Talk:Voices of the Lifestream

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Good article Voices of the Lifestream has been listed as one of the Arts good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
April 5, 2008 Good article nominee Listed

Contents

[edit] Creation

Hello, you might be thinking "Gasp! An OC Remix project article! How dare he!" Yes, how dare. I created this article not only because of Voices of the Lifestream's indisputable notability but also because I am capable of researching the subject matter and backing it up with reliable sources, and I love OC Remix. Of course, this article is not perfect. But I think with some help it will be. Yes, I know about the whole "OC Remix article controversy." I also know that the main point of controversy was that many (if not all) of the articles lacked research and outside sources. Well, guess what? Voices of the Lifestream has been acknowledged and documented by several major gaming websites, Piano Squall, and Tommy Tallarico (VG composer with 250+ titles under his belt and co-creator of Video Games Live). Obviously this level of exposure was exclusive to "Voices" as OC Remix tried really hard to spread the word (which worked) and the fact that Final Fantasy VII is extremely popular. You wont be able to develop an article for the other OC Projects simply because there is not enough information out there (short of the project's official website). However, "Voices" is different and has many outside sources, and because of this can hold its own. I hope you wikipedians are understanding in my views and the work I put into making this article. So if you feel like helping expand/better the article, then go ahead. But dont try to tell me "'Voices' isnt notable" or "There arent reliable sources." Thats BS. Im tired, its 4AM. So, wiki away, you have my blessing. Noj r (talk) 11:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Personnel

While I realize that each musician put a lot of hard work into this project and deserves to be recognized, I feel that Wikipedia is not the proper place to do it. The adder invoked Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums#Personnel but I feel that that does not properly describe what the list currently consists of. Also, the spirit of that guideline does not and should not encompass the sheer number of composers involved. As well, that guideline specifically refers to musicians, and not composers. Ultimately, though, it is repeated better at the project's own website with individual bios rather than this list which really doesn't name notable individuals and consists of a bunch of names that might as well be anonymous. Axem Titanium (talk) 00:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree it is rather cumbersome, perhaps it should be merged with the track list or linked to the artist page at the project website. Any other suggestions? Noj r (talk) 00:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


Just take a look at the album pages for albums such as Other Voices (The Doors album), St. Anger (Metallica), Discovery (Daft Punk album), Sacred Love (Sting), or any one of hundreds of others on Wikipedia. Personnel are routinely credited that are not notable. It is one in a million that any musical album would be entirely written, produced, engineered, and performed by a full cast of 'notable' people- there are always studio musicians, technicians etc. involved who contributed but are not particularly well-known or influential. Simply because "Vlado Meller" (mastering engineer on St. Anger) is not a household name does not mean he should not be appropriately credited for his work.

Additionally, nothing in the WP guideline implies that it should only be used to credit musicians/performers, and indeed if you look at many album pages you will note that people outside of actual instrumental performers or vocalists are regularly credited. Even that aside, no composers are in fact credited in the VotL list, as the original music was all written by Nobuo Uematsu. As the album itself here is notable, I do not see why the musicians involved should be treated differently than the musicians on other notable albums. Zirconst (talk) 01:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

That is a fair objection. Im removing the Personal section and adding an artist link to the track listing. Noj r (talk) 02:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

  • The Personnel list consists of every musician/arranger and performer than was involved in the album. I'm not seeing any rationale being offered than, "this album has so many personnel" (not discouraged on WikiProject Albums information) and that somehow the artists involved in the album are not musicians, which is incorrect. The reasoning that the info is available at the album website and thus should be removed is akin to saying that the info in those other mainstream albums should not be included because it is available in the CD booklet. Though it's irrelevant to this discussion, there is no implication that the Personnel of WikiProject Album is restricted to musicians only [quote: "The forms of participation (for example instruments)..."] That's just your inference, Axel. My only other suggestion would be to make the information collapsible, with the default setting being collapsed. - Liontamer (talk) 02:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Alright, lemmee see if I can integrate the artists into the track names. We'll just see how this works... EDIT: Alright, thats much better. Is everybody ok with it being this way? - Noj r (talk) 04:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

Thanks for the recent help guys. There is still some citation issues that need to be resolved. The Pelit review is missing a citation link or reference; this is pretty important in establishing worldwide professional media coverage of a seemingly "small unnoticeable" tribute album. Also, when I wrote the first draft of this article and was looking for references, I ran across djpretzel in a, OC Remix forum talking about the success of the album and how people thought the album had too many "electronic" pieces. I cant remember where it was, but it would fulfill the citation for the last statement in the Reception section. The article is looking great so far, thanks. Noj r (talk) 00:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


