Talk:Dubstep

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B Dubstep has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.

I have included links to the discographies for various labels on Discogs. Do you think this is appropriate? Michael Ray 16:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of legitimate External Links

I've posted links to the 'Dubstep' entry three times now, and they have been deleted as "link spam" on both occassions. The links I added were, however, entirely relevant to the topic.

One was my own website, Riddim.ca (http://www.riddim.ca), which is a non-commercial Dubstep-focussed community and resource. The site contains numerous articles, interviews, and dubstep mixes, as well as the primary North American dubstep forum.

The other was the blog Gutterbreakz (http://gutterbreakz.blogspot.com) which is widely acknowledged to have been instrumental in documenting and expanding the scene.

You have also deleted Martin Clark's blog (http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com). Martin is responsible for most of the Wikipedia entry on dubstep and is also the most prominent journalist writing regularly about dubstep. His blog is another signifcant source of information and news about dubstep.

None of the above are commercial sites and should not be considered spam in any way. I understand that Wikipedia "is not a democracy," but it is designed to encourage informative submissions (like those listed above) from a wide range of knowledgeable contributors (like those listed above).

I've posted these links in the interest of community-building and spreading information about the dubstep. I don't see how excluding information is in any way productive. There are numerous people who have direct knowledge of the music and who are directly involved in the scene who will gladly lend their knowledge to this section if they are not prevented by over zealous administrators.

Thank you

External links are supposed to provide content that adds to the article, not just be sites that may be of interest. Linking to blogs is also normally to be avoided, millions of people have blogs and they get spammed to WP articles constantly. That said, the blackdownsound blog may be acceptable, but please annotate the link in such a way as to show that the author is well known, rather than just another blog writer. If he has his own entry on the encyclopedia, then link to that in the description of the external link. See WP:EL for the guidelines. --GraemeL (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
@ GraemeL: As I said, Riddim.ca is not a blog. It is not merely "of interest." It is a resource containing numerous articles and interviews that supplement the Wikipedia dubstep entry. The same can be said of both blogs. Both are widely known for well-researched, well-written, original information on dubstep. Please look at the content of the links before deleting them or allow people who are actually familar with dubstep to excercise some judgement over the content of this article.

Removed 1 spam link, and related edit in the DMZ section of the main article. Removed link to dubstep.ca, as it seems fairly uninformative.

[edit] Comments about this article in Artforum

From Michael Wilson's dubstep article Bubble and Squeak in Artforum magazine, November 2006 (free registration required):

Plotting the fractal trajectories of contemporary British dance music’s myriad subgenres is a task at once fascinating (at least to a certain geekish type) and forbidding. Clubland chronologies and genealogies are fiercely debated; local scenes burn brilliantly for a season before fading into obscurity or merging imperceptibly into their successors. The past is alluded to constantly—the nebulous designation “old-school” almost always implies a compliment—but all ears are on the next development, however subtly divergent from the last. An unintentionally comic illustration of this implosive complexity can be found on the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where the music is recast as a web of pseudonymous individuals and collectives that obfuscates as much as it informs: “Dubstep is the name given to the largely South London–based dark two-step sounds that originally came out of productions by El-B (as part of both Groove Chronicles with Noodles and then the Ghost camp), Zed Bias (aka Phuturistix, Maddslinky, and more), and Steve Gurley in 1999–2000. . . . The key touch points of the early dubstep sound were Croydon’s now-defunct Big Apple shop and rejuvenated Big Apple records.” Got that?

Regards, High on a tree 04:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what is lacking

this article lacks information on what dubstep actually sounds like. i'm adding a sentence regarding this (sub-bass, heavily syncopated/shuffled drums, reggae/movie samples); i'd encourage other editors to flesh this out. Kaini 02:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)