Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Pop music issues

message: As this is an unprecedented type of action, I'm not sure how the proper way to respond to it would be. If I've responded the wrong way, my comments can be moved. Thanks OmegaWikipedia 08:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering Hoary left a message on my talk page requesting that I move the article myself, I find it very dissapointing that Freddy decided to ignore his opinion and to do whatever he felt like doing anyway. Freddy, be courteous and DONT move comments from other people without contacting them first. While my comments can be moved, I would have appreciated you letting me know before you actually did it. OmegaWikipedia 20:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You said they could be moved, so I moved them. I apoligize; I was just doing what your comment said to do. --FuriousFreddy 22:18, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The right place for comments 

message: I have divided the article page for this RfC into sections for a statement by the originators (first parties), a statement by the second parties (those whom the originator says are violating the MoS or introducing fancruft), and outside views.  The statement by the originators should consist of the comments of Furious Freedy, Mel Etitis, or any other signers.  I suggest that those responding should move their comments into the section for second party comments.  
Keeping the RfC divided into sections will make it easier for third parties to understand who is saying what.  It should also make these move wars and revert wars unnecessary.  Robert McClenon 20:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We should probably just stop and start over again. People are replying to the wrong sections, and sockpuppets are already making comments. How am I "obsessed with R&B" and immature? I didn't join this project to have to be insulted by people who don't even know me. --FuriousFreddy 22:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Thank you for the offer, Robert. In the meantime, I'll refrain from doing adding anything to the page. I think that Robert's job will be made much easier if others also refrain from adding anything. There will after all be plenty of time to contribute after he has worked on the page. -- Hoary 02:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I added sections; if people consider themselves the subject of the RfC, they can contribute there.  If people want to add an alternative statement of the dispute, they can do that.  Anyone who wants to add an outside view can do that too.  Guettarda 02:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I noticed that sections had been added (thank you!), but I also noticed that the whole thing was still a dog's dinner. I have "been bold" in deleting one author's signed interpolations within another's signed statement, and have alerted the former author, inviting him to re-add whatever he wants but in an appropriate place. And I was about to "be bolder" in deleting the entire "Discussion" from the project page, moving it here, and adding a notice to the project page telling people that any discussion should go here. Would that be too bold of me? -- Hoary 02:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for catching that - I missed it.  Might as well leave the discussion section - no point in making the involved parties feel even more marginalised. The point of this is not to drive them away.  Guettarda 02:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's certainly some truth in that, but what I fear will happen is that 20kB of moderately clear, uninterrupted statements and responses will be followed by a tiresome 100kB of "Did!" "Didn't!" "Did too!" Let's keep up the S/N ratio of the project page. -- Hoary 02:47, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, then go for it.  Guettarda 03:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You can certainly include my comment that refactoring needs to be done in your refactoring.  Jkelly 03:03, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was about to reply to Guettarda with a simple "Done!" Well, I have indeed done what I think and hope he OK'd: simply shunting a large and rapidly growing amount of discussion from the project page to this talk page. I haven't done any other refactoring, though, and right now don't intend to. -- Hoary 03:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Should there be a place to endorse the description of the problem?  Jkelly 20:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sections created 

