Wikipedia:Featured article review/Music of the United States/archive1

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

The article was kept 20:37, 21 January 2008.

[edit] Music of the United States

[edit] Review commentary

Notifications left at WP:US, WP:MUSIC‎, Raul654, Misfit Toys‎, Jkelly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TUF-KAT (talk • contribs) 03:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm the one that originally brought this to FAC, and I thought it was quite a nice little article. I haven't been too active in Wikipedia for a long time, so when I came back to take a look, I was disappointed that most of the changes were negative -- actually, most of the changes revolved around multiplying the amount of info on modern alternative rock by some six times... I've completely reverted the altrock stuff back to my original version, which I think is plenty for an article that is meant to cover more than three hundred years of music spanning hundreds of millions of people from literally thousands of cultures, in addition to modern hipsters. Anyway, I thought it might look like I was being protective of the article, since I reverted most of the really substantive edits (except for some good changes made on the R&B/soul section), so I thought I'd bring it here to get any additional thoughts. Also, since the original nomination, I added a few new things, specifically the "social identity", "diversity" and "scholarship" sections. Here's the diff. Tuf-Kat 03:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

TUF-KAT, please follow the instructions at WP:FAR to notify involved editors and relevant WikiProjects with {{subst:FARMessage|Music of the United States}} and leave a summary of notifications here as in this sample. Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:19, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

• Needs work and to be honest, I don't think it deserves to be a Featured article now, and nor do I think based on the way we assess articles now, would it have passed inthe way it used to be. The layout of the page is generally good, but there's a vast imbalance in musical style areas. R&B/Soul and the whoel rock sections are either too long, or all sections need to be about that long. What sequence are the styles in? It's not alphabetical, nor is it in sequence of when the styles came into prominence, nor is it based on similarities in style, so I'm struggling to see why they're listed as such. And lastly, I'm concerned that at an article as sourced as this has so few inline citations. There's possibly the ability to reference every sentence in the article twice based on the works that are listed as references. I'm certain either it's laziness/apathy that has not allowed for the information to be adequately cited, or it's from the lack of reading the source material and only citing what they can verify is from said source, or (and this is the reason of most concern) it's simpy original research and cannot be supported. There's likely a combination of all of these reasons throughout the article, but for this reason, I don't believe the article meets the Featured Article criteria any more, in fact I think it would struggle to make it past Good Article, based on these concerns. Also, on an aesthetic matter, the map needs a lot of work to be usable in the article. It's terribly cluttered, the text is too small to read on the article, and even on the standard image preview. One has to actually open the image to view close up what the indicators state. While it's an informative list, I would prefer a numerised list of the musical styles and place the numbers in place of the current lines indicating the styles. See this. One last mention about the image is that its comment states The United States is home to a wide array of regional styles and scenes. Now, a "scene" is any demographic region or division, be it socio/econo etc division, and a "music scene" is simply the music of the scene. I don't think it's wrong to indicate that musical scenes and styles differ from place to place, but to distinguish this in an image caption is unwise, as it could potentially be misleading. --lincalinca 10:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

There are 117 inline citations - while you're probably correct that many things could be cited to more than one source, I don't see how that would be a major benefit to the article, and it's certainly not typical of Wikipedia articles, even featured ones, AFAIK. If there's something you'd like cited that isn't, I can probably do that; if there's something you'd like cited more than once, well, I can probably do that too in most cases, but as long as there are wide swathes of Wikipedia with no citations at all, that seems not very important for noncontroversial claims. There is an average of 1 citation for every 87 words (actually more than that, as I calculated the word count with the footnotes themselves).

I'm insulted that you are accusing me of laziness/apathy after spending hundreds of hours working on this article, and I'm even more insulted that you would accuse me of intellectual dishonesty by not having read the sources I cited. I assure you I've read them all multiple times, and that there is no original research here (or if there is, it's crept in without my being aware of it). Please Assume Good Faith, and if you'd like to accuse me of something, please provide some sort of evidence. If you'd like me to fix something in the article, please make some sort of specific suggestion about what is subpar.

Regarding the length of the specific genres sections, "blues and gospel" is 414 words, "jazz" is 506 words, "country" is 529 words and "hip hop" is 410 words, well within range of equal coverage ("blues and gospel" may seem short, but there's 167 words on "blues and spirituals" under folk music). "R&B/Soul" and "Rock, metal and punk" are longer, at 670 and 1093 words, which I think is appropriate as these sections cover a wider range of styles than the others, and because they constitute most of non-hip hop popular music of the last few decades (and hip hop doesn't have the history or diversity to warrant being treated the same).

The genres are in chronological order by the earliest significant popularity.

