User talk:Feldmahler/archive21

Due to my work load I may look at your message but not respond immediately if it is not urgent. I will respond when and if appropriate. I apologize for any inconvenience!

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Heinrich Albert and Heinrich Albert

...bringing the following forum topic to your attention:

Heinrich Albert and Heinrich Albert

Thanks for your input. --Homerdundas 18:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

 ?

Hi Feldmahler, I'm somewhat puzzled by this edit. 1) Why do you need an additional HTML element? If you just need to assign an id (what is it needed for anyway?), why not assign it directly to the div? 2) Why a span element? Normally they are supposed to be in-line, as opposed to div elements, which by default are block-level. --Leonard Vertighel 14:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This change has caused a change in the way that my browser (IE7) displays the file information, so that the table cells change background colour from grey to white as the mouse goes over them. Not pretty at all! Can this be fixed? (I would have asked on the Forums, but they're inaccessible again just now) — P.davydov 22:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Oops... I assumed that since it works under Firefox and Konqueror it would be fine. And you are right about putting the id in the div code Leonard, and I've changed it to that. I need an id for each entry because I need the ability to redirect to a specific entry instead of just the page itself. With an id I can use a URL fragment (e.g. Page_Name#IMSLP10000). You might (or might not) have noticed the new revision in SVN which makes the IMSLP # redirect page redirect directly to the entry and not just the page, though this is not on the server yet.
The reason for this has something to do with a possible partnership between IMSLP and another site, which might require this sort of thing. I can give not a whole lot of other details because I don't know myself. However, it should suffice to say that nothing (besides this change) will be changed on IMSLP as a result. --Feldmahler 23:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
P.S. The forums are actually not down, just very, very slow in responding. But that's actually not an issue with the server, but somehow, in the pipes that make up the internet, there has been a clog that affects only some people and not others (for example, the IMSLP server can see the forums fine, but this Harvard one cannot). If you know how to, please post the results of your traceroute command to IMSLPFORUMS.ORG so that we can locate the offending router. --Feldmahler 23:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Why is Alban Bergs Lyrische Suite TB?

Hi Feldmahler, the composer died in 1935 but the score is totally blocked. Is this intended? Ahandrich 09:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I can answer that: [TB] is not a reflection of Canadian or EU status, but of US status. Any work on the IMSLP that is under copyright in the US is blocked from access, because of the large amount of traffic from there- no matter its status elsewhere. A general rule of thumb is that anything published after 1922 is under copyright in the US, so you see that Berg's later works would almost certainly be protected; Lyrische Suite was first published in 1927. KGill talk email 13:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Genres

Hi Feldmahler. Just to let you know that the results of the pilot study we talked about can be found here, and with some explanatory notes also on the forum here — P.davydov 12:25, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Variant of composer page for non-hosted (i.e. non-PD) composers

Hi Feldmahler,

I thought I’d raise this old hobby horse of mine again with you. I added a couple of FTE pages here and here to test the syntax and colour scheme of what such a page might look like. Of course, in order for it to actually work out in the Wiki, there would have to be a matching parser function such as for {{#imslpcomposer: }}, but I suspect I don’t have the access to be able to implement one (and that's probably a good thing, by the way!). However, I imagine that due to the inherent similarity to the current imslpcomposer parser function, it would therefore be fairly trivial to create a copy, e.g., {{#nonpublicdomaincomposer: }}, that adds the required functionality.

Apart from the visually distinct colours to the page (which didn't require a change to Common.css, please note), I made some other significant changes to the FTE page:

  • I removed the conditional copyright tagging that detected whether a life+50 or life+70 warning should be added. Instead, the life+50 warning is explicitly included at the top of the page, no matter what.
  • there is no Table of Contents, no option for Intersections, and no option to Add Works.
  • changed the category tagging so that the composer is added to [[Category:Non-Public Domain Composers]], rather than [[Category:Composers]]; this is to alleviate the concern that the [[Category:Composers]] might get filled up with thousands of composers for whom there would be no works pages, so that it might become impossible to find actual public domain, IMSLP-hosted composers. (This was discussed at length on the forums, I’m sure you’ll recall, rather a while ago.)

In respect of the last point, however, as you can see the Non-PD category already contains all of the "permission granted" composers, so there would be a corresponding argument that unhosted composers should be categorised elsewhere; it might be difficult to distinguish which of those composers are "permission granted/works hosted" as opposed to "permission denied/no works". So perhaps there should be a third category, [[Category:Non-Hosted, Non-PD Composers]] that would be coded into the FTE page.

As you know, there is at least one composer on IMSLP who already has a category page that really shouldn't be there – I’m sure you know who ;-) – so I would be keen to use his page for testing, before I get too carried away dealing with others for whom we regularly have category pages created by unwitting contributors, e.g. Britten, Shostakovich, etc. Would you let me know if this is a relatively easy or difficult task, as well as whether it is something you would like to see done?

Regards (& happy new year), Philip Legge @ © talk 06:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I also noticed your template for this uses a non-existent category (oops), as well as adding the category to [[Category:Composers]] – was that intended? I’m happy to fix this if you wish. PML @ © talk 07:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I would suggest against using FTE for such a page, because FTE is generally more messy than a normal template. The only reason FTE should be used is for performance reasons: if the template is very frequently used (as in, more than a few hundred pages), FTE can be considered. FTE actually can run quite well without any programming-side support, but there are limitations and the syntax is hard to figure out.
In this case I would stick to the pre-existing template (but maybe making it look nicer?)... there aren't that many of these composers, and is probably not worth the trouble of FTE templates. Inclusion in Category:Composers is intentional; purpose was to prevent people from trying to repeatedly create the category.
Also, sorry for the late reply... was insanely busy with the new tag system, and school starts today :( --Feldmahler 20:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Translator Status

Dear Feldmahler, may I ask for privileges as a translator? I would like to translate special pages from English to Chinese (traditional and simplified). As you can see, there are currently no Chinese translators. Thank you for your consideration! ClassicalComposers 00:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Please, reply if you have any opinions :) I take this seriously, you know... :) ClassicalComposers 17:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I apologize for the late reply (see my above reply to PML). I approve of your request. IMSLP does need more translators, and especially updated translation documentation which is horribly outdated (which you can work on if you have time). :) I've already made you a 'translator', and you should be able to edit the translations in the MediaWiki namespace. --Feldmahler 20:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you very much! :) ClassicalComposers 20:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Dear Feldmahler, I have my concerns about "addfileseparator"... I don't see it used on the main form. ClassicalComposers 21:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
This is almost entirely deprecated. You don't have to worry about it. --Feldmahler 17:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Two questions

So far so good with the tagging. But is there a way on this page to use an intersect function so that, for example in the first line of the table:

  • "Sonata (piano)" can intersect with "Untagged pages" to produce a list of all untagged pages in the "Sonata (piano)" genre?
  • The number of entries in this intersection can be displayed in the third column of the table.

