Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums

Review site: About.com

I got redirected here looking for the talk page for Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Review sites, wanting to propose About.com as a professional review site. Where can I do that? Dan56 (talk) 02:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

You can do that here, conveniently. —Akrabbim^talk 02:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

 Not done – no rationale provided. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Review site: The Music Fix

Would it be possible to add The Music Fix (http://www.themusicfix.co.uk) as a professional review site? We're highly respected with links within the industry and mentions in the mainstream media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.8.18.255 (talk) 16:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I am afraid that such request from a staff member ("We're...") is a conflict of interest which is highly discouraged here on Wikipedia. I would feel much more comfortable if this request came from someone not affiliated with the site. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

IbLeo, 94.8.18 is already following correct procedure as indicated in WP:COI. Instead of adding the links themselves, they are encouraged to bring content suggestions to discussion pages, like this. 94.8.18, could you please elaborate on the nature of your website, so we can better evaluate it in light of the Wikipedia policies of WP:VERIFIABILITY and WP:RS? —Akrabbim^talk 14:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

You are right: "Editors with COIs are strongly encouraged to declare their interests, both on their user pages and on the talk page of any article they edit, particularly if those edits may be contested." So IP 94.8.18.255 acted correctly. Mea culpa, IP 94.8.18.255 please accept my excuses. – IbLeo^(talk) 16:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

 Not done – not enough rationale provided. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Review site: Metal Temple

Hello. I propose to add Metal Temple as a professional review site. It is one of the oldest online magazines on the heavy metal scene with thousands of reviews and live reports and well respected in the metal community. It is a non-profit magazine, run by professional DJs and volunteers. Jimmys Cybertroll (talk) 15:39, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. 10 years of publication both in print & online, with its own staff of critics. Should pass criteria for reliability. --IllaZilla (talk) 16:36, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Not familiar with this site but at a first glance it looks OK to me. However, it would be great if you could prove it's notablity by providing a list of reliable sources that have referred to it, as it has been the case in the past when we have added other sites to the list. See e.g. this thread in the archive. Good luck :-) – IbLeo^(talk) 16:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone actually quotes online magazines (and in heavy metal music I doubt if anyone quotes anything but Metal Hammer unfortunately). Metal Temple has been referenced many times in Blabbermouth.net [1] [2] [3] and other online news sites for metal like Metal Underground [4] and SMN News [5].Jimmys Cybertroll (talk) 17:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

You might have a point here. Indeed the heavy metal world seems to have its own universe apart from the "mainstream" press. Your justification is good enough for me. If in two days no-one has raised their voice against it, I think we can go ahead and add Metal Temple to the list. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree to add. J04n(talk page) 10:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

 Done. – IbLeo^(talk) 21:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly, the article about Metal Template was recently deleted. I would be tempted to think that this means that the website is actually not notable and should be removed from the list. However, I don't want to rush to any conclusions. Opinions? – IbLeo^(talk) 21:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

IMO, if a website is not notable enough to qualify for it's own article here on WP, then it should per definition not be included in our list of professional review sites. Therefore, if I hear no protests within the next few days, I will remove Metal Temple from the list. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

 Undone. Metal Temple removed. – IbLeo^(talk) 15:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Review site: Metal Storm

I'd like to propose Metal Storm [6] as a professional review site. It's listed among the non-professional sites, but I cannot find any discussion in the archives which has led to this classification. Metal Storm has existed for ten years now and is run by a fixed staff of volunteers. It also features a lot of guest reviews, but those all contain a disclaimer. According to Alexa Metal Storm used to be the most visited webzine in the heavy metal category while it still was on the URL MetalStorm.ee, second only to the database Encyclopaedia Metallum. Recently the URL was changed to MetalStorm.net to emphasize its global character - through the change it has also dropped in Alexa rank as the former URLs (.ee and .eu) still redirect to MetalStorm.net. Nonetheless it is a highly notable webzine which has made its appearance in print magazines and many other online media: the German print magazine Legacy has featured an article by Metal Storm in its October 2009 issue [7] [8] (the last sentence mentions Metal Storm and the involved staffers), the (now defunct) Estonian print fanzine Pläkk used to feature a page in English with Metal Storm’s reviews and the Belgian/Flemish newspaper "Gazet Van Antwerpen" has printed news about the victory of the Belgian band Oceans of Sadness in the Metal Storm Awards (here the news item on the newspaper’s online portal). The online news portal Blabbermouth regularly references Metal Storm’s news and interviews [9] and the annual Metal Storm Awards have received several mentions on Brave Words. Metal Storm is also in official partnership with Hellfest, one of Europe's biggest heavy metal festivals [10]. A quote from a Metal Storm review has also been printed on a sticker on the Peaceville re-release of Carpathian Forest's "Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods" in 2007. Unfortunately I don’t have the image link anymore.

The rating system of the site generally is the 10 star system, some reviewers however refuse to add ratings to their reviews, so for those cases tags in the "(favorable)" format should probably be used. As a staff member of the site in question I am probably accused of COI. I am however familiar with the policies and standards of Wikipedia. Therefore I’d also like to add a restriction: the standards of Metal Storm have changed over the years, there are a lot of sub-par reviews on the site, especially from the first half of the decade before our standards shifted. I guess a remark "Only add official reviews (i.e. without guest review disclaimer) from 2007 onwards" would be fine as that would also be the time when Peaceville quoted Metal Storm on their album sticker, thus being the first date I can think of when MS has fulfilled Wikipedia’s notability standards.

