Oremus Hymnal:Community Portal:Contributor's Corner
From Oremus Hymnal
Welcome to the Contributor's corner. This page is provided as a place where contributors can discuss general matters related to this WIKI, including asking for help in using the WIKI, in contributing, and in general organization. It is not intended that this page will be used to discuss issues relating to a particular page. Since every WIKI page has an associated discussion page, discussions relating to a single page should be carried out on there.
Contents |
Newby Notes
- A word of warning for those not already familiar with Media WIKI pages: in page titles, except for the first character of a title, capitalization is significant. "Main Page" and "Main page" refer to different pages. On the other hand, "main Page" and "Main Page" refer to the same page.
- Upon registration, all users are assigned a page in the "User:" domain, as shown by My page. It would be reasonable to assume that in the near future, only registered users will be permitted to edit pages, and further, that registered users will be strongly encouraged to create a User page.
- Please get in the habit of signing and dating your contributions, especially in discussions. -- Noel Stoutenburg 0320 GMT 13 April, 2008.
- The simplest way to sign and date your contribution is to type four tildes thus: ~~~~ -- Chuck Giffentalk 19:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Scope of Hymnal
The Main Page says "This site hopes to be the comprehensive source of information about the extensive tradition of Anglican and English-language hymnody." As a Baptist whose contributions to hymnody are largely not in English, I wonder how the public to which Steve has transferred this site interprets those parameters. --Leland Bryant Ross 08:16, 16 April 2008 (GMT)
- Or for that matter, how Steve himself hopes this will be interpreted. I guess what I'm asking is, is the intended construction really "Anglican and English-language hymnody" or is it "Anglican English-language hymnody"? Is hymnody which has not appeared in official Anglican-Communion publications appropriate here? How about hymns (other than Ein feste Burg! ;-) ) which are in languages other than English? I don't want to contribute much of substance until I know something about the rules of the game. --Leland Bryant Ross 21:16, 17 April 2008 (GMT)
I'm game to about everything; that being said, I would say that the Esperanto hymns are probably rather specialized and should be in their own subsection or webpage. The focus is primarily on English-language hymnody; as an Anglican, my focus is on the riches of my own tradition, which of course is shared with many others. Steve Benner 2305 17 April, 2008
- Last Sunday we sang my Easter-Monday-Breakfast ballad, "Come Then, Let's Have Breakfast", in morning worship at Fremont Baptist, and it was well received. This recasting of the first half of John 21, to the tune Foundation, I first wrote in Esperanto, back in 1996, and several days later redid it in English. It has also been used in worship in Esperanto, the first time set to Montgomery because the worship leader didn't know Foundation and was used to singing "How Firm a Foundation" to Montgomery. It was published with the proper tune in Adoru (2001), and has also since been featured in a hymnology conference in Europe. I'll post it (the English, not the Esperanto) and we'll see; I think that particular pericope was underserved by the existing hymnic corpus before I wrote it. I'm not sure in what sense a hymn is "specialized" by virtue of the language it's in. Is the Welsh original of "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah" more specialized than the English version? Certainly plenty of English hymns are specialized, say ones for the feasts of particular obscure saints. --Leland Bryant Ross 06:42, 18 April 2008 (GMT)
My opinion of the scope of this WIKI, is that it should concentrate more on "English Language", and rather less on "Anglican". Not the least reason for this is the difficulty in determining exactly what "Anglican" means in this context. Does it refer to a hymn text by and Anglican, or a hymn text by an author of a different profession, commonly admitted to the corpus of Anglican hymnody? Is a hymn text (or tune, for that matter) by an Anglican, but not customarily used in Anglican circles, included? How about a text or tune by someone not an Anglican, but which has been accepted into the corpus of Anglican hymnody? In my view, the difficulty in trying to define what "Anglican" is in this context weighs heavily against use except as perhaps related to the history of the site.
