Talk:La muette de Portici

Ref to print article in Grove/Belgian Revolution

One of the sources for this article was the one in Grove (print). This reference has unfortunately been removed. Perhaps the heading 'Source' has been misunderstood? Source on WP means a source not the source of everything in the article'. If any detail in an article needs to be challenged then by all means do that. Deleting text and source information wholescale is not a good solution.

Regarding the reference to the Belgian Revolution, this is mentioned in the Oxford Dictionary of Opera. Perhaps it would have been better to check first before making the deletion? - Kleinzach 23:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I don't claim my edit was the best possible one. An administrator came to my talk page to ask for my help in cleaning up some copyright violations. It's discussed here at the admin noticeboard (although those links will no longer work when the pages are archived. Someone made an originally massive list of articles created by that user, who has now been blocked indefinitely. As people go through the articles on the list, they google phrases or check in other ways, and then remove copyright violations, if appropriate, and then strikethrough the name of the article on the list. Then an admin comes along every few hours, and makes lots of consecutive struck-trhough titles invisible. So I didn't come to this article out of any interest.

To the best of my knowledge, the New Grove Online encompasses the Grove Opera as well as the massive music dictionary, and would normally be identical, except that the online version might be more updated, or might have fixed errors that it finds. I was able to get access to the online dictionary article, as someone in my family has a university library subscription, which covers Grove as well as many other subscription databases. Since Grove and Grove Online are identical, as far as I know, and since the other claims in the article were not mentioned in Grove Online, and since I had added Grove Online as a ref for ONE claim, I took it away as a source. It would have been different if there had been lots of references or lots of sources. I just thought it looked a bit silly to have a ref, and then an identical source.

The riot thing was not in Grove, and I don't know if I have access to the Oxford Dictionary of Opera. I removed it because no source was given. I have no particular attachment to my edit. I'm just uncomfortable with leaving anything exactly as Orbicle worded (or closely based on his wording). If I had found a source for that claim, I would have left it there, but in my own words, and with a reference. Please, by all means feel free to restore it, with a proper footnote. I think it's generally appropriate to delete something that has no source, as someone who's editing an article can't be expected to know what books to check when they find an unsourced claim. I guess it should have been added when the claim was added. If you are adding that fact, perhaps you can reword it a little. I think it would be good to put into your own words anything that was added by Orbicle, because so much evidence of copying has been found that admins are nervous about leaving anything as he wrote it. (You'll notice that I changed "received its first performance" to "was first performed". Although I think my wording is better, it's not the only reason I changed it.) ElinorD (talk) 06:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for replying at such length. I was unaware of the problem that initiated your edit. Nevertheless I'm surprised that plagiarism was suspected here given that the article is such a short stub. In any case it was clear from the article history who had written what. (As you will see from the record, I myself added Grove (print) as a source on 1 April.) Incidentally the various editions of Grove - the leading authority for opera - are not identical (in some cases different authors are involved) and it's reasonable to cite more than one if more than one has been consulted.

I will now go ahead and revert the original information together with the reference for the Belgian Revolt.

If there are a lot of other opera articles likely to be altered perhaps you can put a note at the Opera Project so that we will know what is happening? - Kleinzach 08:28, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm afraid I was a bit careless in checking who had written what. I was trying to get through a large number. I did go to Orbicle's first and last edits in some cases in order to search for phrases at Google, as a change of "many" to "several" or of "often" to "frequently" made by a subsequent editor could make a search fruitless. Please feel free to re-add anything that you think I shouldn't have removed from any page, other than word-for-word phrases that came from Orbicle. They may be okay, and may not. Interesting to know that the Grove editions sometimes have different authors. I'm not interested in or knowledgeable about opera, and just volunteered with this because I was able to get access to a proper source without too much trouble. I'll leave a message at the WikiProject page later today. ElinorD (talk) 08:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Operas vs. Category:Operas by genre vs. Category:Grand operas

Category:Grand operas is a category within Category:Operas by genre which is a category within Category:Operas — Robert Greer (talk) 18:35, 4 October 2009 (UTC)