Talk:12 Gauge (Kalmah album)/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: BelovedFreak 18:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   just a couple of prose queries, lead does not comply with the MOS

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   A few citations required.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   Ok here, just a couple of queries

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   Neutrally written, I trust form the hidden comment in the reception section that you've found no negative reviews for the album.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   Appears to be stable, one recent editor.

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   One too many non-free images

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

No dead links or links to disambiguation pages.

Prose/MoS

Lead

• Per WP:LEAD, the lead section should adequately summarise the entire article. This is a GA requirement. At the moment, it doesn't. No mention is made of the background, production or music video.

Y I expanded this section and it should summarize without introducing any new information (or anything requiring citations). Obviously, let me know if there is anything that could be improved. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 10:09, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

That looks fine; possibly a little overlinking with the countries?--BelovedFreak 12:39, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Background

• Could you mention here that the album is the 6th for the band?

Y Mentioned this at the beginning of the section.

• "In very few cases, the songs were composed on keyboard." - could you say which songs were these few case, and what the others were composed on?

Y Done, using liner notes as reference.

• "The band's intent was to produce a thrashier album." - is "thrashier" a quote? If so, needs quotation marks & attribution; if not, I think "thrashier" is a bit informal & could be perhaps reworded using the phrase "thrash metal" instead.

Y Rephrased to use an actual quote. Note, the citation for this quote appears at the end of the third sentence. See below for discussion on citation placement. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 03:17, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Production

• This is your call, but I wonder if "Artwork" requires a separate subheading, since it's only 2.5 sentences long.

Y I took the "Title" paragraph and "Artwork" section and combined them into one subheading. I feel these should be separated from the actual recording process, but because the entire section is called "Production" (and not "Recording"), it really doesn't matter. This just helps break it up a tad. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 22:26, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Reception

• "...reaching heights that the Finnish are known for." - this is a little vague. Did he mean that the Finnish people in general are known for reaching heights? Finnish musicians? I don't really understand the context.

Y Agreed, a generalizing statement that doesn't add to the article. I removed this part of the phrase.

• "...and quickly gave props..." - this is too informal.

Y This was removed entirely through attrition.

I removed two reviews and added four more. Thank you for considering WP:AGF on my decisions with the foreign reviews, which was entirely accurate at the time. As I had written earlier on this talk page's discussion, I had found English reviews, but considered them unreliable. Google has since "settled" its search results, and I was able to find several more English reviews yesterday. I held a brief discussion on the WikiProject Albums talk page, which helped me with my final decisions to include four new English reviews (two of which I did not list in the discussion: PopMatters and Blistering). These two, plus Angry Metal Guy and MetalEater are new... Feel free to override the reliability of these, but I feel they should be okay.

Prose was expanded to incorporate these new reviews. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 22:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

New reviews / sources look fine.--BelovedFreak 11:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

References

• Citations themselves look good for GA, but please try to provide publishers where possible (eg. Hung Medien for FinnishCharts.com)

Y I added Hung Medien as the publisher for FinnishCharts.com. See next comment below.

• Blabbermouth.net can be linked, should not be in italics

Y Agreed about the italics. I held a discussion on the {{cite web}} talk page (Template_talk:Cite_web#.22Work.22_vs_.22Publisher.22_parameters) because evidently I was a bit fuzzy on the technicalities of the parameters. I've since corrected all references with "work=" and "publisher=" parameters where needed/as needed, and canceled out the italicizing of the "work=" parameter for websites that are not published journals of some sort.

I linked all instances of Blabbermouth.net — I wasn't sure if I should do it only once (per WP:OVERLINK) or in all cases. The reason I ask is because, until the review is settled, the references may shift about and the first instance of "Blabbermouth.net" may no longer be the linked one. This is also why I (long ago) removed the links to the languages (German and Finnish) in the review references. Any advice would be helpful, thank you! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 22:47, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I would link just the first occurrence. I think it's fine to leave it until you've finished moving text around though, so that you don't have to keep changing which one is linked.--BelovedFreak 11:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Y Removed overlinks, linked languages ("in German" or "in Finnish") in review references. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 10:10, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Citations/references

Sources look good, WP:AGF on the non-English ones.

Background

• Per Wikipedia:CITE#When quoting someone, citations should be "placed either directly after the quotation [...] or after a sentence or phrase that introduces the quotation", for verifiability. There are citations missing for Pekka's quotes in this section

Thank you for noticing this. However, I am extremely careful with my citations, so perhaps I should change something here to make a compromise? In the following example, taken from the Background section, the citation [2] is for everything before that point. (Any text written before this passage had its own citation.)

After the songs were written, Pekka Kokko wrote the lyrics. The band's intent was to produce a thrashier album. Pekka explained, "That is why some of the songs are quite straightforward. But we didn’t want to give up our melodies. And we wanted to add some acoustic guitars as well." Pekka admitted that the songwriting process was sometimes difficult. "For my part I have to say writing the lyrics was not easy. And I think it wasn’t easy with Antti’s guitar riffs, either. [...] Some of those songs were composed quite fast, but we had difficulties with some of them."

