Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 56

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Archive 54

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Mixtapes or digital albums

There has been some disagreements in articles like, Campaign and Jeffery. An editor named, In ictu oculi, thinks that the articles should be called albums instead of mixtapes, but these projects was released as mixtapes. Commercial mixtapes at that. Do they have a point, do these projects like, If You're Reading This It's Too Late, Coloring Book and Slime Season 3, should be classified as digital albums instead of mixtapes. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 17:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd go by whatever the artists call them. Sergecross73 msg me 23:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Let's sort this out. When we see an album of original songs for $15.00 on Amazon.com or iTunes being sold as a "mixtape" it clearly is not a mixtape - a free release of mixed material, but just a marketing gimmick or stylism. see this comment. @Sergecross73: surely that is the last thing we should do. As a 3rd-party objective source we aren't here to assist artist's marketing practices but to give objective information from reliable and consistent objective WP:RS. We've had this problem before with Korean and Japanese record companies marketing 15 minute EPs as an "album" and so on. There should be objective industry standards we can follow. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sergecross73: Okay, but should it go by reliable sources too? TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 18:00, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Are there instances where RS's and artists disagree? Does this happen often? Sergecross73 msg me 00:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sergecross73: Well yeah, Canadian rapper Drake called one of his projects, More Life, a playlist, but the sources called it a mixtape, there was even a discussion about it and most of the editors voted as mixtape. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 18:32, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I thought the question was between mixtape and album, not playlist. Nor am I sure what difference it makes, or why an artist labeling it as something other than what it supposedly is would benefit them in any capacity, promotionally or otherwise. I guess I mostly work in the rock music area, and rock bands don't tend to use any of these labels. Sergecross73 msg me 01:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Sergecross73 – More Life is actually a good example of how the descriptions album/mixtape/playlist have become blurred. Drake calls it a "playlist" (the record even uses this word on the front cover), reviewers have described it as a mixtape, but it's hard to see how it is any different to an album... it was recorded in professional recording studios with various producers, features full-length songs, some of which were released as singles, and topped the Billboard 200... I guess it's a "mixtape" because it didn't have a physical release (MP3 download or streaming only), but in this day and age I'm not sure having a physical release is that necessary for an album to "exist". I totally understand why In ictu oculi says that this is an album, it's not something recorded in his bedroom and released for free as a stopgap between major albums. Richard3120 (talk) 02:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I can understand what you're saying. It sounds much like the eternal "single, promotional single, or just random song" debate that erupts on so many album articles these days. The only resolution we've really gotten there is "whatever sources or the majority of sources say. I can't see any resolution other than occurring here either, really. I just recommended whatever the artist says because, per WP:PRIMARY, first party accounts are okay for basic fundamental details on something. I would have assumed the most basic identification of the subject to be one of those things. Sergecross73 msg me 02:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Richard3120: In ictu oculi is mostly talking about the articles like, Campaign and Jeffery [1] [2]. I bought More Life up as a example, when an artist said their project is a mixtape, album or anything else. Do we trust the artist or the majority of sources. Sorry if I sounding confusing about this. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 21:21, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Why not simply fix what mixtape means per reliable sources and apply it? If something is retailing on Amazon with unmixed original songs in what possible way is it a mixtape? In ictu oculi (talk) 19:17, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: A mixtape is a compilation of favorite pieces of music, typically by different artists, recorded onto a cassette tape or other medium by an individual. I got that from Google. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 00:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes that's my understanding too. That is what reliable industry sources say. But we seem to have a stylism issue that certain record companies promote commercial sales album of original songs by one artist (typically a hip hop artist) as a "mixtape" for stylistic/marketing reasons. That to my mind is misleading. If we then slap "(mixtape)" on an album that is in no sense a a mixtape as our own article describes it, what are we up to? In ictu oculi (talk) 07:58, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: You might be right. You seem to know more about mixtapes then me, these projects could be digital albums but label as mixtapes, but I don't know the other editors would agree to that. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 13:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Discussion regarding personnel lists

Hi all. I welcome you to join a discussion on the use of personnel lists in album article at the MOS. Discussion can be found here. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Pet Fishsticks

The article Pet Fishsticks has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No evidence that this comes close to satisfying WP:NALBUM or even WP:GNG. No independent sources cited showing that this is notable enough for a stand-alone article. Perhaps a redirect to Steve Dahl would be an alternative to deletion, but in that case the non-free use of the album cover art being used in the infobox would need to be reassessed since it's unlikely to meet WP:NFC#cite_note-3 as currently used.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Think redirect would be better, doesn't the image pass free use as it is the only visual identification of the album and therefore helps understanding of the album ? thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 12:26, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Atlantic306: @Marchjuly: I agree, no harm in redirecting the article to Steve Dahl. Not sure the fate of the cover art is an issue because then it would become orphaned, not being used in any article, and I think what happens then is that a bot would then tag it for deletion – redirecting song and album articles is a common occurrence on Wikipedia and nobody worries about what happens to the cover art in those cases. If necessary the JPG file could always be proposed for deletion after the redirection occurs. Richard3120 (talk) 13:57, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Atlantic306 and Richard3120: Redirecting is fine. I only mentioned the cover art issue because some editor simply move that to the new article after the redirect; however, the new use does not meet WP:NFCC. The cover art would been acceptable in a stand-alone article about the album/EP, but be really hard to justify in the article about Dahl per WP:NFC#cite_note-3 unless some sourced discussion particularly about it were added to the article. That's possible for sure, but it's not really a major album release by a major artist so it seems unlikely, unless it was really controversial at the time, that something sufficient to justify this new non-free use can be found. What will happen then, as Richard320 points out, is the file will be orphaned and eventually deleted per WP:F5, unless another acceptable non-free use is found for it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Chronologies and film franchises

I remember there was at least one discussion where it was said that {{Infobox album}}, {{Infobox song}} and {{Extra chronology}} shouldn't have chronologies for franchises (e.g. Hunger Games "soundtrack chronology") and members of a group (e.g. Wu-Tang Clan members chronology), but I don't know if this counts as consensus. I remembered about this because I found another one in The Matrix Revolutions: Music from the Motion Picture (I removed a few dozen of them last July).

Is this the current consensus?
Should something like "Chronologies should only be for single artists and composers, and not for multiple artists in a group or film franchises" be added to those templates' documentation, or to another page?

Jc86035 (talk) 10:00, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I recall this as well and think it's a good idea. I also recall this being widely agreed but I don't have a citation. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't remember if there were other discussions, but I routinely remove extra chronologies for band members. Maybe WP:SILENT should apply: if many have been removed over a period of time without objections, then it's probably OK to continue. However, adding to the guidelines/documentation ideally should require more than silence or a very limited discussion. But being bold is a good way to prompt a discussion. —Ojorojo (talk) 18:38, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Sources "anyone can edit"

Just wanted to say that it's hilariously ironic that a website based on the idea that "anyone can edit" would frown upon citing other websites based on the idea that "anyone can edit" as a citation source -- even when, in several cases, they're more accurate.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Matharvest (talk • contribs)

Its not ironic at all. Think of how that would work conceptually. What would be the point of requiring sources to verify content if you could use sources that anyone could alter to say whatever they want at any time? Sources would become entirely pointless. Yes, anyone can edit, but that doesn't mean its "Wikipedia, the place where everyone can write whatever they want." or "Wikipedia, the place with no rules". It's the place where anyone can edit. And they can. Not being able to user-generated content as a source doesn't prevent anyone from editing. Sergecross73 msg me 13:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Article assessment

Hello everybody. About article assessment: How would you rate or assess this version of Dave's Picks Volume 25 -- "Stub", or "Start" -- and, for optional extra credit, why? I would like to see what the members of this WikiProject think about this, so the more editors who post their opinions, the better. This isn't to settle a dispute about that particular article, it's to get a feel for what other editors think about assessing album articles that look like that.

To refresh your memory, here are the guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Assessment#Quality scale.

"Stub":

A very basic description of the album. Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a title and track listing.

"Start":

An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and lacks adequate reliable sources. It should have:

An infobox.
A lead section giving an overview of the album.
A track listing.
Reference to at least primary personnel by name (must specify performers on the current album; a band navbox is insufficient)
Categorisation at least by artist and year.

Thanks. — Mudwater^(Talk) 19:37, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I'd classify it a stub, because there's virtually no prose written at all. It's all just a giant track list and list of production credits. Sergecross73 msg me 19:49, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@Sergecross73: Thanks for your comments here, and also at Talk:Dave's Picks Volume 25#Assessment. At the latter location, you said, I'd generally consider it a stub as well. Perhaps we need to look at this from another angle: if this isn't a stub, what sort of album article would be a stub? I mean this is already basically the bare-minimum for what we'd allow for an album article to exists. Any album article that doesn't even have a track list or personnel listing would almost certainly be redirected to the musician's article. If we call this a start, then we'd pretty much be eliminating stub class from albums altogether.

