Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)/Archive 1

message: I apologize for adding articles about minor bands if they're not important enough for Wikipedia; most of the recent ones I've created certainly don't come anywhere near meeting these Notability and Music Guidelines. But I would still like to see more articles about college bands on Wikipedia. It really helps to give a better feel for the music scene of an area or university. Maybe this group and other groups whose writeups I've created aren't "notable" in and of themselves, but small discussions of their music really humanize the writeup for the university that they are students of. If you're going by the letter of the law, these writeups should probably be deleted, but please leave me a message before you do so.
Additionally, I will do my best to expand them before a VfD comes up, realizing that supposedly a well-written article trumps concerns of notability.  I'm not taking this personally, but I would like to see at least some of these writeups stay.  It is, however, finals week, and it may take 2 weeks to finish revisions for this reason.  Please be patient.
The complete list of my recent group inserts:
====CWRU groups====
*Speakeasy (a capella group)
*Chauncey Peppertooth
*Zugzwang (band)
*The Minimum Requirements
*Case in Point
*Solstice (a capella group)
====Other====
*Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
*M83 (band)
*Members of The Arcade Fire
*Mia Doi Todd
*The Clarks
*Efterklang
*Springbok Nude Girls
*Dune (German band)
*The Avett Brothers
Thanks for your understanding. - McCart42 16:28, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
**Based on a a suggestion from Vegaswikian, I will be moving the CWRU group writeups to a single writeup tentatively entitled Case Western Reserve University Music Groups.  It sounds shaky as an idea right now -- any better suggestions?
***Actually, that sounds like a fine idea, though I'd go with Case Western Reserve University music scene. That would allow you to cover individual bands as well as trends, etc. (In any case, Music Groups in your original title should be de-capitalized.) Also, it would be a good idea to leave a note on each of the articles' talk pages indicating your intentions. android↔talk 16:59, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
****OK, sounds good.  I like your suggestion of a better title, and I'll start moving sometime soon, leaving redirects from the previous pages and a note on the talk page with a link back to this discussion.  I am somewhat concerned that the writeup won't look quite as clean as the current system, though.  Seems much more elegant to just have a writeup for the group itself, though I guess I see that what I consider significant in my little world might not be something anyone else really cares about.  Any suggestions for what to do with the other (non-CWRU) music group writeups which will probably eventually be deleted as insignificant?  Opinions on which of the music wikis to post stuff like this to?  I see Music-Wiki and the Music Wikicity as possibilities, though it would be nice to have some branch of wikipedia which automatically imports the larger band writeups and also allows smaller band writeups (unlike the current WikiProject:Music guidelines). - McCart42 20:35, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
::Nononono, you can certainly leave them on Wikipedia. The best way to prevent these articles from being deleted is to actually write a comprehensive article.  All of the bands listed have multiple CD's & lots of touring experience, which at least qualifies them for borderline notability.  What annoys people (or makes them suspicious) is when an article has two sentences and a link to the band's website as the only content.  You shouldn't just create an article that says "They're a band from Pittsburgh, here's who's in it, here's their records, go to their website for more info."  You should take the info you get from the website and any other sources you can find (including your own knowledge about the band) and write a real article. (see Archers of Loaf, Big Black for examples of reasonable articles about relatively obscure bands.) Although I would un-wikilink the band members and albums until or unless you can create real articles about them.  Soundguy99 23:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds great.  I was always planning to fill out those articles, but I tend to start lots of projects before finishing one.  Hopefully if everyone is a bit patient with me I can put in all I've been meaning to put in on them before they hit the cutting block.  If I don't make it in time and they do get deleted, how final is that?  I would certainly hope that I could make an effort to maintain that work that I put in before the article was deleted.  I did once borrow someone else's brief writeup on a historic person named Liu Daxia that was speedy deleted, and I have no idea where that work went, so I'm a bit curious about this sort of "lost information". - McCart42 04:11, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)
*Well, not to blow my anonymyity, but I can definitely say from personal experience that the bands listed under "CWRU groups" (except JFJO, which is not a CWRU band, although they've appeared there several times) are way under the notability guidelines, and would be likely to be nominated for deletion under  Vanity Pages, Verifiablilty and several sections of What Wikipedia is not.  I think your proposed solution is swell, although I would add "Student" somwhere in the title to differentiate it from any "official" music groups that exist as part of the CWRU music degree program.  Good luck with finals.  ;-)  Soundguy99 18:04, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  College bands/groups and notability 

