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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:55, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Heavy bias

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Removed sections of the page that appeared biased or antagonistic, such as the fact that people doubted the authenticity of her persona being placed in the header, as most of the responses to her music have ranged from positive to neutral (the "Pretty Girl" video has a 98.5% like percentage out of nearly 600,000 ratings) yet the header seems to imply that an overwhelming majority of people, or at least a large contingent, have called into question whether or not her act is genuine, or at least that this topic has caused enough discourse to make it notable or a reason for her notability. Also removed information which appeared superfluous or non-notable, such as her first interview with The FADER or that she performed at a sold-out Bowery Ballroom show at which the audience "consisted largely of chaperoned children and teenagers". Finally, removed the "Criticism" section as per WP:CRITS. Benmite (talk) 00:35, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest publication that has ever published a word about Coitrill is The New York Times, who wrote an entire article about the dispute. It's more biased to pretend that such a controversy never happened, regardless of how it reflects on the subject.
Whether it should be mentioned in a lead is a different argument altogether. WP:LEAD: "The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." Currently in the article, there seems to be 4 out of 10 third-party sources that reference the controversy. I believe that should be considered "prominent".--Ilovetopaint (talk) 12:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think excluding that information from the header, or even from the article itself, would be to "pretend that such a controversy never happened".
Not only does the NYT article acknowledge that it was a small amount of people questioning her authenticity, but most of the article that you referenced from The New York Times is not, like you claimed, about this "dispute". Most of the article is spent talking about her most recent LP, 'diary 001', while only 4 out of the 24 paragraphs in the entire article addresses criticisms of her, the biggest of which is a video by HYPESAGE! that currently has less than 200,000 views and nearly a fifth dislikes, which is irrefutably insignificant compared to the 26 million views racked up from "Pretty Girl" or even the 4.6 million views on "Flaming Hot Cheetos". The only video I could find on YouTube addressing the supposed controversy directly regarding her being an industry plant that had more than 20,000 views was the HYPESAGE! video.
Furthermore, to say that since 4 out of 10 articles referenced on the page address her father's involvement in her rise to fame that that is cause enough for it to be included in the lead is inaccurate for more than one reason. For starters, out of the four articles you mentioned, only two are entirely about the "controversy", one of which is a high-schooler's op-ed from the Burlington County Times, a local newspaper from a county which Clairo is not even from. Regardless of how much external research was done by said high-schooler, little of which actually was, this is not a reputable source in the first place. The second article is from The Ringer, who, in the sub-header of the article, writes "But a vocal minority began to wonder whether it was a more familiar tale than anyone was letting on." Even the one article that is both reputable and fully addresses the controversy acknowledges that it was merely a vocal minority who were making these claims about this "controversy". Again, I understand that this might seem like a significant minority but from what I've seen, this seems like a small amount of people who have made their voices heard through outlets such as Reddit, on which plenty of claims are made every single day.
Finally, WP:BATHWATER is about article deletion, not deletion of material within an article. As a matter of fact, WP:BATHWATER offers content removal from an article which has non-neutral sections as an alternative to deletion. Benmite (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What I meant to link was WP:BABY. I don't completely agree with your assessment (if encyclopedic significance was measured in YouTube views then Despacito would outweigh the Beatles' Hey Jude, A Day in the Life, and Strawberry Fields Forever combined), but now I think it's fair enough that the controversy might not merit inclusion in the lead. It absolutely does, however, deserve a mention in the body. If you're going to remove a minor event from the article that is supported by numerous authoritative sources, yes, that is introducing a bias (WP:UNDUE). If your issue is that a quarter of the section is about the controversy, then it's preferable to add more details about other notable facts, not to remove sourced content.
It makes no difference whether it was a majority or a minority. If it's a notable event that multiple sources reference to a subject, and if it's acceptable under WP:BLP, then there's no reason not to include it in the article. Still, I can entertain the notion. How big is her audience compared to the "online communities" discussing this dispute...? On Spotify she has almost 3 million monthly listeners, but so does Lhast, Isaac Kasule, and Floor 88, so that number is meaningless. Her Last.fm page says that less than 100k of the site's users have listened to her, while the Clairo subreddit has less than 2k readers.
On Twitter, querying "'clairo' 'industry plant'" reveals that it's something hundreds of people have posted about. Meanwhile on Rateyourmusic, less than 1k of users have listened to her album, and hardly any of her other releases budge past 20 ratings. The 500 ratings on Pretty Girl are evenly distributed between users who gave it the worst score possible and the most average score possible, with only a fifth marking the single higher than average. It would be interesting to know the sales numbers of Diary 001. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:43, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(addendum) even if there was no stigma attached to the way she became a professional musician, it's still within the realm of encyclopedic interest to cover how the subject got a record contract. Perfect examples are R. Stevie Moore ("With help from his uncle ...") and Ariel Pink ("gave a CD-R to the band Animal Collective ..." ) --Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Last.fm also says that Cardi B has less than 300k listeners, but Cardi B has also had 12 songs in the Billboard Top 40 and is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars of today. Last.fm is not a reliable source for testing a singer's notoriety because it's not a very popular website in the first place. Its Alexa rating is only 1,195 worldwide, and 1,546 in the US, meaning that it is the 1,195th most used website in the world. For comparison, Spotify (I'll get to that point in a second) has a worldwide ranking of 106 and a US ranking of 51, while YouTube (also going to get to that) has a ranking of 2, both worldwide and in the US, which is why they're more accurate in terms of what can be considered notable information.