Let me give you a two part answer: (1) Just because a Stub album article is hard to find, doesn't mean that a Start album article is a Stub. Again, I'm basing "Start" on the project guidelines. (2) Here is a Stub album article. I whipped it up today, in my spare time. I have seen a fair number of album articles that look a lot like this one, except that this one has better references than most Stub articles. The refs in this case are to help with expanding the article, and also to show that the album is notable and therefore should have its own WP article. I'm guessing that you've seen some album articles that look like this too. Or if not, that's okay too. Anyway, that's what I think a Stub album article looks like. — Mudwater^(Talk) 01:50, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

...They both look like stubs to me. Neither really contain any encyclopedic prose; they look more like a Discogs entry. I think, rather than worrying over virtually meaningless labels like "stub" or "start", you should work on writing some prose to ward off future editors who may wish to redirect or delete it someday. Sergecross73 msg me 02:04, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll work on adding some prose when I get a chance, yes. But, suppose hypothetically that I left the article the way it is. It should not be redirected or deleted, because it clearly meets the notability guidelines at WP:NALBUM and WP:GNG -- despite its being a lowly Stub! (In contrast to the other article, which, not to tip my hand or anything, is clearly a Start.) — Mudwater^(Talk)

I see little difference between Breakin' It Up, Breakin' It Down and Dave's Picks Volume 25, but one is a stub and one is a start? You have the name of the album, who recorded it, when it was recorded, when it was released, and a chart position. These to me equate to "a very basic description of the album", not even close to what I expect as an "overview of the album", a requirement for a start. And I certainly don't have a problem with the existence of stub articles. All I do is try to add an assessment based on the criteria, anyone can change it to what they think it should be. Thanks. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 07:19, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars: In the case of "Dave's Picks Volume 25", you didn't add an assessment, you changed an existing assessment. Those are two similar but different things. When you change an existing assessment, someone who is thinking about album article assessments has already graded the article, and you disagree strongly enough to change it. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In the meantime, three editors, including myself, have posted in this discussion. I'm hoping to hear from a lot more — Mudwater^(Talk) 12:20, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

In my original post I quoted from the WikiProject Albums assessment guidelines. I would encourage interested editors to also look through the general article assessment guidelines, at Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment#Grades. Scroll down to Stub and Start, and click "show" to display the more detailed criteria. Here's part of what it says there:

"Stub":

A very basic description of the topic.... The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article.... Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition....

"Start":

An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete.... The article has a usable amount of good content but is weak in many areas.... Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more....

— Mudwater^(Talk) 12:51, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Yep, that's the same criteria I use. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 14:55, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Do any other editors have an opinion about this? The short version of the question is this: All would agree that this article should be assessed as a "Stub". But what about this one? Should it be assessed as "Stub", or "Start"? Again, it's not a dispute about that particular article, I'm using it as an example of a more general question. Thanks. — Mudwater^(Talk) 21:19, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I would still classify that second one as a stub. I generally think it would need context and additional information besides immediately jumping to the tracklist before promotion to Start. dannymusiceditor ^{Speak up!} 21:24, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Assessment Table Updates

Does anyone know how often the Project's main table ("Album articles by quality and importance") is updated? It's not in real time. I am curious because yesterday I re-assessed several albums that had been listed as "Future" but have actually been released, and the quantities in the table do not yet reflect this. Thanks. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 15:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

@Doomsdayer520: when I work on assessing articles for WikiProject Colombia, I notice that the table updates every 24 hours, so I imagine it's the same for all projects... I think if you check back in eight or nine hours you'll see the table has been updated. Richard3120 (talk) 15:11, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

@Richard3120: - Thanks. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 15:13, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

This shows the history of updates to the assessment page for albums. Like Richard says, it updates approximately every 24 hours. You can actually update it manually by going here and selecting the Albums project. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 21:37, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Album credits

Could someone help me verify the production credits of Yours Truly (Ariana Grande album)? Several entries were removed from the lists in this edit by Epep123 (currently inactive) without any explanation; I noticed because it messed up the list formatting. The table is currently unsourced. Thanks, Jc86035 (talk) 11:21, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

[3] --Viennese Waltz 15:39, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Thoughts on a potential merger

I've been working on some articles related to the Lookout! Records label, and could use some group input on an idea. In the early 1990s, independent punk label Selfless Records paid several bands (all of whom were on Lookout!) to record cover versions of the first three Ramones albums: Screeching Weasel covered Ramones, the Vindictives did Leave Home, and the Queers did Rocket to Russia. Selfless then launched a sub-label, Clearview Records, who continued the series through the late '90s: The Mr. T Experience covered Road to Ruin, Boris the Sprinkler did End of the Century, the Beatnik Termites did Pleasant Dreams, the McRackins did Too Tough to Die, and the Parasites did It's Alive.

Right now, several of these releases are covered in separate articles:

In the past I think at least a few of these were covered as subsections within the articles on the original Ramones albums, but were later split off. There doesn't seem to be much reliable secondary source coverage out there for these releases, which isn't surprising since the labels were small, most of the records were only released in limited numbers, and several of the artists involved weren't very well-known. Thus these separate articles are mostly just infoboxes and tracklists; what little else they have is either unsourced or sourced to fan sites and the like. It seems to me that, since they form an informal series, it might be best to merge the verifiable content together into a single article covering the whole series. I think there's probably enough source coverage available to get such an article started, with the more significant installments receiving the most coverage and the rest getting smaller mentions. Before doing anything, I thought I'd ask for opinions. --IllaZilla (talk) 00:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, *Leave Home (The Vindictives album) and Rocket to Russia (The Queers album) pass WP:GNG with reliable sources reviews so they should stay as seperate articles but if the remainder do not pass a reliable sources search agree that they could be merged, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 10:44, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I scrutinized each article, including the cited sources, before bringing this here. A single review in Allmusic isn't enough to pass GNG; that's been proven hundreds of time at AFD. The Vindictives album has a couple others, but I question whether one is reliable ("Ink 19"...it's not listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources and I can't find any other mention of it on WP) and in any case the combined coverage from all these sources amounts to perhaps 5 or 6 sentences' worth of verifiable content for WP. I honestly don't think these pass GNG individually, but they might as a single article. --IllaZilla (talk) 14:20, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Punk news.org is also a reliable source and I still believe GNG is passed for both of them and they should remain, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 14:44, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Punknews.org is a reliable source except for its user-submitted reviews, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources (I contribute to Punknews from time to time and have been following the site for over a decade; I'm familiar with the relative reliability of its coverage). The review of the Vindictives album is by one of the site's staff, so it's reliable as a source. Still, GNG requires significant coverage in reliable secondary sources; one or two reviews on niche websites can be enough to support a stub or start-class article, but aren't going to be enough on their own to save an article if it's put to scrutiny such as at AFD. I've worked on album articles for Wikipedia since 2006, and have been involved in dozens of deletion discussions and discussions about sources and GNG. One of these articles is one that I created back in 2007. I've done my homework on this...I've got two books sitting in front of me that cover most of these bands, and there's mention of perhaps one of these covers albums. If there were adequate source coverage out there to make a real, decent article out of any of these, I wouldn't have brought this up. I appreciate your take on it, but I respectfully disagree that any of these have enough available reliable source material to survive as separate articles. --IllaZilla (talk) 15:48, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Digital Radio Tracker

Do Digital Radio Tracker chartings count for anything? Probably a silly question but I can't see anything at Wikipedia:Record charts that tells me one way or another, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Record Charts hasn't been edited for months. At least a pointer in the right direction would be appreciated. TIA Andrewa (talk) 08:59, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

