Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums

Help needed to find reviews

Hi people, I've been working on compilation album King of Pop and plan to take it to GA at some point. I wanted to write a critical analysis section but haven't been able to find any reviews. Firstly it hasn't been released in the U.S. so Rolling Stone and the like probably won't cover it. Secondly, the track list is different in every country it is released in, leading me to believe that reviewers just aren't going to enter into the hassle. If anyone can find me some reviews please HELP. Cheers. — Realist² 18:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Metacritic

Why is Metacritic listed as both a reliable source for a professional review, and an unreliable source for a professional review? --The Guy _complain ^edits 16:18, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless there's a mention I'm not familiar with, Metacritic is listed as a practical place to quickly find a lot of online reviews, since it lists and links to reviews from various sources. It is not in itself a reliable source for reviews, since it only synthesizes professional reviews, but earns its place in the list as having "links to reviews that you can use in album infoboxes." --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Moon, although I have created a template for it with, Template:Metacritic album for use in an external links section with albums. I don't know how useful it is, but it's just to encourage metacritic to be used at the bottom of pages for new users! I hope it's not to complicated. Andrzejbanas (talk) 16:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Album

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

melodic.net

Should be a review site. It satisfies the criteria of "written by professional music journalists or DJs, or found within any online or print publication having a (paid or volunteer) editorial and writing staff (which excludes personal blogs). The standard for inclusion always is that the review meet Wikipedia's guideline for reliable sources and that the source be independent of the artist, record company, etc." I'm posting here to attain consensus for the addition. Have a look: [1] --Pwnage8 (talk) 21:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

On the surface it looks fine, but I'd feel better if they had a section explaining who writes the reviews and what their qualifications/backgrounds are. Something that says they're actual music critics, not just site members. I looked but didn't see anything like that. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:33, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The reviews are written by the site staff. --Pwnage8 (talk) 12:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're "professional" reviews. For example, my friends and I have a website where I occasionally write and post music reviews. But since I'm not a professional music critic, I don't like to my own reviews from wikipedia. Being part of the site staff does not make me a professional critic, anymore than being a wikipedian makes me a professional writer. I would feel more comfortable if the staff had some sort of profiles of themselves stating their qualifications as critics. Any music fan can start a review site, but we have a higher standard of what we consider "professional reviews". --IllaZilla (talk) 18:07, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge soundtrack articles into parent media?

A discussion has been started on the WikiProject Media franchises talk page regarding this topic. Please come over and give your input. Thanks! LA (T) @ 07:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The discussion started well, however, it has faltered. If this project approves this, please indicate it in the above linked discussion. It would be a great help if there could be some from this project who would be willing to show which soundtracks need to be merged and which should stay seperate. So, please come over and indicate this project's approval or not. Thanks! LA (T) @ 20:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Ben E. King

I've been punching out as much info as I can for a discography for this great soul singer (and originator of Stand By Me). I am nowhere near done as I've recently found a couple of missing albums (and maybe more), but I might like some help in getting info for some of the articles and filling in any missing information (track times - esp. on the first compilation album - missing album artwork that I haven't found, etc.). If anyone can help with this, either reply here or msg. me on my own talk page and we can discuss. I'm also thankful for any opinions of what I have done so far (and I know, citations may be needed in some cases). Thanks! =)

Note I've mainly worked on the discography so far; King's biography was done by other users. I may contact them as well. CycloneGU (talk) 12:22, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

RfC on Sweet album titles

The actual title of two Sweet albums are being discussed: Talk:The Sweet Featuring Little Willy & Block Buster#Album title and Talk:Give Us a Wink#Give Us an Exclamation mark!. Anyone with an opinion in one direction or the other is kindly invited to comment. – IbLeo (talk) 12:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

May I add that no particular expertise on Sweet's discography is required to comment on the latter. We are looking for general guidelines on how to determine the correct title of an album when the writing on the cover, back cover and record sticker is inconsistent. – IbLeo (talk) 21:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Per Yahoo! Music - http://music.yahoo.com/ar-265727-discography--Sweet - I found the titles.

The Sweet is an album listed from 1999. (If these years are wrong, please ignore them; Y! is inconsistent with release dates and years.)

Give Us A Wink is an album from 2005. There is no mention of an explanation point in Y!'s discography.

