Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hollaback Girl

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 promoted 06:16, 31 January 2007.

[edit] Hollaback Girl

The article was nominated for featured article three times in under a month back in 2005 (most recent). I believe I've addressed all of the concerns from those candidacies, and the article recently had a peer review. The only thing that I've heard could use improvement is an expansion of the "Music and structure" section; I asked at WikiProject Hip Hop and at the peer review, but so far nobody's been able to suggest anything that could be added (I personally think the length is appropriate since the song has few instrumentals to discuss). If appropriate, the section can be merged with another. ShadowHalo 04:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comments I absolutely loathe this song. :) Here are some areas that need improvement:
  • It reached a peak position of number one in Australia and the United States... Perhaps "peak chart position" might be clearer.
  • What the heck is the Celebrity Deathmatch graf doing in the "Writing and inspiration" section?
  • During the early stages of the writing for Love. Angel. Music. Baby., Stefani had worked with The Neptunes. Really odd way to structure that sentence. Why not just "Stefani had worked with The Neptunes during the early stages..."? Also, "During the early stages of the writing for..." is really awkward, especially with those three prepositions.
  • In an attempt to search for inspiration... Did they attempt to search for inspiration, or just search for inspiration?
  • ...several different reviewers began assuming its identity I don't think "assuming its identity" is the right phrase here.
  • In order to visualize the song's bridge... Yuck.
  • The video is complete following a close-up... Why not, "The video ends with a close-up..."?
  • a slender cameo appearance What's a "slender" cameo? "Appearance" is redundant. Gzkn 06:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

    I actually despise the song too. I wanted to work on this one to see how well I could approach this topic with NPOV. I've made most of the changes, but there are a few I'm not sure about. I agree that the section about parodies fits awkwardly where it is, but I'm not sure where to put it. Would it be best in the "Reception" section? If so, I could also then add a mention on Family Guy that would be completely trivial where the section is now. The only other thing is that I left the word "appearance" since IMHO the sentence sounds best that way; I don't think the phrase is redundant since "having a cameo" is really just a shortened, less formal way of saying "making a cameo appearance". If you really disagree, I'll make the change though. I'll try to go through and tidy some of the prose again to see if there's anything else that I missed before. ShadowHalo 07:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it'd probably be better in the "Reception" section, although it's not exactly the perfect section for it either. RE:cameo: Meh, it's not that big of a deal. I feel that "cameo appearance" is redundant because cameo is a noun, and the "appearance" is already implied. But again, not that big of a deal. Gzkn 08:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I've moved it to the reception section and added the reference to it on Family Guy; that it was mocked on Family Guy makes a much better lead-in next to some of the negative reviews that it received. Should "Reception" be split into "Critical response" and "Appearances in pop culture" (or something of the sort)? ShadowHalo 08:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure on that one...kind of torn. It might make sense, but "Appearances in pop culture" is quite trivia-ish, of which I'm no fan...I guess it's fine as is. Gzkn 01:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Support, great article. Not too big of a fan unfortunately, although I do enjoy most of Pharrell's productions. — Tutmosis 15:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose; good article in general, but I have concerns about omitted information. The nominator, on his or her user page, talks about having a preference for excluding information. Could you (the nominator) explain what sort of things you deliberately excluded from this article, if any, and preferably give examples? As an example of something that concerns me, on your user page you make a cute little comment about nobody caring how a song fared on TRL in Antarctica. And, looking at how TRL detail is treated in this article, it corresponds to that attitude: the article doesn't even mention what position the song reached (probably #1? If so, it should also mention how many days it spent at #1.), nor does it mention what day it debuted and what day it left the countdown; it just says the song stayed on the countdown for the maximum 50 days. What's more, what is there isn't even cited! (There appear to be a fair number of uncited things in the article.) I would like to see an explanation from the nominator about this stuff. Everyking 07:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Wow, hadn't realized FAC's were so...intense. To clarify, I only mention excluding "excessive tables of charts...and chart trajectories" on my user page (per WP:CHARTS). The comment about TRL in Antarctica was meant as a joke after seeing articles that were mostly comprised of week-by-week song positions and TRL and iTunes positions from all different countries, the epitome of fancruft. When I began revamping this article, there wasn't any of that. However, I did remove one decent-sized section from the article (see diff) since it appeared to be a hoax and was completely unverifiable either way. I don't know what day it debuted (sometime in March I believe) and I don't have much time to work on it at the moment, but I'll add the information and references tomorrow afternoon/evening. Thanks for your comments. ShadowHalo 07:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
    • If you add that information, and make sure that everything in the article is cited, then I'll strike out my vote (and maybe switch to support). Everyking 08:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I've added the information about its performance on TRL (with references), including premiere date, peak position, and retirement date. I also went through the chart performance section and referenced each sentence except for a few lead-in sentences that just serve as segues; most of them had references in the article, but the citations just weren't present. I'll see about finding references for the other video programs, but I doubt they exist since it's rare that anyone report on any of those charts; I'll probably end up removing them. I did, however, add some more information about its performance at the 2005 Video Music Awards and the aftermath. ShadowHalo 07:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Good. I support now. Everyking 08:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

