Talk:Who's Next/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ben MacDui (talk · contribs) 11:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

"One of the best albums of all time" deserves good writing and the following are some prose suggestions that I believe you should consider including. I will provide a list of other, arguably less important, suggestions at the end. I think they would improve the article and may be helpful if you are thinking of taking it to FAC. (I confess the distinction between the two lists is somewhat subjective).

Melody Maker can be linked

Done. I sometimes forget to link things, or if I do, forget about them then find DPL bot scolding me for linking to a disambig

If you are going to claim that Lifehouse "accurately described future technology" you need a citation at the end of that sentence.

I checked, and the information is cited to the next citation to the next paragraph, so I think copyediting threw this up. I've duplicated the citation. I was worried for a minute that I'd left this end of paragraph unsourced, something I regularly scold other GA nominators for! :-/

"Townshend received a 1957 Gretsch guitar" reads a little oddly. "was given", "borrowed" etc. rather than received? "guitar" also appears twice in this sentence - the second could presumably be replaced with "instrument".

Replaced "received" with "was given", replaced second guitar with "model". The concern about "main instrument in the studio" is that as the 70s went on, more and more synths were used.

"The first session for what became Who's Next was at Mick Jagger's house, Stargroves at the start of April 1971, using the Rolling Stones Mobile." Unless you mean that Jagger changed his house in April 71 this should be something like "The first session for what became Who's Next began at the start of April 1971 at Mick Jagger's house, Stargroves, using the Rolling Stones Mobile."

Damn commas. Fixed.

I don't really understand this: "Townshend later recalled, "we did a test run and it was fucking incredible" and decided to relocate recording to Olympic at Johns' suggestion". Why would the apparent excellence of the RSM provoke a relocation to Olympic?

As I think I said in the talk page, I've concluded I don't either. And we don't really need an "f" word in an article.

Not everyone would agree but no doubt your mother would approve.

"Recording there started on 9 April, where the band". As 9 April is not a "where" this should be "Recording there started on 9 April, when the band", or if that is not factually accurate "Recording there started on 9 April, with the band attempting"

I've rewritten this sentence (combined with removing the above quotation) and everything's now a bit smaller and concise.

2003 deluxe edition. There is no need that I can see to mention John E.'s name again after #4 "My Wife"

Blame the IPs (fixed)

There is a curious mixture of upper and lower case usage in Personnel. The latter would be better throughout. There is also a missing comma in "Vocals and piano on "Baba O'Riley" " as Townshend clearly provides vocals on more than one track - should be "vocals, and piano on "Baba O'Riley"

This is an interesting one, what is now in the article is (AFAIK) absolutely verbatim to the original 1971 LP sleeve. I realise it doesn't conform to the MOS, but I've tried wherever possible to adhere to the original sleeve notes where possible as editors tend to come in and change things around to their personal preference. Sticking to the sleeve notes is the only thing that reaches a proper consensus. However, one can go too far with these things, so I've tweaked things so the caps and punctuation is more aligned with our house style, so hopefully that

Singles - I am not over familiar with this but this box reads oddly to me. At first sight it is not clear if "Baba" reached #8 or #11 in Holland and I think that "Netherlands Top 100" shoud be repeated with a line under the first mention to make it clear this refers to "WGFA".

Quite agree with that, and so fixed. I'm sometimes twitchy about foreign single releases, but the Who did play Holland quite a bit (Tommy at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam was a highlight) so as they appear to be properly sourced they can stay.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

Check

3. It is broad in its coverage.

Check

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

Check

5. It is stable.

Check.

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales) Check

b (appropriate use). There may not be much available of direct relevance but I think one or possibly two extra images, maybe of band members if there is nothing else, would not go amiss.

I've had trouble finding good appropriate free images. There is a shot of the band live in November 1971 on the main The Who article which could be used. It's a shame no free images of Kit Lambert or Glyn Johns exist as they were two key people in the article outside the band. Let me rumage around and see what I can find.

Quite agree. In the perfect world the Olympic and Gretsch images would have a ref.

