Template talk:Track listing/Archive 18

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Using a track listing template on a song/single article for a song which has no alternate versions.

Is it necessary? See: September Song (JP Cooper song). It has no alternative versions or remixes. It's just repetition of what is already made clear in the info box, and is a waste of space. It should only be used for albums, or things just as EP's or to show multiple separate versions such as remixes. And even then, most people bullet point them.  — Calvin999 12:39, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it could be removed from that page. If it had a remix it would be reasonable to keep it... --Jennica✿ / ^talk 16:52, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I see the template's now been removed but, yes, I agree it's unnecessary in such cases. No disrespect to those who wanted to see it included, but I think this is an example of when editors perhaps focus solely on one or two issues across the encyclopaedia – whether it's a track listing template for any single; chart boxes; album review ratings; genres in song/album infoboxes; or adding infoboxes for almost each and every semi-notable cover version – and how that focus might then clash with the perspective of editors who contribute to (expand) articles with a view to how the piece works from top to bottom. What I mean is, an editor who writes or expands specific articles will often view a chart box or album reviewer-ratings box containing just one or two items as an unnecessary addition, whereas someone who goes from article to article focusing on those particular elements could be more interested in a completist approach, encyclopaedia-wide.

Last time I checked, the various guidelines did include mention that editors should consider omitting such table, box or list features when the content is minimal. I'd say the use of the track listing template should follow that approach. JG66 (talk) 05:38, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Jennica and JG66, I agree. JG66, the reversion was undone again so going by what you have said and that guidelines say to omit minimal content tables I am removing it because it doesn't serve a purpose. If it had remixes or alternative versions, I would agree that the table would be of use to show the various versions.  — Calvin999 09:05, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Automatically calculating total run time

Hello everyone. I've just had a conversation with Sherbet-head on my talk page which I think could do with more input from editors here. Here it is in its entirety:

Hey Strad,

Just recently joined Wikipedia. I've edited a few music release pages now and I've realised that the total runtime is entered manually by the user. This isn't a huge issue however it's a little time consuming and also prone to error (as I just had to amend a page for it being incorrectly calculated). I noticed that you've mostly been maintaining the track listing module. I'd love to implement this total runtime automatically by myself, however I'm not familiar with Wikipedia's lua modules. If you could consider adding this, that would be great. I'm willing to help out if needed.

Thanks, Dave - Sherbet-head (talk) 15:21, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting idea. My first thought was that this might not work because track times are rounded to the nearest second. For example, say we had a CD with three tracks of exactly 60.4 seconds each. Each of the tracks would be listed as 1m 00s, as they are rounding down the part after the decimal point. However, the total running time would be listed as 3m 01s, as 60.4 x 3 is 181.2, i.e. 3 minutes and 1.2 seconds. So naively adding together the individual track times won't work in all (or maybe even the majority of) cases.

However, there is a way we could use this idea. The greatest possible difference between the total run time and the total of the track times is the number of tracks multiplied by 0.5 seconds (assuming that CD makers round to the nearest whole number of seconds). So if the actual difference is greater than this, then we can assume that there is an error in one or more of the times, and add a tracking category. What do you think? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I see your concern, but ultimately it seems a bit of a moot point seeing as:

• I would assume most wiki authors use the total runtime that they have calculated from the original track times (failing to account for milliseconds).
• I think it's purpose is to serve a good approximation to the actual running time.

Maybe the best way to implement it for the sake of simplicity and effectiveness is have it automatically totaled by default unless the user specifies because they have a more accurate calculation? It may also be worth considering that the running time data in the music "data box" is also entered separately from the track listing. Sherbet-head (talk) 19:47, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

What do people here think? Would it be a good idea to implement this in some form? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:36, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I too have recordings were the actual run-time of the disc, when adding up individual track times, does not equal the lengths of each track. That is, the time reported by an application displaying the CD during playback will be shorter than the sum of all the tracks. The rounding error you claim is not a possibility, it is a reality. I also have seen instances where the reported track lengths on the liner notes are different from the actual length as reported by the application displaying the physical track time, and often by multiple seconds, not only milliseconds. This is most noticeable when albums were released in both vinyl and then later CD formats which was common in the early and mid 80s. They didn't seem to care about exact track lengths so I'm not sure we need to be overly concerned about it as well. In short, I don't think that possible calculation errors are an problem and I would employ WP:CALC to claim that if we were to modify the template to sum the individual track lengths it would not be considered problematic or event a violation of WP:OR. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:32, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Error message "Track listing error: Time value does not contain a colon"