- Andrewa (talk · contribs) hi, can you please give some details about the chart. Also, has it been referred to in reliable sources ? thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 12:15, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
  - No mention at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources that I can see. It was referred to me as a possible reliable source to justify recreating a record label article which was deleted as no evidence of notability. At least one of their artists has had some chart success but only on downloads, no physical media have been released AFAIK. It seems to me that it's more likely to justify an article on this artist than on the label! But I'm interested either way; My agenda of course is not to make peace as to get the article(s) created if they're encyclopedic. They've provided many (claimed) sources but many (perhaps even all) are useless, mainly owing to being primary sources but there are also a number of blogs etc (which may be primary sources as well of course). And there is this chart (and possibly other similar ones).
  - See http://kwwkdb.com/drt-national-airplay-top-50-rock-chart-2/ for a sample chart. I should have supplied that in the first place, apologies.
  - DRT seems to be the popular abbreviation.
  - The more general question is, do the charts we currently explicitly recognise adequately catch these digital downloads? I know they try to factor them in. But with the proliferation of paid download sites, and the fact that even free downloads do represent some sort of popularity (and are more easily manipulated... but that's the job of the charts to figure it out), and the vested interest of at least some chart compilers in the physical media and the older download sites, there may be an issue here. Digital downloads are not just iTunes.
  - Cashbox is another possible chart (now mainly online but apparently independent). Again no explicit mention at WP:IRS.
  - I'm not sure at all of any of this. That's why I came here. Andrewa (talk) 17:51, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed information - I don't know too much about charts but will read up your links tomorrow Atlantic306 (talk) 16:03, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the record label article it would be best IMHO if significant coverage in at least two reliable sources could be found to justify recreating its article. Looking at the details of DRT here, am a bit concerned at the element of snooping on radioplay in cars and tablets etc which may also be unreliable as the technology seems experimental, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 16:36, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Looking at Cashbox, couldn't find much chart info at their site but the wikipedia article on them states that "the chart data for the main Cashbox charts is provided by Digital Radio Tracker" so I have the same concerns as raised above for drt, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 16:50, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Regarding reliable sources for the record label, this list Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources may be helpful, it doesn't include obvious general reliable sources such as reliable newspapers and general magazines, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 19:11, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks... Agree totally regarding significant coverage in at least two reliable sources could be found to justify recreating its article... I'm actually working on an essay inspired by this episode, see this section of it in particular.

Thanks also for info on DRT and Cashbox... I'd missed the connection. So they're essentially the same chart, and the same source.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources doesn't seem to mention either of them, or have I missed it? But from http://www.digitalradiotracker.com/faqs.html it seems to me that the information there may be behind a paywall. So even if reliable, it wouldn't be a very good reference.

Being new and leading-edge tech may not be a problem. Music publishing is changing (colossal understatement). That's why it occurs to me that we might be a bit out of date so far as charts are concerned. But staying up to date on this is not going to be a trivial matter, and in theory we fail safe of course. Andrewa (talk) 00:52, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, the essay looks good, agree if the info is paywalled it would have verification issues, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 11:19, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Theory of a Deadman discography

Hello, WikiProject Albums! I have nominated this discography for WP:FL (you can find it here) and the review seems to have stalled. May I please ask that anyone interested take a few moments to review it and leave comments and support for its promotion? It would be greatly appreciated and I would be happy to reciprocate if you have anything that needs commenting. Thank you! — Miss Sarita 17:15, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Miss Sarita (talk · contribs) Hi, the article looks good but think there may be problems with the vevo and vimeo references as they are primary sources so suggest that they be replaced with reliable sources references such as those in this list Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 11:29, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Per WP:PRIMARY, primary sources are acceptable to verify basic, objective facts. I haven't done a thorough search on every instance used, but it should be okay to verify something as basic as, noting the existence of a music video. Then again, if FLC has some sort of issue with that mindset, it'd be an easy fix too - RS's like Loudwire or Team Rock frequently announce things like music videos being released anyways. Sergecross73 msg me 13:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

@Atlantic306: and @Sergecross73: I thought they would be considered WP:PRIMARY too, but figured I would at least try. The references from Vevo and Vimeo are in place to cite the director used for each music video, which might be a little more than "basic information". Would this still violate WP:PRIMARY? I have searched and searched for replaceable refs, but most of them unfortunately, the directors are either not found in secondary sources (only primary sources, such as the director's and film company's websites) or there is no ref found at all. Also, while I have you both here, I would like to ask whether the record label listings in the "Studio albums" section is correct. As in, should Island Def Jam, Warner, and Atlantic Records be included or are they just distribution companies for the records and should be omitted? Both of your advice on these questions is much appreciated. — Miss Sarita 16:42, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I would think it would fall within acceptable application of WP:PRIMARY, personally. As far as your second question goes, I'm not entirely sure. Personally, I'd add them all, (or wouldn't revert someone else who added them all at least.) But I'm not sure what the FL standard is. I spotchecked some. Nine Inch Nails discography (FA), Pearl Jam discography (FA), and Beyonce discography (FA) list off the multiple record label variants for releases. Metallica discography (FA) doesn't seem to though, although, that could also just be that their record label situation has historically been pretty straightforward too... Sergecross73 msg me 17:04, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Awesome! As usual, Sergecross73, you come through with a fast and efficient answer! :-) I will leave most of table as is, but I will attempt to find reliable secondary sources for as many as I can. Regarding the record labels, I think it's just a little confusing because they have two labels for North America (604 is for Canada, Roadrunner is for the U.S.), and then Island Def Jam, Warner, and Atlantic are the distribution labels for international sales. A reviewer at the FLC suggested removing them, but I'm not so sure... — Miss Sarita 17:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Just need one or two more "Supports"! A lot of the major legwork has already been done. If anyone has some time to look it over, that would be so wonderful! It's so close! And as I mentioned, I am more than happy to take a look at anything you have that needs to be reviewed (now or any time in the future). Thank you! — Miss Sarita 19:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Is this article ready for FAC?

I have been working on Amor Prohibido for some time now and believe I have exhausted every outlet I have in expanding this article. I tried to get a peer review completed back in November but it was archived with no input. So I am coming here to you guys in hopes that this will attract reviews or even just passerby comments. I am hoping to bring this article to FAC in the very near future, but I don't want to nominate it if it is not ready. Thanks – jona ✉ 14:50, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

@AJona1992: That looks good enough for me to say with confidence that you should go for it. As long as you don't get any nitpickers like you did when getting Dreaming of You listed at GA (I saw that so long ago and am familiar with your contributions), you should do just fine fixing anything that's wrong with it within the nomination. dannymusiceditor ^oops 20:03, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@DannyMusicEditor: Awe thanks man! I remember that nomination haha...I appreciate it though, I'll go ahead and nominate it. Thanks for the encouragement

– jona ✉ 19:58, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

If anyone is interested, the nomination link is here. Thanks – jona ✉ 22:39, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Ending the system of portals

Hello, there's a proposal to delete all Wikipedia portals. Please see the discussion here. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:58, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

/* Template:WikiProject The Beatles:

User:Moxy has amended the Beatles project banner to remove all the albums from WP:albums, and other projects. His rationale for this change is Wikipedia:WikiProject coordination, which would actually say there cannot be co-ordination between projects. FWIW, It means every Beatle album (and any album or related category remotely connected to the Beatles have now been removed from this project. A discussion has already been started by me at User_talk:Moxy#Template:WikiProject_The_Beatles:_Difference_between_revisions. Anybody else have an opinion? This will also be posted at songs and Beatles projects --Richhoncho (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

That makes no sense. There's no conceptual reason why an article can't be under multiple WikiProjects. Sergecross73 msg me 22:43, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Just for clarification, if something tagged as Beatles project has 'album=y' appended then it will appear in this project. The assessment and importance will also show in this project. --Richhoncho (talk) 22:57, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps this is not clear....the Beatles banner had others project banners in its banner. No problem with multiple projects tagging an article. Did all the other projects even want a tag in theses articles and templates? Can't force project banners into other banners....as its up to each project to pick there articles. Not sure why the album project would care about ringo star navigation templates etc... This is what it looked like . Plus we should not be forcing these projects into this other template because they're so small and diminished they look unimportant. They are just as valid as another projects. Moxy (talk) 23:01, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

What you did, Moxy, whether intentionally or not, is to decide that an album recorded by Ringo Starr could no longer be in WP Project albums. There is no valid argument for changing something that has been in place for at least 8 years to my certain knowledge and probably much longer. --Richhoncho (talk) 23:33, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Actually almost 10 years they removed the Bio temp for this reason. --Moxy (talk) 11:45, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

*Note Moxy has now undone his edit which caused all the problems, but the conversation should continue in case others are now of the same view as Moxy. --Richhoncho (talk) 23:39, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

The {{WikiProject Pink Floyd}} banner worked the same way when User:Kaldari removed the embedded album/song tagging for that one with this edit, so I think he should weigh in on this. It seems to be more than just about sharing a banner. Because of the issue, I brought it up at the Beatles project last August. After bringing it up again a month ago at Template talk:WikiProject Pink Floyd, that's when User:Moxy stepped up and helped with the Beatles banner. I have been in the process of adding the album/song project banners for such articles under the Beatles project ever since (for example, Talk:Blackbird (Beatles song)). --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 00:27, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. As discussed at Template talk:WikiProject Pink Floyd, Wikiproject Albums cannot be both a task force of WikiProject The Beatles and a project itself. It has to be either one or the other. If it is set up as both, it causes confusion for software that uses the banner data to classify pages by WikiProject, for example, XTools, Pageviews tool, and CopyPatrol. The two projects should both have separate banner templates on the page. This is the case for all other types of WikiProjects. There's no reason to make Wikiproject Albums and Wikiproject Songs into special exceptions. Since there are only about 100 Beatles albums, this shouldn't be too hard to fix. Kaldari (talk) 00:57, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, articles in this project also include every song/album by each member's solo career and family members such as Yoko Ono and Julian Lennon. Worse yet, someone thought it was a good idea to create redirects for every non-notable original recording by each one (see Category:Yoko Ono songs, for example) and which are tagged with the Beatles' project banner using the song parameter. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 21:41, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Several points have been made and I would like to respond to each.