7. Overall:

Pass

Additional suggestions:

Background:

"By 1970, the Who had obtained great critical and commercial success". Yes, they are a great band but I think "considerable critical and commercial success" or similar would be more encyclopedic.

I've gone with "significant". I couldn't just say "had obtained critical commercial success", as they'd already done that by the end of 1965.

"a satisfactory follow-up for Tommy" - "a satisfactory follow-up to Tommy" would be better

Done

"the audience was invited from various organisations such as youth clubs, with a few tickets on sale to the general public". This starts off definitively but then qualifies itself. Suggest "the audience was mostly invited..." or "with only a few tickets on sale to the general public" or similar.

I've gone with "the audience was mainly invited".

"at Lambert's suggestion". This is his first appearance in the main text and should be "at Kit Lambert's suggestion"

I think the first appearance is in "Background and Lifehouse" ie : "The group had started to drift apart from manager Kit Lambert"

Good.

"Roger Daltrey, at the time, said" probably better as "At the time Roger Daltrey said"

I like that, it gets rid of a comma which is always a good thing

"abandoning Lifehouse was a newfound freedom;" should have a colon not a semi-colon and "newfound" is more usually "new-found" in GB English

I've changed this to "Abandoning Lifehouse gave the group extra freedom" and split it into two sentences. This looks like a "salvage job" where I was rewriting text to improve the article, but managed to keep some of the original prose by bolting it on elsewhere.

"a common sound between" - maybe a "unifying sound for"

Done

"input from applicants which" should be "input from applicants that"

Done

Recording

"is informally known by the line "Teenage Wasteland" - this could be "is informally known as "Teenage Wasteland" from a line in the song"

Done, except I went with "from a line in the lyrics" as "song" is already in the sentence earlier

"on a Baba tribute album, I Am," - you don't need the first comma.

Done

Artwork

"The rear cover showed the band backstage at De Montfort Hall, Leicester" you could make this more interesting by adding "the band backstage amidst a jumble of furniture and equipment at De Montfort Hall". Theoretically the artwork should get a mention in the lead.

I've gone with "amidst a debris of furniture", and dropped a sentence about the cover at the end of the lead

Release

"the longest break by far" could be "their longest break by far"

I've simplified this to "their longest break of their career at that point"

"a substantial amount of old tapes" would read better as either "a substantial amount of old tape" or "a substantial number of old tapes"

As "tapes" is already mentioned in the sentence, and again in the sentence before, I've gone with "a substantial number of old recordings" to break up the repetition a bit

References

The bare VG-lista spoils an otherwise good quality selection.

It's also a dead link (or at least comes back with no data. I wonder if somebody added this (or tried to) after I swept all the sources and templated them properly.

I belatedly noticed 3 dead links and found archived versions. The formatting of the 'Rolling Stone's 500' reference could do with tweaking but I am not over familiar with the template and at least the link now works.

Good catch. The ref checker script has been going up and down quite a lot, and it's possible I just couldn't get it to work when I was originally checking sources before improving it, plus to be honest I'm surprised that something as established as Rolling Stone would let link rot creep in, given how often it's cited here. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:17, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Finally - there are a couple of grumbling hidden cats that you might want to appease.

Yes, I know about them, but what about the article ;-) Seriously, I'm not sure what you mean by "grumbling hidden cats" and the phrase reminds me of that illustrated here!

You should attempt to distinguish the crucial difference betwen a 'grumpy cat' and a grumbling one. The felines in question are here and here. No doubt some bot or other will eventually appear and make them happy.

The first one is probably me doing something silly like putting "publisher" twice in a citation, which is one reason I like to use {{sfn}} - you only then make a mistake once. I have some scripts that flag up template errors in red, but nothing is showing for this article at the moment. Fortunately, perfectly formatted citation templates, while useful to have, aren't actually part of the GA criteria, so I can get away with it. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:17, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good work. Ben Mac Dui 16:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I just need to see if I can find some other images, and work out what the category problem is. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 20:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on producing another GA and for responding so quickly. All the best for 2015. Ben Mac Dui 10:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for a comprehensive and substantial review that has improved the article further than I could just on my own. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:17, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]