IMSLP Forums

Hello admins:

Would it be possible to have more than one composer picture on the composer page?

Regards,
WB

ill second this

I’ll ask: why?

To make some already unwieldy composer pages even bulkier and slower to load?

Also, how many is “multiple”? Five, ten, a hundred?

Cheers, Philip

PS To be honest, I think this might best be handled by linking a separate page where such “portrait galleries” can be assembled without impeding access to score pages. Or if there are multiple pictures for a composer (e.g. if I recall correctly there are four Berlioz portraits uploaded) I think it would be rather better to allow the picture and its accompanying caption to be selected randomly from those available, as opposed to displaying all of them at once, which would probably look like a mish-mash.

[quote="pml"]I’ll ask: why?

To make some already unwieldy composer pages even bulkier and slower to load?

Also, how many is “multiple”? Five, ten, a hundred?


Why? For the same reason that you often get two or three pics at different stages in life of anyone. For example, did Brahms always have a big white beard? Surely we understand his early works better if we see a picture of him in the 1850s.

How many? Ask a stupid question ... With most of the composers on IMSLP there are only a few extant pictures. I would suggest five as a maximum. If you look at Klassika.de they have a picture gallery option. Also for sources, there are one or two excellent online libraries of musical pictures.

IMSLP` bosses seem to agree that the site needs to be visually interesting, hence the score thumbnails and eye-catching main page. Since the site depends on sponsors, presumably anything that attracts clicks is good, within reason. Therefore pictures thumbnails and sound bites are all worth putting on.

Regards, WB

WilliamBunting wrote:Why? For the same reason that you often get two or three pics at different stages in life of anyone. For example, did Brahms always have a big white beard? Surely we understand his early works better if we see a picture of him in the 1850s.

Does it really matter enough to put on the composer page, though? Is that the 'main attraction' of the composer page? Would it provide added utility?

How many? Ask a stupid question ... With most of the composers on IMSLP there are only a few extant pictures. I would suggest five as a maximum. If you look at Klassika.de they have a picture gallery option. Also for sources, there are one or two excellent online libraries of musical pictures.

Rudeness will get you nowhere. If there are websites that contain excellent galleries of pictures, why not just link to them? They may be far better suited to contain such collections than IMSLP.

IMSLP` bosses seem to agree that the site needs to be visually interesting, hence the score thumbnails and eye-catching main page. Since the site depends on sponsors, presumably anything that attracts clicks is good, within reason. Therefore pictures thumbnails and sound bites are all worth putting on.

Huh? We have a deal with Amazon such that we get 10% of the money they earn from items bought through links we provide on the site. I don't see how that includes "anything that attracts clicks"...

[quote="pml"]I’ll ask: why?

To make some already unwieldy composer pages even bulkier and slower to load?

Also, how many is “multiple”? Five, ten, a hundred?

end of quote

re: rudeness

See the above quote

This is not the first time a serious suggestion has been met with a patronizing and dismissive answer.

Regards WB

WilliamBunting wrote:This is not the first time a serious suggestion has been met with a patronizing and dismissive answer.

In Philip's answer I detect a trace of sarcasm and/or non-seriousness, at least in the first sentence. I fail to see how the second is in any way either patronizing or dismissive, and looking at his postscript seems to confirm that he did anything but dismiss your request - he proposed a possible solution to it. If by "patronizing and dismissive" you mean addressing your point in a somewhat casual tone then I don't really know what to say...

I am happy to admit my first response to the question was somewhat casual, as I really don’t see the point for putting multiple pictures on a composer’s category page. The œuvres of the composers who are likely to have multiple pictures tend to be the ones with multiple hundreds of compositions, making their category pages unwieldy for normal users of the site to navigate and I don’t need think they should be made any more inconvenient by slowing the speed they take to load. I also would suggest the page layout of composer pages would have to change markedly to host multiple pictures so that they do not look like a mismatched hash. But seeing as the main page has recently had a face lift, maybe it’s time to change the look and feel of the composer pages.

Specificially addressing your “Ask a stupid question”, I can’t help it if you think ‘how many is “multiple”?’ is a stupid question, and merely reserve the right to disagree. It was in keeping with the thread title.

My second response to the question followed in the postscript after I’d signed off my name. It is the position I still think is more appropriate:

(1) (quasi-)randomly select one picture (with accompanying caption) from the set upon each page load. (By quasi-random: to maximise caching, the granularity of randomness should be over a time interval of several days to a week, so you get picture A this week, picture B the week after, picture C the week after next, etc.)
(2) host multiple pictures on gallery pages separately of the composer page.

Regards, Philip