Talk:Bach House (Eisenach)

Complete overhaul: Translation from German Wikipedia, 20 September 2012

I have translated the current version from German Wikipedia de:Bachhaus Eisenach. I have added a few things from other German Wikipedia articles linked inline in the German version when they weren't available in English (such as the comment on the Bach statue from 1939 in St. George's Church, Eisenach). I added information on accessibility for disabled visitors to the museum which was missing in the German version (I guess, I should add it there now, too). I omitted the section on school's programmes, since they are only available in German. I also included my recent (small) additions to the German version even though they still wait in queue for sighting there.

I should add that I am the current director of the museum, so I ask for close scrutiny. I leave the above WP remark if someone should really be upset by my new version. We can remove it later. I should also add that I am not a native English speaker, and so if there are any mistakes (as there are bound to be), please help me correct them.

One additional note may be required: The date of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth (21 or 31 March) is an object of neverending debate among Wikipedians (mainly). The German Wikipedia has a nice template for giving simultaneously the Julian (21) and Gregorian (31) dates (see there), but unfortunately there doesn't seem to exist a corresponding one for English. I don't want to use the Old Style template used on the page Johann Sebastian Bach: It makes the Julian date almost disappear from view, but that is the traditional date that we celebrate here and in other cities. If you come to the museum on March 31, expecting a piece of birthday cake, you'll be sorely disappointed - we do serve it, but on March 31 it will all be eaten up. So even though information may be accurate, it may still be misleading. I decided to solve the problem with a footnote, if anyone has other ideas: go ahead.

Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 23:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I added the translation remark to this page, as required, sorry.Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 23:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your complete overhaul – it's a huge improvement. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the warm words! And also for the changes - so that's how references can be arranged in columns: great. Looked at the new page on my phone and decided to move the 'opening times' to the 'museum overview' section (more logical, I also added a bit on parking and general city location), rearranged the photos in the text for a better (and again more logical) flow, and with tears in my eyes released the rights for two more photos from our collection: the Thomanerchor singing at the house, and Bill Clinton's visit. Will have to do the same for the German version now, I guess. I didn't give the name of the old guy with Clinton: it's Dr. Oefner, my predecessor. If people really want to know they can infer it from the list of directors. He wasn't the first to shake hands with Clinton, though: that honor belongs to our janitor who had dressed so well for the occasion that Clinton believed him to be the director. Really true. :-) Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 12:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Also thanks for adding the musical notation for the Bach Goblet. Just saw it. I put in the full poem text in the German and now also the English version; it is one of my hopes that someone might want to tackle this riddle again. (I confess, I am a fan of the theory that Krebs gave it to Bach for his fiftieth birthday, making it a bit juicy since this would have been well before the exam.) -- Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 15:26, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

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Updating the translation from German Wikipedia, 07 May 2018

There have been a number of additions to the exhibition since 2014, and also a few deletions, so I have been updating the German Wikipedia entry last week and made the corresponding changes here this week. The German version does not have the "Trivia" section any more, but I have decided to keep it here a bit longer. The introductory photo in the museum box has been set back to the museum's current press image which seems to be in line with what is expected in museum boxes (no snapshots, even nice ones). Since, as I said before, I am not a native speaker, please help make sure the language is correct. As I also said before, I am the museum's current director - all changes have been made with the aim to provide factual, up to date and referenced in depth information about the museum and J.S. Bach, but if you feel I have crossed the line to promotion somewhere please help to correct this. Thank you! Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 07:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

COI guidelines, advert and COI flag

I believe I have been frank in the past about my connection to the museum that is described on this page. I noted it after each edit on the talk pages of both this page and the German version de:Bachhaus Eisenach. I did not use the template above, it may or may not have already existed before. I also used a user name that reflected this connection, even though this seems to be against policy. I am sorry about this, and if anyone feels that I was not clear enough.

The Bachhaus (Bach house) that is described on this page and its German twin de:Bachhaus Eisenach is both a public and publicly funded museum. Since 1907 it has been owned by the Neue Bachgesellschaft. It is one of two big Bach museums, in Eisenach where Bach was born, and in Leipzig where he died. In 2005 I have been appointed the Bach House's director. I have been doing the updates on both the German Wikipedia page de:Bachhaus Eisenach and in parallel on this page since 2011. I did this in my spare time, but mine is a paid position, so there you are.

I feel the advert flag is misplaced. Just describing what a 110 years old publicly funded museum currently exhibits is not an advert. Lots of people are interested in Bach and in the history of the two large German Bach museums, and the page is telling them that for our institution in a detail that can not easily be found elsewhere, certainly not on any webpage. In fact when preparing for a presentation I might refer to the Wikipedia page since I keep forgetting these things and they are hard to look up again elsewhere (like, is it better to call an instrument a viola pomposa or a violincello piccolo?). Such detail obviously may make people curious to visit the museum themselves but that can't be helped. Other than that I believe my edits have been factual rather than promotive.

