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Title TK

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This is the second peer review for this article. After the first peer review, I brought the article to FAC—Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Title_TK/archive1—but one editor identified that the article needed more work outside of FAC. I have used that editor's feedback to polish the article as much as possible. Of course, I look forward to all other editors' feedback as well. Thank you very much. Moisejp (talk) 04:45, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: Sorry for the delay here, I haven't forgotten but life is hectic at the moment!

  • Just had another look at the lead and I wonder could the order be changed a little. It reads a little oddly to start with the groups problems. What about a structure that goes more like:
    • Paragraph 1: Release, sales, reviews (?), meaning of name
    • Paragraph 2: Background and recording (maybe split into two paragraphs?)
    • Paragraph 3: Songs
  • For me, that would be a more logical order.
  • Before, I had a problem with some of the comments on the music from reviewers. We have "stark arrangements and unpredictable musical embellishments, and a relaxed, unpolished feel" in the lead, and this is the kind of thing I had the problem with. My reasons are simply that I think the general reader would find this hard to interpret. It may be common music-speak, but if this made it to the main page, what would someone think when they read it? I'm pretty sure that I know what "stark arrangements" would mean, but it implies some judgement. We need to say something like their wasn't much instrumentation, but in a more elegant way than I just did! Similarly, "unpredictable musical embellishments" reads very vaguely. I'm not too sure what it means, and I have a slight musical background. It sounds like it might be flourishes, or syncopation, or something, but I think we need to be more precise so that there is no doubt. The same for "a relaxed unpolished feel". Again, what does this mean? How can music be relaxed in an encyclopaedic sense? We must remember that we need a professional, encyclopaedic tone, and for me, these kind of comments, even when coming from reviews, doesn't quite hit the mark.
  • I will look more when time permits, but I will be back soon! Sarastro1 (talk) 21:03, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Sarastro1. I will see how far I can get with this in the coming days, and let you know if I need further advice on these particular points. Cheers, Moisejp (talk) 06:40, 2 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hi Sarastro1, I have made changes based on your suggestions for far, including reorganizing the lead, and rewording "stark arrangements" and "unpredictable musical embellishments" (in both the lead and the main text). I ended up just removing "relaxed, unpolished feel" for now. The phrase had been meant to encompass some slightly different concepts by a couple of writers, but for at least one of them, I think there is overlap with the ideas of "minimal instrumentation" and "All Wave" ideals, which are already covered in the article. Let me know if any of my changes don't wok for you, and I look forward to your next batch of suggestions. Cheers, Moisejp (talk) 11:34, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More: Sorry for the long delay. The lead looks much, much better to me. I've done another copy-edit on it, but please revert anything you don't like. I've also done some copy-editing later on as far as the end of "subsequent recording". I'll stop there and see what you think. Feel free to shout at me and revert anything you don't like. It's looking good overall so far. Sarastro1 (talk) 13:05, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sarastro1. Thank you very much for the copy-edit. I was really happy with most of your changes. I made some minor changes to your edits that I hope are acceptable to you (let me know if any aren't, and we can discuss these bits more). Besides these, there were two or three sentences that were nice edits but that unfortunately don't match the sources perfectly. I would like to think about these for a couple of days and try to come back to you with some good alternatives. Thanks again! Moisejp (talk) 05:36, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here are my concerns that I alluded to above:

  • "The reception of Title TK has been generally positive; commentators have praised Albini's contributions to the sound of the album and observed that the musical arrangements isolate the individual components, such as vocals, guitar, and drums." I like the conciseness of this edit, but I'm afraid that it may suggest multiple reviewers praised Albini's contributions, when in fact only one did (and two reviewers said the second part about isolation of sound). The version you edited away from was "Appraisal has included commendation for Albini's contributions to the sound of the album, and for how the arrangements isolate the individual musical components, such as vocals, guitar, and drums." I agree that it may not be quite as concise as your version, but it would solve the problem the problem of how many reviewers said these things. What do you think?
  • One possible solution would be "among the commentary has been praise for Albini's contributions to the sound of the album and observations that the musical arrangements isolate the individual components, such as vocals, guitar, and drums." Does that work? Sarastro1 (talk) 21:57, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The resulting strain, and the unpleasant atmosphere of the recording sessions, caused Macpherson and Farley to leave the group during this period." Again, I like the conciseness of your edit here. However, I'm worried it makes it sound like only those two of the former Amps quit in 1997; I think it's likely Luis Lerma also quit then (we know that by 1998 Deal was bandless), although I don't have any sources that explicitly say so. I guess it's also possible that he was fired, or he was still in the band when Goggin told Deal to go home to Ohio. But in the version I had I before ("This caused strain on the Breeders;[3] Macpherson and Farley have recounted how they left the group during this period due to the unpleasant atmosphere of the recording sessions.") I tried to deflect attention off exactly how many people may or may not have quit, and focus more on Macpherson and Farley recounting that they specifically left.
  • My concern here is that if the sources only say that those two quit, that is what we should have here. But I take your point. Perhaps "caused, among others, Macpherson and Farley..." but that wouldn't reflect the sources. On this point, my inclination is to leave it as it is, as I don't think it's a big deal, but you know the sources so it's your call really. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:57, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • My other concern about your edit is that it explicitly says (a) Deal's overly demanding musical standards caused strain (b) this strain and the unpleasant atmosphere were the causes of both Macpherson and Farley leaving. My sources do say that she had overly demanding standards, and certainly that the unpleasant atmosphere caused both to leave, but not explicitly that the overly demanding standards caused them both to leave. In my version I tried to avoid saying directly that the cause of them leaving was definitely anything more than the unpleasant atmosphere. (In my version maybe I should have even said "Deal's behavior caused strain" instead of "This caused strain".)

Here are what my two sources say specifically about Macpherson and Farley, by the way:

  • "Drummer Jim Macpherson also bailed. 'Kim had changed,' he agrees. 'The band had a totally different feel, and I was drinking and smoking with Nate and Luis. And I felt I wasn't wanted. I also had two small children."
  • "Kim's behavior took its toll on what remained of the band. The guitarist Nate Farley, a friend from Dayton, became so deeply depressed that Kim's father, Ed, drove to New York to take him home. 'I was under the impression her dad was picking us all up,' Farley says. 'But when I got in the car Kim goes, "Well, I'm staying." I needed to quit playing music for a while after that.' "

To summarize, again I agree that your version is more concise, but mine would solve the problems I mention above. Let me know what you think. Thank you. I'm very much looking forward to your next batch of comments and/or edits. Moisejp (talk) 13:38, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More: Thanks for your patience on this. Here's a few more, and I'll try to speed it up a bit for you; I think we're getting there now. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:19, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Do we need to attribute the minimal instrumentation to the reviewers? Can we not simply have "Minimal instrumentation is used throughout Title TK" and keep the references the same?
  • "Reviewers have also commented on the unorthodox character of Title TK's lyrics": I'm not quite sure what this means. Unorthodox how?
  • Also in this section, we are using "reviewers" a lot; not sure of a solution yet.
  • As written, it looks like the same lyrics (i.e. the same actual words) are both poetic and cryptic. Incidentally, my preference would be not to give the lyrics as I don't think they really support "poetic"! But that's just my view, so don't worry about that one.
  • I have no idea what the reviewer means by imagistic baffle, so unless it clarifies it somewhere, I'd be inclined to remove this as meaningless, even though it is a quote.
  • Just now I looked up "baffle" (noun) in some online dictionaries and I concede I could not find the meaning that I've always understood the reviewer to have expressed here: that the imagery was something that caused bafflement, i.e. that he had no idea what some of the imagery was supposed to mean. Anyway, I will take "imagistic baffle" out. (First I just need to figure out how to best deal with your comment about "cryptic" above.) Moisejp (talk) 05:42, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that 2nd paragraph of Music and Lyrics needs a little work; there may be a way to combine it all to cut down on the use of "reviewers", etc, but I'll let you respond to these things first; you might not agree at all! Sarastro1 (talk) 22:19, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

