Talk:Rich Mullins discography

Photos

The photo of Rich Mullins is supposed to be inside the infobox, as it's the first on the page. As a new Wikipedian, I don't know how to fix that yet, so if someone else does, it would be nice to get it properly formatted. Otherwise, I will keep trying. Al Leluia81 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:17, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

It is inside the infobox, but there's nothing else in the infobox. To see how to complete it correctly, go to template:Infobox artist discography. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:47, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. I will look at it. The photo looks better than what it did with your changes. Al Leluia81 (talk) 19:31, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Biography

Information about the artist adds to the discography. See Simon & Garfunkel discography and Chris Tomlin discography for examples.Al Leluia81 (talk) 00:26, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

The differences are simple those articles doesn't discuss the subject, only the recordings. In your version you discuss formation of bands, which I have kept, and charitable organizations, Mullins' education, his death, awards, etc. Discographies are not to discuss general information about the subject, but only about the subject's music. Do you recognize the differences? This information would be better added to the subject's biographic article. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:14, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

• Walter Görlitz, I removed three of the errors in your edit before returning some of the material, so you can see more clearly better what I am doing. Be aware that a lead section needs references. You had removed all of them. I removed the information that I see as your biggest concern. However, awards for music, Hall of Fame information,etc., related to the music is largely standard in discographies. The need to mention his death is due to some of his awards being posthumously awarded.Al Leluia81 (talk) 18:49, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

You have clearly missed the point. This is not a biography of the subject. I will remove anything related to a biography and not related to a discography and have attempted to follow MOS:LEAD. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:18, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Please look at Category:Discographies of American artists, Category:Christian music discographies or Category:Pop music discographies for further examples. I removed all discussion about the albums as well as it placed undue weight on some content. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:22, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

• I have seen those links. As an example, see the Alice in Chains discography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Chains_discography, Beyonce discography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyonc%C3%A9_discography, Bob Jovi discography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Jovi_discography, Rosanne Cash discography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosanne_Cash_discography, Loretta Lynn discography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn_discography, and the Johnny Mathis discography:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mathis_discography. That is a sampling of articles providing information in the lead paragraph that has not been deleted because there is no rule that discographies cannot verbally summarize awards and other details related to its music. Some discographies lead with a single sentence. Others, usually those in a later stage of completion, also give a longer prose summary that points out notability. Here is a page with the list of discographies which are also Featured Articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies. Go down the list and click to see what lead sections of Featured Articles look like. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies/style. Note that not only is there no rule against providing relevant context, but "Every artist is different, and therefore no two discographies will be exactly the same." The Mullins Discography has certain conditions that are better pointed out, including that he died and his awards were posthumous, for example. Your edits have removed valuable referenced material and have left typographic errors.Al Leluia81 (talk) 17:36, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• The above link to the Featured Article discographies has an error in. This should be the correct link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Al Leluia81 (talk • contribs) 17:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

There are always articles that do not follow the guidelines and manuals of style. Featured articles do not mean that they are correct, only that editors reviewed them, found problems with references, linking, spelling, etc. and once those problems were fixed, the articles were accepted as "good". The fact is simple: follow the manuals of style and guidelines and you won't have problems. Follow what you see in other articles and editors who can point to manuals of style and guidelines will rip your edits to shreds. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

• I agree there are always articles that do not follow the guidelines and manuals of style. Featured articles, on the other hand, represent some of the best content on Wikipedia. At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies I have not found even one article that follows your preference of limiting the lead section to just one or a few unreferenced sentences. All I have seen there do follow the Manual of Style about Lead paragraphs. See MOS:LEAD. I have found no such rule or law either there against lead paragraphs in discographies, or at any of the links you have given that, and some only list discographies by various artists according to genre. Those discographies are at various stages of completion. Please note the following from MOS:LEAD: “The lead is the first part of the article that most people will read. For many, it may be the only section that they read.” “The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies.” “As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate.” Yet you have removed all references, now four times. MOS:LEAD makes no exception for discographies. Specifically what guidelines and place(s) in manuals of style are you basing your edits upon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Al Leluia81 (talk • contribs) 17:06, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Featured articles do represent some of the best content on Wikipedia, I'm sure I can find major problems with any feature article you care to put forward from violations of WP:OVERLINK and of the various manuals of style to more serious problems. Don't hold any other article up as an example of how this should be, point back to manuals of style and guidelines.