Wikipedia:WikiProject coordination specifically refers to stubs and projects and says there are problems joining stubs together i.e. Songs-1970s-stub which goes in the article at the bottom of the article. Let’s be clear, I am ONLY talking about project banners which go on the talkpage.

It also goes to say, “’’’Banner templates, on the other hand, can be altered as an individual WikiProject sees fit, and—since they can be used to tag all articles relating to a WikiProject’’’” Pretty clear in my mind that there is no reason why to projects cannot be partially merged, i.e. all albums appear in albums and artist project, providing both or all projects agree.

What happens when say, a song or album is show in two projects but assessed differently, say, a stub and a c-class? It gets analysed (see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Album articles by quality log ) for both projects with alternative assessment on subsequent days. Pretty clear then that the software likes and can handle merged projects. I use this as a clear example as a reason why tools DO work with a single combined banner.
What actually happened is a there was a large scale culling of articles from related projects, albums & songs by removing the joint banner –I do not follow any individual artist banner, but to suddenly see, say, Hey Jude removed from the songs project is pretty scary. There should have been a discussion first, not after.
If it was agreed to remove projects, then somebody should have had a word on the technical helpdesk, who would have been happy to give you a little program to duplicate the relevant project banners, so nothing was lost.
WPBiography is not under the umbrella of WP:Music, so a total red herring.
I note Starcheers comment about what is added into the Beatles project and I don’t disagree, (if a Beatle said hello then it gets added to the project) but should be taken up at that project. As for the redirects – that is becoming a WP problem – redirects for song, song (song) and song (artist song), but obvious and less obvious spellings, other capitalisations, it’s pure name grab and serves no significant purpose with modern search engines.
“Plus we should not be forcing these projects into this other template because they're so small and diminished they look unimportant.” …because the artwork… Irrelevant, because editors will format multiple project banners so they all look small.

Finally, unless I am missing something, I am not seeing any benefit to separating projects under the general auspices of music. Not convinced by any argument above. Unilaterally removing projects without any discussion is not helpful for anybody, especially in view of the number of articles affected – that’s the reason they are protected!!! --Richhoncho (talk) 11:07, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

OK so it's clear that we should remove the banners from the template and replace them individually. Will look at a bot to do this. No point in trying to explain any further......will work on this this weekend.--Moxy (talk) 14:09, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

You do realise that if you do separate the projects you will still have problems, don't you? --Richhoncho (talk) 15:33, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

The problem is the mixture of the templates.--Moxy (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2018 (UTC).....we will work on this. Feel free to help.--Moxy (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I am against separating the templates, more, not less integration, is needed. I have read all of above and see no reason to separate (I saw some vague things which weren't substantiated), the link you gave me originally, Wikipedia:WikiProject coordination and here you are, still thinking it reads "uncoordinated." Leave it alone. Bring all the projects together -PROVIDING it's agreed with the projects. Don't make the mistake of thinking because you have done something once it was ever the right decision...--Richhoncho (talk) 16:18, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

But what about the technical reason mentioned here: "If it is set up as both, it causes confusion for software that uses the banner data to classify pages by WikiProject, for example, XTools, Pageviews tool, and CopyPatrol." Do you believe that this is incorrect or perhaps irrelevant? --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 21:44, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I would need to see evidence - I have already shown one piece of evidence where unmerging would cause problems. Perhaps the problem is with the software and not the projects? --Richhoncho (talk) 23:36, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Should the change made to the Pink Floyd banner be undone too in the meantime? Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 22:05, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Of course, and perhaps we should be looking to join the relevant music projects up, seems so wasteful to have 2, 3 or more projects assessing the same article by the same criteria and coming up with different classes! --Richhoncho (talk) 22:08, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

You mean like having "album=yes", "song=yes" parameters on {{WikiProject Rock music}}, etc? I think it comes down to Kaldari's claim to determine whether that's viable. However, it certainly wouldn't be worth going through the thousands of existing articles to "merge" such templates.

I would have thought any merges would be with consent (as they were with the Beatles and Pink Floyd) and the relevant projects might take the work on. Also, a request at Technical Help Desk would probably supply a short program to automate the changes. --Richhoncho (talk) 08:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Richhoncho: If you're going to have a special hybrid tagging system, you need to create your own templates from scratch rather than using {{WPBannerMeta}}. That template can only handle one WikiProject per banner. The way templates like {{The Beatles}} are set up, it declares that WikiProject Albums is a task force of WikiProject The Beatles. So tools like CopyPatrol, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Popular pages, etc. see that pages like Abbey Road belong to WikiProject The Beatles, but not to WikiProject Albums (except that Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars fixed this by adding a separate {{WikiProject Albums}} to the page). Notice, for example, that Abbey Road doesn't show up at all on last month's popular pages report. The reason Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Album articles by quality log still works is that it uses categories to determine WikiProject ownership, not the data from {{WPBannerMeta}}. This hybrid tagging system is confusing. For example, it is unclear to editors if they should add {{WikiProject Albums}} if a page is already tagged with album=yes in the band template. It also goes against existing tagging conventions. There are many overlaps and hierarchies of WikiProjects, but traditionally every WikiProject uses its own banner for tagging, and the task force parameters are used for actual task forces. Misusing the task force parameters is not a good solution. My personal suggestion would be to ask for a bot to migrate these parameters into separate WikiProject banners on the affected talk pages and then remove the album=yes parameters. Kaldari (talk) 20:26, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

I still maintain that there should be a technical solution, I was looking at one page which was a member of 5 different projects, and because there is no technical solution at the moment, then 5 separate edits might be needed to, say, reassess the article. What a complete waste of time, for what should be a technical solution. Cart before the horse and whatnot. And if one report can handle different projects under the same banner, I can't see why all the software can't. In the meantime, it looks like this discussion has taken a larger dimension here. --Richhoncho (talk) 12:42, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

The use of Dead Press! as a source

I remember years ago having the same issues with this site when I started on Wikipedia as a contributor, being very sceptical of the website as a reliable source. But I'm starting to question this lately...

The primary reason for having this new curiosity regarding the websites status was sparked when I noticed several big names either re-tweeting Dead Press! articles or tweeting at the Dead Press! account directly, suggesting that these notable names in the industry do regard this site as reliable, gladly sharing their articles and promoting them in the process. I have found more of these interactions and they include:

Enter Shikari - from:ENTERSHIKARi @deadpresszine
Every Time I Die - from:everytimeidie @deadpresszine
Fact - from:factjapan @deadpresszine
Fearless Records - from:FearlessRecords @deadpresszine
Fozzy - from:FOZZYROCK @deadpresszine
Holding Absence - from:HoldingAbsence @deadpresszine
Jamie Lenman - from:jamielenman @deadpresszine
Nuclear blast records - from:nuclearblasteu @deadpresszine
Polaris - from:PolarisAus @deadpresszine
Prosthetic Records - from:ProstheticRcds @deadpresszine
Sonic Boom Six - from:SonicBoomSix @deadpresszine

NOTE: using twitter, if you search for example "from:FOZZYROCK @deadpresszine" it will display the tweets Fozzy has sent/mentioned to Dead Press!

Because of this I thought perhaps another discussion was required regarding the sites reliability, especially since the last discussion in 2011 was unanimously negative due to the users malware warnings being set off. Whether or not this was indeed due to virus' being present on the site or simply their web-browsers giving false-alarms (something that I have experienced myself on other reliable and safe websites) is unknown but I for one recently have not gotten any from Dead Press! so I doubt that's the case anymore. I would argue perhaps that the sites reports and interviews are fine but since the authors of the site hold little credibility, perhaps their reviews should be excluded? I'm also aware that the simple fact that the authors, and even the site owners themselves, don't have much in terms of experience outside of Dead Press! so I'm unsure whether that alone fails the site for its reliability.

