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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Election: Coordinator for 2010

Starting today, we are holding an election for coordinator for 2010. This has been discussed above, and explained here.

• Nominations will be open until Sunday 3 January (midnight GMT)
• If we have more than one candidate the election will be be extended, to end on Sunday 10 January (midnight GMT).

• That might not be a bad idea anyway, given that many people are on holiday. --Jubilee♫clipman 00:50, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm never very keen to change a process of this kind once it has already started, in any case it seems unlikely that we will get another nomination. --Kleinzach 03:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

• We are using approval voting. Under this system, participants may approve one (or more) candidates, but not oppose. We may ask questions and make comments, if necessary critical ones.
• Notices have been sent to all members (active and inactive).

Please also note:

• Active members are asked to reconfirm their participation in the project (see here). This is to help the new coordinator identify those who are working on articles. --Kleinzach 04:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

• This leads me wondering about what qualifies as an active member. I hadn't really thought of myself in this way, but as roughly a third of the articles I list on my user page as created by me fall under this project (and mostly WP:WPO) I thought I could add myself.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

• You qualify indeed as an active member, more so than many of those actually listed as active! --Jubilee♫clipman 23:27, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that a number of those on the list are no longer on WP at all. This is an opportunity to update. --Kleinzach 23:32, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I've moved three names that were listed as active but haven't edited WP itself for 3 months to inactive. Other names might not be involved in this project's work, per se, but that will need more thought while reviewing their contribution history. --Jubilee♫clipman 19:37, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Nominations

Comment/Reply to Myke Cuthbert (see below): This will be the first time we have had a coordinator in a CM-related project, so it's an experiment. In the past it's been difficult to sustain interest in this particular project and the election is part of the effort to get it moving again. --Kleinzach 22:28, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Jubileeclipman

Jubileeclipman (talk · contribs)

Comments and questions for Jubileeclipman

• Question: How do you see this project developing over the next 12 months? What are the priorities? --Kleinzach 04:14, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Well without a doubt, the most important priority of all is communication. It goes without saying that we need to communicate with each other since that is the purpose of a WikiProject. However, we also need to communicate with other projects since we work in collaboration with similar WikiProjects. For example, Thomas Adès is a contemporary figure in music but he is also a composer. Thus we need to work together with the composers project on his articles. He also writes operas so we also need to work with the opera project on certain of his articles (including his bio where appropriate). The main reason for this is that people tend to join WikiProjects covering things that they are knowledgeable about so that they can contribute to that project. Our project is quite broad in its sweep since it is not exclusive in its coverage but generally covers [a]ll articles that relate to Contemporary classical music written in the past 50 years or so. I do not believe that any editor can know everything about all of that (I certainly do not), nor can any editor know everything about, say, opera relevant to contemporary music. For example, a lesser known fact concerning 18th-century opera might just be pertinent to a contemporary composer's works - and not just to the composer's operas for that matter. At least three projects are going to be involved in that group of articles.

Concerning our focus for the next year, there are several groups of articles that need serious attention. In particular, those covering the periods we deal with: 20th-century classical music, Contemporary classical music, 21st-century classical music. I do not need to go into the details here as they are well known, but these are cross-project articles and need to be dealt with in that manner. There are also articles that cross projects but seem to fall through the cracks simply because no one is prepared to spend time trying to sort out the multiple issues they have or (often worse) because they are left to a single editor to "sort out". The problem with the latter approach is that that editor might not actually be the best person for the job. Perhaps they are so knowledgable that they forget that most people just do not know what, for example, combinatoriality is, and simply wiki link it without explaining it and hope for the best. On the other hand, perhaps the editor is tired of all the jargon in a particular article but actually knows nothing at all about the subject and yet decides to be bold and goes ahead and tries to make sense of it all nevertheless. Both these people need our (collaborative) help but of course we need to know of their existance. A simple "you might be interested to know that editor is making changes to article" is often enough. However, we also need to be pro-active and check at least the most "important" articles regularly. (All articles are by their very nature "important" but the three highlighted above and those directly linked to them, as well as the top-ranking articles in our project, are of special importance).