Because since we're not deleting the sub-genre info at the same time as adding the tags (which was the original plan, but you asked us not to do), we've no way to assess our progress :-)

The other question involves the category walker. Could you give me some examples of how this will work? The documentation is a little, erm, sparse ;-) Thanks — P.davydov 11:18, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Syntax of category intersections is: http://imslp.org/index.php?title=Category:MainCategory&intersect=Category1**Category2**etc
Syntax of category walker: Special:CategoryWalker/SomeCategory**IntersectCategory**etc/ (note the trailing slash; doesn't have to have an intersect)
Important actions of the category walker:
step = add a category to the intersect string and do a walk on that.
itst = go to the category intersect page (list the articles)
What the category walker does: Finds the other categories that pages under the specified category/intersect also include. Using it on a composer would mean finding what other categories the composer works include (Sonata, etc).
I cannot say much more at this time (I have class very soon), but play with it. Click on links and see where they lead. Its all very safe (relatively) :) And very importantly, document what you see, so other people will know where to look for answers :) --Feldmahler 17:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Just realized I answered the wrong question. The answer to your real question is that it is technically extremely difficult to count the number of articles in an intersection without actually running the intersection (which is very slow, unlike the category page counts which are cached). Considering your purpose, I would say with some certainty that the tradeoff is probably not worth it (even if technically possible re: speed issue, which I'm not sure it is), especially since it is temporary.
I would however encourage linking directly to the intersection as an alternative. If the number of articles is smaller than 200, you will get an accurate count. Otherwise not, however. --Feldmahler 18:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
P.S. You can, however, get a count of all articles in the Untagged category. See the code used on the Main Page for finding the number of pages in Category:Scores. Not perfect, but does provide some amount of progress indication. Note that not all pages may be in the Untagged category because of the category link refresh issue I talked about on MW:G. --Feldmahler 18:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that is helpful. At the moment only 7,000 or so works are marked as "Untagged" out of 20,000, and although our volunteers have been working extremely hard, I don't think they've quite managed to tag 13,000 works in less than 24 hours :-) As you say, it must be the cacheing issue, and counting again in 2 or 3 days should give a more reliable figure. Anyway, thanks again for the information on intersects, which I'll work on later... — P.davydov 18:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Category walker

Excellent :-) Thank you — P.davydov 21:11, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Progress

Just to keep you up-to-date, the tagging is going much more quickly than expected, and around 2,000 works have been tagged in the first five days! Now that we have such a good base to work from I'm intending to regroup the temporary categories assigned when the tags were first created into a more logical arrangement, which of course is very easy to do with this system :-)

I've deliberately kept the new categories as red links with this in mind, but I was thinking of activating the new "Sonatas" category shortly and place the category walker there for people to experiment with. There are over 1,000 works in that category, with lots of potential intersects, and avenues for people to explore. Then, if there are any problems, you'd have an opportunity to modify the walker in the light of any suggestions recieved, before the other categories go live as well. Does that sound OK?

No problem that I see. I would suggest keeping most of the categories as red links until it is known for sure to be a lasting category, but "Sonatas" would certainly be lasting, so please feel free to activate it.
A note that there will be a few changes made to the category walker, mainly bug fixes, after the MIT talk. The only major layout change is that Composers will be below the Genre tags. It felt strange to have Composer and Other separated. If you think otherwise, tell me. Also tell me if you have any layout or other changes you want to see on the category walker. --Feldmahler 04:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

For a while we'll have both the new categories and the old genres co-existing, which is unavoidable, but I wondered if you've given any thought to how the old ones should be 'switched off', as it were? Do we wait until every last work has been tagged, and then try a mass delete, or remove the old genres one by one as they're completed? There's also the issue of deleting the genres options from the "add a work to this page" form. Not pressing questions, but you mentioned you would be unavailable from the end of January, so I thought it best to mention this now :-) — P.davydov 22:52, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Not necessarily every page being tagged, but enough such that the system is proven to work conclusively and we have no major problems that might require the old categories to fix. Turning off of the old tags are very simple (in fact, can be achieved without any additional programming via the FTE template), so don't worry about me being unavailable. The only minor programming change would be to remove the genre tagger from the add work page, but that is also relatively quick. Summarily, don't worry about it :) --Feldmahler 04:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps once a category of works has been done, e.g. “Symphonies”, change the old category “Symphony” to being a hidden category? Then they’re out of sight and can be safely removed later. :-) Regards, Philip Legge @ © talk 00:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't oppose this if it matters to people. I haven't looked at the feature in detail, but considering that we are not going to live with the categories for long anyway, perhaps it is enough just to turn them off at the end when we don't need them anymore? --Feldmahler 04:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
It might be useful to separate out the "style" categories (20th century, romantic, classical, baroque, etc.) and put them together in their own list. What do you think? — P.davydov 19:47, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
I have absolutely no objection. And it is actually a very interesting use of the Tag system. The categories specified in the category section of MW:G can be existing categories, and they do not have to be used by any tag. In order to do what you want, simply list all the style categories in the relevant section of MW:G and all the rest is done automatically :) --Feldmahler 22:17, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Ah, so it is! Very clever :-)
P.S. There will also be a reverse intersect feature coming shortly (already programmed but not tested yet). Not everything will support reverse intersects (i.e. there may be some strange, but non-fatal and harmless, breakage in borderline usages of reverse intersects), but it should be supported by the Category and CW pages well enough to use ordinarily. However, I wanted to say that, when the feature is out, use of the feature should be very judicial; it takes a significant amount of server power. Just a heads up. --Feldmahler 22:17, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
There are times now when the server seems a little stretched, so we'd better be careful! Incidentally, I'm waiting for some old categories to disappear from the cache before asking for comments on the walker (possibly tomorrow), but the librarians have seen a demo, with Snailey rating it a "Wow!" :-) — P.davydov 22:34, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm thinking about programming a function that will force category links purge, but that is not high priority (as I can manually purge them at any time). For now, you'll have to wait :(
Also, I wanted to respond to PML's note on the forums about server issues (500 errors). The server is actually not entirely stretched (still have significant room). The problem is because the configuration that I have on the server is copied from the previous (much slower) server, and needs tweaking (and I know what to tweak). The problem should mostly go away after the MIT talk. I will be doing many server stuffs right after that because that will also be the last chance I have prior to my being away.
Another little performance tip: When designing the initial CategoryWalker link, try to make it such that it will search the least number of pages. The fewer the number of pages, the faster the CategoryWalker is. In other words, starting the CW at a category like Scores is inefficient because that takes a significant amount of server power and time. I am looking into caching CW results, but that is fairly complex, and I will most certainly not get to it by the end of January. --Feldmahler 22:51, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Here's the Sonatas category page, with a link to the walker included in the header. For each category on MW:G I'd envisage having a similar arrangement, except for the "Period" categories that are too large and unwieldy. BTW, have you any idea why the items listed on the sonatas category page aren't sorting correctly? It seems to be the case with all the categories generated by the tags — P.davydov 06:40, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Regarding activation of genre categories: it may be beneficial to actually create a template for such (normal template is fine; FTE unnecessary). That way we can centralize design changes and etc. At some point we will have to use templates for this stuff, so perhaps it is wise to do so from the beginning. Template doesn't have to be perfect; ability to be modified is a key element of templates. However, do try to leave all the stylistic and repetitive things to the template, instead of passing all the stylistic information via template variables. In other words, give the templates as little information as possible to achieve your goal.
Regarding sorting: this is because the sortkey is not used for genre categories. I have corrected this in my offline copy of the code, and it will go live after the MIT talk. --Feldmahler 18:05, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

hddptxhossssohxtpddh.imslp.org

Hi, Feldmahler. May I ask what "hddptxhossssohxtpddh.imslp.org" is? I assume that it is an archive of IMSLP, but I'm asking you just out of curiosity. Thanks, ClassicalComposers 02:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I don't know where that is from. It points to the same server as imslp.org. I think the issue is that I redirected *.imslp.org to the same server, hence this. I am looking into fixing it, but it is not high priority. --Feldmahler 22:17, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
That was the site in the search results from Google—when I tried to search my own piece that I posted here. ClassicalComposers 22:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that was what I was referring to. I am aware of the situation on Google. --Feldmahler 22:22, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Untagged pages

The category for untagged pages currently shows 4,873 works in total, but by my calculations we've not quite tagged 2,000 works, leaving about 14,000 others unaccounted for! Is this because there are untagged pages that aren't recorded in the "untagged pages" category?

