User:Mungo Kitsch/Essays/Genre Warring and Genre Warriors
This is my first Wikipedia essay. Feel free to comment about it on my talk page or on this essay's talk page. You can even feel free to edit the page if you believe that is appropriate.
Foreword: The following essay deals with genres of music, because music articles are what I specialize in on Wikipedia. However, this essay can apply to any medium that involves genres.
The essay
editMusic is a field with vast variety and diversity. The Wikipedia coverage of music is pretty extensive as well. Concerning the vastness of music, there are particular bands and musicians that stay with what they know, and they may exemplify this by sticking to one or two genres or styles for the duration of their musical existence. On the other hand, there are bands and musicians who like pushing the envelope by possibly, among other reasons, exploring any type of genre or style they want to with their music. The latter type of music that is produced as a result may be more musically ambiguous and understably harder to categorize. When bands are harder to categorize, like "Band A" for instance, one party, which will be referred to as Party 1, may think that Band A belongs to a/b/c genre. Another party, Party 2, may think that Band A belongs to d/e/f genres; even after that, a separate party, Party 3, will proclaim that the band belongs to a/c/d/f genres. These parties can quarrel all they want and think themselves as entirely correct concerning which genres belong to Band A, or any other band for that matter. But does such genre classification of bands truly matter? Do these opinions about Band A's genre carry enough matter to be relevant?
No.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with thinking that a certain band belongs to a certain genre (as long as that notion is not blatantly and indesputably incorrect), it is very wrong to force such thoughts onto others recklessly. People who do that are known by titles such as genre warriors, genre fiddlers (usually applied to people who do it to a lesser extent), genre manipulators, genre feuders, genre trolls, and pompous, narcissistic idiots who don't care about anyone's opinions or knowledge except their own. Genre warriors, as they will mainly be called henceforth in this essay, may add or subtract genres listed in articles of bands, albums, and/or musicians, oftentimes giving no sources or reasoning for such input. These genre warriors may give reasoning for their edits, but that does not mean that the reasoning doesn't suck. But a noticeable amount of these genre warriors may refuse to discuss their changes with others, even if given a mind-numbing amount of opportunities to do so. Genre warriors, as mentioned before, may not give any credence to the knowledge and opinions of others, favoring their own point of view as what is right, as opposed to what their viewpoint truly is: subjective and of little significance.
Genre warring is a serious problem on Wikipedia, as well as other websites. These genre warriors take it upon themselves to jump to conclusions about the genres of other people's musical works, with dubious results. About the lack of consultation of outside information, a lot of these people do not source their assertions or supply an edit summary, thus submitting an unexplained toying with the genre field. Such edits, unless if backed up by sources that are already there or on relevant pages, deserve to be reverted without a second thought, regardless of the truthful or untruthful value they possess. In Wikipedia terms, genre warring opposes and violates guidelines of original research, reliable sourcing, content removal, disruptive editing, verifiability, maintaining a neutral point of view, and civility, as well as possibly others. People who continue to engage in genre warring should be respectively warned; if warning(s) are ignored, they can hopefully be appropriately held responsible for an appropriate amount of time. But what about the sockpuppets or multiple IP users?
The type of genre warriors who use multiple accounts and/or IPs have enhancements via these multiple accounts that are moreso irritating, which is especially true with people who only use IPs, as opposed to multiple usernames. It is in itself a questionable practice to use multiple accounts, and people who use multiple accounts AND wage genre wars are a grand disturbance, to speak in the terms of an understatement. The wrongdoers with multiple accounts and/or IPs should be dealt with accordingly; for instance, when an individual who hops IPs all the time and only uses most IPs once (or twice, if such a chance prevails), then my course of action is to revert away and possibly post on the user talk pages about why that is wrong. An additional option is to make another failed attempt at inviting cooperation with the offender; since that would be bound to fruitlessness, it's probably not worth trying, though. After all, no matter their modes of practice, these genre warriors deserve to be entirely discredited and dismissed per se.
Seriously, though, there is absolutely no point to genre warring and unmitigated genre changing in the first place. Genre classification exists in order to give the interested party a clue as to how the music sounds. What should take place is that the music is described, that description is read, and the interested parties move on with their lives, possibly reading further on their band of interest. But no, that's not what happens when whiners are present. Some people change the genres or do other, similar useless crap. Not only is genre warring bad if it is a constant issue (which it is with select individuals, as well as generally), but it is also bad because certain individuals don't have in mind that genre categorizing doesn't matter nearly as much as it is hyped to be.
Genre classification is present to give a basic idea of what the music sounds like, not for idiots to argue or whine about. The genre classification only matters in order to tag the music, but if the genres of certain types of music are too hard to nail down, then it may not even matter at all. The assigning of genres matters more if, say, a band helps create a genre, such as Bathory's relation to both black metal and Viking metal and King Crimson's relation to progressive rock. But if you ask me, if the assigning gets to hard, then ditch it! The genre info should be kept in a constant, immobile state that is agreed on and sourced; if this is less than possible, though, then some form of protection would be acceptable, given a permitting amount of activity takes place. I also advocate clearing the infobox of genres entirely, if other resorts are already exhausted. After all, the music itself is far more important than the genre(s) it belongs to. When people try to pigeonhole what genres a band or album belongs to, they forget this in favor of their own trivial beliefs about something that is ultimately insignificant. This type of practice is indulgently narcissistic and self-important, as if the practitioners think of themselves as experts. The possibility of such thought existing in the person's mind is not unrealistic, while the thought itself is unrealistic. If someone is a true expert on certain areas of music, they are unable to prove it if 99% or so of their Wikipedia edits consist of tinkering with the genre line-up.
It's also very ugly when two or more people fight about the genres. Yep, a group of people fighting about something so frivolous. When two or more people are fighting about genres with each other, no matter who is right or wrong (if it is even the case that one party is right and one party is wrong, which can be a laughable notion at times), then from a distance, both parties look like idiots. Wikipedia is a website and community intended for the promotion and display of academic, intelligent, neutral, reliable information, not to argue about genres. However, when there is one champion of a certain genre line-up and multiple people reverting that person's edits, that may be an inclination (however, no certainties about this general idea) that the singular unit of this instance is disruptive, as opposed to mutual idiocy.
Genre warring is a shameful practice that continues to exist to this day. There needs to be awareness spread about this, because it is a problem that does not need to persist. Sure, it will likely stick around further, as long as there are arrogant fools who think about music in terms of genres and stupid labelling. Genre warriors, when they are partaking in their respective activities, do not have the improvement and betterment of Wikipedia in their motives. The genre warriors may think that they are standing up for what is correct and therefore think of themselves as brave and valiant white knights of knowledge. But I cannot understand why they would think themselves as such, even if I try to. But genre warriors truly are among the lowest bottom feeders of the entire music community, potentially alongside the business-people who exploit random "musical" egomaniacs into mainstream superstardom, as well as said egomaniacs (which is a different subject; therefore, no need to go into detail here). Instead of being a hero of musical knowledge, a genre warrior is merely a spineless coward hiding behind a computer screen.
Post-Scripts
editI wrote three short post-script blurbs for the above essay. While more topical and relevant in 2012, I would see them as nice bonus material available for reading if you so choose.