:* In an earlier version of the article, I had a lot fewer instances of "reviewers" but for some reason I thought in your FAC review you pointed out an instance where one was lacking, so I worked hard to add a bunch of them. But now I can't find your comment where I thought you'd said that. I must have misread one of your comments. In any case, I'm really happy to cut a bunch of them out. I'll try to work on that, as well as looking at your other comments, in the next couple of days. Thanks. Moisejp (talk) 05:24, 28 July 2016 (UTC) I realized afterwards that I misremembered something about this, but rather than explaining this and confusing the issue more, I'm just taking this comment out. Moisejp (talk) 06:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have reworked the end of the first paragraph and all of the second paragraph to remove a few instances of "reviewers have said". This included taking out the sentence about the themes, which wasn't the strongest point anyway, plus the road trips theme is mentioned again later, in the Songs section. I also kind of reverted the structure of the "divergence in speed and levity" vs. "unified feel" sentence (but took out the "reviewers have said" part of it)—because my impression in the reviews was not that critics were necessarily treating these two tendencies (divergence vs. unified feel) as being mutually exclusive—but I incorporated your "opinion has varied" idea into another sentence (in the second paragraph). Let me know what you think. Thank you. Moisejp (talk) 06:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Songs: I've no real problems with this section, just a couple of thoughts. First, I'm never a fan of long lists of quotations and I'd prefer more paraphrasing, but that wouldn't be a huge issue for me either way, so it's your preference really. Secondly, I think some of the paragraphs could be combined a little. The short paragraphs make it a bit choppy, and it becomes a slight chore towards the end. Combining the paragraphs might help. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:30, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Release and reception: Again, generally OK. Just one last point on this, which I mentioned back in the FAC. Most of the quotes are positive. Could we not say where the reviews come from, e.g. Rolling Stone, the Guardian. I also return to the Allmusic review I mentioned a long time ago; despite it's four stars, there are some negative things in its review, and these might be included for balance. Feel free to disagree on this though. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Overall: That's pretty much it I think. It looks much improved to me, and might be worth another tilt at FAC now. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sarastro1, thank you very much for taking the time to work on improving the article, and for your many helpful edits. About your final comments above:
  • In the Songs section, I have now merged the many smaller paragraphs into fewer bigger ones. In the section, I had already done a couple of rounds of paraphrasing parts that had previously been additional direct quotes. If you don't have a strong opinion, I would like to try to keep all of the direct quotes that are in there now, unless you or other editors have particular ones you think would be good to remove or try to paraphrase.
  • About the degree of positive quotations:
  • I have five positive ones and two negative ones. I think that matches the 71% score mentioned from Metacritic. I could put another negative review in there, but then that would be three negative to five positive, which would not match the 71% score. I would also have to consider removing the "reviews have been generally positive" statement, as this would not be supported by the proportion of good vs. bad reviews included.
  • I also would like to note that the Seattle Times review also includes some positive points, but I only included negative ones in the article, for overall balance.
  • In the infobox, I can't help it that the star rating of the AllMusic review may or may not seem stronger than the content within the review. That is an editorial decision that the AllMusic editors decided on for whatever reason they did.
  • For me, the little review quotations in the Reception section (in this or any article) should serve two purposes: (1) clearly convey a degree of appraisal (good or bad, or both good+bad); and (2) be somewhat descriptive. I haven't found it that easy in this batch of Title TK reviews to find lots of usable quotes, including in the AllMusic review. If you want to have a look yourself in the AllMusic review, for example, and can find a quote that you think would convey that it was a fairly positive but not completely positive review—or if you can think of a good paraphrase of some of the review that would work—I'd be very happy to consider including this.
  • In the infobox, I can't not include AllMusic, Billboard, Christgau, NME, Pitchfork, PopMatters, Rolling Stone, or Spin. These are all big names in the music world that I can't leave off since reviews are available. But if you think it would help, in the infobox I would be happy to replace the 4-star Guardian review with a negative one from somewhere.

Thank you again for all of your help! I am happy to keep discussing these final points if you feel more needs to be done. Moisejp (talk) 06:46, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request for feedback

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Hi FrB.TG, Stifle, Robvanvee, Prism, SchroCat, IndianBio, Sparklism, and Famous Hobo. Thanks again for your support for Title TK during its FAC in May. Since then, I've been doing lots of editing of the article based on comments by Sarastro1 (who has made edits too) and the article has evolved quite a bit from the version you all approved. My work here with Sarastro1 is winding down, and I hope to bring this back to FAC in the relatively near future. I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to look at this new version, and see if there are any issues that might prevent you from supporting again. If so, I'd like to catch these in this peer review, rather than in the FAC itself. Thank you in advance! Moisejp (talk) 07:03, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks so much, SchroCat!

It's only been five days since I pinged everybody, but haven't had a response from anybody except SchroCat; I will optimistically assume this means any of the other editors' concerns would likewise be minor. If anybody does have any other concerns, I'll deal with them in the FAC, and will now close this peer review. Cheers. Moisejp (talk) 03:22, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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