I do not believe Pelit magazine offers its articles online, but this article does link to the issue that included the review (to the right of the 5 star rating). I do have a scan of the VotL review from Pelit, for what it's worth; http://www.soundtempest.net/IMG_1836.JPG - what else needs to be done to verify this? With regards to the 'too much electronica' stuff, that has appeared in a number of forum posts in various places on the 'net, but I don't think a random post by someone on the Penny Arcade boards is necessarily a good citation, especially given how strict people have been on OCR project citations in the past... Zirconst (talk) 01:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, you have the article, thats great. Could you cite the Pelit review as a magazine reference and we'll keep the link to the website. As for the post regarding too many electronic pieces, I was thinking about adding djpretzel's post on the issue as a reference to balance out the reception subsection. But it probably would be better to simply dispose of that sentence entirely. The reception subsection is balanced without it. If a notable citation is found then it can be added later. Noj r (talk) 02:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability concerns

No independent coverage -- all references go back to the source site itself, or gaming blogs. It would be difficult to argue the independence of gaming blogs by a long-shot. This is a major concern with establishing this article's notability. I'm also concerned about catagorizing this article in popular catagories such as "Final Fantasy Music." This is a bold move for an unofficial work without sufficient references. (which may be counter-productive -- helping other editors locate articles with notability problems only increases the liklihood of them being nominated for deletion) If someone can work toward locating independent coverage of the album, it would help the notability immensely. Otherwise, there's a possibility the article may be nominated for deletion in the future.

I also feel strongly against starting independent Wiki articles such as this one. Encyclopedias should pertain to encyclopedic subjects -- not serve to promote independent works. At most, I would consider the subject a trivial mention in an article related to the OCReMix website appropriate. It doesn't quite merit an entire article to itself, and the lack of significant and independent coverage affirms this. 68.209.235.149 (talk) 02:35, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
It clearly has some though, and if an article has some notable coverage, the debate becomes merge or no merge, not delete; that is reserved for articles with no notability. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 04:51, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand. This album has received coverage from numerous third party publications, one of which is Pelit, a professional video game magazine. The huge amount of coverage from "underground" sources is just a testament to how popular the album became. Also, these "blog sites" like Kotaku and Destructoid are not just random goons either, they are professionally employed journalists and are read by thousands of people every day. That means something. It means the album was notable enough to have professionals take time out to write about the album.
This has become an issue of whether the sources themselves are notable or not. Because so far, there are almost ten third party sources speaking about this album:
  • Destructoid - professional blogging site
  • Pelit - professional game magazine
  • SquareSound - internet based company dedicated to Square Enix music
  • VGMdb - database of video game music
  • Game Daily - professional game site
  • Kotaku - professional blogging site
  • Game Tabs - site dedicated to providing guitar tabs for game music
  • Music 4 Games - professional site dedicated to video game music
And when I say professional, I mean, read by thousands of people daily, have interviews with celebrities (like Nobuo Uematsu), etc. But of course these sites are not notable or reliable because they don't have a giant IGN or Gamespot logo behind them. Noj r (talk) 21:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GAN on hold

  • I don't think the Reception section image is needed
  • Practice on album articles is to have no refs in the infobox. The professional reviews ones aren't necessary as you also have the link there
  • "numerous video game sites[1] " - need some form of punctuation under the ref
  • "endeavor by OCR" - what's OCR?
  • Are the links in the Music video competition section copyvios?
  • "downloaded project to date" - competing against what? Other OC Remix projects? If so, say so
  • Anything on Metacritic?
  • Ref 14: USA Today goes in italics. Check other refs for newspapers and things like that

Leave a note on my talk page when done. Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:37, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Fixed everything! Looked on Metacritic and it doesn't seem like they have anything. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 13:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Deleted a rogue ref in the infobox. Also, thank you for taking care of this article Judgesurreal. -- Noj r (talk) 22:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

This GAN has passed, and this is now a good article! If you found this review helpful, please consider helping out a fellow editor by reviewing another good article nomination. Help and advice on how to do so is available at Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles, and you can ask for the help of a GAN mentor, if you wish.

Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 00:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

(Putting aside the above automessage..wink wink wink ;) Now, you want to for FAC...well, I haven't seen anything significantly lacking in my review. Something that could be done would be to expand the lead to two paragraphs...talk about the development and the basics in one, and reception etc. in the other. Some people might have fair use issues with the 5 fair use images on the article - you might want to specifically ask about that if you do a peer review. Otherwise, just keep an eye on prose, and you should be good...leave me a note if you'd like me to take another look some time in the future. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 00:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)