Talk:Spinal Tap discography

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Why did someone take out the gaps between the albums? It looks far too cluttered now! --Steve Worek

whered all the info come from?!

The two books released about Spinal Tap, Tap fan sites, a lot of interviews with the band; places like that. Incidentally, could someone help me properly space this out, if possible? Everything looks a little cramped... --Steve Worek

Contents

[edit] Fake albums

I strong support deleting this section or at the least limiting a brief summary of their fictitious albums. As it stands now this article does not assert the significance of this fiction it is also unsourced and has more than a hint of original research. I will delete it if no one has any objections. --Daniel J. Leivick 01:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I fully-support you on this, but as long as there's a brief summary of their "fake" albums. ĤĶ51→Łalk 22:12, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Damn right, I object! I worked extremely hard researching this page to make it as complete as possible, and I think, being that I did clarify that those albums were part of their fake back catalog, that this page should be allowed to exist! Not to mention, this article was even made with the approval of Tap historian, Chip Rowe, who links to it from his own discography page. --Steve Worek

I appreciate your work to build the fictional discography (and it has not been destroyed it is in the history and can be retrieved), but unfortunately i don't think that it is encyclopedic content. Fictional items must assert their cultural significance and I don't think that individual fictional albums from a semi fictional band have much. Also there is the matter of original research which is a big problem with the fictional discography, but even if a source is found I struggle to see the relevance of these albums. --Daniel J. Leivick 19:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary - being that Spinal Tap is, for the most part, a fabricated group, I feel that a complete encyclopedic resource with information about them does indeed require this information. Since the characters known as Spinal Tap are composed of and mainly consist of an extremely elaborate fabricated back history, the fake albums are a whole lot more important than the two cash-in albums, because they are indeed a huge part of the back story that defines just what Spinal Tap are. Therefore, I feel that by removing this article (or at least, removing the information about their fake catalogue), you are presenting an extremely inaccurate and incomplete view of these characters. --Steve Worek

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. Omitting the original research, fan list that was previously part of the article does not present an "extremely inaccurate" view of the semi fictional group Spinal Tap, it merely separates fiction from reality. The main article presents a very clear picture of what spinal tap is, this discography page should list in a clear fashion their real world discography while mentioning their extensive fictional works without going into serious detail. The real albums have intrinsic importance as they can be found and listened to in real life, while the fictional albums are simply immaterial creations of the writers of the film and fans of the band. Each fictitious album in contention receive at best one second of attention during the the film. This does not merit an extensive list in Wikipedia, certainly this information has a place on a fan site, but Wikipedia is not the place. If you would like we can file a RfC (request for comment) WP:RFC and get the opinions of more Wikipedia editors, otherwise I don't see any reason to revert the article to it's former state. --Daniel J. Leivick 05:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do so. --Steve Worek

