Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Archive 40

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

As the title of the section suggests, should navigational templates for bands, such as Template:Megadeth have items that do not have their own dedicated pages or are simply redirects to the respective artists' discography (such as) [[Deathstars#Discography|Decade of Debauchery]]? Obviously redlinks in navboxes are prohibited, but is it okay to include a non-wikilinked item? The subject of this is Template:Eisbrecher, where I have attempted to add a compilation album (best hit album) section for their best hits album Ewiges Eis - 15 Jahre Eisbrecher, but it has been reverted by User:Jax 0677, firstly under the grounds of WTAF, which is not valid since band members who do not have have their respective articles have remained (don't tell me notability reasons, Ewiges Eis charted on German charts) and previous albums that did not have articles (namely Schicksalsmelodien, which I created myself), remained intact. Following a short discussion which Jax has decided to ignore, citing BRD (how is this change even bold??), I have come to here to settle this. He has violated 3RR and I cannot be bothered reporting this to WP:AN/3RR. Interested to hear your thoughts X-750 _{I've made a mistake, haven't I?} 05:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

• Navigation templates are not lists, they should only include links to articles.
  WP:EXISTING. Linking to redirects is also inappropriate. The one exception has been band members. If any have an article, it is safe to list them all, even without an article, but only above the main part of the nav template. Your RfC was added incorrectly as well. Walter Görlitz (talk
  ) 05:48, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Noted. I just find it rather annoying that something like Schicksalsmelodien existed for a long time, like you said per WP:EXISTING it should've been deleted, but my change was reverted within pretty much a day. Appreciate it X-750 _{I've made a mistake, haven't I?} 05:53, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

• I think it's misleading for a template to have, for instance, only links to studio albums with their own articles. Any discographical list implies to its user that the list is complete (or an attempt at completion); truncating it to linked articles is an information reduction that suggests only the linked albums were ever released. The same logic for bandmembers applies, and
  WP:EXISTING was updated to reflect this; I think the same should be done with album discographies (as well as filmographies and bibliographies). Chubbles (talk
  ) 10:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
• Im generally in favor of following
  WP:WTAF; it's a navigation tool, not a discography. It should generally only be items that have their own article. (It feels like it's geberall believed that current band members are an exception, so I don't take issue with that.) Sergecross73 msg me
  13:14, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
• Definitely only for existing articles imo - as others have said, they're navigation boxes, not lists. Popcornfud (talk) 18:06, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
• I don't think they should include albums/songs without their own article, either. You would have to set some kind of limits, otherwise there would be nothing to stop editors creating a navbox containing one bluelinked article and 20 non-notable albums, just to display a complete discography... which entirely defeats the point of a navbox. Richard3120 (talk) 15:58, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

In cases like that, there's no need for a navbox at all. Chubbles (talk) 00:01, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely – what I mean is that you would have to draw the line somewhere. Okay, so one article and 20 non-articles = no navbox. Four articles and 12 non-articles? Not sure. Unless we follow

WP:NENAN and set three bluelinked articles as the minimum number for a navbox to exist with a complete discography, some kind of guideline would have to be drawn up to determine what would be the minimum number of articles or minimum percentage of bluelinked articles to have a complete discography in a navbox. That's why it seems easier to follow the existing navbox rules and only include WTAF. Richard3120 (talk

) 02:26, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think you need to appeal to that essay when

WP:EXISTING is clear. Walter Görlitz (talk

) 02:41, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I think you're on to something there. I think what we should be doing in cases like this is discouraging the creation of navboxes for small-nucleus article topics, rather than pursuing a WTAF strategy. A topic should reach some threshold of links where this tool makes sense to employ, but without a prohibition on including unlinked information. Chubbles (talk) 15:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Seconding this notion. Having a navbox full of unlinked text that really only exists for two or three pages (which would likely be linked somewhere in the articles anyway) seems like a waste of resources. Not sure what the threshold should be, but it certainly makes sense to have one. QuietHere (talk) 16:25, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