We also need to get the word out more about our activities. We risk forming a clique of core people if we are not careful since few editors involved in the project participate in discussions or initiate discussions of their own. I cannot decide if that is because these editors are facing no major problems with articles they are working on or because they feel unconfortable here or perhaps simply because they forget about the project. Whatever the cause, we need to ensure that 1) the project is welcoming to both newbies and oldies alike, 2) we are actually doing what people expect us to do, and 3) our help is constructive and informative within our own fields of expertise. And that we are prepared to accept and admit those things we just don't know and ask for help ourselves! --Jubilee♫clipman 08:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

• Question: Will you introduce monthly collaborations, concentrating on a list or a composer or a movement/school or whatever?

That is a very good idea. We can either work on a single article or a set of articles. If we worked on a set, we would need to define the limits, however: for a composer we might work only on the main bio, the list-of-works article(s), and the articles on that composer's work; for other items we work on a similarly specified set of articles. Collaboration would have to be the key. We might, for example, decide to work on all the articles directly related to John Adams. Given that he wrote several operas, we would need to work with the opera project in this case. We would also need to work with the composers project and several other projects directly covering this composer's articles. This idea will need to be discussed again to discover how other editors here feel about it and how practical it is, and, assuming it goes ahead, to set up the specifics in advance rather than muddling through on a case by case basis. I would welcome other editors' thoughts on this. --Jubilee♫clipman 21:41, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

• Question: The project still doesn't have a defined, properly categorized, set of articles. How can we deal with this problem? Could it be a collaboration?

First I need to ask whether everyone feels that the actual scope of the project is defined well enough after the redraft of the project page a few months back? If it is not, our first priority is to address that issue. Regardless, the actual definition and categorisation of the set of articles will undoubtedly need to be a collaborative effort. In the first place, we have many articles tagged as ours that clearly are not ours. (This is due to a bot run at the start of the project which placed the project's banner on articles using certain general categories many of which are now defunct. See here and here in particular.) If an editor removes our banner and no other project is bannered what happens? If the editor is a member of other projects, they could simply re-banner on behalf of one of them. The alternative is to discuss the issue with other projects that might be interested (at the highest level, probably WP:CM for the most part). This way is probably to be preferred, for all but the most obvious cases, and essential for the less obvious cases. Coincidently, discussing articles in this way will also have the happy consequences of generating discussion about certain articles that might never have taken place otherwise and raising awareness of those articles’ existence.

There is a more serious problem however: how do we find these miscategorised articles beyond a manual trawl of all 2,729 articles (according to Category:WikiProject contemporary music articles) or waiting for someone to alert us? All the other active music projects are fairly well defined, so involving them in an issue that is essentially our problem is not fair (except insofar as the articles might belong to them). The radical solution is to empty the entire Category:WikiProject contemporary music articles and start again. That would be a last resort, though, and may well create more problems than it solves unless we can properly define which cats to use in a fresh bot run in order to avoid the exact same issue as before. I do not know the answer to this yet and must ask everyone to get their thinking caps on. --Jubilee♫clipman 21:41, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Votes in support of Jubileeclipman

1. --Kleinzach 04:14, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
2. -- I'm not entirely sure the project needs an elected coordinator, but I think that if there is to be one, I can't think of a better one that Jublieeclipman in terms of energy and willingness to reach out to other people and avoid making a clique. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 13:46, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
3. -- Fine by me --Peter cohen (talk) 21:12, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
4. --Deskford (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Result

As there was only one candidate, Jubileeclipman is now duly approved as coordinator for 2010. --Kleinzach 01:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Thank you to everyone that voted for me. Thank you also to all those that reconfirmed their participation in this project: we now have a far clearer idea of who is involved. --Jubilee♫clipman 01:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Craig Armstrong