I posted an RfC a couple of days ago but it hasn't generated any traffic, I was afraid this might happen and I am hesitant to solicit the help of editors I know as I don't wont you to feel ganged up on (If you would like I can ask some specific editors to respond to this discussion). I (and I think most editors) classify this type of information as fancruft, as it does not have any bearing on reality. The fact is these albums are mentioned extremely briefly as part of a joke during a film, the detail that this article goes into is original research or at best fan fiction. Wikipedia articles that discuss fiction need to use an out of universe perspective, for more information on this see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction). According to this policy this article should address the albums not as if they were real but as jokes that make up part of the bands back story. To this end it is not necessary or desirable to have a detailed description of every album some of which I don't believe were even in the film. Article on Wikipedia need to adhere to policy, we do not get to put up whatever we want even if we think it is valuable information, you might want to look at a couple of specific policies such as the MOS that I linked to as well as WP:NOT particularly the "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information section" --Daniel J. Leivick 01:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
The vast amount of information about the articles is most definitely fancruft, i.e. only a hardcore fan is going to get any use out of it. Most of the albums in the article aren't even mentioned in the film, and I assume they were only mentioned in interviews. making them un-notable and unencyclopedic, plus it confuses readers as they aren't entirely sure which albums were actually released and which are just fiction. By all means, some of the fictional albums should be kept, but only the ones mentioned in the film and the detail we go into on them should be brief. Furthermore, bootlegs are not normally included in discographies. ĤĶ51→Łalk 20:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Why should they be confusing to readers?! The fake albums and legitimate albums are clearly differentiated into different sections. Not to mention, only mentioning the albums that were named in the movie is asinine, as it makes the article extremely inaccurate and incomplete. Furthermore, the definition of 'in the movie' is skewed - for example, "The Sun Never Sweats" was discussed only in a deleted scene. So, this is my plea - Wikipedia has millions upon millions of articles, a good number of which are probably eons more 'trivial' than this. In the big scheme of things, does ONE article make a difference? If Wikipedia has a Spinal Tap discography, should anyone particularly mind? Does anyone say "Oh, look at that Wikipedia article - how dare they include such garbage?" Only a very select number of people, who should probably be concerned with things in their life a lot more important than a single article about a band that does not even exist. I may have put in countless hours of work trying to research and complete this article, but it seems asinine for someone to spend even *more* time thinking up reasons why I am in the wrong. Thank you. --Steve Worek

The same way listing insane amounts of genres in band infoboxes is confusing. Each fake album is not discussed to an extent in that we know where it came from, ie, which part of the film it was mentioned in, which interview etc. It's confusing to the extent that they are not organised correctly either; members' individual solo albums are mixed in with the other fictional albums. If a fictional album was only discussed in a deleted scene, do you think it deserves a mention in an encyclopedia?
Welcome to Wikipedia. We're here to write quality articles and build an encyclopedia, not a dumping ground for random pieces of unsourced, unverified information. Yes, articles in worse shape than this do exist, but this is no reason to make this article above Wikipedia policy, is it? The general idea is that all Wikipedia articles will get cleaned-up in time. Visit: WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:CITE, WP:NOT, WP:TRIV and WP:CIVIL. ĤĶ51→Łalk 21:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
One article does make a difference. It weakens Wikipedia when articles exist that contain original research and encyclopedic content. The argument that "it is just one article" is used thousands of times a day and their really isn't room to budge on this topic, if you think there are more trivial articles that don't meet policy, you are welcome to nominate them for deletion(see WP:POINT first). I am sorry you put some much effort into researching this topic, but Wikipedia is very clear about original research and policy has to be followed otherwise it diminishes Wikipedia as a whole if anyone can post any essay they want. Thanks for discussing these issues. PS save this stuff, it would certainly be valuable elsewhere. --Daniel J. Leivick 21:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Is that what it would take for you to not kill off my hard work? More sources? Because I'll gladly do it. Also, the only reason I put solo albums etc. in with everything else is that some albums fell into different categories (solo albums, unreleased albums, unplaceable dates) so I would've had to split it up into a ton of one-album-long categories that would've made the page ridiculous. --Steve Worek

I don't think anyone said that sources were the only problem with the article. Relevance (fancruft) is the primary issue in my mind with original research being a close second. The amount of work you did is not an issue, the work still exists it should be moved to some other web page. --Daniel J. Leivick 23:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I just came upon this debate. I'd recommend at least moving the fake albums below the real ones in the article. Putting them at the top may confuse users. Also, more description than simply "fake" is needed, and (sorry) it does need to be reiterated throughout the section that the trivia, etc. are not real. I'm not really familiar with the band, and I can imagine that a user slightly less aware of its history than I am would be very confused by this section's position at the top of the article. As for the inclusion of the content, if it is well-sourced I'd recommend keeping at least some of it (it may need to be pared down a bit -- the section is very long). The only worry I have is about notability, but sources would alleviate that to some degree. Note that mainstream sources would make me much more confident that the material is notable than Tap-specific sources would, although both would be helpful. If it can't be sourced, WP:OR becomes an issue.
As for the "crufty" details, I appreciate recording details on Wikipedia, but they should always be important details. As a simple example, consider the computer game Starcraft. A list of the units available in this game might be suitable. A list of the units with game statistics, backstories and errata would be way over the top. --N Shar 03:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

