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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Slug (song)/archive3

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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 promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 13:05, 12 August 2016 [1].

Slug (song)

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Nominator(s): –Dream out loud (talk) 20:39, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a song recorded by U2 and Brian Eno as part of a side project album in 1995. This is the song's third nomination for FA, as its previous nominations failed as many editors simply felt the article was "too short". Keep in mind, that the song about which the article was written was not released as a single, performed live in concert, or released on a mainstream album. As a result, it was a very obscure track released under a pseudonymn by major artists. I have noted that it is comparable in size to FAs of other lesser-known releases. The article completely details the background, inspiriation, writing/recording, and reception of the song, and I feel that is definitely warrants the status as a featured article. –Dream out loud (talk) 20:39, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by starship.paint

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Review
Lede
  • If Passengers is a secret pseudonym, perhaps that should be emphasized.
Infobox
  • Some discrepancies between this particle and Original Soundtracks 1. So this song was released on 6 November and the album was released on 7 November? Shouldn't they be on the same date? Also, the album says the recording for Westside Studios, London was in 1994.
  • Is there a source for the recording locations... would that be the album itself?
  • How is the genre for the song determined? I see 'experimental' appearing in the body, but not 'ambient', 'alternative' or 'rock'.
Background and recording
  • U2 and producer Brian Eno intended to record the soundtrack for Peter Greenaway's 1996 film The Pillow Book - what soundtrack?
  • U2 spent time in Shinjuku, Tokyo at the end of the Zoo TV Tour in 1993, and their experience in the city influenced the recording sessions. - when were the recording sessions?
  • I believe that all the sentences until ....the bullet train in Tokyo". should be in one paragraph as they are about the album. Whereas the stuff after that is about the song.
  • By early July 1995, the band renamed the song "Seibu/Slug" - so why did the name turn out to be just Slug? Since it was never mentioned in the sources, how about inserting The song was released as "Slug", the second track on the Passengers album Original Soundtracks 1 on 7 November 1995. rephrased from the first sentence of the Reception section into the background section, before Details of the song's recording sessions were documented in Eno's 1996 book, A Year with Swollen Appendices.
Composition and lyrics
  • I thought the line "Don't want to be a slug" should be mentioned...? There should be some explanation of the title of the song, lest people like me think of the mollusc. I wiki-linked to Wiktionary since you didn't explain. Is that all right?
Personnel
Most issues have been addressed. I don't understand your concern about the intention of recording for a soundtrack. U2 and producer Brian Eno intended to record the soundtrack for Peter Greenaway's 1996 film The Pillow Book. That sentence seems fine to me. What soundtrack? The soundtrack for the film - which they never ended up recording. As far as the name of the song, I could not find any source that explains why the name was changed. The closest thing I found was a source that mentions how The Edge still calls the song "Seibu", but I couldn't find a place to fit that in nor did I think it was worth mentioning. –Dream out loud (talk) 22:01, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Starship.paint: Thank you so much for your feedback! Out of all the FA nominations this article has had, I can easily say that your feedback has been the most constructive. I've address all the issues so far. Please let me know if you have any other comments. –Dream out loud (talk) 09:57, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Dream out loud: - You're welcome, I'm heartened to hear that. There's one last issue above at the red text. The Reception section seems fine, the sourcing seems great, my review is almost done then. I don't see problems with length, content is enough for a non-single. starship.paint ~ KO 10:28, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Last issue addressed. Thanks again! –Dream out loud (talk) 11:42, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Dream out loud: - one more thing I thought of. Since this is a non-single, could you mention the album's commercial success (or lack of it) in this article to get an indication of whether many people could have heard this song. Maybe mention that this was one of U2's poorest albums (according to the album article) and the album's peaks in the American, British and Australian charts as a sample. Two sentences for commercial stuff. starship.paint ~ KO 23:28, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Starship.paint: Thanks, I didn't want to get too detailed about the album's lack of success since the article is about the song, but I did add one sentence in the reception section. I don't think statistics are necessary so I just added a line mentioning how/why it didn't sell well. –Dream out loud (talk) 11:06, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