What do you think, notable enough? :-) Promonex (talk) 17:30, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Up front: I love Metal Storm. I am a member. I enjoy the reviews. Unfortunately, it's not about me (or you)! Here is a sample of previous discussions regarding why Metal-archives isn't on the list; I suspect the reason why MS will be objected to is along the same lines. All the best. – B.hotep •talk• 13:02, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
• Thanks for being honest about your COI. Your webzine certainly does seem to satisfy our criteria "found within any online or print publication having a (paid or volunteer) editorial and writing staff", and you do provide some proof of general notability. For me this is sufficient. Would someone object to the addition of Metal Storm (with the annotation "Only add official reviews (i.e. without guest review disclaimer) from 2007 onwards") to our list of professional review sites? If not I will add it by the end of the week. – IbLeo^(talk) 16:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
  • On the subject of proof of notability: anyone can email Blabbermouth to submit news stories, thus boosting the profile of anyone's site; and, of course Peaceville are going to use a favourable review of one of their recording artists on the front of their records – from whatever source it originates. It will be time-consuming to filter the additions of reviews so that they adhere to the "official only review after 2007" criteria. On this basis, I object at this present moment. However, I do acknowledge that we have an article on Metal Storm, and that MS is one of the more professional-looking websites out there... I am open to more debate. :) – B.hotep •talk• 19:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Well, we've never submitted any of our news or interviews to Blabbermouth. Not as far as I know at least. But to be honest, I don't believe that being mentioned by another site does say a lot about a given site's notability anyway. I just brought it up as it seemed to be sufficient in The Metal Temple's case above. I do believe however that appearing in a print magazine does qualify a webzine as highly notable (as was the case with Legacy Magazine) and as you refuted several points except for this one I guess you agree ;) Actually I don't think it's that time-consuming to filter new additions as they all appear (or are supposed to appear) at the end of Metal Storm's "What Links Here" page. Far more time-consuming will be the deletion of several existing links which shouldn't be there in first place (and some probably legit ones don't adhere to the correct rating format). I'd volunteer to weed them out myself and, if necessary due to my COI, give full account of deletions and new additions on my behalf. So would everyone be fine with an "official staff reviews starting from 2009" criterion instead? Promonex (talk) 16:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I am unsure about where to go with this. Input from editors with more interest in heavy metal than me would be highly appreciated! – IbLeo^(talk) 05:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Albums by artist categorization

Hi there everyone, I'm coming here to the project today for a few reasons. Although I know discussions concerning categories aren't exactly a popular thing among users, I've come here here to make a proposal regarding Category:Albums by artist and a recording artist's or band's nationality. I decided to start a discussion here instead of taking it to WP:CFD (where it would go should a consensus form of my proposal) as it's quite complex, and I would rather this process be well thought out to give the community more than enough time to voice their opinion and concerns of my proposal.

As I was browsing Category:Albums by artist, I noticed that these categories didn't appear to be subcategorized by nationality. I thought it was a bit odd, as Category:Films by director was subcategorized by nationality. After a bit of searching, I found Category:Albums by artist nationality, though I found it problematic. Although it's categorized under Category:Albums and Category:Works by nationality, the subcategories appear to be flawed—or, at least the naming convention is. For example, categories are titled Category:American albums, Category:British albums, etc.; by name, it appears the albums themselves are being categorized by nationality. I don't think this was the intent, but this is how it seems. Clearly, albums themselves can't be American or British, but the recording artist or band are.

Now, my proposal: I'm proposing that these categories be renamed. Instead of being named Fooian albums, I think these categories should be renamed using the Albums by Fooian artist format. For example, the category Category:American albums would be renamed to Category:Albums by American artists ("artists" being pluralized, as the subcategories in Category:Films by director are). Along with these renames, Category:Albums by artist nationality will by re-categorized as a subcategory of Category:Albums by artist; the current categories in Albums by artist will should then have to be categorized accordingly under the proper nationality subcategory. Additionally, should we come to agreement, Category:Albums by genre and nationality and its subcategories would also be nominated for renaming to correspond with this proposal; Category:Albums by genre and nationality would be renamed to Category:Albums by genre and artist nationality—basically adding "artist" before the word "nationality" throughout (unless someone can think of a better name for the parent Category:Albums by artist nationality)—while the subcategories of those subcategories would be renamed using the [Genre] albums by [Fooian] artists format as opposed to its current format of [Fooian] [genre] albums. Basically, the artists are American, British, whatever, not the albums themselves.

So there you have it, my proposal. I wasn't kidding when I said complex. I hope to get some feedback. Questions, comments and concerns are welcomed, of course. — ξ^xplicit 03:19, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

There are two problems that I see.

• albums can be nation-specific; consider, for example, Yesterday and Today, which was by a British band, no argument there, but was put together by an American record label for USA/Canada release, and was never officially released in the UK, so I don't think it's a British album.
• whilst soloists are (usually) single-nationality (there are exceptions: how about John Barrowman?), many bands are multi-national. Fairport Convention, for example, started off as all-British, and are at the moment, but have included Australian, American and French members. So, is Nine (Fairport Convention album) British, when only 60% of the band on that album claimed that nationality?

--Redrose64 (talk) 12:01, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Although I understand how albums can be nation specific, I still don't think calling an album American or Canadian makes sense. Categorizing Category:The Beatles albums under Category:Albums by British artists should resolve this specific case. As for cases like Barrowman, I'd assume it would only make sense to categorize Category:John Barrowman albums (assuming it existed, which it doesn't at this point in time) under Category:Albums by American artists and Category:Albums by Scottish artists, as his article is categorized similarly.

Cases like Fairport Convention are definitely a more complex situations, as neither category scheme really covers its multi-nationality. As it stands, Category:Fairport Convention albums is only categorized under British and English categories; these types of cases would probably need more in-depth discussion. Although my proposal isn't perfect, I do feel it has a lot less holes in it than the current naming convention does. — ξ^xplicit 20:15, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

You're talking about simply abolishing the Albums by artist category. The Films categories are a poor example, because instead of Category:Films by director, it should be called Category:Films by directors' nationality.

Right now, we have (reading from article upwards)

• Album article is in...
  • "Artist" category, which captures a particular artist's albums, and puts them in...
    • Albums by artist
    • "Nationality" cat(s)
    • "Genre" cat (where possible)

I like this system a lot, though the Category:Albums by artist may be overbroad. What I don't like is the horrible crossing of genre and nationality categories. Maybe that's what you're having a problem with? Bottom line is that we have the nationality cat, and the "albums by artist" cat is possibly superfluous. As for other points, I agree that while Category:Albums by artist nationality is named properly, Category:American albums is a problem, because the artists' nationalities are what we are after here, and as Redrose suggests, the nationality of an album itself is a valid descriptor. As far as bands having members from different countries, there are two ways to handle it. You can look at where the band is based, or you can categorize it under both countries. -Freekee (talk) 05:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting abolishing Category:Albums by artist, but to refine the categories by nationality. It is overly broad, as you've suggested. Essentially, Category:Albums by artist nationality would become a subcategory of Category:Albums by artist, and we would then subcategorize using the Category:Albums by Fooian artists naming scheme. The current subcategories of Category:Albums by genre and nationality would need to be renamed to reflect that we're categorizing the nationality of the artists. I really don't have an opinion for the categories that cross genre with nationality, I just brought those up because they would also need to be renamed as well for uniformity, assuming the nationality categories are created as proposed, or some form that would need these categories to be renamed.

