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Citing TOEOT in Wikipedia

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Saved by Andrew Alder
on March 13, 2009 at 6:03:19 pm
 

The main reason I created this site in the first place was that I was looking for online sources for Wikipedia, and those I found were dismal.

 

There were some good sites out there for particular instruments, but the ones that covered the instrument I particularly wanted were all highly opiniated, inaccurate, poorly formatted to the point of being illegible, incomplete, or all of the above. And there was no central index, which surprised me a bit.

 

So, could Wikipedia itself become the general reference site that seemd to be lacking? At first glance it was obvious it could, but as I progressed there were many problems. Particularly, the notability and verifiability standards of Wikipedia eliminated much of what I personally wanted it to publish. So at second glance, it was very doubtful.

 

But something did come out of this: The Wikipedia Manual_of_Style_(Stringed_instrument_tunings} was a response to the inconsistencies I found within Wikipedia itself. And many of them are still there, but hopefully they'll be fixed in time. Wikipedia is like that.

 

Writing this highlighted some things I wanted in the site I was looking for:

 

  • I wanted complete tunings, not just pitch classes. These might be fine for the expert but for the layman, even the expert on another instrument, the actual pitch wasn't always easy to guess. In the case of coursed instruments, just giving the pitch class of the courses also left out whether the strings were in unison or at octaves, and if octaves which string came first.
  • I wanted a more general lack of ambiguity. List a guitar as E-A-D-G-B-E or as E-B-G-D-A-E, but decide which and stick to it, and more, tell the reader which way around it is.
  • I wanted it to work well on all browsers, both for readers and contributors. I had serious doubts about the flat and sharp symbols Wikipedia uses, and their version of Helmholtz notation. (I looked at scientific pitch notation but it was even worse for other reasons.)
  • I wanted it to list as many instruments and tunings as possible, without making judgements as to which were notable.

 

So now this is the second thing to come out of it. But it will be some time before it becomes a source that I can personally feel happy quoting in Wikipedia. If that ever happens, it's a bonus. I think the site has a purpose all its own, and even if I write it all myself (and I hope not to) it's worth doing.

 

If you think it's ready to cite in Wikipedia, don't let me stop you. But do have a good look at the guideline at the Wikipedia guideline concerning Iinks_normally_to_be_avoided and particularly item 12: Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors.

 

It's worth noting that this is mainly about the External links section. The requirements for a reference are in some ways less demanding.

 

Alternatively, have a look at the External links sections here. They may contain better citable sources than this site itself, or they may not. In particular, I hope that this site has been checked and cross-checked a bit more carefully than some of them. There's a lot of inaccurate stuff out there.

 

Anyway, good luck!

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