IMSLP talk:Contributor Portal

Some thoughts on the reorganization of the Portal and the project pages in general (I'll also post some more specific comments in Talk:Internationalization (translation)).

• Purpose of the portal: I think it should become, roughly speaking, a sitemap for contributors (including maintenance work etc.). Information on browsing/searching etc. should probably be accessible from the Main Page instead.
• There are two namespaces, IMSLP: and Help:, the latter being almost empty. To be honest, I'm never quite sure what should go where. Do we need both of them at all?

--Leonard Vertighel 09:48, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Indeed this is ambiguous to a extent. Unlike Wikipedia, namespaces are not terribly necessary on IMSLP... nevertheless maybe it is a good idea to use the IMSLP: and Help: namespaces to do some separation. I would suggest the following:

• No namespace: "Objective" pages; non-project related pages (ex. Public domain, Historical Publication Info).
• IMSLP: namespace: Project-related pages (ex. Score submission guidelines, Score submission guide).
• Help: namespace: Wiki-related help (ex. Help:Editing).

Also, it may be a good idea for the namespaces to stay the same for different language translations. :) --Feldmahler 13:36, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

I have some rough contents, feel free to modify.

We also need to think about all the talk pages and the forum... we should make strict guidelines on what to discuss where (and maybe even block some talk pages), because now there are too many widespread discussions. The previous advice was as much as possible talk on the forum because the talk pages take too much bandwidth of the main server. And, maybe ONE centralized general talk page to post questions would be good for new users that tend to go directly to our beloved admin's talk page who spends probably a great deal of time in answering questions that can be answered by others too, isn't it?Peter 12:26, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Looks great... the "news for contributors" section is a good idea. The news frame on the Main Page could then be used only for news that are interesting for the general public, who probably couldn't care less about IFLANG constructs and the like. The only thing I'm not sure about is the "internationalisation" section. Maybe that stuff should stay on a separate page in the IMSLP namespace.

Centralizing the discussions in the forums probably makes sense, though I have to admit that to an old Wikipedian like me using the talk pages feels natural... at any rate, I agree that currently the discussions are much too scattered over random talk pages. --Leonard Vertighel 15:36, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

I agree with the internationalization observation (a separate page probably best, considering the amount of info on it; btw, thanks Leonard for making that IFLANG tag show up ;), never thought of that way of doing it), and also the forum centralization :) While wikis are great for many things, they are not especially well suited for forum-like discussion; they were just simply not designed with that in mind. Not only is it expensive to edit a page (the entire page needs to be saved, as opposed to just one post in a real forum software), there can also be confusions when, for example, people forget to sign comments and the like. Therefore, it may be a good idea to link to forum discussion threads from the wiki, instead of discussing directly on the wiki :) This also makes it possible to link to the same thread from different pages on the wiki, and thereby preventing duplication. --Feldmahler 15:51, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Though in some cases it's just much faster to click on "talk" and start typing, instead of navigating to the forum, starting a thread, going back to the wiki and there to the talk page anyway, in order to place a link to the forum... I guess that you agree... ;) (And you can't really draft a portal in the forum either.) Maybe we should rather say what kind of discussions go where (something along the lines: quick notes in the talk pages, presumably longer discussions in the forum... or something like that).

Apart from that, one more thing: Maybe we should focus a little more on the newbies - maybe some sort of "getting started" section, that lists the "essential reading" to get started as quickly as possible (though I know that it's not as trivial as in Wikipedia, due to all the copyright issues - can't avoid studying those to an extent, I guess). --Leonard Vertighel 16:10, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

What I meant was indeed the general discussions that are scattered on talk:main page, talk:community portal, etc. They should be centralized OR held on the forum. Discussions that are confined to the topic of that specific page (e.g. the schumann lieder) and where not many participants are expected (in most cases it's a question of an admin or user to a contributor) can IMHO take place on the talk page. Contributers should have the discipline to take action on the moment the discussion needs to attention of more users, or the moment the topic is expanding, for moving it to the forum. Where do we put this information?

