Could someone tell me if this list is still in use? It seems the great majority of requests are very old. There are many "requested" scores that are already available on CPDL, and there are many "completed" requests whose links seem to be broken. And what's the meaning of "pending" status? wouldn't it be better if the completed requests were removed or moved to other page in order to free space for new additions here? Otherwise this page will become too long and of difficult maintenance (it is already). CarlosTalk 16:11, 27 April 2008 (PDT)
This list is still in use, but hard to maintain. Ideally when a new work is added this list should be checked. To make this list easier to check if we put a link with the composer's page name with a link "X" after the work's name then it becomes one click away to check on whether the work is now "done". A good number of these requested works are now completed. ie "An Evening Hymn (Henry Purcell)" has been submitted. Otherwise keeping this list up-to-date becomes verry difficult and time consuming. (Ideally this operation would be automated... ) Johnhenryfowler 01:29, 8 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi John, thanks for your explanation. Looking at the requests, I see that most of them are 4+ years old. Do you believe that the people who made these requests still check this page after so long? They have most probably forgotten about it, and if ever come back to CPDL, they will use the Search tool to find the score they had in mind. If their request is now available, they will find it with the Search alone, without the need of this page. So, I believe we could completely remove from this list the entries with status "complete", leaving only those "requested" or with copyright issues. Can you tell me what's the difference between "requested" and "pending"? Thanks --CarlosTalk 18:07, 8 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi Carlos, Old as the entries are it is the only way a CPDL user can request a score. When I am contemplating what score I might do, I check the requested list, (usually for a Parry or Purcell work) and then do that work. When it is being worked I change "requested" to "pending" and put my name on the request page to show who it is that is working on it. In theory this is so some other well-meaning CPDL contributer does not start to work on the same score. (I was working on Brahms's "New Lieberlieder Waltzes" for over a year and a half !) When I'm done I move it to "Completed" where it stays as an indication of how well CPDL is doing on the requested stuff. Johnhenryfowler 01:41, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Thanks, John, now I can see the logic behind what you're doing. In this case, what I propose is to break this page in 4-5 smaller ones based on an alphabetical sequence (say A-F, G-L etc.) so that when a request changes status it continues on the same page. If one of these pages ever grow too big, we can just divide it in two again (like, A-C & D-F), and so on. This page would function as a menu to reach the other smaller pages. What do you think? If everyone agrees on this, I can do the move. --Carloshuh? 10:23, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi Carlos, Your proposal sounds logical to me. Johnhenryfowler 12:55, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Permit me to wade in here. If I recall correctly from discussions a long way back on the old forums, we created categories Requests, Requested, Pending, Completed, and (more recently) Requests by composer surname. These were intended to supplant/replace the Sheet Music - Requests section of the present page.
The principal reasons for making such a change were precisely those issues raised by Carlos about the list being difficult to maintain, its unwieldy length, the matter of broken links, etc. It would seem that the time is ripe for the listing method to be deprecated in favor of the category method of tracking requests.
Unfortunately, there has been little help offered and suggestions made to users about how to go about requesting a score. Furthermore, the Template:Request is a bit awkward for new users to assimilate ... most of the request made through this mechanism were made from the old request database by Raf in 2006, and most of the rest seem to have been added by various admins acting on behalf of requests from individuals. There is a Sheet music requests and questions page on the Bulletin board where requests can be made - and then entered by someone (probably an admin) through the Request template and/or on the present page. But even this means most new requests would have to be "processed" by someone other than the person making the request.
The Request template is quite old (it was initially called an "attempt", long before people were aware of the ability to used named parameters), and has not been significantly modified since its inception. I'll take a longer look at the template and see if it can be extended (backwardsly compatible) or if a new template should be made for future requests - in either case in a way that is more user-friendly.
Better yet, Chuck! Perhaps, then, entries here that have a Requests: page counterpart could be safely removed from this list, helping reduce its size. --Carloshuh? 02:30, 10 July 2008 (PDT)
Hey Chuck, you did a great work with this new form! I spent a good deal of time trying to understand how it worked :) You have probably seen that I tried to make the form bring some default values, but it didn't work as I expected. If only we could use javascript, things would be so much easier! Thanks --Carloshuh? 00:50, 11 July 2008 (PDT)
That looks great, Chuck. Thanks for all your hard work on this. I guess the next step is to update the help pages with details of the new score request system. I'd be happy to do that if you're busy coding something else! --Bobnottstalk 21:52, 11 July 2008 (PDT)
As part of deprecating the score requests aspect of this page, it would be good to have volunteers systematically go through each remaining Requested entry on this page and either:
1. move the entry to the Completed section if appropriate; or
2. create a corresponding request at if one does not already exist, then comment out the request entry on this page for these requests (these can eventually be deleted if desired). In the meanswhile, I've started annotating the entry with XFR Complete.
This is a volunteer project that can be broken into components easily and added to the volunteers page. Even people who are not comfortable with wiki editing can still check all open Requests related to a paricular composer or set of composers--I can serve as e-mail recipient for their results to conssolidate and do the updates, and work on finding volunteers to do the look-ups.
Is there an easy way to take a list of requests we need to transfer, the proper Title (Composer) format, and feed them into the request intake form?
At some point, when all that's left is Completed pieces, it's probably worth transitioning those over to the method so the record of requests Completed gets consolidated too, but that's lower priority.
It's still worth keeping this page for article requests about general topics, and maybe having a score request here for things that aren't easily captured via the approach, such as "any barbershop music."
2. create a corresponding request at if one does not already exist, then comment out the request entry on this page for these requests (these can eventually be deleted if desired). In the meanswhile, I've started annotating the entry with XFR Complete.
I think it would be worthwhile to move these transfered items from the "Requested" section into their own new section ("Transferred to new request system") before commenting out and/or deleting them.
And I'll volunteer to do this so other volunteers can continue to work in just the "Requested" section, instead of having to edit the whole page each time.
What do all y'all (since "y'all" is singular) think?
I've moved everything I could find. While I was at it, I also added Request: to items in the new "Already transferred" section, as a crude way to determine if the request exists in the new system.
Links that are blue in this section can now be deleted "at-will": items that are still red should be double-checked against the new system, then deleted.