• I would say no to redirects and unlinked entries, per
  WP:EXISTING, because the navigation template is for clicking on things to go somewhere specific. Let's not trick the reader with a link that doesn't give them what they expected. And there is little need to have unlinked items because these should already be listed in the related articles. The navbox should not duplicate or substitute for a discography. Binksternet (talk
  ) 03:06, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Several users have expressed a similar opinion here - that a navbox is not a discography (or a filmography, or what have you), and since it is for navigating, it should only include navigable links. This is the wrong way to think about the problem. Both a discography and a navigation box are information organization tools. A navigation box helps navigate, but its primary purpose is to inform; the navigation is in the service of informing. It helps people find more information about these existing bluelinked articles, but only if it has arranged the data in a way that makes those articles contextually meaningful; if there are gaps between discographical entries, the navbox is hiding information from the navigator (user), just as it would be if the discography listing were incomplete. That's not a good way to organize information. To be honest, it would be better not to have navboxes at all than navboxes with missing (non-bluelinked) entries; side note - do we have stats on user engagement with these tools? Chubbles (talk) 07:07, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm just not following at all. Can you give an example where you've observed where such confusion has occurred? I edit templates a fair amount in music and game-related subject areas, and this just isn't something that has been an issue in my experience. Sergecross73 msg me 11:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Template:Caravan would imply that the band stopped releasing studio albums in 2003; half of Template: Barclay James Harvest's discographical entries would be culled; Template: Wishbone Ash would suggest the band released only one studio album between 1982 and 2007, when in fact it released nine. Why is it that band members are important enough to include even if unlinked, and studio albums are not? I'm arguing the exact same principle holds here. Chubbles (talk) 15:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the rules should be applied evenly between artists and discographies, but I would take it in the opposite direction; what use is there to listing a bunch of non-notable band members in a navbox? Band articles and infoboxes already have that information. QuietHere (talk) 16:25, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the better solution is to also remove bandmembers from navboxes, but at least that would be consistent, and I'd prefer that than leaving the bandmembers and culling disc/bib/filmographies. Chubbles (talk) 23:29, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand why people would use a navigation template to come to conclusions like that. If someone wants to know when Caravan released their last album, they'd check the bands history section, or their discography. I don't believe they're jumping all the way to the bottom of an article to look at the navigation template to come to those sorts of conclusions. Sergecross73 msg me 17:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Surely it's called a navbox because its primary purpose is for navigation, and a box made for providing information would have a different name. Perhaps "infobox". That aside, if the only purpose an item of info serves is to tell you that a thing exists but isn't notable enough to have a page, is that really valuable information that we desperately need to make it visible all over this website? If you ask me, that's in direct counterpoint to the core of WP policy. Stick to

WP:WTAF and leave non-notables to discog sections. QuietHere (talk

) 12:34, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

This argument is an unfortunately hidebound reading of the semantics of what the boxes are called, rather than how they should function. I don't think it merits further addressing. Chubbles (talk) 15:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I would disagree, I think the argument merits further addressing. Calling something hidebound is a dismissive argument rather than a reasoned argument. Basically, I think you are trying to re-invent an existing tool. The navigation tool that shows all the albums is called a discography page, and one can be set up for most bands, and it can have non-linking album listings and linking album listings. A navigation box is at the bottom of the page and is intended to be an aid to navigation, and has a function and layout defined by

WP:Existing. They are two different tools, and do not need to be merged into one. Mburrell (talk

) 16:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

On top of this, and while I hate pulling any sort of "majority rules" argument, it seems that you're the only one here claiming that a navbox is meant to serve a purpose other than navigation between existing articles, and in fact numerous people have explicitly stated the opposite so far. I'd argue that it not only merits further discussion, but has already been addressed quite clearly. QuietHere (talk) 16:31, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree: it's called a navbox because its only purpose is for navigation. It is not called an organization box because that's what articles and lists are for.

WP:TFD has had discussions on many nav boxes that have only one or two linked items. Walter Görlitz (talk

) 16:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

The name of the item does not define in full what its purpose is. This argument is along the same lines as, "if women were meant to do utility work, they wouldn't call them manholes", and it's not worthy of the pride of discussion it's being given here. Beyond that, non-linked placeholder information is a navigation aid - it guides the reader to understand the placement of the links in time. It works the same way that the spatial orientation, sorting, and dating does in the navbox; it is organizing information for the reader. Chubbles (talk) 23:29, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Okay, then let's not limit it to the word, let's look at

WP:NAV: "A navigation template is a template that links between existing articles belonging to the same topic on English Wikipedia." That sounds pretty straightforward to me. And the closest statement I can find regarding your definition is "Tangential information should be kept out of sidebars." If you wanna debate that definition further, this is not the venue for it, but for the moment I don't see anything supporting your point. QuietHere (talk

) 15:11, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That's not even remotely the same. The "man" in "manholes" has no function in the concept. The "navigation" in "navigation template" does. I would totally understand your concerns if our concept of discography sections/articles didn't exist. But they do. Prominently. So your proposed function you wish navigation templates had...are redundant to what we already do. Sergecross73 msg me 15:24, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

So, the better version of the argument is one that would claim I am guilty of scope creep here, but as I noted above, I don't think nonlinked text is outside the purview of navigation. But if that is the judgment of this RfC, then it should also cover non-notable bandmembers and any dates of release (as are common in e.g. navboxes with filmography sections). Chubbles (talk) 19:51, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

I personally still favour keeping to

WP:EXISTING. One issue that hasn't been brought up yet is that most navboxes don't just include studio albums, they also generally include EPs, live albums, compilation albums, and singles – in fact, this RfC was started because of an attempt to add a non-notable compilation album. Listing singles might not be a big issue for editors who work mainly on jazz artists and 70s rock bands, but for many alternative rock bands there could be dozens of singles released throughout their career, and few of them will be notable enough to have their own article. Look at {{The Fall}}, which is a manageable size, and then look at The Fall discography (every record listed here is an official release, not a bootleg), and imagine all of that listed in a navbox... it would take up most of the page on most Fall articles. Richard3120 (talk

) 15:32, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Those in charge of the templates do think non-linked text is outside the purview, hence EXISTING. I think you need to convince them, not this project. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:21, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

You're right, Walter – these navboxes aren't just related to music projects, but across Wikipedia. Saying we should accept a full discography in a navbox sets a precedent for an actor's navbox to include a full filmography, for example. Then you lose sight of what a navbox is supposed to do and it simply becomes a list. Richard3120 (talk) 15:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