And indeed for starters there should be a quick guide. As we can see in the number of non-PD or weird submissions (this Satie thing today...), the starters do not seem to get the information they need. Since the information really is on the site, there must be a problem. e.g. accessibility, pages too long, and maybe name confusion (score submission guide and score submission guidelines differ only 5 letters). Peter 16:56, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Hahaha... you've caught me red handed I guess Leonard ;) And indeed, like you say, it is considerably more trouble to start a thread than to just edit the talk page. So I concede ;) The idea of having a newbie section is also very good. :)

And Peter, I suppose we can put it in some kind of policy page (there's already the IMSLP:Manual of Style but this is different). It may well be that additional moderators would be needed to do this; I'm not sure if we can count on new or infrequent contributors to take the care to move discussions. But yes, it would be good if prolonged discussions would occur on the forums :)

One way of doing it is to not try to do everything at once; first leave the talk page issue as it is (people can start a discussion on a talk page or a forum thread), and slowly test out how moving certain discussions to the forum goes, and see what happens :) Though I think the reorganization of the wiki should come first... and as with all large projects there should be a leader. Since, Leonard, you already have experience with Wikipedia, you can start to reorganize IMSLP as you see fit, and Peter and me will observe and (occasionally) complain about what you did (haha) ;) As they say, the best way to prevent something from being done is to ask a committee to do it, so I guess the reverse is true too, which is why I want one person to take the initiative, and we will follow you :) --Feldmahler 19:43, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Layout

Very first layout draft posted, have no idea if it will break in MSIE. (Keyword "web standards" for those who know what I'm talking about.) --Leonard Vertighel 16:01, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

"Getting started" section

Should we try to write a complete tutorial? For the copyright stuff, do you think it would be possible to make some sort of checklist, which would allow to determine easily the copyright status in most cases? (For the complicated cases, there's always the forum.) What I'm thinking of is, roughly speaking, a significantly shorter version of the public domain page, maybe like a list of "if ... then" statements (like "If the composer died one million years ago, the copyright of the work is owned by the Louvre, Paris, France" - "If blablabla, the edition is PD" - etc.) Feasible? Who can do it? (I'm afraid that I don't know enough about copyright to make an attempt.) --Leonard Vertighel 16:01, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Projects

I've tried adding a section for the projects (layout is not great, maybe we can do better). I'm thinking of removing the projects from the page Current projects, and moving that page to "IMSLP:User scanning queue" (I'd also split off the "conversion queue" - maybe I should find a better name for it anyway). But if you find it important to have all projects together on a separate page that can be linked e.g. from the Main Page, we could try to make a small page that can be transcluded into the Portal (though personally I think that it's enough to say on the Main Page what projects exist, and refer to the Portal for details). Opinions please... --Leonard Vertighel 16:28, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Deletion proposals

• Vacant staff positions - all the relevant info should be in the Community Portal by now, I believe. --Leonard Vertighel 03:43, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Feel free to delete a page as long as the text is moved elsewhere, and you specify the moved to page in the deletion reason :) --Feldmahler 03:53, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Redesign???

Currently, the portal looks like the old main page. Ought'nt we revamp it to match - and encourage contributors (subconciously, we all judge on first sight).--Snailey _{Yell at me} 12:37, 21 October 2008 (EDT)

Have access to score, Would like to learn to download

--Judy Hirsch 17:53, 17 April 2009 (EDT)I am the music librarian of a chamber orchestra in amherst, NY. The Buffalo/Erie County Library has a large collection of orchestral scores and parts (NBC Collection) that was purchased at auction when the NBC Symphony went out of business. The physical use of these scores is limited to the Buffalo Philharmonic and other community orchestras (professional and amateur) in the area. There are four other similar collections as well. In browsing your files, there are many works that have notwould not be duplicates. I would like to download these scores to IMSLP as I have to copy them anyway for use in our concerts (10-12/year). Our personnel manager would also like to help with the downloading. I am relatively new to the internet. My background with computerfiles has mainly been on mainframe and stand-alone PCs, so I may need a bit of hand-holding to start with. I will scan in some files first into pdf format. and when I have several done, I would like to contact someone directly, who willing to mentor me. The Buffalo/Erie COunty Library also has an extensive library of chamber music. Please feel free to email me at judyhirsch@earthlink.net

OK, I would be fine with hand-holding. To start, in the future, please post such requests in somewhere more well-suited, such as the forums. You seem to be on the right track. Make sure to read the score contributing guide, tutorial etc. and please, please make sure that your submission is in the public domain. We look forward to your submissions! (Incidentally, when transferring from a computer to the internet, it is generally called "uploading")-- Snailey _{Yell at me Email me} 21:41, 17 April 2009 (EDT)

Hi Perlnerd666, I'm adding a comment about this over at your talk page. Carolus 19:46, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

Name?

Is this to be named "Community Portal" or "Contributor Portal"?. --Homerdundas 18:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The Latter, though it was original Community.-- Snailey _{Talk to Me Email me} 02:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)