Anyway, thank you for your time and hope to hear back from you guys soon. - SilentDan (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for this. When I was cleaning up and revamping the source list, this was a discussion I was going to start up as well, just because I think I've used the source here and there in the past (before I knew it was listed as an non-RS) and I didn't recall having issues with malware or anything. I still need to look deeper to make a call, but at the very least, I think its a good idea and look at it again either way. Sergecross73 msg me 18:14, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Depends on how old the material is (I think?). I could be wrong, but I thought I saw something on this organization that was cited for some band here, and the article struck me as unprofessional. Maybe they're better now than they used to be. dannymusiceditor ^oops 19:12, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

So perhaps a limit on what articles to use by era? Like if they're older than what I have referenced to have been promoted maybe? - SilentDan (talk) 19:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, we've set up situation like that in the past at the video game equivalent source page, but usually for a particular reason, like website revamps or something.. For example, they only allow for Kotaku sources after 2009, but that's because in 2010 they revamped their website with bringing on new writers and professional editors from places like MTV. Sergecross73 msg me 19:38, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

What would you say to a situation like Dead Press! then? I'm not sure when the site got potentially revamped. - SilentDan (talk) 20:20, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Their "about" page says they were formed in 2007, but: In May 2010, the website saw a complete revamp and brought a whole new drive to its contribution to the music scene the world over. I found a LinkedIn profile on their founder, Zach Redrup. [4] dannymusiceditor ^oops 00:20, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

So would mentioning that articles after that revamp would be eligible then? Makes sense to me if that's the case, and looking at this profile on LinkedIn, Zach does appear to be decently experienced so it seems that the source is more reliable now. - SilentDan (talk) 01:21, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I would say it's definitely gotten better. I am in favor of moving this to the reliable list. dannymusiceditor ^oops 02:52, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I too am in favor for moving the site to the reliable list. - SilentDan (talk) 08:39, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Here's my review:
- They've got an About us page here. As mentioned above, they've been in the industry for roughly a decade - founded in 2007, but it sounds like it really became more of an official publication in 2010.
- They have a dedicated staff, completely with an editorial team, shown here.
- The website's founder and one of its editors, Zach Redrup, has a BA degree in music journalism, and has written for a number of other publications too. His Linked In verifies all of this. He's written for Stencil Magazine, which appears to be a print magazine, so they're also probably reliable. Buzzfeed was one too.
- The other editor is Mike Heath, who I found less on. I found it interesting that he's on the Heavy Music Awards voting panel. Seems like that's worth something.
- There's a bunch of contributor/writers listed, though it doesn't say anything about them.
Overall, I wish I knew more about the rest of their staff - if anyone has anything else to add on it, it'd be helpful - but I am impressed with their founder, who has actual musical and writing education and experience. I'm leaning towards reliable at this point. Sergecross73 msg me 12:55, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Since we've been the only ones contributing to this discussion, is it safe to say that it should be moved? - SilentDan (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I've been watching, and moved to where? Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:26, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I assume he means, moved from off the unreliable list to onto the reliable list. In response to SilentDan, I'd wait a little longer, like another day or two, just because 3 participants isn't the strongest consensus. But I'd say "soon", if there's no opposition presented. Sergecross73 msg me 18:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah to clarify I meant to move Dead Press! to the table of reliable sources, and I have no objection to waiting a few more days. - SilentDan (talk) 19:11, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I haven't commented before because (a) I'm on holiday in California, (b) I'm not familiar with American music websites, (c) it's not a music genre I work in, so I'd be unlikely to ever cite the website myself. But editors whose opinions I respect seem to think the website is okay, so I have no objections if you want to move it to the list of reliable sources. Richard3120 (talk) 00:35, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Since it's been a couple of days, shall I list the site as Reliable? Everyone seems to be in favour of it. SilentDan (talk) 14:22, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Go for it. We can always discuss further if anyone objects in the future. Sergecross73 msg me 16:12, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

The use of Setlist.fm

This is a website that has been sourced on good articles such as:

The thing is, I'm pretty sure Setlist.fm is a user contributed site. So why is it being used on these articles? It's not listed on WP:ALBUMS/SOURCES at all so I don't suppose a discussion regarding this site has taken place. - SilentDan (talk) 20:19, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

It should not be used - it definitely fails WP:USERG. We should add it to the unreliable list. Sergecross73 msg me 20:41, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

"About setlist.fm" includes "Anyone who likes to share their knowledge about setlists is welcome to add and edit setlists".[5] Maybe it is too obvious, but it should be added to WP:NOTRSMUSIC if it is being used. —Ojorojo (talk) 14:31, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Fully agreed. And now we'll have a discussion to link to too. Sergecross73 msg me 16:01, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

template:albumchart dates wrong everywhere?

So in passing I fix a bad date usage with {{albumchart|UK2|date=nnnn-nn-nn}}. Then I wonder how many times someone has specified the date using YYYY-MM-DD instead of the documented YYYYMMDD (see Template:Album chart). So I search using

hastemplate:"albumchart" insource:"uk2"

and in the first 20 results of 1000+ I see 12 wrong date format usages and only 5 correct! So many usages are wrong, such as this edit from 2014?

Oh, and if I search using the other name for the template

hastemplate:"album chart" insource:"uk2"

I see 1720 results (the combination of old name 'albumchart' and new name "album chart"?), many which are the broken YYYY-MM-DD format. Hey, if even only half are broken, that's 800+ broken links.

Ahh, docs changed June 2017 by SnapSnap. Only... all the previously existing usages of YYYY-MM-DD were not changed to conform to the new URL format at that external web site?

Is this normal that no remedial action has been taken so that WP usages keep up with external realities? Can y'all suggest where to apply for bot fixups, or perhaps another way to fix sooo many now broken links? Shenme (talk) 06:59, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

@Shenme: You need WP:BOTREQ - X201 (talk) 07:08, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The use of YouTube interviews

Ok so in a scenario where an artist is being interviewed by a YouTuber with little or no journalistic credibility, would that be considered an unreliable source because of the interviewer despite the artist themselves being present in the video answering questions? I pondered on this when I came across the other sources section of the WikiProject Albums/Sources page and debated whether or not it fitted the definition of: "If the artist in question was subject to any form of recorded audio or video in the possible form of a television documentary or an informational DVD/VHS..."

Hope to hear your thoughts on this and perhaps when a verdict is brought an amendment can be made on the page to specify the reliability of these sorts of videos. Thank you for your time. - SilentDan (talk) 13:32, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm personally okay with it. I've avoided using it for the reason above (and doubts about its reliability), but since you brought it up, I don't see anything wrong with it if they're interviewing the source in question. The only problem it presents is that they are impossible to archive if the video gets deleted, which may cause problems with WP:VERIFY. dannymusiceditor ^oops 14:15, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

If the artist is clearly shown, I can't see why the source would be deemed unreliable. Besides, artist will often share their own interviews on Facebook, etc., which can be an additional evidence of reliability. Victão Lopes ^Fala! 14:21, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

A potential problem is that non-professionals/amateurs may edit the interviews so that the artists' original statements are out-of-context, etc., and do not present the artists' intentions (clever editing may be difficult to see). Professional writers' must preserve their credibility to remain active and therefore are more suitable sources. —Ojorojo (talk) 14:56, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

It sounds like a blog or other poor-quality source. If the content is important, use that sort of source sparingly. Keep WP:NOTNEWS and WP:INDISCRIMINATE in mind while using any such source. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:01, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I echo Ojorojo and Walter's concerns. If its really important, it seems like other sources should cover it too. I'd use extremely sparingly, and in accordance to WP:PRIMARY. Sergecross73 msg me 15:25, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Precisely - I meant to mention that. Use them sparingly. dannymusiceditor ^oops 15:40, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Succession boxes

Succession boxes are being added to song articles for specialty charts, such as Mainstream Rock,[6] Alternative Songs,[7] Adult Contemporary,[8] etc., sometimes with "multiple runs.[9] Please add your comments at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Record charts#Succession boxes. —Ojorojo (talk) 15:48, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

RfC on whether succession boxes should appear in song and album articles

A RfC has been opened on the question "Should succession boxes appear in song and album articles?" Please add your comments at WT:Manual of Style/Record charts#RfC on whether succession boxes should appear in song and album articles. —Ojorojo (talk) 16:06, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Help with changing a redirect

I created an album page in one of my subpage sandboxes. I pasted it over a redirect that was on the page with the name of the album. The redirect went to the band which recorded the album. Now people are deleting my work. I can see the global tags on the talk page but evidently I am too stupid after 11 years on Wikipedia to figure out how to delete them :) Free Yourself Up is the page ThanksRcollman (talk) 16:26, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

@Rcollman: If you're interested in preserving the history of your sandbox, you could tag the article with this {{subst:db-move|PAGENAME|reason}} (replace PAGENAME with the name of your sandbox), then an admin would move your sandbox over the article so your edits get the proper attribution. Editors redirect your article probably because it is improperly sourced and requires more reliable sources to establish notability. Sources are needed to verify the information, otherwise anyone could insert false information and claim it to be true. KingAndGod 16:37, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the process information. Is the computer turned on? Did you source the Wikipedia page? <blush> No, I did not. I did copy a previous album page for the Bad Self Portraits. I commented out the review categories. I will source the opening paragraph to the Nonesuch Record company announcement and the Band's webpage.