I agree that the map would be better with some work, and I've been trying to cook up a better version, but I don't know of any better images that could be neutrally said to warrant being at the top of this article at the moment. I'm not sure I understand your concern regarding the use of "scenes", but feel free to change the caption. Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:10, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Please don't misunderstand my intent here. I've reviewed your version and it was adequately cited and referenced, but the newly added information since it achieved FA is for the most part under-referenced or completely unreferenced, and by the looks of the article history, much of this is by IP users or occasional editors, so I'm not accusing you at all. --lincalinca 21:58, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I guess I should have assumed good faith in your comments then, myself (though I submit that you could've phrased your comment more tactfully). Anyway, I agree that most of the additions since the original FAC were downgrades. I reverted the worst of it before placing it here. (It did have a whopping six paragraphs entirely about the seven or eight years immediately surrounding the grunge era...) Anyway, specifically referring to the map, I had originally meant for it to go at the top of the article, but I don't have any knowledge of image manipulation and thus the result wasn't as great as I had hoped for. I moved it down from the top of the article for the same reasons you note, but during the FAC it was suggested to move it up. I'm going to go to the WikiCommons and ask if anyone there can help make a map - I envision something like one of those National Geographic fold-out maps, or the kind of thing that could even be a dorm room poster, with particular symbols of some kind that could depict everything from the cities with a notable blues scene, to the regions with a significant history of Armenian or Bulgarian folk music, to the best-selling/most critically-acclaimed symphonies, largest music venues, institutes of higher music education, etc, and I think it could be a fascinating map. But it's way beyond my ability to actually produce. If anybody here is willing to help let me know - I can provide all the info about what to include, so you'd need to find a sufficiently detailed map, come up with the key and put the symbols in their place. (We could even take a subset of the map's symbols and make images for articles like Latin music in the United States). Tuf-Kat (talk) 04:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I know a lot about image manipulation, though this sort of image would be better served as SVG (i.e. a vector graphic) so that its scalability is vastly improved. My issue is that I don't know US geography all that well, and frankly have a little bit of difficulty reading some of the bits that are filled in, even with the size at full. I've downloaded it, as well as a governmental (i.e. state division) SVG map from U.S. States and will set to try to give it some sort of better co-ordination. The existing map already employs colours, so I think I'll use them as a key, but I will probably tap your shoulder occasionally to check what goes where (for things such as Cowboy music, it could be a little bit unclear). It might take me a while. I don't have the time to give to Wikipedia that i used to have. --lincalinca 05:33, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Great, I'll see if I can come up with a more detailed list of stuff to put on the map tomorrow. Tuf-Kat (talk) 06:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I think I'll just make an article, list of music areas in the United States, and the map would more-or-less be a graphical representation of that. If you can just make a good start on it, it might prompt others to fill in the details (which is kind of what I was hoping for to begin with...). Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

It has occurred to me that I might want to make the sections currently devoted to the specific styles of popular music and make them the basis for a new version of American popular music (which was a bloated mess last time I saw it), leaving behind an ultratight 10-12 paragraph summary as a replacement. This would allow for expansion on topics that are relevant and currently not really covered (there could be more stuff under "social identity", like "regionality" or something similar, for example). Any thoughts? Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are comprehensiveness and focus (1b and 4). Marskell 14:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Fixes needed. External jumps (for example at: These researchers included Robert W. Gordon, founder of the Archive of American Folk Song, and John and Alan Lomax; Alan Lomax was the most prominent of several folk song collectors who helped to inspire the 20th century roots revival of American folk culture.[112]) Copyedit needs: (for example: Early 20th scholarly analysis of American music tended to ... 20th century perhaps?) Incomplete references, see WP:CITE/ES (for example, Library of Congress: Band Music from the Civil War Era). WP:MOSNUM (example: During the '70s ... ) The size is a concern: at 59KB of readable prose, can some of the sections could be summarized better? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Clearly, this can be saved and I'm tempted to default keep it, if there aren't more comments. I'll work through a CE over the next few days. Marskell (talk) 20:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Another criteria concern is POV, with words like "popular" used too sparingly. LuciferMorgan (talk) 20:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• I think I probably did some copy-editing on this during the FAC process. I'm afraid I lean towards removing this. Scope is a problem: the topic is so huge and complex, and this is not well handled in terms of WP's summary style. Too much of it is a highly selective (arbitrary?) flash tour ("The New York classical music scene included Charles Griffes, originally from Elmira, New York, who began publishing his most innovative material in 1914."). Daughter articles would be a good project now rather than trying to fix this main article. That might, in reverse, make the summary style easier to arrive at. Take the map: I'm very uncomfortable about the labelling, say, of "Omana sound" or "Cowboy music" in specific locations. The eastern seabord and Michigan look very crowded. There are many unsatisfactory statements. This one starts the Folk music section: "Folk music in the United States is varied across the country's numerous ethnic groups". Tuf-kat, have you thought of preparing and nominating some of those historic recordings for Feature Sound status? Tony (talk) 12:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Above Tuf-Kat noted "It has occurred to me that I might want to make the sections currently devoted to the specific styles of popular music and make them the basis for a new version of American popular music (which was a bloated mess last time I saw it), leaving behind an ultratight 10-12 paragraph summary as a replacement." This might be a good idea because scope is most definitely an issue. Unfortunately, Tuf-Kat may have lost interest in this review as he didn't reply when I pinged him. I could still go either way here (hate these +2 month reviews). Marskell (talk) 13:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dammit, I'm going to "default" this. While there have been many difficult reviews, this, weirdly, has crystallized the difficulty at FAR. Nothing is happening after two months. There are no solid removes and there are no solid keeps. No one watching. There is no clear remove indication—and there's no flagrant WIAFA or policy breaches that I would normally hold it up on. I take Tony's points, but we've never explicitly removed for summary style (in the absence of explicit removes). This crystallizes the problem, because it's the first keep that I really don't like. But I think I must keep it.

If an interested editor wants to bring this up again (Tu-Kat?), we could go over it without the formal process. Marskell (talk) 20:34, 21 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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.