I've been working on databases of supporting information for the Rise Up Singing and Rise Again songbooks, with links to YouTube videos for each song, and to Wikipedia, Mudcat, Roud, and the Traditional Ballad Index and other sources. The Rise Again database is available online, but we still have a lot of work to do on it.

I was surprised to find that there were Wikipedia entries for the vast majority of songs in the two books - and that the Wikipedia information is usually quite good. I don't want to get into yet another extended argument about the pros and cons of Wikipedia. I can read the articles myself and make up my own mind about the value of information there, thankyouverymuch, just as I critically read everything I read.

But still and all, there's an awful lot of good information about songs there, and I really wonder who put it there. Seems to me, that it's likely that a lot of the good stuff there, was put there by people we must know. But who are they?

And then the second thing I want to know is how to put an article in about things that are missing. I was looking today for the camp song, Rise And Shine (and Give God Your Glory, Glory). Wikipedia didn't have an entry for the song, but its "disambiguation page" listed the song as written by Peter Anders Svensson, a member of the Cardigans pop group who wrote a song titled "Rise and Shine" in 1995 that had nothing to do with giving glory or arks. I corrected the page entry as best I could, but it might have been nice to have started a Wikipedia page for the camp song.

So, just how does one go about starting a page on a song that will fit Wikipedia criteria?

Has anyone here started song pages there with any success?

-Joe-