This message appears 25 times under the track listing in The Five-Year Engagement. The reason is not obvious. Can someone please have a look? Jodosma (talk) 18:32, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

It's happening in almost 200 articles and growing. I was able to partially fix it at Reaching into Infinity by correcting the parameter "| music14 = Morishige", which was previously shown as "| music13 = Morishige" (or maybe it was "| lyrics13 = Juichi Morishige" to "| lyrics14 = Juichi Morishige", which probably makes no difference). This is not shown in the history of the page because I did that between previews. Victão Lopes ^Fala! 20:07, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035: made some changes to the track listing module. Maybe he can fix it? --Jennica✿ / ^talk 20:53, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

It appears to be in cases where the template is used without a time at all. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:53, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Note: I've reverted the recent change to the module until the issue can be resolved. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:37, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the module needs to test for the existence of the length parameter before processing it. It may also be possible that there are lengths of the form "50" (a value that is present but ambiguous) to be taken into consideration. A silent tracking category may be better to weed out the garbage before turning on an error message. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:50, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I've reworked the code a little, and added the pages to Category:Track listings with input errors, without outputting a warning message (for now). The current version of the module allows track lengths in the following formats:

• h:mm:ss, where h is 1 or greater (with no upper limit), and mm and ss are both less than 60.
• mm:ss, where mm is between 10 and 99, and ss is less than 60.
• m:ss, where m is between 0 and 9, and ss is less than 60.

The above formulation means that times like "01:23" are considered invalid, which accounts for most of the pages in the tracking category. That can be changed if needed - what do people think? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:56, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Times like 01:23 are acceptable in some languages, but are not normally done in English. The entries I have seen where that format have been used are on foreign-language album articles, primarily Spanish-language articles, and the edits were made by anons. I suppose I could use AWB to fix the time if the change is permanent. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:07, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Category:Track listings with input errors

The following article is ending up in Category:Track listings with input errors

• Vivus!

and I don't know why. Also so are

• Symbolic (Death album)
• Human (Death album)

I believe because they have a reference in them. The category inclusion seems to be due to bugs in the template. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:55, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Quoting problem

Consider the list for the anime Totoro: each "title" consists of output from the nihongo3 template, being a romanised Japanese title, the original Japanese, and an English gloss. This is fine, except that the Track listing template adds quotes around the outside, resulting in a bit of a mess. Is there a simple way to avoid this? Here's an example:

• "Gogatsu no Mura (五月の村, "The Village in May")" : surplus or misplaced quotes
• "Gogatsu no Mura" (五月の村, "The Village in May") : could be moved
• Gogatsu no Mura (五月の村, "The Village in May") : or omitted
• Gogatsu no Mura (五月の村, "The Village in May") : or (best?) italicise the original title

Suggestions? Imaginatorium (talk) 05:05, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: I would tend to go with the second bullet point. I feel it's important to stick with the standard of double quotes for song titles, and to not have any non-title material within that set of double quotes. (Also, I don't think MOS:FOREIGNITALIC applies to titles.) The parenthetic part should, I believe, go in the note= parameter. Whichever you decide to use as the primary title is up to you. I would tend to go with the kanji (?) if that is the original language, though I can see arguments for using the translation. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:53, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Possible error in example

One of the examples in the template documentation is:

"Ready Steady Go (Hydeless Version)"

To my thinking, (Hydeless Version) is not part of the title – unlike, say, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". (see MOS:TITLE.) I propose moving the parenthetic part into the noten= parameter. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:42, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

In some instances, the "version" of the song is part of the title. I don't know about this song in particular, but I would hesitate to move it without knowing for certain. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:52, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm. A different version could have different performers and producers, but the songwriter (the main creative artist and typically the copyright holder) is the same for all versions. I feel that separates the song from remixes, versions, covers, etc., which would be subordinate to the main title of the work. Or that's what I thought. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:47, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Total length