This is quite important, as our 'to do' lists are all based on intersects with Category:Untagged_pages. I hope you can set worried minds at rest on this one? :-) — P.davydov 18:43, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

On further investigation it looks like the number of entries being reported on the category page is incorrect, but that otherwise all is well (phew!) — P.davydov 08:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Sorry for the late reply, I was busy working on the (hopefully last) update to the Genre system. Re: category counts. I would rely on the counts in the CategoryWalker, which are accurate, instead of the ones provided by MediaWiki, which are cached. The cache is not accurate probably because the dynamic category assignments breaks the caching mechanism. You should not worry about it, apart from knowing that the thing is inaccurate.
This also means that the article count cache being inaccurate in no way affects any substantial function.
Also, I just uploaded the (hopefully last) revision of the Genre system, and there are a few things I wanted to point out:
  1. Reverse intersects now work fully and completely for both the Category page and the CW page. You will see a new action ('-') on the CW page, which basically adds a reverse intersect to the current intersect. Play around with it. The same syntax for the intersect works on actual category pages. Reverse intersects do take a performance hit, but I managed to tweak it so that the performance hit compared to a normal intersect is minimum. Still, I would not recommend starting a CW link with a reverse intersect unless very necessary, which in most cases they are not (usually people can just ignore that category entirely if they don't want it).
  2. See my note on the Genre page for the "Composer" and "Unknown" sections. You do not need to do anything.
  3. Genre roots are now sorted in the order that they are defined on MW:G instead of the previous ordering, which was by the number of articles.
  4. Other various stuff that I am too tired to remember... I'm sure they are good :)
Also, pursuant to the possibility that the genre system actually may become (if not already) one of IMSLP's main features on par with the collection itself, I wanted to ask if you would be willing to tell me what area you work in in real life. Specifically, I would like to know whether you are a musician, librarian, musicologist, or a combination. If possible I would like to know the institution or company you work for. However, all of this is optional, and you can also shoot me an e-mail with this information if you do not want to reveal it on this site. --Feldmahler 23:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The new changes look great, although frustratingly I've only had the chance for a quick glimpse in my lunchbreak at work. I'll contact you by PM tonight... — P.davydov 13:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I've had a chance to play now, and in particular using the table layout throughout with the indents is a big improvement. I have a couple of suggestions though, that of course you're free to ignore :-)

  • If a list runs on to two or more pages though, it might not be clear to people that each of the tables continues on the next page(s), and I wonder if there's some way of addressing that (maybe by adding "More..." links at the end of each table, or having hyperlinks that jump to particular tables?).
  • Since there's a "Next >" link at the end of each page, would it be helpful to have a "< Back" one at the top as well?
  • Would it be possible to change the links for read "[step] - [itct]" to something more use-friendly like "[add] [remove] [list]" (if there's a 4-character limit then maybe: "[add] [hide] [list]"?)

Apologies if this sounds like someone suggesting to Michelangelo that he's missed a bit on the Sistene Chapel ceiling :-) The amount of programming required for this is incredible, and, as they say, it will immensely enhance the user experience! — P.davydov 20:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I've received your e-mail. Thanks for volunteering the information; I promise to keep it secret. I have caught wind of some talk about IMSLP in the music library world, specifically about the cataloging system (not this current one which they don't know yet, but general talk about other libraries adding MARC records for IMSLP). And so it may be such that in the near future I could ask librarians to contact you directly about this. But you don't have to worry about it now. I am also not entirely crazy about using MARC since this current new genre system seem to be working quite well. I think we will have to wait until the end of the retagging process before we can say anything about possible alternative systems like the MARC, if at all.
Here's responses to your questions:
  • This is hard/impossible because CW does not actually know if there are more entries for a particular table. What happens is that the CW gets all the categories (regardless of table) jumbled together, and then it sorts through them. That is why it is nearly impossible to control the number of categories in a particular table (all categories are sorted by the number of articles, and the limit works on that), and consequently to know whether there are more categories in that table or not. I agree that this information would be very helpful, but unfortunately the current state of things is probably the best I can do for a while. This is something you might want to note in the header text. I think it might not be too bad if people get used to it.
  • This omission is strategic. Not having a back link does make the programming a bit easier (or, at least the URL not so tortured), but the real value is because I want to force users to use the back button in their browser instead. Despite everything, CW is fairly resource intensive, and I do not want the server to have to render pages when the user could have just used the back button. Again, this might be something to note in the header text.
  • I've changed the links to "[add|rmv|list]". There is no letter limit; rather, the reason I had such a counterintuitive negative intersect is because people really should not be using it often. It takes slightly more server resources, and is adverse to caching (since the likelihood of two people using the same negative intersect is vastly smaller than common positive intersects). And so I wanted users to think before they actually click the link, hence the unintuitiveness. I think "rmv" is probably fine as a replacement though; it also saves on space.
In addition, I wanted to note that despite my earlier assertion that the last update is the last one, it is, in fact, not the last one. I've added in my offline copy of the code a caching mechanism for CW pages. This means two things: (1) CW pages will have the same drawbacks as the cached Category pages, namely that the page will only refresh after the set cache time (doesn't apply to registered users), but that (2) the CW will be ready for mass consumption without killing the server. However, it will only cache CW pages with up to 4 category intersects, and will be online after the MIT talk. You may plan accordingly any public usage of the CW system. --Feldmahler 00:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I speak MARC and FRBR, so by all means point any enquiries to me :-) I understand the issues about server load, and as we can't easily anticipate what that might be, I agree that it's best to be cautious. BTW, I'm still seeing "[step] - [itct]" in the walker, even after purging the cache.

Oh, I have not uploaded the changes to IMSLP yet. I'll do so in a minute. Also, my understanding is that MARC is a meta-schema that encloses several fields such as the Library of Congress categorization system, and that as such it is almost entirely static.
Would it be relevant to IMSLP at all? You don't have to know the answer to this question, as we would probably be in a better position to answer after the retagging is finished. However, if you have any thoughts on the relevance of classic library information systems such as the MARC/LoC to IMSLP, feel free to tell me so that I can address it in the MIT talk. This is completely and absolutely optional, as I do already have ideas to talk about in this regard. But always good to know another point of view. --Feldmahler 18:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you need any more new categories/walkers setting up in advance of your MIT talk? — P.davydov 15:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry about the MIT talk. I might show off the CategoryWalker, but I don't think there is any particular category that I will need. The presentation will focus more on the theoretical side of things, both for time reasons and because, since the CW is not officially open to the public yet, we can't really anticipate what sort of uses will be made in real life, and so I don't want to focus as much on actual usage yet. --Feldmahler 18:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

The MARC system is getting on for 30 years old, and the only practical application I could see it having for IMSLP would be to standardize work titles; although whether IMSLP users would consider "Symphonies, no. 9, D minor (Beethoven, Ludwig van)" an improvement on our current title system is a matter for debate. Actually FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographical Records) is being touted as the next big thing, although its complexity means that it's been a little slow to catch on. FRBR uses a "Work > Expression > Manifestation" heirarchy that mirrors IMSLP's "Work > Score > Edition" configuration, and allows for complicated types of relationships between the levels and headings. Fortunately IMSLP is already FRBR-compatible, but just how we might take advantage of that depends on how FRBR develops in the next year or two. Who knows, they might even learn a thing or two from IMSLP... :-) — P.davydov 22:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Problem with forums?

