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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of best-selling music artists/archive2

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by Giants2008 20:19, 28 May 2012 [1].

List of best-selling music artists

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List of best-selling music artists (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Harout72 (talk) 22:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because I believe it is now quite close to becoming a featured list. Please note that List of best-selling music artists and List of best-selling music artists (page 2) have just recently been split into two parts due to its large size. The list was listed for peer review (see here) just a few months ago, further improvements have been made since then. Should I list both split pages separately?--Harout72 (talk) 22:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to nominate both pages for FL, then you need to open separate nominations for both of them. However, as per the guidelines, you can't have two open nominations, so you'd need to wait for one to pass/fail and then nominate the other one -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK, no problem, I'll wait until the first page passes/fails the nomination.--Harout72 (talk) 21:48, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments some quick thoughts...

Oh I see what you mean. I think perhaps we can get rid of the word Total and have just Certified units. Would that work? Because I don't think it would be the right move to place some medium-size markets before the larger ones only because the formers occasionally generate more sales for some artists.--Harout72 (talk) 15:21, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 14:03, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
*"From available markets" -> "from available markets".

The Rambling Man (talk) 08:43, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

CommentsSwitching to oppose
  • Yeh, I'm not keen on the "(page 2)" title format either, as it offends against WP:TITLEFORMAT ("Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another"). But that's not this article, after all...
  • Why is the list split into multiple sections? If it was one table, you would be able to sort the entire lot and compare countries, periods, years etc, rather than just be able to sort within arbitrarily chosen sub-sections.
  • Basic point - use {{sortname}} to sort by surname etc rather than everything sorting by first letter.
  • "To ensure a highest level of fact checking and editorial control, this list sources sales figures to news organizations and highly regarded music industry related organizations such as MTV, VH1, Billboard and Rolling Stone." Quite apart from the fact that "a highest level of fact checking" is not good English, I don't think we ought to be putting quality claims like that in articles, let alone repeatedly. I don't remember seeing featured articles that say "To ensure the highest level of fact checking, this article only uses the very best and most highly regarded sources", for instance.
    • The list attracts many music fans; therefore, I and other editors have been forced to come up with methods that could minimize insertions of sources which often claim inflated sales figures and fail to conduct thorough research before publishing their numbers. The wording is mine; therefore, it's probably not well constructed since I'm not a native English speaker. I have to add though that ever since we implemented that sentence, we've seen a big decline in poor sources.--Harout72 (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead is poor, really - it tells us about how the list has been compiled but nothing about the list contents. It also tells us who isn't in the list, which leads onto the next point...
    • Well, that's not entirely correct as the lead does state about the content of the list: The world's best-selling music artists includes artists with claims of 50 million or more record sales in multiple third-party reliable sources. The sales figures within the provided sources include sales of albums, singles, compilation-albums, music videos as well as downloads of singles and full-length albums. The artists in the following tables are listed with both their claimed and certified sales figures and are ranked in descending order, with the highest claimed sales at the top. Artists with the same claimed sales are then ranked by certified units. Sales figures, such as those from Soundscan which are sometimes published by Billboard magazine, have not been included in the certified units column.--Harout72 (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, I can read, and thanks for making my point for me. I can't find the Beatles mentioned anywhere in the lead, for example, or who the highest-selling individual is, or who the highest selling group/person in genre X is... no summary of the content of the list at all. BencherliteTalk 06:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "All artists included on this list have their lowest available claimed figure(s) supported by at least 15% in certified units.... However newer artists such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna are expected to have their claimed figures supported by at least 60% in certified units. " Why? Who's decided that 15% is the figure for older artists, and 60% for newer artists? Is that a ratio supported by reliable sources, or is it just something that Wikipedia editors have decided? WP:OR alert?
    • Unfortunately, inflated sales figures do come from reliable sources also. Therefore, we've designed a method to prevent the list from being filled with inflated sales claims. The discussion for that could be found here. While it may seem like an OR, all certification are supported by reliable sources. After all, the original research policy restricts what content can be added to articles, which is not the case for this list.--Harout72 (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • It is original research, then - there are names that could be included on the list which are being omitted because of inclusion criteria of your own devising that do not have support in reliable sources. BencherliteTalk 06:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The tables are to include two sources only for each claimed figure." Says who, and why?
    • We used to have fans inserting four and even five sources for their favorite artists to make their points. Again, while the requirement of two sources may sound like a dictation, it seems to work well. But it can be removed.--Harout72 (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there any way we can avoid all the empty white space in each line?
    • If it's absolutely necessary the we could use
      Title text here
Body text line 1
Body text line 2

, which would get the job done. However, I feel that it's important to have the certified units by country visible once you land on the list.--Harout72 (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Clearly a lot of work has gone into this but I have reservations about saying that this is ready for a star. BencherliteTalk 01:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Switching to oppose per above comments and responses. BencherliteTalk 06:36, 24 May 2012 (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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