For 12 Gauge, Pekka's lyrics were inspired by "themes like environment, politics, religion, social problems, fishing, hunting, drinking, failure, pessimism, [and] grievances concerning our daily lives."^[2]

What I would like to avoid is the possibly-redundant, over-citing seen like this:

After the songs were written, Pekka Kokko wrote the lyrics. The band's intent was to produce a thrashier album. Pekka explained, "That is why some of the songs are quite straightforward. But we didn’t want to give up our melodies. And we wanted to add some acoustic guitars as well."^[2] Pekka admitted that the songwriting process was sometimes difficult. "For my part I have to say writing the lyrics was not easy. And I think it wasn’t easy with Antti’s guitar riffs, either. [...] Some of those songs were composed quite fast, but we had difficulties with some of them."^[2]

For 12 Gauge, Pekka's lyrics were inspired by "themes like environment, politics, religion, social problems, fishing, hunting, drinking, failure, pessimism, [and] grievances concerning our daily lives."^[2]

Am I wrong in thinking this? Perhaps a single citation at the end of the first paragraph, and then a citation after the first sentence of the following paragraph can remain as well; this would be a total of two of the same citations in a row, instead of three. Obviously, if I am in the wrong or working against a guideline/policy I'm not aware of, do let me know. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:24, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

For this, I'm purely going from the that says: "You should always add a citation when quoting published material, including the page number if there is one. The citation should be placed either directly after the quotation [...] or after a sentence or phrase that introduces the quotation." This is not a policy, but a guideline, but is closely linked to WP:V. However, I am purely going from my reading of the guideline. I haven't really seen this in action, ie. seen anyone arguing at WP:FAC for example, that a citation after every quote is always necessary (or not always necessary). I personally have a tendency to overcite, and have been told that at various peer reviews and GA reviews, so I'm probably not the best person to dictate this. I have asked about it at the talkpage for the guideline (Wikipedia talk:Citing sources), as I would like to be clearer on this myself for future reference.--BelovedFreak 11:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'd also left a comment on WT:Citing sources, but because that talkspace is pretty dead (or no one is replying), I figured, rather than hold up the GA process, I may as well be safer than sorrier lol. In the Background second, I re-phrased the second paragraph some, so the citation of quotes came together naturally. The above examples (in {{Quotation}} boxes) are now irrelevant. For the Production section, I simply placed a single citation at the end of the paragraphs that didn't otherwise have an obvious citation. Can you tell me what you think about this? I do prefer avoiding over-citations, but I'm perfectly content with this. This means that there may be quotes in either Background or Production sections that don't have a citation next to it; for example, in Background, the first couple of quotes ("more aggressive thrash metal" and "That is why some of the songs ... acoustic guitars as well") don't have citations directly next to them, but are covered by the citation in the following sentence. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 10:34, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

It looks fine. I'm actually coming round to your way of thinking on this, but I would like to have some clarification from someone else, for my own information. I may try posting my query elsewhere.--BelovedFreak 12:39, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Production

• Citations after direct quotes are missing here

N Not done for now. See discussion above. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:26, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Y Citations added to end of each paragraph that was otherwise not apparently or obviously cited. See last comment in discussion above. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 10:36, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Broad in coverage

• The genre has two citations in the lead. This leads me to assume that the genre may be controversial or questioned? At the moment, you haven't really mentioned the genre in the rest of the article. It would be nice to see that covered somewhere. I know it's touched on in the reception section, but could this be developed?

YCitations removed. The genre isn't necessarily controversial since many of the references specifically use the term. I usually do what I can to prevent genre-warring before it occurs. The citations were merely there as a preventative measure. (This stems from watching genres change per opinion-du-jour on other articles, despite Wikipedia's policies of original research, verifiabiliy and reliability.

N I have not developed the genre yet, as you suggested; this is something I'll work on when I work on the rest of the GA suggestions. I'm honestly not sure how I'm going to expand on it without referring to reviews; there are no references that I've found that discuss why Kalmah is specifically melodic death metal.

Not sure what to suggest there. It would be good to have more detail about the genre, especially if heading to WP:FA in the future, but I won't fail it based on this. There's not much you can do if you can't find and significant coverage/analysis of it. You mention at the beginning of the "background" that it's more of a thrash metal sound than their others, perhaps say what genre/subgenre the others were as a contrast?--BelovedFreak 11:24, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

From what I understand, bands are unreliable sources for labeling genres on themselves. In the interviews I've read and cited, Pekka or Antti will use the words "trash metal" and "thrash metal" (almost interchangeably) to describe the sound they're trying to achieve. The critics seem to have adopted the word as well to describe their sound, but within the blanket of melo-death, or melodic death, or blackened death genres. In other words, the album is "thrashier" than previous albums, but because their vocals are death vocals and the guitarwork and drumwork are defined by "melodic death metal," they are still a melodic death metal band. However, all of this I would consider original research, because there really is no analysis of this band's sound. They're simply not covered in the media enough (to be honest, the only reason this article exists was because I noticed the surprising abundance of articles and interviews promoting this album!). I really wouldn't know how to proceed with this, but it's a great suggestion otherwise. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 10:42, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

• My initial thought about the video section was that it was undue weight on the video for one song. However, I presume that the song in question will never have an article of it's own? In which case, it's fine to include it here. Were there videos for any of the other songs?

Y Correct. Because of the nature of this music, Kalmah's album doesn't really have any "singles," per se. The video itself is extremely low budget (though paid for in part by the record label) and is intended for, essentially, YouTube and viral marketing only. VH1 and MTV (for example) don't play a role in the promotion of the song. So you are correct in presuming the song will never be notable enough for its own article, but the video itself was an integral part in promoting the album. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Images

Images and music sample are appropriately tagged but I am concerned about the use of two non-free images to illustrate the section on the music video. This seems to be stretching fair use two far. One can be argued to be used to show context / relevance, but a second doesn't add anything other than decoration really.

Y I agree. I feel both images were able to show context to some degree, and after some consideration, I removed the sillier, and more blurry image. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Pass/Fail

This is very close to GA. The main things holding it back are the lead section (needs expanding), the missing citations and the questionable use of two FU images in the video section. I'll put it on hold for seven days to allow you to address these issues.--BelovedFreak 19:03, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, it's a pass! Thanks for the hard work you've put into it, and for listening to my suggestions. Good l uck with developing it further!--BelovedFreak 12:39, 29 May 2010 (UTC)