Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Sweet Escape (song)/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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 01:52, 21 January 2008.

[edit] The Sweet Escape (song)

I was going to wait for the Rock Steady (album) FAC to close, but that's moving pretty slowly. It's been a GA since August, but I wanted to wait until the song was off of all of the charts and I could find more information about how it was written. It recently exited the Canadian Hot 100, which was already weird to explain in the article since there's no archive of the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian Hot 100 was officially introduced after the song had reached its peak. I also found a good article about Akon which discussed writing the song, so the article seems ready to me. 17Drew (talk) 02:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

• Support - Another healthy article from the Gwen Stefani factory. Very nice article with minor problems which i might point out when i am back in April. Indianescence (talk) 11:08, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
• Improper Nomination Talk moved to FAC talk page--Keerllston 04:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• Reply. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
• Precedent found--Keerllston 10:07, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
• Failure to ensure FA quality--Keerllston 15:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Support I did a copyedit as I went through. Two things: insert the "flat" note symbol to replace the illegible script box, and add a reference to the allusion sentence in the music video section (it sounds like original research). WesleyDodds (talk) 11:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I removed the part about the allusion completely; that was added by someone else a week ago, and it looks like OR since I can't find a source supporting it. For the flat symbols, do you mean changing it to a letter b? 17Drew (talk) 14:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I distinctly remember seeing a flat symbol used in a song article that worked perfectly. WesleyDodds (talk) 23:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Does ♭ work for you? 17Drew (talk) 01:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Yep. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose—1a, formatting, MOS breaches, over-the-top approach to providing educational commentary for the fair-use justification, and 1c. Here are just some samples of problems. The whole text needs careful attention: auditing, copy-editing.

• How will readers in the future know what "to date" means? Will they know to sift through the diffs to find the date intended?
  • "To date" means up until the when the article is read. She hasn't had a top 40 song since this single because of the fact that she's no longer promoting the album and has returned to the studio with No Doubt. The only change that will need to be made will likely be changing it once her singles are off the air and it will refer to her solo career in the past tense, which is no more of a change than updating the information about the Grammy nomination. 17Drew (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
• "he reviewed her body of work"—some readers will conjure up a fleshy image. Remove "body of".
  • I agree, though I think the issue is less that people don't know what homonyms and simply that there's no point in using three works when one will do. 17Drew (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
• Formatting of song titles: double quotes, italics, initial caps? Which is it to be?
  • Maybe you're unfamiliar with the conventions? The song is consistently referred to as "The Sweet Escape" (with double quotes and initial caps) except once in the Background and writing section when it refers to the working title as noted in reference 2. 17Drew (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
• When talking about style and technique in relation to an audio clip, keep to information we can understand and relate it to the bigger picture of either their style or that of the genre more broadly. "The song uses two-measure phrases that, aside from the choruses, use a i-III-IV-VI chord progression. The B♭ minor chord is held for 1⅓ of a beat, and a relative transformation is then used to produce a second inversion D♭ major chord, which is held for 1⅔ of a beat. In the second measure, a first inversion E♭ major chord with an added ninth precedes a G♭ major seventh chord; the chords are held for the same durations as the previous two.[6]" Now, I know what all of this means technically, but it doesn't help me to imagine the style: it's just too technical and not sufficiently relevant to the style. The chord progression could be distinctive (especially IV–VI, note the en dash, not a hyphen), but citing it doesn't convince me of this. The same for the hair-splitting one and a third of a beat, etc. and the G-flat major-seventh chord, well, so what? Neither experts nor general readers will benefit from this. The song mixes those styles? Yes, that's good to say. Remove "composed" as a redundancy. I think the 120MM tempo is unremarkable, so consider omitting. The huge vocal range, yes, that is worth mentioning. Hyphens for "first/second-inversion" when used as a compound adjective.
  • Describing the song's harmony is a pretty important part of the article, and it wouldn't be comprehensive without that information. However, relating that to the song's "style" would be original research since it's not backed by the sheet music. If people see a connection between Akon's introduction or the slight swing in the chord progression and traditional doo-wop structures, then that's great. But we can't make that connection if the sheet music doesn't make it and there aren't any references supporting it. I've made the other changes, though you may want to check on the use of en dashes since I formatted the progression based on the Chord progression article, which seems to use hyphens as the convention. 17Drew (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
• Read MOS on the final period in captions. The left-side gold cage image: make it right-side to avoid squashing the text in the middle. Remove OF.
  • I've changed the noun phrases to independent clauses, so this should be fine now. 17Drew (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
• I'm unconvinced of the reliability of some of the references. For example, Ref 16—anyone can write in about.com, and this link goes to highly opinionated and not-very-well written hype, sandwiched around commercial push.
  • I'm not sure where you're getting that claim from. I haven't seen anything that suggests that, and considering all of the site's employees are supposed to be hired experts, I'm not seeing why it would fail WP:SPS. 17Drew (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I guess it depends on how you define "expert"; anyone can sign up to write for about.com, and if no other editor has covered that territory, you're probably hired. [1]. Can you establish some credentials for this particular writer? And can you establish any fact checking and editorial oversight for writers at about.com? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
• "With 6.4 million in sales"—Remove "in", unless you mean dollars. Tony (talk) 13:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
• Comments
• the link to single is pointless in this article, it's like linking song
• early 2007 (see 2007 in music) - linking this is pointless and breaks the prose - even if it is recommended by a guideline, does it add anything to the article?
• link doo-wop in the third paragraph of Background and writing - had no idea what it was, realised it was in the infobox after searching for it
• All Music Guide described the song - one reviewer does not represent the entire website, all reviews need to be attributed to the reviewer in this case it's Stephen Thomas Erlewine for AMG. M3tal H3ad (talk) 04:11, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment: If FAs are comprehensive, what is this: This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it. Also, the year ender chart is not needed. Add it to the chart performance section. --BritandBeyonce (talk) 08:48, 13 January 2008 (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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.