  • "Lyrically, it is a portrait of a "desolate soul"[1] during", and throughout: See WP:INTEXT. Quoted material has to be attributed in the text (or paraphrased, i.e. not quoted). - Dank (push to talk) 18:31, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the Edge": Two problems here. On WP, BritEng requires "the" in front of "guitarist", which would make it "the guitarist the Edge", which doesn't sound right. Also, one "the Edge" is fine (and it's fine in the infobox), but the constant repetition comes off as affected ... Donald Trump is sometimes known as "the Donald", but imagine how it would sound if you kept referring to him that way. "Edge" alone is listed as an acceptable name in his article, so I've switched to that name, I hope that's okay. - Dank (push to talk) 19:26, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "started to "sound better" and described it as a "[l]ovely song" ... they seemed "unfocused" and": I don't get why people make the mistake of quoting lots of completely ordinary phrases. This isn't a fancy FAC rule, this is common sense. Suppose I make a comment that the "article" had many "short, repetitive" phrases and numerous "punctuation" problems. Wouldn't you wonder what the hell I meant by the quote marks? Use quoted material sparingly, and only when it adds something to the narrative more than paraphrasing would. - Dank (push to talk) 19:42, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support on prose per my standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 20:23, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Dank: Thank you for your edits and your comments. I went ahead and removed some excessive quotation marks in the prose; I left ones in where the sentence referring to a quote (e.g. X described Y as "Z"). As a result, I removed the quotes from "desolate soul" so I don't feel a need for attribution. –Dream out loud (talk) 21:46, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article is very well written and I couldn't find any issues while reading it. There is, however, a FN issue with FN#22, once this is fixed I can support. Best – jona ✉ 12:12, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Moisejp

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  • "As producer, Eno had most of the artistic control during the sessions, limiting U2's creative input on the recordings": I found this sentence problematic. My understanding of the producer title is that its degree of artistic control can be anywhere from total control—someone like Phil Spector (except when he worked with high-profile artists like John Lennon?)—to someone who simply makes suggestions but leaves the final decision-making to the artist. From my limited knowledge of Eno, I have the impression he is perhaps a strong-willed producer who is used to taking quite a bit of control (?), but U2 is a band with a lot of artistic integrity, and I'd expect them to have some say in artistic decisions. I know U2 had worked with Eno before, and maybe part of the story is that they have developed a lot of trust towards his artistic instincts. But the next bit ("which prompted Edge to force the other members of U2 into putting extra effort into arranging the song") suggests maybe they were being complacent (not giving 100%) in the Passengers recording sessions. To sum up, problems with this sentence are (1) "As producer, Eno had most of the artistic control" suggests this is always the case for producers, but I don't believe this is true; (2) "limiting U2's creative input" sounds like Eno "forcibly" kept U2 from contributing much artistically, but it sounds more likely that U2 willingly ceded decision-making (possibly through complacency or respect)—unless there was a big power struggle during the recording sessions, in which case this should be stated more explicitly.

