Celtic Woman Member Timeline

[CWazyTom]

I looked at the source for some of the Wikipedia pages for other bands (ie. CT's wikipedia page).

It looks like their timelines were done in Wiki Markup.

Doesn't seem to be the most intuitive thing in the world, but I did programming and a tiny bit of web development back in the day, so I'll figure it out.

... although I'll also have to figure out how to create a sandbox to experiment with this. I don't really feel like messing around on the actual CW page until I have a clue what I'm doing with this. Lol.

[CWazyTom]

Ok everyone!

Here's the first draft of the CW lead performer timeline!

Don't worry if it doesn't look perfect yet or if some of the dates are wrong, this is just a proof of concept for now.

Any suggestions / feedback, please let me know.

I've tweaked a few of the dates (ie. 1-2 day PBS special recordings) to be more like the whole month. I found that the bars were difficult to see for very short time frames.

In cases when I knew the month a performer started / ended but I wasn't sure of exact dates, I generally guessed: first date of month for start dates ... end of the month for end dates).

It's uploaded to a temporary site that time bombs (removes the image) after 7 days. That's to avoid confusion with old versions once I tweak it more.

Here's the first draft:
http://www.tiikoni.com/tis/view/?id=24e662d

[Celtic Chan]

Very nice timeline, Tom!

[CWazyTom]

Very nice timeline, Tom!

Thanks!

There's just a few more things I'm trying to narrow down at this point:

• Lisa Lambe's debut date in 2010 ... completed
• Meav's end date in 2007 ... completed
• Date(s) Home for Christmas album was recorded in 2012 ... relevant to Meav's timeline...completed
• When Lynn left in 2010 ... completed
• When Alex left in 2010 ... completed
• When exactly Deirdre was a member of Celtic Woman in 2005 until Meav returned in 2006.   Based on tour dates, July-Oct 2005 (then Meav returned in February, 2016). But there are some conflicting sources and no concrete information I've found.

Here's a new version of the timeline with what I have so far. I made it a bit wider horizontally to make some of the shorter appearances stand out more. I also re-ordered it as follows:

• First, the current girls, in their join order.
• Then, the former girls, in their join order.

New temporary link (expires after 7 days):
http://www.tiikoni.com/tis/view/?id=0c6c96e

I think if we can narrow down the above dates a bit and if everyone's reasonably satisfied with the way it looks, it'll be Wikipedia-ready.

Then we can all cross our fingers they don't challenge some of my sources. Lol.

[rfcw]

I Love It! Seeing the girl's timespan is cool!

[CWazyTom]

I was looking up Lisa Lambe's start date and the first place I found the date was in a "On this day in Celtic Woman history..." post from the Celtic Woman forum by "Enchanted" (from December 5, 2010):

http://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=11653.15

Lisa Lambe was officially announced as a member of Celtic Woman on November 29, 2010.

Once I had a specific date to search by, it was fairly easy to cross-reference it with a number of other sources.

It also indirectly led me to discover some fancy new tricks for searching old posts on Facebook.



"Enchanted" actually started the "On this day in Celtic Woman history" post on January 26, 2010:
I thought it might be fun and informative to have a topic where people can post bits of the history of Celtic Woman.  This will be both educational for the new fan and a trip down memory lane for those who have watched it all unfold from the beginning.

Well, here we are around 6 and a half years later. Celtic Woman is still awesome, that post is still educational, and I'm really thankful for the bits of history documented in that old thread.

Maybe one day 5-10 years down the road, someone will come back and visit this Member Timeline thread will find this information useful too.

[CWazyTom]

A couple of tweaks to the aforementioned dates so far. I have made the corrections in line and in my copy of the timeline markup code already. I present them here as well to log the changes and my reasoning.

Lynn (corrections):

Previous start date (initial stint):   Oct 10, 2007
New start date (initial stint):   Aug 17, 2007

Lynn's end for her first stint was Nov 12, 2010:
https://www.facebook.com/celticwoman/posts/169640543064007
http://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=14676.0
http://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=11653.0


I referenced her start date from one of our forum posts on August 17, 2007:
http://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=1470.0

Source for ANJ tour start date, Oct 10, 2007:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Hilary


Alex (corrections):

End of Alex's first stint announced May 26, 2010:
https://www.facebook.com/celticwoman/posts/103076549740779
http://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=11653.0


Deirdre: *** NEW UPDATE

The following site shows Deirdre as active from June - October 2005:
http://cw-ct.com/cw/deirdre.html

... Deirdre might have been announced in June 2005?  So far I haven't found anything to prove or disprove it. For now, I'll continue to base her membership on what I believe to be the tour dates: July 20- Oct 22, 2005, with Meav returning in February of the next year. I don't think there was additional touring in 2005 after the original tour ended, so October 2005 would be a valid end date, but my rationale is this: if there had been more touring that year, Deirdre would have been doing it, so until Meav returned, I consider Deirdre still a member (unless something is found to the contrary). Not sure what her actual contract period was.