• Conditional yes – I support the points made by
  principle of least astonishment. If an artist's navbox does not contain all of their core albums, there's nothing to indicate to the reader that some albums are missing, unless they navigate to the artist's discography article. This can be accomplished by redirecting the missing albums' articles to that discography. However, if the missing album in question is something like a non-notable limited-release greatest hits compilation, then it's probably not worth including in the navbox. ili (talk
  ) 16:43, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

• You've clearly lost the plot on what navigation means if you think it should be a list. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:45, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not sure WP:PLA applies here – personally I wouldn't be looking at a navbox if I wanted to find an artist's full discography, I'd look at the discography page. And adding a whole load of redirects to a navbox is going to try the reader's patience if they keep getting redirected back to the discography page, because they won't know which albums actually have an article to read. And having a case-by-case argument about what constitutes a non-notable album to not include in a navbox sounds like a whole lot of trouble to me. Richard3120 (talk) 15:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
• @
  Santa Barbara, yet, a link on the artist's navbox will navigate readers to the section on the encyclopedia that contains the most information about the album. If you're saying that the navbox isn't serving its intended purpose there, then who's really "lost the plot"? ili (talk
  ) 20:11, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

• No need to do this if there is no article about the album. Period. Knowing that a French-released EP became an album, none of which is sourced, is rather useless overall. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:15, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

• FWIW, my opinion is that a navbox aide should NOT have redirects, confusing and possibly taking the reader somewhere they do not wish to go. The discussion here should be whether they are removed or delinked. --Richhoncho (talk) 19:19, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
• Only include existing articles. Very rare exceptions may apply, but certainly not to the extent of providing readers with a full discography when each item does not merit sufficient or perhaps any coverage at all. As others have said, navboxes are there to help people navigate the encyclopedia in relation to the topic. So if an item has no presence on the encyclopedia, it has no place in a navbox.

I think half the problem is when editors add years in the navboxes; they're making a leap in scope from purely navigational to informative. With the years added, it's then easy to get lulled into the idea that the content is incomplete. I've had fairly limited involvement with music navboxes, but at, eg, Template:Ravi Shankar or Template:Billy Preston, does anyone really think each field is exhaustive? I'd doubt it if you know anything about those artists.

There are a few examples of Beach Boys album navboxes that shouldn't exist at all, imo. See Template:Friends (album) – not only do most of the main songs there not have articles, but some of the links under Outtakes lead to album articles where the outtake is barely mentioned at all. JG66 (talk) 01:27, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Actually, make that no end of examples at Category:The Beach Boys album navigational boxes. JG66 (talk) 01:35, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

• Only include existing articles.
  WP:EXISTING is clear (as an essay supporting a guideline) and I'm not sure why we needed an RfC here as if a local consensus could override that. Changing this would justify the creation of so many unnecessary navboxes. The purpose of them is to point readers to related topics that exist, not ones that don't for the sake of completionism. Ss112
  04:58, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
• Comment - With respect to musical compositions, only links to actual albums and songs (and perhaps similar entities) should be in a navbox about musicians or musical ensembles. This means that redirects, links to sections of another article and listings of compositions with no actual article should not be in the navbox at all, because it is not an infobox. For a musical ensemble comprised of multiple individuals, a complete list of members should probably be in the navbox to prevent the misconception that the entity is a solo act. If the number of individuals is enormous, such listing can be discussed on a case by case basis. --Jax 0677 (talk) 23:43, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Read here. TLDR: The current situation is mess (examples included), it has been unresolved mess since 2010-2012 with no decisive solution and only occasional "tweaks" to allowed color scheme, bringing only more mess to the issue, the coloring scheme is arbitrary and basically is a legacy thing bearing no worth. I propose to uniformly color all music genre infoboxes gray (taking the color from the electronic genre infoboxes), as the most readable of all currently used color for music genre infoboxes (negotiable). Albums, movies, books in Wikipedia are not "colored" according to genre, and that works just well, so music genre should not be colored either. Wikipedia is not a coloring book for children and music fans. AK 178.121.43.158 (talk) 17:30, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

The issue's been brought up numerous times in the past only to conclude to that "it needs more work" and occasional "tweaks" to the color scheme which only created more confusion over time. The only space where it worked seamlessly is electronic music, where the interconnectedness of genres made wikipedians abandon fruitless color debates and introduce uniform color.