Hi Feldmahler, I've been trying to connect to the forums for about 1 hour without success. Is there any maintenance going on or just too many requests? Traceroute:
...

  • 5 hbg-b2-link.telia.net (213.248.69.33) 24.611 ms 22.001 ms 22.606 ms
  • 6 hbg-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.253.57) 22.275 ms 21.995 ms 26.937 ms
  • 7 ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.250.151) 36.924 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.254.7) 35.899 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.45) 35.688 ms
  • 8 nyk-bb2-pos0-2-0.telia.net (213.248.65.94) 106.419 ms nyk-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.248.254) 109.329 ms 120.945 ms
  • 9 sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.254.177) 181.819 ms 181.882 ms sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.188) 190.876 ms
  • 10 layer42-ic-120233-sjo-bb1.c.telia.net (80.239.193.126) 189.427 ms 188.784 ms 190.899 ms
  • 11 vl2.sw1.scl.layer42.net (69.36.225.134) 176.843 ms 183.772 ms 181.711 ms
  • 12 conquest.kjsl.com (198.137.202.16) 190.952 ms 184.860 ms 189.812 ms

update: same problem with files, none is accessible at the moment. Browser: "Connecting with imslp.info....". Traceroute gives the same result with conquest.kjsl.com as last entry.

Regards, Hobbypianist 18:47, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

forum is available again now. Hobbypianist 21:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
It does seem like from time to time there are issues with the forum server, but unfortunately I do not control the server (it is donated), so I am relatively powerless. Both IMSLP.INFO and IMSLPFORUMS.ORG are hosted on the same server, so problem with one usually means problem with the other. --Feldmahler 23:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Yay! Negative intersects!

It looks fairly neat through the Category Walker (apart from the inevitable AND NOT); I hope it wasn’t too arduous to program this into the category intersects system? (I wonder how many people its going to confuse, though.) Regards, Philip Legge @ © talk 04:04, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It was ok. :-) Took about 4 hours. --Feldmahler 00:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Composer Page Intersections

Could you take a look at User talk:P.davydov#Intersections?-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 17:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

New User Account

Dear Feldmahler, it may interest you that most of the new user accounts have no contributions at all. You may want to add "Please do not create an account unless you intend to contribute to IMSLP" to the create account page. Thanks, ClassicalComposers 23:51, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

CC, I really don't think that's necessary. Many create accounts simply out of a desire to feel more connected to a website, not because they are going to use any special features.-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 03:50, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Categories

Just to let you know that I've reorganized quite a few of the category names to take account of arrangements. For example, "Arrangements for violins (2), violas (2), cello" has become "For 2 violins, 2 violas, cello (arr)", and "Works featuring the oboe" is now "Scores featuring the oboe" (to get round a semantic problem with the descriptions). I've still go some regrouping to do on the orchestral and vocal categories, but after that I wouldn't expect any major changes.

Good luck with the MIT talk tomorrow, BTW! — P.davydov 00:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Just to add that I've created the new featured instrument categories, which can be accessed from Category:Instrument_Composition_Lists. It's a bit quick and dirty, but I'll try to put together something better at a future date. Maybe it's my imagination but the server seems a bit slow already :-) — P.davydov 23:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
You have a good imagination ;-)
Jokes aside, it is very possible that the CW system is slower than it should be, not due to traffic (the server load is not higher), but because of the flood of new category links, which slows down the CW pages (but not the rest of the system of course). But don't worry about that; we'll worry about it when it becomes unbearable, in which case I will end up ordering a second server for IMSLP. Remember that CW pages are cached for anonymous users (but not registered users), so the speed difference when logged in and when logged out may be significant. --Feldmahler 02:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

OK :-) On a related point, ClassicalComposers has raised the issue that <quote> "I'm not sure as to whether including so many categories at the bottom of the page is the best option. I already find a category labeled "Pages with arrangements." We could create a subcategory from there, and use it as a hidden category for the work pages" </quote>. My initial reaction was that hiding categories would cause problems for the category walker, but would that actually be the case? There might be a case for, say, making all the arrangement categories hidden, so that just the original instrumentation shows at the bottom of each work page. Just a thought... — P.davydov 15:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that I don't really understand that quote. For example, what are "hidden categories" and how do subcategories factor into the CW? My impression of subcategories is that they are like normal pages included in the category, except that they are categories themselves. Or is "subcategories" referring to the subcategories on the CW (i.e. child nodes/categories)? Also, which "bottom of the page" (CW page or work page)? If it is referring to work pages, including a lot of categories would seem to me to be inevitable... but I don't think I really understand the discussion...
However, if it is relevant, you can now use categories as the root node (but it still won't be resolved by the tagger). So, you can have "Pages with arrangements" as the root node now without problems, which would take the category out of the "Unknown" section. But I don't know if that is revelant to the discussion... --Feldmahler 05:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if that didn't make sense. On reflection it's probably not such a useful suggestion anyway — P.davydov 20:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

MIT Talk

How did that go? Is the video available online? etc.?-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 22:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

It was mixed (I wrote a more detailed description at the bottom of Davydov's talk page), the first half being not so good, but the question section being OK. I think it will be clear when the video goes online, and I will also make a statement at that time regarding the video. It will be online, but it isn't online yet. --Feldmahler 05:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

User:ClassicalComposers

Just a heads up on the latest posting in the moderation forum — P.davydov 23:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Apostrophes in category names

I know we've talked about this before, but is there any way that we can include the apostrophes in the MW:G category names involving "viola d'amore", "oboe d'amore" and "children's voices"? — P.davydov 10:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

For categories, unfortunately not. This will be fixed in the future, but at this time I am just way too overloaded with work. My next break is in May, so you can collect all the issues and I will try to fix it then. --Feldmahler 14:07, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Categories (again)

Hi Feldmahler. I'm pleased to report that the tagging is at 41%, so we're approaching the threshold to launch the category walker. However, I've only just noticed something about the categories that hadn't struck me before. The current MediaWiki:Genres includes these categories:

  • Chamber-Instrumental
    • For 1 player
      • For accordion
      • For alto flute [etc.]

This same heirarchy is also used by the category walker output, but it seems not to be applied to the wiki categories themselves. In other words, Category:For 1 player is not part of the Category:Chamber-Instrumental, and neither Category:For accordion nor Category:For alto flute belongs to Category:For 1 player.

This might not seem too important, but it causes a headache when the browse lists of categories are created, because all the possible sub-categories in "For 1 player", "For 2 players", etc., will have to be manually linked to their parent categories. If we take the example of "For 1 player", then there are getting on for 50 sub-categories, and while the walker is helpful in browsing some of the combinations, it isn't possible to use it to see all 50 at once, or in alphabetical order, which is important to place, say, "For piano" and "For piano (arr)" next to each other. And if the mapping in MW:G changes, the manual links will all have to be edited manually again.

