Wikipedia:Peer review/By Your Side (The Black Crowes album)/archive1

By Your Side (The Black Crowes album)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's the last step before FAC. The article has long been a GA but I just recently finished adding content. It also went through a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors a few hours ago.

Thanks, Two Hearted River (paddle / fish) 03:47, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Bradley0110

This is a nice article, which I presume you modelled on !your FA-class Lions (album) article. However, there are structural problem, particularly with the long quotes. In some places this gives a journalistic tone rather than an encyclopedic one.

• For example in the Writing and production section, "Shirley's laid back style also won praise from the band. "Kevin is the first guy that I've worked with that just went with it—especially my singing. A lot of this album is just my scratch vocals. It's very loose, and Kevin let it go.... He'd say, if we didn't get it in two or three takes, 'We'll come back tomorrow'", said Chris." looks like part of a magazine interview or profile. I recognise that it is sourced from an interview, but in an encyclopedia article, the information should come from the source, not the style of writing.

I'm not sure what you mean here – that the information should not come from the style of writing, or that the style of writing should not come from the source. Please elaborate.

I mean the encyclopedia article should not be written like a magazine article. "'Blah, blah, blah,' said Chris" sounds like the sort of text that would be in a magazine.

Is that because Chris doesn't speak in an encyclopedic tone? ;) I think the inclusion of quotes from the principals brings the reader a little closer to the subject and does better justice than a third-person rewrite could. If FAC reviewers don't like the amount of quoting, I'll trim it down.

• Further instances of this occur.
• I'm not sure of the purpose of the non-free sample File:The Black Crowes - Kickin' My Heart Around.ogg. The FUR states "The section of music is used to illustrate critics' characterization of the performance and sound." presumably referring to the Jim Farber quote. But the main crux of Farber's quoted analysis is the comparison between "Kickin' My Heart Around" and "Memo From Turner" and "What's Yer Name". Listeners won't be able to make that comparison without hearing the other two tracks.

Can I not assume the reader is familiar with these two tracks? Earlier in the caption, slide guitar and harmonica are referenced – surely I can assume the reader is familiar with those instruments for the purpose of distinguishing them in the sample, right? So there's a line somewhere...

• The same goes for File:The Black Crowes - Virtue and Vice.ogg; the sample won't help me understand Dan Aquilante's comparison to Traffic in a way words could not if I've never heard anything by Traffic.

In this one, further explanation of how it's similar to Traffic is given. If Traffic weren't mentioned, would the FUR be sufficient in your view?

The point I'm making is I'm pretty sure some of the more aggressive reviewers at FAC would rip these rationales apart. I think you should find someone who is good at FURs to give them a look and see if they think they're OK.

• Check reference formating; some single page citations have the plural "pp." instead of single "p.".

Good catch. I'll get on this.

• Some refs, e.g. Ref #19, lack page numbers.

Many of my print sources were obtained through Factiva, and the page number wasn't always provided. Thanks for finding #19.

News International's archive has Times and most Sunday Times page numbers (some ST supplements are not included) and ProQuest should have some U.S. titles. I'll have a look on Newsbank for some others.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to either of these. (News International says I have to be logged in.)

• What makes Refs #80 through #89 reliable?

The assertion has been made many times at FAC and FLC that these sites, all published by Hung Medien, only contain data that are licensed from the original chart providers. I haven't been able to find the proof of that, but it must have been provided at some point because the assertion is always accepted.

Fair enough.

• If you're not putting publishers in citations you should add locations for newspaper/magazine publications without it in the title (e.g. format The Times as "The Times (London)" and the Daily Mail (spit) as "Daily Mail (London)").

Will do.

• In the <code>{{Cite news}}</code> template you've sometimes put the work in the publisher field but italicised instead of in the work field. This should be corrected.

Ditto.

Despite the GOCE copyedit, I still think there is more work to be done. Apart from the long quotes, the top end of the article is quite well-written but it feels repetitive and rushed as it moves towards the bottom, particularly in the reception sections. It might be worth directly contacting one or two users at WP:PRV to perform a more in-depth copy edit than GOCE was able to achieve. Bradley0110 (talk) 10:42, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I see what you mean. This seems to be how most featured album articles read, which is not to say that featured article status is the be-all and end-all. If you can provide an example of an article in which the reception section avoids this problem, I could probably take care of it myself.

With the goalposts being constantly moved at FAC, I wonder whether any of those articles can be used as a model. The primary issue I have with the section is the repetitive "So-and-so from This magazine said 'this', so-and-so from That magazine said 'that'", etc. Bradley0110 (talk) 13:59, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not in love with that section, either, but I think I've gone beyond the usual organization method of "Reviewer 1 said this. Reviewer 2 said this. Reviewer 3 said this. [new paragraph] Reviewer 4...." I start each paragraph with a thesis about a specific aspect of the album and then back it up with examples, and I've varied the sentence structure to help with flow. Two Hearted River (paddle / fish) 14:38, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the thorough review! Two Hearted River (paddle / fish) 11:45, 23 July 2011 (UTC)