message: I will, at some time in the next 24 hours, be refactoring these comments to move all comments by second parties to second parties, and all responses by first parties to first parties, and all unsigned comments to a sort of limbo.  If I see any comments deleted, I will write them up as vandalism.  Do not move any comments except to put them in their proper places.  Robert McClenon 01:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the offer, Robert. In the meantime, I'll refrain from doing adding anything to the page. I think that Robert's job will be made much easier if others also refrain from adding anything. There will after all be plenty of time to contribute after he has worked on the page. -- Hoary 02:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I added sections; if people consider themselves the subject of the RfC, they can contribute there.  If people want to add an alternative statement of the dispute, they can do that.  Anyone who wants to add an outside view can do that too.  Guettarda 02:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I noticed that sections had been added (thank you!), but I also noticed that the whole thing was still a dog's dinner. I have "been bold" in deleting one author's signed interpolations within another's signed statement, and have alerted the former author, inviting him to re-add whatever he wants but in an appropriate place. And I was about to "be bolder" in deleting the entire "Discussion" from the project page, moving it here, and adding a notice to the project page telling people that any discussion should go here. Would that be too bold of me? -- Hoary 02:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for catching that - I missed it.  Might as well leave the discussion section - no point in making the involved parties feel even more marginalised. The point of this is not to drive them away.  Guettarda 02:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's certainly some truth in that, but what I fear will happen is that 20kB of moderately clear, uninterrupted statements and responses will be followed by a tiresome 100kB of "Did!" "Didn't!" "Did too!" Let's keep up the S/N ratio of the project page. -- Hoary 02:47, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, then go for it.  Guettarda 03:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You can certainly include my comment that refactoring needs to be done in your refactoring.  Jkelly 03:03, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was about to reply to Guettarda with a simple "Done!" Well, I have indeed done what I think and hope he OK'd: simply shunting a large and rapidly growing amount of discussion from the project page to this talk page. I haven't done any other refactoring, though, and right now don't intend to. -- Hoary 03:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Refactoring planned

message: I will not be refactoring the article page because the other contributors have already done that.  Thank you.
I think that this discussion will proceed much better if we discuss in our own discussion sections so that it is clear what the different points of view are.  Thank you to everyone for cooperating.  Robert McClenon 11:59, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Should there be a place to endorse the description of the problem?  Jkelly 20:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Refactoring has happened

message: These two points have nothing directly to do with the persons in question; it has to do with the qualities of certain articles.
*The articles for Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson contain numerous instances of POV language, and are also very long (Mariah Carey was 61 K the last time I checked). In a related issue, the Michael Jackson page is also very large (and is vandalaized pratically on-the-hour); and it may need to be reduced (although I do this every two weeks) or split.
*The articles on The Emancipation of Mimi and We Belong Together, which both document current releases, are also excessively long. The former in particular is far too long for anyone not wholly dedicated and determined to reading the article to be able to do so. Cleanup is certainly neccessary, but I do not know how to begin (my first thought would be to start over again with a stub, and determine the important points ot include to build up an article of higher quality).
There still also exists the issue with seperate articles on different recordings of the same song. Such editing is questionable, certainly in the cases of standards such as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", which could very easily result in dozens of articles on various recordings of the same song if the example here is to be followed. When said articles are nominated at AfD with the intentions of having information on the recordings moved to an appropriate album article, several of the editors band together to vote "keeps" in order to retain the articles, resulting in several "no consensus" AfDs. Often, no rationale is given for why the articles should be kept (insults for nominating them for deletion sometimes occur as well), while some users provide rationales such as "it is a part of *artist's name*'s official discography" or "the text is too long to mere". This brings up the following questions:
#How notable does a song need ot be in order to warrant having a Wikipedia article written about it. Is every single by a notable artist inherently notable?
#Do we need seperate articles in the Wikipeida on different recordings of the same composition? And, if so, why?
This was previously being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Notability and Music Guidelines/Songs, although dicussion seems to have tapered off there. 
--FuriousFreddy 00:42, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd suggest that in the preceding discussion, FuriousFreddy showed us in micro- level detail where some problems with Wp's music articles are.  I'd like to interject and follow up this point with some macro- level concerns.  I just spent some time going through the album articles for the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and David Bowie.  The vast majority are unreferenced, informal, and contain personal speculation, and this is actually referred to as a model at the project page.  Having said that, they are by no means as troublesome as some of the articles FuriousFreddy has been trying to direct our attention to here, but I suggest that they set a questionable example.  These articles, unlike the ones under discussion here, do not have a body of editors edit warring to preserve their current state, but it would take a significant amount of effort to clean them up nevertheless.  FuriousFreddy mentioned me in passing on the RfC page, in connection with some Madonna albums.  What seems to have happened there is that User:Beautifulstranger, perhaps after reviewing the standard set by the Mariah Carey articles, set about working diligently at turning them into competitively flattering and marketing-material-oriented.  At the moment, however, there is no Madonna fan base to back up those changes, and that user (who I am not holding up as an ideal contributor) left the project upset.  I don't want to move the conversation into some abstract discussion about how the Music Project needs some help (the general problem is much less distressing than the immediate problem we're discussing here).  Instead what I am trying to convey is that the Music Project is not at the moment able to deal with aggressive unencyclopedic editing on its own, and the matter very much needs outside review.  Jkelly 01:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Really? I've only briefly glanced at those album articles, although I've read several of the singles articles. Many of those cited several books written on the band, which is where I figured the imformation came from. But if these also contain speculation and such, then a closer look at them is also needed. I'll go ahead and put myself up to the test: is there anything, upon first looks, that needs to be done with, say, any of the articles in :Category:The Temptations albums, all but one of which I wrote primarily on my own? I've come across several articles on, for example, Michael Jackson, Jackson 5, and Marvin Gaye albums/singles that I've been cleaning up as I get time (since the cleanups to those articles did not get reverted or disputed, there was no serious issue at hand there).--FuriousFreddy 03:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't clear enough. In fact, I added links to a number of singles articles to the Wikiproject Songs page as models, including ones by The Beatles and The Temptations. I meant specifically the articles on albums that I was just looking at. Since it's listed at WP:ALBUM as a model, take a look at The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. In any case, I wasn't trying to suggest that this RfC should get into the details of the WikiProject, or that there weren't FA-standard articles in it. Jkelly 03:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Next elements of issue 