MOS:LEAD is not specific to discographies. Extend the style to this specific article. In the case of a discography, it "should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic," which in this case is the discography, not the person or bands involved in the discography. That's what it does now. You are suggesting that it should a biography of Mullins. I say that's not helpful when I want to know how many albums and singles he's released. If I want that, I'll click on his name and read the summary of his biography in that lede.

Similarly, if I'm writing an article about a football team's season, I don't give full information in the lede about when the team was founded, who previous club presidents were, key players were, etc. I only give a summary of the season, which one it is in the league's history, where they played their games, what the win-loss-tie record was and key moments that happened in the season to players on the team (trades, milestone achievements, etc.). I also don't give a brief history of the sport. I could reference all of that and say it has to be included, but it's not relevant to the football team's season.

You have written a great lede for Rich Mullins and have incorporated content related to the discography, but it's too detailed for this article. 03:57, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

This is the previous post, indented 10 levels

Start of a new post.

• I appreciate your comments. When we use a analogy we must get clarity so we compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges, or in this case, soccer balls to soccer balls, not soccer balls to American footballs. If you wrote about the record a football team produced in a year, that is analogous to a record a music artist produced in a year (it's a more accurate analogy, despite the pun). You would include wins, key events, and milestone achievements. That is what I have been trying to do. However, a discography is not a record produced, but a summary of lifetime professional work. We need a better analogy. Maybe we could view music as the sport, Christian Contemporary Music as the team, and the article focused on the professional contribution or production by a single player, over their lifetime. That is what is being written. Perhaps you would include key events and milestone achievements. But in this soccer/discography analogy, there is another article written with the player's biography. It should include major events also. So (playing your roll) I would say you can not include that information, because it is biographical. Would that help create a better soccer/discography article?

• When a discography stands alone it needs to display information so it can be grasped by readers. Tables are useful for people with usual vision, who can scan information. Vision-impaired readers sometimes can not do this. Tables may block them from getting information. Articles that have little or no prose description can be inaccessible to those who use scanners. I think an article needs to be designed so readers who have different reading strengths can access the information. Here are some articles that may help clarify this issue (gained from a Google search for "reading tables visual impairment): "Creating Accessible Tables" has an example of how screen readers read material: http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/. It has a related article, "Designing for Screen Reader Compatibility" at http://webaim.org/techniques/screenreader/. How screen readers may read a table line-by- line is explained at http://www.nature.com/nature/software/screen/screen2b.html. Under the heading "Reading tables" it says sighted students may "look at a matrix and examine it for interesting patterns (for example, do the numbers in the top right look larger than those in the bottom left?)" but that is difficult for the blind. Articles about creating accessible pages are here: https://www.amherst.edu/help/make_accessible, "Making Accessible Tables": http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/accessibletable.html, and http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/accessiblepage.html

• Placed solely in tables, information is not accessible to millions of people. This creates a problem in discographies where information is limited to tables. In Rich Mullins' main article, there is a well-made chart summarizing his awards. Some people can not take in that information. In his current discography, you have disallowed a prose description of what awards his music won. Yet it's a stand-alone article and I think we agree it should follow MOS:LEAD ("should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic"). What awards did the music win? Why can't a prose description be used to contextualize the information in a discography?