But with the further development of trap and post-trap music the question rises again even for the trap genres which are 100% electronic, yet "of different lineage" and thus of different color. The cross-pollination continues now as all the hypey genres such as hyperpop, trap music, EDM (colors suggesting being subgenres of pop, rap and electronic, respectively) are all basically made in one program , even using the same VSTs and samplepacks, and freely intermix within one album. Same gets with time basically true for rock (especially pop-punk now, which is during the 2022 wave made exclusively by trap and trap-adjecent beatmakers on a laptop, with many more genres of electronic rock existing previously) and even for heavy metal which is often right now metal only in its name and is made using VSTs. This could be an essay, but I won't bother with it, as it's as clear as day that colors in music genre infoboxes in 2022 and beyond only add to tribalism and confusion. 178.121.43.158 (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support uniform default/gray - This solution help similar issues at the video games Wikiproject. Colors add zero benefit, but brings a lot of potential for extra arguing, disputes, edit warring, etc. Sergecross73 msg me 17:45, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support uniform default/gray I have no strong opinion, but IMO the varying colors serve little values and just add unneeded complications. North8000 (talk) 18:10, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support uniform default/gray: I have no strong opinion on this personally, but clearly there's no additional benefit for readers to having a color scheme, and anything that gets rid of potential edit warring (and genres are one of the biggest reasons for this) is a good thing. Richard3120 (talk) 19:35, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support uniform default/gray per all previously stated reasons. To be honest, I don't think I ever noticed the color-coding before so it wasn't even useful beyond someone's aesthetic preference (not that any greater attention-grabbing quality would've made it more useful). QuietHere (talk) 03:42, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
• Opposing the removal of colors, but in favor of reorganizing their application. I've been extensively involved in applying colors to genres for the last year and a half. I've drastically reduced single genre colors and linked the remaining colors to subgenre categories: see
  WP:GENRECOLOR and compare to what it was before. I even had a plan for how to reorganize genre colors
  to a broader application based on major cultural and musical regions or groups of genres. But over time I realized that it's not a good idea to add exclusive colors for a few regions while ignoring the others, which are represented on the English Wiki a little worse. The colors are still an important informational identifier, indicating the connection between genre branches. Nothing else on the wiki more versatile indicates the grouping of genres right now. Preambles are often written too vaguely, and individual categories for genre groups are sometimes missing, or are non-obvious sub-sub-categories.

I've changed my view now from how I was going to do it before. Now it seems to me that the scheme used in the music albums template is the most successful. There you specify an album type from a pre-defined set:

WP:GENRECOLOR, and added to the template's auto-propositions via TemplateData. In the template it should look like "Direction: Electronic, pop" indicated by the very first field in the template, and the color is automatically set to silver. Two or more directions can be specified for a particular genre, in which case the color is either set to the first value in the list or left uncolored. We can take the list of genres from the existing list of genres, reducing the small groups. With the ability to add separate groups, with the condition that this meta-genre must have its own category of sub-genres, including at least 10 sub-genres. So generally speaking, after reviewing and adjusting almost all of the music genre template applications on en-wiki, this seems to me to be the best option. Whereas eliminating colors and not adding anything in return seems to me to be a significant degradation for readers. Solidest (talk

) 04:53, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• This post is in response to a post in another thread, so as not to double the discussion. @178.121.43.158, all of your arguments seem a bit questionable to me. For all the frustration about the color setting, you forget that the colors are directly related to how concrete genre is positioned by it's article — to what category that genre is placed in and in which navigation template it's placed in. Broken beat is not jazz, it is an electronic genre and therefore placed in the electronic music genre category and has silver color. Nu jazz is a fusion between jazz and electronic, but it is primarily listed as a sub-genre of jazz in the navigation template, and therefore is the same color. (It is worth saying that the Electronic-based template itself is absurd and nonsensical and should be removed, as it levels the term electronic music to the use of synthesizers, which simply contradicts scientific sources). About new age, ambient and drone is fair - they should not have electronic color, and the color of New Age should be removed, as it is not as broad as the others (this kind of reorganization I was doing for the last year and I thought whether New Age could find a broader category, so I did not touch it yet). Kuduro is light-purple because I guess that's the standard color of Wikipedia templates without coloring. Want to prove it's a techno or electronic genre? Go ahead, change the article and category and put electronic coloring. With the argument that gray is more neutral, you should probably go to the main Wikipedia forum and decide there. Repealing the colors will not change the content of the articles or the categories in which genres are placed. The dissatisfaction with specific colors, on the other hand, is something subjective. They are primarily used to indicate the difference between genre branches and links within branches. They all pass for contrast standards, So eye tiredness from red isn't an argument either, especially considering it's just a few lines of headings in the templates. The choice of specific colors is certainly something long accepted without consensus and probably needs to be reconsidered. And it's probably worth moving to more neutral shades and generally automate the application of colors along genre directions (which I detailed above). But actually the criticism you're applying in that post could similarly be used in relation to the [standard colors approved by Wikimedia]. It's just subjective. And arguments along the lines that pink is girly and blue is because African-Americans are democratic sound silly and inappropriate at once, which is a bit disconcerting. Solidest (talk) 05:07, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Comment from the IP user who started all this. I've seen you did work on colors. But your point only serves to prove my points further:

