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… has been deleted n, n, n, … nineteen times since the beginning of IMSLP. Nearly two dozen times a page with a variant spelling has also been deleted, for a grrrrrande total of forty-two deletions.

Stravinsky had to be deleted thirteen times, but thanks to IMSLP·US he’s now kosher. Fritz Kreisler’s been eradicated nine times. Aram Khachaturian and Carl Orff have each had to push off on seven prior occasions. People have tried to put up a Ligeti page four times.

By comparison, “Leaping Lenny” Bernstein has only needed to be deleted three times.

And one of those pages had the name “Bernstain”. LOL.

Is it perhaps time to put a redirect there which either goes to the Public Domain page or the page explaining Canadian copyright, or to a page explaining that Shostakovich cannot possibly under any circumstances be added to IMSLP? (Or at least until July 2025, at the very earliest.)

For extra measure, once the redirect is in place it gets protected against all edits or moves bar those of sysadmins, so that newbie users can’t overwrite it.

Another possibility you might want to consider is to resurrect my “non public-domain composer” Mediawiki template, which has a distinctly different look-and-feel to any other composer pages and again could be “locked down” with extreme prejudice to prevent edits until the six months before a composer becomes eligible to have scores hosted on IMSLP.

Whadday’all think?

Cheers, Philip

Linky

Some of the deletion comments have an increasingly despairing tone, which is somewhat amusing.

First, the 19 attempts at the definitive Shostakovich page:

* 11:35, 25 April 2011 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (under copyright in most of world)
* 09:22, 1 April 2011 Schissel deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (composer is not PD-CA, and can't be put on the US server since nothing of his was published before 1923 (etc.))
* 14:36, 27 February 2011 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Copyright violation: content was: '{{#fte:person |Born Year=1906|Born Month=9|Born Day=25 |Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9 |Time Period=Early 20th century |Biography Link=[http://www…' (and the only contributor was '[[Special:Contributions/Fr)
* 05:46, 6 February 2011 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (under copyright pretty much worldwide)
* 11:37, 4 February 2011 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (not PD in Canada)
* 02:29, 24 December 2010 Perlnerd666 deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (content was: '{{#fte:composer |Born Year=1906|Born Month=9|Born Day=25 |Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9 |Alternate Names=Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich |Time Period=Modern |Biography Link=Wikipedia |Nationali…')
* 00:04, 19 December 2010 P.davydov deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Copyright violation: content was: '{{#fte:composer |Born Year=1906|Born Month=|Born Day=25 |Died Year=1975|Died Month=|Died Day=9 |Time Period=Early 20th century |Biography Link=[http://en.wi…' (and the only contributor was '[[Special:Contributions/)
* 09:35, 29 January 2010 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Copyright violation: content was: '{{#fte:composer |Born Year=1906|Born Month=9|Born Day=25 |Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9 |Time Period=Early 20th century |Biography Link=[http://e…' (and the only contributor was '[[Special:Contributions/Hi)
* 13:48, 9 October 2009 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Copyright violation: content was: '{{#fte:composer |Born Year=1906|Born Month=9|Born Day=25 |Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9 |Time Period=Modern |Biography Link= }}' (and the only contributor was '[[Special:Contributions/Dracula1213|Dracula1213)
* 08:42, 18 April 2009 Perlnerd666 deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (content was: '{{#imslpcomposer:|Born Year=1906|Born Month=9|Born Day=25|Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9|Time Period=Early 20th century|Biography Link=[ht...' (and the only contributor was 'Doctorjason'))
* 22:28, 1 February 2009 Leonard Vertighel deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (content was: '#REDIRECT Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitrievich' (and the only contributor was 'Perlnerd666'))
* 13:23, 5 October 2008 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Non-PD in Canada)
* 07:04, 8 July 2008 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Not PD in Canada)
* 04:24, 29 October 2007 Leonard Vertighel deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (Not PD in Canada)
* 08:52, 9 May 2007 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (not pd, unless you have something published pre-1923 (before he was 17 years old))
* 00:39, 22 April 2007 Leonard Vertighel deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (empty category)
* 00:59, 3 March 2007 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (please don't create empty composer pages... plus almost all of Shostakovich's works are not in the public domain in either US or Canada)
* 12:00, 18 November 2006 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (ditto)
* 05:00, 8 October 2006 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri" (probably a good idea to not make people think there were shostakovich scores on IMSLP)