• I agree I began with too much unnecessary biographical information. My last edit reduced that further. What I would like to know is why this discography is a stand-alone article. How is that better than being part of the main article, which could use a visual description of his work and which has context? When I see Paul Simon's discography, it needs to be a stand-alone article because it has many tables that readers would need to scroll past on his main page. It would be too much of an intrusion. Mullins' discography has 1 table. It would be a good addition to the end of his main article. What do you think? I saw you left the only talk page note regarding his discography back in 2005. You have been involved with it now for over 10 years. I'm asking what you would think abut merging this discography back into the Rich Mullins article. Thank you for your time.Al Leluia81 (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry you don't understand why this is a stand-alone article. Snow1215 split the articles in 2007 and it appears that it's because the main biography was becoming too large with the included discography. This is what's known as splitting. He has not been active since 2008. I'm not sure why you think that a reader might have access to this article and not the biography. It is linked in the first link. My first edits here were a year ago and my first edits on the main biography were about four years ago. If you think the tables do not follow accessibility guidelines, please discuss that at WP:ACCESSIBILITY or possibly at the albums project, however you did not edit the tables, only the prose.

As for apples-to-apples comparisons, it was simply and attempt to show a smaller article. The point here is that the opening paragraphs of any article should summarize the content of the article, not include information from related articles. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• My previous comments and links point to other discographies with more content at the beginning. I encourage you to look at some other examples of how discographies can be written and made more user-friendly because of the prose. I must also point out that your comparison suggesting my lead for this discography was ever the equivalent of giving information about when a "team was founded, who previous club presidents were, key players were" or that I gave the equivalent of "a brief history of the sport" are inaccurate as I made no such comparisons and those comparison are therefore irrelevant. My comment about your discography comment on this site referred to Rich Mullins' main article's Talk page, heading #5: "Some of those relases are compilations and should be separated or identified in some way as compilations. --Walter Görlitz 21:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rich_Mullins. Also, you are correct that I did not edit the tables, however I did add the Infobox, photo, and added content to it, with your help, and have been the only person to add references which, at my final edit on January 12, totaled 31 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=prev&oldid=699499386), and with your edits has been decreased to 19: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=699588177.

After some extended discussion it appears to me that you disagree with biographical information being allowed in leads for artists' discographies, maybe as a matter of principle. That creates some problems for me. I have now clicked on every featured article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies, which today includes 158 discographies, and the 1 "A-class" article, and also the 20 articles listed as being "Good". One featured article,"Australian Crawl", has a lead with 3 sentences which includes the biographical details that they are an Australian surf/pop rock group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Crawl_discography. All other articles, a total of 178, have leads that are usually 3 to 4 full paragraphs of discography-related prose that include biographical details relevant to that discography.

I would like Rich Mullins' discography lead to be written as well as any of the best on Wikipedia. What I have written so far certainly falls considerably short of that, but is an improvement on having a single sentence that restates the discographies title and the Infobox information thus being doubly redundant. As of now you have reverted my lead section 3 times (different days). I added it on December 15, 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=695421314&oldid=695394439. You reverted it on December 16: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=695422771. I undid that on December 17: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=695471957. You removed it all December 18: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=695707824. You then added two more sentences to "The discography of American musician Rich Mullins, with their release date" on that same day: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=695738908. After fixing 1 error and 2 typos (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=prev&oldid=699499137) I added material with the portions edited out that I thought would be your main concern on January 12 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=699499137. You reverted it on January 13: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=next&oldid=699588177, leaving the 1 sentence, "The discography of Rich Mullins includes 11 studio albums, 7 compilations, 20 singles and 1 musical., The Canticle of the Plains." Although it contains another typo, I have made no more edits to this page.

I would have found it more constructive if you had simply removed whatever was actually not needed in the section, rather than removing the entire referenced content. However, if I understand you correctly, you object to biographical details even when relevant to a discography if that material is (or could be) on the artist's main page. This means readers must go to the artist's main page and search for information, which would likely be more general. As I pointed out extensively above, some readers may prefer a prose summary and for others it may be a necessity. As a stand-alone article, biographical information should be allowed on discographies and there is no guideline against it.