Never new the trick of using my subpage so an editor can decide if it can be included. I will give it a try (after adding more sources and perhaps a review and Billboard ranking). Greatly appreciate your help. Rcollman (talk) 14:59, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in discussion re: how we categorize all songs by an artist by genre(s)

Project members may be interested in this discussion re: whether or not we should categorize all songs by an artist by specific genre(s). Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:41, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Citing Christgau's book vs. original Village Voice column

Please weigh in on this RfC at the Raw Power article, regarding the ratings template and how to cite Robert Christgau's reviews: one review of the original album whose earliest known publication was in the 1981 book Christgau's Record Guide, and another review of the remixed album whose earliest known publication was in the Village Voice in 1997. Dan56 (talk) 18:52, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Something Else!

I'm perplexed about this source, Something Else!. MarilynMansonFan96 suggested I use this to help cite glam rock on Marilyn Manson (band), and I get this is an album review, I haven't considered its context yet, I'm just concerned about reliability here. I looked at its about page - it has many people listed as well as authors, however the results turn out to be mostly troubling - they seem like they do this as some sort of side job and are not professionals. The only one I did find was their co-founder (who is no longer with them as of 2015), Nick DeRiso, which lists something rather promising; currently, his LinkedIn profile states:

I'm a veteran editor, writer and manager with more than three decades of experience in print and online publishing. Named columnist of the year five times by the Associated Press, Louisiana Press Association and Louisiana Sports Writers Association, I previously oversaw a daily section that was named Top 10 in the nation by the AP.

What do you guys think? I have no idea what to think of this source, what with its other co-founder being a pro at SQL programming rather than writing, and the above article's writer listing no specific experience. dannymusiceditor ^oops 14:29, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I've come across this site and was thinking about writing an article on it sometime. In the case of that Marilyn Manson review, it might be worth investigating the author. His bio states: "Fred Phillips is a veteran entertainment writer ... He has written music reviews, columns and feature stories for several newspapers, Web sites and a national wire service …" So, obviously, one wonders: which newspapers/websites/national wire service?

I've visited the site now and again for its articles on the Beatles, almost all of which are written by DeRiso. (I had no idea he'd left, in fact.) His bio, at the end of this 2012 article: "Nick DeRiso has written for USA Today, American Songwriter, All About Jazz, and a host of others. Honored as columnist of the year five times by the Associated Press, Louisiana Press Association and Louisiana Sports Writers Association, he oversaw a daily section named Top 10 in the U.S. by the AP before co-founding Something Else! Nick is now associate editor of Ultimate Classic Rock." I think that's quite impressive. I haven't looked into the other writers but I wonder if it might be worth treating Something Else! as we do about.com: it's an RS but dependent on individual contributors' credentials. JG66 (talk) 15:34, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't recall reading the website in the past, but I'd agree with that, I've come to similar conclusions. Looking over their About Us page, its impressive that there have been features on the website by high level sources like The New York Times or NPR, and that their writers have written for places like USA Today...but it does appears like it mostly applies to a handful of the writers, albeit prolific ones. Sergecross73 msg me 18:48, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Help with a page

Is anyone good at the certification tables and charts? I'm trying to work on the section at Chinese Democracy and really have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to that. The charts table needs to be alphabetized by default and the certifications table needs to be expanded. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.RF23 (talk) 17:16, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

@Ringerfan23: I've put the charts in alphabetical order at least, but the referencing needs work and checking to see if they come from reliable sources. I'll work on that, and have a look for certifications. Richard3120 (talk) 17:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

thank you. If you have a second, could you look at the page List of awards and nominations received by Guns N' Roses? the Billboard Music Awards and Billboard touring section needs some quick fixes, mainly the tables aren't closed out under the nominee/work section, and the 2018 section of the top rock tour needs to list the tour name (not in this lifetime... tour) instead of the band name. If you could help that would be appreciated. Also is there a tutorial or something on how tables work on Wiki because they have stumped me for years. RF23 (talk) 13:11, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Article on unreleased album?

Should the article,Scorpion_(Drake_album) be removed? A lot of misleading unconfirmed information on it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TomasTomasTomas (talk • contribs) 18:45, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

It looks good to me and the sources are reliable. If you think it should be deleted, WP:AFD is the proper venue. KingAndGod 18:53, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

No, not even that's correct in this instance. It's already survived a very recent AFD. I'd just worry about cleaning it up, though even then, I'm not sure exactly what Tomas is referring to, as there's not much in the way of content yet. Sergecross73 msg me 19:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Sergecross73 – it's just survived an AfD, and even if it were to go to a second AfD, the album would be on the verge of being released by the time the AfD was closed, making it somewhat redundant... as the album will include arguably the two biggest worldwide hits so far of 2018, this is obviously going to be a very notable album, and deleting or redirecting it now just to have it recreated again in probably less than a month from now is a waste of time. Exactly what is the "misleading" information in the article as it stands? It's in very basic shape, sure, but everything in there is confirmed detail so far from reliable sources. Richard3120 (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

None of the tracks are technically confirmed to be on the album yet, especially since two of the projects are from a previous EP. While the only single that's known for certain on the rollout would be Nice_for_What. I agree now that it would not be grounds for deletion, however I don't want to start an edit war if I were to remove the "Possible tracks" section, so i'm not certain on what's the right way to go at cleaning up the article. TomasTomasTomas (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

The right approach would be to add sources for any than can be confirmed through reliable sources, and remove any that can't be. Doing a brief search, Billboard states that ""God's Plan" and "Diplomatic Immunity" were already featured on the Scary Hours EP released earlier this year, so it's likely the singles won't land on Scorpion...test song "Nice for What" was produced by Murda Beatz and could possibly be featured on the new project as well.". So perhaps the best approach, for now, would be to delete the "possible songs" section, and add a sentence to the capacity of what Billboard is saying above. (I'm rather shocked - for someone who is on top of the musical world, Drake sure doesn't have much of a Wikipedia presence. Can't believe no one's writing this article yet.) Sergecross73 msg me 12:44, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Edits are being made, it's just that we really don't know much about the album, so there isn't much to put on.TomasTomasTomas (talk) 04:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

One-hit Wonder Criteria

Hello. There is an ongoing debate on the criteria for the one-hit wonders in America listings over here at Talk:List of 2010s one-hit wonders in the United States#Inclusion criteria. It'd be nice if we could get some more opinions on the matter. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nintendoswitchfan (talk • contribs) 17:04, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Notification of discussion of redirection of I'm Free (The Rolling Stones song)

There is a discussion at Talk:I'm Free (The Rolling Stones song) about a possible redirection of the article to Out of Our Heads -- Tyw7 (☎ Contact me! • Contributions) 15:55, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

MusicBrainz at ELN

Whether or not MusicBrainz authority file numbers should be included in {{authority control}} is currently discussed at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#MusicBrainz. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:08, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

June Women in Red focus on singers

		Welcome to Women in Red's June 2018 worldwide online editathons. New: WiR Loves Pride New: Singers and Songwriters New: Women in GLAM New: Geofocus: Russia/USSR Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 10:32, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. — The Transhumanist 10:53, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Scott Floman as a reliable source

Scott Floman is cited as source in several album and song articles.[10] Although he is sometimes identified as a "music critic for Goldmine magazine", references for his quotes and album ratings do not mention Goldmine and link to archives of "sfloman.com"[11] or "South Florida Insurance Man".[12] A Goldmine search turned up one article that quotes him.[13] He is quoted once in Guitar World[14] (a similar quote is in "Easy Now") and has ten Daily Vault reviews from 1997–1998.[15] The rest seem to be from WP mirror sites.