I've also reviewed both talk pages. Regarding punctuation, I tend to remove it from all song titles (even commas) when I list songs in my collection as the words are all that is relevant. The only punctuation I leave is apostrophes. Thus, you can guess my opinion on Give Us A Wink as the album's title. As for the other listing the names on the cover, I say put the full name as it appears on the original as the title; thus, the page should be titled The Sweet Featuring Little Willy & Block Buster. If an album is later re-released - say as The Sweet with nothing extra - use the original page to discuss the reissue and indicate the different title (just like you'd list bonus tracks or different track orders). Keep the original album name as it appears originally for the title.

Hope this helps. If anyone differs in opinion, I'm interested in the discussion. CycloneGU (talk) 03:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking time to look into this. By linking to the discussions to the talk pages I was actually expecting it to continue over there... but never mind.

• On the Yahoo discography (although it does not seem very accurate to me either) the album listed simply as The Sweet is the 1999 CD reissue of the album in question, as they are identical regarding album cover and track listing. This is one more reason to believe that the title of the original LP was also simply The Sweet. As I see it, this supports the article move I did just a few hours before your entry.
• Can you refer to any policy here on Wikipedia that supports removing special characters from song or album titles? It seems a bit liberal to me to remove the comma from "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" or the leading dots from ...Baby One More Time.

– IbLeo (talk) 12:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Call it a personal preference. I forgot to consider the ellipis, and that I might leave as well (mind you, when you actually say the title, the ellipis doesn't show itself in speech at the beginning of a title), but I prefer not to use the comma in song titles for my own personal reasons. If there is such a guideline, I'm curious too, but the only guideline I've heard of is regarding words like "to", "the" in the middle of titles. Basically, do not capitalize them. (e.g. "The Circle of Life" instead of "The Circle Of Life" - and I still prefer the capital. *LOL*)

As a side note, I used this page because I was discussing the topic of both albums. I did not intend to refer to either album on the other's page and used this as the discussion was already begun here for both. CycloneGU (talk) 16:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, let us keep the generic part of the discussion here. Regarding use of capitals, we must adhere to MOS:CAPS and especially WP:ALBUMCAPS for album titles. WP:MUSTARD gives guidelines for music in general. They don't really leave much room for personal preferences, which in my opinion is a good thing. – IbLeo (talk) 12:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Policy on Footers

Greetings All, Can someone please help me find info. regarding previous discussions, here or elsewhere, on the "correct"/consensual use of footers. I think they have their function and are really useful in one or two limited cases, but these templates are now sprouting up like mushrooms and are slowly but surely being added to every individual musician, regardless of relevance. In some cases, the footer is longer than the actual article itself. Cheers! --Technopat (talk) 16:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The template should be directly relevant to the article. This is somewhat subjective, however. Using the John Lennon template on, say, the Paul McCartney article would be improper; but using The Beatles template on The Quarrymen article seems acceptable. Could you please give a couple examples of what you mean? — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Greetings Twas Now - thanks for your reply. I agree that any internal wikilinks, as opposed to a generic template, are sufficient as they would have a more direct bearing on the article. Of course, in trying to find the couple of examples you requested, I could only find one of the many I have seen that seemed out-of-place (Ronnie Stephenson)! But on clicking an actual template I came across the following comment to which sums up my own views:

This template does a disservice to all of the great Jazz articles by grouping them together as a footer. By attempting to be as expansive as Template:Jazzbox it blurs too many topics together and takes away the individual poignancy of having separate boxes for each of the main topics, ala Genres, Topics, Lists and Lists of Musicians [...] • Freechild'sup? 04:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Cheers! --Technopat (talk) 07:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is an official guideline or not, but I really think that a template should only be included in an article that is linked to in the template itself. This preserves the template's use as a convenient, one-click navigation box between related articles about a specific topic. Following this philosophy, the "jazz footer" template should not be included in the Ronnie Stephenson article, or in any article about an individual musician. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 10:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's only an essay, but WP:NAVBOX recommends that navboxes should be small in order to aid navigation and that they are only used for related articles. --JD554 (talk) 11:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for feedback. Given the consensus here, I'll remove those I come across that are decidely out-of-place. --Technopat (talk) 12:39, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Requesting comments at FAC for 9.0: Live

If anyone's interested, the Slipknot live album, 9.0: Live, is currently at FAC. Please post comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/9.0: Live if you can, as it has stalled and has not received comments in the past few days. Thanks in advance! Gary King (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Review sites

Regarding the current inclusion of Piero Scaruffi and his History of Rock site as acceptable reviews. I'm curious as to how it was determined that it was a valid review site.

