Talk:Sleeping Giant (band)

Notability tag

Reverted twice by User: ‎Walter Görlitz, the most recent time without any edit summary. Care to offer a more detailed explanation for the persistence of the tag? Chubbles (talk) 07:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

No I don't care to. Feel free to take it up at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music). It has been discussed there and you can ask there. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Whoa. And you have the gall to leave me a templated message telling me I'm the one who didn't explain himself? Chubbles (talk) 07:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing on the talk page about that now; thanks for not linking me to any historical argument you may or may not have had about the purpose and function of notability tags (which you seem, despite having been around for a while, to be pretty unclear about). If you have serious notability concerns, AfD the article. Otherwise, the tag is pointless. Chubbles (talk) 07:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Please read the section "WP:NSONG needs re-evaluating and re-wording". The discussion is about songs, but applies to the whole list. If you doubt it, start a discussion there, as I suggested.

Cheers. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:18, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Not at all. There's no good reason to assume that some consensus that WP:GNG is the only guideline to use for songs (which isn't the consensus I see emerging from that debate) carries over to artist articles. That's something you'd have to demonstrate; the onus certainly isn't on me, since WP:MUSIC is still hale and hearty right where it is now. Chubbles (talk) 07:27, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry you feel that way. The onus is on you because MUSIC does state it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

MUSIC does not state that the GNG is the only guideline to be used for artists. It states the opposite of that, to wit: "A musician or ensemble may be notable if it meets at least one of the following criteria." Not "A musician or ensemble may be notable if it meets only the first of the following criteria [the GNG]." Chubbles (talk) 02:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

It will shortly. Patience. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

You cannot unilaterally apply a tag on this page based on your belief that, at some point in the future, policy winds will change to fit your beliefs. If this is the reason you keep putting up the notability tag, it is completely unsupportable. Chubbles (talk) 15:59, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I can and I did. Take it WP:ANI if you think I'm wrong. It would be best if you entered the discussion at NMUSIC though. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:27, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Chubbles, what you're missing is that NMUSIC also states that passing one or more of its criteria does not constitute a guarantee that an article about the artist must be kept. Subject-specific inclusion rules exist to clarify what we accept as a valid claim of notability for a Wikipedia article — they do not constitute any sort of exemption from Wikipedia's referencing requirements. No matter what criterion you're claiming that the band meets, they do still have to be the subject of enough reliable source coverage to qualify for an article on here — nominally meeting an NMUSIC criterion does not grant a band an unconditional right to keep a permanent Wikipedia article regardless of how poorly sourced it is.

The only criterion in NMUSIC that you're even attempting to assert here is #2 ("has had a single or album on any country's national music chart") — but that criterion (a) doesn't include "Heatseekers", (b) doesn't include peaking below 100 on the Billboard "Hot 200" either, and (c) isn't sourced to any substantive coverage in which the band is the subject, but merely to directory listings. And the only other source you've added here is a 164-word blurb in Allmusic — but (a) a short blurb is not substantive coverage, and (b) Allmusic aspires to have profiles on every single musician or band that has ever released music at all. So for both of those reasons, the mere existence of a profile on Allmusic is not, in and of itself, sufficient to serve as the only source for a Wikipedia article. It would be acceptable as one source within a diversity of quality sources — but the profile itself is not substantive enough, and Allmusic is not selective enough in its inclusion criteria, to cover off the basic notability question if it's the article's only real source.

The claim to passing NMUSIC is not, in and of itself, what gets a band over NMUSIC — the quality of sourcing that can be provided to support the claim is what gets a band over the inclusion bar. NMUSIC could stand to be rewritten a bit more clearly, I grant you — but it most certainly does not mean that if a band nominally meets one item on the checklist, then they're automatically entitled to keep an article that's this poorly sourced. The sourcing, not the mere claim itself, is what satisfies NMUSIC.

As written, the article is making enough of a claim of notability to not be immediately eligible for speedy deletion — but it is not making (or, more importantly, adequately sourcing) a claim of notability that's strong enough to escape being flagged with the notability template and/or listed for AFD if the sourcing doesn't improve within a reasonable "grace period". So Walter Görlitz acted correctly here: you should by all means be granted the opportunity to improve the sourcing, but the lack of reliable source referencing means that in its current form the article is not satisfying NMUSIC just because it claims to. Bearcat (talk) 21:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

True enough, and, at long last, elegantly defended. I take the point of WP:MUSIC - the only real reason it continues to exist - to be that WP:GNG is insufficient for certain types of articles which, properly considered, constitute encyclopedic coverage of a topic. (Professional sports figures and geographical places are similar cases.) WP:MUSIC gives criteria which are indicative that a musical artist has risen to some level, which most bands do not (the proverbial "MySpace band" of yore, no longer called that since MySpace is in essence defunct), of importance (in terms of popularity, critical notoriety, cultural value, what have you), which we formally call notability. In this particular case, two of those criteria, at least, have been met - that of charting (#2), and that of releasing two or more albums on an important record label (#5). Both of these are supported by Allmusic's database, and since a citation has been given to that material from a reliable source, WP:V is satisfied. And WP:V is the policy that is the key here. If a band meets one or more - particularly if it meets more than one! - of WP:MUSIC's bullet points, and this information is properly verified with reliable sourcing, we have a clear criterion for determining a musical artist's eligibility for inclusion, and I wish this were taken to be the gold standard in deletion debates. The important thing that flows from it, though, is that WP:GNG is insufficient for judging an artist's notability. (It's insufficient for judging the notability of a lot of things, in my opinion, but I have no interest in getting into a protracted and hopeless policy battle on larger scales; I do not have the temperament to be a politician, here or elsewhere.) If the GNG were sufficient, there would be no need for WP:MUSIC to exist at all, as it merely adds eleven other things that Walter is claiming do nothing to establish notability. (I am not sure whether your main contention is that Allmusic is an unreliable source, though I believe that battle has been fought in the past, and that AMG's ingestion of the Billboard chart database and its album metadata are generally considered reliable, barring evidence to the contrary. Also, they are rather more selective in their provision of biographical information than you might realize. I am not arguing that the sourcing is unimpeachable - merely that it is sufficient to meet WP:V, and thus WP:MUSIC.) Chubbles (talk) 22:41, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz, @Bearcat & @Chubbles, I removed the notability tag because I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt this band is in fact 100 percent notable. Move on!The Cross Bearer (talk) 00:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)