By comparison, the page with DSCH’s patronymic has only been deleted seven times, first the “y” version:
* 10:24, 8 April 2010 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitriyevich" (Copyright violation)
* 23:11, 5 September 2009 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitriyevich" (How many times is this going to happen!?!?!?!?!?)
* 02:18, 4 June 2009 Hobbypianist deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitriyevich" (not PD in Canada)
* 06:03, 5 March 2009 Hobbypianist deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitriyevich" (Shostakovich is NOT pd in Canada! content was: '{{#imslpcomposer:|Born Year=1906|Born Month=12|Born Day=25|Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9|Time Period=Early 20th century|Biography Link=[h...' (and the only contributor was '[[Special:Contributions)

And now the “i” version:
* 20:28, 1 February 2009 Leonard Vertighel deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitrievich" (empty category)
* 09:48, 29 May 2007 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitrievich" (no valid submissions)
* 09:39, 30 January 2007 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitrievich" (empty composer category (see your talk page Jdbrown))

Another sixteen variants including Schostakovich, Chostakovich, and Šostakovič:
* 07:02, 20 January 2011 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakóvich, Dmitri" (under copyright worldwide)
* 07:49, 29 October 2009 KGill deleted "Category:Shostakovich, dimitri" (empty and not PD)
* 03:20, 10 May 2009 Perlnerd666 deleted "Category:Chostakovitch, Dmitri" (content was: '{{#imslpcomposer:|Born Year=1906|Born Month=|Born Day=|Died Year=1975|Died Month=|Died Day=|Time Period=Modern|Biography Link=[http://fr.wikipedia...' (and the only contributor was 'J.p.m'))
* 07:51, 11 April 2009 Hobbypianist deleted "Category:Shostakovitch, dmitri" ( Shostakovitch is not PD in Canada!)
* 05:01, 9 March 2009 Hobbypianist deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmítrievich" (for the umpteenth time, Shostakovich is not PD in Canada! content was: '{{#imslpcomposer:|Born Year=1906|Born Month=9|Born Day=25|Died Year=1975|Died Month=8|Died Day=9|Time Period=Romantic|Biography Link=[http://es.wi...' (and the only contributor was ')
* 07:12, 24 January 2009 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dimitri" (for about the 20th time!)
* 05:14, 11 January 2009 Carolus deleted "Category:Chostakovitch, Dimitri" (Not PD for a long time)
* 09:58, 2 October 2008 Carolus deleted "Category:Dmitri, Shostakovich" (Not PD in Canada)
* 03:36, 2 October 2008 Carolus deleted "Category:Chostakovitch, dimitri" (Not PD in Canada)
* 06:54, 29 October 2007 Leonard Vertighel deleted "Shostakovich" (broken redirect (points to deleted page))
* 02:54, 30 June 2007 Carolus deleted "Category:Šostakovič, Dmitrij Dmitrievič" (Arcane spelling - alomost everything is copyright)
* 18:47, 18 June 2007 Carolus deleted "Category:Shostakovich, Dmitrij" (There really aren't any works that are PD)
* 01:06, 7 June 2007 Leonard Vertighel deleted "Category:Schostakovic, Dmitrij" (empty composer category)
* 10:30, 2 June 2007 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Schostakowich, Dmitrij" (not public domain)
* 11:16, 28 October 2006 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Schostakovich, Dmitry" (I hope it is safe to delete this now)
* 10:34, 28 October 2006 Feldmahler deleted "Category:Schostakovich, Dmitry" (not PD :/)

I'm not a CR, so this doesn't affect me too much, but it does seem like less work to do a re-direct, though I think one of the initial objections was that having a composer page would make people think they could upload. On the other hand, at least with Shostakovich, the lack of a page doesn't seem to have inhibited people . . . .

Any chance it could re-direct after, say 10 seconds? That would give them enough time to read a header saying "Nothing may be uploaded to this page, since Shostakovich is under copyright on most of the planet. You are being re-directed to an explanation of copyright law." (Or something to that effect.)

I like your template design. The only thing I would change would be to get rid of the business about there being a chance anything was published before 1923, since any composer with pre-1923 publications is eligible to have things on the USA server. This is definitely worth serious consideration insofar as one of our purposes is to serve as a resource of information.

Hi Steltz,

I thought there was a method of doing a timed re-direct; along with a target you can also specify how long you display the original page. (Or maybe I’m simply remembering something wrong that is a normal feature of html — edit: however, this ability in html is not available in MediaWiki.)

I think 42 page creations in 5 and a bit years says loud and clear that the uploaders don’t need any prompting – but “locking down” the usual targets might stop some in their tracks as well as having a bit of an educative purpose.

Carolus, that template does need a bit of an overhaul, as there’s been very little work done on it since the start of the year, while at the same time there’s been colossal revisions and development of our main fte:person template. Edited to add: I’ve since pruned it rather viciously. The notice at the top of the page is blunt.

Just think: in the remaining 14 years before there might be the slightest justification to begin looking at scanning some DSCH for the following year, the category page will probably be re-created another 100 times, judging by the current average…

Bump.