Craig Armstrong has been appointed OBE in the (UK) New Year Honours list and the article on him is a bit of a mess. Anyone feel inclined to use this as an excuse to improve it...? --Deskford (talk) 01:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Kobi Arad (AfD and Sockpuppetry)

Those of you who have been observing the bewildering array of editors adding links to the Kobi Arad article from other articles, always in a similar editing style, may wish to record your observations at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Knoblauch129. --Deskford (talk) 01:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Very few of the weblinks in Kobi Arad lead to anything in English. Furthermore, much of the information appears to be lifted from somewhere since in the edit window it breaks off to a new line after about 10 or 15 words:

Cheese is very nice and easy to eat but

difficult to digest. You should not eat it at

night as this could case nightmares. It is good

on toast melted and with a tomato on top [etc]

These editors are indeed almost certainly socketeers... --Jubilee♫clipman 02:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Aha! Well spotted! I hadn't noticed those line breaks. That explains why the New England Conservatory link in the first paragraph doesn't work. --Deskford (talk) 02:11, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I've sent it to AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kobi Arad --Jubilee♫clipman 02:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Many people, including me, tried to help the main contributor for over 5 months on this article to little avail. In the end the AfD got snowballed... --Jubilee♫clipman 23:19, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

We need to remain vigilant. I notice that since the article was deleted (18:56, 3 January 2010) it has already been re-created and deleted again (09:07, 4 January 2010). --Deskford (talk) 12:18, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Gwen Gale has warned Schoenberg129 and noted that even his very latest offering fell short of WPs standards (WP:MUSIC especially) and the reasons why (once again). She also explained why the AfD was snowballed and requested the editor wait for at least 3 months before recreating the article. See here. I have little doubt that she will personally block this user if he does not follow her advice. It might be worth putting this article on our project page under pages with potential problems (or some such) in case it goes blue again, unless anyone cares to watch it personally: what do people think? --Jubilee♫clipman 22:03, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

She's also blocked the page itself against re-creation for one month. Most editors would take the hint and give up at this point, but in this case I have a suspicion we will see this page re-appearing again when the block expires. I've left it on my watchlist, so I should notice if it does. Of course he might still try to create it with a different name in the meantime. --Deskford (talk) 22:48, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Deskford. I'll leave it with you for now, then, if that's ok? Any problems, you know where to come... --Jubilee♫clipman 22:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW, would Arad Kobi be valid in his native language? --Jubilee♫clipman 01:53, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, Hebrew does read from right to left... but I don't think they reverse family and given names as, say, Hungarian does. No, I was thinking he might create Kobi Arad (composer) or some such, to get around the block. But I think for now we should just forget about him and concentrate on other things. I suspect if he does come back we'll soon spot the inappropriate links appearing in articles all over the place. --Deskford (talk) 02:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, good point! --Jubilee♫clipman 02:36, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Conclusions have been drawn and the case closed. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Knoblauch129. --Deskford (talk) 13:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Frank Corcoran

An article on Frank Corcoran has appeared, created by User:Fbcorcoran. However, unlike some other recent attempts at self-promotion we have seen, this time we are dealing with (in my opinion) a worthy composer, so I have overlooked the possible conflict of interest and attempted to clean up the article a bit. There is one sentence I don't really understand about his first symphony being the only one premiered in Vienna in 1981, so I have tagged it for clarification. I'm also slightly surprised that he appears to have composed and had performed three works in 2010 already, but hey, that's only one a day.