As for the COI flag, the reason for my edit in 2011 was that the pages then did not reflect what people found when they visited the museum. The German page's last major overhaul had been in 2007, before the building had been extensively restaurated and the exhibition completely renewed in the same year, but Wikipedia still continued to describe the exhibition from 1973. I made the changes and asked for them to be implemented by the German referees/moderators. I also laid open my affiliation to the museum. Here is a snippet from the de:Bachhaus Eisenach talk page from then:

• Zunächst: Ich bin der derzeitige Leiter der Einrichtung. Überprüft also bitte mit mir, ob mein Änderungsvorschlag so neutral ist, wie er sein soll. (...) Bachhaus.eisenach 12:57, 20. Nov. 2011 (CET) First, I am the present director of the museum. Please check if my proposed changes are as neutral as they ought to be. (...) Bachhaus.eisenach 12:57, 20. Nov. 2011 (CET)

• Ich finde die neue Version des Artikels sehr gelungen, besonders die Beleg-Situation scheint mir relativ vorbildlich. (...) Da der Artikel gut gegliedert ist, ist die (relative) Länge kein Problem. Man findet sich ja schnell zurecht, wenn man nur etwas Bestimmtes sucht. Trotzdem meinen besten Dank für die Mitarbeit. Meistens höre ich nur die Variante "der Wikipedia-Artikel über unser Haus ist ja so schlecht und so falsch", ohne dass etwas an eigener Initiative gezeigt wird, obwohl niemand über ein Museum und seine Geschichte so gut bescheid weiß, wie einer der Mitarbeiter/Forscher selbst. Natürlich kann man diese Qualität nur schwer erreichen, wenn man Artikel aus leicht verfügbaren Quellen (Reiseführer, Populärliteratur, Websites, Zeitungen etc.) zusammenklauben muss. Grüße --Michael S. °_° 17:45, 25. Nov. 2011 (CET) I find the new version is a tremendous improvement, in particular the citations are quite well done. (...) The article has a transparent structure, so the length is not a problem. When one is looking for a certain fact, it is easy to find. Still, many thanks for the collaboration. Mostly I just hear "the Wikipedia article on our institution is so bad and so wrong" without showing any own initiative, even though nobody else is as well informed about a museum and its history but their staff themselves. This quality is hard to reach by just copying material from easily accessible sources (travel guides, popular literature, web sites, news papers etc). Cheers, --Michael S. °_° 17:45, 25. Nov. 2011 (CET).

After (all) my edits, the article was refereed (by different referees), as is standard for German Wikipedia; most writers can only propose changes here, not put them in effect themselves. I think it is a good method to keep conflicts o. i. at bay without barring good content.

The German version of the article was confirmed as "good" in 2014 and was Wikipedia article of the day on 21 March 2014.

So what now? Do I refrain from updating the page even though the exhibition has changed? It can take years until someone else finds the time to work on it, see the time lapse between the complete redesign of the museum in 2007 and my edit of 2011. In between the article is false. For the same reason it would hardly be appropriate to roll back the article before a person working at the museum (me) started to edit it. That would be to 2011 (I guess the old translation flag would then go back up as well...).

So what I am doing is, in keeping with the guidelines on Wikipedia:Conflict of interest I am requesting an edit, and will be doing this in the future whenever I edit this page:

Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2018 (UTC) My recent changes on 6/7 May 2018 are a proper translation of the changes I have made to the corresponding German page de:Bachhaus Eisenach. These concern changes - additions as well as deletions - in what is presented at the J. S. Bach museum since the page was last majorly edited in 2014. I believe all my changes are well referenced. So even though I have a noted potential COI I feel it is right to make these changes. I believe my additions have no advertorial or promotional character other than describing correctly what people will see or have seen when visiting the museum, but feel free to check this for yourself. Many thanks!!! PS: Please remove the advert flag and COI flag if you think that neutrality of the page has been preserved. Thanks again! Bachhaus.eisenach (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Reply 07-MAY-2018

Please clarify, is it your wish that editors review the changes you made to the article on 6 May in order to determine if they are acceptable for the article? If that is so, it would seem that those changes have already been reviewed by another editor, who determined in their best judgment that they were problematic. In that editor's actions we see a person who has expressed a genuine concern for the article, just as you have. In which case, the best course of action when editors have already expressed interest in an article is for those editors to work together to discuss changes. If those discussions prove not to be fruitful then that would be the time to place the request template for more editors, or perhaps, begin a request for comments process. It is my understanding that the edit request template ought to be for specific changes to be made, and the question here is over the suitability of those additions, which requires more discussion before other editors are able to act. .spintendo⋅⋅) 22:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Note

I left a note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Classical_music#Bach_House_(Eisenach) asking if anybody from the classical music project would be interested in helping the director of the museum update the page. Perhaps we can get some interested people this way. Jytdog (talk) 00:14, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification at the talk page of the classical music project, Jytdog

@Bachhaus.eisenach: first task at hand is imho to change your user name so that it becomes acceptable:

• policy: Wikipedia:Username policy
• procedure: see Wikipedia:Changing username

The policy linked to above applies to English Wikipedia only (German Wikipedia may have less problems with your current username, I don't know while I didn't check, but in English Wikipedia it is problematic): current problems with the user name are that it is the name of an institution (Bachhaus Eisenach), while the username should represent a single person. You may not always work for that institution, and when you stop working there, the account should be tied to your person; the account is also not transferable to current or future collaborators of the Bachhaus institution.

When following the procedure I linked to above: don't worry, all edits you ever made with the "Bachhaus.eisenach" account will be transferred to your new account name, there will be no confusion that they belong to the same person.

If the overview at Bach House (Eisenach)#Ownership, finances, Blaubuch, museum directors is correct, your real life name is known: you can (although you're not obliged to) choose a user name that reflects that real life name, despite what is said in the third bullet at Wikipedia:Changing username#Must read.

Next step would be disentangling COI and non-COI edits (etc), but I propose to get the username issue sorted first. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:47, 8 May 2018 (UTC)