Mockup of the category now available. What do ye think?

Officially, Shostakovich is a non-person: he doesn’t get confused in either the “People” category, or any of the “Composer”-like categories. (This was a concern once upon a time, that IMSLP might be inundated with hundreds of thousands of empty composer categories.)

The page has a huge copyright symbol in red at the top of the page with the legend “Any files uploaded will thus be subject to immediate deletion.”

At the very bottom of the page, overlooking the technicality that we often start uploading files in the six months leading up to a change of copyright status, it unambiguously says in large letters, “works by Shostakovich cannot be uploaded to IMSLP until 2026”.

All locked down (as are the redirects for the two common versions of the names including the patronymic).

Cheers, Philip

P.S.

If it’s the view that the category page style isn’t a desirable way for IMSLP to go for these sorts of commonly requested non-PD composers, then as I see it there are two places on the Wiki to possibly consider redirecting the page to:

1) IMSLP:Copyright made simple
2) the Wishlist entry for Shostakovich, which similarly has been updated with a terse warning of “The earliest that scores by Shostakovich can be hosted by IMSLP (Canada) is 2026. Please do not bother adding any items to this wishlist until 2024 at the earliest; they will simply be deleted without comment.”

Unfortunately while Steltz wanted a delay to display a copyright warning before redirecting the page, this doesn’t appear to be an option in Mediawiki.

P.P.S. Well, I didn’t expect to find this… is it allowed to be here? (I presume it scrapes through on the Urtext pretext.)

Looks great! We could use this for about a dozen other composers I can think of. Now we can stop typing new messages to people in the forums explaining why Shostakovich et al cannot be uploaded and simply send them a link to this page.

All works of this composer are under copyright in Canada, the US, the EU, Japan and elsewhere, and may not be uploaded.
Any files uploaded will thus be subject to immediate deletion.

What about this - just to make it even more blunt:

All works of this composer are under copyright worldwide and may not be uploaded.
ANY FILES UPLOADED WILL BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY!

I like the template. It really does have its own look and feel. The main concern I've had with making categories for composers like Shostakovich available is that it will only encourage the crazies to upload things - which they try to do on a fairly regular basis as it stands. Yes, technically speaking there is no copyright in Afghanistan, Aruba and a couple of other places. However, for all practical purposes, any composer eligible for this template is protected worldwide. There are a more than a few who qualify. Having the category and useful information is a big plus.

I like the template -- as long as it doesn't appear in the people categories, it will work well, and it is suitably blunt. Anyone who writes to the forums now asking why he can't upload a file can be told off for not reading!!!

Hi Carolus,

you want blunt? Alright then, let’s get out the "2 by 4"… (*smash wallop crash bang thump*)

Carolus wrote:All works of this composer are under copyright worldwide and may not be uploaded.
ANY FILES UPLOADED WILL BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY!

Okay, does it look better now?

Finally, for what its worth, the recent discussion with Jonathan de Peri suggests DSCH’s Opus 1 will be available to go up on IMSLP·US in 2022 – but I intend to leave the unambiguous message about 2026 unchanged, since the page isn’t there to communicate “nuance”.

Steltz,

at present the people thus tagged won’t appear under either category for People or Composers. They will appear in the nationality and era ranges. Interestingly Shostakovich edited one of the Rimsky-Korsakov urtexts, so he’s currently appearing under Category:Editor – and it seems arguable that on those grounds he should have had a page since earlier in the year when we started giving proper category pages to editors, writers, and translators. (Which would have made it even easier for the copyright violators to upload all manner of infringing works!)

Daphnis,

there’s no especial rush to create them, compared to the quite extraordinary interest there has been over the years in Shostakovich. Stravinsky was a very distant second place (and he now has a legitimate page for IMSLP·US contributions), followed by Kabalevsky (11 page deletions) and Piazzola (10 page deletions) coming in third and fourth, I think. But the means are there now, the look is distinctive and the message is plain (and don’t forget to use the sysop privileges to firmly lock down the page once you’re done).

Cheers, PML

PS In a shock reversal, Poulenc steals the silver from Stravinsky with 16 page deletions.

Are all these pages like Shostakovich translated into the various languages so we make sure folks get the memo in whatever language(s) they speak?

Nothing gets their attention like the proverbial two by four. Having just deleted Piazzola for the 3rd or 4th time, I can really see the need for this nicely done template with its very different look and feel. Dmitri's photo has a certain brooding quality to it as well. I can almost feel his eyes following me around the virtual room.

Having the extra-blunt copyright notice in multiple languages would be very helpful. At the moment it’s not being transcluded from another page, but is directly inserted into the template as is. Perhaps I should put an “iflang” statement around it and then some of our translators might like to have a go at translating it idiomatically for maximum effect (i.e. using a 4 by 2).