My only reasoning for listing the fake albums first is that in their backstory, the fake albums come chronologically before the real albums. But if I need to switch them, I will. --Steve Worek

[edit] Compromise version

What we need to do is create a compromise version. I suggest that it include the real albums first followed by a list of the fictional albums listed in the film and a description of how they are discussed i.e. whether they are in deleted scenes or the film itself. Following that should be a mention that they have a larger back catalog that is mentioned in books on the film. Any details that are not directly from the film including inferences need to be sourced from a real source, no blogs or forums. I would create this compromise version myself but I don't know enough about the film. I think this would lead to a decent discography article, any thoughts? --Daniel J. Leivick 18:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

If we make it clear at the beginning of the fictitious albums section that the albums are indeed fictitious, I'd have no objections to this. ĤĶ51→Łalk 19:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I support this suggestion as well. --N Shar 01:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I am going to go ahead and delete the fake album section again. If some one knows which albums are mentioned in the movie lets list them as described in my hypothetical compromise version, but for now the article is better off just listing the real albums. --Daniel J. Leivick 18:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Can I just point out something? Can I just point out that EVERY Wikipedia page about an album goes into as much detail as possible? So why do you have so much objection to ME doing it? You could look up "Abbey Road" and get ten pages worth of detail. I add a few lines of information about Tap albums, and suddenly, 'oh no, that's not allowed on Wikipedia! Albums 100% relevant to characters already discussed on Wikipedia aren't allowed to be discussed.' That is the absolute most oxymoronic and prejudiced thing I have ever heard. And who are you, Daniel J. Leivick? Who are you to think you have the right to control someone's actions? Because as far as I'm concerned, you could just be some random person who saw my discography, and decided, "Oh, I feel like screwing around with THIS one." Because I strongly feel you're infringing on my right to contribute information to Wikipedia - a right that is supposed to be equally given to each and every living citizen on this earth. Everyone is supposed to have the right to research information and present it on here. But you seem EXTREMELY apt on making sure I don't have that right, and taking action as soon as I try to exercise it. This is the free encyclopedia. This is not the 'free when we say so' encyclopedia. This is not the 'free when Daniel J. Leivick damn well says it is' encyclopedia. Tell me, have you ever created a Wikipedia article, particularly one of this size? Have you ever had to track down obscure magazine articles for your Wikipedia entry? Have you had to turn to eBay to buy an expensive book that's been out of print for over a decade so that the Wikipedia article would be more complete? Have you actually had to communicate with someone directly involved with the subject of your article in order to get more information? Have you? I certainly have. I've shelled out thirty dollars for out of print Spinal Tap books. I've tracked down decade-old articles about them from Entertainment Weekly. I've spoken with Harry Shearer to get information. And as long as its taken me to do all of that, which has been OVER a year, because I was piecing this together LONG before I started transferring my information to Wikipedia, you will probably spend that much time hounding me with reasons why I was in the wrong. If you personally want Wikipedia to be inaccurate by withholding information about a subject, you do so. But do that in your own articles, and stop worrying about mine. --Steve Worek