message: *Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
*M83 (band)
*Members of The Arcade Fire
*Mia Doi Todd
*The Clarks
*Efterklang
*Springbok Nude Girls
*Dune (German band)
*The Avett Brothers
Thanks for your understanding. - McCart42 16:28, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
**Based on a a suggestion from Vegaswikian, I will be moving the CWRU group writeups to a single writeup tentatively entitled Case Western Reserve University Music Groups.  It sounds shaky as an idea right now -- any better suggestions?
***Actually, that sounds like a fine idea, though I'd go with Case Western Reserve University music scene. That would allow you to cover individual bands as well as trends, etc. (In any case, Music Groups in your original title should be de-capitalized.) Also, it would be a good idea to leave a note on each of the articles' talk pages indicating your intentions. android↔talk 16:59, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
****OK, sounds good.  I like your suggestion of a better title, and I'll start moving sometime soon, leaving redirects from the previous pages and a note on the talk page with a link back to this discussion.  I am somewhat concerned that the writeup won't look quite as clean as the current system, though.  Seems much more elegant to just have a writeup for the group itself, though I guess I see that what I consider significant in my little world might not be something anyone else really cares about.  Any suggestions for what to do with the other (non-CWRU) music group writeups which will probably eventually be deleted as insignificant?  Opinions on which of the music wikis to post stuff like this to?  I see Music-Wiki and the Music Wikicity as possibilities, though it would be nice to have some branch of wikipedia which automatically imports the larger band writeups and also allows smaller band writeups (unlike the current WikiProject:Music guidelines). - McCart42 20:35, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
::Nononono, you can certainly leave them on Wikipedia. The best way to prevent these articles from being deleted is to actually write a comprehensive article.  All of the bands listed have multiple CD's & lots of touring experience, which at least qualifies them for borderline notability.  What annoys people (or makes them suspicious) is when an article has two sentences and a link to the band's website as the only content.  You shouldn't just create an article that says "They're a band from Pittsburgh, here's who's in it, here's their records, go to their website for more info."  You should take the info you get from the website and any other sources you can find (including your own knowledge about the band) and write a real article. (see Archers of Loaf, Big Black for examples of reasonable articles about relatively obscure bands.) Although I would un-wikilink the band members and albums until or unless you can create real articles about them.  Soundguy99 23:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds great.  I was always planning to fill out those articles, but I tend to start lots of projects before finishing one.  Hopefully if everyone is a bit patient with me I can put in all I've been meaning to put in on them before they hit the cutting block.  If I don't make it in time and they do get deleted, how final is that?  I would certainly hope that I could make an effort to maintain that work that I put in before the article was deleted.  I did once borrow someone else's brief writeup on a historic person named Liu Daxia that was speedy deleted, and I have no idea where that work went, so I'm a bit curious about this sort of "lost information". - McCart42 04:11, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)
*Well, not to blow my anonymyity, but I can definitely say from personal experience that the bands listed under "CWRU groups" (except JFJO, which is not a CWRU band, although they've appeared there several times) are way under the notability guidelines, and would be likely to be nominated for deletion under  Vanity Pages, Verifiablilty and several sections of What Wikipedia is not.  I think your proposed solution is swell, although I would add "Student" somwhere in the title to differentiate it from any "official" music groups that exist as part of the CWRU music degree program.  Good luck with finals.  ;-)  Soundguy99 18:04, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Other

message: I'm getting sick of VFDing imaginary music genres. Every garage band thinks they have a unique style which they'd like to name, and even worse, every journalist, reviewer, webzine, and blog likes to make up their own terms to describe musical styles. Typically, WP articles on styles give examples of bands which play in that style, but if you read the band's article, it uses some other name for their genre. Accordingly, I'd like to propose the following criterion for a music genre to be included:
*A music genre may only be included in Wikipedia if at least one Wikipedia article on a musician or band uses the genre as a principal description of their style.
—Wahoofive (talk) 23:49, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How would that guideline address the problem of 'every garage band thinks they have a unique style which they'd like to name'? As for 'every journalist, reviewer, webzine, and blog likes to make up their own terms to describe musical styles', the unfortunate reality is that more often than not, it is the music press, not academic musicologists in some ivory tower, that creates new genre names. The names are all legitimate to the degree to which they are adopted by the music producers, brokers and consumers. It's difficult to know where to draw the line. — mjb 00:03, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's why the line I'm proposing is that there be a legitimate WP article (i.e. not a garage band) which uses the term to describe that band's style. This puts the onus on the editors of each band page to determine which term is appropriate for that band. I don't care who came up with the genre term, but I'd like to see a consensus so we don't have ten different terms (coined by ten different webzines) for the style of the same band.—Wahoofive (talk) 01:39, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Mmmmm. . . . . Too self-referential, IMHO.  W'pedia articles aren't neccessarily proof of the existence of a genre.  I would think a guideline should say something about multiple verifiable uses of the term in major media, and associated with a minimum number of "unrelated' acts (i.e. acts that don't have important members in common; just because one guy has five projects he's working on with different members in each project, it doesn't constitute a genre.)  Also, just to be sneaky, my gut instinct is that a lot of these "fake genre"  articles are created immediately after a new/anon editor writes an article about a non-or-borderline-notable band; after about a week the author loses interest, moves on to something else, and stops watching his/her baby articles or becomes more acclimated to W'pedia standards.  So waiting a bit before VfDing might result in the fake genre getting deleted without objection.  Soundguy99 16:15, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Music genres