Talk:The Folk Songs of Britain

Andy. If you are intending to set up a page for each LP in the Caedmon series, listing songs etc, that's fine. Perhaps on reflection, as you have separate pages for Child Ballads 1 and 2, that is your intention. But if you are setting up a subject page, that might cause some confusion. As these various compliations use different titles for the same themes, I have attempted to rationalise this site's on the main song page, and am adding a page on each of them. Happy to have these change, but perhaps we only need one site on, for instance, sailor's songs.

--PeteWood 21:53, 16 April 2007 (BST)

Pete. I was merely setting up separate pages for each LP (like we have for each of the VOTP volumes). But there could be a clash of page titles with pages about courtship etc. Do I need to change the title of these pages to e.g. Songs of Seduction (Folk Songs of Britain) to avoid ambiguity?

Andyturner 13:09, 17 April 2007 (BST)

Andy. I think your suggestion makes sense, but there are other questions arising in my mind. At the moment, to keep it simple, my theme pages just refer to the two series without specifying a volume. They could be more specific, though I don't think it necessary. I am at present erring on the side of the novice who wants to find out more about folk song rather than a reference for the experts, although we have to find a way of doing both. I am also a bit wary of setting up too many blank pages before we have more experience, as they're a bit tricky to delete or to change once you've got them! (I see that on Voice of the People you have set up a page for every singer and every song in the series. Does this mean every folk song will have its own page on the site?). Another point I'm not sure about is whether every time we mention a person or subject that happens to have a page, we need to direct the reader to it. Maybe so, but it just makes reading a bit disjointed. All these points are occurring to me as we go, and I'm asking questions rather than making statements. I'd welcome more discussion on these points.

--PeteWood 19:17, 17 April 2007 (BST)

Pete. Sorry for tardy response - I gave myself a week off :-) I agree it's a pain deleting pages - well, only the select few have rights to do it anyway - but remember that just putting in a link to Ken Stubbs doesn't immediately create a page for Ken Stubbs. It just means that when someone creates one, any links will immediately become active - so in my view it's better to put those links in as you type up a new article. As for making the page difficult to read - I see your point, but that's what a wiki tends to be like. Wikipedia certainly is. I think that for the novice, reading an article say on Henry Burstow, they may see a reference to Lucy Broadwood and think "I wonder who that was"; if there's a link they can follow it, if they're not curious they can just ignore the link.

Of course the VOTP and Topic/Caedmon LP pages are very link-heavy. But those are index pages, not designed for bedtime reading. I think that potentially there would be a page for every singer on those recordings. Probably every song too - although see my suggested File:Songs scheme.pdf for pros and cons of different approaches. Scheme 1 has been adopted at present, and I'll try to remember to follow it when creating song entries! I did notice when entering the Folk Songs of Britain indexes that there was some tidying up of inconsistencies to do at some point. Andyturner 21:11, 1 May 2007 (BST)