Steve please try not to take this personally. You might want to take a look at WP:CIVIL. In any case I am trying to work out a compromise, please work with us so that we can create the best article possible. I'm not going to address you questions about my edit history as it is available for everyone to examine. As for your personal financial expenditures they are not wasted. The album info you created could easily be transfered to another site that might be more appropriate for your research. I think that you may not understand my issue with your album details. At the beginning of your last post you compare Abbey Road to fictional Spinal Tap albums saying that equal detail should be given. I hope that anyone can see the difference between an incredibly culturally significant real album created by one of the most widely known bands of the 20th century with thousands of article written about it in magazines, newspapers and books and a fictional album from a semi fictional band that exists only in (at the very best) passing mention in a movie and a brief mention in a book. This is why this information is not encyclopedic. Once again this is not an attack against you nor an effort to censure you. I think this detailed information would be great for a different type of site and I hope that we can work together to make the Wikipedia article on Spinal Tap discography the best it can be as a Wikipedia article. Please take a look at my suggestions for a compromise article and comment on them. --Daniel J. Leivick 04:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't comparing Abbey Road to Spinal Tap's albums, I was just merely making the example that EVERYTHING gets a detailed article on Wikipedia, no matter if the album was by the Beatles or a garage band from Denver. Someone who came to my defense on AOL Instant Messenger raised the point that even Weird Al Yankovic's song "Weasel Stomping Day" has its own Wikipedia article. I just feel like if you take all my information out of this article, you might as well delete 100,000 other 'culturally insignificant' articles. And furthermore, why only discuss albums mentioned in the movie, when the band themselves have published just a brief discography (duplicated on Chip Rowe's site) that mention at least twice as many? I mean, shouldn't the band's word come before anything else? Off the top of my head, I could name every album mentioned in the movie - "Smell The Glove", "Intravenus De Milo", "Shark Sandwich", "Rock And Roll Creation", and "The Sun Never Sweats" (deleted scene). That leaves out "Spinal Tap Sings Listen To The Flower People", "We Are All Flower People", "Icarus P. Anybody", "Silent But Deadly", "Brainhammer", "Nerve Damage", "Blood To Let", etcetera etcetera, all of which are in the band's officially published discography. So what's the point of only discussing *five* albums out of a discography with at least thirty, and especially, five albums which are summed up in only one or two lines of the movie? The only album that the movie pays attention to is "Smell The Glove", and even that isn't fully elaborated upon. Even the band's official discography doesn't mention that the album actually HAD a song on it called "Smell The Glove" - that was only given a brief, passing mention in the band's first official biography, "Inside Spinal Tap", which simply mentions the album's "lurid title track." In other words, it just seems like you're grasping at straws and aren't even willing to elaborate on information officially stated by the band. And you may then argue that nothing was stated by 'a band', because Spinal Tap doesn't exist, but if Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean put on costumes and perform actual concerts, then yes, even though they're fictional characters, they are very much still a band - and the band's word should be top priority. I'm also insisting, and this is trying to reason with *you*, that until you can come up with a "compromise version", my original version stays. --Steve Worek

  • The original version is not gone. You can still get it from the history, and if there are no objections to my doing so, I'm going to put a copy in my user space so that it can be worked on. --N Shar 05:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Fundamentally, the reason Daniel J. Leivick is concerned about the article is not that he is opposed to having correct information on Wikipedia. The problem is that for information to be maintainable, it has to be verifiable outside of the personal experiences of Wikipedians. Though you, Steve Worek, are quite able to confirm that your information is accurate, what happens when you're no longer maintaining the article? Someone's going to have to be able to take care of it, and without access to your personal interview notes and other information only you have access to, he is not going to be able to do so. Another concern is: what happens when J. Random User comes along to the article? How does he know he can trust the information? We know that you've done interviews, etc., and in general done very comprehensive and accurate research (at least we hope so). J. Random doesn't read the talk page and can't know this. Your research qualifies as a secondary source, and we'd love to include it, but we have to have some way to cite it (and I hope you realize that "Because Mr. Worek says so" isn't likely to satisfy J. Random). If it were posted on another website, we could then link to it, include it, etc. But for the reasons I've just described, Wikipedia cannot serve as the only forum for publication of research. Wikipedia only uses already published research. Once again, I advise that you publish somewhere else first, to deal with the problems explained here. That way, original research is no longer a problem. --N Shar 05:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention. I would recommend that you read the verifiability policy. A key passage follows:
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source."
The reason for this is basically everything I said about J. Random, above. You might also want to read the entire policy page for a more thorough explanation. --N Shar 05:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to maintain good faith here, but I think Steve misunderstands Wikipedia a little. First, garage bands from Denver do not have articles unless they are notable. If you know of any that are not notable and have articles please nominate them for deletion, that goes for all non notable articles not just about bands but those about video games anime or Star Trek (frequent offenders). This argument is made everyday "Why delete my information/article it is way more important then all those Pokemon articles? The answer is: if you can make a case for the other articles deletion do so. Secondly you continue to compare fictional albums to real albums. Weird Al Yankovic is a real musician who releases real music. While Spinal Tap is sort of real, the albums you wish to include are not real. Just because members of the band say that these fictional albums are part of their back story does not make them real or worthy being described in exhaustive detail. In order for any information to be allowed on Wikipedia it must meet WP:RS and WP:V so at the very least you should provide some sources as to where this info came from and show that it is not your original research WP:OR. Secondly please work to compromise with myself and the editors who agreed with my proposed version. I think that you could be a valued contributer to Wikipedia, but you have to work with editor who may disagree with you from time to time. In truth, we need your help on this article, but you don't get to dictate exactly how you want it to be. Thanks for discussing. --Daniel J. Leivick 05:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A temporary compromise

