IMSLP Forums

IMSLP is growing faster and it becomes more and more a problem, to get an overview which scores are availble.
The main instrument for the solution of this task is the category walker together with a tagging system.
My question is now: Is it not necessary to have specialists for each time period who do the tagging work with
maximal expertise? I think to share the tagging work according to a certain specialization would be a good idea.

Yes, I agree that in a way it would be great if different members of the tagging team were specialists in different time periods and could be trusted to reliably and accurately tag for them. This does raise (at least) two major issues, though:
1. What would become of members of the team who are not really 'specialists' in any particular area? (If this criterion existed when the project was started, I doubt I would have ever been allowed to join it ) Would there be certain types of works that could only be tagged by certain people? Would this mostly be applicable to music from the Baroque period and earlier, the musical practices thereof being sufficiently alien from those of the 19th through 21st centuries that it really does require a certain amount of specialist knowledge to classify?
2. Is it possible for the team to actually muster the numbers necessary to afford dividing its members so sharply? We've expanded rather slowly over the last year and a half - not many people have ever been interested in signing up. There are still only 10 registered members, probably about 4 of whom are not really active at present. And there's only really one person (Philip) who, as far as I know, has a significant amount of specialist knowledge in early music.
I'm not trying to reject this proposal, but I would like to see these issues resolved before we consider implementing it

To be honest, I think that the existing team has a fair enough number of people with expertise in each area to function—for now.
The rate at which IMSLP is expanding is the key to how we structure this sort of thing, and that rate isn't particularly high right now.

Also bear in mind that the general public doesn't see the discussion page the team uses, and we do talk to each other about issues. I take it the main area of concern for the person who started this thread is the Baroque era, and we do have a person (Philip) whose brain we pick if there is a non-standard issue.

I don't think there is a lack of expertise, but not all pieces can be easily pigeon-holed. All of the taggers have access to reputable scholarly sources, and they do check them. Mistakes do happen, but not often, and they can easily be fixed. The provisos, though, are that the tag has to come from the title (or collection title), and there has to be a reputable scholarly source for a tag that does not come from the title. Splitting the tagging team is not going to change that.