Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/"Weird Al" Yankovic (album)/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 by Karanacs 19:31, 14 July 2009 [1].

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"Weird Al" Yankovic (album)

Nominator(s): — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 04:13, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/"Weird Al" Yankovic (album)/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because... I've worked on it significantly since its GA-promotion and peer-review, and can't think of anything else to improve. I could soundly be wrong, but this is my first attempt at this process, so please be kind. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 04:13, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Seems thin and has some problems.

The lead is too short for an FA. "... garnered a lukewarm reception by critics and reviewers" is redundant. What was its commercial reaction? What was the most famous song from the album? What effect did this album have on Yankovic's career?

What is the "ace rock guitarist" description of Derringer about? How much influence did he really have – "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" was already a decade before.

If "Promotion" and "Album cover" are this short, they don't need to be separate sections. Or expand them - what kind of promotion did the record company do? And the "Production" overall section name doesn't cover these activities; maybe "History"?

Transcribing all caps ("AN EVENING OF DEMENTIA WITH DR. DEMENTO IN PERSON PLUS 'WEIRD AL' YANKOVIC") is generally not a good idea.

Any more specific month or date when it was released in 1983?

"in subsequent albums it's only used where deemed appropriate or wholly inappropriate" is a good line.

In Track listing, the link to "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" should be repeated, rather than force to reader to go back up and hunt for it.

Other reviews? Rolling Stone? Newspapers? This Google News Archive search doesn't show much; perhaps you could use it to indicate that newspaper reviewers completely ignored it.

Try to avoid repeating the same footnote over and over in the Personnel section.

How did/does Yankovic feel about this album? How does Derringer feel about it?

How did the satirized artists feel about this album, then (if they ever heard it) or later?

The lead's "and satirizes American culture and experiences of the same time period" isn't really explored in the article body. What is Yankovic's outlook on American society as expressed in this album?

Overall, as I said, the article seems a bit thin for FA status. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Thinness was one of my chief concerns for the article, despite having searched for any and all available sourcing since my initial reconstitution of the article in October 2008. The biggest problem with searching for sources is the album's eponymous nature, all searches for "Weird Al" Yankovic tend to provide me with a large amount of results for information relating to this particular article.

• Yes, searching is hard in cases like this, I've had the same problem with title songs of albums and the like. But that's what we get paid the big bucks for ;-)

• It's my understanding that the lede is supposed to summarize the content of the article and its contents, I can't put information about "commercial reaction", "most famous song", or "career" effects unless they're already brought about in the body of the article, right? For the information that is in the article's body, does the lede not summarize well? How so?

• If there's so little in the article that the lead has to be this short, that's a symptom that the article isn't really FA material, in my view.

• The quoted description of Mr. Derringer was simply for clarification purposes. The source described him as such, and since I can't assume any reader to know who he is, I thought the descriptor applicable. Do you think it's putting any undue weight on ... something? When you ask about his influence, do you mean the influence as described in the article ("music indistry prestige"), or something else?

• There's no footnote on that sentence, so I can't tell what the source is or who is saying it. Most people don't exactly think "Rick Derringer" when they're thinking of rock guitar gods! He is nowhere to be found on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest guitarists of all time list, for example.

• I tried to combine the two sections, but I couldn't think of any header or descriptor that would make sense for these two unrelated subjects to be under. Again, I couldn't find any information about the production company's promotion efforts, I would be thrilled to include them as the section is short.
• "An Evening of Dementia with Dr. Demento in Person Plus 'Weird Al' Yankovic"? I wasn't sure how to properly de-CAPIFY something w/o potentially changing any inferences or meanings, and neither the GA or PR processes had any input on this in particular.

• What you propose here looks good.

• I can provide a reliable source that the contract specified an April 1983 release date, but not that it was actually released in that month.
• Thanks.  :^)
• Sure, easy peasey. I tend to lean moreso in the direction of underlinking to prevent overlinking. No biggie.
• You came to the same realization that I did: that either there wasn't much in the way of reviews, or we just can't find them. The problem with noting their absence, is that doing so draws specific note to that fact without any sourcing to back up that it's pertinent; you know what I mean?
• I'm not sure what you mean? Do you mean I shouldn't use the same citation multiple times? Can you clarify, please?

• Just put one footnote at the end, something like that.

• /sigh No sources available/found.
• Again, no information available or found.
• The lede's description of cultural and experiential satire is just a condensed description of the individual songs' subjects. They all describe their subject matter and manner of parody or satire; I was just reflecting this in the lede. I have no sources on Yankovic general worldview on the subject matter, and didn't mean to infer such. I don't read it that way, but if anybody else does, how would you recommend I repair that?

