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Composer names: change requests

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:13 pm
by pml
It seems we're limited to 10 options on a poll, so here are five of the suggested name changes from this thread. Please post any more suggested name changes over in that thread, rather than here.

The poll will go for a week.

You should be able to select up to five poll options out of the ten; please be sensible and limit yourself to one option of each pair!

Edit: Smetana, as Leonard pointed out below, is a case of a mistaken spelling without the diacritical há?ek. Mea culpa. So please vote on Carl (August) Nielsen instead.

Re: Composer names: change requests

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:27 pm
by Leonard Vertighel
Why do we need to vote about Smetana? To the best of my knowledge, the version without the caron is simply wrong. Move it to the correct spelling, and leave a redirect from the spelling without caron for the search engine. Am I missing something?

Re: Composer names: change requests

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 7:30 am
by Generoso
I am all for changing the names to the original or to the most used but very important is that somewhere on the page be the alternant spellings (even if wrong) to enable searches and lookups find what the searcher is looking for.

I know for instance that searching on the Sibley Music Library for the word
"Violoncello" gets 242 results
"Violoncelle" gets 406 results
"Violoncell" gets 406 results
"Violoncel" gets 406 results
"Cello" gets 10 results
"Violonc*" gets 523 results

For the sake of finding COMPOSERS on ISMLP, even if there is just a mention of the name (spelled correctly or misspelled on the page) a variety of different spellings will then enable a search to be more useful. This is especially important to those composers with accents or other letters that are out of the 26 letters of the english alphabet (ie. Dvo?ák). These alternate names could be even hidden from view. (I think it is set up as such at the moment.) Just my 2 cents worth.

Re: Composer names: change requests

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:57 am
by Lyle Neff
Generoso wrote:I am all for changing the names to the original or to the most used but very important is that somewhere on the page be the alternant spellings (even if wrong) to enable searches and lookups find what the searcher is looking for. [...]
For the sake of finding COMPOSERS on ISMLP, even if there is just a mention of the name (spelled correctly or misspelled on the page) a variety of different spellings will then enable a search to be more useful. This is especially important to those composers with accents or other letters that are out of the 26 letters of the english alphabet (ie. Dvo?ák). These alternate names could be even hidden from view. (I think it is set up as such at the moment.) Just my 2 cents worth.
That's what redirect-pages are useful for. Search "Rimsky" and it should take you to the composer page for "Category:Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai".

Re: Composer names: change requests

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:29 am
by pml
Bump!

I think a voting trend is already well established in the cases of Dvo?ák and Wagner to indicate support for a move, whereas there is substantial opposition in the case of C.H.H. Parry so that there is almost parity between pro and contra. I will be interested to see how things go for Nielsen and Nietzsche in the next few days. :)

EDIT: It seems there's a unanimous case for Dvo?ák's middle name to go, and a fairly good level of support for Wagner, Nielsen and Nietzsche, so I'll be moving these over the next week. (It takes time, since there are a lot of pages that need changing in the wake of the bulk move of pages, which is relatively straightforward.) Parry obviously will stay put.