Although I do agree that some albums can be released only to in certain one or few nations, I don't feel that categorization would be the best option. If such categories surfaced, it might trickle over to overcategorization and category clutter, especially if an album is released across several nations, but not all of them. — ξ^xplicit 19:04, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

From your previous statement, I cannot tell anymore if you want to refine the categories by nationality of the artist who released the album or by country in which the album was released. I find both problematic, anyway. Where would an album go that was e.g. released on a German label by a US-american artist (The Köln Concert) or by South African musicians then living in Great Britain and so on? Nevermind, BNutzer (talk) 19:58, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I think Category:Albums by artist is something like an adminstrative container for its subcategories, and I don't think it is helpful if you need to know the nationality of an artist (which is sometimes difficult to define) if you want to find their albums' category in such a container. Besides, I think that some Category:Albums by artist nationality categories, e.g. US-American or British would still be too big to be of much more use than the current one. BNutzer (talk) 20:04, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Refining the categories by nationality of the artist who released the album. Apologies if my wording was unclear. I think you misread have my proposal (or I have terrible wording). My proposal is trying to address the broadness of Category:Albums by artist. For example, Category:Keith Jarrett albums is currently categorized in under Category:Albums by artist, which I find too broad. What I'm proposing is that Category:Albums by artist nationality become a subcategory of Category:Albums by artist. Its subcategories (which currently use the "Fooian albums") should be renamed using the "Albums by Fooian artists", because the categories are defining the nationality of the artist, not the album. Should a rename take place, Category:Keith Jarrett albums would then be categorized under Category:Albums by American artist.

In my previous post, I was addressing the concern that some albums are released in one or few nations, but I feel that categorizing albums by region-exclusive releases would be overcategorization and add category clutter. Hopefully this clears things up a bit.</before edit conflict>

I disagree that subcategorizing Category:Albums by artist by nationality wouldn't be helpful. I feel that if the category was refined as such, it would make browsing through it much easier for navigational purposes—which categories are supposed to accomplish. Yes, categories like Category:Albums by American artists and Category:Albums by British artists would still be quite large (but then again, some categories will just always be large), but as far as my proposal goes, I think breaking it down nationality-wise would be much more efficient. — ξ^xplicit 20:14, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Explicit, I must say that I have sympathy your proposal. Currently it is unclear for the casual reader whether Category:English albums contains albums by English artists or albums released in England by any artist. – IbLeo^(talk) 18:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I do not think that Albums by artist's nationality should be a subcategory of Albums by artist. I think it should remain a subcategory of Albums. It doesn't make sense, from a naming standpoint, to have subcats like "albums by Greek artists" in a category named "Albums by artist". -Freekee (talk) 02:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Why not? We have Category:Films by director, which breaks its subcategories down by nationality, like Category:Films by American directors. Granted, there's no Category:Films by directors' nationality, but exlcuding that, the scheme is the same. — ξ^xplicit 02:44, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Simple. I think that Category:Films by director is named wrong. They could correct the category name to Category:Films by director's nationality (or would that be Category:Films by directors' nationalities?). Compare that to our situation. We already have a category for "Albums by artist's nationality" (though it's not named properly either). Why should we then make that one a subcat of "Albums by artist"? I think it fits quite well in Category:Albums. Also, I agree with BNutzer that Category:Albums by artist is something like an administrative container for its subcategories. I've used it quite a bit for keeping an eye on band categories. -Freekee (talk) 04:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

If Category:Films by director were renamed, where would that leave its subcategories not related to nationality? I personally don't understand your argument of categorizing artists' categories under Category:Albums by artist as well as Category:Albums by Fooian artists (assuming you support the renaming aspect; I don't think you've expressed your opinion on that matter). That's like categorizing an American singer under Category:Singers and Category:American singers, when the latter is a subcategory of the former; obviously, if a page is categorized under a subcategory, the parent should be removed. It wouldn't make sense to categorize American singers under Category:Singers simply for, as BNutzer put it, thinking that it wouldn't be helpful if "you need to know the nationality of an artist (which is sometimes difficult to define)". We have Category:Singers by nationality to do just this, and I I feel the album categories would be better organized and easier to navigate through if they followed the format that I proposed. — ξ^xplicit 22:55, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I have the impression that there are two requirements here: 1) (of mine, too) Have "SomeArtist albums" in Category:Albums by artist. 2) (of you, Explicit, too) Find "Fooian Albums" easily. That can be done in Category:Albums by artist nationality already, if I am not mistaken. Why mix the two requirements and sacrifice the benefits of 1)? If you find Category:Albums by artist wrong for your requirement, use Category:Albums by artist nationality, and let me do it vice versa. BNutzer (talk) 23:31, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

First, yes, I wholeheartedly support proposals to name categories correctly and specifically. The category American albums should be renamed to Albums by American artists.

Second, this goes back to my first comment, way above. Here are three statements, followed by the only logical conclusion: *Since* Category:Albums by artist nationality already exists, *and* it does not belong in Category:Albums by artist, since it's not really by artist but by country *and* you feel that categorizing it doubly is superfluous (per your example about the singers) *then* the answer is to delete Category:Albums by artist. But since Category:Albums by artist does have its uses, as BNutzer mentioned, it's not really superfluous, and I see no reason to delete it.