message: There is no question that a lot of "singles" pages are either not needed and/or need extensive cleanup.  Case in point: "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life", a hugely influential dance song performed by Indeep, and also the name of a best selling book (which has become a definitive guide to the history of DJ culture and in fact, is named after the Indeep song), is another Mariah Carey page on Wikipedia... a Carey single that received almost zero airplay and sales, both in and out of nightclubs.  At the very least this title needs a disambig page which leads to the song (not just Carey's version) and the book.  The Carey page makes a slight reference to the Indeep original.  A newer example would be the "Hung Up" page for Madonna's newest single.  The article lists twenty-two different charts (most of them iTunes charts specific to different countries) and a US Dance chart trajectory... and the song just debuted this week.
As long as we are speaking of article accuracy, I would like to also draw attention to the growing trend of discography/singles tables within artists' articles.  Recently the Madonna discography page listed new single "Hung Up" with a number 25 peak position in the Dance chart column, which in fact that is only the song's debut position.  After questioning this practice on that article's Talk page, User:Red-Blue-White willingly removed this misleading information, although a similar situation now exists on Depeche Mode's page, with current single "Precious" showing a Hot 100 peak of number 99 in the singles table when in fact the track makes its debut appearance on the Hot 100 this very week.  It may sound anal-retentive to bring this up, but I believe it to be unencyclopedic and comepletely erroneous.  Yet there are editors who are inserting incomplete discography tables throughout Wikipedia and updating chart postions week by week before a song has even reached its peak.
I suggest people in this community not only review the overly-detailed singles pages, but also the accuracy of singles info and chart data right in the artists' articles.  Just my $.02.  -- eo 03:17, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Thank you, FuriousFreddy!

message: I'd like to point out the Wikidata project, which is a proposed Wikimedia project that I think will likely come about fairly soon.  It would be a home for extremely detailed data such as sales performances, and could be displayed in any number of ways.  This way, it would be easier to include only the most important data while still making it simple to link to more details. Tuf-Kat 06:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Music/Tables_for_charts Jkelly 17:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Chart data and Wikidata

message: The Wikipedia will never be able to sustain a standard of quality if there is no group involvement. This issue needs the attention of more than a few individuals; what it really needs is for rules to be set and established. --FuriousFreddy 23:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Three thoughts.  The FA process on Cool (song) deserves a mention here, as it brought in some commentary on articles about contemporary pop music singles.  I've suggested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Tables for charts that Cool (song) can, and perhaps should, be used as a model for similar articles now that we have a FA standard to compare to.  The other thought is that there is no Music project guideline for bands or recording artists, and drafting one, along the lines of WP:ALBUM, might go some distance towards getting a lot of discussion about articles on artists.  The last thought is that, just from what I have seen around Wikipedia, articles on movie stars and their products aren't generally great, articles on athletics figures tend to not suffer from what I've called a "marketing material" look, in spite of the fact that sports stars also have energetic fans and it is easy to imagine gushing praise and long table-formatted lists of achievements.  It may be worth trying to figure out what Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sports is doing correctly.  Jkelly 00:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inactivity. Why? 

