Talk:The Man Who Sold the World (album)

message: YOu guys got THREE days to do so, or I will -The Bird -  unsigned comment by 66.154.192.129 on 16:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did it, but threats are not a way to contribute to an encyclopedia, so I'm deleting it. Fantailfan 21:51, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi guys. Fantail, notice you put a cover version section in then removed it - correct in my opinion. Albums shouldn't have sections for cover versions of their songs when there are entries for the songs themselves - and "The Man Who Sold the World (song)" gives prominence to Nirvana's version. A brief mention and the song link, as we already had, is all it needs here. Cheers, Ian Rose 00:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should we include Nirvana's perfomance? 

message: When you type "The Man who Sold the World", it automatically gives the song.  I know the song is "better known" but I think the album is more significant and should be the automatic destination for typing "the man who sold the world".  I don't know how to do this, but it's just a thought. 160.39.145.130 (talk) 16:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you and could organise that but let's see if anyone else has an opinion first... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

text: I also agree, having just found this more than two years later! It seems logical to me that the album should take precedence: though it seems clear that the song is more widely known, the album was its origin. After all this time, it looks like a consensus to me...? Should probably be cross-posted to the talk page for the song before any ch-ch-ch-changes are made, though. Nortonius (talk) 23:15, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree, the song is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and shouldn't be disambiguated, whereas the album should. --JD554 (talk) 13:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: On what basis is the song the primary topic, would you say? While it seems that no pages link to the album article, two link to the song article; on the other hand, viewing figures for the album article for last month (June 2010) were 9,246, while those for the song article were 8,267. Not much to choose between them, but it would suggest to me that it's the album people look for on WP, rather than the song, and that seems to be the thrust of WP:PRIMARY TOPIC. I'd rule Google searches out, because of the multitude of song lyric sites - Google any album with the same name as one of its tracks, and you'll get zillions more pages on lyrics to the song, rather than about the album. Nortonius (talk) 15:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

text: Just thought I'd check that those viewing figures for June were representative - from the beginning of July 09 to the end of June 10, the album article got 172,680 hits, while the song article got 153,915, and the album got a higher hit rate in every month. Actually I think that this is highly significant, given the original point of the discussion, that a simple search for "the man who sold the world" takes you to the song: clearly people are choosing to look at the album more than at the song, despite the re-direct, without which the viewing figures would probably be even further apart. Nortonius (talk) 15:51, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You make a good argument with respect to the page visits of the album article and, due to that, I've changed my mind and agree that the undabbed page should be the album article and the dabbed page should be the song article. Incidentally, you can exclude the majority of lyrics servers for google searches if your add "-lyrics" to your search string. --JD554 (talk) 11:51, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok great, thanks for coming back with that, and for the tip re search strings - to be honest, I'd forgotten about adding +s and -s to search strings! I wonder, should we go ahead and do something about changing the dab? Don't mind waiting a while for more input, as it's only a couple of days since I posted something about this on the song's talk page.  People don't seem to be finding this the most gripping issue for their attention though, given that so far you and I are the only people to have spoken up in over two years - understandable really! p.s. Hmm! Looks like I completely failed to understand how "What links here" works, too! Something felt wrong about the results I reported earlier so I looked again - of course, both articles are linked from more places than I could be bothered to count, even hiding transclusions and redirects! Oh well - I'm pretty confident of those viewing figures, anyway, anyone can check them! Nortonius (talk) 12:31, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

text: Well it's been 10 days since I posted a note on the song article's talk page, and JD554 and I remain the only editors to comment on this in recent times, either there or here, so I think it's time the dab was changed per the above discussion - only, I'd rather not do it myself as I have no experience of moving pages etc. and don't want to mess up! If it's not done in a few hours, I'll ask around for someone who might do it. Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 13:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

text:  Credit goes to editors Sonia and Anthony.bradbury for picking up the pieces of the mess I made when trying to do it myself, and making it work! Nortonius (talk) 22:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirection 