If we really want to make searching easier, let's try to clean up the genre/nationality crossover categories. -Freekee (talk) 03:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I see both of your points. I guess we can drop the whole Category:Albums by artist nationality becoming a subcategory of Category:Albums by artist. As for the renaming, if significant problems don't show up, I'll nominate the subcategories of Category:Albums by artist nationality for renaming (changing the naming convention from Fooian albums to Albums by Fooian artists) and leave a notice here. The issues regarding Category:Albums by genre and nationality can be discussed in the subsection below. The nominations of the first batch may be held off to coincide with the ones below. — ξ^xplicit 05:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Awesome. As for further discussion, I'll join in when I have some free time. -Freekee (talk) 05:02, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Albums by genre and nationality

Now, this section is solely for discussing Category:Albums by genre and nationality and its subcategories. This way, we don't get discussions all jumbled up. I really don't have an opinion of these categories as I haven't really looked into them. The following is a proposal that popped out from the top of my head, so it shouldn't be seen as binding or that I'm against their deletion, especially if a better alternative is suggested, or deletion of these categories is agreed upon.
What we can do with these categories is set up the naming convention similar to the ones above. For example, Category:Albums by genre and nationality could be renamed to Category:Albums by genre and artists' nationality (on a side note, this suggestion alone makes me not like this category, but I'm not going to suggestion deletion for not liking it). The subcategories of Category:Albums by genre and nationality I haven't figured out yet. The only thing I can come up with is the horrid Albums by Fooian artist by genre. Again, others can argue deletion if they think it's best. Anywho, moving on from that... The subcategories of the prototype Albums by Fooian artist by genre (for lack of a better name) would naturally be renamed using the [Genre] albums by Fooian artists naming scheme. These [Genre] albums by Fooian artists would naturally be subcategories of their respective Albums by Fooian artists. For example, Category:Rock albums by American artists would be a subcategory of Category:Albums by American artists and Category:Rock albums by artists' nationality. Oh wow, this is more complicated and ugly than I thought. Help? — ξ^xplicit 05:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so, it seems Category:Albums by genre and nationality was previously nominated for deletion over at WP:CFD; in fact, the discussion was just last month, which resulted in keep. There was a suggested rename to Category:Albums by artist nationality and genre, so this may be a more suitable alternative, though I'd probably swap the characteristics and be in favor of Category:Albums by genre and artist nationality, due to the fact that the naming scheme would take the Goo albums by Fooian artists format. So, modifying my proposal of my post just above this one, the subcategories should then be renamed using the Goo albums by artist nationality, instead of my horrid suggestion of Albums by Fooian artist by genre. Modifying my example above now, Category:Rock albums by American artists would then be a subcategory of Category:Albums by American artists and Category:Rock albums by artist nationality (which already exists in this case, making things a bit easier). Thoughts? — ξ^xplicit 20:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Just a note, I created a subpage in my userspace of a hypothetical nomination of these categories that reflect this discussion, which can be found here. This discussion has died out, but I would really appreciate feedback. I should point out that some of the content under the "Fooian albums by genre" collapsed table is incomplete and suggestions are wanted for a few of these categories. — ξ^xplicit 00:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Support. I really don't like these categories and all their subcategories, as genre is such a POV-loaded subject. However, getting rid of them all is probably not an option. So I think that what you propose above is the next-best solution: Renaming Category:Albums by genre and nationality to Category:Albums by artist nationality and genre, Fooian albums by genre to Albums by Fooian artists by genre, and Goo albums by nationality to Goo albums by artist nationality. And so on. So Category:Finnish heavy metal albums would become Category:Heavy metal albums by Finnish artists and Category:British folk albums would become Category:Folk albums by British artists. It's quite a huge renaming task, but it makes perfect sense. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I support any proposal to rename categories from "nationality albums" to "albums by nationality bands". Explicit, your proposal sounds great. Let us know if you have any other issues regarding it. Otherwise, there hasn't been any dissent in a couple of weeks, so I suggest taking your argument to CfD. If approved, let's find a bot operator, or whatever it takes to make these changes. -Freekee (talk) 03:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I plan to take it to CFD later on this week. Should the nomination succeed, the closing admin would simply list all categories in WP:CFDW; either Cydebot (talk · contribs) or CrimsonBot (talk · contribs) will take care of creating the new categories and moving content from the old to the new, leaving minimal, if any, work on our part. — ξ^xplicit 03:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. I hope it's not premature to say, "good work!" -Freekee (talk) 04:17, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

CFD initiated

Those interested in taking part of the discussion regarding the categories above, please feel free to comment here: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 May 15#Albums by artist. — ξ^xplicit 01:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done. For the record, the CFD passed and has been implemented by now. I have awarded our project barnstar to Explicit for his initiative and good work. – IbLeo^(talk) 15:50, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I've been seeing Justin / Koavf doing a lot of category changes on album articles over the last week, which I believe is connected to this, so thanks to him as well for all the work he has put in. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 21:37, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

New RollingStone URL

Rolling Stone's site recently had its url's changed and it is difficult to find older reviews, but even more hard to cite the new url's, as they include brackets ("[", "]") in the links, which cuts off the whole url from being an external link in a citation; such as with this link http://www.rollingstone.com/music/reviews/album/;kw=[14339,94931] (the last characters that are not blue r supposed to be part of the url). Is there some trick around this? Dan56 (talk) 01:00, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Looks like they'll have to be encoded with %5B and %5D, like http://www.rollingstone.com/music/reviews/album/;kw=%5B14339,94931%5D. —Gendralman (talk) 02:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Their redesign is god-awful and practically unnavigable. Is there a way for WP to communicate to them that their redesign has broken thousands of links to their past content? Perhaps there would be a way for them to provide backlinks to the old content, or at least to fix their brackets-in-urls nonsense. --IllaZilla (talk) 05:08, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Their contact page [11] provides no email for website problems. I'm going to fire out an email to every address at the site, and make up a few like webmaster@rollingstone.com, admin@rollingstone.com, and bugs@rollingstone.com. Hopefully someone will get it. —Gendralman (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Lol, so I'm not the only one whose not in favor of Rolling Stone's new page lay out. If anyone notices their page re-posting old articles and reviews, please let us know. --Blastmaster11 (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Has anybody received a response from Rolling Stone about this issue yet? Melicans (talk, contributions) 20:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, believe me, their craptacular redesign has been noticed. In my opinion, this is one of the worst re-designs of a website in the history of the web. Their website is practically unusable and years of valuable content has simply disappeared. Various new pages display stray HTML elements (e.g. <div>), while some artists' profiles have incorrect information (e.g. inaccurate album art and review scores). It's a disaster. I hope somebody lost their job over this. In the meantime, I think everyone should be looking to replace their references with versions that have been archived on archive.org. Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 20:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

