Template talk:Instrumental
I propose that we do away with the Instrumental template, so that all the "Lyrics" links on the song nav stubs appear red. I don't really see the necessity of filling in a page saying there's nothing in the song, and it's not like we do that with Guitar/Bass tabs or chronology. The "Instrumental" listed in the songs' "Themes", I think, should probably be sufficient. So... any opinions? ~ magbatz
- I agree. Confuses me alot. --Valerie 22:52, 5 May 2006 (CDT)
- I suppose we would do something like that with bass and guitar tabs if the song were an a cappella, maybe. Red links are always bad in my book because it looks like we don't have enough information. For instrumentals, we know the fact that it has no lyrics. For songs that don't have a Guitar Tabs page, we know that there could be a tab, but no one has written one yet, leaving it open for people to write their own. Addressing the "Themes," not very many people would look there to see if a song has lyrics or not, the red link would most likely make people think we don't know what they are. --badqueso 02:28, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
- Would putting "Instrumental" on the Sung By: thing be a good idea? Or no? --Valerie 12:21, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
- I like it as it is now. Looks more professional. - Whirrrlwind (Woosh!) 12:22, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
- Same here. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 12:23, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
- Would putting "Instrumental" on the Sung By: thing be a good idea? Or no? --Valerie 12:21, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
And again I'm against the new version of the instrumental template. I was never really for the above-mentioned lyrics page for instrumentals but I've come to accept it. But I don't even see an underlying point to it being included on the "sung by" section. On the "run time" section where there's the {{liveonly}}-type thing, although I still think it's ugly and weird-looking, I at least see a purpose for explaining the lack of a run time. For an instrumental, though, this would seem very redundant. While for the run-time template the run-time is subject to change (if it's live-only or currently unknown, the surfacing of a band recording would fill in that info), nothing of the like would ever happen for an instrumental; if someone found a lyrical version of the instrumental, a new page would be made. And I think two mentions of it being instrumental on the page, both in the song themes and lyrics page is enough of a hint to somebody that nobody sings on the track. Oh, and sorry that I keep sounding so disgruntled about all these changes to the wiki-- I think I just like to complain about things :/ (Though I think it's pretty cool how you did the "if eq=" thing to make the template work on both the main song and its lyrics page, if I'm even understanding that much.) ~ magbatz 20:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- I hate to see the a blank field on a song page (one of the reasons I think we should do away with the Track Number field), so I figured it wouldn't be too messy to have a line there for instrumentals...I figured it would at least be cleaner than having a blank Sung By field that's there for no reason. That and the Instrumentals page now updates itself, which is an improvement over the old Instrumentals page that was missing quite a few songs on the hardly-updated list. Anyway, I guess I kind of agree that the sentence was a bit lengthy...what do you think of it now? -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 20:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- I do like it better without the sentence, thanks. But my problem with it seems to be the reason that you put it there in the first place. You put it there to fill in the space to make it look more complete, whereas I'd rather not put anything there if it's already been said. Which is kinda funny because me and badqueso had this exact conversation just a couple paragraphs above; I said the instrumental link was pointless since it was already there in the song themes, and badqueso said it looked better since the blank space was filled in. ~ magbatz 20:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- Well, the Sung By field does come before the Song Themes list on each page, so in the context of the page it hasn't exactly "already been said." An item in the Song Themes list also isn't as prominent as something shown as one item under a separate field. Honestly, I don't think the redundancy is nearly as bad as it might appear at first, and I still don't think it's nearly as bad as having a few dozen pages with permanently blank and completely irrelevant Sung By fields. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 21:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- An option for those blank Track Number and Sung By fields then could be just to delete them off the page. Back a year or so ago if the song had an alias, like 'The Orange Peel' for Asheville, we would add a line saying "Also Known As: The Orange Peel" underneath the Song Name: field, but we left the non-alias'd songs alone. So basically, if the song has a singer (or is part of a major TMBG studio release), then leave the Sung By (or Track #) field intact; if not, don't. Of course that wouldn't apply to the Song Themes field, since the themes are always changing (and I'm sure a couple other fields too). That would make a song page more compact, but it would get rid of a blank space next to a "Sung By" field. Tell me what you think. ~ magbatz 21:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- The thought's crossed my mind plenty of times, but I think it's really best to have each page following the template strictly to prevent the creation of off-model pages and the like. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 21:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- Would it really be that radical a difference between pages if some songs had different fields from others? They'll still be in the same format and will definitely all look like a song page; the only difference is that there will be a "track number" line if the song's on one of the main albums, and if not, then to most the line's absence will go unnoticed to most except for a few wikians like us who are a little too obsessed with TMBW. I think we both see the positives of doing it... it would make pages more flexible (to a point of course) and would get rid of a lot of empty space, which you've said you have issues with. I dunno, it just seems like the perfect compromise. ~ magbatz 22:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- You make good points, but I still am a bit against having song pages with varying fields. Then again, it's not my wiki. :) I suppose that in the case of the Track Number field for anything but albums and the Sung By field with instrumentals, it could be beneficial to just do away with them, however a clumsy solution it is. I'll see what Duke33 thinks about the situation (he reverted most of the few edits I made last December where I removed the Sung By field from instrumentals, but maybe his thoughts have changed). -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 22:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- Would it really be that radical a difference between pages if some songs had different fields from others? They'll still be in the same format and will definitely all look like a song page; the only difference is that there will be a "track number" line if the song's on one of the main albums, and if not, then to most the line's absence will go unnoticed to most except for a few wikians like us who are a little too obsessed with TMBW. I think we both see the positives of doing it... it would make pages more flexible (to a point of course) and would get rid of a lot of empty space, which you've said you have issues with. I dunno, it just seems like the perfect compromise. ~ magbatz 22:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- The thought's crossed my mind plenty of times, but I think it's really best to have each page following the template strictly to prevent the creation of off-model pages and the like. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 21:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- An option for those blank Track Number and Sung By fields then could be just to delete them off the page. Back a year or so ago if the song had an alias, like 'The Orange Peel' for Asheville, we would add a line saying "Also Known As: The Orange Peel" underneath the Song Name: field, but we left the non-alias'd songs alone. So basically, if the song has a singer (or is part of a major TMBG studio release), then leave the Sung By (or Track #) field intact; if not, don't. Of course that wouldn't apply to the Song Themes field, since the themes are always changing (and I'm sure a couple other fields too). That would make a song page more compact, but it would get rid of a blank space next to a "Sung By" field. Tell me what you think. ~ magbatz 21:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- Well, the Sung By field does come before the Song Themes list on each page, so in the context of the page it hasn't exactly "already been said." An item in the Song Themes list also isn't as prominent as something shown as one item under a separate field. Honestly, I don't think the redundancy is nearly as bad as it might appear at first, and I still don't think it's nearly as bad as having a few dozen pages with permanently blank and completely irrelevant Sung By fields. -CapitalQ ♫ talk ♪ 21:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- I do like it better without the sentence, thanks. But my problem with it seems to be the reason that you put it there in the first place. You put it there to fill in the space to make it look more complete, whereas I'd rather not put anything there if it's already been said. Which is kinda funny because me and badqueso had this exact conversation just a couple paragraphs above; I said the instrumental link was pointless since it was already there in the song themes, and badqueso said it looked better since the blank space was filled in. ~ magbatz 20:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- Here are some of my thoughts. At first I thought it was really odd that you would make the instrumentals a category. Thinking about it, I understand the self-updating part of it. I've previously wished that there was a way to do this, I just never thought of and/or liked the category idea. Also: this category idea reminded me of the Unreleased Songs category, which kind of dovetails into this next idea. The page says "instrumental" way too many times (three), so why not make Instrumentals not a Song Theme anymore? With this new redirection to a category it doesn't have the same benefits as most theme pages anyway, which is detailing which colors are in the song or which cities are mentioned. But instrumentals don't need that detailing anyway. They're instrumentals. For the most part. Which should probably be mentioned on the category page. I think we should still include songs like Minimum Wage and Lady Is A Tramp. Now as for the fields on song pages, I don't think we have to be so strict with them. Track Number definitely needs to go (please, someone!), but I think that Sung By is just too crucial too the whole idea of a song. I think leaving it just say Instrumental is fine and some "instrumentals" have "lyrics" (sacrilege, I know) as mentioned above. Sorry if you have to reread this. Train keeps rolling off the track indeed. --badqueso 23:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