message: I have posted links to the RfC article page on the user talk pages of the four Wikipedians who are alleged to be problematical editors.  Are they willing to respond to the concerns expressed by the signers of the RfC?  
I, like the signers of this RfC, would much prefer to see it resolved by improving the way pop music articles are edited and by improving their quality, rather than by treating it as a user conduct issue.  Are the enthusiastic pop music fans willing to work with the signers of the RfC?
Robert McClenon 18:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notice 

message: OmegaWikipedia has asked me, on my user talk page, what MoS edits are being reverted and ignored.  Can one of the signers of this RfC please identify a few examples?  Robert McClenon 21:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: I generally agree with the RfC description, from first-hand and current experience, having even witnessed the Return of WinnerMario, who showed up yesterday to weigh in on the FAC procedure for Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl". The situation as far as song article quality on this and "Cool" (the two in this fanatic category that I've checked out) is ridiculous, the behavior is, well, kinda fascinating and kinda part of normal (Wikipedia being what it is...)... My specific concern is when all of this carries over into Featured Article, and on to the Main Page FAs.''
Case in point, yesterday's Main Page feature for Stefani's "Cool". I couldn't believe it. In the summary, it explains:
:The song's musical style, and its production by Austin, were heavily inspired by pop music from the 1980s
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Can anything be more vague and confused? Only, perhaps, the redirect for "pop music from the 1980s"... And there is no further elaboration, really, nothing on the music itself, in the rest of the article, just lots of stuff about the lyrics and "meaning" and chart performance and plotline for the music video. 
HOW CAN THAT HAVE MADE IT ONTO THE FRONT PAGE??!!!!??
So, I think that, besides rules and stuff, it's also practically important that one decent standard example for this type of article should be created, even if only to protect the Main Page from more "Cool"-grade articles. Perhaps not for a target artist, but for some other borderline consequential song that won't get raided...
Also, finding out that ONE PERSON alone picks the FA for Main Page, with no criteria beyond FA status, a summary section, and a pic, is also somewhat alarming. Another reason to make sure FAs deserve it... --Tsavage 07:07, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You may be interested in Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates.  It is, however, typical to let some reasonable amount of time to pass after an article has passed Wikipedia:Featured article candidates before listing it there.  Jkelly 09:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, thanks, I discovered FARC soon after discovering FAC, which all happened by accident maybe 3-4 days ago. This seems like an instance of a "typical" situation in...our society, where a small number of people are active in ways that have big effects, but on things that only seem on the periphery to most, most of the time. Like, FA. You see the front page pick, maybe read it, but... Until one catches your eye, usually, for a negative reason...you don't think about the mechanisms behind it, and the relatively few people involved in the decisions. So anyhow, after two years or so, and a fair bit of contribution, I discover this FA world, Raul654 as lone gatekeeper, etc. FA procedures is not an obvious area to find, even to the Wikipedia-involved. It certainly narrows down the wide open free spaces of Wikipedia feeling pretty quick, as in, A) few people involved in the FA process, B) one person with final authority. Of course, this is human nature, people operate in hidden spaces until the lights go on... Hmmm, that's kinda dark... (Why wait a reasonable time after Main Page FA for FARC, if the article is SOOOO bad? To make "us all" not look silly? But I automatically did that, I lodged my complaint on the Cool talk page yesterday, and figured I'd let it sit there for a while)> --Tsavage 15:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment: "Cool" on the Main Page???!!!!