How far back does the Internet Wayback go though? I've often had many difficulties in finding any articles from the last few years preserved on there; part of the reason why I try to preserve them myself. Melicans (talk, contributions) 21:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

It goes back to 1996 (or it can), but not everything has been archived. Probably only the most visited areas of a website are archived (which might explain why some Rolling Stone articles and not others from past years have been archived)). Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 21:44, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant what is the most recent that pages have been archived. I know that in searching for link repairs for the U2 360° Tour, I had no luck with it for the Rolling Stone articles. If it is only the highest-traffic areas that are archived I suppose it is the reason why these pages have seemingly vanished forever. Melicans (talk, contributions) 22:24, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything archived in 2009, so presumably the archive is only as recent as some part of 2008. Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 23:22, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Wayback machine only archives web pages from six months back or more, no sooner than that. But it is weird that they haven't archived anything from '09. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 08:11, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Gendralman, thanks for the %5B and %5D suggestion. I thought the issue was only missing articles, I didn't realize their URLs has brackets in them. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 22:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

C-class a little too stringent

"A track listing containing track lengths and authors for all songs." Why do authors have to be included in the track listing? For example, I've just finished adding information to the article 12 Gauge (album) and I'll be adding more soon with several interviews I've just found. After all this work, the article is still going to be rated "Start" because I don't have access to the actual CD booklet information? If I finish all my work, including fixing the references (most are primary sources), and then add the C-class-required authors of each song... the article jumps from Start to B-class. C-class seems kind of... unnecessary. I've had this problem with several band articles I've worked on as well. Not enough of a gap between C and B. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 06:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Here are your song credits, so that should solve your problem. In a more general sense, the criteria at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Assessment#Quality scale are not necessarily hard and fast. Clearly 12 Gauge (album) in its current state is above start-class, and I doubt any project member would object to its being rated C. Usually the track authorship is something that's added early on, as it's primary source info that's pretty basic. This case seems to have been an exception, but that's not really an obstacle to its being C-class. --IllaZilla (talk) 06:45, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with both of you. On one side the track author and lengths are usually added on the early edits of an article but certainly the difference between a, let`s say, "Good C" article an a "Just B" article is blurry to say the least, at that point it becomes even subjective member to member, but i don`t think is that big a problem, after all, C or B, are just grades, the objective is GA or FA, arguing about criteria below those two, is secondary. Zidane tribal (talk) 07:00, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

IllaZilla, thanks for the link! Hmm, as for writing credits, I'm still a bit stumped. Even with a higher-profile album, like Stone Temple Pilots (album), I haven't been able to find writing credits (and I checked Allmusic, since you linked me there). I always figured songwriting credits were late in the contributions, but (like a lot of things), I'm sure it's different from band to band. In the case of the latter, interviews with the band somewhat hint at who's written what, but I prefer a concrete source to reference. But Zidane makes a great point: these are just grades between the more important GA and FA statuses. Still, I have a thing for articles "earning" their way up. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 07:04, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Since Stone Temples Pilots isn't scheduled for release for another 3½ weeks, that may be why you can't yet find the credits on Allmusic. If you have access to a copy of the album, you can cite the album notes using {{Cite album-notes}}. Failing that, Allmusic often has track credits for most high-profile releases. Outside of that I'm not sure where to look; I typically write about releases that I own, so I just cite the notes. I'm sure the credits for Stone Temple Pilots will become citeable from somewhere as the release date draws closer. --IllaZilla (talk) 07:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahhh okay, I'm sorry, ignore what I wrote. I "mixed up" released and yet-to-be-released albums in my argument, and that was really dumb : ) Obviously once the STP album is released, the information will become available. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 07:43, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

12 Gauge – Great album, great article. :) – B.hotep •talk• 21:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, B.hotep : ) – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 20:45, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Non-English reviews

I understand that, according to WP:ALBUM/REVSIT, "reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question." However, the album article I'm working on, 12 Gauge (album), isn't a very well-reviewed album in the States. In fact, I have found many reviews, but the English ones are unreliable (they are blogged or user-submitted) and the majority of the reliable (I assume) reviews are in German. There are two or three reviews in Finnish, which is the language specific to the album. So... in short, I have no English reviews that I can use. What should I do? I have no problem working with the German and Finnish reviews, but in this case, they won't be diluted with English reviews. I can provide a list of the reviews as requested. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 05:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Finnish is relevant, since it's a Finnish band. I see no problem with using German reviews, either, since there is a scarcity of English reviews. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Greatly appreciated, thanks for the response! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 06:18, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English_sources. English is obviously preferred, but foreign-language sources are also acceptable (they do still have to meet the reliable source criteria, though). —Gendralman (talk) 04:09, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I think I did an okay job of pulling relevant information from the reviews without any "loss in translation". I weeded out the obvious non-reliable sources (all but one were English) and I think the ones remaining are both reliable and somewhat broad in their views, since the extreme metal scene is taken a little more seriously outside of North America. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 06:07, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to auto-narrow the width of Template:Track listing

There is a proposal to change the way the width of {{Track listing}} over at Template talk:Track listing#Proposal to auto-narrow width. I invite people here to join the discussion. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Therion page

I'm Germano from Italy, i correct the term that compares in the Miskolk experience spotigle in the correct italian spoglie. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.48.142.138 (talk) 08:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, and welcome to Wikipedia! --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 12:34, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, although the name should be "Vedi! le fosche notturne spoglie", Therion (perhaps deliberately, we don't know) actually used "Vedi! le fosche notturne spotigle"[12][13], so I've reverted your change[14], but please don't let this put you off contributing to Wikipedia! --JD554 (talk) 13:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Problem with inter-Archive links