message: Is there any connection to, or inspiration from, Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon? DS (talk) 00:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: I understand that this album has some hard rock and heavy metal tones, but it also explores progressive and psychedelic and blues. Rock just seems easier. --24.107.207.98 (talk) 18:28, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: According to whom? (WP:SUBJECTIVE). Dan56 (talk) 20:39, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

text: I agree with the IP. 'Rock' is a good general term for the album, without going into a long list of all the genres it does explore.  While we're at it, Dan, I see you'd made the main infobox image the early US 'cowboy' cover. I don't think this is appropriate as the iconic cover, the one used for original release in the album's country of origin, is the 'dress' cover. If there's a general rule about using the very first release as the infobox image then I think we're adhering slavishly to it here, not logically, by using the cowboy cover. The community seemed to agree with this for a very long time, as the article has pretty well always used the dress cover as lead image, and you've already had at least one editor revert you on the change, so I'm hoping to convince you here that we should switch back. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:00, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

text: Again, other than us editors, what third-party source shares this opinion? That other genres describe the album that way? And I don't think one inexperienced IP in the last week is a worry. I don't know how it's iconic, but if it has replaced the original and is widely distributed, then that would fit the criteria for an alternate cover. If the artist's country of origin should take precedent, then why wouldn't that apply to the release date as well? Dan56 (talk) 01:41, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: This is my point, you say 'rock' and you don't even need a citation. Undoubtedly there's a strong hard rock and heavy metal tinge to it, that's in the main body, with citations, but that's not all there is to it (as the main body also intimates, again with citations) and the source in the infobox about "moving into" hard rock and heavy metal doesn't necessarily support the idea that the whole album can be characterised that way. Don't get me wrong, I wrote much of this article and personally prefer to describe it as heavy metal, but you'll always have arguments over that, even with citations, which are easy to cherry-pick. As to the album cover, it's not so much that someone you describe as an inexperienced IP has reverted your change of cover, but that what you've changed has had the tacit support of the community for a long time, even with the slightly earlier cartoon cover and its date listed among the alternatives. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:06, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

text: This would, as would this. There should never be cherry-picking, tho: The sides/genres that the sources have taken should be explained and included in proportion to the viewpoints. You might find one source that says it "explores progressive and psychedelic" for instance, but if it's in the minority of viewpoints that largely call it "hard rock" or "heavy metal", then placing it in the infobox (even with a cited source) would be undue weight. Dan56 (talk) 02:28, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hard rock/heavy metal? 

message: The editor of the Michael J Weller page has stated that the artist did the sleeve art not the cover art, as stated in this article.  Which is correct???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Weller
User:JCHeverly 21:46, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cover Art, or sleeve??? 

message: I have just looked up this album in Billboard's "New Album Releases" and it appears in the 2 January 1971 issue. The following appears above the list of releases:  This does not support a November 1970 release. As Billboard is a reliable source, especially on the subject of album release dates, should the article be amended? I ask due to the existence of citations of apparently reliable sources supporting the date given in the article.
I note also that the booklet accompanying the American 1999 remastered album credits the original US cartoon artwork to Michael J. Weller © 1971. Would this not have to be © 1970 if the album was released in 1970? — Labalius (talk) 01:55, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm always in favor of having dates supported by references rather than dates that come out of nowhere. Binksternet (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

text: The Billboard report is basically just saying they missed mentioning it in previous issues, and are mentioning it 'now' - I bought the album a couple of weeks before Xmas in '70 - so, it was definitely out. 50.111.60.168 (talk) 17:57, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  USA release date 

message: While sources routinely give 4 November 1970 as the US release date, might some sort of mention - in the body or a footnote or something - of the idea that it actually came out later be worth considering? Not to overwrite 4 Nov as the date but at least to suggest there's some debate there. The official Bowie blog have talked a few times like here and also here about it supposedly being released the other side of New Year (the latter also suggests the UK release was a few days earlier, too). --TangoTizerWolfstone (talk) 12:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. Might not hurt. If there's one thing I've disliked about writing Bowie is the website insistence of changing established release dates for everything. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 13:15, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  US release date (again)