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LyricWiki talk:Community Portal/Archive/2008 February 1 - 2008 July 31

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[edit] THE SITE IS BEING "WEIRD"... IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FIXED

Due to an unfortunate series of events, the site is being weird and will take several hours to fix. In the mean-time you may have to force-refresh some pages several times before seeing the most up-to-date version. Updates will be posted on the blog at [1].
Sorry for the inconvenience :(, -Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 07:37, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

Everything should be fixed now... taking a look around...
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 09:04, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Language Contribution

I really like this website. And I'd like to translate the Main_Page and other guideline, FAQ, interface into my native language, Traditional Chinese(zh, big5).

Is there anyway I could do this thing? It would be my honor to make here a better place for Chinese Users. Any response would be greatly appreciated.:) --Tomin 17:14, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Hi Tomin,
Thanks, that would be awesome! :)
There are a few blocks of text that need to be updated:
Just click the red links, then click "edit" on the top of the page to create the translation. I'll link to it from the home-page when it's done.
Thanks again,
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 15:42, 23 April 2008 (EDT)
  • I would like to translate it into Russian, but when I follow your links (MediaWiki:Main_Page/Menu/ru and so on) I see a message that tells that only administrator can edit the page ;( --eugrus 10:59, 18 June 2008 (EDT)
I think the easiest thing would be to write these up, and then you could post them somewhere not protected, and I could move them to where they need to be. Would that be OK?
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 12:47, 18 June 2008 (EDT)
how about:
I Think you will find this sufficient. Thanks so much for your help.
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 20:13, 18 June 2008 (EDT)
PS: might there be a translation for 'Hometown' that is a little shorter? The current one runs off the end of the sidebar.
Yeah! Replace "По городам и странам" with "По городам" (by cities). "По городам и странам" meant just "By cities and countries" as there is no word for "hometown" in Russian that wouldn't be too emotional (as "родной город" (native city) is. --eugrus 04:56, 19 June 2008 (EDT)
For the sake of simplicity, and for the sake of consistency, I would say keep with the way you have things now. Nice touch with the Cyrillic redirect, IMO.
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 01:23, 20 June 2008 (EDT)
  • Sorry to be political. Can you change the national flag?　China and Taiwan are different. My suggestions are below: ('By language' is preferred)
    • By language: Change '中文'(Chinese) to '繁體中文'(Traditional Chinese), and change the flag image to this.
    • By country: Like youtube, use '台灣'(Taiwan), not '中国'(China).
See also Youtube Taiwan, Creative Commons Taiwan how other sites do.--Tomin 00:15, 20 June 2008 (EDT)
Is there any particular reason to change the flag? Now, I'm by no means a fan of the current regime in China, but I can find sites that list China, Taiwan, and both. What I don't want to run into is one person complaining about the Chinese flag and it to be changed and then have someone else complain about the Taiwan flag.
The language has been changed to 繁體中文, 中文 is what is given from the template {{#language:zh}}, there was no bias in chosing that on our part.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 00:46, 20 June 2008 (EDT)
The most simplest reason is that China doesn't use 繁體中文. China uses 简体中文. So that the flag China should match 简体中文 someday if someone wants to translate China's language.--Tomin 03:51, 20 June 2008 (EDT)
That would be a good reason, just a second...
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 01:49, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Revamping {{Song}}

A few of the members here have been working on revamping one of the main templates used on this site, the {{Song}} template. The discussion so far can be seen here. Any comments or suggestions before we change over to this template would be appreciated.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌) 03:50, 2 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Off-topic, but quite helpful...

If any users are using Mozilla Firefox and are experiencing delayed or incomplete page loads, you might appreciate the following solution.

There is a tweak for Firefox that involves enabling network pipelining and upping the number of simultaneous requests. The idea is that Firefox can make multiple connections to an Internet server, and pull in pages much faster than with a single connection.

However, pipelining does not work with many Internet servers. For those that don't like those multiple requests, you may see problems such as:

• Pages take a long time to load
• Pages load partially and seem to stop loading (or appear to be forever waiting on the server to respond with further data)
• Pages time out with only part of the page displayed

To disable pipelining, type about:config in the address line. In the Configuration page that opens, scroll down until you find the following entries, and verify that they are set to false. If not, double-click them to change them to the default setting of false (disabled).

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining

If you've installed an Add-On for Firefox that promises to speed things up (like FasterFox), you may have to disable or uninstall it. Such extensions do the same trick, and you might have to kill them before they'll let you turn pipelining off.

I should point out that the problem doesn't appear to affect LyricWiki much, but can be quite significant on sites like Google (particularly Google Images and Google Video), AllMusic, and others. You should notice the change immediately, but it's possible you may need to clear your cache or restart Firefox before the problem goes away.