At the top of Archive 33 there are link to the first (#1), the previous (#32), and the last (currently #36), but the link to the next (#34) is missing. Same issue for all other archives since #30. It's quite annoying for archive browsing. Does someone know how to fix this? – IbLeo^(talk) 05:02, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't look like the {{atn}} template supports what you want it to. I don't see the point in such a fancy navigator, I would just use {{archive-nav}} or {{talkarchivenav}} and if I needed to jump around a lot, I would just type the archive number into the URL. But yeah, I can see where that's frustrating. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 05:25, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I've replaced {{atn}} with {{atnhead}}. It seems to have fixed the problem. — ξ^xplicit 05:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Possibly a bug? I found that it stopped working at Archive 21 and up. I left a note on the template's Template_talk:Atn#Bug_at_Archive_21.3F talk page. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 05:53, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Almost forgotten about this one... which shows that it's not the most important problem in the world. Starting from archive #31, the archive header is implemented by {{atn}}. So Explicit, I think you are on the right track, it's probably an issue with that template. Keraunoscopia, you lost me. Archive #21, as all other archives up to #30, uses {{atnhead}} for the header and it links to both next and previous archives, but does not provide the links to first and last. So I am at loss with your post over at Template_talk:Atn#Bug_at_Archive_21.3F talk page. – IbLeo^(talk) 20:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

A proposal has been made at the Still Standing article talk page, about a type of table that tracks sales of an album; is this suitable for this article and other album articles? Dan56 (talk) 02:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Intervention required

A few weeks ago, one editor put The Roxx Regime Demos up for deletion. It was determined that it was notable and so was dropped. The majority of the work was done by another editor. I started watching the album as I started to expand my interest in watching albums. When I joined it the two editors, User:Amsaim and User:Koavf were at it again. This time it was over how the Type = should be listed in the infobox. Amsaim insisted it as a compilation while Koavf, having lost the first battle, insisted that it was a demo. I thought studio would be a good thing. Amsaim had Koavf blocked for 48 hours for "for repeated abuse of editing privileges" (see [[15]]). In his absence Amsaim requested that consensus be reached. Discussion was ongoing and consensus was forming. As soon as the block was lifted Koavf came back and changed several things including the Type = value. I laid into him and probably broke a few rules myself in the process, but the edits stopped. Consensus was then reached. Based on the evidence we felt that the infobox should list it under the category of compilation and that the categories of compilation album and demos were both suitable for the footer. Now Amsaim is not satisfied and is telling us that the latter category is not appropriate. He is also insisting that without verifiable sources (which we have provided) that he would either remove the category or slap it with an unsourced tag. His argument is that a demo is a single work that is unreleased and this doesn't qualify. He has changed his reason for not catting it as a demo but it always comes back to his opinion that the title itself is not a valid source, which I proved was wrong, and that no verifiable source could be found to indicate that it is a demo. He is not relenting and his arguments are, in my opinion, either an attempt at ownership of the article or a way to demonstrate dominance over Koavf. So if some of the WikiProject types wouldn't mind dropping over there, reading the volumes of discussion, and weighing in it would be appreciated. I am taking a break from the page since Amsaim refuses to discuss the issue, he only wants to make his point. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:28, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

My discussion on the article's talk page is according to Wikipedia's guideline on consensus: "Discussions should always be attempts to persuade others, using reasons." Furthermore WP:Consensus tell us this: "Developing consensus requires special attention to neutrality and verifiability in an effort to reach a compromise that everyone can agree on." I do not claim to own the article and I have accepted the community consensus. However, for the inclusion of the Demo-album category there is still no source cited. The editors who voted for the inclusion of the 'Demo album' category into the article, have not been able to provide a reliable verifiable source which calls Stryper's 2007 compilation a demo. On the other hand there are many available reliable sources which call 'The Roxx Regime Demos' either a compilation or an album. Lastly, I am merely discussing the issue on the article's talk page, as I have been accused of not doing so in the past. To my surprise after just a short time of discussion yesterday, some of the editors began to 'close' the discussion by asking others to continue the discussion elsewhere. Let us please discuss the issue at hand, (and in doing so let's not leave out WP:V): is 'The Roxx Regime Demos' a demo / demo album, or is it an album / a compilation? Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 04:14, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

1. You don not claim to own the article, you just act like it. If it walks like a duck ....
2. You tried to close the discussion. You claimed that consensus had been reached. Two editors immediately stated that what you assumed was consensus was not in fact what the rest of us thought was consensus. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello, WikiProject Albums. I have suggested a centeralised discussion on all of the issues drawing from several different albums as examples: User talk:Jubileeclipman/Demo album. Cheers --Jubilee♫clipman 11:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:ACCESSIBILITY

A user over at The Dark Side of the Moon has been modifying the layout of the article's tracklist, quoting the above guideline. I've reverted them as I think it looks messy, and even squashing my browser down to a tiny 400px wide the table is still perfectly legible. What is this project's view on this matter? Parrot of Doom 13:56, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The wider one is better. Any browser worth its salt - and Internet Explorer - will autoformat a table according to how much space is available to display it in. Forced line breaks are thus unnecessary, and "W&W" is a fudge. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's related to this rather long discussion: Template_talk:Track_listing#Proposal_to_auto-narrow_width. Looks like the editor in question is deploying a forked version {{Tracklist custom}} of {{Track listing}}. It's currently used on two other albums, Conspiracy of One and Godsmack (album). I believe this is done against consensus, see Template_talk:Track_listing#Proposal_for_limited_use_of_2nd_Template:Tracklist_custom. – IbLeo^(talk) 16:30, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

• The readability problems only occur for readers with screen windows set to 800x600 resolution, or using larger text-size in their browsers. See subtopic below: "#Run-together track-table in WP:FA". -Wikid77 (talk) 18:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Run-together track-table in WP:FA

The featured article "The Dark Side of the Moon" (album) has been displaying a run-together table for screens at 800x600 resolution. Per policy WP:Accessibility, the display at 800x600 must be reasonable (not with words in different columns run-together), which has been policy since before May 2009. See sample display below:

Current table appearance at 800x600 resolution: Template:Tracklist custom

NOTE: Observe (above) how the heading words are run-together as "Lead vocalsLength" and the tracks have compressed phrases "containingMason" or "Gilmour,Gilmour".

Customized table at 800x600 resolution: Template:Tracklist custom

NOTE: The heading words are spaced now as "Lead vocals      Length" (no longer run-together). Per WP:Accessibility, the table does not need to have the same balanced appearance when narrower than 800x600 pixels.