As far as your Beatles comparison, I would bargain that Despacito is honestly probably more commercially successful than all of those songs separately (it was the #1 song in 47 countries, is certified platinum, and holds the record for most weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 combined with 16 weeks), let alone combined, but that's besides the point. I'm merely using YouTube view counts as a metric for notability because it is currently the 2nd most used website in the world. Despacito has more views than all of those songs' videos combined because it is a recent song that came out while YouTube existed, whereas the songs you listed by The Beatles did not, which is why most pop music that came out before the year 2000 doesn't have as many views on YouTube as, say, a video like Roar by Katy Perry, despite comparative success.
But more on your point about her subreddit. I went looking at some of the subreddits of the biggest pop stars of the past few years, only to find that their subscriber counts were somewhat abysmal compared to the general population of Reddit. Ariana Grande's subreddit only has 57.2k subscribers. Taylor Swift's subreddit has a mere 49.5k subscribers. Does this mean that there are more people who enjoy pimple popping videos or dumpster diving than there are fans of Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande? This seems like a hard point to argue considering the star power and record sales of both Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, two of the most commercially successful pop singers of the past decade, compared to the widespread appeal of dumpster diving (which is, thankfully, not that large.)
The musicians you listed currently have 64,058 listeners, 25,768 listeners, and 76,246 listeners on Spotify, respectively, while Clairo has 2,747,727 listeners. So not only do those artists not have the amount of listeners you claimed they had, but they also don't have even half as many as Clairo with all of their listeners combined. Moreover, what do those artists have to do with the price of tea in China?
Now that I've addressed all of the points about whether or not she's notable, let's address the main issue here.
I am still a bit confused as to what your reasoning for keeping this information in the article's lead is. Every artist has critics, and nearly every artist has talked about their critics in interviews before. Are you arguing that she is not notable enough to have an article in the first place? What do her Last.fm page, her subreddit, and her Rateyourmusic page having low amounts of verified listeners have to do with her being accused of being an industry plant? Although I don't assume you personally have a bias against her, you seem quite adamant about keeping this information in the article's lead section, without having explained much of why, other than that it has been addressed on a few occasions. Lastly, which part of WP:BLP are you referring to when you say it meets their guidelines? Benmite (talk) 03:47, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My cursory reading of her fanbase size was only to demonstrate that she is not a big enough artist to claim that such a dispute is "minor" considering there is almost nothing else to say about her. In her entire 2-year career, she has had 1 EP released by a minor label and some other things on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Her encyclopedic notability is almost totally derived from "Pretty Girl". Any professional articles that aren't centered on "Pretty Girl" is almost always a fluff promotional piece, so I don't count those as authoritative journalistic works. It could be argued that the vast majority of her Spotify and YouTube interest comes from both site's "suggestion" algorithms, and I don't think anyone knows how those work. Since it's hard to truly gauge these things I'll refrain from discussing that particular subject any further...
"Every artist has critics", that's absolutely correct, and it's always appropriate information to include such information, even if it might be construed as negative. You should check this recent RfC regarding similar verified criticism in the lead of Frank Zappa. Plus WP:BLPSTYLE: "Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of small minorities should not be included at all. Care must be taken with article structure to ensure the overall presentation and section headings are broadly neutral." The subject is not damaged by the issue, and the issue is presented in a neutral and balanced tone, therefore BLP concerns don't apply here. (I get that your central argument was that any mention of the issue is undue/unbalanced, but the contrary is indisputable, so the only other defense would be to cite BLP ...)
The worst thing that can be construed from the article is that the artist doesn't know what "DIY" means and is ignorant of music history. This is not a scandal, but the fact that is caused some sort of uproar, however the scale you wish to define it, is important in understanding the extent to which she is significant in the public consciousness (i.e. her notability). This is the same reason we cite her millions of YouTube views. MOS:LEAD: "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. It is not a news-style lead or "lede" paragraph."
I've tried expanding the lead so that there doesn't appear to be so much weight on this one detail, but it seems even that's not a good enough compromise for you. To wipe it completely from the article is terribly misguided. If Clairo came up in any scholarly works about DIY, lo-fi, or bedroom pop, it's inevitable that this controversy would come up as well.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:23, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The argument here seems to be whether or not including this information in the lead would be considered "neutral". You seem to have decided that the material is, in fact, neutral, without responding to my counter-argument. To say she is a pioneer in bedroom pop is not "vandalism". You are assuming bad faith when I had no intention of vandalizing the page, merely adding information as to why she is significant, because many of the articles I've read have cited her as being one of the breakout artists to make bedroom pop, although I should have sourced my material. However, you removed nearly every single piece of information I added other than that based on claims of vandalism.
Also, I didn't remove that information. I took it out of the lead because again, it does not appear to be the focal point of the article. As for the information you added to the lead, you haven't addressed that or any of the other numerous changes you made to the article, even though these seem to be pretty significant changes. Benmite (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As the original author of this article, and an infallible judge of such matters, let me say that this industry plant baloney doesn't belong in the lead and I've removed it. Its in the main body enough (probably too much). LOL, nothing ever changes. This sort of fake controversy is the type of bullshit that fills the pages of countless rock and rock biographies, legends being created out of events that were never anything to begin with. It happened with our parents (see Cynthia Plaster Caster, shall we put her in the lead of Jimi Hendrix? No.), it's happening to us, and it will happen with our kids one day. Guess what, if you know someone in the music industry, it can help you. Yes, if not for the MAN, we all know that every shitty bandcamp band would be world famous. That's the way it is. If its the subject of significant coverage in the NY Times, we should mention Clairo's evil plan to steal our souls, but that doesn't make it real.--Milowent • hasspoken 17:17, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As the original author of this article, and an infallible judge of such matters [...]

