Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Roy Orbison

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[edit] Roy Orbison

Article is no longer a featured article

This article may have once been "brilliant prose" (it is a holdover), but it isn't now. Now it's a mishmash of uncited and probably apocryphal stories, miscellaneous trivia, and poorly sectioned and poorly written prose. For most of its recent life the lead was blatant copyvio. It contains two fair use pictures, neither one of which has a stated fair use rationale and one of which didn't even have its caption displayed until I added it. The article is junk, definitely not featured quality. It's on the Main page right now, and it's embarassing; it makes Wikipedia look as amateurish as its critics deride it as. Specifically, in regards to the FA criteria it fails to meet: 1. the prose is not brilliant or even grammatically correct in some places, 2. there is a total of one reference, one citation (not specific), to an article which looks to be chock full of things needing to be cited (stories about entertainers are almost always false in my experience), 3. it is full of peacock phrases and other non-neutral lauding, and there is a dearth of encyclopedic analysis, 4. the lead section (what remains of it) is not adequate, the heading system is underdeveloped, 5. images are not of a good copyright status nor are they very good, 6. it is not written in an adequately encyclopedic style (it included many instances of addressing the subject as "Roy" until I changed them). Not featured quality in the least. --Fastfission 00:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Strong remove, in agreement with nom. This article is unfortunately one of the shoddiest I've seen on the main page. Featured article candidates are now being held under much, much higher scrutinity than what this exhibits.—jiy (talk) 01:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• There is a sycophantic quality to this article, particularly in the assessment of Orbison's music; rather than viewing his contribution to popular culture in a critical light, the reader is met with hyperbolic, uninformed fawning. The writing is fan-club rhetoric, at best. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.68.240.41 (talk • contribs) 01:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC).

• Remove, only two pics. It's a shame it was selected today to be presented on the Main Page. DaGizza ^{Chat (c)} 02:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove - I agree with all of the points in the nomination. My main criticism is that the article does not meet FAC criterion 2(b) "comprehensive" means that an article covers the topic in its entirety, and does not neglect any major facts or details. Specifically (this is from my recent post on Talk:Roy Orbison), I'm concerned at the lack of coverage of Orbison's musical craft. For instance, the article states:

he is revered for his song writing abilities. Master record producer and Orbison fan Don Was, commenting on Orbison's writing skills, said: "he defied the rules of modern composition." Songwriter Bernie Taupin (composer of many lyrics for Elton John) and others, referred to Orbison as far ahead of the times, creating lyrics and music in a manner that broke with all traditions.

However, there is no explanation of why he was so revolutionary and ahead of his time, of how he defied the rules of composition, only, perhaps, reference to his "operatic" voice and singing range. What exactly was special about his vocal abilities? How was his guitar playing? How did he approach songwriting? In short, "how did he approach music-making?" is not answered. Related is the absence of any clear discussion of his use of falsetto. The term is not even mentioned ("operatic" just doesn't do it), yet falsetto is part of his signature sound. --Tsavage 04:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment: While I cannot track down a source, I vividly remember seeing something on TV once where someone noted that those high notes Orbison hit were real - not falsetto. As the article notes (unsourced, natch), Orbison had a three octave range, and he used it seemlessly. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment: You may be right! I recently listened to a lecture on the role of falsetto in Western contemporary popular music, and Orbison was used as an example (along with Jimmie Rodgers, Marvin Gaye, the Bee Gees, many others). The technical issue of vocal harmonics versus regular high notes and verging on that "falsetto sound" is beyond me as a discussion topic (although in his case, it does sound like falsetto). Either way, Orbison is widely noted in connection with falsetto (for example, Google:Roy+Orbison+falsetto), so this to me is a significant hole in the coverage, which is why I specifically mentioned it here. (From the official Orbison site, in a page-long quote from kd lang as published in Rolling Stone: He also loved to express his voice in this upper range, in falsetto.[1] So, technically, maybe "false falsetto", but effectively, falsetto.) Editor's note: I'm just in a mode now, which I suspect can't last, where I believe FAC/FARC objections and supports should be fully...supported. --Tsavage 16:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove as per above. Saravask 04:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom. Jkelly 04:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom, also, it'd serve us well to get a picture from before he was dead. gren グレン 07:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per Fastfission and the anon, as it really is lacking a great deal (an FA on a musician with no sound clips?). Too bad this wasn't initiated before it was main page'd. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Funny how an article can remain featured for such a long time, and it only appears here because it goes to the Main Page. For what it is worth, I suggested it on WP:TFA and did read it first. I must admit that I didn't (and still don't) think it is that bad - there are plenty of worse articles out there; on the other hand, it would rightly face an uphill struggle on WP:FAC as it stands today. Presumably Raul654 didn't think it was desperately bad either, otherwise he would not have accepted the suggestion. I wonder how many other featured articles (particularly the ones of this vintage) would receive a similar reception here?

