Wikipedia talk:Notability (albums)

message: The general standard of notability that I've seen on wikipedia is as the title says, nontrivial coverage in multiple reliable sources.  I'd consider most album reviews to constitute nontrivial coverage, and there are countless reliable sources for them, (AMG, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Christgau, Popmatters, etc.).  I'd say any album which recieved nontrivial review coverage (at least a few sentences) in multiple sources should qualify, since once you have a couple of secondary sources (reviews) you can synthesize them into a tertiary source article. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that a "few sentences" would be nontrivial, but a full writeup certainly would be. The issue isn't just verifiability (which generally would be satisfied with a simple Amazon link), but notability-is there enough source material on the album (itself, not the band) that a good article could be written about it? If not, no one's arguing the album should not merit mention-only that it would be better handled under its parent band article until/unless there is enough sourcing to spin it off into a decent article of its own, populated with real information that isn't just a track list and cover photo, but actually explains why the album is significant. It need not be a "Top 20" for this-but in addition to WP:NOT paper, is mentioned that WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information. Creating articles "because it's an album" rather than "because it's a notable subject" is the very definition of indiscriminate-information added "just because." Now, that being said, if an album's received a ton of coverage in "alternative" but reliable circles, we certainly should not exclude them for simple lack of mainstream coverage. The standard should be, however, that we have something to work with allowing an article more then "The Cow Jumped Over The Moon is the second album by the Barely Notables. It was released in 2010 and has 12 tracks: (listing). One critic said it was 'okay but not inspiring.'" Seraphimblade 17:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel like reviews should be the #1 criteria, because 99% of the albums that deserve articles are going to have reviews.  Everything else is just there for completeness in all sorts of little categories, but if you can find reviews for the material then you have your secondary sources.  Of course it's being discriminate: we're limiting ourselves to material that someone else has considered worthwhile enough to review. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we're mostly in agreement-I entirely agree with "notability is not subjective", if it's received non-trivial coverage, it's notable period. However, I think we should consider the nature of the review-if it's a site which allows anyone to post reviews, there's no verification or reliability. If it's a major site with professional reviewers (or at least well-known, identifiable amateurs who undergo editorial review), that's probably a different story. (This should, of course, include those sites which mainly focus on a specific genre, so long as they're not doing trivial coverage, anonymous coverage, or reprints from the band or its label.) However, I think length is still a consideration-an album which received one review, which consists basically of "X released Y on mm/dd/yyyy. It's alright but needs some work." is probably not an establishment of notability. On the other hand, one lengthy and in-depth reviews or several reasonably deep ones should qualify. My only objection would be allowing "mentions in passing"-almost every album gets mentioned somewhere, notability should demand that someone cared enough to actually delve in. Seraphimblade 19:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, I would encourage hesitating on a book by a notable author, if it's not generated much press. Same with a notable filmmaker. Now note, we're not talking about :Steven Spielberg or :Stephen King here-anything they write is going to generate a ton of press, guaranteeing its notability. But what about an indie filmmaker or smaller-time author who just barely passes notability? Maybe they've had enough written about them to be notable, but little has been written about a book they wrote. In this case, I'd say we should mirror the coverage in reliable sources-if the book's only been mentioned in passing in connection with the author, or the film only mentioned in passing in connection with the filmmaker, we should mention it in passing in their article. Similar with music-if we're talking about :Nirvana or :Led Zeppelin, all of their albums are going to have generated ample coverage to write a good article. On the other hand, if we're talking about a band who juuuuuuust barely scrapes by the notability criteria, their albums may not have generated much press. In this case, it's best to handle it as with any non-notable thing which requires mention due to connection with something notable-mention it at first in the article about the notable subject, and then, if it later does generate enough press, spin it off into its own article then. Seraphimblade 19:43, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text:  I disagree with the idea that all material produced by a notable person is itself notable enough to warrant an article.  I certainly understand the thinking that we're only placing limits on ourselves, but from what I've seen of Wikipedia:Notability, this line of thinking is not what Wikipedia is about.  Rather, albums should be evaluated as to whether they were influential and notable, not just whether they were performed by a notable person or group.  Take, for example, the realm of classical music.  There are quite possibly over a hundred thousand recordings of classical music, and a large number of them are performed by people considered to be notable; it would be rather ridiculous for each of those albums to have their own article.  Or take the compositions by J.S. Bach; we would find ourselves with nearly a thousand more articles each detailing the specifics of those pieces.  You may say, fine!  Let's add all of these articles!  And to some extent, that's what the philosophy of Wikipedia has been.  I can certainly see why; such information can be useful, and it's convenient to have it all in one place.  However, my point is that the material isn't important for an understanding of the main subject.  You can give me a page about a tiny Bach work, or one of the least popular albums of a famous band, and I'll be able to learn about that one item, but my understanding of the subject would have been much better served by a summary in the main article generalizing the style of the music.  If we continue in the current fashion, I predict we'll have ten million articles, but less than a million will be about broad, notable topics, and the rest will be articles about specific, minor topics related to or produced by things that are actually notable.  Be that as it may--if, as you say, minor books and movies are being deemed notable, then we have little choice but to adopt the same approach for albums. —Sesquialtera II (talk) 21:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nontrivial, independent, reliable sources