Template talk:BBC composer page

List of URLs

The BBC has provided the following list of URLs:

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:38, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

-- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rogerdp59 (talk • contribs) 13:06, 30 January 2015‎

Declaration of interest, and template rollout

Resolved

I am undertaking some paid consultancy work for the BBC (the UK's not-for-profit national broadcaster). While this does not carry a job title, it may be thought of as being analogous to Wikipedian in Residence or GLAM ambassador activities.

The BBC have asked me to raise with the Wikipedia community the possibility of linking to more of their series of pages on well-known composers, which act as portals to their online archives of broadcast content, which they feel is relevant, educational, and of interest to Wikipedia's readers. Some of our articles already link to the corresponding page in the series.

My recommendation was to create a template for this purpose, demonstrate its use, and ask for community agreement to deploy it for the pages listed in the section above. This I am now doing.

I have deployed the template to six pages, as examples:

• Johann Sebastian Bach (replacing existing link)
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Franz Schubert
• Igor Stravinsky (replacing existing link)
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

with a pointer to this discussion in the edit summary. I shall also post pointers to this discussion, to relevant project/ noticeboard pages.

If there is agreement to proceed, I shall add the template to the other pages for composers listed above; though of course anyone else may also do that.

I am happy to answer any reasonable questions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:53, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Nice. The template seems to let me link an article about a composer to the composer page at BBC. How about linking a composition to the page for that composition? For example, creating an external link from String Quartet No. 14 (Schubert) to Schubert: Death And The Maiden Quartet? Or would it be simpler to just write the external link without a template? --Ravpapa (talk) 14:38, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@Ravpapa: Please use {{BBC programme}} for that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:42, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

This seems to me fine and very helpful, many thanks Andy. I will be using it.--Smerus (talk) 14:44, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Looks good. It may need care to insist on using it in External links rather than in References, at least in some cases. For example, the Stravinsky page has a biography section that links right back to the Wikipedia article. @Ravpapa: the Death and the Maiden page you mention is not a "page for that composition", but a review of one particular recording of that composition, hence too commercial for us to link to, imo. --Stfg (talk) 17:32, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Andy, is it worth considering creating a 'BBC Composer of the Week' template as well? - there is a wealth of material on the website covering many composers who have featured in this series.--Smerus (talk) 17:21, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@Smerus: For pages like http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lhj5z ? Again, I would use {{BBC programme}}; with the PID as the first value, thus: {{BBC programme|id=b04lhj5z|title=Some episode title}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:45, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks.--Smerus (talk) 06:20, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all for your supportive comments; in the light of those and the lack of objection, I'm going to go ahead and deploy the template. I'll work from the top of the above list, downwards, if anyone else wants to join in, working from the other end. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:04, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Now done. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:37, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I've just today seen the result of this template, and I think Andy Mabbett deserves our thanks. These BBC pages, of which I was unaware till now, are full of interesting, reliable, relevant and sometimes offbeat information. I shall definitely be dipping in for material. Tim riley talk 22:59, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I work for the BBC team producing the Radio 3 composer collections and would like to thank Andy for his help with this project. We have just published 8 more collections, covering Copland, Gershwin, Monteverdi, Nielsen, Purcell, Schoenberg, Vivaldi and Walton, taking the total number of collections to 40 (there are no others planned at this time). If there are no objections, I will add the urls to the list at the top of the page and deploy Andy's template on the relevant pages. Thanks, Roger Philbrick Rogerdp59 (talk) 14:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Dead

The links seem to be dead now. I randomly checked http://bbc.co.uk/mahler, http://bbc.co.uk/mozart, http://bbc.co.uk/tchaikovsky. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 20:15, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I've only just seen this. The links work for me. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:05, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. They work now, but the pages render completely mangled in my (deliberately) old version of Firefox, but work as expected in an up-to-date version of Chrome or IE. Also, when I wrote the above, I was, unlike now, in non-Commonwealth country. Maybe that explains that hitch, maybe not. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:30, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Wording

Instead of "material", which I think is overly simplistic, would anyone be opposed to changing the wording of this template? Taking a cue from the BBC itself, might I suggest the more prosaic:

Programmes examining the life and works of Chopin from BBC Radio 3

I don't think "archives" is necessary. I'd also question the use of italics; at the very least "archives" should be non-italisised.

Edit: I hadn't realised this was a citation template (hence the italics!); I thought it was primarily for use in WP:EL sections. Maybe my suggested text isn't suitable in a citation context. — Hugh (talk) 01:39, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree that "Chopin material" is odd and the text suggested, based on the BBC phrasing, is preferable. The italics can be avoided if this template invokes {{Cite web}} with |publisher= instead of |website=. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:18, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I'd question why this template would be being used in citations in any case, since surely the source is at most a single programme, not a collection, and {{BBC Programme}} can be used to cite specific programmes… — Hugh (talk) 20:37, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: What do you think about this? — Hugh (talk) 19:25, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I think the current wording is accurate and correct. Some programmes are performances, and do not "examine" anything. I have no issue with Michael's suggestion to use {{Cite web}} with |publisher=. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:14, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I've made that change, and I've also removed "archives", since the publisher is properly BBC Radio 3, not its archives. Since the title of each page is "Discovering <artist>", I have gone with that construction for the |title= parameter. — Hugh (talk) 01:31, 29 March 2018 (UTC)