Please have a look over the article and give it any further tidying you think it needs. --Deskford (talk) 19:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I see you've already sent the standard letter to the editor. I've asked for a statement of COI and an explanation of the dates of those compositions on the talk page. I've also edited the Vienna bit to clarify it (based on one of the other sources which I have now used as the citation instead). I have actually heard of this guy, though, so I think he is here to stay. --Jubilee♫clipman 23:55, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I have just realised where his name is familiar from: he was a redlink in List of 21st-century classical composers by name! Anyway, the article is pretty good and will probably stay. --Jubilee♫clipman 01:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Archived but still unresolved issues

I've just archived much of this page but noticed a few unresolved issues, in particular the categories discussion and the list-articles discussion (especially the list of 21st-century classical composers). Both these issues need to be resolved. Thanks --Jubilee♫clipman 22:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

20th-century composer lists

I've recommending a merger of the three 20th-century lists. See discussion here. --Kleinzach 00:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

List of 21st-century classical composers

I've now removed all the red links. (It took me a week!) Would someone now like to volunteer to take out the footballers? I feel I've done enough on this, so I've taken it off my watchlist. Best. --Kleinzach 01:08, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll have a good look at the whole list when I get time. Most of the footballers etc are probably mis-linked so it might take a while to find the correct dab... --Jubilee♫clipman 01:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks to Kleinzach for completing that major task. As well as the footballers to be weeded out, there are numerous names in the list that link to what appear to be self-authored vanity articles for composers of dubious notability. I am unlikely to have time in the coming months to do a systematic trawl, but I will flag up composers at random as I come across them. --Deskford (talk) 00:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed: thanks Kleinzach! I have two weeks off work from Monday (yey!) so I can trawl various things at my leisure, including this and the entire group of CTM-tagged articles. I won't kill my self going through endless lists for hours on end, rather I will dip in and out of these and skim read the leads to establish basic categorisation.. I suspect most articles are in the right place: we just need to find the misfits. As for the NNs etc, we just have to wait for them to be flagged: I am not reading every single article just to establish notability. I will also look into how to create/use a bot specific to such tasks (I haven't a clue about bots). --Jubilee♫clipman 01:02, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The 'good editor's rule' is to do one thing at a time - and finish it. Just checking the links (for disambigs, footballers and Tasmanian politicians) will be a major step forward. --Kleinzach 01:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

OK: I'll concentrate on this list first, then move on. If I spot any very obvious NNs with no sources I'll PROD or AfD as appropriate (they are likely to be BLPs in fact so speedy might apply in a few cases). --Jubilee♫clipman 01:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Sound art

Just out of interest, what is the precise difference between a "sound artist" and a "composer"? Or are they in fact the exact same thing? I don't doubt that Miguel Álvarez-Fernández is a composer, I just wonder if there is a distinction to be made so that we should say Miguel Álvarez-Fernández (Born 1979 in Madrid, Spain) is a sound artist, composer...[etc]; or should we replace sound artist with composer? --Jubilee♫clipman 05:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I think sound art and to a lesser extent noise art are well-established terms with a meaning quite distinct from composition, even though people will argue to define what exactly they mean. Sound art is more about concentrating on the nature of sounds themselves, how they are produced and what they signify, rather than how they are organised into structured sequences. For example, if I were to hang lots of wind chimes of different materials (metal, ceramic, bamboo, glass, shell) in a forest and invite people to wander around the forest, I might call that sound art. If, however, I asked people to follow a specific path through the forest so they heard the chimes in a particular order, that might start to be composition. Having said that, I think most practitioners of sound art tend to be composers as well. We do have a List of sound artists and a Category:Sound artists, so if someone is only described as a sound artist they don't need to be on the composer lists. As for noise, that tends to be used when people are working with sounds that might normally be thought of as undesirable, e.g. traffic noise, electrical interference, or indeed the sorts of sounds that are normally avoided on musical instruments. --Deskford (talk) 16:36, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I wondered if that was the case. I immediately thought of Gavin Bryars, Brian Eno, and various prog-rock artists bashing bits of metal and dropping empty milk bottles when I saw "sound artist" and was going to investigate further when I got time. You beat me to it: thanks! (I should have recalled Luigi Russolo, though...) --Jubilee♫clipman 01:01, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Guto Puw

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found a number of concerns with the article which you can see at Talk:Guto Puw/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 18:17, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

