IMSLP Forums

Almost every time I add a new person (composer, librettist, performer) to IMSLP I need to post-edit the article in order to fill in the template parameter 'Nationality'. It would ease the addition of this information if the parameter 'Nationality' could be part of the initial editing form.

Any hope for that feature?

How frequently are you adding composers (or, roughly how many more composers do you need to add)? Because of the highly standardized nature of this field, I'm slightly hesitant to allow anyone to add it easily. For example, people could add "France" or even "Francois" instead of "French".

imslp wrote:How frequently are you adding composers (or, roughly how many more composers do you need to add)?

Most of the 'composers' I've been adding recently are performers of music by Frederic Rzewski.

The WIMA database has an entity 'Person' for registering composers, publishers and contributors; but performers are only presented in WIMA as 'raw text'. Unfortunately I'm not able to answer the question on the number of WIMA composers needing to be added to IMSLP. That requires calculating the difference set between WIMA- and IMSLP persons having a composer role. If you could provide a data set extraction of IMSLP composers (Surname, First name, Birth year, Death year) then I might be able to script a list of WIMA composers not present in IMSLP.

imslp wrote:Because of the highly standardized nature of this field, I'm slightly hesitant to allow anyone to add it easily. For example, people could add "France" or even "Francois" instead of "French".

I see your point. I wonder whether there are 'Nationality lists' flowing around in the internet like the lists of countries. A nationality list could feed a list-of-values drop down menu like that for licenses. But of course I can live with post editing nationality manually.

Perhaps a pull-down menu? That limits the options for "French" to "French" of course. Trouble is - you have to come up with a really nasty long list of 200-plus terms just to cover most nationalities. Then you'll probably have someone complaining that the "Klingon" option is unavailable because they composed a Klingon opera. Believe it or not, "Klingon" is actually there as a language option when one is setting up an ISBN with Bowker, Amazon, etc.

Well, I sort of doubt Klingon will be coming up much as a nationality

"other/unknown/leave blank" (to fill in later as the last option on the dropdown)?

Eric wrote:"other/unknown/leave blank" (to fill in later as the last option on the dropdown)?

This could work. Let me see if the rest can be boiled down to a manageable list.