Even though consideration of sight-impaired users requires extra planning, and support of 800x600 format requires extra testing, the extra efforts are justified when typesetting one of the WP:Featured articles, such as "The Dark Side of the Moon". Meanwhile, there is also an ongoing discussion to provide similar wide track-tables for the general album articles as well, but that discussion has been more complex, due to gaining consensus for changing the display of over 11,000 articles using Template:Track listing. That task demands more time, due to the complexity of verifying track-table layouts in those 11,000+ articles. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what browser you're using: but I have Firefox 3.6.2, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 7, and in none of those do words get run together as you claim. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:53, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Look at the first table, not the 2nd. -Wikid77 11:18, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I was looking at the first table; and the words are not run together, either before or after your fiddles just now. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

As above. Also, WP:ACCESS is not a policy, it is a guideline. – B.hotep •talk• 19:38, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

As others have mentioned, WP:ACCESSIBILITY is a guideline, not a policy. I'm clueless as to what the problem is here. On any normal resolution (I bet less than 1% of users are viewing at 800x600 or less) the table looks fine, however the above changes make it look awful. Parrot of Doom 22:09, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

• The difference is merely the spacing & wrapping (see: Typesetting): the customized table has 5 spaces between columns, but the default format has no spaces between columns & wraps the rows to 3 or 4 lines. Read WP:ACCESS. It's not just a problem for 800x600 screens, but for readers using larger text-size. Also, many sophisticated users are displaying windows at half-screen size (Windows 7 even has a feature to align 2 windows, side-by-side, as each half-screen size). The track-tables need to appear balanced for sophisticated users who know how to adjust the browser window settings. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:18, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

As there is obviously no consensus to deploy this forked template at this point in time, I have removed it from the two articles where it was already used (see my entry further up). I suggest that we close the discussion here and continue over at Template talk:Track listing. As I already stated at several occasions over there, I would support an evolution of the template that improves the auto-widening for smaller displays, but only if it does not decrease the display quality for "non-sophisticated" users like myself who look at Wikipedia in full screen mode with a fairly standard setup. – IbLeo^(talk) 20:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

What should we do with the forked template?

The forked template {{Tracklist custom}} is now used on another article: Riot Act (album). I would propose to nominate it for speedy deletion and instead implement enhancements to our "official" template "{{Track listing}} when there is consensus to do so. Any objections to this approach? – IbLeo^(talk) 17:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree. In the meantime, if Tracklist is not adequate for a certain article, there are other options such as creating a table, which allows information to be presented in rows and columns with much greater flexibility. The reason for objecting to a forked template is not to prevent non-standard formats; we recognize that customized formatting is a good choice in some articles. Maintenance of multiple templates is the problem. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 22:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I have nominated {{Tracklist custom}} for speedy deletion under CSD T3 and notified it's creator. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

The speedy deletion has been contested by the template creator and consequently turned into a WP:TfD. You are invited to comment over at the templates entry. – IbLeo^(talk) 16:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Using a forum "largely unacceptable"

I am hoping to get a bit more input from other editors regarding a discussion on the Wintersun Time talk page about using an update posted on the band's official messageboard by the band's creator/songwriter. Perhaps supporting my desire to do so, according to Wikipedia:RS#Statements_of_opinion, "Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs and tweets as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material." Does this allow an exception in my case?

This is just an observation, but some of the bands I follow, and whose articles I contribute to, will post updates on their actual website, either the main index page or on some "News" page, and then these updates will be reprinted almost verbatim by, for example, Blabbermouth.net. Because Wintersun's update was on a messageboard, his words have not been (and I doubt they ever will be) reprinted by a secondary source. Until he does interviews in the future, his "updates" seem to be limited to his messageboard. So, any thoughts would be fantastic so I may either go ahead and add some of the info, or drop it entirely. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 22:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

A more detailed explanation is here: WP:Verifiability#Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves. Anything the band posts on their own forum/website/etc. is considered "self-published". You're free to use self-published information by the person/group who wrote it, as long as it's only about themselves (not some unrelated subject), it's not questionable information ("We finished recording the album" vs. "We've already sold 60 million copies") and isn't the only source the article uses.

When they say forums are "largely unacceptable" it's just a rule of thumb, since most forum posts are by anonymous people. The quote you posted ("...unless written or published by the subject") is the more detailed and accurate policy. —Gendralman (talk) 22:51, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

That's wonderful, then. This definitely helps in updating with lesser known bands' articles. I appreciate the quick response! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's good to use a bit of context when using sources such as this. Like, "according to the band's website..." -Freekee (talk) 04:09, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, okay, that's a good suggestion. I will do that. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 09:19, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Music Notability

Hello, I'm opening a discussion about the refinement and clarification of notability criteria. your opinion here would be appreciated. Lil-unique1 (talk) 00:11, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Single releases

Are live versions of album tracks listed as a single release in the infobox? A Momentary Lapse of Reason for instance, has a few live single releases due to the tour which followed its release, and one of them charted. What to do? Parrot of Doom 07:25, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I would say that it would probably follow the same reasoning as the discussion above about bonus tracks released as singles. Technically, they aren't singles originating from the album, rather the songs originate from there but in a different form. Were they ever released on an album (say, a compilation) eventually? – B.hotep •talk• 07:48, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, I haven't checked. Now re-reading my sources I'm not even sure that both sides were live, I think one side might have been from the album, and the B-side from the concert. So confusing... Parrot of Doom 09:11, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

To me, it's even looser than the "bonus singles" category; the main thing to consider is the primary track (ie the A-side(s), or equivalent) of the single: is it the same recording as appeared on the album? If not, it's not a single from the album. Turning now to specifics: I assume that you are thinking of On the Turning Away, which according to the A Momentary Lapse of Reason infobox, is a live single (although that's not stated on the OtTA page). The album track is definitely studio; so if the same song on the single be a live recording, it's not a single from AMLoR. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:59, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Overcategorization of albums

Per the Categories section of the Wikiproject page it states "For album articles, there are three "top-level" categories: Category:Albums by artist, Category:Albums by year and Category:Albums by genre. Each album page should be placed into two categories, Category:<Artist name> albums and Category:<year> albums, which should be sub-categories of the respective top-level category." But recently User:Koavf has been making probably over ten thousand edits over the past week, although it is hard for me to tell the number because there are have been so many, that I would characterize as overcategorization. I asked Koavf if there had been some consensus found somewhere for all of these categorizations and they stated they were being bold, which I also had a problem with one editor making this many of edits in such a short time span without any sort of consensus to back up the edits.