I’m surprised Carolus you didn’t take the trouble to convert the Piazzolla page into the “locked down”, blunt-warning state – he’s getting to be a regular. Was it a normal drive-by poster uploading contraband? Anyway, that now updates the top 10:

1. Dmitri Shostakovich ⟹ retired hurt, 42
2. Francis Poulenc ⟹ 16 not out
3. Igor Stravinsky ⟹ timed out, 13
=4. Dmitri Kabalevsky, Astor Piazzolla ⟹ tied on 11
6. Fritz Kreisler ⟹ 9
=7. Samuel Barber, Aram Khachaturian, Carl Orff, Heitor Villa-Lobos ⟹ 7

I also think, to limit the creation of a profusion of what might essentially be “vanity” pages, we should limit the addition of “locked down” pages to non-PD composers who’ve had works repeatedly added to the site in contravention of copyright: a sort of three strikes and you’re out system. I think we’ve had multiple uploads of all of the remaining six in the top 10, probably thanks to very popular works: Kabalevsky’s Comedians, Piazzolla tangos, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Khachaturian’s Gayaneh or concertos, Orff’s Carmina, and various Kreisler arrangements/concoctions. I’m talking post-2008 – prior to 2007 there were some pieces on IMSLP which had somehow avoided being flagged as infringements.

Cheers, Philip

EDITED TO ADD: Trying to add #iflang didn’t work. Apparently this should be handled by separate pages with titles like MediaWiki:FTE:…:Messages/de, Messages/it, etc. I’m having a truly yucky time getting the messages and formatting to work in synchrony. The result is a weird mélange of semi-purged, old revisions of pages. I’m going to look away for a while in the hope IMSLP will straighten its act out in the meantime.
[LATER] It did.
[LATER STILL] Three more additions to the rogues’ gallery of “non-persons” (IMSLP’s “Most Wanted” #4, 5, and 6).

Bump…

The latest development, contra my initial proposal:

Pml wrote:For extra measure, once the redirect is in place it gets protected against all edits or moves bar those of sysadmins, so that newbie users can’t overwrite it.

Kenny has added a new message to the template “You are still welcome to add any information you have on this composer, however.” and Nick has gone about unprotecting one of the several pages to which this applied, with the result that some bad hat has made it possible to upload any piece at all by Dmitry Kabalevsky.

The reason for protection was twofold: firstly, an unprotected page can be overwritten. Secondly, the unprotected category page can be simply “flipped” over to the ordinary fte:person template (in fact you don’t even need to commit a save, changing the template and previewing is sufficient), and then it’s open season to make new works pages and add copyright infringing works — which by definition we do not want.

Now no one is stopping anyone from making other non-copyright infringing pages (such as the Sortable worklists, or other related information). However, the linking of these to the composer category can (and should) be left to the admins, as making this available to the general users opens up the can o’ worms of the two previous protection reasons.

As for the “You are still welcome to add any info” message; I’m a bit ambivalent about that, because it’s sending another message in addition to the very clear one which these pages were designed to be asserting:
All works of this composer are under copyright worldwide and may not be uploaded.
ANY FILES UPLOADED WILL BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY!
Works by __________ cannot be uploaded to IMSLP until 20__.

Although the pages have been locked down, this does not mean they were left without any info at all (and Shostakovich even has a recordings link).

Discuss. :)

Cheers, Philip

I'll keep this very concise: If users want to violate copyright law, they will find a way. We have hundreds of composers not listed as non-PD composers for whom users can simply make composer pages. The reason I unprotected the page was to allow an influx of information about the composers as per Kenny's idea.

This is a community based website, and I see no reason not to leave the page unlocked. It detours would-be editors who often have fantastic ideas, and I highly doubt some users would know to ask an admin about it.

Yes, we had one isolated incident of something happening:

http://imslp.org/index.php?title=User_t ... PDcomposer


Maybe I was wrong to un-protect the page. Sorry.

But the point is, these pages are only for the most commonly targeted non-PD composers — not “hundreds of composers”.

The point of the lock down is to not make it easy to commit a copyvio; unprotecting the page reduces it again to the trivial.

Really, we’ve had this discussion before (it will take me a while to search it out) and the consensus then was we didn’t want “hundreds of composers” with empty pages.

To date we have only four (and no one other than me has gone about looking to add composers to this intersection), and I deliberately went and gathered a fair proportion of info before locking the page.

As far as I am aware, the category talk page isn’t affected by the lock down, and anyone who is prevented from adding a really good piece of info can suggest it there; sysops can then evaluate whether it’s sufficiently notable to make its way to the category page proper.

Cheers, PML