In the description for total_length=, I've only now noticed that it says the field is "Not necessary in most cases (as that information will usually be covered by an infobox)". I highly disagree with this, having used them across countless articles for almost a decade without issue. There are plenty of things which are covered by the infobox, yet are repeated or expanded upon in later sections (multiple release dates and labels, producers in Personnel, etc.) Therefore I see no reason to discourage the use of total_length= for any track listing, be it single- or multiple-disc. It's a useful piece of information to crosscheck against individual track times (especially for different release versions), and not intrusive in the slightest. I request that the second sentence of the description be omitted altogether. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 17:15, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

After a small research in the archives of this talk page, it appears that the topic of the total_length parameter's use was never discussed here. If somebody knows something about a discussion where it was decided to limit the use of total_length could shed a light on "Not necessary in most cases" sentence. Lewismaster (talk) 08:26, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Vocal Production

Open discussion at: Template_talk:Infobox_song#Vocal_Production. Please feel free to comment → Lil-℧niquԐ 1 - { Talk } - 19:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

all_writing parameter

The |all_writing= parameter doesn't seem to be working here. Is it deprecated or something? Cheers. Linguist^unEins^uno 17:58, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

It was a stray hyphen in place of the underscore. Fixed. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 19:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea how I missed that. Still, thanks Mac Dreamstate. Linguist^unEins^uno 00:04, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Title_width inconsistent in Chrome browser

On a wide screen display, the track length column is all the way to the right edge of the display, while the title column is at the left edge. This leaves a lot of white space between the columns, making it more difficult to associate a title with its track length. In the article The Man Who Sold the World (album) I set title_width = 75% for "Side one" and "Side two", which appeared to solve this problem (in the Firefox and SeaMonkey browsers on a laptop). But when I viewed the change in the Chrome browser, the Title column width for "Side two" appears to be about 20% wider than for "Side one". If I were to set the "Side two" title_width = 71% in Chrome, the two sections would have a similar Title width, but the "Side two" width is a bit wider. When I set it to 70%, it was too narrow (1% makes a large change). And on an Android phone, with the display oriented horizontally, using the Wikipedia app, the Title columns also differ between the two sections. Can something be done in the {{Track listing}} template to give consistent behavior? Can the template behavior differ between Chrome and Firefox to fix this issue?

Other issues I've noticed with this template:

1. Why does the default behavior with no title_width expand it to full width, this is not optimal for reading. Shouldn't the columns be only as wide as necessary?
2. Setting title_width = 75% reduced the Title column width by much more than 25%, and appears to be only 33% as wide. The parameter value does not seem to represent the result obtained. What is this percentage applied, this is not explained.
3. There should be a way to set the Title column width to a fixed size (in pixels?) and not a percentage.

CuriousEric 15:36, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

One of the problems is that because this template exists, editors feel they *have* to use it, whereas the album article style guide says to use a numbered list in the first instance, and {{Track listing}} only in more complicated situations. But the template often gets used even when there is nothing else other than the title and the track length (no different writers, or notes on each track, for example), so you get left with a lot of space between the track title and its running time. Richard3120 (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

The width issue happens because someone decided to add two values total_length = 19:22 40:29. Chrome doesn't force a wrap on the column. I've fixed it. This is not the correct use so there's nothing to fix in the template.

Setting the title in absolute pixels is also not appropriate as people can set a default font size in their browsers so it's not advisable to override that preference. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:32, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Richard, good point about using a numbered list when only listing track lengths. But even when adding a "Lead vocals" column, as in Revolver (Beatles_album), there is quite a bit of white space between columns. I imagine it would be difficult to set the column widths to the minimum necessary, but it would help readability. And this minimum would differ in the case where two {{Track listing}} templates are used as in The Man Who Sold the World (album).

Walter, thanks for explanation and correction. CuriousEric 18:32, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Medleys

Some albums have songs grouped into medleys, where a single track has multiple titles, each of which might have different song writers. For example, on 'What is Love?' by Andrea Marcovicci, track 11 is "The Thrill is Gone (Brown, Henderson) / You've Changed (Carey, Fischer)". Four or five other tracks on the album are similar.

It would be prettier if each part the medley could appear on its own line with its own composer attribution. Is there a nice way to list songs that don't have track numbers associated with them? EACH (talk) 03:03, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata hook?

