User:AnatoleSerial/Music Categories Rework Proposal: Difference between revisions

The problem is that a lot of information about Songs in the wiki is *''inconsistent*'' and/or *''incomplete*''. As an example, let us look at one of the most prolific artists in hololive, [[Hoshimachi Suisei]], and how her releases show that lack of consistency.

In her page, she has three main categories for releases: Singles, Extended Plays, and Albums. However, a closer examination shows that all of the releases in Extended Plays haveare two songsactually [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-side_and_B-side Double-sided Singles], with 1 or 42 songs, ifon youits count"A-side", theand their corresponding Karaoke version,versions whichon Itheir personally"B-side". don'tThis becauseis thesupported musicby industryactual itselfreleases doesn't.in the general Japanese industry; Forfor example, SMAP's best selling single ever, "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekai_ni_Hitotsu_Dake_no_Hana Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana]", follows thethis examexact samedouble-sided format as all the "EPs" in Suisei's page and is definitely classified as a *Single*).

Other pages have them, correctly, as singles (i.e. [[Tokino Sora|Sora]]'s). Few talents in hololive have released actual EPs ([[Mori Calliope|Calli]] being the most prominent in this regard). It is likely that this mis-classification is due to how music platforms classify releases, as they automatically assign a classification based on the '''number of tracks''': These platforms see ''4 tracks'' and classify it as an ''EP'', when in reality is two tracks in two different versions, or a double-sided single.

Let's take Suisei's Bluerose single. Released on June 25, 2021, it includes two songs: [[Bluerose]], the new release, and [[comet]], a song that had a prior release as an MV-only song. In Suisei's page, Bluerosethis release is correctly listed as "Bluerose / comet", which is its official title, with each song including a link to each respective song's page. However,Clicking thereon iseither noof those take us to each song's page, forwhich features some inconsistencies and omissions: the "[[Bluerose]] /page comet"focuses singleentirely on the song, onlycontaining forvery eachlittle separateinformation song.about Worseits yetrelease as a single, while the "the [[comet"]] page just says "work in progress" without any template, so it exists, literally, in the void: without the Under Construction or Stub templates, there is no way to know that this page is empty.

In short, as it currently stands, none of this can be used for Categorizing, nor provide enough valuable information, which would save time in creating listings of releases.

The objective of this proposal is to ensure a minimum amount of consistency across music pages, and to create a framework that can be used to generate listings of musical releases. The best way to automate this is through '''Categories'''. However, we also need to make sure that the information in the wiki is as *'''consistent*''' and *'''up-to-date*''' as possible, so we need to do some work: creating '''blank templates''' (lowercase, not to be confused with MediaWiki's Templates) for different release types, and going through '''all musical releases''' to ensure that there exists, at least, a page with the right Categories for *each release and song* (including the Stub and Under Construction Categories, when necessary).

BasedThere on theseare two types of pages, weeach canfor havea 3different typestype of categoriesrelease: Song Categories, Release Categories, and General Categories.

** '''Original Songs released in <nowiki><year></nowiki> songs''': Important for classification.

** '''Original Songs with MV''' / '''Original Songs without MV''' / '''MV-only songs''': important for classification. The last category is particularly important, as there are some songs that do not have any kind of Single/EP/LP release and still need to be tracked as such.

* '''Original ReleasesLPs''': General Category

** '''Original ReleasesLPs by <nowiki><name></nowiki>''': Name can be talent, group, or project.

We need to linkput these throughtemplates pagesin thata Editorsplace canthat is easily consultaccessible to new and accessold editors, copyingso they can create new pages and copy the template into them, along with the new pagecategories.

The Media section on the songs page looks absolutely atrocious, mostly due to changes in how certain third-party plugins / templates work behind the scenes. We need a new format that is *''resilient*'' to these changes. My best idea for this is a new '''Template''' that encapsulates the calls to these third-party plugins, while also providing some degree of formatting.

=== 3. ReleaseEP/LP Pages===

The first thing to complete would be the *Release'''EP/LP Pages*'''. The main reason for this is simple: Therethat are less releasesEPs and LPs than there are songsSingles, and this can be done in parallel with the new Media Section format, which is not used in the EP/LP pages. We will track these on a talent-by-talent basis: if someone chooses to help, they choose a talent and add all their releases with, at least, a *'''Stub*''' format and a set of *'''Categories*'''

The Discography Infoboxes for individual talents are incredibly outdated, and keeping them up to date is always a chore. I am leaving this last for a single reason: '''We need to look into how these could be generated *''automatically using Categories*Categorie'''''. This is a job for those of us who work on the lower-level stuff, as it might require some tinkering with stuff that your average editor does not touch much upon. Same as the New format for Media Section, this can be done in parallel with the ReleaseEP/LP Pages and Song Pages rework/recategorization.