1. After a year or longer of your "extensive reorganization" of colors, colors are still a subjective mess. As they have always been (see my examples). "Reorganization" only adds to mess. Years go, mess persists, and can be effectively solved all for once by locking a color for all genres. Moreof, you are not the first one to try to "reorganize" that mess, as I've said earlier. New users with new feelings will come after you and will "reorganize" it to their taste too, adding more to the mess. This situation exactly describe what the issue is: breeding ground for edit warring and point of view pushing, and that is.
2. Your comment, as it seems only goes to strengthen my position. You literally posted a wall of text warring about which colors should be which, in regards to the arbitrary subset of genres I chose for examples. Your opinion is different I get it. Half or more of what you said needs specific references to back every specific color you objected to. And so do all my opinions about the random genres too, they also need sources. Sources, which are often not even there, notwithstanding the fact that you are arguing for sources to change a literal color of infobox. If that's not genre warring, don't know what it is. Near to zero contribution to encyclopedic content, if you ask me.
3. Your point of the usefulness of music infobox genre colors is what I also disagree with. The "Stylistic origins" and "cultural origins" sections of the music genre infobox serve exactly the purpose of defining the genealogy of music genres. The colors do not actually define a genealogy, they, phylogenetically speaking, define clusters over the set of all genres. As you are arguing for the clusters, you should be aware, that clustering items in science needs good sources to back up the discussed clustering. You cannot simply go in modern biology, for instance, and define a cluster out of thin air. You need principal component analysis for that at least. And you also need a ton of publications to define the clustering/taxonomy. In music, by analogy, there is a similar field of study, called musicology, so it's not exactly free of responsibility to adhere to the same basic and clear scientific procedure. The issue with the music genres is that no one, to my best knowledge, apart from media journalists, even seriously bothers to delineate the genres rigorously (and journalists do not employ the scientific apparatus, so their opinions may be significant in regard to WP:GNG but still never scientific). More than that, say two journalists disagree on topic of lineages as they understand them, there is no standard procedure to account for that, apart POV-pushing (read, adding weights to their opinions, which often, I'll say it again, don't even exist for many genres). The set of criteria for clustering is not even delineated for music genres. Should it be the lineages (trees, saying phylogenetically)? I think not, I think music genres heavily cross-pollinate and thus the tree model would not work there. But that doesn't matter either way at all because it's only my opinion and it is therefore NPOV. Same as yours about the perceived difference. TLDR: Rigorous and clear criteria set for phylogenetic delineation/clustering of genres doesn't exist; and "stylistic origins"/"cultural origins" serve the purpose of hinting on the genealogy of a specific genre way better than arbitrary colors.
4. And once again there are success stories in regards to how to solve this mess once and for all, each accounting to the complete forgoing (=locking) of the colors in the music genre infoboxes. Electronic music genres in Wikipedia, music genres on discogs, on rateyourmusic, and so on and so further, do not have "colors" and function just well without them. I am yet to see someone who was confused by, for instance, "Hardstyle" and "Deep house" having the same color in the infobox. The lack of color doesn't thus add to confusion, while the presence of color often does. AK 178.121.44.47 (talk) 09:36, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• Firstly, I don't really understand what you're saying about adding a mess when I've reduced the use of colors by about 30%, leaving only the most extensive categories (but not finished with all the small ones yet).

Second, all of your arguments once again collapse on what I wrote above. Colors don't set categories, they visualize existing information from an article. Each article is already placed in a "Category:Genre" or "Category:Genre's subgenres". And color, as part of the infobox, simply summarizes and visually duplicates that information from the article or just show root meta-genre from the categories tree. This is exactly what the infoboxes on wikipedia are for - they are designed to summarize the article briefly. Color is not a statement in and of itself. Neither is the "stylistic origins" parameter such a statement - it's also only supposed to duplicate and summarize information from the article.

And in your statement, you are not fighting with colors, but with the very system of categorizing genres on wikipedia. And in doing so, you mention RateYourMusic and Discogs, which both based on the very same hierarchy. Your argument rather suggests that you want to abolish the entire category hierarchy and put all genres in Category:Music genres, isn't it?

If you are talking about the problem of what color to color fusion genres. That's not a problem for me either. Having worked with hundreds of genres, this issue has actually only arisen with

new wave

(pop vs rock vs no color). And in both cases the dissatisfaction with the color was expressed by one and the same user, and it is resolved by removing the color and adding a comment in the box that there is no consensus. I haven't seen this kind of controversy with any other genre.

I still think that the only way out of doing away with colors should be the "Direction" graph. Because "Stylistic origins" doesn't solve the question of genre affiliation. Both parent genres and inspirations and other based on stuff are listed there. One genre can have a dozen various cross-genre inspirations and they will all be listed in alphabetical order. Therefore, this field is not useful in terms of genre affiliation. Like, for example, dubstep is obviously electronic genre. But how would show that clearly and distinctly in infobox? That's what the colors are doing now. Any genre on wikipedia is already categorized under one of the dozen major meta-genres. Both the color and the "direction" simply would serve to indicate which group the genre belongs to. Solidest (talk) 12:28, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Both of your need to tone it down with these massive responses. Massive walls of text stifle participation in discussions and you're never going to get a consensus on this that way. (Unless that's what you're trying to do, in which I politely ask you to stop.) Sergecross73 msg me 14:51, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree. AK 178.121.44.47 (talk) 16:13, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

It would not be hard to deduce that dubstep is a genre of electronic music, as the first sentence explicitly says Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s.. This is an explicit function of the referenced text, and implicit ambiguous visual cues like infobox colors are thus reduntant. If rock music subgenres evolution is a substantial topic for Wikipedia, it probably warrants a section or a separate article, but hardly that topic should be set as implicit visual cues such as coloring. 178.121.44.47 (talk) 16:13, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