More comments to follow. Moisejp (talk) 02:12, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • "which prompted Edge to force the other members of U2 into putting extra effort into arranging the song": instead of "force" would "convince" or "spur" or "encourage" be more accurate?
  • (minor suggestion) "[l]ovely song": If the "[l]" is just because there was a capital L in the original, it feels unnecessary and distracting, and I would just put "lovely song". But if you disagree, please disregard. Moisejp (talk) 02:44, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
U2 had been working with Eno since The Unforgettable Fire, which came out 11 years before this song, so for the band to make this comment, must have been implying something unusual about the way he was working in the studio. I'm not sure what you "know" about Eno personally, but what is stated in the article is directly based on an except from the cited book. I can't speculate further on this as per WP:OR on the situation at hand, so I basically summarized what I read.
For the most part, the idea was that Brian Eno would be captain of the ship. He'd call the creative shots and, like good musicians, the members of U2 would obey. "The only tracks we really dug in our heels and did more work on and tried to craft," The Edge explains, "were 'Miss Sarajevo', 'Seibu', and 'Your Blue Room'. [...] It seemed obvious to me that they could be great songs, and so I did some extra work and pushed them." –Dream out loud (talk) 16:26, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great. I have a few other comments, and I'll try to get them in the next couple of days or so. Cheers, Moisejp (talk) 05:06, 12 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • "As all the songs on Original Soundtracks 1 were written for films, "Slug" is credited as having been written for a fictional German film of the same name." Earlier it says, "Eno suggested they continue recording music suitable for soundtracks, as Eno did with his Music for Films album series." So am I correct in understanding that they recorded a bunch of music that sounded film-y, and then attached fictional film titles and stories to all of them afterwards. If so, I think "written for films" sounds a little misleading. How about something like "Following Original Soundtracks 1's theme of music for imaginary films, "Slug" is credited..."?
  • "the group witnessed gang members who had their fingers amputated as punishment for their misbehaviour": I suspect this just means the band saw gang members who had amputated fingers, and U2 did not witness the act of amputation. But whichever meaning it is, the current wording may be ambiguous. If it's the former meaning may I suggest "the group saw gang members who had had their fingers amputated as punishment for their misbehaviour"; if it's the latter meaning, then "the group witnessed gang members having their fingers amputated as punishment for their misbehaviour".
  • "Original Soundtracks 1 had low album sales compared to previous U2 releases,[22] as its record label Island Records intentionally did not market it as a U2 album." I wonder whether it would be better to remove this sentence—it doesn't seem really relevant to "Slug" itself?
  • I feel the final paragraph is the weakest. It stretches too thinly the idea that some critics have compared it in some way or another to Zooropa. You could extract the general, non-Zooropa bits (from DeRogatis and Stokes) and group them with the other general reviews, and then possibly sum up in one sentence the fact that some critics found similarities with Zooropa, with one or two specifics mentioned as examples? That could be one way to handle the content.

I have at least one more comment that I'll have to get in next time. Moisejp (talk) 05:36, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All issues have been addressed. The sentence about the low album sales was only added after an editor here in FAC suggested its addition, but I agree it seemed out of place and I removed it. The Zooropa paragraph was also removed with some of its content consolidated above, and other content was reworded to satisfy certain clarifications you requested. –Dream out loud (talk) 09:20, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice. There was one suggestion above that I'm not sure if it got lost in the shuffle, but did you want to keep the verb "force" in "prompted The Edge to force the other members of U2 into putting extra effort into arranging the song"? It sounds extreme to me, but do you feel it's justifiable?
  • So here's I think my final suggestion, and it's about the whole article, at least to the end of "Composition and lyrics". There are two time frames in the article: one is closed, basically 1995 around the time of the recording sessions; the other is open, and consists of all of the instances mentioned where band members have talked about their experiences after the fact. By using the simple past for both of these time frames, the article currently unsatisfyingly compresses both times frames into one. So you have instances such as "The lyrics were written in five minutes and are derived from U2's experience in Shinjuku. Bono compared the lyrics to those in U2's 1991 song "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"... " I would like to suggest that the present perfect would be more appropriate for this open-ended time frame. This would mean changing:
  • "Bono said that Original Soundtracks 1 evoked" → I see from the Footnotes section that Bono said this in interview in 1995; however, because this time frame is not implicitly or explicitly specified in the text itself, I would argue that here also the time frame is open-ended, and the present perfect is appropriate → "Bono has said that Original Soundtracks 1 evoked"
  • "He said that along with" → "He has said that along with"
  • "The Edge later said he felt his effort" → by using "later" here you have already distanced it from the 1995 time frame, which could be enough. However, if you take my suggestion to use the present perfect in these other instances, for consistency I would recommend the present perfect here as well → "The Edge has said..."
  • "Bono compared the lyrics to" → "Bono has compared the lyrics to"
  • "which Bono described as a "very, very surreal" experience. He said that "Slug" was" → "which Bono has described as a "very, very surreal" experience. He has said that "Slug" was"

I think you could keep all simple past for all of the Reviews section. Moisejp (talk) 05:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • One more comment. May I suggest the caption of the sound clip could restate a point mentioned in the sound clip's Fair Use Rationale. This would reinforce the justification of the sound clip's existence all the more. The caption sort of does already, but it may not clear to the reader what a "laundry list" is (and the number of things "listed" in the sound clip is too short to be clearly a list); and if "laundry list" does have negative connotations (?), this statement by Catlin sounds subjective. Since you could include anything in the caption, why not, to the extent that's possible, include a clear, neutral, objective-sounding statement that reinforces the FUR? Moisejp (talk) 05:59, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Possibly "said" is slightly overused throughout the article? The last three reviews all use "said" as do several quotations from Bono and The Edge (including most of the ones I mention above). It shouldn't be too hard to substitute other verbs for some of these. Moisejp (talk) 06:07, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again. All issues have been addressed. –Dream out loud (talk) 19:31, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support - My concerns are all addressed and I'm happy to support. Moisejp (talk) 00:25, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Coord notes