The time that might otherwise be spend debating whether or not some particular class of text should be considered "Anglican", would be better spent on more practical matters, such as how to handle the situation of copyright texts. My expectation is that of this set of texts (or tunes) they will fit very neatly into exactly two categories: those texts and tunes which the creator (or other copyright holder) does not permit to be published on this site, and those which the creator does permit to be included. It seems to me that some thought needs to be given to the latter category, particularly with respect to the possibility that the holder of a the copyright of a text may intitially decide to allow it to be published on the site, and later may request it's removal. There is a tension here between the rights of the person who posts copyright material, and then decides to the contrary, and the rights of those who have already downloaded the text, or those who remember it, and seek to download it later. Noel Stoutenburg 0731 GMT 26 April, 2008
- As far as what the Oremus hymnal means by "Anglican", it appears that the definition is even more broad than "commonly admitted to the corpus of Anglican hymnody"; it looks somewhat more like "ever admitted to the corpus of Anglican hymnody", defining that corpus as (more or less) those texts ever published in a hymnal associated with or approved by a Church of the Amglican Communion. Steve's the expert on that definition, but I shall operate on the notion that all of English-language (and much of non-English—the hymnal already contains (at least) Latin and Irish texts) Christian hymnody, defining Christian also rather broadly, is potentially the matter for this hymnal. --Leland Bryant Ross 16:30, 10 May 2008 (GMT)
Yes, that's fine. When I gave over editorial control, it means just about anything goes. I think we should stick primarily to English-language materials at this time, although there's no reason why there can't be a whole subsite with Esperanto, German, or whatever category. My indexing and my interest is exactly as Leland has described it: to show that definitions of "Anglican Tradition" are relative to churchmanship, geographical location, and indeed to a given time and place. All good things and important for folks to understand as we undergo this major worship reformation that we are currently experiencing (whether we greet it with open arms or not). The fact is that a significant of Anglicans worldwide are Evangelical and sing a very different corpus of hymnody than we typically do here in the States and we ought to recognize that this reflects some of the significant theological differences which are currently the Anglican Communion. So my hope is that we can learn more about each other and perhaps realize that there are many ways to express poetically our relationship with God. That's all. Steve Benner+
External Links
Looking at Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side, under Sound Files I see something that says external link. It seems to me that this should at least say Finlandia (external link), and that Wiki formatting makes the fact that it's an external link explicit to the casual but informed observer, so it should suffice to put Finlandia. But I am asking first because either Steve or the emerging editorial consensus may have some reason for using the "external link" approach. If I don't see a defense of it here in the next few days, I'll try to remember to edit it. --Leland Bryant Ross 17:26, 28 May 2008 (GMT)
The point of using "external link" is to indicate that it is a file not under our control. My hope is eventually to get MIDIs or other sound files under our control, but, quite frankly, the MIDIs at CyberHymnal and other sites are often not good enough to take credit for. My hope is also that some musician will start working on the sound files sometime. Also, by having the text "external link" we will know where to go in the future (by using the search capacity) to add our own files. Steve+
- Still, I think Finlandia (external link) is preferable to external link; consider a situation where there are three (or seventeen) tunes, each with its own external link, associated with a single text. If I were a user of the hymnal rather than an editor, I would be put off by, and would probably make fun of, "information" that says
- Clearly,
- is much more user-friendly and usefully informative. --Leland Bryant Ross 04:43, 31 May 2008 (GMT)
I suppose that would be true. I will change it for future pages, but probably won't take the time to go back and change the first 500 pages I've done. Steve+
Permit me to butt in here, but the little symbol that appears after, say Finlandia sound file (after "Finlandia sound file") is itself the Wiki method of indicating that the link is - guess what! - an external link. Hence, the Wiki-preferred way is not to say "external link" either by itself or enclosed within parentheses. -- Chuck Giffentalk 19:59, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
"Sandbox" Pages
Any page which has as the first word of the page title the word "Sandbox", is a page being used by a user, or group of users to explore the matters related to the mechanics of using WIKI software, or various aspects of page layout. When the user, or group of users has completed the exloration, the sandbox page should be blanked. Any Sandbox page on which there is no activity within the past 30 days may be blanked by a moderator or admin. --Noel Stoutenburg 00:25, 21 May 2008 (GMT)
Bibliographies
I have received a bibliography of editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern (from 1861 to today). I'd be happy to post it here, if a page could be created for it.--Stephen Hutcheson 2009-01-07
Also, the "Chorale Book for England", 1865, is arguably an Anglican book and could be included. It's online at ccel.org and hymnary.org.--Stephen Hutcheson 2009-01-07
Structured Wiki
This is just a weird thought; because of the more database nature of what's being constructed here, has anything like a Structured Wiki been considered? Just a thought that might streamline things a little.--RAult 10:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
