ChoralWiki:Volunteers

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Welcome to the Volunteers page! Thank you for your willingness to help CPDL.


How can you volunteer to help CPDL?

You may find the following link useful as it provides a quick guide to wiki page editing.

Adopt-a-Composer

Volunteer to "adopt" the composer of your choice (if he/she is not already taken) by visiting the adopt a composer page and adding your name. You would build up the composer page with additional content which may include:

  • List of choral/vocal sheet music organized by various criteria (publication date, opus, genre, whichever is appropriate)
  • List of complete choral/vocal works
  • List of all publications/editions
  • Biography
  • Bibliographic information
  • External links
  • Recordings of interest
  • Images

You don't have to include all of these items, indeed, other content not listed here may also be added. While there is a great deal of flexibility in this, it is generally a good idea to stay with the general guidelines and organizational structures of this wiki. Check out other adopted composer pages for ideas.

Contribute editions

CPDL welcomes your contributions of scores you have set (provided that the scores do not violate the rights of others). Contribute editions of public domain works or make your own compositions and arrangements freely available. Refer to the score submission guide for a comprehensive guide of how to contribute your editions. Refer to this page for general information about when music enters the public domain.

If you're looking for some music notation software, click here for a list or ask for advice on the forums.

If you're not sure what you should include in your edition (apart from some notes and words!), or perhaps you've been editing scores for a while and want to see if you can improve your editions, click here for some guidelines.

You can check Category:Requests people have made for scores. Note: be sure to click on the Requested subcategory, since the general Requests category includes all Requests, even those that have been completed.

Add texts and translations

One of the many advantages of CPDL being a wiki is that any (registered) user can easily add texts or translations to a score page. You can view a list of score pages which need texts adding here. If you want to get involved, please read the comprehensive help page on how to add texts and translations.

Fill in missing composer nationality, era or composition's genre

This page has a list of composers missing various information, such as birth or death date, era, nationality. View the composer's page to see what information is missing, or click on one of the subcategories such as the one for nationalities if you want to work on a particular aspect.

For example, if you know a composer's nationality, click the composer's name, click on the 'edit this page' tab, and change the line at the bottom from [[Category:Unknown_nationality]] to [[Category:Russian composers]] (if Russian is the correct nationality). A list of existing nationalities CPDL has defined can be viewed here.

You can also fill in the composer's birth/death dates (edit both the dates at the top of the composer's page and the categories at the bottom of the page), and also update the era of the Composer at the bottom of the page if you know it. You can check Category:Unknown_genre and Category:Unknown_era for pages where that information is missing. The AddScore form has a list of defined categories you can use as a guide when filling in any of these items.

Fix dead links

When a link appears red, that means that there is no page with that exact title. Either the link is wrong, or the destination page is misspelled. A special page called "Orphaned pages" lists all those pages which are not linked from any other page.

When a web-link returns an error - or shows the intended information is not on the hosted site - the page should be edited and marked with the "broken" template, which will show up as: Broken.gif It should be placed immediately before the score link which is broken, as shown below:

*'''CPDL #7884:''' {{broken}}[http://www.odhecatonmusic...

Create redirects and aliases for optional spellings of composers

This involves creating links to composer names, based on a common name, or on a variant spelling. For example, the page for Orlando di Lasso should appear when people type in a search for 'Roland Lassus' or 'Lassus'. This is done be creating redirects. To create a redirect, type the alias into the search box, click "Go", then on the page that appears, click the red link "create this page". In the edit box that appears, type: #redirect[[Orlando di Lasso]] where "Orlando di Lasso" is the exact name of the composer on CPDL.

Similarly, redirects should be created in many cases so that the last names of composers point directly to the composer page. An important question arises: "What should the official name for a composer be?" If you are interested in discussing such issues, or suggesting a name change, you can post the suggestion on the discussion page for a particular composer (see the tabs along the top of a wiki page), or post it on the CPDL forums.

Help add new scores submitted by others

The following type of help is best done by those comfortable with wiki editing, and who are already somewhat familiar with CPDL genres, voicing conventions, etc.

For users who fill out the form to add their edition to CPDL but do not do the wiki editing themselves to create the necessary composer and score pages, CPDL e-mails the results of the forms to a small group of volunteers so they can complete the remaining work. You don't need to be an expert--there is opportunity to ask questions and other volunteers to provide guidance. Please e-mail addscore At sign.png cpdl.org if you would like to find out more.