That addresses your underlined point directly, colors may visualize what article says, but may as well set a breeding ground for edit warring. And for many genres, especially for fusion genres, these visualizations are either subjective, or inconsistent, or cannot be backed by sources. 178.121.44.47 (talk) 16:22, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• It seems to me that all these arguments I have already answered above, and you again argue with the sense of the use of infoboxes as such. Dubstep has it in the premise that it is an electronic genre, kuduro and hundreds of others do not. Premise and infobox don't have to be mutually exclusive. For fusion genres, I've already shared that so far I've only seen two such cases with color setting issues. And given that color now applies in 975 genre articles, there's clearly more benefit than potential edit wars in very few cases. Also given that such cases are solved by consensus with color disablement. And I don't see a problem with picking and choosing between the two colors — it's not so matter as the color is just a visual summary of the article text, and not the sole argument. And arguments such as "subjective, or inconsistent, or cannot be backed by sources" also refer to the object of the article, and not the color. Solidest (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• It's clear you've put a great deal of thought and effort into this. So it pains me to say that...I doubt that any of this would ever really be noticed, let alone understood, by most readers. Hell, I've been heavily involved in the music content area for the last decade, and it never really registered with me that the infoboxes were color-coded at all until this discussion arose. It's just not intuitive or easily understood. And anything not intuitive is going to a hotbed for edit warring and disputes. And I don't believe it provides the benefit you think it does. Sergecross73 msg me 18:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

• From my personal experience: As far as I remember, when I first started researching genres years ago, I knew right away that the same colors belonged to the same genre branch (pop/rock/electronic/hip-hop/folk were pretty obvious) and only months later I randomly found complete list of colors that confirmed that. So it does felt pretty intuitive to me. The only issue was with the colors used in a small number of articles so I got rid of them years later.

But yes, it may not be as instantly obvious for someone and it doesn't work if you only open a couple of pages and don't come back to it again. So I think, instead of removal it must be better replaced to text parameter "Direction", which also would automatically set the colors if needed, and would work similarly to {{Infobox album/color}}. (Btw it also may not be so obvious why box-set + greatest hits + mixtape have the same color, but it would be obvious why rock genres have the same color). We could simply replace "bgcolor: silver" with "direction: Electronic music", etc. without any problems. If we had such a parameter, then we can already consider abandoning colors, because a similar visualization would have a better replacement. But not before that. This parameter, by the way, works fine on the Russian wikipedia for a long time, and may be supported by wikidata, if its integration with the English wiki finally ever starts. 19:28, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

If there was any discernible benefit, I'd agree, but again, I'm still struggling to see any benefit to this color scheme stuff. Sergecross73 msg me 00:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Since it was decided above to remove the colors from the infoboxes of music genres, I propose to replace the information conveyed by the colors with a separate text field. Suggested name is "Direction" (variants are "Branch", "Division"). This field would indicate the closest largest parent genre(s) with the text.

The problems with using the color scheme have been pointed out above:

• (a) creates disagreement that burns up volunteer time;
• (b) creates difficulties with accessibility;
• (c) oversimplification risks misleading our readers.

(a) is solved by allowing the field to be filled with more than one value, and this also coincides with the solution of (c). Problem (b) is also solved by transferring to text.

It is important to say that since infoboxes are designed to summarize information about the article, this field will not give any new information, but rather should convey the essence of the article (since now there is no systematic indication of the parent genre (or genre branch) in the premise of articles). As for genres to be filled in, I suggest to limit the condition in the template documentation specifying it as largest parent genres, aka the closest upper genre in the hierarchy that have 5 or more subgenres. Usually it is easy to select such genre(s) from the existing text of articles or by existing hierarchy of article's categorization. And initially we could focus and be guided by List of music genres and styles and Category:Musical subgenres by genre. Thus, this parameter would reflect the largest 20-25 genres, linking their sub-genres. The same goal was pursued with the colors, but now it will be much looser and at the same time more accurate. It would also not be a problem to replace the color parameter with the direction parameter using bots. Solidest (talk) 14:15, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose - the level of time wasted arguing about music genre leads me to believe that this will be a messy time sink. Sergecross73 msg me 14:24, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  I don't understand how marking what categories an article is placed in, or what is already written in the article by sources, and reflecting that in the infobox can be a time sink. I probably should have highlighted and emphasized the above text that the information in the infobox is not something new, but rather a summation and quick access to article's information: Help:Infobox#What infoboxes do. Are you suggesting that breaking the rules of infoboxes would be time-consuming? Or why shouldn't your argument apply to editing articles and categories? The fact that a genre belongs to some branch of genres is pretty important information to put in an infobox. I've personally encountered many articles where neither the premise nor the text in the infobox nor direct categories labeled the genre as folk or popular. This information was "hidden" in the text of the article and hub categories. For example, wouldn't it be useful to indicate in the infobox that the genre Skweee is electronic, when premise only mentions funk and rnb and synth-pop? The fact that it's an electronic music genre can only be determined by re-reading the prose and sources, or by browsing the categories. We already have this information stored in template colours. I have been checking and correcting it for several years. I doubt anyone will want to transfer this information, correcting thousands of premises anytime soon. Solidest (talk) 15:15, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Not sure how you missed the mark of what I was saying so badly, but what I'm saying is that genre is subjective and people love to argue over their interpretation over what's a sub genre of whatever. It's the same spirit of what got the infobox color stuff rejected. Sergecross73 msg me 15:22, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

We really don't seem to understand each other. What does the discussion about parental genre selection of individual articles have to do with quick access to information in the infobox? Here we're not even talking about some endless grouping of sub-genres and the like, on which the categorisation of wikipedia is based, but literally about moving the biggest established branches on which no one has any disputes. How does your argument even correlate with the existing genre categoristion on wikipedia?