The link was added at this point on 5 July 2006, by User:Gika. I had a look at the Archives to see if it was discussed (i.e. a determination was made that it warranted inclusion on the list - the onus of proof being on the claimant and all that). One would expect any discussion to have occurred shortly after its addition, that is, it should be in Archive 7 if any. I checked further archives, but it doesn't look like it was discussed as valid or invalid.

In the case of, for example, Beach Boys album "reviews", for the set of "reviews" for albums from Surfin' USA to Pet Sounds, a link is provided to The Beach Boys section of his History of Rock Music. This page provides only numerical ratings for these albums and an overview of the group. This page is largely in Italian (I think) and would therefore violate Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums#Non-English_reviews, which states that non-English reviews should not generally be included. The author in fact requests English translation assistance from his readership. As the copyright notice for the page is from almost a decade ago (1999) and the material has not yet been updated, can it really be taken as a relevent (well known) site? From the album Smile onwards, there are some English writings. These write-ups in English are merely general descriptions of the albums and the time period over which they were written, and does not provide a critical analysis or review of the materials. How does any of this constitute a "review" of any kind?

In short, how was it determined that using his website as a link for reviews was valid, and, if it was simply not challenged, does that in itself constitute its approval, or was it just missed. That is - can we delete the links, or will it cause a stink? --Roygbiv666 (talk) 23:56, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The relevant discussion is here in archive 26, though I don't think we reached a satisfactory conclusion. --IllaZilla (talk) 00:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The "Reviews" section of the album infobox should include no more than 10 reviews. Since those albums don't have anywhere near 10 reviews, and since, aside from Allmusic, Scaruffi's are the only reviews we seem to have for many of the albums, I think we should include the reviews. Ideally, however, if a better review can be found that would bump the number of reviews above 10, then replace the most trivial review. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I spend a lot of time replacing unexplained deletions of Scaruffi's reviews from articles. To his detriment, it can be said that he is a self-published source, and is not a professional reviewer; on the other hand, he often gives a more reasoned review (within his own frame of reference) than, say, Christgau, and of albums that tend not to get covered at all. My take on it is that WP:NPOV suggests that we do not make up our readers' minds for them and that we give them a selection of reviews (otherwise why have up to ten?) and let them make up their own minds. Is that not what we're here for? --Rodhullandemu 00:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, but if the "review" contains no critical analysis or even a statement that the album is good or bad - is that a review? Specifically, I'm referring to the Beach Boys albums noted above.

Roygbiv666 (talk) 03:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess for these albums in particular, his reviews could be excluded, based on this: "reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question" (from WP Albums: Non-English reviews). — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:32, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Image Deletion

How do I request an image be deleted? I took off its fair use rationale as I am keeping the one that appears as just the free cover, not the table that it was taken on. *LOL* CycloneGU (talk) 20:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

As long as the image isn't being used in any articles, a bot will automatically tag it as orphaned and delete it within a week. There are ways you can request it to be deleted, but letting it go orphaned is simpler. --IllaZilla (talk) 21:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Echoes (Pink Floyd song) - some opinions requested

There has been a graphic in this article demonstrating the dynamics of the piece over its 22-minute length. An editor keeps removing it claiming, inter alia, that this is not fair use. The status of the image itself has not been impugned by any editor. Two editors have replaced the image, claiming fair use and that it enhances the article. Some further input on the talk page would be welcome. Thanks. --Rodhullandemu 13:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look. I suspect I'll be suggesting that the contributor pursue these questions through the regular channels of WP:NFR. That's what it's for, after all. Simply removing the image doesn't fairly evaluate that question. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:32, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

And have done. Simply removing the image without that consensus isn't necessarily helpful. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:36, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Seems to me that image could clearly be released under a free license. I don't think that a screengrab illustration of a soundwave needs to be licensed as non-free, even if it's of a copyrighted song. If you made it yourself, you can release it under a free license. --IllaZilla (talk) 15:44, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Well I was playing safe and treating it as a Derivative work thus requiring a fair-use rationale. It's not clear, but if different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work", is copyrightable and therefore can be released under GFDL. Clearly the technology does not allow the original work to be constructed from the image because of bandwidth considerations so breach of the original copyright does not seem to arise. I'll ask on Commons Village Pump and see what they say. --Rodhullandemu 15:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation query

