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Dream Theater

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Review commentary

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Messages left at Plattopus, Bio, Metal Music, and Music. Sandy 17:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This became FAC in April 2005. I think the content is nice, but there are some style and prose problems:

  • Inline citations: This article is seriously under-citated.
  • Prose: Incoherent prose in some parts. See for instance the stubby paragrpahs in sections "1985 - 1990", "1991 - 1994" and "Cover songs".
  • Listy sections: "Notes" sectionsis a trivia section. Such sections are no longer recommended. It should be trned into prose. "Fanclubs" and "Awards and certificates" seem also listy to me.
  • Stubby sections: "Current schedule" is stubby.--Yannismarou 17:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Listy, short stubby paragraphs, inadequately cited, inline citations do not conform to WP:FN (I am going to test Gimmetrow's new bot for fixing the refs here), does not conform to WP:LAYOUT, some of the inline citations cite the group's own website, inline citations are poorly formatted, including external jumps, and the article needs copyediting, with tortured prose ("Some fans, however, missed the early bandˈs complexity that began to diminish from the bandˈs compositions, being replaced with prolonged virtuoso solos."). Sandy 18:21, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed Layout, Notes, and References, still testing Gimmetrow's ref fixer, which got all but one of them. Also, found external jumps in the body of the article. Sandy 18:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and clarifications. Thank you Sandy for your work on fixing the article so far, and thank you to Yannismarou for your concerns. Can you please give me some specific details about what you find lacking in the article?

  • Inline citations: Could you add [citation needed] to specific passages you believe need citations? I will attempt to find some references for whatever is found, but as I go through the article it's pretty hard to find any conspicuously un-cited sources. I will also try to format the references to be uniform, I originally used the footnote3 format for citations and someone else changed them to the cite.php system, so I'm kind of unfamiliar with how that format works but I'll give it a go.
  • Footnotes: Is there some rule I haven't seen that says you're not allowed to use a band's own website as a reference? If it confirms the information found in the article, I don't see a problem with linking to a band's official website.
  • Prose: I completely agree that some of the prose sucks. I will fix this up.
  • Listy sections: Notes section will be converted to prose. Fanclubs and Awards sections are lists, I don't think there is a better way to present this information.
  • Stubby sections: Current Schedule is short because the band have not released much information about their current plans. A single paragraph is all that's available.
  • Layout: Specifically which parts of WP:LAYOUT are not being followed?

Thanks again for bringing up these concerns. If you could just clarify them a bit more I will be able to start work on improving the article. plattopustalk 09:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the sections to conform with WP:LAYOUT, but you might want to rename your section called "Notes", as that conflict with the Footnotes, which are typically called "Notes" in Wikipedia articles. It is reasonable to use a band's own website to reference something like the members in the band, but they are not an independent, verifiable source of other information, like songs hitting certain numbers on charts. Sandy 13:37, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've replaced chart performance references with links to Billboard's new chart history website, and tried to clean up the rest of the footnotes. plattopustalk 16:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Table of Contents is rambling and overwhelming, reflecting a need to better organize the material; there are unattributed "weasly" statements ("Dream Theater is also noted for ..."); I'm not sure "Current schedule" is encyclopedic (WP:NOT Wiki is not a website or an advertisement); there is a section called Notes, which is confusing since Notes in Wiki is usually Footnotes - that section should be renamed to something encyclopedic assuming the content of the section is encyclopedic and not trivia; there are external jumps; and the article needs to be much better cited. I haven't looked at the prose. Sandy 21:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed some headings to get them out of the TOC and re-arranged and expanded the Notes section, but IMO the history subheadings are adequate and not too stubby for the main article (you'll notice that History of Dream Theater is far more extensive). Layout has already been fixed and I can't spot any major prose problems (apart from citation issues, which I'll address later), and IMO the listy sections are perfectly fine as lists (they are, after all, simple lists of awards). The only real pressing issue as I see it is the lack of citations, but since I read through the article and take most of the information within it for granted, it would help me immensely if you could go through the article and add [citation needed] to any statement you believe lacks reference. I'm perfectly happy to go through and attempt to reference every statement you pick up, but I need to know which parts of the article need citation before I can do it. I hope the changes I've made to the article so far have improved it. plattopustalk 15:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have taken the liberty of placing [citation needed] tags at the end of multiple statements that I feel require support from credible sources. Hope this helps Wisdom89 18:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome, thank you! plattopustalk 08:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Suggest FA criteria concerns are lack of citations (1c), prose (1a), section layout and content (2). Marskell 13:04, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove unless copy-edited.
"Dream Theater is a progressive metal band formed in Boston, Massachusetts by three students at the Berklee College of Music in 1985. In the 21 years since their inception, they have become one of the most commercially successful progressive bands since the height of progressive rock in the mid-1970s, despite being relatively unknown in mainstream pop/rock circles. Their two highest selling albums are 1992's Images and Words, which was awarded a gold record and is consistently regarded as a seminal progressive metal release, although it only reached #61 on the Billboard 200 charts;[1] and 2005's Octavarium, which reached #36 on the Billboard 200.[1]"
    • The opening sentence is on the long, complex side.
    • This ideas of using the possessive apostrophe for years should be nipped in the bud right now. Try "Images and words" (1992). Consider normal case for titles, not title case, which WP doesn't even use in titles.
    • "Reached only".

Then:

  • "They are highly respected by many of rock and metal's biggest names, leading to collaborations between Dream Theater members and many other well known musicians." There's a problem with tense/time here.
  • "Dream Theater also possess significant musical versatility, which has made it possible for them to perform with a very diverse range of acts. Some of their more notable touring partners include ...". Remove "also" and it's much stronger. Try "enabled" instead of "made it possible for". Remove "very", which is weak. Remove "Some of", since you've already got "include".

Tony 10:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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