Talk:Rock Me Tonite

A fact from Rock Me Tonite appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 January 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the 400 people interviewed for an oral history of MTV's early years could not agree on what was the best video, but they all agreed Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonite" was the worst?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Rock Me Tonite.

Wikipedia

Great Article!

Whoever wrote the part about the video did a SUPERB job. I have looked and looked and waited for years to see something written about that shocking video. A+--99.184.205.160 (talk) 15:12, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. It was, as the footnotes suggest, the result of an even more excellent chapter in I Want My MTV. Daniel Case (talk) 16:15, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One Source

I'd like to see some other sourcing a bit more balance in the section about the making of and fallout from this video. Squire has spent decades pushing his version of events and there are many^[who?] who question this version of history. Ridernyc (talk) 06:35, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Such as? You can't get away with this kind of vague phrasing in articles without citations (Kind of ironic, isn't it?).

In any event I think your criticism is a bit too hasty here. The quotes are all taken from one book, to be sure, but it is an oral history that talks to many different named sources in an entire chapter devoted to just this video. The authors included, in other chapters, many instances where people's accounts of something differed considerably. There were none in this chapter. Those who would probably be the likeliest to dispute Squier's account in the chapter, his managers (well, one of them) at the time corroborate his account (as I think the article makes clear).

Now, of course, one would like to hear what Kenny Ortega has to say, given the extent of his later career and the fact that Squier states that Ortega willfully deceived him. My understanding is that he has avoided or refused to answer questions about this video.

If you aren't more forthcoming with specific sources as to who "question[s] this version of history" within a couple of days, I will feel free to remove the tag. Daniel Case (talk) 16:51, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I take that back. It took some deep Google searching and several different strings, but I found Ortega's response. So, I will be putting it in. Daniel Case (talk) 17:02, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's done. Can we consider removing the tag now? Daniel Case (talk) 17:24, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reversion of edits by Dgpop 6/27/2015

I've reverted the two edits made by Dgpop for reasons more complicated than I felt I could go into in an edit summary.

1} "Removed unsourced opinion" The text in question stated that many people thought Squier was gay, or on drugs, because of the video. This is actually supported by the source cited in the article, and to be fair it should be in the intro.

2) The claimed justification for this edit was that the editor believed the intro unnecessarily duplicated information and was too long. This I don't get.

The sections of the intro that were moved into the article had all of one sentence that described the video, and then moved on to summarize the difference of opinion between Squier and Ortega over it. This is exactly what it's supposed to do, per MOS:LEAD: "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies" (emphasis mine). And no, two paragraphs is nowhere near so long that we'd have to trim it down. Daniel Case (talk) 03:55, 28 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]