• Object. It's a very good article, and much improved from the previous FAC, which is when I last read it closely. There are just a few things such as extraneous words that I feel need fixing:

1. "reached a peak chart position of number one" - how about "reached number one" or "peaked at number one"?
2. "went on to become" - how about "became"?
3. "Upon returning to the studio, Williams began to play Stefani his first solo album" - this implies Williams returned to the studio, but the previous sentence says it was Stefani who was leaving.
4. "Stefani understood that some of the fans of No Doubt would be upset with her solo effort" - I'm not comfortable with "understood" here as it implies it is a certainty that some of the fans would be disappointed. How about "believed"?
5. "The track ranked higher [on the Maxim list] than several other chart-topping singles such as Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" (number three) and the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" (number five)." - why list these two out of the whole twenty? I think this implies a POV that these other songs were equally worthy candidates for the number-one spot.
6. "topped its component chart, the Billboard Pop 100 Airplay, for four weeks" - aaahh, component charts :). It's already established before this sentence that the single received huge amounts of airplay, so I don't feel this info is relevant.
7. Given that Canada isn't a major world music market, I think having an entire paragraph describing the single's chart performance there is a bit much.
8. "Although its UK success was limited, widespread airplay kept it in the top forty for an additional eleven weeks." - the MusicSquare reference doesn't support the airplay part.
9. "[Pharrell Williams] is present in the video, making a cameo appearance" - how about simply "makes a cameo in the video"?
10. There doesn't appear to be sources for the VH1 and MuchMusic statistics, although this isn't an important point.
11. The titles of all the non-U.S. charts end in "Singles Chart". Are you sure this is the official title for all of them? I'm concerned about misleading readers and possibly introducing inaccuracies; we wouldn't list the Billboard Hot 100 as "U.S. Singles Chart", for example, because there's more than one.
12. Is it necessary to include the Top 40 Adult Recurrents chart? If its position on that chart was significantly higher than the position on the Adult Top 40, I'd say it should be included, but that isn't the case here (the positions are the same).

Again, I think this is a very good article that is close to FA standard. Extraordinary Machine 22:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I've made the changes with a few exceptions. I removed some of the unimportant info about its performance in Canada, but given that its relative popularity in the U.S. caused issues about Canadian copyright law, it seems appropriate to have a separate paragraph that has that information. I'm leaving the VH1/MuchMusic info in there just until I can find references; if I can't (very possible since they're less publicized), I'll remove them. I just want to check the formatting for the non-U.S. charts; would "<country> Top X Singles" be appropriate (with the occasional exception of, for example, Dutch Top 40)? I just don't want to have to go through all of those charts more than once. ShadowHalo 22:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I found a reference for MuchMusic, but I removed the Yahoo! Music (I didn't even bother looking for a reference; I don't think anyone cares about it) along with the VH1 countdown, replacing it with VH1's year-end countdown. ShadowHalo 05:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the edits and response. I meant whether the titles of the charts listed were the actual names of those charts; for example, as you said, the official title for the singles chart in the Netherlands is the Dutch Top 40, not the Dutch Singles Chart. Please make sure that they are all accurate. If there is no official title, I think leaving it as [Country] Singles Chart is fine. Thanks again! Extraordinary Machine 19:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I compared all the charts to the references as well as the Wikipedia pages about them, when applicable, and it looks like Dutch Top 40 was the only one that needed to be changed so far as I can tell. ShadowHalo 22:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for checking. I think I need to give the article another close look before I consider supporting, but for now I'm withdrawing my object. Thanks again. Extraordinary Machine 18:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• Support: You've bitten off a lot here, and I'd object to the lifeless Music and structure section if I thought it could be feasibly improved upon. Thing is, I have no idea how that could be done. With that in mind, I support. Seegoon 23:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
• Object An OK article, but not very extensive, and only 1 in 1310 of Wikipedia's entries are featured articles. If you give me 1310 articles, do you really think I'm gonna say that this is the best of all of them? On a side note, who spent so much time working on the article for such an unlistenably awful song as this one? Cheers. 2Pac 13:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

  Could you be a little more specific as to which part of Wikipedia:Featured article criteria the article doesn't meet or, even better, how the article could be improved to meet the criteria? ShadowHalo 22:30, 27 January 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.