Wikipedia talk:Filmographies and Discographies

Created talk page to clean up article. Ortolan88

Filmography/Discography list

The list should be on the same page as the article about the author.

Really long lists look tacky and it would be better if they were on a separate page. See Muddy Waters for counter-example.Ortolan88 04:58 Sep 13, 2002 (UTC)

I suggest that really long filmographies are trimmed to only include notable films. The rest just clutter the article. If the IMDb link is included, as it should be, interested people can just go there for the complete filmography. —Frecklefoot 19:31, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia should be as independent as possible from other sources. Therefore why not create separate pages for complete filmographies? Andres 07:00, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, that's better than cluttering the main article with every single movie an actor has appeared in. But I really dislike articles which are just lists. But I guess this is a reasonable compromise. How would they be named? List of Elizabeth Taylor movies or List of movies featuring Elizabeth Taylor or just Elizabeth Taylor movies list? A standard naming convention would be nice. —Frecklefoot 15:22, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

Italification

While it is obvious that titles of films should be italicized when they are in an article, I do believe that they should not be italicized when in a filmography. The point of using italics is to separate something visually from the rest of the text. In a bulleted list this is not necessary at all. Actually, it only makes it more difficult to read! user:vaganyik

No, the point of italics is to distinguish film titles (book titles, television show titles) from regular words wherever they appear. By using the italics, we can write, "The big, brassy movies of yesterday are gone with the wind", and "A big brassy movie of yesterday was Gone With the Wind" without causing confusion. Using nonitalics is confusing to the reader, particularly in the same article as italics. And, the better filmographies, like all the better lists, are annotated with further information, which also makes the distinguishing of the title more important. All serious publications have a style book, ours is Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Ortolan88

There seems to be general consent about it, so I accept it without further arguments in my defence. :-) user:vaganyik

Ascending or descending

The list should be in descending chronological order. This means that the most recent film/album should be at the top of the list and the earliest film/album at the bottom.

I disagree. Most people think of time as going forwards. -- Tarquin 12:46 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)

Second the motion, mostly to protect Wikipedia from copyright violation. It is too easy to simply cut and paste a filmography from the Internet Movie Database into a Wikipedia entry. IMDB's filmographies are latest-to-earliest. Requiring the filmography here to be earliest-to-latest would cut down on the temptation to cut and paste. Modemac

A simple list of films isn't subject to copyright, as it is mere information, not expression. So in fact copying and pasting it is fine -- which may be why this order was specified. -- Tarquin .... added at 11:49, 15 Sep 2002

Can we please have a vote on whether film-/discographies should be ascending or descending order? The page says "ascending" always, but it looks like it used to be "descending" (judging from the above comment), and it seems that the majority of actor/actress pages recently entered follow the descending style (probably because of IMDb cut and paste), while music pages seem to prefer ascending style. I find this quite OK myself since it fits my way of thinking (being a regular IMDb user myself, and I agree with Tarquin that a simple list cannot be copyrighted). But we need some standard. djmutex 16:23 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Vote here:

Both should be in ascending order (votes: 0)

Both should be in descending order (votes: 2) Tompagenet, Ryan_Cable

Filmographies descending, discographies ascending (votes: 1): djmutex

does descending = oldest first or youngest first?

Because the number of votes was tiny, the result was confused, and the issue is still "in dispute", I've reopened the question. Please don't comment here, but instead move down to the section "#Oldest to newest, or newest to oldest?" -- Hoary 02:52, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Links, italicization, etc., within lists

I intend to go through wikipedia and edit all discographies to conform to the style suggested on this page. I am using a perl script to assist me in this process. The input and output are human mediated and the script does not directly connect to wikipedia hence its not a bot. The code consists of mostly regexes, there are however quite a few grey areas that crop up, so I am requesting some feedback on these areas. Be aware that I intend to change bulk pages to whatever is decided here. Htaccess 03:11, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Links: Should discographies where none of the works referenced link to a real page be made links like this page:

Everchanging World (1991)

or not links like this?

The Cover Doesn't Matter (2001)

In the case of mixed I propose all works are links like this

Performance and Cocktails (1999)
Just Enough Education to Perform (2001)

agreed?

If links are chosen should they all have (Album) (album) (LP) (Music Album) or some other consistent identifier added? (album) already seems fairly common so I would like to go with that.