I recently came across Over the Rainbow (Connie Talbot album) and Over the Rainbow (2007 album). Since the former was also released in 2007, the latter should be moved: but where to? It apparently existed at Over the Rainbow (Showtunes album) at one point; if that's where it should be, I'd have to merge the histories, which is a bit of a pain. What's the standard disambiguation for a case like this? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I moved it to Over the Rainbow (2007 charity album). — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:28, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

AfD notice

Members of this WikiProject might be interested in the discussion going on at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of musicians with multiple self-titled albums. ProhibitOnions ^(T) 07:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No Jacket Required Peer Review

Hello! I have heavily contributed to an article about one of Phil Collins' albums, No Jacket Required. I am very happy to say that I totally re-wrote the article (And had help from a few users along the way), and then nominated for the Good Article criteria, where it passed! I am not 100% on how the criteria for a Featured Article works, however, but I am pretty sure that the article is not at all FA material yet! So, I have decided to request for a Peer Review at this link, [2]. I cordially invite anyone from this project to comment on the article as it stands right now, and would love to see feedback from anyone! No Jacket Required is one of my favorite albums, and I would love to see it get to FA status, but I can't do it without the help of other Wiki users! Thank you for reading, and I hope to see some comments at the PR! Have a nice day! :) CarpetCrawler (talk) 22:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

An invitation to join a conversation

This current discussion is open for anyone who wishes to comment. The final goal is to end disruptive edit wars. The Real Libs-speak politely 16:37, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#Time to remove genre section on info box? If you wish to comment, please do so there. --IllaZilla (talk) 01:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Why would this conversation be moved there? Merging infoboxes on singles and infoboxes on songs seems unrelated to the question of removing genre sections from infoboxes. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, I believe Libs linked to the wrong discussion in his original post. Fixed. --IllaZilla (talk) 01:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, well no wonder we weren't aware of the conversation. We were advised of the conversation about merging infoboxes on singles and songs, at least. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

British charts

Apologies if this has been asked before, but is there a decent, free, online source for checking whether an album has charted in the British charts, that is considered reliable? Two possibilities are EveryHit.com and ChartStats.com. Anyone have any thoughts? J Milburn (talk) 17:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Chartstats I find is the best source. It lists every week in the history of the UK Chart. However, the albums chart is still undergoing work and at the moment is missing the complete chart of some weeks. Also keep in mind that recently, they have started to feature the whole top 100 singles and albums, but officially only the top 75 is counted as genuine charts, so the positions 76-100 should be ignored. Still, it is far better than Every Hit, which is incomplete in its information, and is the site I always use for chart info.Tuzapicabit (talk) 15:23, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

acharts.us

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#acharts.us for a discussion of the reliability of acharts.us that is relevant to this project. PiracyFundsTerrorism (talk) 14:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Help

Can somebody help copyedit the Into the Fire article which is a current GA nominee. --Be Black Hole Sun (talk) 12:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll note for the benefit of any copyeditors who may assist that technical personnel is required for the article to meet B class criteria by this project. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:Number-one albums in the United Kingdom

This category is underpopulated. If you come across and album that was number one in the UK, please add it to Category:Number-one albums in the United Kingdom.

Thanks, TwentiethApril1986 (talk) 12:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Another approach, rather than just adding them as you find them, would be to go through the articles listed at List of number-one albums (UK) (from 1950s to the present) and add the category to each album article. Using AWB, this could be achieved probably in a short time. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I have AWB but I've never used it before. I wouldn't want to mess anything up. I'll just go through the list of number one albums. Might take a while... --TwentiethApril1986 (talk) 19:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I have now added albums from List of number-one albums from the 1960s (UK) using HotCat. --TwentiethApril1986 (talk) 00:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Genres

Why have the genres disappeared from some of the album infoboxes? Charmed36 (talk) 00:05, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a discussion about this on the template page, here. --TwentiethApril1986 (talk) 00:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#Time to remove genre section on info box? If you wish to comment, please do so there. --IllaZilla (talk) 01:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey: Music from the Motion Picture

Could someone please do an assessment on this page and Transformers: The Album? Sarujo (talk) 02:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. Both are start-class, low priority. Some more prose could bump them to C-class. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)