Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ilaiyaraaja/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 07:46, 15 March 2007.

[edit] Ilaiyaraaja

This is an article about a musician. This article was first nominated for FA status in November 2006 (see following link). It is now re-submitted for FA nomination after substantial improvement. This is a self-nomination. For reference, the old FA candidacy page can be found here. Thank you. AppleJuggler 07:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Some of the sections should be renamed. "Summary of his career", "Traits of his music", etc. don't sound formal/proper enough for me. Shrumster 09:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Appreciate your fine eye for detail and thank you for the comment. I have addressed your comment by improving how the headings are phrased. As part of the exercise, I surveyed all the FA of musicians that are on Wikipedia. I have made the headings more concise and hope they sound more formal now. Cheers, AppleJuggler 11:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: I've further tweaked the section headers a bit. The article on a whole seems short for someone with a thirty year career. Surely there's more detailed information available on his life? Tuf-Kat 02:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

It may be insightful to ponder on the terms 'short' and 'comprehensive' here. Though short, the article tells us all we need to know about the musician and his work with adequate detail and without going overboard (see Wikipedia Featured article criteria, points 1(b) and 4). There are also Featured Articles that are much shorter; see here. The non-text media used in this article, such as the music sample section, and references (see, for example, reference 31, 32 and 33) speak a thousand words and so saves us from having to go into musical minutiae. Note that in the academic journal articles that I obtained in which his career is described, the story of his life is limited to brief career highlights. Nevertheless, editors of this Wikipedia article went through great pain to flesh out the early life and rise of this musician by digging out reliable sources (good newspaper articles and academic journal articles and book chapters). This musician's career path and life is fairly simple (no scandals, drama or excesses) and editors of this Wikipedia article have consciously endeavoured to describe the gist of things in easy-to-follow, logically-flowing narrative. This film score composer is markedly prolific (he has composed music for over 800 films). It would be a tedious, repetitive or unnecessary to spell out the details of his work for each film or groups of films, apart from highlighting some outstanding work across general periods which is representative of most of what he does. This is only practical given the circumstance. A more blow-by-blow account may be possible for a film composer whose oeuvre consists of say 30 films (as the average may be for many Western film composers), but in this specialised case it is not feasible. Outstanding works of this musician are mentioned in the text (albums with some good background music, albums for highly-acclaimed films etc.), although involved analysis of the characteristics of these film albums is deliberately left out (as it should be -- independent analytical writing is contrary to the fundamental spirit of an encyclopedia and Wikipedia biography guidelines -- see talk page). In fact, this issue of brevity for a musician with a 30-year career was raised in the previous FAC and discussed substantially (please see this discussion) and an agreement was reached with regard to the format of this musician's life/career biography. It was decided that a broad but comprehensive overview of the essentials be provided (viz., the musician's early life, formative music years, rise to prominence, characteristics of his works and notable works) to render a general yet sufficiently informative encyclopedia entry. You may be interested in reading the hyperlinked discussion to gain a better picture of this. We can discuss this further if you like to. The heading changes that you made are perceptive, and I have tweaked it a little more (please take a look). Thank you for taking the time to look at this article and providing helpful comments! AppleJuggler 02:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

• Well, I think that's really an argument for having more detailed subarticles in addition to a comprehensive main article. I think this article is missing important information - for example, the "live performances" section begins following a 25 year break, when it should cover what came before the break too. The article notes he used elements of stuff like doo wop and flamenco, but that isn't explained or described or placed in any kind of context.

True, as you say, his previous performances and reasons for his break from live performances can be elaborated on and this has now been done (check article). I have also elaborated on the common characteristics that make his songs distinct in the 'Style' section. In relation to doo-wop and flamenco etc., one could make mention in the article about which songs of his contain strong elements of these, to substantiate the point, or alternatively, see below. Where else do you feel that important information is not apparent? AppleJuggler 03:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• The sound samples are nice, but each need fair use justifications, which means each one needs to explain what it adds to the article by linking the sample with something encyclopedically notable. The best way to do that is to move them into boxes in each subsection, I think, with the captions expanded to link the sample with what's being explained in the text. Tuf-Kat 01:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Glad you found the music samples pleasant. The samples were selected with great care and effort to illustrate different styles, sounds and compositional/arrangement methods. The rationale for their inclusion in this article is to justify and demonstrate these various musical styles/approaches listed in the 'Impact' and 'Styles' sections of the article. As such, these sound clips exemplify tribal folk (Nila Athu), Tamil traditional folk and an example of Ilaiyaraaja's singing (Ponna Pola Aatha), disco (Ilamai Itho), funk (Oru Nayagan), pathos/sad/wistful songs (Nadanthal Irandadi, Mandram Vantha), modern pop (Ninaichu Ninaichu), modern Indo-Western syntheses (Nee Partha, Antha Naal Nyabagam), doo-wop (Raja Kaiyya Vecha), classical-rock fusion (the violin concerto), acoustic guitar-driven folk (Ponmaney Theduthey), synth-pop (Ninnukori Varanam, Konji Konji), psychadelic (Vaanam Keezhe Vanthal Enna), a Rimsky-Korsakovian ballad (Chittuku Chella Chittukku, which has the Rimsky-Korsakov 'The Tale of the Kalendar Prince' piece (from 'Scheherazade', 1888) as its inspiration and leitmotif), an example of polyphonic use of vocals (Poo Maalayeh), and a theme from a film (for the film 'Netrikan'). As you suggest, boxes could be made containing the music samples with captions to link it to the main text. For example, the musical styles described in the main text (the use of polyphonic vocals, an example of a traditional folk or Carnatic sound, an example of funk or psychadelic-sounding music) or some other interesting observation that can better educate the reader with regard to this musician's musical style could be linked to the music samples in boxes besides relevant paragraphs. Also I wonder if some additonal music samples could be left at the base of the article with further justifications provided in captions? Please advise. Thanks AppleJuggler 09:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I neither support or oppose, but this article needs work.
• Remove the IMDB link from the infobox, its for official websites note it just says website not websites

