Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Intelligent dance music

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. - Mailer Diablo 12:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intelligent dance music

Intelligent dance music (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

This is a genre of music that in the words of one of its "references" is ' music that defies categorization'. The term is a complete neologism, and also inherently point of view. Why is this kind of dance music intelligent? The references are completely unreliable, being a few forums, blogs and a web ring. the entire article seems to have been built off the fact that an album was released in the mid 1990s called Artificial Intelligence. Aphex Twin, which this original research describes as the founder of 'intelligent dance music' is a drill and bass / ambient techno artist, not 'intelligent dance', and said himself that he considers he has nothing to do with the newly-invented and made up arbitrary name, himself suggesting it was not a fair name to use ([1]). Wikipedia should strive to avoid neologisms, avoid original research, and not be the place for things made up in school one day. Delete. Proto::► 14:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. The fact that the name of a musical genre is vague does not deprive it of notability. This label (usually seen as IDM) is at least discussed at allmusic.com and audiogalaxy.com. Easily meets the "I heard of it before seeing the Wikipedia article" test. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

  I'm sorry, what policy is that test contained in? I have heard of my dog, but my dog has no article. Allmusic is utterly unreliable when it comes to names of genres, as they're chiefly user submitted (I don't know about Audiogalaxy). Proto::► 15:45, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

  "Policy" is the biggest problem with the project right now, it seems. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

  No, failing to grasp those policies in the first place is the problem. Proto::► 18:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

  When "policy" is imagined to trump the observation that I had heard of this term well before seeing a Wikipedia article on the subject (and therefore, this isn't some newly made neologism, but a label with some currency), this seems to me to lead to the conclusion, not that this AfD has even slight merit, but that reams and reams of "policy" ought to be on WP:MfD. - Smerdis of Tlön 22:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• Very Strong Keep - Excellent article which tries to explain a term, a so called superword like Punk in which it's meanings are contested, which has been used widely for the past 16 years in the dance and electronic music community. Hardly a neologism and definitely not something which someone made up in school the other day. A google search for "intelligent dance music" produces 120,000 entries and the more frequently used term idm+ambient (for example) comes up with 1.3 million entries. A quick search on ebay for idm came up with 85 music listings. Yorkshiresky 15:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • And the fact that it's linked to 400+ other wikipedia articles seems to indicate that's it's a fairly widely used term. Yorkshiresky 16:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
    • The fact that some word is linked to 107+ articles usually indicates that it sits in a template :-) `'mikka 17:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep and massively cleanup. I don't think WP:NFT applies here as if this is a term made up by the music media (as are most genre designations) and then written about. WP:OR Does apply to some of the content of this article and it certainly needs some editing to take out content that doesn't meet WP:V, but on the whole I don't think the very concept or existance of the term is WP:OR and I don't think WP:NEO necessarily applies here. Inherent POV of the term is also not an issue in my opinion, any moreso than it would be with Trash rock or Emo. It is a name, nothing more or less. With all due respect to Richard David James, I don't think his opinion of what his music should be categorized as is in any way relevent here. What matters is what the music media categorizes him as and if he doesn't like it he can start up a support group of "mislabeled artists" along with the multitudes of musicians who have been lumped into the catch-all of Emo... All that said, Proto has a very good point about the reliability of the sources. Other than Allmusic, there is an audiogalaxy editorial, Usenet posts, and a couple of interviews that don't even reference the term. This is something that needs to be corrected. The fact however that in an interview with James the interviewer references the fact that his music has been called IDM and that would seem to indicate the fact that this is a known term and the way he answers the question would indicate he is familiar with the term and it is one that is common enough that it would be understood by someone who follows techno music. Of course "seem to indicate" isn't what we base articles on. I guess what I'm getting at here is that at this time I think a keep and cleanup (and if that means busting it back to a stub on the term ref'd just to the Allmusic article, so be it) is the correct course of action with no predjudice against another AfD if real reliable sources are not added to this article in the next month or so.--Isotope23 18:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, 11 gbooks hits, 200 GNA hits, even 12 Google Scholar hits. The fact that Aphex Twin does not like the label is hardly an argument from Wikipedia policy. As with all music genre articles, it could stand major improvement. --Dhartung | Talk 19:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep. I see the problems with WP:OR, especially in terms of giving much credence to the effect of a usenet group without citing anything, but the article can be cleaned up. The important thing is that the article has a good skeleton to it. The concept itself was not "made up in school one day" and is certainly not a neologism--it's been around for a decent amount of time and has been fairly widely adopted. If you're going to consider this a neologism, you might as well AFD Indie pop and Drum and bass as well. --Jackhorkheimer 20:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep The article needs work for sure, but it is a definite keeper on the basis that it is a fairly commonly used genre label. The description of the music being "intelligent" may not even accurately describe the music, but there are other music genres that arguably suffer from inaccurate labelling as well. Regardless of that, people commonly use the word and I see it often on different websites including AllMusic, and even MySpace has it as an option for artists to describe themselves as. Overall, it just needs editting and sources, and I think it can be on its way. -- Shadowolf 23:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, The Promise Ring say they aren't emo, Tarentel say they aren't post-rock, Aphex Twin says he isn't IDM. Sounds about right. There are tons of genre articles we should be deleting before this one. And it doesn't really defy categorization, you know.Recury 23:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep based on academic references, but I agree that it cries out for sourcing and removal of statements that can't readily be sourced. Gazpacho 00:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep 'IDM' is a notable and very widely used term to describe this fairly popular subgenre of electronic music.--HisSpaceResearch 21:33, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletions. -- SkierRMH 06:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep The genre classification is very widely used, it is not "made up in school one day". The google book/scholar hits should be enough to show that this genre deserves its own article. AmitDeshwar 17:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep Not commercial but quite widespread underground. While I do not liste to it, it certainly does not fit the deletion guidelines. A simple genre search returned over 1000 albums. Now if that genre came out of another one in the 90s or not i don't know nor care, since the term is notable on its own. _└ ^VodkaJazz / _talk ^┐ 18:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep To paraphrase: "The odd thing about Intelligent Dance Music is that it is not all that intelligent, you can't dance to it, and it can rarely be called music." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.123.134.128 (talk) 21:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC).
• Strong keep Anyone who listens to any kind of electronic music can tell you IDM is a distinct style of music. It's not something that has been created out of thin air, and just because something defies definition doesn't mean it should be deleted. Captiivus 00:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Clearly notable. F.F.McGurk 02:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, clean up and sort out referencing. I've never seen something so notable at AfD. CiaranG 11:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Everyone who is interested in this subgenre recognizes the term and it immediately conjures up a certain sound in the mind's ear. I fail to see why this discussion remains open eight months later.216.241.33.5 20:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
• Beyond strong keep Important subgenre of Electronic Music. zellin t / c 01:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.