Hoping I've explained that coherently, my question is can the heirarchies in MW:G be mapped automatically to the wiki categories? — P.davydov 16:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

(i.e. subcategories???)-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 16:10, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
This is a problem that I had foreseen when designing the system. It is, however, impossible to make the genre system map the hierarchy onto real MediaWiki categories without significantly changing the entire MediaWiki software (only the page itself can link itself to a category; third party category link injections do not exist). There are two main solutions: (1) to have a function that will automatically generate a list of CW links from MW:G (which I will have to write, but after the middle of May), or (2) use manual links very judicially such that the list is not too long, and thus you can change the list without too much trouble (i.e. only list the major CW entry points, and let the users find the more obscure categories themselves). I think (2) is a good idea at this point in time.
Also, regarding the rollout, I think you can start with adding an automatic CW link to the composer pages. Just edit MediaWiki:FTE:composer and MediaWiki:FTE:composer:Messages in order to add the link. The FTE pages may seem like voodoo magic at first, but it is not that different from normal template pages. The only major exception is that {{{msg:<name>}}} refers to a message on MediaWiki:FTE:composer:Messages, and {{{int:<name>}}} is an internal variable injected by the #fte hook (which you do not need to worry about for CW purposes. {{{PAGENAME}}} is what you need (e.g. [[Special:CategoryWalker/{{{PAGENAME}}}/]]). I could do it myself, but I want people to start messing around with the FTE templates, so that I don't end up being the only person who knows how to modify them.
After the composer pages, you can maybe create a CW "entry" page that lists the main entry points like I said above. Be sure to also include the old instrument lists at first, so people don't get mad. We can phase them out once CW tagging gets to near 100%. --Feldmahler 16:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Many thanks for the prompt response. I'll try a couple of different methods with the category links to see what works best... — P.davydov 17:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
One note is that I would strongly recommend against actually linking the subcategories to its parents by adding category links on the subcategory pages. It is very inflexible, and would furthermore slow down the entire system by adding unnecessary category links. For both flexibility and speed I would go for formatting the links on a wiki page instead. --Feldmahler 18:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that will have to be the case. There is a fundamental problem that has to be addressed first, in that some of the tags relate to the whole works, while others just apply to individual arrangements, and this can cause confusion when using category intersects. The category heirarchy system might have helped to reduce that, but there are still other possible ways around this, which I'll try out when the site isn't so busy... — P.davydov 20:57, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't quite understand your distinction between whole works and individual arrangements. Could you give an example?
Yes, see the new section below — P.davydov 11:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Also, I do see that the 500 errors have been rather nasty today, with 138 2-second shortages. Let's see if this is a pattern. Hopefully after a while I'll get a better sense of why the 500 errors exist. --Feldmahler 01:31, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

How will that affect all of the {{IS}} links there already?-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 16:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The intersection links? I would keep them there at least for now. Even with the CW, intersection links are a quick way to get where users want. --Feldmahler 17:13, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Arrangements and Original Works

Take Symphony No.5, Op.67 (Beethoven, Ludwig van), for example, where the tag for the work page itself places it in "Symphonies" and "For Orchestra". But the numerous arrangements on the page add considerably to the number of instrumental categories:

  • Chamber-Instrumental
  • For violin, cello, piano 4 hands (arr)
  • For 4 players
  • For violin, cello, piano (arr)
  • For 3 players
  • For 2 pianos 8 hands (arr)
  • For piano 4 hands (arr)
  • For 2 players
  • For 1 player
  • For piano (arr)
  • Keyboard
  • Scores featuring the violin
  • Scores featuring the cello
  • Scores featuring the piano
  • Scores featuring the piano 4 hands

When a work starts appearing in so many categories, it starts to reduce the usefulness of the category walker (as in this case the work appears simultaneously to be for orchestra, 4 players, 3 players, 2 players and 1 player!). On the other hand, users should quite legitimately be able to search under, say, works for 3 players, and find the piano trio arrangement of the symphony that way.

The higher instrumental categories (like "For 4 players" or "For voices and solo instruments") were created to provide convenient groupings for the lower levels, with the thought that the lower-levels would automatically become sub-categories on their parent page, making searching easier. Now you've clarified that this won't be the case, and that instead there will be a manually-updated page containing lists of the instrumental categories. This means that the higher instrumental categories really only need to exist as headings on a page, and not as actual categories.

There are two main ways I can think of to handle this: (1) abolish the higher categories entirely, or (2) make them 'hidden' (using the __HIDDENCAT__ function), so that they'll continue to be used by the category walker, but won't be listed at the end of work pages. Either way the number of instrumental categories shown in our Beethoven example would reduce from 17 to 11, with a clearer distinction between the original work and its arrangements:

  • For orchestra
  • For violin, cello, piano 4 hands (arr)
  • For violin, cello, piano (arr)
  • For 2 pianos 8 hands (arr)
  • For piano 4 hands (arr)
  • For piano (arr)
  • Scores featuring the orchestra
  • Scores featuring the violin
  • Scores featuring the cello
  • Scores featuring the piano
  • Scores featuring the piano 4 hands

There are pros and cons to both solutions, and there are other, more radical solutions, that could work as well. So I'd like to do some discrete testing to check for any unintended consequences before going any further. This could take a while, as I have a particularly heavy workload this week... — P.davydov 11:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

PDFs not recognised as PDFs?

Hi Feldmahler,

I appreciate you might be too busy to respond. I've been attempting to restore additions to !shorter!longer!shorter! (Fuchs, Armin) added by the composer here, at first using the multiple files upload page; of the 4 files for the soprano, alto, tenor and bari saxophones, only the soprano is being treated as a valid PDF - the others came back several times with error messages saying "Invalid PDF". Any idea why? Update: As of about a minute ago (see timestamp), the three remaining files were successfully recognised as PDFs, so it looks like it's a strange transient error.

Regards, Philip Legge @ © talk 11:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Messiah, HWV 56 (Handel, George Frideric)

Hi Feldmahler. Any idea why the autotagging of the arrangements on this page doesn't seem to be working? — P.davydov 17:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I confess that I am as baffled as you are. My investigations also do not yield anything beyond the fact that the problem occurs somewhere after #41603. Mark this work page (and others like it) and I will do a much more thorough investigation in the summer. --Feldmahler 21:48, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems not to be caused by any of the text already on the page, but by the size of the page itself. Deleting a sufficient number of lines anywhere on the page (it doesn't matter where, so long as they're whole files), causes the arrangements to be correctly recognised in preview mode. Very strange! — P.davydov 00:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I thought this might have been the problem. However, it also seems not completely settled: if I replace the file entries with junk (random letters), it actually works, even though it would be as large as the original. Either way, it makes no sense insofar as the current programming is concerned; it has probably something to do with some hidden size limitation within that particular function that I do not know about. Should have no other side-effects besides this. --Feldmahler 01:57, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

500 Error

While this problem is still prominent, we might as well make a nice custom error page, with a link to the forum post etc...maybe?-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 02:35, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

That is a good idea, however, the 500 error has actually decreased by a lot (more than half) for the last week. I feel that it may have something to do with the FTP server. I would still like to focus my time on fixing the 500 errors... I may turn off the FTP server tomorrow if nothing else needs to be done there. I know Carolus was working on this. --Feldmahler 01:57, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

OP project is done, and Carolus did notify...go ahead...but the page might still be a good idea...even if it's only a sporadic problem.-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 02:41, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. It will show the "server maintenance" page. Not strictly accurate, but does the job and I don't have time at the moment to design another one. I've also turned off the FTP. Hopefully the errors will go away altogether. --Feldmahler 03:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I was going to respond again yesterday, but 500 popped up ;). That page should do fine. Cross our fingers!-- Snailey Talk to Me Email me 03:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

BGA prefaces

Hi,
Thanks for all the scanning &c! Any strong feelings on this? Richard Mix 02:24, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Access to the emergency BB

It seems that the IMSLP BB is down. The emergency BB that I created in November 2009 is now available at http://www.imslp.eu (or simply http://imslp.eu) . Administrator's username and password are the same as in November (I sent them to Perlnerd666).