The problems are, in essence, stylistic: there are a few near-weasels and an over-abundance of He... He... He... amongst other things. I will check the article out. Thanks, Jezhotwells. --Jubilee♫clipman 23:47, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Time for specific style guidelines

This week coming, I am going to write a draft of a new style guidelines section for this project based on WP:MUSTARD,WP:MUSIC and those used by other music related projects. At present all we have is This project uses the following guidelines... but I don't think this is specific enough for this project. Any thoughts on what should be in/not in? See also this discussion on the Classical music Style guidelines' talk page (and most of the previous discussions on that page) and this discussion on the WP:CM main talk page. --Jubilee♫clipman 23:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

This might not be as necessary as I first thought: see the key signatures discussion over at CM that I pointed to above. --Jubilee♫clipman 18:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I have added some info for each guideline and added a section about sourcing and citing. Obviously, you all know this stuff but it might be a useful page to direct a struggling new contributor with good faith to? Any thoughts? Wikipedia:WikiProject_Contemporary_music/Style_guidelines --Jubilee♫clipman 15:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Sérgio Azevedo

Is this article viable, given the huge number of red links to so-called "prestigious ensembles, soloists and conductors" etc? I have multi-tagged it but can't really see much beyond a sea of red (you have been warned)! --Jubilee♫clipman 05:39, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a classic case of someone putting his own CV/résumé on WP. The most substantial content was contributed by Mynameisnoname (talk · contribs), whose only other contributions have been on a (now deleted) conductor and some dubious edits to List of GIS software. The Sérgio Azevedo article quotes external links including his own blog, the blog of the aforementioned (now deleted) conductor, two publishers, and the sites Classical Composers Database and The Living Composers Project, both of which appear to invite user contributions and are thus not reliable sources. --Deskford (talk) 12:54, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Then again, it might become useful... Klein's had a go at cleaning it up a little. The sources leave a lot to be desired though, indeed. --Jubilee♫clipman 15:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Kenneth Atchley

(Moved from above) - Kenneth Atchley appears to be a "noise artist", whatever that is... --Jubilee♫clipman 05:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

More background on Kenneth Atchley - The article is also an unsourced BLP and has been since its creation in 2004. A couple of IPs have added info here and there while a few registered editors have performed cleanup. However, a quick Google search appears to show up several RSs (Dusted Meridian Gallery etc). I'll investigate further, later tonight, and attempt to sort this article out rather than send to AfD. --Jubilee♫clipman 15:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I placed a WP:PROD on this before I read your comment above, since the lack of references has been challenged for several months and the article hasn't been improved. However if you find reliable sources that indicate notability, please remove the prod! --Deskford (talk) 17:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I have done a fair amount to add sources and clean up this article. Please check and verify. There is still a paragraph or two lifted directly from his official site. OTOH, one of the sources mentions that he was interviewed by the Wire. Still much to do but I think he is here to stay. --Jubilee♫clipman 00:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Good rescue job! It now seems a half-decent article if I read it with one eye closed.... --Deskford (talk) 10:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

As opposed to "with both eyes closed"? :P --Jubilee♫clipman 13:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Working on the list...

I have tagged a huge number for lack of sources. However, I have been rapped on the knuckles for nominating a few articles for deletion and PRODing others. See my talk pge. Maybe I was little too quick with a few but the prods in particular seemed appropriate:

PRODs

• Hans Abrahamsen - Unsourced BLP since creation in 2005. UnPRODed. (I have started to source this now: the article is tiny though given the write up in Chester/Novello.)

Perhaps the article on him by Anders Beyer in the New Grove would be of use? I have expanded the article on Abrahamsen with reference to Beyer.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Beyer is certainly an RS in anyone's book. Probaby just needs expansion/tidying etc then. --Jubilee♫clipman 16:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

• István Anhalt - Unsourced BLP and stub since creation in 2005. UnPRODed. (One editor has added a few lines and added a good source.)