Yes, this is off-topic for LyricWiki, but I know a lot of users will appreciate knowing this little helpful hint.  :-)

—  jF 00:39, 9 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Album Pages

Do we really need the album pages? The only additional info on those pages is the genre and the album length which could be added to the artists page, I think. The album pages are often forgotten if someone changes something on the album, like correcting a title name, and I can't think of a reason or situation where I want to go to the album page. So, what's your opinion about this? --MetalSnake 07:27, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Wow, what a radical idea. First off, if nothing else, I say the idea of album pages is justified for all the compilations and soundtracks that don't exist on any artist page. Second, artist's page are already cluttered and to move all the links and things to their pages would just make a bigger mess. I see what you're saying though; a lot of people don't think in terms of albums anymore. I think for now, though, they should stay and be made better. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 10:33, 23 February 2008 (EST)
If, taking the most extreme as an example, a single artist has released so many albums that couldn't be isolated off the page, TOC did not exist, and someone was looking for a number of songs off different albums (with the wrong titles in mind), wouldn't it be a pain to scroll through so much albums on the artist page, or to wait for the page to load? Of course, that isn't usually the case, but there may be a possibility. Maybe I'm just wandering in circles on that matter, but in my opinion, they should currently remain.
To solve part of the topic issues, perhaps a simultaneous update system could be created (if not already) and implemented? So that if the albums on the artist page was updated then the albums page itself would be simultaneously updated, and vice versa. Though if there was a vandalism, it would affect both. And I have no idea how to work those codes.
However, as Aquatiki mentioned, many people think less in album terms, and the lack of an album page on LW does not witness the surge of requests from anonymous users. They seem content with the albums on the artist page... --BryghtShadow 10:55, 23 February 2008 (EST)
Such simultaneous updating is easily possible with transclusion, including one page within another. We could also solve the "clutter" problem by only include part of a page with <includeonly>, <noinclude> & <onlyinclude> tags. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 11:31, 23 February 2008 (EST)
Ok, how about just do some code on the artists page that shows all albums and the songs on the artists page, but gets them from the album pages? I just tried that in the Sandbox, so just check here: Sandbox With this you just edit the song titles or whatever on the album pages and, as the artists pages just get the stuff from the album pages, the artists pages will be "updated" automatically. What do you think? --MetalSnake 11:38, 23 February 2008 (EST)
To Aqua, never knew about transclusion. Thanks for the info.
To MetalSnake, thumbs up. :) I think it's a brilliant idea, as it utilizes the Albums page more. I think this will reduce the bytes in a positive way.
--BryghtShadow 11:45, 23 February 2008 (EST)
look what I did here Nexus 18:16, 30 March 2008 (EDT)
This is a good example of the problems that arise from this method. Multiple album footers, the track listings aren't editable from the page itself, and suddenly Anders Manga is included on the Album O, Album W, Album B, and Album L lists. If a bot could be created to compare artist track lists and album track lists, that would likely be the best solution to track list variants. This method solves one problem, but creates a handful of others. If only it didn't, this would be so sweet (and would have been implemented a year ago or more when this was first explored) but unfortunately, it does.    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   22:27, 30 March 2008 (EDT)
This idea came up again. I've tried to get this working before and these are the main problems I ran into:
  • How do you get new users and anonymous users to add the needed code? I think that the template system we have now will help with this.
  • Section edits won't work. Either some tricky coding would have to be done or section edits would have to be disabled.
  • Converting the existing format to the new one. A bot could be used for this, but it would still be tricky and expensive (time wise) to do.
And from the discussion with MetalSnake and DarthNemesis in IRC:
  • Categories are added to the album page. This is a bit tricky to fix, but could possibly be fixed with a small change to the software and an {{#ifeq}} statement.
I really hope that this works out.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 15:05, 23 February 2008 (EST)
This'll be some tricky coding. I suggest we keep the === Album Titles (2008) === as links to the album pages, so people can see where to go in order to edit. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 19:18, 23 February 2008 (EST)
Personally, I'm for keeping the album pages and seeing them become part of LW's development into a wealth of information about music. Yes, our goal is lyrics, but the source of those lyrics is essential to a lot of what we promote. Discussion and debate, for example—those album pages can provide a lot of information, such as who recorded the song first, whether a cover was moved into a different genre than the original, etcetera.
Someday, I'd like to see even more info on those pages to help with discussion, such as song lengths, credits for performing musicians, songwriter/lyricist information, producers/engineers, and even copyrights. Then you'd discover all sorts of interesting things, like why the Christopher-penned hit "Manic Monday" sounds so suspiciously like Prince...
Would, however, like to see some thought and effort put into simplifying the creation process for those pages. Transclusion sounds a bit better—ideally, I'd like to be able to create an album page, and have it reproduce on the artist page without having to cut and paste as we do now. It would also be nice to be able to make changes on a single page, and have it propagate to any other occurrences on the site.
—  jF 22:23, 23 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Adding to {{Instrumental}}

I have been looking into adding special cases to the {{Instrumental}} tag, and before rolling it out, I'd like to ask some of the other editors around what they think would be some good special cases. So far I only have a few. One is 'This song is an instrumental noise compilation' inspired by Neutral Milk Hotel's older works. The other is for the Sigur Rós fans: 'This song is hopelandic, it has no lyrics.' I was also toying with 'Overture', but beyond that, it's not much. So suggestions are open.
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 20:12, 24 February 2008 (EST)

I have a couple songs where there are "vocalizations" only (oh, ah, oo). 'Got a name for those? --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 00:01, 25 February 2008 (EST)
Well, I'd say that is beatboxing or scat singing. Does that sound accurate?
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 00:24, 25 February 2008 (EST)
How about the specific known lone instruments in the instrumental? EX: a piano only instumental version would be "This song is a piano instrumental", while a acoustic guitar only instrumental would be "This song is an acoustic guitar instrumental". Also, without vocals but with the same background music, such as karaoké, it might be "This song is a karaoké version", and TV MIX (often instrumentals usually played in background of TV Drama) it might have the same "karaoké" banner. --BryghtShadow 04:32, 25 February 2008 (EST)
Yeah, that's it most of the time, but there are sometimes when a band just jams, but the kind of sing-along with the instrumental jam by oohing and ahhing. I just want to make sure people who speak another language don't think they're missing something just 'cause they don't speak English; to let them know those aren't words they're hearing, just vocalizations. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 10:44, 25 February 2008 (EST)
To Bryght: I like the lone instrument idea. I had never run across karaoke tracks, so I never thought of that...
To Aqua: That's good too. The reason I have the hopelandic special case is because this Icelandic band Sigur Rós has plenty of lines in their songs that are just gibberish, and because I don't speak much Icelandic, I didn't know until doing some research.
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 11:09, 25 February 2008 (EST)
I have some to start out. You can see them all here.

[edit] Along the same lines of timestamping...

Any chance a system can be developed for specifying who (say in a band where 2 or 3 people sing in most songs) sings the word/line? The more metadata the better as far as I'm concerned. --this unsigned comment was by Fbcd (talk • contribs) at 00:52, 25 Feb 2008

[edit] Illegal characters in xml reply from api.php...

Hello,

I'm having difficulties reading

http://lyricwiki.org/api.php?artist=Smoke_City&song=Underwater_Love&fmt=xml

and

http://lyricwiki.org/api.php?artist=Louis_Armstrong&song=C'est_Si_Bon&fmt=xml

since these contain characters which are not utf-8.

Would it be somehow possible to filter out/disallow these characters already upon submission, so that this issue wouldn't a problem in the future?

(Of course I'm looking more for a permanent solution than actually solving these particular two lyrics :))

Best regards

dg.

This is the issue I concerned, too.
In page, the characters seems good.
http://lyricwiki.org/Louis_Armstrong:C%27Est_Si_Bon
http://lyricwiki.org/Smoke_City:Underwater_Love
Can't they appear the same in API?
Thank you!
--Tomin 03:56, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] All Music...

Can someone tell me why we don't link to AMG? Is it because a lot of people suffer connections issues with this site?    Redxx    talk   13:52, 2 March 2008 (EST)

Personally, I'm glad we don't link to AllMusic. While they can be handy for quick reference of things, they have proven horribly inaccurate with track listings. I give them credit for obvious attempts to improve (mucho accolades on working to divide original issues from reissues on separate pages), but there's still a lot there that needs improving. The search function could use some work to improve its efficiency, there are still countless albums without track listings, and they still are mixing up albums from different artists with similar names. It seems like they've put way more effort into building their revenue structure than their content, and it's hindering their growth into a truly useful site.
—  jF 01:58, 8 March 2008 (EST)

[edit] Redirecting Pages

I'm having trouble with redirecting pages... I'm using the format: #REDIRECT [[Artist_Name:Song_Title]]. Sometimes it works, but sometimes I get: 1. REDIRECT Artist_Name:Song_Title, linking to the page I'm trying to redirect to. Why does it work sometimes, but not others? I can't see how I'm doing anything differently.

--Bananaducky 14:27, 26 March 2008 (EDT)

It should only display: 1. REDIRECT Artist_Name:Song_Title, when you preview the page. Once you save he page, it should corrctly create the redirect. If it displays: 1. REDIRECT Artist_Name:Song_Title (no link), then you have to add the double square brackets to this redirect page in order to link to the target page. Hopefully this will clear it up. If you have any specific pages where it isn't working, feel free to post them here. --WillMak050389 14:33, 26 March 2008 (EDT)
Here is an example where it's not working: http://lyricwiki.org/Kenny_Chesney:Live_Those_Songs_Again
--Bananaducky 15:32, 26 March 2008 (EDT)
Not sure what was wrong with that one. I re-created the redirect by selected all of the content and retyping it. I also removed the underscores. When I checked the changes between edits, it seems there was an invisible line return before the number sign (#). This seems odd, not sure how it happened. I would try to select all and retype, that should fix the problem. --WillMak050389 16:02, 26 March 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Pre-Album Lyrics

Some artists such as Fair to Midland have lyrics that are completely different for some songs earlier in their lifetime. There are recordings of these songs, live and demos- that some might find interesting to listen to, or find lyrics to. Is LyricWiki interested in documenting these lyrics for those songs? --Sin 16:06, 29 March 2008 (EDT)

Personally, I say bring it on. Subtle differences in lyrics can mean a world of difference, but I should warn you that you're in for a headache trying to keep track of the various versions. I would steer away from bootleg recordings (unless they're very well-known and widely-available, like these), and stick with the officially sanctioned recordings. Otherwise, the Grateful Dead page is going to get reeeeeeally big...
I would also suggest some discretion in what constitutes a "significant" difference. One word different might not be worth the effort (and potential confusion), so I'd exercise some judgement there. But I can certainly see where some things would be nice to have. Such as Jefferson Airplane's performance of "Somebody To Love" at Woodstock, complete with Grace Slick's legendary "GOOD MORNING, PEOPLE!" transcribed in.  ;-)
—  jF 05:22, 30 March 2008 (EDT)
Yeah, if it shows a somewhat major change or evolution of the lyrics, that would be great to note that evolution. If it's a word or two or perhaps a line that is changed, then probably just a note about this after the "regular" version's lyrics section would be fine. If the changes are somewhat major or are throughout the lyrics, then an entirely new page can be created with an appropriate add-on to the pagename: (Demo) or (Early Version) or some such thing. As jF noted, noting every live variant ("But they left out that word when they played it live on Saturday Night Live!") and minuscule change isn't really what the site is looking for, I don't think.    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   14:05, 30 March 2008 (EDT)
The versions I'm specifically talking about are widely known by fans, and are 100% different then the final studio versions. I bring this up because I'm a bigger fan of some early demos rather then the final song. Since I'm seeing acceptance to this idea, I will begin adding another section to the already great Fair to Midland page. --Sin 00:44, 1 April 2008 (EDT)
Should also add a point for this discussion that our primary focus here is lyrics, not music. An incredibly nuanced performance, a song played in a different key, or the presence of an extended instrumental break does not constitute a unique song if the lyrics are the same. Neil Young's performance of "Rockin' In The Free World" on the aforementioned Saturday Night Live was legendary, but the lyrics were the same as the album. Just because it was a really good performance doesn't mean it merits a separate set of lyrics.
On the flip side of that, singer Kevin Rowland sang different lyrics nearly every time Dexy's Midnight Runners performed live, and his extended vamping resulted in literally hundreds of unique sets of lyrics for their handful of songs. Thankfully, though, very few of those received commercial release; otherwise, their page would be gargantuan.
Again, your discretion is always the best judge of what's appropriate. If anyone disagrees, that discussion page makes for a wonderful place to come to a consensus. There's a nice democracy around here, and many people who are appreciative and respectful of any contribution. So again, bring it on.
—  jF 01:14, 3 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Microformats

How about using Microformats?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.232.24.104 (talk) .

It looks like you got here before me...I have reposted my reply below.
I briefly looked over these links and I think that these would apply to our project. I have looked at Microformats at least once before and I am interested in seeing our project support these. I don't think that the first has been submitted to the microformat.org site yet, so I would be a little hesitant to add that untill that is taken care of and we know that the standard doesn't change. I'll talk to the other administators about the matter.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 04:21, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
I'm for waiting until it's garnered a little more support from even the enthusiats on the net. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 06:19, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
But it is good to start discussing this now so that when the time comes, we won't have a ton of work to do to be compliant with these proposed standards. Which is why I am interested in Microformats, OpenID, and other similar standards.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 13:26, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
¢ and ¢ (my two cents getting thrown in)... I like the idea of microformats, but I would be a bit leery of something that doesn't have clear support and organization behind it. From the Wikipedia article on microformats, note that they state that there is no standards body in place, and describe the microformat community as "an open wiki, mailing list, and Internet relay chat (IRC) channel." Unless I'm missing something here, there is no single entity charged with developing a uniform specification for microformats (unlike the firm guidance you see for technologies like HTML, PHP, XML, etcetera). Early involvement by Microsoft, who is notorious for doing what they want to do (and be damned if you don't like it) could easily result in more than one specification, and resultant chaos.
Browser wars, anyone?
I should also point out, in the same article, that the big two browsers are "expected" to implement microformats in their next releases, but so far that is nothing but speculation. I fear that implementation could undo a lot of achievements other organizations have realized (standardization of HTML and XML, in particular—I'd love to see this project brought to the attention of W3C, and worked into the XML standard, where it can be clearly-defined and browser manufacturers held accountable for any incorrect implementation in their products.)
I read through the blog link provided, and I don't see where that would be a significant improvement. In practice, I find that many songs have choruses that are not identical, and require separate transcription to be accurate. And while I'm playing devil's advocate, I note that the paragraph tag, <p>, is used extensively in applying microformats. This would require the addition of a cascading style sheet to alter the default whitespace; otherwise, there would be numerous undesired blank lines in the lyrics. I can easily see where that could be a headache, particularly for novice wiki users.
Unsigned, can you provide other examples of how microformats would benefit LyricWiki? While I'm dubious about whether the benefits could outweigh the learning curve and potential chaos, I'd certainly like to hear more about the possibilities it could open for LW.
—  jF 02:36, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Wikipedia links for songs (and albums)

there's quite a bunch of Wikipedia articles on songs which have a page here. Is somebody able to include links ({{Wikipedia|Song Name (song)|Song name}}) in a (semi)automated way?--Speckmade 13:06, 3 April 2008 (EDT)

I kinda doubt it. Wikipedia's naming strategy differs from ours, and while there might be only one "A Love Bizarre", you're bound to hit disambiguation with many songs like "One" (which over there could include "One (Metallica song)", "One (Bee Gees song)", and "One (U2 song)". You have no choice but to research the song for its appropriate Wikipedia article name, and enter that manually.
Maybe some of the bright minds around here could come up with something...  ;-)
—  jF 02:48, 4 April 2008 (EDT)


[edit] Up-to-date

Can someone remind me why we aren't using the latest version of MediaWiki (Special:Version)? There was some extension we were afraid would die, but I can't remember which one it was... Maybe I could work on it? --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 00:13, 13 April 2008 (EDT)

Well, we tried to upgrade to the latest version recently, but things broke massively. For one, the SOAP and the Facebook app didn't work at all, and the site went down completely. You can read up on the attempt here and the several following posts. We are trying to get this working, it will just take some time.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 02:34, 13 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Firefox Search Plugins

I use this site a great deal, and it would be very helpful to me to be able to go directly to a song from my browser search bar. Would it be possible to create a search plugin for LyricWiki similar to the one used for Wikipedia supplied with Firefox? Here's the link to the wikipedia plugin. Here's the documentation for search plugin creation for Firefox. I'd be very grateful if you looked into this. Thanks! --BozoCat --76.24.70.80 13:29, 18 April 2008 (EDT)

This first comment has nothing to do with the request, but that page is typical of what I find frustrating with many Firefox plug-in pages. No description of what it actually DOES. *grrrrr*
I'm guessing, however, that it's supposed to automatically search Wikipedia and you want to be able to do the same to LyricWiki? Strangely enough, though, I can search LyricWiki using the default search tool already. (I don't believe this is from an add-on - it doesn't appear to be - but I could be wrong.) While at LyricWiki, I can click on the Google icon (it has a small downward triangle) and there is an Add "LyricWiki" choice. Once I click that, I have the LyricWiki icon instead, and I can search the site from there.
As an added plug, Kingnee has put together a page of suggested Firefox Extensions for LyricWiki (and in general, too) here!   Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   00:51, 19 April 2008 (EDT)
Thanks for mention it. I'm looking for it, too. And it's just right there, surprise! Just click your search button, add it and finish.--Tomin 08:42, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Apostrophes in Song Lyrics

Hi! I hope this is the right place for my message, anyway:

Is it possible to create a bot that checks all lyrics pages and replaces these accent symbols ´ and ` which are often misused as apostrophes with proper ones (’)? I think this would be more effective and complete than having the job done manually by a few people (or is it just me who cares?) who come across such mistakes now and then. Greetings, Chillvie --80.130.175.6 21:02, 22 April 2008 (EDT)

I can get that. Give me an couple hours and I'll turn BotUm (talk • contribs) on that. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 21:16, 22 April 2008 (EDT)
No, we all care. As such, it would be great if this could be done.  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 21:29, 22 April 2008 (EDT)
I just meant, because I'm at work, I'll have to wait til I get home to work on this. I'll neeed to design a regular expression that'll catch all the one's we want and none we don't. I think I've have to make a category too, for the one's with funk in the title. I should have all the songs fixed by the morning of April 23rd. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 22:27, 22 April 2008 (EDT)
OK, maybe that was a bit optimistic. I have to do two passes: 1) I find pages that have gunk in the title and move them and 2) I go through and replace a gunk with '. This may take a day or two. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 04:56, 23 April 2008 (EDT)
Great, thanks for your quick reply. And good luck with your bot! ;) --Chillvie 06:49, 25 April 2008 (EDT)
I'm working on it, but it's very slow going: there are lot of pages and I'm having to move the wrongly titled ones by hand. It may take me a week, but I'll get there! --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 06:55, 25 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Note on timestamps on the site

Someone pointed out that the clock was yet-again off by half an hour. I reset it, so the times will look weird for a little bit (for the next half hour, some of the Special:Recentchanges will be out of order. While I was changing it, I also accidentally set it to be the 25th of April for a few seconds, so a couple of edits will show up as being in the future.
Just wanted to put a post up about this to avoid any more confusion than necessary :)
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 15:09, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Films

While looking over Pink Floyd (and creating more of their albums), I ran across the fact that they did a number of films. I was wondering if we have a policy on films (not soundtracks), or if we should create one. For example: what should distinguish Pink Floyd:The Wall (1979) from Pink Floyd:The Wall (1982) (other than the date)? Or Pink Floyd:La Carrera Panamericana (1992) (no official soundtrack was ever released, but it contains a few new songs by Pink Floyd)? There are a lot of artists that release live concerts on film, but never release an audio release of the film.

I was thinking just creating a "Category:Films" and adding it to these pages. Or should we create a slightly different template (such as Template:Film and Template:FilmFooter) for them? (This way, we can add links to IMDb and other good movie sites) What does everybody think? --WillMak050389 12:18, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

Sounds great! Why not make a test page for us to see what you mean? --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 12:24, 30 April 2008 (EDT)
I've created the two templates, and used them on Pink Floyd:The Wall (1982). How does it look? --WillMak050389 14:15, 30 April 2008 (EDT)
I think it's a great idea Will and the page looks great too (well done!). The only thing that we would have to ensure (particularly for those unfamiliar with the artist's work) is that we make clear this is not an audio album. ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 14:55, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Google Search Result

For a long time, I search lyric directly in Google. I found out that LyricWiki doesn't appear in the first page(first 10 results). But often appear in the second page(about the 15th-17th result) instead.

It's not really bad, but I think we could do better in SEO, right? :D

Wikipedia didn't have a good pagerank in google two years ago, but later they improve it. I don't know how, but they did it! So why can't we? --Tomin 08:25, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

I think Wikipedia is a special case here: I believe to know that there is some sort of agreement between Google and Wikipedia - so actually they kinda cheat here... :-) --Speckmade 14:04, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Front Page down

I get the following error when I try to view the Main Page:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function wgMsg() in /var/www/html/lyricwiki.org/extensions/LyricWiki/Tag_XML.php on line 132
--Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 22:19, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

I can see it just fine, do you still have the issue?
King_Nee1114 (talk page • contributions • deletions) 23:28, 8 May 2008 (EDT)
Nope. Must've been a temporary thing.--Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 04:35, 9 May 2008 (EDT)
It happens somethimes.--Tomin 07:44, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Email notifications

I haven't been getting timely notifications in about a week. Is anyone else seeing this problem? If that's happening, then its likely spammers figured out how to exploit our Send To A Friend script and got our server put on some blacklists again.
If you see this message, please let me know either way what has been happening for you.
Thanks,
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 13:59, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Same thing here. I imagine the site has gotten so huge and is generating so much email, that we've ending up on some spam-tracking blacklist. I think this is a good featuring, but if it has to go for server performance/cost, I can live without it. Oh, and thanks for getting the site back up! --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 07:43, 13 May 2008 (EDT)
Weird.. I just got a TON of alerts (and bounces). Not really sure why. Maybe now that the server is running better again, it just got to catch up? Odd.
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 08:21, 13 May 2008 (EDT)
Ditto again! No sooner had I posted than I got 17 emails! --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 08:28, 13 May 2008 (EDT)
Yup. Something got cleared up. Whatever was reset to get the site up and running again (after 15 hours!) seems to have also opened up the floodgates. E-Lax to the rescue!
Actually, I was noticing quite a number of semi-funky things the last few days, as have a few others. Should we e-mail you when we start getting an unusual number of Too Many Connections notices and such?    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   08:46, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] If You Care About This Site!!!

Get over to Wikipedia's attempt to delete this site's article (again) and vote keep!!!! Wikipedia use "Notability" to destory articles that a bunch of admins've decided to delete. The only way to oppose these oligarchs is with an overwhelming show of numbers. Find one external refence to lyricwiki and post your vote!

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.

Mao Tse-Tung

P.S. The above quote is here to remind you not to try to reason with the admin's or you'll just get yourself blocked. Just list a reference and vote keep. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 12:59, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

Meatpuppetry is against Wikipedia's rules and is an all-around bad idea anyway. -- I need a name 09:59, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
No one is advocating creating account just to do this. I know everyone here reads WP and most have accounts there. The attempt of WP admin's to ram deletes down people throats, especially in such a case where there are no new rationales to do so, is abuse of power on their part. Those who understand this call to action already know what to do, they we're just probably unaware that WP would stoop so low ... again. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 10:05, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
P.S. If you think I'm a ranting lunatic, try reading this, this, this or this. This is primarily a problem on the English language Wikipedia. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 10:33, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
Ranting lunatic? Comparing Wikipedia to Communism and somehow attributing (although in a sideways fashion) this deletion request to loose-cannon admins? Why would anyone think you a ranting lunatic?  :-]
Seriously, I know your disdain/frustration about Wikipedia, and I understand where that's coming from, but you need to let go a little.
I, personally, was glad for the notice, as I wouldn't have known about the situation otherwise. I created an account at Wikipedia a while back so that I could clean up little messes there that I discovered while researching for things here, and so have added my 2 cents, as is my right. The problem seems to be that those "voting" for deletion there appear to be doing so in a knee-jerk fashion, without doing much research or follow up on the evidence for keeping the article.
Now, if the article is deleted, then it's deleted. The death of a Wikipedia article isn't the death of LyricWiki. I'd be surprised if many (if any) visitors come here for the first time because they stumbled onto the article. No big whoop. It's nice that it's there, I feel that it should be there, but I won't throw my keyboard across the room if it isn't there.    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   11:39, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
I know you're right, but I sure have a hard time not getting hot under the collar about WP:NOT. I got so mad about Wikipedia censorship I had to start my own wiki! Also, I have no clue about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so a I guess a WP article just seemed like the one thing I could do for the site. I took it kinda personal. :-( --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 12:19, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
I didn't realize that you created the article. Yeah, that makes it quite a bit more personal. I don't see it getting deleted, though. There's just a whole lot of nothing on the "Delete" side of things. Like I mentioned in my comments there, there's nothing new being presented. Same arguments, same evidence disproving those arguments, and so there should be the same outcome. If not, I give you permission to rant!    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   12:31, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
I would like to remind everybody to be civil about the matter, especially the administrators. Wikipedia has its rules as we have ours, and we would not like them comming over here and messing with our rules, why would they be any different. That said, it would be sad if the page about our site is deleted. (Though, the page looks a little thin right now, which is probably why it is up for deletion)
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 18:06, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
Yeah..interesting discussion guys. I'm onto it.  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 21:40, 21 May 2008 (EDT)
For the record here, the result was keep, just like last time (and the page doesn't look to bad either). Keep an eye out in the future as well, this may happen again :(
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 01:12, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Programs/Services that use LyricWiki...

Is there a list of projects that use LyricWiki? I've just pretty much completed a program that pulls lyrics using this service (http://shtaggle.co.uk) and it seems sensible to tout it here!! :-P

I've looked the program's screenshot. Pretty good! List is at plugin page here. You can add yours of course. :) --Tomin 23:58, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Semantic MediaWiki

Some of you may have seen the discussion over on LyricWiki_talk:Esperanza, but since it's been dead awhile, and I'm trying to revive it, I thought I'd bring it over here.

What I'm trying to argue for is the installation of an extension that will fundamentally alter the way this website works. What if, instead of thumbing through endless categories there was a way to search for specific values associated with pages. What I mean is, what if you could ask LyricWiki, "What albums were released between 2000 and 2005 by metal band from the UK?". Also, the extension I'm talking about would make album and artist pages radically simpler. Because songs would all be tagged with artist and album name, the artist and album pages themselves wouldn't need to duplicate that information: they would be auto-populated.

The extension that could do all this and more is Semantic MediaWiki and I've made a bare-bones example at Sandbox.S-MW.org (of Death Cab For Cutie). --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 06:56, 29 May 2008 (EDT)

Mmmm...mixed feelings. I prefer the layout of the pages as they are atm since it looks like there would be a lot of wasted white space to the left of the artist info box. If we could insert a photo of the artist that would be great of course. Also, I happened to notice that a lot of the info contained in the artist info box is duplicated in the facts box at the bottom of page. I will admit that not having to manually create album pages would be a bonus. Indeed I am aware that users regularly complain about creating album pages and feel this is unnecessary. I don't however consider album pages unnecessary for many reasons, but primarily because it allows for greater detail to be inserted about the album which would be inappropriate on the artist page. I like the search idea too. Could attract more users to this site. Hope that helps  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 21:21, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
The reason I think there is so much white-space is because I put in every kind of factoid about the band. Not all artists' "Infobox" would be as big. The reason I duplicated at the content from the factbox is that a lot of people don't want to be dependant on looking at it, and in fact, most people hide entirely on their wiki. (P.S. I've always been in favor of artist photos!) As to your last point, there are still album pages [3], but there is no need to add/tweak songs on them. Basically, they exist to define the image and genre of the album, but they could include "greater detail"s too. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 23:40, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
Redxx, something to consider is that in practice, there will be considerable distance between the infobox on the right and the facts box at the bottom. Also the whitespace should be consumed by the table of contents and also by the ads on the right side.
I took a look at the code at the sandbox site, and I have to say, sweet!, but it looks like another bot pass would be needed. One concern I have from my brief review of the sandbox is this: How will track numbers for songs on multiple albums be handled? From what I can see, only a single track number can be associated with the song page, though I'm sure there is a way around this.
We will also need to consider how this will affect site performance. Will this increase the load on the databases? Does the convience outweigh this?
Also, we will have to get Mediawiki upgraded in order for Semantic to even work. (Note: the last time, the site broke massivly) This has been something on the ToDo list for some time now and will eventually happen, but until it is done, extensions like this will be held back. A fairly large amount of downtime will be required to upgrade the site (a day minimum) and a lot of custom code (the API and Facebook App) will need to be updated so this will have to be well-planned.
Anyways, enough of my rambling. Hopefully this is some food for thought. I am by no means against this, quite the opposite. I'm just being a bit cautious from past experience.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 01:06, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
I think it's pretty much a given that we would need a major bot overhaul to go from one layout to the other. The way I would do it, if it were my wiki, would be: 1) lock the site into read only mode (maybe this could be done on a Wednesday) 2) Export everything via phpDumpBackup (?) 3) Have a bot chew it up and spit out SMW relative wikicode 4) Meanwhile, install extensions, upgrade, etc. 5) Upload pages back.
Actually, if we do this or anything else, we should upgrade and install incrementally, before we change anything else about the site. ... Basically, I'm saying I agree with the "Go Slow" approach. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 01:15, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Underscores Removed

I'm contemplating during BotUm loose on the underscores (i.e. _'s) that are part of internal links. I think this would greatly improve the readability of the wikicode here and help prevent a lot of unnecessary horizontal scrolling. However, this would mean an edit on just about every page and take over a week (assuming I throttle BotUm). Does this seem like a good idea? For the curious, the regex I had in mind was: 

\[\[(.*)_(.*)\]\] transformed into \[\[\1 \2\]\] done recursively.

Any thoughts? --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 14:31, 9 June 2008 (EDT)

It's all a matter of personal preference, but personally I hate underscores. Some people appear to love them however (goodness knows why) but I agree wholeheartedly that they do nothing to improve the readability of text/the wikicode here. I also hear what you say about it taking a week to complete, but it would certainly save a lot of time in the future for those, like me, who remove them when editing pages.  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 21:06, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
It wouldn't be a week of my time: I'd just leave 'um running day and night. And every one would get an email about every single page they watch almost, since they'd all end up editted. --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 23:40, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
It is personal prefrence (and my happens to be the same, no underscores). You will probably want 
\[\[(.*?)_(.*?)\]\] transformed into \[\[\1 \2\]\] done recursively.
for the regex just to be safe (use non-greedy matching) ;)
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 00:07, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
Alright! I hope nobody mind, 'cause I'm turnin' 'er loose! I've got a two second pause between page evals and a twenty second pause after page changes. 'Hope this is an OK server load! --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 12:03, 25 June 2008 (EDT)
Excellent stuff! I can see 'she' is quite the mover. Well done you! ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 22:45, 25 June 2008 (EDT)
UPDATE! BotUm (talk • contribs) only made it to Camden before being shut down by a server error. Since Sean C. has fixed that, I've turned 'er back on, but now eliminating all underscore (without regex). The reason not to do so before was because Wikipedia links needed to preserve them. Since Kingnee1114lyrics (talk • contribs) has fixed that now, this shouldn't be a problem, right?! Let me know right away it not! --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 13:44, 5 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Capitalization of words

Don't know if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find any reference to this matter so I will bring it up again.

Why doesn't the site conform to rules of capitalization? Take Coldplay's new album for example. In LyricWiki it is listed under "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends". Notice the words I marked in bold? They should all be lowercase. The same goes for "in", "with", "for", "a", "the", etc. (given that those words are NOT in the beginning of the sentence).

So is LyricWiki going to stay like that, or can we work towards properly capitalized artists and song titles?

From LW:PN:
The purpose of this policy is to have pagenames that are as uniform as possible. LyricWiki is a site that has songs, artists, and users from many different nations, which have rules for capitalization that may vary. (At times, the Artist may creatively change capitalization as well.) By breaking the capitalization rules of every nation, it is hoped that the creation of multiple variations of a page will be minimized. This way, the site won't have one group of editors working on one variation, while another group works on another and work can be more collaborative. Also, because LyricWiki is incorporated into other projects, a uniform method of creating pagenames is also necessary for coding purposes.
One of the main reasons why is so that scripts and plugins can access the content of the site in a uniform way without having to guess if it should use "the" or "The". So, unless something changes, we will most likely keep things the way they are.
Hopefully that answers your question.
- teknomunk (talk,E,歌,A) 19:20, 12 June 2008 (EDT)
This has been in use in Wikipedia since day 1, and thus far it worked flawlessly. How is LyricWiki any different? Besides, what are redirects for? Exactly for matters like these. Also, I was referring to English titles only. David.L 07:28, 13 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] SOTD noms

I need some help. Scheisster111 moved the nomination page to (redacted). Can someone move it back to where it was? EDIT: In fact, he's got a whole lot of moves to imply sexual meaning. Those need to be reverted, as well. --Cubs Fan2007 12:54, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

Thanks for bringing this up. I think things are back to normal (hope I didn't miss anything).
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 13:37, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
I deleted all the nasty pages he'd made (there's no reason to keep those redirects) --Åqúàŧĩkī - É - Ŧ 15:06, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Same title, different lyrics

Hi! Ok, now that part's done. So, I'm a wiki-noob starting to play with Stacey Kent's Artist page. I noticed in my collection that Stacey has two different songs entitled 'They All Laughed'.

Uberbot had gathered the one that starts with The odds were a hundred to one... from the album Let Yourself Go. But how I should add the different version of the song that starts with "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus...", that is on the album Love Is The Tender Trap ? Do plug-ins (iLyrics for me) generally lookup the album first, or they go straight for the track title? Thanks! Monotone 01:23, 18 July 2008 (EDT)

I have no idea how we're supposed to deal with different tracks of the same artist and name on lyricwiki, but concerning iLyrics: It just looks for artist and song title, the album doesn't matter at all. -- Chillvie 05:51, 23 July 2008 (EDT)
If there are only very slight changes, making a note below the original lyrics is a good way to go. (A second lyric section on the same song page with the changed portion(s) would also be a good addition.) If there are major lyric changes, such as added verses, a changed chorus, etc., then creating a new page with a parenthetical description [EX: (Live), (Remix), (Extended), etc.) is perfectly wonderful. If you wanted, you could even create a link between such versions. Hope that helps!  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 07:56, 23 July 2008 (EDT)
No, it's actually two completely different songs by two diferent composers! I guess there are no copyrights on song titles, and she just happens to interpret both versions. Its just one of those rare exceptions! What I think I'll do is put the name of the composer in parenthesis for both song titles, and redirect the default title to the version that appears in the most recent album. A decent tradeoff I hope. Monotone 20:34, 25 July 2008 (EDT)
I believe that this is the song you are referring to allmusic.com which was composed by George and Ira Gershwin and appeared in the 1937 film "Shall We Dance" starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Just one of these versions has an added intro. And especially for you, here's a bonus track!! [4] Great film..they certainly don't make 'em like that anymore!!  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 23:07, 25 July 2008 (EDT)
Pardon me for interrupting and for my confusion, but you state that the two songs have different composers, and yet both have the same title and include the line "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus"? Are you sure they aren't just two different versions of the Gershwin song?    Kiefer    talk    contribs    admin   21:59, 26 July 2008 (EDT)
Well, I'll be damned. It is indeed the same song, but a different intro lyrics that got me confused ! If that doesn't look like a major case of lyrical ADD, I don't what does. Thanks Redxx & Kiefer! Monotone 23:19, 27 July 2008 (EDT)
Lol. Glad to assist :-) ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 18:20, 28 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Page Ranking ... FOR REAL!

moved to LyricWiki talk:Page ranking

[edit] Return references from songs to compilations

I created a compilation album (Celtic Woman (1996)). The first song is Annachie Gordon by Loreena McKennitt. That song already exists on another album, and when I put it in my list, it references the existing page (very nice). On the song page, there was a reference to the original album, and I wanted to add one for my compilation too. So I put in my line after the first one:

{ {Song|Parallel Dreams (1989)|Loreena McKennitt} }
{ {Song|Celtic Woman (1996)|Loreena McKennitt} }

The first one links back to the Parallel Dreams album, by using the artist name. But the second one tries to use it too, and doesn't get back to my original page at <http://lyricwiki.org/Celtic_Woman_%281996%29>. How can I put a compilation album on the song page properly?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.187.32.75 (talk) .

Take a look at the song page now in edit mode. You simply needed to add the soundtrack template. I know it isn't a soundtrack, but we use this template for various artist albums.More info  ♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪Talk 16:37, 24 July 2008 (EDT)
Awesome. Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dlamet (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Page Rank Galore & Uncategorized Pages

So are we ready to categorize all pages? I was thinking I could either change {{Song}} and {{Album}} to say if no "star" then star=Green. That would categorize most everything at once. Or, I could have m'bot go through and add it slowly (maybe even after the unending underscore death march ends). This appears better on the surface because the bot would be necessary regardless, since artist pages don't have a template at the top to change. What do other people think? --Aquatiki - T - E 01:38, 29 July 2008 (EDT)

I was actually hoping I could bring up a thought. I think that having Category:Green Songs and what-have-you is not the best way to go about things. I say that because Green Songs and Green Artists and Green Albums would be simply so massive that it would not mean much to have that category (even the songs categories are smaller, being broken into A-Z). At least not right away, because later, that group will shrink, as the other bronze, violet, gold, and silver categories grow. While that might be a reason, it isn't the reason, which would be that I have been working on getting all the pages I can SongFooters. The way I can track these pages is if they are on Special:Uncategorizedpages. I am almost done, though, as I have 1950 left, and today alone I worked through 300 or so.
King_Nee1114 (