He wrote a book, The Story of Rock and Soul Music: Album Reviews and Lists 1960–2016, that appears to be self-published.[16][17] The way he is referenced in WP articles, it is not clear which of his reviews were professionally published (with some oversight) and which are from his own self-published book or website. How should he be considered a reliable source? —Ojorojo (talk) 18:36, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Generally, with situations like this, we'd only use him as a source in instances where he was clearly published from a third party source that had editorial oversight. So, anything traceable to things like Goldmine or or Guitar World would be usable, but not the self-published stuff. (Though I suppose his own website could be used in the same capacity we use Discogs - as a way to potentially check what something says, but not cite it directly as a source.) Sergecross73 msg me 19:35, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Since most all of Floman's reviews are from his website (and archives) or from his self-published book, I've added him to ALBUMAVOID, with the note that only his reviews in reliable third-party publications are usable. —Ojorojo (talk) 19:30, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Personnel

It is about Indian soundtrack albums. Nowadays, instead of physical CDs, they compile all the tracks together and upload it to YouTube, calling them Audio Jukeboxes. Take this soundtrack album as an instance. The personnel has been provided in the YouTube's description box. All I did was port it to October (soundtrack). Since it is hard data from an official primary source, there is no copyright violation because it is fair use. Did I do the right thing? Harsh Rathod Poke me! 04:27, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Should the unreferenced switch be removed?

I just discovered today that there is a ~~switch~~ parameter in the {{WikiProject Albums}} template to denote unreferenced articles, I find that extremely unnecessary, there are currently only 7 pages in Category:Unreferenced album articles compared with over ten thousand articles that are applicable and I have been adding the {{unreferenced}} tag to album articles for a while now and simply inserting the tag does not get the talk page placed in that category, so I think it should be removed. - CHAMPION ^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)} 03:43, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Agree @Champion: It should be deprecated or completely removed if possible (it is possible!) and that category should be speedily deleted after that. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 04:58, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Music Story as a reliable source

Music Story album ratings appear in a number of album articles (for example[18]). Most of the citations are to Acclaimed Music, a music review aggregation site apparently operated by one person. These only show ratings (1–5 stars) without reviews, writers, dates, etc. Some link to archived reviews for music-story.com[19] or are dead links. The WP Music Story link and the company's "about" page describe it as "an international music data provider"[20] and makes no mention of album reviews by professional music writers.

How is a reader supposed to know that Music Story may have been a RS for album reviews at one time or that Acclaimed Music is not just another website that includes self-published ratings (it does have ratings by Piero Scaruffi,[21] who is currently on the WP:ALBUMAVOID list)? A February 2017 discussion didn't produce a consensus. With several review/rating options available, WP should not have to resort to using sources of questionable reliability just for another star rating with no commentary to back it up. This might also apply to ratings by other reviewers that are found on Acclaimed Music.
—Ojorojo (talk) 19:14, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Unreliable per comments above. Willing to reconsider if there's something we're missing here, but as is, doesn't look like an RS. Sergecross73 msg me 19:16, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
~~Unreliable~~: according to its homepage Music Story is now a "music metadata provider" (whatever that means) and there is no sign of any album reviews or ratings on its website, nor a means to search for them if they exist (clicking on "Catalog" or "Database" just returns you to the home page). So all we have in most cases in Acclaimed Music's word for it that the ratings on the old Music Story website are correct, because there are few archive links, and no idea who reviewed those albums at the time. As there are so many other more reliable and verifiable sources available, it doesn't seem worth relying on this site for reviews. Richard3120 (talk) 20:05, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
Reliable: Unfortunately, this site had a complete revamp a year or two ago, perhaps even by the time Dan56 started the article here. It used to contain artist bios and album reviews by artist, similar to AllMusic, and there are some pages saved at archive.org. Here's the page for John Lennon, although images and part of the formatting haven't come through. What should, and did once, appear under "Discographie de …" was a line of album cover images with a star rating for each. In some cases, this constituted a gallery of five pages of images (i.e. an arrow head in the far right of the gallery took you onto the next five images). Clicking on each album cover then revealed a review (or a "chronique"), often about two or three paragraphs long and credited to a French journalist. Here's one for a Ravi Shankar album. I'd always meant to add to the article Dan started – one of the reviewers has written books on jazz and a David Bowie biography. Somewhere I've got a list of additions about the contributors, in a Word file, which I was going to use to expand the article; I'll have to get back to you once I discover what I've done with that list. Acclaimed Music picked up Music Story as one of only two French sites/magazines that deserved inclusion there at the time, the other being Le Guide du CD. I'd agree that many other sources exist and their reviews are far easier to access, but I don't see that as a reason to deem this an unreliable source, especially if an archived url can be found for each review. JG66 (talk) 02:40, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, that at least clarifies what the website used to be, though it doesn't really touch on why it should be considered reliable. (The links weren't loading for me, so I couldn't really see it fur myself, FYI.) Sergecross73 msg me 02:56, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

You have to be patient, but the page does come through eventually. The writer of that album review, Christian Larrède, is a longstanding contributor to Les Inrockuptibles. His linkedin page also names Jazz News (which I'm surprised to see hasn't got an article here on English Wikipedia), as well as Radio France and Music Story. Larrède wasn't the writer I was referring to above, in fact, but he and others appear to have the credentials. I appreciate that this doesn't testify to the reliability of the site per se – all I can say is that in its past incarnation, pre-"music metadata provider", it was and it looked the business, certainly more so than sputnikmusic and a good number of sources we accept as reliable. JG66 (talk) 03:27, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I've tried looking for three of the first four albums that come up on Ojorojo's first link above, and managed to get archive copies of all of them. Here are the reviews for Wish You Were Here [22] and Electric Ladyland [23] – the article for Yellow Submarine appears to be a rating only, with no review text [24]. JG66 might be right here – I've looked up some of the reviewers and they are all professional journalists, so I've struck my vote while I investigate more. Richard3120 (talk) 03:43, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Another quick one on MS reviewers/contributors: it must have been Loïc Picaud I was thinking of above. He co-founded Music Story in 2008 and, according to this, has authored books on Bowie, Serge Gainsbourg, McCartney, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the French rock scene. JG66 (talk) 04:05, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad someone was finally able to provide some links to the originals. I couldn't get usable info out of the Lennon page, but the Shankar page eventually loaded. It is odd that the article MS links for Wish You Were Here and Electric Ladyland are to Acclaimed Music, rather than the MS archive. AM only shows the star rating – no writer, date, or commentary. The MS pages at least show the writers and that some reasoning is behind the ratings, which would seem necessary for a FA. As Richard noted, MS only shows a rating for Yellow Submarine, although the YS WP article links to a Beatles discography page that takes a while to navigate through to get to YS.

Some MS contributors seem to be professionals. But readers don't see this, because most all of the WP MS links are to Acclaimed Music, which doesn't identify them (Scaruffi is on the same list for WYWH & EL) and the WP MS article only identifies it a data provider. I think the value of a star rating without any supporting commentary is minimal. MOS:ALBUM#Album ratings template includes "The bulk of the information should be in prose format, though the text may be supplemented with the Album ratings template, as a summary of professional reviews in table form. The template is not to be a substitute for a section in paragraph form, since a review cannot be accurately boiled down to a simple rating out of five stars or other scoring system." (Some disruptive editors are mass adding problematic ratings to articles, which prompted this discussion and about Scott Floman above.) The original MS reviews are probably RS and should replace AM when available (with the writer identified in the ref). I think that editors should be made aware on Albums/Sources that Acclaimed Music includes ratings and lists, etc., from sources that are not consider to be reliable by WP standards.

—Ojorojo (talk) 16:25, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Rojo: well, that applies to a good many other album ratings as well. Those in Larkin's Encyclopedia of Popular Music, The Rolling Stone Album Guide, MusicHound, and Strong's The Great Rock Discography – the first two of which appear to be viewed as vital inclusions in ratings boxes for rock albums, anyway. Often, those books say barely a word about live albums or compilations, for instance. I recently did some work on a couple of Beach Boys album articles and, in the case of Larkin, he says nothing at all about their 1968 studio album Friends, although the period is discussed; same with MusicHound – the band's career is discussed in general terms, key albums (good and bad) are then discussed in detail, but Friends and others are simply listed with a rating. And that's the approach Strong takes generally, from what I've seen of his book. I'd say the situation with Music Story and Yellow Sub is consistent with those examples: the album's mentioned ever so briefly in the biography, and the rating is an offshoot from that.

As far as Acclaimed Music goes, I was in favour of using the site to support an album's standing in critics' best-of lists, particularly. For the Wish You Were Here and Electric Ladyland album ratings, archived MS pages should be used, and hopefully more pages will become available, just as they did quite recently for Blender's reviews. (That magazine's site disappeared off the face of the earth for years; then, in the last year or two, from what I saw, archive.org suddenly had hundreds of Blender Guide pages available where there were almost none before.)