Another editor (namely me) has just added an even better source. This is now the third time I have gone to New Grove while checking this list, and found an article. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

*Stephen Mark Barchan - Still PRODed. (Possible self-promo.) I dePRODed as Klein is sourcing it.

Barchan is young but I think he just about scrapes through - it's also not such a bad article. In the circumstances, I think Afd would be preferable to a Prod if anyone wants to question this. --Kleinzach 00:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I checked a few of the references. One seems to be dead, but the others convince me he's notable. --Deskford (talk) 00:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

You can't rePROD anyway, IIRC, so would have to be AfD. --Jubilee♫clipman 01:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been through the refs now and I rather think I've been conned! There are a couple of reviews but they don't amount to much. I've put a notability tag on him. --Kleinzach 09:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

...and just as you'd convinced me he was notable! I've replaced some of the dead links (SPNM and BMIC are now merged to become Sound and Music). --Deskford (talk) 12:55, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear... what a tangled web... If the article is unsalvagable I'd AfD it personally. Delete vote in advance from me. --Jubilee♫clipman 16:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think in this case we probably need to remove some of the irrelevant references and see if what's left amounts to notability. --Deskford (talk) 17:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

• Clarence Barlow - BLP poorly sourced and still a stub since creation in 2003. UnPRODed (I have added a couple of ELs to this now.)

Astounding. No one since 2003 has even bothered to check whether New Grove has an article on Barlow? Well, it has been added now, as well as an interview in Computer Music Journal. Also fixed a bare external link, and added some material about his compositional focus.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• James Barnes (composer) - BLP unsourced since creation in 2007 (only reference is his Faculty page write up). UnPRODed. (I have added the USNA Band article, though it took an age to find because of the way WP links to Google in the find sources box. I had to move the quote so that it only enclosed his name.)
• Christophe Bertrand - Still PRODed. (Possible self-promo.)

Thoughts on these welcome!

AfDs (mostly contested but at least this way people are alerted and can improve the article)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Theodore Antoniou
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher Auerbach-Brown
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicolas Bacri
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Claude Ballif
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cacilda Borges Barbosa

Another issue is that several very notable composers seem to have few or no inline citations: Malcolm Arnold (vast list of sources but absolutely no inlines), Milton Babbitt (he actually needs more sources too), Warren Barker (wrote the Bewitched theme tune among others; article still a stub), Luciano Berio (only two inlines though there is a huge list of Ext Links) and Michael Berkeley (only a small list of ELs) Harrison Birtwistle (other issues too) and Gavin Bryars (more inline needed).

There is also a new stub for people to check out: Daniel Börtz.

Anyway, I'm only half way through B so far and I have opened a massive can of worms. Any help from you guys appreciated! --Jubilee♫clipman 06:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

A/B finished. Francis Burt.

Also, is Dennis Báthory-Kitsz a serious and genuine article? His pseudonyms are listed as: Dennis Bathory, Dennis Kitsz, Dennis J. Kitsz, Dennis Bathory Kitsz, Kalvos Gesamte, Grey Shadé, D.B. Cowell, Brady Kynans, Kalvos Zondrios, Báthory Dénes, Orra Maussade, Don Johnson, Kerry Merritt, Calvin Dion, Enimtu Bemanyna. The sources seem to check out, but we are also back to that Nonpop thing we sent to bed a few weeks ago. --Jubilee♫clipman 08:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

A lot of issues here, and in the spur discussion on your talk page. If nominating articles for deletion leads to their improvement, that can't be a bad thing, can it...? I suppose it could be argued that it's not how PROD and AfD are supposed to be used. And if in the process the odd notable gets deleted because their article didn't assert that notability, then they may actually benefit from being recreated from scratch. I hadn't come across WP:MET — that could be useful, though it confusingly seems to index everyone by first name.

Of the above list, some seem certainly notable, though their articles are poor.