I am not suggesting my last edit was the best lead it could have been, and welcome comments from any editor about how to improve it. If another editor can write it better, I welcome that as well. I am not committed to any particular version I have written thus far, but what is written requires references and needs to be as good as what I have seen. I am concerned that because you are an editor in the Contemporary Christian Music genre you might take this stand on other musical artists' discography articles as well, preventing editors from making valuable improvements to them, and discouraging editors from creating referenced content which can take hours to research and create, but takes just seconds to remove. I am also concerned I may find the same issue arise if I attempt to work on any other CCM artist's discography.

I have every reason to believe you may well think you are protecting Rich Mullins' discography article. I can respect your tenacious stance on that. I have found many of your comments very valuable, and hope to work with you on improvements for this discography.

Here are other examples of the kind of work included in many discographies: The Beatles: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_discography); David Bowie (featured): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie_discography; Led Zeppelin (featured): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin_discography; Mariah Carey (featured): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariah_Carey_albums_discography; Pet Shop Boys (featured): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Shop_Boys_discography. Vladimir Horowitz (featured): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Horowitz_discography. I am asking you to reconsider your position.Al Leluia81 (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• I'm adding another comment regarding your comment at 06:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC): "I'm sorry you don't understand why this is a stand-alone article." There are artists with far more extensive tables on their main article, see for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Feliciano that are not intrusive. You said, "Snow1215 split the articles in 2007 and it appears that it's because the main biography was becoming too large with the included discography." Snow1215 created the Rich Mullins discography article on April 9, 2007 in the Rich Mullins main article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins&diff=next&oldid=121112989, then moved it off the Rich Mullins article (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins&diff=next&oldid=121433208) to its own article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=121440760&oldid=121435397.

That table was an excellent contribution to the Rich Mullins main page. The Rich Mullins article, I estimate using a word processor, was only around 2,063 words of readable text on that day (everything down to and including awards, before the discography). When an article is even 50 kilobytes of readable text only, it may not require splitting. A 30 kB to 50 kB article is about 4,000 to 10,000 words of readable text. See WP:SIZE. The Rich Mullins article on April 9 was greatly enhanced by the table with good information (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins&diff=prev&oldid=121433208) and today has only a portion of Mullins' work listed on the main article page apparently because of the convention that there is a separate discography page so readers can go there to get it. This is that page today, and has just a minimal list and is missing much information that was here in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins&diff=697942728&oldid=695138305, while the Rich Mullins discography still has just a single chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Mullins_discography&diff=699593130&oldid=699588177. It was better with all information on one page. It inconveniences readers to have to go to an additional page to get valuable information that was a blessing on the article's main page. The question is not that readers can go there. The issue is what percentage ever do? Why demand they do so until the discography has been developed to where it needs its own page? Why remove valuable information from an artist's page, then limit viewers to scanty information on the main page on the grounds the reader can go elsewhere and disallow more than a few sentences on the artist's discography on the grounds the reader can go elsewhere? Discography articles do not need to be created as stand-alone articles when it requires a reader to waste time for information they could all have been given and which enhanced the main page. Even today the main Rich Mullins article is only 23,926 bytes. That was my point. The goal is not to create stand-alone discography pages. The goal is to make it simple for readers to have access to information. Regards Al Leluia81 (talk) 20:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

You seriously do not get it. I am done arguing with you when all you do is point to other poorly created articles. Do what you want, but if you add any biographic information here that is unrelated to a discography I will delete it. Feel free to ignore this statement. I will not read your essays above. I'm sorry. I do not have time to educate you on editing this or other articles presently. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:39, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

And just to clarify what you don't get: follow the guidelines and manuals of style, not the work of others in other articles. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:02, 31 January 2016 (UTC)