Record Lables: Should record lables be allowed like on this page and if so should only the first mention be a link?

Good Charlotte (Epic Records) (2000)
The Young and the Hopeless (Epic Records) (2002)

Years: quite a few discogs link to the year, which is fairly pointless (see The Cure for a good example), one possibility though is to link to that years year in music link which actually gives quite good context. If this was adopted then presumably only the first instance would link.

Actually I don't think the link to the years is so pointless. It's useful to see what was happening in that year. But if we linked to the year in music, using a piped link (which you may or may not be suggesting), then we would be in contravention with another standard, specifically point #5 in Wikipedia:Wikiproject Music standards. And in fact that standard already allows for the use of year links in discography charts.:

5. Don't use piped links to the "year in music" articles (i.e. do not write "the Beatles released Please Please Me in 1963"). Instead, link to the normal year article (1963) and, sparingly use parentheses after years mentioned in the article, such as "The Beatles released Please Please Me in 1963 (see 1963 in music)". In discography charts or other specialized forms, it is acceptable to use non-piped links to the year in music articles.

Of course, using non-piped links would be OK, but that would be somewhat verbose for each album. I propose allowing (although not requiring) the use of links to the year in question. It's already quite common and doesn't have any real drawbacks that I can think of. --Lexor 09:41, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hello. I love to see people standardising such things - good work. Taking your points in turn:

Links: I prefer not to link every album. There are so many that are unlikely to ever get an article and I see little point in making links to them. But that's personal taste not a guidline or policy so you might feel differently. The music guidelines suggest not linking to greatest hits and compilation albums unless there is something special about them.

Disambiguation: The usual is not to use a disambiguator such as (album) unless it is needed (see also Wikipedia:Disambiguation). So I have added a disambiguator to the Dixie Chicks albums Fly and Home, but not to Little Ol' Cowgirl

Record labels: I'm not sure about this. It might be better to have the information in the text ("their first three albums were produced by Epic Records") but the way you have it above looks good too.

Years: As Lexor says, see point 5 on Wikipedia:WikiProject Music standards, I think you are right that a link to "years in music" pages is more useful but it might look a little cluttered.

User:TUF-KAT is a useful person to know for anything relating to music on Wikipedia. Regards -- sannse 09:54, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hmm well the suggestions so far seem to be more or less what I've been doing, changing the obvious problems and erros but being flexible where there are differences, so I will start editing discographies again. Oh and thanks for pointing out a couple of standards I wasn't aware of. Htaccess 09:20, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Extended filmographies

I edit a lot of entries on actors and actresses and I've noticed a disturbing trend: some fans add complete filmographies for these celelbrities. While this isn't much of an issue for actors who have starred in just a few movies, for actors with long careers, the filmography can span several scores of entries. While Wikipedia is not paper, it is an encyclopedia and I think the lists should be trimmed to include just their notable films. After all, the IMDb has every actor's complete filmography for those interested (and I always include the link if it is missing). A list with hundreds of entries is almost worse than no list at all.

Is there a page that discusses how to make an entry on an actor/actress? I think including a note to not include an overly long filmography plus always including the IMDb entry would be useful. —Frecklefoot 18:41, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Filmographies and Discographies and its talk page, where a suggestion is made to have lists on a separate page when they become too long. Angela . 19:12, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

I strongly support that suggestion. Wikipedia should be as self-contained as possible. A shorter filmography could be included to the main article, and the complete one could be a separate entry. Andres 07:04, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Also, it is very useful to indicate if there are issues that IMDB may have missed (e.g. if IMDB is unaware of the person working under another name). Similarly, it is useful to indicate if seemingly authoritative filmographies / bibliographies have included "phantom" works (such as the Premio Cervantes bibliography for Jorge Luis Borges that turned his Historia Universal de la Infamia into Historia Universal de la Infancia, an error that has now propagated around the net. -- Jmabel 00:58, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have nothing to contribute to this conversation, but I would like to say that the "It's all on IMDB" argument doesn't seem to hold much water with me. All of the information on Wikipedia is certainly available elsewhere. We put it here because then it can be free (speech, not beer). Complete filmographies can of course be unwieldy; the challenge then is to organize it so it's manageable. "Notable films" and "not-so-notable films", perhaps. I'm sure we can do better than IMDB's "all 300 films chronologically" approach, or what-have-you. OK, I'm done. :-) -- Wapcaplet 01:03, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input. I think having the complete filmography in a seperate list is a good compromise. At least that way it wouldn't clutter the main article with every single film an actor may have appeared in. Also, of course the IMDb may have some incorrect information (since it's not a Wiki!) and if it does have any, we should clear those up in the article proper. —Frecklefoot 16:03, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

Lists of films

Is this the place to discuss lists of films? If so, I have two suggestions.