Hans Abrahamsen is, I would say, a significant composer. He had a lot of exposure in the early 80s — BBC, London Sinfonietta, Almeida Festival — then he disappeared from view for many years, I think due to ill health. I have a few CDs of his music within easy reach, so I'll have a go at tidying up this one.

István Anhalt and Clarence Barlow I have definitely heard of, though know nothing about.

Christophe Bertrand is young, and one to watch. He was featured in the Ensemble Intégrales European Young Generation programme.

Nicolas Bacri — wasn't he a Masterprize finalist one year? I think he is being promoted by BIS at the moment, with a CD of his orchestral music out last year.

Daniel Börtz — I think I've heard a solo trumpet piece somewhere. Probably notable.

Francis Burt (composer) — one work by him was issued by NMC and created a bit of a stir, but otherwise unknown. See here. He's on my list of composers I feel I should find out more about, though I've never heard a note of his music.

And yes, the Arnold, Babbitt, Berio, Birtwistle &c. are all in need of attention.

So that leaves Stephen Mark Barchan, James Barnes (composer), Theodore Antoniou, Christopher Auerbach-Brown, Claude Ballif, Cacilda Borges Barbosa and the many-named Dennis Báthory-Kitsz. Well, I've never heard of any of them, but others might have.

A good start to the tidying up process, and don't let a few disgruntled knuckle-rappers put you off! But seriously, they will come to the rescue of any articles worth saving from the deletion process. Perhaps it would be worth posting a list of those you nominate for PROD and AfD on this page as you go along, so that we can all glance over them and rescue any endangered notables. --Deskford (talk) 11:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I was going to add the list here anyway but got rapped before I got around to it... I copied their names over to notepad as I nomed them and was going to list them all enbloc. How was I to know that I was being followed by wolves? There are a few other articles that I have flagged up in my notepad, actually: Vytautas Barkauskas, Sylvie Bodorová, Hans-Jürgen von Bose, David Bruce, Javier Busto, and Nigel Butterley all of which are in serious need of cleanup... Anyway, I'll watch my step from now on! Thanks for your encouragement, Deskford, and I agree that AfD (at least) can be used to alert people to "apparently Non-notable Notables" (if I may coin a phrase). --Jubilee♫clipman 11:24, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I have often wondered about the "Look at the other language pages" argument: after all if you can't read the other languages then it is hardly going to help you much if you do happen look at those pages. Ditto for non-English sources added to articles in English Wiki whether those sources happen to be in French, Swahili or Martian... --Jubilee♫clipman 11:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Other-language WPs can be a useful guide. Even if you can't read the language, you can make rough judgements based on the shape and size of the article, how much blue and red it contains, and how many references. As for using non-English references in English WP articles, I confess I have occasionally done this where I couldn't find a suitable English reference, but only as a last resort. Similarly, I would say that references to books and journals that are not available online should be avoided as they are hard to verify. --Deskford (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I'm not sure about avoiding books-not-online: a large number of very important reference works are not online—at least not without paying a fee—but are usually freely (gratis and libre) available in top quality libraries. I would perhaps avoid using fee-paying sites though, given that anyone wishing to check a single source might have to end up paying a year's subscription for that one source only to end up putting in the text... Texts in Sandscrit and modern Ethiopian are a different matter, however. Perhaps French also has enough cognates with English to make sense of it even without fluency? --Jubilee♫clipman 16:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I knew the books-not-online point would be controversial! --Deskford (talk) 23:02, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Well I won't be online from Wednesday for a short while, probably, so I hope those books still exist at least...! --Jubilee♫clipman 01:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Surname in "C" AfDs/PRODs and other concerns

I am going to do this as subheadings so we can comment here on each one if we really feel we need to. --Jubilee♫clipman 12:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC) Changed my mind: that method would be messy! --Jubilee♫clipman 12:16, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Carnes

  Seem to be quite few people with this name... --Jubilee♫clipman 12:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC)