IMSLP Forums

More like 3 parts, but I liked the title (darn you, Stefan Wolpe and others. )

Necessary and not disingenuous disclaimer - these are my thoughts, I don't pretend more importance for them, and I have barely mentioned them, I think, elsewhere, leave alone discussed them. The focus and topic of them is some ways that the site can be more useful for non-editing users.

The "presto veloce" part - refers to the tendency, I think, to create a range of pages and upload content very rapidly as though in a contest (maybe I'm projecting, since I know I've done.) Sibley Library Rochester or some other site uploads a dozen scores, and several of us "compete" to harvest them. The more quickly this is done, though, the more errors on the resulting workpages. Since other sites and other people use our data, as they do Wikipedia's, to back up their claims in other contexts, and since these mistakes later go uncorrected for some while, is there some way to encourage - systematically, I really really have to emphasize, not individually - a slowdown, more than is already being done?

Moderato: should really be ritardando- as in- again- slow down... ... relates to this, in a more specific way. Several times lately - for example but not only, in a review of a recent recording of Reinecke's cello sonatas, where the reviewer pointed out how the scores were available on IMSLP- but two of them were incomplete (this is still a problem with one of the three sonatas , but I have since uploaded an alternative for the other from Sibley ) - ... it seems a good idea at least for briefer works to check within reason! that they are actually performable in the state in which one is uploading them, instead of waiting for an "enduser" to complain likewise. (The reviewer did so publicly at Musicweb-international.com presumably because he was unaware that we have a reporting feature here - or thought it annoying enough to be worth noting even so. And ... I have to say I see his point; free need not mean unprofessional in that sense, as he puts it, and I agree.)

Third part: to make things more useful - I almost forgot it. We have a number of works that are hard to use - either full scores without parts, or hard-to-read manuscripts, or etc. - the more typesetters (and even typesetters-in-training like myself :^) ) willing to donate some time, may find them good practice, too. Without making it a formal "project" with a list to be checked off (I find those increasingly annoying for reasons I will not go into right now... ) ... hrm. Still, a "category"... hrm. How to handle... don't know at all, don't know how to encourage this that's not being done...

Eric

Very good points. I have to say that the informal Abt project seems to be an exception, generally speaking - as the vast majority of uploads have been accurately described with as much info as possible about librettists, translators, etc. The publisher citations are likewise excellent overall. Your point about the increasing use of this site as a source for citation is important to remember. This is one of the reasons why we try to be consistent about what is being made available here. It's also one of the things that makes IMSLP different from several other sites offering downloads of free scores and even from the commerical sellers of scanned scores like CD Sheet Music - who hardly ever states what has been scanned.

I wish we had time to look through each file that is uplaoded, but with hundreds being added every day it is not really possible until we have more groundskeepers like yourself around. Once WIMA is done, we might have some slower days and free time where things could be checked for their suitability for actual performance and the like.

Until now, problem-scores have been dealt with in different ways: an entry under misc. notes (the best place to warn other users), in the Misc. comments, in the Discussion, or in the forums, or by pm to the uploader.

Maybe a solution would be a "wishlist" for improved / corrected scores, in addition to encouraging users (or even better already the uploaders) to enter a brief description of problems under the misc. notes for the file.

Hrm. Well, I'm liking these ideas.
(Carolus, you give me much too much credit in that last part...but I also like how the Abt project has been going, and a number of others also. I very much should not have generalized! )

I like the idea of a wishlist for corrected scores/files. If the problem is just pages in the wrong order, anyone with the ability to take apart PDFs and put them back again could do the correction. The more difficult things that require access to original scores would be bad scans, pages that are actually missing, etc.

But little by little, we could reduce the number of problem items.

In the meantime, the people doing their own scans should meticulously check that they didn't miss pages. Uploaders who are taking scores that other people have scanned won't necessarily have the luxury of making sure it is correct. But they could add a piece to the wishlist if they can find known problems. That takes a slower approach, and more checking . . .

This discussion gives me an idea to share and commentary on past experiences. In the thousands of scores I've uploaded, I have been made aware of several errors on my part amounting to missing pages. In some cases, the problematic scores have gone unnoticed for more than a year until some kind soul speaks up and either makes a forum post or, better still, leaves me a message on my talk page. I have always tried to fix these if at all possible, but I'm sure there are more floating around that might have a missing page or two. We all (or most of us) realize that this is a user-driven community and that in any project of this nature and scope, mistakes are to be expected. However, there are lots of users that visit this site, see an error such as this, and blame the site directly not knowing how we work or who is actually behind the oversight.

What do you all think about having a sort of "report a problem" feature next to each IMSLP file tag on which a user could click if they've just reviewed a file that has a glaring error such as a missing page? I can't say how this could or should be implemented on the wiki or where these entries would reside, but it would make it much clearer and easier for our users to pipe up and help us improve the quality of the scores we offer. With an easy reporting system such as this, it would make it very convenient and quick for a user to file a report rather than post a comment somewhere, the latter requiring much more effort and time than the former.

Sounds really good!

Has IMSLP created a "Report a Problem" feature?