I know it's a bit of a challenge, but I'm wondering if it's possible to extend Track Listing to allow importing data from WikiData.

Syntax could either be: {{Track listing}}

Or to import from a different page: {{Track listing|from=Q150901}}

Ideally, it would iterate over the values of tracklist and retrieve whatever information is available. This would save anyone looking to edit the Wikipedia article the hassle of writing the whole tracklist, copy-pasting from other languages, and constantly updating when new information is available. It could also encourage people to contribute to WikiData.

If I type {{#statements:tracklist|from=Q150901}} I would get a comma separated list of the track names From Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.

Would it be possible to just get that information and format it to Track Listing?

Thanks, Alex.osheter (talk) 13:56, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Better to create a new template for that purpose. If we have album data there, it should be easy enough to do that. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:17, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Proposing {{TracklistData}} Alex.osheter (talk) 10:44, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Demo:

No.	Title	Length
Total length:		42:59

Nice. Is there time data as well? Walter Görlitz (talk) 13:16, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Extra column doesn't respect bulleted lists any more

See Back in Line#Track listing, the "Personnel notes" (extra) column contains a number of bulleted lists. In each case, the first list item is displayed with an asterisk instead of a bullet. This has not always been the case: see Template:Track listing/testcases#No idea which section this one goes in where I have set up Template:Track listing/sandbox to be the final non-Lua version of the template. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:36, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Total length

I've noticed that under Category:Track listings with input errors, most of the articles in the list are caused by the "total length" code being added in the tracklist. Does the total length need to be appear in the track list when it already appears in the infobox?--Mjs1991 (talk) 04:28, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Mjs1991: There is nothing wrong per se with filling in the |total_length= parameter; the problem arises when what is filled in isn't a pure time - for instance, when there is a reference as well as the time. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:54, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Deprecated "collapsed" parameter

I understand the reasoning behind the deprecation of the "collapsed" parameter, as described in the documentation. But if it violates MOS, why not remove the parameter altogether so it doesn't work anymore? Another option would be to add a hidden category (something like Category:Track listing templates with collapsed parameter enabled) to track articles with it and have it removed. Any thoughts on how to clean up the deprecated usage? –Dream out loud (talk) 08:19, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Great question. I did just that years ago and was reverted. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:45, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Examples in the documentation

Does everyone think we need 20 rows or will four-ish do? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:44, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Personally I think three or four is plenty... everyone will get the idea of usage after three examples, and albums rarely go to twenty tracks, even hip hop albums with their interludes and "skits". And it just makes the page long for little reason. Richard3120 (talk) 22:11, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

total length calculated at module

Could the total length be calculated at the module level instead of manually entering it? If a parameter like |total_length=yes is set, then it checks all the |length_x= parameters and calculates them, ignoring non-valid entries and then adds the result to the table. --Gonnym (talk) 14:14, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

The length of works are not always a simple sum of the individual track lengths due to rounding error. In other words, if you have two songs that are 1.4 seconds in length, their combined length is 2.8 seconds. The track lengths would show as 0:01 but the total is 0:03. This is an instance where 1+1=3. Now take that possibility across the five tracks of an EP, or the tracks of a full-length album. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm guessing the total length includes the silent bits between tracks. Do these count towards the individual track lengths? If not, I would expect the total length to be somewhat more than the sum of the individual track lengths. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:45, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

On CDs, there are no silent bits between tracks. This may not be the case with vinyl and other media. Since downloads also include track gaps at the end of songs, it's incorporated into the song length. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:11, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Syntax not working

Please see the following diff on Stranger Songs. I'm completely confused as to why writer10 and extra10 aren't showing. Any ideas? TheKaphox T 18:31, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

@TheKaphox: There appeared to have been some control characters between the parameter and the strings it was looking for that confused the template. I cleared that up and it's working now. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:52, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

The "control characters" were non-breaking spaces (NBSPs) and this is yet another instance of this problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:36, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Performers

Maybe adding performers column would be a good idea? This template looks messy when every song on album has a different performer, like on The Lion King: The Gift. King10 (talk) 17:51, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I think at present the template only allows for one extra column apart from "Writer(s)" – a third column, along with the song titles and the track timings, could result in things getting a little crowded. Richard3120 (talk) 23:39, 19 July 2019 (UTC)