Clearly our standards have improved somewhat in the 18+ months since this became a featured article. For example, in those days, references were not required, and there has been repeated debates over whether that requirement should become retrospective. I seem to remember that someone (Taxman?) has a list of poorly referenced or unreferenced featured articles somewhere. Has the time has come to remove featured status from all featured articles without references? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking of User:Taxman/Featured_articles_with_possible_references_problems. Anything promoted from FAC since this list was compiled should have adequate references. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

re: remove featured status from all featured articles without references? That could be an approach. I'd be completely against in any way sanctioning regular articles based on references, however, if FAC (therefore, TFA, as well) is to proceed in a most useful fashion, making sure the pool of existing FAs is "reasonably good" is important. Some research, perhaps? Isn't there a database query procedure available, where clever search criteria could at least produce (near real-time, on demand) an approximate picture of how well-referenced FAs really are? Is FAs with possible reference problems up to date?

Another, complementary approach (which I haven't thought through), is to establish informal FA guidelines for obvious problem subject areas (like many types of pop culture topic), and manually investigate. (I'm sure all of this has been discussed elsewhere; hunting down previous discussions is quite the task on its own.) --Tsavage 17:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I hadn't had a chance to check the status of this page in a while. No that page hasn't been checked through since July 2005. That page was assembled from manually checking every featured article at the time to see if they had a reference section. It really took quite a while and a database query would be a much better way to go about it. Since references/citations are called many things, it wouldn't be perfect, but could probably be a reasonable start and reduce the manual checking needed. There may even be a couple FA's that snuck through after the list was initially compiled. - Taxman ^Talk 01:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. For this article after it's been fixed up a bit, I'm inclined to vote keep. I'm coming to reallize the problem with FARC is that there are a lot more people willing to vote remove than there are people willing to dig in and do the work to improve them, so hat's off to Aloan for that. - Taxman ^Talk 01:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove: I discovered this was here when I went to it's talk page to nominate it myself. Its need to be removed for all the reasons given above. It's just not up to the standard expected today. I think ALoan has a point about unreferenced articles being automatically removed. Giano | talk 16:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, per all above comments. A lot of the language ("astounding success", "powerful rendition" etc.) is written almost in the style of a hagiography or a fansite biography rather than an encyclopedia article. Unfortunately, this is the same problem that many other articles about musicians here have, and to one with such noticeable POV problems featured on the main page is rather disappointing. I think that, more than ever, this emphasises the importance of Wikipedia:Featured article review. Extraordinary Machine 17:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• WP:FAR... Yikes. I barely ever knew and had entirely forgetten about that. So it's WP:FAC, WP:FAR, WP:FARC, WP:TFA, plus Peer Review, and the current FAs—is that all of it...?! --Tsavage 17:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Let's not forget WP:FAD :). Extraordinary Machine 19:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Gosh - I wasn't aware of that one... also known as WP:FAHD (bit Arabian, that shortcut). -- ALoan (Talk) 19:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove per WP:CITE and WP:NPOV. Also, non-free images are not supposed to go on the main page. This is not so good. Chick Bowen 21:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per all of the above. Peacock words are throughout; too many to outline here. The "Early career" section goes off on a tangent about international success up to the artist's death. The trivia is barely relevant to the subject (Example: "It is widely believed that he was the physical basis for the Marvel Comics character, Doctor Octopus." Widely believed by whom? Is this even important to anyone researching Roy Orbison?). This could be a good article. There is a wealth of published information to reference about him. I was excited when I saw this on the Main Page and disappointed halfway through reading it. --malber 23:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear. Is anyone interested in collaborating to salvage its featured article status? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

No? Oh well, I've chopped it about a bit and added some extra information cleaned from online biographies that I have added as references. Not being an expert, someone else will have to help me out with musical analysis. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Coment: I speedy demoted this, but ALoan asked me to reconsider. While I have not yet taken it off WP:FFA, I will do so if the article improves by the end of the two weeks. And ALoan has a point above - no article is unsalvagable, and anyone above who knows anything about Orbison can help the article. While I feel that the article could use a rewrite from scratch and go through WP:FAC, if all objections have been met in two weeks, I will relist it on WP:FA. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 20:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove This does not represent Wikipedia's best work. --Wikiacc (talk) 01:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove if only in protest of its style problems.

Put together by musical director T-Bone Burnett, Orbison was accompanied at a recording at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by a who's who supporting cast, all fans and all volunteers who lobbied to participate.

Orbison himself was put together by T-Bone? Ouch. And the sentence disintegrates from there. There are also citation problems. In the next paragraph, we say the concert was critically acclaimed, but offer no specifics on which critics did the acclaiming. BYT 14:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)