I started the List of French language films and decided to create two lists, one with the English title and one with the French title. I'd like to suggest this format for all foreign film lists.

Some lists would benefit by being both alphabetical and chronological, After some discussion on the talk page of List of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender-related films, I created a chronological list to go with the alphabetical one.

--Samuel Wantman 04:21, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oldest to newest, or newest to oldest?

We read:

The following point is in dispute: The list should be in ascending chronological order. This means that the earliest film/album should be at the top of the list and the latest film/album at the bottom.

(I've reformatted that in the hope of extra clarity.)

There has indeed been a certain degree of dispute on this talk page. But it had very few participants, and it seems to have been hobbled by the combination of (i) the use of "ascending" and "descending", and (b) a lack of understanding of what these two terms meant.

I therefore offer a simple proposal: that, where a list is chronological, we agree on the order "oldest at the head of the list, newest at the foot", and that we then remove "The following point is in dispute:". -- Hoary 02:45, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Well, I for one, think it should be in the other order (i.e. newest first, oldest last). That way we just lift the info from the IMDb (which is legal, lists can't be copyrighted). — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:50, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about it either way, but I've always felt it should be oldest first precisely because it makes it look less like we're copying straight from IMDB. Certainly it can be a little more work (and it's a task I occasionally leave for the wikifairies, although I've also sometimes played wikifairy myself when editing an actor article for other reasons.) I also always remove numbers (I, IV, etc), leader lines, and character names for the same reason. Lists/facts can't be copyrighted, but their particular compilation and formatting can be, and why tread on their toes? FWIW, discographies, especially large ones, generally seem to be ascending (oldest first). — Catherine\^talk 03:00, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I realise I'm adding to this discussion as if from a far off era, but I prefer oldest first and, speaking just from my memory of browsing and editing for the last 18 months or so, I'm pretty sure most film/discographies I've seen are currently oldest->newest as things stand so would require less editing. --bodnotbod 14:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Yes, IMDB does these things (to my mind) backwards. IMDB's way of putting latest first is perhaps to increase the conspicuousness of films from which it can generate more clickthrough or other advertising revenue; nothing like this will be an issue here. (Or it ought not to be. Vanity/advertising articles sometimes do manage to survive on WP, of course.) It's easy to switch the order around: load the list into a spreadsheet (OpenOffice works fine for this), number each row, sort according to "descending" order of numbers, copy them back. Numbering the rows is a bit of a bore: the solution is to keep a spreadsheet with a column of numbers for limitless reuse. Anyway, this what I did with the filmography within Robert Altman just yesterday; it took very little time. -- Hoary 01:13, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just throwing in a concuring opinion with Hoary. It should be in a descending order. On a slightly seperate note, I suggest that the day should be first before the name of the work, like this...

   * (1994) Léon (a.k.a. The Professional, a.k.a. The Cleaner)
   * (1995) Developing (short)
   * (1995) Heat
   * (1996) Beautiful Girls 
   * (1996) Everyone Says I Love You
   * (1996) Mars Attacks! 
   * (1999) Anywhere But Here 
   * (1999) Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 
   * (2000) Where the Heart Is 
   * (2002) Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

It is better organized than the the way it is on the front page, with the title first then the year. Does anyone object to that?--Weebot 23:54, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Um... I think,Weebot, you've used the term descending when you mean ascending. That's to say I agree with the way you've laid out your example, but I would call that an ascending list - since the number (year) is getting larger as you go down the list. You also appear to have said day when you mean year. But I agree with that layout you've demonstrated in your example too.

After some discussion I changed the Bonzo article discog from this to this. And although you clearly lose detail, it fair brings a tear to my eye to see it looking all lovely, like. --bodnotbod 13:38, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement Drive

Horror film and Pulp fiction are currently listed on WP:IDRIVE. To be improved, the articles need your support.--Fenice 08:32, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]