I hear what you're saying about the need to avoid the abundance of review ratings with nothing in the way of accompanying article text. My point is that it's a good rule of thumb but a) one needn't be overly rigid about implementing it (i.e. as long as a decent portion of the ratings given are represented in prose in the reception section – that's what matters), and b) it's a rule that we often have to break to ensure that album guides such as Larkin and Rolling Stone (and Strong, and MH) are represented. It's worth adding that Blender (like Larkin, RS etc. even when those sources do explicitly discuss the album in question) give the flimsiest of a "review" each time, and it's often impossible to find anything meaningful to then include in an album article here. For example: Beach Boys' Friends, which is paired on CD with 20/20. There are times when I've felt I'm really scraping the barrel to adhere to that guideline, "The bulk of the information should be in prose format …"

I think a large part of the problem re unrepresented review ratings came about through the 2013 RfC where it was decided to only include formal ratings (no comments on "favourable", "mixed", etc). Certainly in the case of albums that were first released and/or had a major reissue campaign before scores and ratings became standard, this has meant that a full, dedicated review can be well represented in the text but, lacking a formal rating, it's absent from the ratings box, which then gets filled with ratings from the short-sharp variety of critiques – ring-ins, really. (I'm talking about for a period up to about 2004, which is when Mojo, The Guardian, Record Collector and PopMatters either finally succumbed or had only adopted formal ratings in the previous year or so. Or take The Word – a prestigious publication that never had formal ratings, as The New York Times still doesn't, I believe? – a review from there is never going to have a presence in the ratings box even though, one would hope, prose appears in the article body.) JG66 (talk) 09:45, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

JG66 has a point about there often being an "inverse relationship" between star ratings and the amount of prose that go with them. Speaking from a British perspective, I don't think any music reviews used ratings during the 1960s, and the only one of the four major weekly music magazines that used star ratings in the 1970s was Sounds - these two decades are the "classic rock" period that JG66 focuses his work on. Record Mirror brought in star ratings when it switched from newspaper to magazine format in 1982, I think, and NME started using ratings in the latter half of the 80s, as did Rolling Stone. Melody Maker avoided ratings for almost its entire existence: it experimented briefly with a two-star system around 1995 for "recommended" and "bloody essential" albums, and then only used ratings during the last couple of years of its life as an A4 format magazine. So clearly very few albums until the mid-80s are going to have any presence in the ratings box from British publications - but obviously the reviews are the most RS contemporary ones available.

On the other hand, Q, which started in 1987 and is the UK's leading monthly music magazine, has always had a rating system. But the sheer volume of reviews it includes in the magazine each month (usually over 100) means unless it's a release by a major artist, it can't dedicate more than a brief paragraph to each album. I often find it hard to extract more than a six or seven-word phrase from the review that is meaningful. Likewise, Mojo reviews about a dozen albums in depth, and then crams the rest of the month's releases into a single page with a one-line review. So you're often going to find that up until the 1980s, the best prose comes from reviews that have no ratings attached. Richard3120 (talk) 14:34, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

While I continue to mull this over, these are some preliminary suggestions:

Expand the Music Story article to show that for a period they provided album reviews by recognized music writers/critics, maybe with some names (the French WP article is no better). The one-year old tag "may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for companies and organizations" does not inspire confidence in its being a reliable source.
Add Music Story to WP:RSMUSIC with the note "If available, link to the original review rather than only a rating linked to an aggregator" and any other identified limitations.
Add Acclaimed Music to the WP:ALBUM/SOURCE#Aggregates or other section with something like "Acclaimed Music's lists of ratings by reviewers may include those that are not considered reliable by WP standards; only cite individual ratings by reviewers that meet WP:MOSALBUM#Critical reception. Additionally, these should only be used when the actual reviews are not available; seek out the reviews in full and cite them individually."
Please provide a link to the 2013 RfC re: not using "favourable", "mixed", etc. This should be noted in Template:Album ratings#Instructions and MOS:ALBUM#Album ratings template.

—Ojorojo (talk) 15:28, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I'll see what I can add to Music Story. I take your point that it hardly inspires confidence right now; also, that French WP is of little help. The change regarding our album ratings was not an RfC after all, I've just discovered, just a discussion that resulted in a vote: Template talk:Album ratings/Archive 1#Request to remove subjective labels. A notification of the discussion was posted on the Albums project page but there was nothing about a vote taking place that would have such a wide-ranging effect on all album articles. JG66 (talk) 08:49, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, but I didn't find the discussion helpful. On one hand, eliminating prose would cut down on OR and be more appropriate for a ratings (numeric, etc.) table; while on the other, it would also eliminate many of the better, more reasoned reviews from easy visibility (a positive from a well-known reviewer might carry more weight than one or two stars from a lesser known). I don't know that a RFC would help, but without a broader consensus to the contrary, it looks as if the mixed use of prose and symbols will remain. Adding Music Story to ALBUM/SOURCE can wait until its article can be improved. Any thoughts on adding a statement about Acclaimed Music? It looks like SELFPUBLISHed, but has a lot of support. —Ojorojo (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Okay, on the article expansion front, I've just added some more details. I've not been able to find my fabled Word document, so I'm simply searching for hits for some of the contributors the site used to list. I get the impression that a lot of their writers have common ground as contributors to the book Le Rock de A à Z. Also, that in its new incarnation, it could be akin to Muze, which benefited from Larkin's development of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music database. JG66 (talk) 08:36, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Ojorojo: Yes, regarding a possible statement on Acclaimed at WP:ALBUM/SOURCE#Aggregates or elsewhere, I agree we're some way from establishing that it merits that sort of recognition on Wikipedia. I like what the site offers, and I believe it's well maintained and accurate, single-operator or otherwise; but I can't argue with those who object to its inclusion on the grounds of SELFPUBLISHed. (If Acclaimed were to be accepted, however, I think your suggested wording is mighty fine.)

With the Music Story article, I'm planning to expand the lead slightly and perhaps introduce subsections under History, to differentiate between the two eras of the company's operation (online music encyclopaedia; music service and data provider). I suspect that further investigation into the list of contributors will continue to unearth something useful. (Eg, Jean-Noël Ogouz appears to be another veteran music journalist and published author/biographer.) So how do you think the article looks now – does it sufficiently establish the site for our purposes? JG66 (talk) 05:09, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

The Music Story article now shows that it is/was a RS for album reviews (I am tempted to remove the notability tag, but WP:ORG has a lot of criteria). Should we assume that all its reviews are OK (similar to AllMusic) or just the ones by certain authors? I'd be hesitant to use unattributed ratings for albums such as Yellow Submarine (I try to avoid similar AllMusic "overviews"). How to treat Acclaimed Music probably needs more input and a separate discussion. —Ojorojo (talk) 16:33, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, got distracted … I've not found any of the MS contributors to be anything but the real deal, so, yes, I suggest we treat it as we do AllMusic.

On the issue of unattributed ratings, I can only repeat what I was saying above about how this situation mirrors the treatment many albums receive in books by Colin Larkin, Rolling Stone, MusicHound and Martin Strong – in which case, there are no end of ratings that deserve to be removed. (I know this because, in years gone by, I've done a sweep through of all albums by artists such as the Stones, Led Zep, the Band, Petty & the Heartbreakers, the Beach Boys, ELO, solo Beatles, adding ratings from those titles.) In the case of Yellow Submarine and any of the other Beatles albums on Music Story, my argument would be that none of the star ratings are unattributed, strictly speaking, because they complement the six-page artist biography written by Loïc Picaud.

I agree that Acclaimed is for another day. JG66 (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I'll add Music Story to WP:RSMUSIC with the note "Use a citation the complete review if available". What is the best link to add under "Website/Archives"? —Ojorojo (talk) 16:10, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Ojorojo: hmm, not sure what to suggest. I was thinking we could do the same as for Blender since loads of that publication's reviews have appeared at archive.org. But then I see our link for Blender doesn't in fact go there – it's goes to a Maxim back-issues site, with nothing related to Blender album reviews, as far as I can see. I appreciate that it's preferable to include either an active website (which in MS's case is going to be of little-to-no use, given the company's change of operation) or an archive link, but is it a condition of inclusion in the list of sources? JG66 (talk) 01:47, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@JG66: Just trying to be consistent with the other entries. How about a general link to the Wayback Machine?[25] —Ojorojo (talk) 15:13, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Sure, understood ("consistent with the other entries"). I think a general link is fine until something better turns up. JG66 (talk) 16:23, 16 June 2018 (UTC)