What you are talking about is the subject of discussions of some individual articles content. At the moment we don't describe rock music genres in premise as "something debatable" or "music genre without context". We explicitly write in the premise that things like hard rock is a subgenre of rock. What possible argument could there be with that? I'm talking about summarizing content, and you're talking about writing content and debating sources. Also, if you look at all the other parameters in the infobox (stylystic/cultural origins, subgenres/derivations/fusion genres) - the Direction field is actually the least controversial of them all. So here too, your arguments look like you are trying to override this infobox altogether.

I insist that crossing out and not using that information would be just a deterioration of the wikipedia. And btw, if you want my assessment - 95% of articles using the infobox would have no problem writing out one or two or three directions for the genre by article content and category. Even in controversial cases such as New wave music, we could write "Direction: Pop music or rock music". And where the situation is completely insoluble, just don't fill in this field. There will be maximum 2-3 such cases on the whole wikipedia. Solidest (talk) 16:07, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose: I don't see what about this isn't already covered by "stylistic_origins". Having two parameters serving the same/a too-similar purpose could get even more confusing for readers than the color scheme. QuietHere (talk) 18:58, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  I as a reader would be much more confused by the fact that one genre can be equally attributed to 5 different genres, when in fact it is just electronic music. "influenced by" and "subgenre of" is not the same thing. House music doesn't even has anything that says that it's electronic dance music genre in stylistic origins now. Solidest (talk) 19:06, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  Or how can you say that hyperpop is just experimental electronic pop with that kind of stylistic origins row? Solidest (talk) 19:19, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per both of the above, and because it's entirely unclear what "Direction", "Branch", or "Division" could even mean in a music-genre context.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:15, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This RfC is in response to a recent edit war regarding Supertramp, a band that formed in London and had a mix of English, Scottish, and American members. What default position should we take when a band is formed in one country, but contains members who are from elsewhere?

1. Band nationality determined by place of formation ("Supertramp was an Englsh rock band formed in London [...]")
2. Band nationality determined by nationalities of members ("Supertramp was an Anglo-American rock band formed in London [...]")
3. as above, but limited to nationalities of core or founding members (in the Supertramp example, we would be accounting just Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, who are both English)
4. Band nationality ignored ("Supertramp was a rock band formed in London [...]")

Some other bands to consider are the Velvet Underground (American, even though John Cale is Welsh), the Monkees (no nationality given), and Fleetwood Mac (British-American). ili (talk) 20:33, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but how does 1. above differ from 4. above? Do we need an option that takes account only of how sources describe them? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

I assume you mean never describe any band as having a "nationality". Martinevans123 (talk) 12:39, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Survey

• Nationalities of members. "Place of formation" would be weird if we were covering a group of Americans who formed a band in Denmark. "Ignored" feels like a cop-out. "Nationalities of core or founding members" might be ideal, perhaps not as a default, but for bands with an unwieldy number of past/current members like Supertramp. ili (talk) 21:02, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
• Comment I believe this is already somewhat covered here in the MoS. Is this RfC seeking to amend this - which I think is a perfectly good set of guidelines? I don't see why this topic should differ from the wider practice of looking at the description in RS and, where there is disagreement in individual articles, let editors form consensus. I don't think a one-size fits all rule would work and would cause havoc in articles where this issue has already been settled. Vladimir.copic (talk) 01:08, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
• Simply follow sources.....no need for editor guess work.Moxy- 01:14, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

  That's generally good advice, but I'm willing to bet that for most such edge cases, especially when band members come from different countries, sources will also disagree wildly and the whole debate will just start again. This also happens for many hyphenated identities of individuals. PraiseVivec (talk) 10:29, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

  So the idea is that the Bee Gees' article should start "The Bee Gees were a Manx music group formed in 1958..." (if option 2 or 3 were chosen) just because it will make things easier for edge cases? In edge cases, editors should look at sources and guidelines then come to consensus accordingly. We do it for every other topic. Vladimir.copic (talk) 10:56, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

  Is "a band is formed in one country, but contains members who are from elsewhere" really an edge case? I would have thought it was quite common. Is this RFC only about edge cases? It's not clear to me. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:37, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

  I think it's quite common too – U2, the Police, and the Pretenders are three more major bands that spring immediately to mind. A quick search on the Police seems to indicate that the majority of sources describe them as British or English, even though one-third of them was American. And good luck to anyone trying to get a definitive description for Boney M. – I've found at least two reliable sources describe the group as German, even though none of the four publicly visible members were from Germany. Wikipedia currently describes them as "Euro-Caribbean", even though that doesn't describe any nationality at all... I think Escape Orbit below is right, it's unlikely that any uniform rule will be satisfactory to everyone or stop edit warring. Richard3120 (talk) 14:12, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

  Just to clarify, I don't think it is uncommon. I more meant the edge cases to be where there is dispute in sources or amongst editors. Implementing a one-size-fits-all rule for this has the potential to force things like calling The Police an Franco-Anglo-American band when no sources would describe them this way. Vladimir.copic (talk) 12:30, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