Max (Choralia 04:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC))

Would you be interested in letting IMSLP move the forums permanently to IMSLP.EU? If you are, I will need a clean phpBB3 installation and a SSH account to manipulate the SQL (both the initial upload and subsequent backups). I would also like to know a little about the set-up of the account (e.g. shared host?). In any case, thank you for providing the emergency forums! --Feldmahler 13:51, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
The current "IMSLP emergency BB" is on a shared server account provided by Bluehost. The same account is also used for the BB of CPDL, for my own website (http://www.choralia.net), and to manage about 15% of the CPDL visitor traffic (the remaining 85% of the traffic is managed by a shared account at HostGator, as HostGator's shared accounts appear more "powerful" than Bluehost's ones). In the case of a permanent solution, I would be happy to offer to IMSLP a dedicated account on a shared server. In such a case I would subscribe a new hosting account at HostGator rather than at Bluehost, for the reasons explained above. I already manage IT operations for CPDL and for the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA), so I would be honoured to manage IT operations of the IMSLP BB as well. We can share the same SSH and cPanel access credentials to this purpose.
I've registered IMSLP.EU as I think that, in the long term, it may be useful to have some kind of repository physically hosted in Europe, where scores that are already in the public domain in Europe can be made available, so that European users are not penalised. This is a project that I would like to be also considered in the future. Max a.k.a. --Choralia 14:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
A shared hosting account is fine, and we would be happy to leave the forums in your care :) Just send me an e-mail with the access information, and we can get this thing off the ground! Also, if you aren't an administrator on the forums before, ask Perlnerd to make you an admin after the forums go back up.
Also, registering IMSLP.EU is a good idea; we are indeed working on ways to make sure people will be able to access as much of the public domain as possible. While I cannot speak to any solid plans, EU is slowly becoming a good contender, given the ossified nature of the US public domain. --Feldmahler 15:05, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
OK, I'll proceed with purchasing a new shared account at HostGator for IMSLP.EU. Activating SSH requires some hours, as my identity needs to be checked (it's a security measure). Then I'll have to re-program DNSs around the world to have IMSLP.EU being directed towards the new server. I think that tomorrow everything can be up and running. Max a.k.a. --Choralia 15:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
No hurries; I will be mostly unavailable for the next week anyway (moving and stuff). Also, I want to ask if they will allow IMSLPFORUMS.ORG to point to the same server (I think most hosts should allow this, though it has to be requested). That way we can keep all the original links. --Feldmahler 15:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Yup, no problems to have any number of domains being hosted under the same account at HostGator, I just need to purchase an upgraded service package. Then DNSs will have to be re-programmed so that the domain IMSLPFORUMS.ORG is resolved to the IP address of the new server. This needs to be done by you, I guess, through the DNS control panel provided for IMSLPFORUMS.ORG by your registrar. --Choralia 15:42, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I can take care of that. --Feldmahler 19:41, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Choralia is now Admined.-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 16:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Category Walker

Welcome back! Just checking in to let you know I'm still around, if you have any thoughts about how to upgrade the CW... — P.davydov 22:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Basically there will be two main changes: 1. an automated genre list special page, and 2. "advertising" of that special page on the IMSLP portal and in the browse by category page. I hope that would be enough to attract enough people to use it, and we can go from there. :) Also, great work on the CW tagging! --Feldmahler 03:05, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Search Function

IMSLP's search function has never been its strong point, as you probably know. I recently realized that of the many people who ask me a question about using IMSLP, I'm almost always asked "could you find this piece for me? I couldn't." Obviously, I instruct them on using composer pages, but the fact is that searching "Gran Partita" does not get the Mozart B♭ serenade close enough to the top (which is a bit ridiculous - it's the 5th item. Still, a lot of users find it a struggle). Wikipedia recently redid their search which has improved it dramatically; is there any possibility of using theirs? Also, google searching works well with IMSLP; can we implement something that will just search site:imslp.org? Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 17:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Can you check if the improved search function is in Mediawiki 1.16? If it is I might consider upgrading. For the Google search, that's a good idea that I will think about. Should not be hard to do. --Feldmahler 13:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

It would seem not to be at all a wikimedia thing...Wikipedia seems to have really branched off from wikimedia in this update (and the new skin looks pretty sweet :), and that could just be brand-new.-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 13:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and IMSLP:Temporary Forum#Typeset Licenses-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 13:52, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

File Ratings

Me again (get it out of the way!)
First, we are almost at 15,000 file ratings, which is an incredible achievement. This data is extremely useful. Therefore could I suggest that you implement at least one of the following?

  1. Surprisingly, rating files is a relatively slow process. One reason is the intermediate "successful" page. Could we treat this like the CR tagging and just go straight back to the original page?
  2. I think I've brought up the multi-file rater idea before. :)-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 18:24, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I can fix #1. For #2, I'll put it on my list, but there are other higher priority items I need to do before I can do this. I cannot promise I can fix this this summer, though I will try. Shouldn't be to hard. --Feldmahler 13:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! This should make 20,000 come much sooner ;)-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 13:46, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

IMSLP:View Genres

Hi Feldmahler. Apologies for not commenting sooner on your recent changes, as I haven't been online so much over the last few days. I like the way that IMSLP:View Genres shows the work types alphabetically under the main headings, but unfortunately this misses out all the 2nd and 3rd-level categories, e.g. the large number of categories under "Dances" and "Religious Works". Can anything be done about this?
Also, is there a way to remove the redundant "Composers" and "Unknown" headings at the end of the list?
Keep up the good work :-) — P.davydov 21:47, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You can mess with the number of levels it shows by editing the page - for instance, to force another level, you could change it to, say, {{#imslpviewgenres:3|3}}. The problem is that there are then so many sublevels displayed that it's extremely difficult to navigate... KGill talk email 01:35, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
KGill is correct on both counts. The reason I limited it to 2 sublevels was because of the clutter. However, I've just uploaded a new version, and it has an additional feature that can force it to display only a part of the tree (see syntax usage). You will obviously have to list the headings, but it allows more control over the display of each one. Play around with it!
Regarding "Composers" and "Unknown", I have not yet fixed it, but will do so later in the summer. Unless, of course, you managed to work around it using the specific subtrees function. --Feldmahler 01:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
P.S. Davydov, do you think we are ready to turn off the old genre system? If so, simply remove the corresponding category links in MediaWiki:FTE:imslppage ({{{Genres}}} and {{{int:metagenre}}}), and it will be gone. People will still have to select genres when creating work pages, but I'll fix that later. --Feldmahler 01:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Should we delete the old browse by genres page, categories, etc.? Will your bot get rid of the old stuff on the work pages?-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 02:45, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for making that change to the tree display, which I'll have to play around with. You may have noticed last night that I started hiding some of the old genre catagories, but we could still do with having access to them until the tagging is more or less complete, because we're 'converting' the old genres one-by-one. In the meantime I'm 'hiding' the genres that we no longer need, with the result that their names will no longer appear on the work pages. But can you also alter the file submission pages so that the old genres won't be used on new work pages? I'm not sure how to do this — P.davydov 08:24, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

