Talk:HIM (Finnish band)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 11:42, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll review this; it may take me a couple of days to complete the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:42, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll copyedit as I go; please revert if I make a mess of anything.

• Why is it worth mentioning that their music appeared in various TV shows? Surely this is trivia that is true of any successful band? And the same goes for the mention of the heartagram, unless there's more that can be said than simply "it appeared on the show".
• There are three sound samples in the article; that's a lot, given that they are copyrighted. Are they really all necessary for the reader's understanding?
• After a few years of inactivity: "a few" usually means more than two; the gap here is from 1993 to no later than 1996, and it sounds like it was probably 1995. Can we get the year they were signed or the year they recorded the four-track demo?
• Soon thereafter, Mige rejoined the newly reformed His Infernal Majesty, as did drummer Juhana "Pätkä" Rantala. You don't need to say "rejoined the newly reformed..."; we know that. Just say "Mige rejoined the band". Rantala didn't "rejoin" it, did he? He hasn't been mentioned before, so I assume he's a new addition.
• Some of the details could be cut -- do we need to know that the first album reached 56 in the German charts? Or that "Join Me in Death" reached number eight in Switzerland? Even if we did, this could be left to the articles about the individual albums and songs. Similarly, I don't think you have to tell the reader every time a music video accompanies a track -- remember that there are subsidiary articles that will give the additional details.
• This resulted in HIM nearly breaking-up, until things settled down, and the band began rehearsing for another album: "until things settled down" is vague. Did things calm down because they stopped touring, which relieved the stress?
• This may be just a personal opinion, but I don't think the Metacritic scores are very useful to a reader, and they shouldn't be the first thing you say about an album. They summarize the reviews, but if you're writing the article you should be doing the summarizing.
• The reviews for Dark Light are described as "mostly positive" but then only one of the three quotes is positive.
• There are quite a few duplicate links which should be removed; see MOS:DUPLINK, and I recommend installing the script mentioned there.
• The list of the band's fans, and those who have a heartagram tattoo, seems like trivia to me; I'd suggest removing it.
• I haven't looked in detail at the sources yet, but I see at least a couple of YouTube sources. YouTube is not banned as a source, but can you tell me why you think these are reliable? (I'm not counting the music videos, of course.)

-- That's it for a first pass; I'll look at the sources after this pass. The article has a lot of good information and the structure seems reasonable; my main concern is that there is too much detail, which gets in the way of the reader. A reader unfamiliar with the band doesn't need chart positions, exact dates, and names of journalists who made comments; those can be put in subarticles or footnotes. There's some good narrative material here, but it is rather buried by the details. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:27, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

OK Mike Christie, I fixed most of the stuff you brought up, hopefully it looks better now! As for the YouTube sources, most of them are interviews with the bandmembers, so you really can't get more reliable than that, seeing the band themselves giving the information. If there's more stuff that needs work on, let me know.--SilverBullitt (talk) 09:23, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I had a quick look but don't have time to go through in detail; it looks much improved. I should have more time this evening or tomorrow morning. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:32, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Second pass

Nothing in the list below is necessary for GA; these are just comments and suggestions.

• I think the fair-use rationales for the remaining two sound samples could be strengthened. There should be some reason why we need to listen to these particular samples. The first one is described by Valo as featuring many of the band's key musical elements, and that's probably a good rationale. The second one is more or less "here's a well-known song by HIM", and that's not very strong. I think this would likely be questioned at FAC, for example.
• You really don't need the "main articles" subheads under the sections on the albums. Those are intended for situations where there's a sub-article but you don't have a clear link to it: e.g. History of France has a "main" France in the Middle Ages in the section "State building into the Kingdom of France (987-1453)", because there's nowhere else that's a natural link. Here you have links to the albums so you don't need a "main".
• I eliminated a bunch of duplicate links, but looking through I think I screwed up in at least a couple of cases and eliminated the first instance of the link, when I should have left the first instance. I'll revert the ones I spot, but please fix any you see; sorry about that.
• Please add the "lang" parameter to the appropriate citations indicate the language of any non-English sources.
• Anything linked in the article doesn't need to be in the "See also" section; that means "Helldone" at least can go.

So far this passes everything except criterion 2b: reliable sources. I will take a look at the sources next; just wanted to post the notes above to let you know everything looks good so far. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:52, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Sources

Many of the sources are in Finnish, and I can't evaluate their reliability; I'll take those mostly on faith. I've listed below the sources I've looked and am unsure about; can you explain what makes these reliable sources? I'm not saying they don't qualify, just that I need to see a reason why they're reliable.

• Blabbermouth.net
• Soundi
• viihdeuutinen.net
• metalinjection.net
• kaaoszine.fi
• singleeurope.com
• musicomh.com
• melodic.net

Once we've addressed these, I can pass the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:03, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I cleaned it up a bit more; added the lang parameters, removed the subheads, etc. As for the sources, Blabbermouth is arguably the biggest source of rock and metal news, and is the place where most people get their information, plus they often include links to sources (interviews etc.), so for me at least, it's valid. Soundi is the biggest music publication in Finland, while Kaaoszine is pretty much the Finnish equivalent for Blabbermouth, and equally legit, having done several high profile interviews, including HIM. MusicOMH fall in the same category, being a real publication, with interviews etc. Singleeurope.com I know little about, but the link is actually for an article originally published by IFPI, found on the singleeurope site. Viihdeuutinen.net and melodic.net I removed, and metalinjection.net I switched out with a better link. Hope that clears everything up Mike!--SilverBullitt (talk) 07:30, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I've struck most of the list above. Looks like you still have one use of melodic.net left; can that be eliminated? For the singleeurope.com link, here is an archive.org link to the IFPI page, so you should be able to get rid of that too. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:27, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Alright Mike, the final links have been dealt with. --SilverBullitt (talk) 22:59, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Looks good. Passing; congratulations. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:07, 20 December 2017 (UTC)