• There is no uniform rule for this that has any hope of working. Each individual case needs to treated as a unique case. In this particular case, I'm not convinced that there is a strong case for changing. Band was formed in England by English people. The Scottish member joined after formation, and this member was not one of the band's leads. But I'm fine if consensus is for change. I'm sure sources can be found that say both. (Also worth pointing out that the IP editor that prompted this by edit warring is very likely the same editor who was already banned for edit warring on this topic over a number of articles.) --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 10:53, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4, generally. Explain it in the article prose. Infoboxes and lead sentences are very blunt intruments.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:27, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
• Comment - I doubt there will be a one size fits all approach that ever works. What would AC/DC be? Any source will tell you Australian, but the Young bros. and Bon Scott were born in Scotland, and Brian Johnson in England. What about Heart? The Wilson sisters were American, but their husbands considered themselves Canadian. Or the band that led to the discussion, Supertramp, formed in England but with members from Scotland and America... Are they English, British, British-American, English-Scottish-American? We should go by the majority of what sources say, weighted by official-ness, notability, or the opinion of the members themselves in interviews. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 21:13, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4 (Assuming there is no RS consensus for a band's nationality) With this option, readers are able to discover the complex reality of the multiple interpretations of nationality for themselves. By seeing that the band is formed in London, and visiting the pages of the band members and viewing their nationalities, one can reasonably assume that the band has no set nationality, but could be called both English and American. —
  PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c
  ) 22:48, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, I suspect that many, if not most, bands don't consider themselves to be any particular "nationality". It's really not what they are about, is it. The most useful format might be along the lines of: "are / were a band formed in x-town, in y-country, by musicians a, b and c..." I think that the existing section of the MoS, linked above, is really about individual people and cannot be easily applied to bands at all. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:28, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better to adjust the word choice and use "originating" rather than "formed." I think it will solve some of the granular issues editors are having regarding the literal location of the band's "formation."Writethisway (talk) 15:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 4 Can a nationality be ascribed to a grouping of individuals from different countries? Suppose I start a club made up of a Bolivian, a Greenlander, a Kenyan, and a Singaporean. Does the club itself have a nationality? The members can have nationalities, of course, but as I see it, a club, band, or group is an inanimate association of people rather than a living being that can claim national identity. I think we should stick to the objective facts: stating where the band was founded, who the members are, and (in their respective articles) where each of them is from. I think specifying a nationality here would be making a subjective assessment of the personal identity of a non-person entity. Sarbz (talk) 00:04, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

A

• This strikes me as a false dichotomy to an extent. We should keep links to bandmembers that go to a section/anchor in another article; but we should not keep those navbox entries that don't exist (unless as redlinks to targets that clearly are notable and should be articles); and we should not keep links that just go back to the top of the band article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:12, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
• As I mentioned earlier, the prior discussion didn't particularly indicate that editors were bothered by having band members be an exception to
  WP:WTAF on templates. If nobody really cares, then neither do I. Sergecross73 msg me
  15:08, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
• As I said before, I support updating EXISTING to remove the band members exception and make the rules apply consistently for all types of items. A navbox should be focused on navigating between topics, not deeper encyclopedic information which can be found elsewhere in the relevant articles. QuietHere (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
• (invited by the bot) I don't have the experience in this area to make a fully informed comment. But anything that is explicitly or implicitly a statement of who the band members are should include all of them. Otherwise such would be making a false statement. North8000 (talk) 22:45, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
• Comment - With respect to musical compositions, only links to actual albums and songs (and perhaps similar entities) should be in a navbox about musicians or musical ensembles. This means that redirects, links to sections of another article and listings of compositions with no actual article should not be in the navbox at all, because it is not an infobox. For a musical ensemble comprised of multiple individuals, a complete list of members should probably be in the navbox to prevent the misconception that the entity is a solo act. If the number of individuals is enormous, such listing can be discussed on a case-by-case basis. --Jax 0677 (talk) 23:50, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

What is the rationale for treating the two types of information differently - that albums should be links-only, but bandmembers should be everyone? In both cases, there is a possibility of misconception, but as consensus has established, navboxes are for navigation, not full informational lists. Chubbles (talk) 04:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• Reply - The number of non notable songs and non notable albums, in some cases, has more potential to flood the navbox than non notable musicians in a musical ensemble. --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:10, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

But less flood potential still isn't zero flood potential so this excuse can really only go so far. QuietHere (talk) 13:35, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, that doesn't seem to hold water at all. One look at the navbox for Molly Hatchet, for instance, illustrates how much worse the flooding can be with musicians than with albums. Chubbles (talk) 21:56, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment (Summoned by bot) Like North8000, I'm botted here, but this is outside my area of experience. However I echo his statement anything that is explicitly or implicitly a statement of who the band members are should include all of them. Otherwise such would be making a false statement. This would to a lesser degree apply to other infobox content - unless heading make it clear that the content is 'partial'.Pincrete (talk) 05:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Note that this is in reference to navboxes, rather than infoboxes. I agree that infoboxes should have complete memberlists. It's worth noting that band member information often shows up in four different places on many musician articles: the infobox, the prose history of the band, the memberlist, and the navbox. As with discographies - as was argued repeatedly in the navbox/discography RfC - there is no reason to think the navbox ought to be the principal locus for comprehensive information about band membership, and so there is no reason to read the navbox as making a false statement. Chubbles (talk) 06:25, 26 May 2022 (UTC)