WP:OWN: All Wikipedia content—articles, categories, templates, and other types of pages—is edited collaboratively. No one, no matter how skilled, or how high-standing in the community, has the right to act as though they are the owner of a particular page.

This sort of fake controversy [...]

  • The New York Times: "Almost as quickly as fans began worshiping her as “mom!” and “queen!” in comment sections, Ms. Cottrill inspired a digital counter-movement that questioned whether some shadowy Svengali had engineered her success — conversations not unlike the skepticism and conspiracy-mongering that accompanied the rise of Lana Del Rey and Lorde." (cont.)
  • The Ringer: "To the majority of her fans, 19-year-old Clairo’s rise was the quintessential anyone-can-do-it success story of the viral era. But a vocal minority began to wonder whether it was a more familiar tale than anyone was letting on. What’s real for the young pop star?" (cont.)
  • Dazed Digital: "When “Pretty Girl” blew up in 2017, she found herself at the centre of a Reddit-generated whirlwind, after some sleuths figured out that her dad is Geoff Cottrill, a marketing executive who used to run Converse’s Rubber Tracks music studio programme." (cont.)
  • Pitchfork: "Like any young woman whose music suddenly becomes popular, the Massachusetts-born singer attracted legions of naysayers who dismissed her as a one-hit fluke or an industry plant."(cont.)

an infallible judge of such matters, let me say that this industry plant baloney doesn't belong in the lead ... That's the way it is. If its the subject of significant coverage in the NY Times, we should mention Clairo's evil plan to steal our souls, but that doesn't make it real. ... the type of bullshit that fills the pages of countless rock and rock biographies, legends being created out of events that were never anything to begin with.

WP:VERIFY: Wikipedia does not publish original research. Its content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors. Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it. If reliable sources disagree, then maintain a neutral point of view and present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight.
No comment on the comparison to Jimi Hendrix.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 18:46, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean that literally - that you are friends with Pitchfork staff? Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Surely that is how people get famous in music, its not due to anything so mundane as writing a catchy song!--Milowent • hasspoken 15:08, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:23, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Composition I - Writing Wikipedia

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 6 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Annawiat32 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: ChasGree.

— Assignment last updated by Danibanani3 (talk) 17:30, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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