Eabha (correction): *** NEW UPDATE

Previously, I had been using July as Eabha's start date as there were a number of sources that stated or implied it. I know she auditioned for CW around July 2015 shortly after her NYC show. However, Celtic Woman Tour's post on Facebook (and the corresponding post on the CW Forum) suggest that August 11, 2015 was her official start date (it was at least when she was officially announced). I have corrected the previous post and the timeline to reflect that.


Meav (corrections):

Previous end date in 2007:  Aug 20
New end date in 2007:  Aug 17

I sourced her departure date using the forum and a few Facebook posts from the same day, which likely were in response to the forum post:
http://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=1495.0

Notes:
- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Woman) says Méav left on Aug 20, 2007 (as do a number of other sources that likely got their info from wikipedia).
- I'm not sure if August 20th was the date her departure was "officially" announced, if it was the effective date, or if it just happened to be the date it was actually posted on the CW site.
- Wikipedia cites the post from the CW site, which is no longer available, as well as the archived version of that post, which is also no longer available.
- I believe August 17th, 2007 is the first date her departure became known to the devoted fan base.

[CWazyTom]

The is a bit long-winded, but I think it's important.

Dilema:

- The inconsistencies with some of the dates leaves me in a bit of a quandary.

- I'll use the end of Meav's original stint as an example...

- I intend to use Aug 17, 2007 as the end date (for that stint) in the timeline, since it's the most likely to be correct as far as I'm concerned.
- That will disagree with referenced Wikipedia info, and can thus be disputed as an inconsistency.
- I could go in and edit the CW Wikipedia pag.
- But aside from some forum and Facebook posts on August 17, 2007 which I trust, I haven't found anything that could be considered a valid reference to prove either date.
- Even if Meav herself said she initially left on Aug 17, 2007, the folks at Wikipedia insist that there be verifiable, independent sources and they have shot down far lesser changes of mine in the past on those grounds.

- I could change the date on Wikipedia anyways.
- But that would make most other sources (which likely referenced Wikipedia), to be inconsistent with the Wikipedia article.
- Someone might dispute the info on Wikipedia on those grounds, not realizing that Wikipedia was the source for those other articles.
- There's also danger the change or the whole page could get flagged due to lack of proper / sufficient citations.
- At this point, there aren't any significant consequences to the article getting flagged (other than it will frustrate me).
- It's unlikely, but possible that Wikipedia could prune flagged articles in the future. That would be bad for flagged articles (they would get removed).
- Indirectly, it draws attention of the Wikipedia folks to the CW Wikipedia pages and if they audit it, they're going to find a LOT of inconsistencies on there, beyond timeline-related ones.

They have a number of automated tools that search Wikipedia articles for inconsistencies, but in my opinion, it would be unreasonably difficult to design a tool to audit timeline dates based on other (untagged) dates in the article. They would have to audit it manually or not at all.

I'd appreciate any of your thoughts on this (but I'd especially appreciate any additional verifiable sources I can use to ward off the Wikipedia hounds).

Thanks.

[CWazyTom]

Home for Christmas (album, 2012):

Finding the recording date(s) for the Home for Christmas album in 2012 has proven extremely difficult so far.

It was fairly easy to find the release date for the album (and the record date for the 2013 Home for Christmas DVD), but the date / month the album was recorded (which is relevant for Meav's timeline)...

Here are some places I looked:

• CW site
• CW forum: "Home for Christmas" section, Meav section, etc...
• http://cw-ct.com/
• Google: ... checked a LOT of sites, including Discogs
• Facebook: Celtic Woman Tour, Meav, Lisa Lambe, Chloe, Mairead Nesbitt ... filtered for any posts in 2012 with the word "Christmas" posted by any of those accounts
• Meav site: http://www.meav.com/contact/
• Meav forum: Can't search it without an account

I searched a bunch of other places, then finally found something of interest on Facebook under the "Celtic Woman Fan Page" account:

https://www.facebook.com/CelticWomanFanPage/posts/487139037964851
(post from August 11, 2012):

• The recording did take place in August, 2012, as I had assumed.
• It is implied, but not stated, that there were multiple days involved in the recording.

I'll go with all of August 2012 as part of Meav's membership.


At this point, I have all the dates to a margin of accuracy / error with which I am reasonably satisfied, but I'm going to go back and double-check a few of the dates using some of the new sources / methods I discovered along the way. I expect that to be done by the end of the weekend and will hopefully have a final draft of the timeline posted by then (before I deploy it live on the CW Wikipedia page).

[The Impatient New Yorker]

I'm not sure when the CD was recorded, but the PBS special was recorded August of 2013

[CWazyTom]

Ok everyone,

Behold the final draft of the timeline for principal Celtic Woman performers:

I have no doubt this isn't perfect, so if you notice anything that needs to be corrected or doesn't look right, please let me know.

UPDATED for the new member, Tara:




There are some weird-looking gaps in the timelines for temporary absences (ie. still a member, but not active due to maternity leave or other commitments). I don't think it would be too difficult to fill them in with a different color or shade. I'm not sure if it would make it look better / worse / more confusing etc. If there's enough interest, I can experiment with it, though.