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looks like we still need:

  • Image licensing review.
  • Source review for formatting and reliability.
  • Because it's a few years since your last FA, Dream out loud, a spotcheck of sources for accurate use and avoidance of close paraphrasing.

You can request these at the top of WT:FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Basic image looking-at by Jo-Jo Eumerus

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  • File:Don Quijote in Shinjuku at night.jpg: ALTTEXT seems OK, wonder about the sourcing for the caption since I am not certain the article text matches. Seems pertinent IMO, I am trusting that the source does explicitly refer to the scenery (not necessarily this one). File properly sourced and licensed - the billboards shown fall under de minimis. No indication on GIS that it was taken from elsewhere (it appears in many other places, but all items are of lower resolution or refer to Flickr or Commons), plausible EXIF. Can't check the other uploads by the Flickr user because Flickr works very badly at low connection speed.
  • File:Seibu-Department-Store-Ikebukuro-01.jpg: Inclusion justified, may be a bit decorative though. OK ALT, caption is reciprocated and sourced in article text. Proper source and license, I presume the artwork in the front falls under de minimis also, the building is covered by freedom of panorama. No clear EXIF, locale of the image is consistent with the other images by the uploader at that date. Image appears elsewhere on the web, in smaller resolution or the same resolution on some websites with no clear dates or with dates that postdate the original upload or referencing back Commons.
  • File:Passengers-Slug-musicsample.ogg: Non-free file, is appropriate here as a license. WP:NFCC#1, WP:NFCC#2 and WP:NFCC#3 are met (for this article; whether the other use of the file is compliant with #3 could be questioned but is technically not the issue here). Likewise for WP:NFCC#4, WP:NFCC#5, WP:NFCC#6 (using Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music samples, might want to specify some more information though), WP:NFCC#7, WP:NFCC#9 and WP:NFCC#10 seem to be OK. The rationale goes into some detail about WP:NFCC#8, some of it doesn't seem to be reciprocated in the article.

That's my (somewhat lengthy) commentary on these files. Take note that this is my first at-length FAC media look at.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:32, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your notes. I updated the caption for the first image, and update the rationale for the audio clip. I also removed the audio clip from the second article in which it is featured. This should help satisfy all necessary issues. –Dream out loud (talk) 10:29, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Source review and source spot check

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  • The formatting of the sources seems consistent.
  • I could find no sources that seem unreliable.
  • I checked all available online sources and could find no overly close paraphrases or instances of incorrect information.
  • Suggestion: In some places, you have multiple pieces of information from different sources, with all of the sources bundled at the end. Would it be better to put each source directly after the particular piece of information that it is relevant to? The instances I noticed are as follows:
  • "The song was written to create the visual of lights turning on at dusk in a city like Tokyo, beginning with 'tinkling' opening notes resembling Christmas lights, and a gradually rising and falling synthesizer rhythm throughout the song.[9][10]" I only saw the second piece of information (about rising and falling synthesizer) in source 10, so presumably the first part is from source 9 (which I don't have access to). Would it be better to put ref 9 after "Christmas lights"?
  • Likewise: "'Slug' runs for 4 minutes, 41 seconds and features a synthesizer rhythm laid over a drum track, with vocals sung by Bono in a murmured voice.[3][18][19]"; "The lyrics are sung in a list-like format and consist of 19 lines, most of which begin with the words 'Don't want';[3][20]". (There may be other instances that I didn't see because I don't have access to the sources—if you agree with my suggestion, please check.)
  • Perhaps having four refs after "Details of the song's recording sessions were documented in Eno's 1996 book, A Year with Swollen Appendices" isn't necessary; a couple seem enough. Moisejp (talk) 05:33, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your comments. I've gone ahead and moved some of the reference tags around to space them out a bit, as per your suggestion. –Dream out loud (talk) 10:39, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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