Done. AppleJuggler 10:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• The first sentence under Early life and education has no reference and is a one sentence paragraph. Remove, merge or expand the once sentence paragraphs, with one sentence paragraphs it is not well-written, thus failing critiera 1a.

Done. AppleJuggler 10:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• Teatro Comunale di Modena, External jump

Done. AppleJuggler 10:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• Unreferenced paragraphs and statements in 'Awards and honours' - if you say he won an award you need a reference.

Done. AppleJuggler 11:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• Too many song samples which violates fair use, Wikipedia is meant to be a free encyclopedia.

According to Wikipedia:Music_samples, there is "no limit of how many samples you could use in one article", as long as their use can be justified. And the reason why there appears to be too many samples is because Ilaiyaraaja has made more than 4000 songs and there are 28 music samples on this Wiki article, but these music samples constitute 0.7% (hardly 1%) of this artiste's total output. AppleJuggler 11:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• References contain Blue URL's the URl's should be linked through the title of the page, {{cite web}} can help with this or link it your own way, look at Slayer as an example. M3tal H3ad 10:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I am not so good with computers and I did my best for the referencing of this Ilaiyaraaja article. Using these templates sounds like a good idea, but I do not understand what you mean by containing Blue URL's (and how to link something through the title of the page)? I took a look at Slayer and its references also have Blue URL's. Could you help me with this please, M3tal H3ad? Would appreciate it a lot. AppleJuggler 11:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The samples use are not justified. Justiied refers to making a reference to the song in the text, this article slaps twenty samples on the end. Regarding URl's the URL is linked through the title of the article where you have the actualy addressed. It currently is like this - Wikipedia home page http://wikipedia.org/ -Where it should read Wikipedia homepage to clear the clutter made from the address. M3tal H3ad 04:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I get your point about justification. I am also aware of the guideline at Wikipedia:Music_samples that states that "you have to put in mind that music samples serve as tools for a better understanding of the article, so insert only relevant samples". This will be addressed soon (please see my response to TUF-KAT about the possibility of boxing up music samples and inserting justifying caption). The key here, as I understand it, is to be able to provide adequate justification for each and every music sample provided, regardless of whether one includes just one music sample of one thousand. With regard to slapping music samples at the end, you might be interested to know that this Featured Article --> Nirvana (band) slaps all of its music samples at the end of the article (with no justification given for each music sample); you can find more of the music sample 'slapping' at this other Featured Article too --> Pink Floyd. I don't think the issue is whether a bunch of music samples are slapped at the end, although according to Wikipedia:Music_samples it's "better to insert the samples next to paragraph mentioning them to justify their fair use, instead of grouping them in the end of the article". The keyword here is "better", and not "must"; it is not a necessary condition. It all depends on the way the article is crafted. In some Wikipedia articles, it is simply not possible to integrate a song sample within the text without obstructing narrative flow. (This is the case with Ilaiyaraaja: the musician has literally made hundreds of notable/hit songs and so you cannot mention all these in the text; the best strategy is to describe the style or musical characteristics of his representative hits, and illustrate these styles and characteristics with music samples). In others Wiki articles, you can create boxes beside the relevant paragraph containing music samples and then link the music samples in the box to the text that refers to the various styles (this way, you justify your samples and preserve narrative continuity). In yet some other cases, it may be more suitable to have some music samples near the end of the page. On the separate issue of URL formatting: I understand what you mean now, and I will fix this soon. Thanks. AppleJuggler 07:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• Object 1.b. Don't feel article does justice to such a long career. I have difficulty reconciling your plea for a short concise article on one hand, and utilisation of twenty eight samples, none of which have fair use rationale, on the other. Ceoil 09:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

First off, Article 1(b) of the FA guideline states: "Comprehensive" means that the article does not neglect major facts and details". If you say the article does not do justice to such a long career, then please highlight in what respects that is so. This would substantiate your comment and simultaneously help editors in a big way to improve the article. To summarise, this article at present covers (i) the early years, rise and status of this musician (ii) the characteristics of his music, (iii) the people he has worked with, (iv) other albums he has made apart from film music, (v) aspects of his live performances, and (v) awards received. What would be valuable is that you provide constructive comments; in other words, you are able to say that "this article is not complete, BECAUSE x or y or has not been addressed, or z could be explained like this... etc". Secondly, the number of music samples can be greatly reduced, and the provision of rationale for their use is under way. AppleJuggler 11:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.