(later...) After having a play with IMSLP:View Genres, I've been able to remove the unwated sections at the end, but could I ask if:

  1. The level 3 headings at the top of each column can be removed, as they inflate the table of contents (temporarily hidden), and aren't needed with the new level 2 headings.
  2. Is there a way to choose/hide sections in Mediawiki:Genres from the Category Walker? The aim would be to create a new alphabetical list of the Work Types in MW:G (separate from the existing tree structure), so we have the alphabetical one (only) in IMSLP:VG, and the tree (only) in the CW. The existing tree structure just looks confusing in IMSLP:VG, but sorting it alphabetically would ruin the heirarchy in the CW. You see the problem? — P.davydov 22:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
I just wanted to note that because I'm moving (and thus really occupied), I will not able to answer all these questions right now. However, I will be back in 2 days, and I will answer them then. Sorry! --Feldmahler 00:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm back :)
@Perlnerd: Do not concern yourself with stuff on the work pages; they will either be taken care of by a bot or simply left there (since they do no harm). For browse by genre pages, you can remove links to them from major pages, but I would let them live, since deleting them does not actually free up any space or otherwise help the system. The main performance gain would be removing the category links on the work pages (via MediaWiki:FTE:imslppage).
@Davydov: (1) I can certainly remove them on the next upgrade. It will most likely be an option in #imslpviewgenres. (2) Instead of duplicating the entire tree, I can make VG sort by alphabetical order. How do you want the tree flattened? Do you want actually flattening of the hierarchy, or do you want to pull out certain depths in the tree? If the latter, you can use the subtree option to do that; it is not limited to only first level categories. --Feldmahler 15:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
P.S. I think hiding categories is a good idea; I will certainly remove the genre selection from the add work page. --Feldmahler 15:12, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Welcome back :-) In answer to (2), the "Work Types" and "Featured Instrument" categories (only) need flattening and sorting into alphabetical order. If flattening could be made an option in #imslpviewgenres, then it could be selected for these two groups, and left off for the others. Does that sound workable? — P.davydov 15:29, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Is a straightforward flattening OK? If so, I can make it an option. --Feldmahler 15:42, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes — P.davydov 15:56, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Performance issues

Since last weekend I've been finding the site extremely slow to respond, with many pages timing out when trying to load or save them. In fact whenever I try to save an edited page, there's a less than 50% chance that it will do so without timing out. It's similar to a problem we had a few months ago when you 'tweaked' something, so did you change anything during your updates at the weekend that could account for this? — P.davydov 14:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I did introduce updates to the site, but none should have such an effect. I do, however, know that saving pages is slow; I have not figured out the reason yet. I will look into this. What kind of pages have this problem? All of them?
Also, I've added the tree flattening and sorting you wanted in viewgenres. --Feldmahler 15:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's all pages that are affected, regardless of size. They are all taking a long time just to load, as well as saving after an edit. I was using IE7, and upgraded today to IE8 to see if that made a difference (but it didn't).

The flattening doesn't seem to be working, unfortunately. For example. the work genre category "Dances" includes Waltzes, Mazurkas, Tarantellas, Polkas, etc., none of which are showing up in the list — P.davydov 17:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, after fiddling with the settings the flattening seems to be working now. It does lead to some duplication for items that appear in the original list more than once (e.g. "Sacred cantatas"), but that's not too serious. And the site seems to be responding much more quickly just now, too — P.davydov 19:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Good :) Item duplication should disappear after the next upgrade (hopefully tomorrow). --Feldmahler 13:37, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Account

Hello Feldmahler, Long time no see. I suspect someone's been playing with my account - I've received a password reset mail which I didn't request, and can't login because of too many attempts with a wrong password have been made, obviously not by me.

Can you check possibly the IP, and reset my access restrictions? Thanks --Peter 14:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I can't login even to change my password.--Peter-tester 14:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmm... I probably cannot recover the IP of whoever tried to access your account, but usually the IP is mentioned in the password reset e-mail. I will try and see what I can do to remove the account lock on the next software upgrade hopefully tomorrow (have never done this before, so cannot make any promises), but in any event I can give you the same privileges in the worst case scenario when you have to use a different account. --Feldmahler 13:37, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, can you tell me the exact error message you get? --Feldmahler 18:39, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Well everything seems to be solved. Probably I tried to log in just after someone entered a wrong password a couple of times. Thanks anyway. --Peter talk 13:35, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

IMSLP #

I know this isn't top priority (especially now), but it is frankly likely that the IMSLP numbers might hit 6 digits in the next year or year-and-a-half. The FTE currently only displays 5 digits. How will this be affected? Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 04:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

There should be no problem insofar as I know. At the worst, the layout may be screwed up a bit (though I doubt even that). There should not be any major problems. --Feldmahler 19:36, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Great! No IMSLP2K for us...-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 20:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

The "recent recordings" looks fine. Could you add back a few recent score additions (or a few more recent recordings?)? There's a lot of empty space at the bottom-right. Also, I would probably consider breaking featured scores and recent additions up with a colour box, but I'll beg askance first :D-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 20:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Feel free to change it if you want. My only purpose was to announce that such a functionality exists. If there is a better layout feel free to fix it.
Note, however, that the recent recordings list is not fully populated, and when it is, it will be the same length as the recent scores list. In fact, the combined length (30 items) will be longer than the previous joint list (25 items). But for the record, simply change the numbers used to change the list length. --Feldmahler 20:30, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 20:34, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I just used that to make IMSLP:MoreRecentAdditions! :).-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 03:46, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Very good. Exactly what I thought. --Feldmahler 14:09, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Recordings and such

  1. I changed "Pages with audio files" to "Recordings," to make it consistent with "Scores." Of course, we could change it back and also "Scores" to "Pages with image files," but that sounds awkard, to say the least.
  2. Category Walker needs to be modified to accomadate the new categories for recordings! Have fun...
  3. You probably should edit the text of the file rater, as it still pertains only to scores (or link to it and I could whip something up).
  4. Recent additions: the coding thing for it doesn't add any more additions past a certain number, if you change it. Discovered that when messing with Template:RA (Made as per Funper's request on Talk:Main Page)
  5. And I really do think that a lengthy forum post or open letter is in order, because IMSLP has undergone some pretty radical changes in the past few months: Recordings, new genres, new hosting of forums and (so I hear perhaps??????) of the main server, etc.

Thanks for reading the grocery list :)-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 04:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

  1. I wanted to make that change myself. Good.
  2. How so? Category Walker should list all categories anyway (and what exactly are the new categories?). Plus, if you want to format the list, simply add the categories to the MW:G list (without corresponding tags). MW:G can be used for more than simply tagging you know. It is basically a control page for the Category Walker. I like my programs to be multi-use. :)
  3. Just do a search on some of the text of the page and you should find it (a nice trick for finding such things). Be sure to check the "IMSLP" box on the search page.
  4. There will always be a limit on Main Page-style recent additions. It is a matter of what limit. I'm thinking about increasing it to 50, to be displayed on the "more..." page.
  5. I will hold out for a while longer. As much as IMSLP has changed greatly over the past few months, there will be more major changes in the next few weeks. I will write something near the end of the summer with a summary of the past half year. --Feldmahler 14:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

2. The performer pages would need their own item (analoguous to "Composers"). And "Recordings" needs its own thing. I'll bring this up with P.Davydov, as he's better with this than I am
3. Thanks.
4. I in fact made IMSLP:MoreRecentAdditions but had to scrap it (it indeed had 50!) because people were complaining about the interim reduction. Can't we make this widget accommadate any size?
5. Sounds fine. Thanks again.-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 19:41, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

2. I see. Actually, at the moment I would prefer to refrain from doing to Performers what I did with Composers. The custom "Composer" section is very taxing on the server (it requires an extremely complicated SQL query that takes quite a while), and insofar as there are few performer categories (and they are not as useful under CW as composer categories), I would like to wait at least for a year or so before deciding whether they should be added to the CW.
4. Any size is pretty much impossible for Main Page-style recent additions. As it is, the longer the list grows the longer it takes to process the list. I am thinking of increasing the length of the scores and recordings to 100 each, but anything above 100 will probably be too much. This is because the code that handles the recent additions list is by far the oldest unchanged code in all of the IMSLP extensions (more than 4 years old), and is horribly inefficient. Unfortunately, I am at this point way too busy with other IMSLP programming to rewrite this code (which is somewhat complex despite its appearance). --Feldmahler 15:30, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

2. OK.
4. I figured as much. There's a post on the main page talk to which you might wish to respond then. Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 15:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

tagging

Me again!
You may have noticed that I added certain items from the tagging project to the recent changes text. Since I don't know how to edit the "toolbox" section of the sidebar, could you please add these under, say, "library tools" for the group "librarian," analogously to the "copyright tools?" This would de-clutter the recentchanges text, although that seems to be mostly admin stuff anyways. Thanks.-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 21:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll do this soon. --Feldmahler 14:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 21:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again!-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 17:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Wind Quintet 'Et Lux Perpetua' (Dyson, Peter)

This page (among others to follow) has brought up a problem: pages with no scores, just recordings. How do we take out the scores category? Do we even allow these pages?-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 17:18, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Just as a note, that page will have the score as soon as the composer uploads it. I deleted the file that was there because it was a duplicate and informed him. KGill talk email 19:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah. But the issue stands.-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 20:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

These pages should be allowed. I would for now not remove them from the Scores category because people use that as a generic browsing category. When the time comes this is very easy to fix. --Feldmahler 14:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Great!-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 22:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

FTP

Hi, as far as I can tell this is down (FileZilla said the connection was refused) - could you please restore it (unless of course there's some sort of problem)? Thanks, KGill talk email 22:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Confirmed. My connection via Fetch was likewise refused. Carolus 23:26, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
There is indeed a little problem. (Carolus, check your yahoo e-mail.) The FTP will be most likely up tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. --Feldmahler 23:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Emergency

What is the emergency?
Also, the forums are down (I'm back on the east coast, too)-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 19:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I see. You might want to archive your talk page, BTW-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 20:09, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Override upload limit

Hi Feldmahler, How are you? Long time no see indeed. I am about to upload the holograph of Beethoven Grosse Fuge, op.134 (recently rediscovered) but the file size of the scan exceeds the upload limit with circa 30 megabyte; the scan being incredibly high depth (good enough to make a facsimile with it). I don't want to split it in two since having it like that isn't as elegant. Is there any way I (or someone else) could override this or isn't it worth while? --Funper 00:53, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll interject and ask if you think it's really practical to have a 180 mb file up here??-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 00:56, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Well I was not thinking from a practical point of view but rather from an aesthetical :) Furthermore, there is no natural break in the manuscript where it wouldn't be awkward to split it. --Funper 01:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah. And no image compression schemes have worked?-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 01:09, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Ugh! :S It is compressed to the limit. The raw .tif files are 5.7 gigabytes, the pdf being 180 megabyte I dare not to compress it anymore. It's already somewhat pixelated. --Funper 01:13, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Well then we await Feld's reply :)-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 01:17, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

The upload limit shouldn't apply for admins. --Funper 01:19, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Why not? It is there for an extremely good reason: 20 MB is already a gigantic file. 150 Mb is practically useless. It is just asking for trouble to take it away. It's not as if we have that much to do in that respect anyway-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 01:38, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

There there people... don't fight :) The file size limit is on a very basic level, so it is impossible to distinguish between admins and non-admins. Changing this limit is probably too much trouble for not enough return. I understand that splitting the file in half would not be as nice, but I think that is what we need to do here... --Feldmahler 14:44, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Index errors

Hi Feldmahler -- I was browsing through a number of score pages which I have posted to in the past and am finding a significant number of error pages when attempting to click on the link to a score. I come across either "Requested file not yet officially submitted to IMSLP" or "INDEXNONEXISTANTERROR" -- it is alarming because I know these scores have been reachable in the past. Is there a known reason why this may be happening? For examples check out the medium-voice score link for Les femmes de Magdala and my upload on the Cigale page. Let me know -- if I need to upload the scores again, I probably still have them on my old computer. Thanks! Massenetique 21:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

  • Ok, well either you did something or it was just a temporary glitch cause they seem to be working fine now...Massenetique 21:34, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it was a bug (see forum thread in the bugs forum). --Feldmahler 00:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

FS Category

I actually got rid of this a while ago because I couldn't implement it on every page (So many complete works!!!!!). Feel free to delete as you come across.-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 00:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I was actually just trying to force a complete page purge (&action=purge does not work) on that page because the recent index nonexistant fiasco apparently has left something semi-permanent: pages with (1) an index nonexistant error between 10:30AM and 5:30PM, and (2) the last page edit being within this period of time, will have orphan files for the index nonexistant error entries, such that you are not able to find the page via the index search (only the file). This bug can be fixed entirely if I rebuild all the image links, but that takes a very long time. This bug will also go away if the page is edited again afterwords (like I did with Beethoven 19th), but obviously that does not cover every possible page (the recent changes list does not even go back so far).
However, since this bug is rather limited I think I will let it pass for now. I will probably need to rebuild all the links at some point in the future anyway.
Also, make sure that people don't accidentally delete entries because of the error. That is the main reason I want to clear the cache, but as the cache seems to be clearing faster than I anticipated I may just let it run its course. --Feldmahler 00:18, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Good to know. Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 00:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

For clarification, by "accidentally delete" above I meant pages that still have the nonexistant error. Clearing the cache does not fix the index search/orphan file bug, which also means that administrators should not delete files on the "Unused files" special page (where they show up; though I see the Beethoven ones are nicely listed there so we can figure out which pages are affected). I remember a long time ago (i.e. several years ago) I had encouraged administrators to clean up the "Unused files" special page, but times have changed and unused files should be left there (the previews and thumbnails are technically classified as "unused" anyway).
Considering the very specific and limited nature of the bug I do not think it is a big deal; but perhaps just something to know in case. --Feldmahler 00:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Cheers-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 00:33, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Copyright

Dear Feldmahler, I am curious if this site is copyrighted or not. I was thinking of helping out by contributing to IMSLP by looking at some of the old manuscripts to try to make organ and piano transcriptions. I had started making one when I thought that maybe it was copyrighted by IMSLP, so I deleted the file. I should ask though, is it okay for me to copy the files on this site and make newer transcriptions of them? Thanks in advance - Benedict

I'm not Feldmahler, but here goes. The site itself and the scans are not copyrighted — and old manuscripts are out of copyright. The whole point of this site is that you can do what you want with anything labeled "public domain." Thanks-- Snailey (_@/) Talk to Me Email me 22:27, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
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