I'm very aware of its thinness, but can/will that fact alone deter or derail this article's FA chances? Perhaps it fails in this instance, if there are little-to-no easy (or even moderately difficult) sources to be had, would it not be eligible for nomination again? If it were, how long should one wait before doing so? I worry of having to prove a negative. What are your thoughts on that matter? — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 00:42, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

• Other views may vary, but I feel that this article doesn't have enough heft, and may well never have enough heft, to be FA. If you know some of the history of GA, it was created in part to give a goal for articles that would never be suitable for FA, and the first sentence of WP:GA still conveys some of this idea, although many editors now just see GA as a preliminary stop on the way to FA. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Ouch; I'm going to reply to your points here, if you don't mind.

• Regarding the Rick Derringer quote; the citation for the entire paragraph contains the same for the quote. As for Mr. Derringer's actual qualifications or "ace" status, I'd never heard of him before or after reading about his participation herein, so I'm certainly not qualified to comment. That being said, Barret Hansen, my source, described him as such and I think its use warrants inclusion as Mr. Hansen specifically made use of it. Would you prefer a different, un-quoted descriptor? Do you have any preference or suggestion?

• Liner notes aren't the world's most objective source for this kind of assessment. I'd just give a short, neutral description of Derringer's work to that point. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

• Okay, I implemented by de-CAPITALIZED version of the quotation as you suggested. ([2])
• I still don't understand what you mean about my footnotes. The article is using twenty-five separate citations, ten of which are used multiple times by virtue of duplicating the reference name in my -- WAIT. I'm sorry, I misread your initial comment; you specifically referred to the "Personnel" section, and I missed that. Okay then, my question now is how to indicate that nine of the ten people come from one source, while the tenth comes from a separate? — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 17:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

• I'd say at the top of the section "As listed in the album notes:" and then cite what the album itself says, using template {{Cite album-notes}} or the equivalent. Online sources like this that you are using are notoriously unreliable when it comes to getting the credits right, I've seen many mistakes compared to what the actual albums say. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. Prose needs polishing; choppy; slender.

• Two pet peeves: Why is "American" linked in the first sentence? Is it an arcane term that English-speakers struggle with? Can you pipe "Compact Disc" to "compact disc", please?
• When there's an "of" to the right, put a "the" to the left. This is a saying I came up with for non-native speakers, and it solves a lot of "the" issues. "the pop and rock music of the late 1970s. However, you don't want "the" for the "culture and experiences of": let me work on that one (it's eluding me at the moment).
• "garnered a lukewarm reception by critics and reviewers"—too fruity, "garnered" ... go plain: plain is elegant, uniquely in English as far as I can tell. "received ... from critics and reviewers".
• "the perfect producer"—it's just a style thing ... p p. What about "ideal producer"?
• "Derringer used his music industry prestige and convinced Cherokee Studios to record an album's worth of Yankovic's songs gratis, to be paid when the album sold." First, "to be paid for"; second, sold its first copy? Consider "to be paid for from sales revenue"?
• Quotation in box: two sets of ellipsis dots are bounded by square brackets; one is not. This means that one is in the original?
• Choppy paragraphing in "Critical reception". Choppy subsections in a few places.
• A bit listy. Rather slender. Tony (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

• I'll bite on the former ([3]), but the latter is a proper noun as far as I can tell, and should be capitalized. Ergo, why else would the article be located there?
• I ... think I'll let you think on that for a bit.  :^)
• Meh, okay. No biggie. ([4])
• It's not quoted specifically, but "perfect" is the word used in my source, and "ideal" != "perfect". Does that make sense? Do you have any input on that?
• I don't like "paid for" because it says to my mind an exchange of goods, whereas Cherokee Studios was providing services to the artist and producer. For example, "I gave you a pork chop, to be paid for later" works, but "I vacuumed your house, to be paid for when you have the money" doesn't. That being said, I'm fine with generalizing to "sales revenue". ([5])
• Yes, exactly; the quoted ellipsis was a "disgusted pause" (if you will).
• As to the "critical reception" section specifically, how would you recommend formatting it? As to the choppy sub-sections, as I said above, I tried to come up with a way to combine them, but when I did, they read as inappropriately related and the move from one to the other was rather more jarring than the short, choppy sectioning. Do you have any specific input or suggestions?
• I think it seems listy because the track listing consists of more of the article than I would prefer. Unfortunately, as I said above, I've simply unable to come up with more content and sources than I have currently in the article. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 17:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
  • There's only the one: ballast, and as its part of a quotation, I don't know the author's specific intent for meaning. Should I remove the link altogether, then? — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 18:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Use a wiktionary link if possible. Generally though, we should be modifying quotations as little as possible (reduce links). Dabomb87 (talk) 21:24, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.