I'm providing the Wiki-Markup (below) for a couple of reasons:

• To document the dates I used, in case there are any questions or things that need to be corrected in the future.
• For maintainability ... I'd prefer that more than one person be familiar with how this was constructed. It's fairly easy to make corrections if you know how it works.

Code for current version of the timeline (updated to reflect Tara and Mairead Nesbitt stepping away:

===Member Timeline===
===Member Timeline===
<timeline>
ImageSize = width:1300 height:auto barincrement:25
PlotArea = left:125 bottom:80 top:0 right:100
Alignbars = justify
DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy
Period = from:01/01/2004 till:31/12/2016
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal format:yyyy

Colors =
  id:Susan              value:orange
  id:MaireadC           value:blue
  id:Eabha              value:green
  id:Tara              value:red
  id:MaireadN           value:gray(0.5)
  id:Chloe              value:gray(0.5)
  id:Orla               value:gray(0.5)
  id:Lynn               value:gray(0.5)
  id:LisaK              value:gray(0.5)
  id:LisaL              value:gray(0.5)
  id:Deirdre      value:gray(0.5)
  id:Alex      value:gray(0.5)
  id:Hayley              value:gray(0.5)
  id:Meav              value:gray(0.5)
  id:bars               value:gray(0.9)

BackgroundColors =  bars:bars
ScaleMajor = increment:1 start:2004
ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:2004

BarData =
  bar:Susan         text:"Susan McFadden"
  bar:MaireadC           text:"Mairéad Carlin"
  bar:Eabha             text:"Éabha McMahon"
  bar:Tara      text:"Tara McNeill"
  bar:MaireadN            text:"Máiréad Nesbitt"
  bar:Chloe         text:"Chloë Agnew"
  bar:LisaK        text:"Lisa Kelly"
  bar:Meav          text:"Méav Ní Mhaolchatha"
  bar:Orla         text:"Órla Fallon"
  bar:Deirdre         text:"Deirdre Shannon"
  bar:Hayley          text:"Hayley Westenra"
  bar:Lynn           text:"Lynn Hilary"
  bar:Alex          text:"Alex Sharpe"
  bar:LisaL        text:"Lisa Lambe"


PlotData=

  width:10 textcolor:black align:left anchor:from shift:(10,-4)

  bar:Susan         from:05/01/2012 till:end              color:Susan
  bar:MaireadC          from:23/08/2013 till:end          color:MaireadC
  bar:Eabha          from:11/08/2015 till:end              color:Eabha
  bar:Tara      from:07/08/2016 till:end      color:Tara
  bar:MaireadN     from:15/09/2004 till:07/08/2016         color:MaireadN
  bar:Chloe          from:15/09/2004 till:05/08/2013      color:Chloe
  bar:Orla          from:15/09/2004 till:09/12/2008      color:Orla
  bar:Lynn         from:17/08/2007 till:12/11/2010      color:Lynn
  bar:Lynn         from:01/03/2014 till:08/06/2014      color:Lynn
  bar:Lynn         from:03/09/2014 till:07/09/2014      color:Lynn
  bar:Lynn         from:08/04/2015 till:23/05/2015      color:Lynn
  bar:LisaK          from:15/09/2004 till:31/12/2007      color:LisaK
  bar:LisaK          from:13/02/2009 till:31/12/2011      color:LisaK
  bar:LisaL           from:01/01/2011 till:01/04/2014      color:LisaL
  bar:LisaL           from:23/11/2014 till:31/12/2014      color:LisaL
  bar:Alex           from:01/12/2007 till:26/05/2010      color:Alex
  bar:Alex           from:03/05/2015 till:28/06/2015         color:Alex
  bar:Deirdre            from:20/07/2005 till:28/02/2006      color:Deirdre
  bar:Hayley         from:24/08/2006 till:13/02/2007      color:Hayley
  bar:Hayley         from:09/03/2007 till:05/04/2007      color:Hayley
  bar:Hayley         from:04/05/2007 till:31/07/2007      color:Hayley
  bar:Meav         from:15/09/2004 till:19/07/2005      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:23/08/2006 till:08/03/2007      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:11/04/2007 till:03/05/2007      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:29/06/2007 till:17/08/2007      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:15/01/2012 till:31/08/2012      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:01/08/2013 till:31/08/2013      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:06/03/2015 till:04/04/2015      color:Meav
  bar:Meav         from:01/08/2015 till:15/08/2015      color:Meav
</timeline>




Next Steps

• Give the dates and the graph a look over
• Let me know if you have any corrections to report or any other feedback. I'd love to make it better.
• I'm planning to stick this on the CW wikipedia page at the bottom of the Membership section on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on the amount / nature of feedback by then. Once it's posted it's fairly easy for me or anyone else to edit it again there if needed.

Enjoy!

[Kimberly AJ]

I think we've passed 2015.

[Jim M.]

I think we've passed 2015.

Kim, the chart is too wide to fit the screen so you need to press your right arrow key to slide it to the left.

[CWazyTom]

Haha.

Yes, I forgot to mention that.

I can make the chart less wide if that helps too.

 

[CWazyTom]

The time has finally arrived.

The timeline is LIVE on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Woman#Member_Timeline