Can we leave the "fake albums" in, but put an "unverified" template on them for now? I don't want there to be an edit war. --N Shar 05:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with that as long as discussion continues towards some kind of compromise version. --Daniel J. Leivick 05:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
As it now seems that we will be unable to work towards a compromise version. I am going to remove the items in question. If anyone want to work on a compromise version by reinserting elements that would be great. --Daniel J. Leivick 19:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I quit.

Well, I officially give up. I'm tired of arguing over a bunch of albums that don't even exist; I just feel like it's a huge waste of time. Do what you want with the article, I just don't care anymore. --Steve Worek

I really am sorry that you decided to not help work on this article, I am also a little surprised as I thought we were working towards a compromise version. If you change your mind please feel free to come back and work with us your input would be appreciated. --Daniel J. Leivick 19:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

You know what, if someone else doesn't do anything with this page soon, I'm putting my old content back. Fuck what Daniel J. Leivick thinks, I have just as much control over this page as he does. And that's final. --Steve Worek

If you want to help I would be happy to work with you on a compromise version as outlined above, but please do not just add your own version back. We need your help to create a compromise version that is why no work has been done. --Daniel J. Leivick 16:29, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You know, you talk like you own Wikipedia... you don't. I have as much say about what goes on this page as you do. --Steve Worek

I don't think your continued hostility is warranted. This is hardly the only place where users disagree about content. Wikipedia works on consensus not edit warring. The group has control over this page not individual users. There is however clear consensus on this talk page that your version is not appropriate. If you would like we can work on a compromise version, but you did say that you "officially" gave up on that. --Daniel J. Leivick 16:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

If the Rutles can have a phony discography page, why can't Spinal Tap? And stop taking everything I say as "hostility" because it's true - you have no more control over this page than I do. --Steve Worek —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.240.37.225 (talk) 01:46, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the Rutles page is going to get merged and shortened into the main page. --Daniel J. Leivick 16:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

This is pathetic. No matter what I think about the article, the behavoir is pathetic. Anyways: Spinal Tap's fake discography is a crucial aspect of their backstory; as Spinal Tap is essentially nothing but backstory, to say that their discography is not noteable renders their entire backstory non-noteable. That would limit the Spinal Tap article to a few blurbs about being a "semi-fake band with an elaborate back story". To go deeper and actually understand any fictional details about the band, and how those details are related to the bands' satire of Rock and Roll through the 60's to 80's, one must start with the discography. For example, Listen to the Flower People, Rock and Roll Creation and Smell the Glove are parodies of late 60's- early 70's psychadelic rock, followed by 70's religious/ occult themes, followed by the late 70's- early 80's hedonistic Arena-Glam rock. All of the albums, listed with their fictional details, and then paired with brief explanation of how the fictional details allude to and satirize reality, would go a very far way towards explaining the various stages and sides of the band. Why could that not be done? Begle1 02:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Begle1, could you come up with a new version, using the info from my version then? Nice to see someone with sense around here. --Steve Worek —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.240.44.14 (talk) 04:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)