Koavf has been making edits such as moving Kapuso sa Pasko from categories Category:2004 albums, Category:Christmas albums and Category:Compilation albums as mentioned above to categories Category:2004 Christmas albums, Category:2004 compilation albums and Category:Christmas compilation albums. I find these adding of years to the types of albums and adding Christmas to the compliation albums to be overcategorizations that are not needed. Also for example is a category like Category:Carmen McRae live albums for two albums needed when the parent category Category:Carmen McRae albums only has five albums for a total of seven albums or a category like Category:Live Christmas albums needed for six albums. Maybe I am the only one who feels this way, but I thought I would get others' opinions of these categorizations. Aspects (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. Sub-dividing into such tiny categories decreases their utility substantially. The smaller the categories, the more they come to resemble individual articles, which are what we're trying to group together in the first place. Torchiest (talk | contribs) 16:07, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

What I've done First off, I would like to point out that I am not responsible for either Category:Carmen McRae live albums or Category:Live Christmas albums. As noted above, they are pretty small intersections from already small parent categories. What I did was as follows:

I went through Category:Albums by artist and took a look at every category that had 20 or more articles in it. For these larger categories, I created subcategories if there were five or more of the following: live albums or compilations. I did this per the consensus at this CfD.

I started breaking up Category:Live albums and Category:Compilation albums further by genre and year. This is in part to mirror the scheme from Category:EPs by year and Category:Video albums by year--which were not initially created by me either.

Basically, what I was doing was simply an extension of the preexisting scheme to 1. break up categories for artists that are large and 2. to break up album type categories into album-by-year subcategories. I did not come up with either of those schemes of my own volition and both of them have a prior consensus for their existence. I simply applied that consensus to several more examples where I saw large categories--e.g. thousands of live albums--that could use diffusing; I decided to be bold and do just that. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:17, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Addendum I am also not responsible for creating the compilation album-by-genre scheme as--e.g.--Category:Hip hop compilation albums existed before I got here and survived a CfD of its own as well. Virtually none of this is my own original idea and it has a prior consensus for its existence. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:22, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI and FWIW, on a related note (I think), see my (archived) comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Jazz/Archives/2010 1#Sub-categories. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Sans a few hiccups here and there, I generally think Koavf's edits are helpful...or at least not harmful. Of what real utility is something like Category:Live albums containing every live album? It would have tens of thousands of articles in it, and thus not be of much use to a reader trying to navigate through the sea of articles. A category that large ought to be divided into more specific subcategories, and it seems like by-year subdivisions are logical. And as Koavf points out, it mirrors the existing system of Category:EPs by year and Category:Albums by year. Clearly there's a common-sense limit to how far down we subdivide; we don't want categories with only a handful of articles in them. But cats like Category:2009 live albums or Category:2009 compilation albums seem to be just about right, as each contains a few dozen articles. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. --IllaZilla (talk) 16:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I do agree that it is overcategorization as well. Under nomination for CfD is the family of categories under Category:Soundtracks by date, which I listed not long before this discussion began. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 18:12, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Keep it all. There are so many Christmas, compilation, live, soundtrack and video albums and other stuff released every year, it would make sense to use categories. J 1982 (talk) 18:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with IllaZilla here, splitting these categories by year is more helpful for navigational purposes, as far as album types (studio albums, EPs, live albums, etc.) go. The only one that sticks out to me as a problem—mainly because I haven't gone too deep into this—is Category:Live Christmas albums, as that narrows down into album type and theme. To me, this would be equivalent to creating Category:Live concept albums or similar, which is not only overcategorization, but it really makes things more complicated and less accessible than they need to be. — ξ^xplicit 20:48, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

My two cents It appears that a small consensus is forming for keeping these categories--particularly the large and broad scope of by-year. I'm going to continue categorizing along those two schemes and I'll check back here for any developments. I.e. I am now watching this talk page. If for some reason, the consensus is to bring these to CfD, it would be a simple matter to reverse this--much simpler than adding them in the first place--so I feel comfortable going ahead with these. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:07, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry, but this discussion involves your edits and you should wait until it closes before you engage in the edits again, since a consensus could be found that would conflict with your edits. This is not an extremely pressing matter and it could wait a few days before it could be started again if consensus is found that way. Also, you are not even staying by your standards of sticking to by-year categories. This edit, [16] moved the album from Category:Dire Straits albums to Category:Dire Straits live albums, splitting a group of sixteen albums into four and twelve albums. No one has approved of those categories here. Aspects (talk) 23:30, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Aspects, see Category:Live albums by artist -Freekee (talk) 00:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it's out of hand. Why does an artist with only three album articles such as Kurt Elling need to have a category for studio albums and live albums. Even worse, do we need to go as deep as having further subdivision of categories with Category:Live jazz vocal albums and Category:American live albums? What's next Category:American live hip hop compilation video albums? --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 00:51, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that I am not responsible for Category:Kurt Elling live albums. Quadruple-, quintuple-, etc. intersection categories are so rare as to probably be impossible, so it is very unlikely that there would ever be enough demand for Category:American live hip hop compilation video albums, as that is the intersection of albums, video albums, compilation albums, hip hop albums, live albums, and American albums. On the other hand, "Genre live albums" is the intersection of three properties and is commonly used to diffuse large categories--e.g. Category:Live albums. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

You may not have created it, but this is exactly what this type of scheme leads to. "Oh, that's how this is, so this should be like this, too", regardless of how many studio albums or live albums an artist has. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 03:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay You've just argued against all intersection categories. cf. Slippery slope. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

No I didn't. I am against overly narrow category intersections as in this case. You've created a precedent with all these "live albums by artist" categories, but you don't think every artist who has a live album needs to have a live albums category as stated below. But someone who sees the scheme will create the live albums for an artist because their favorite artist has released a single live album. The usefulness of the Foo albums category is to see all Foo albums in one location, not in various subcategories for that artist. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 16:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

'Intersections A category with 300 articles is hardly overly narrow. You cannot have all three of the following things: 1.) a desire for manageable album categories, 2.) to respect consensus, and 3.) to delete the "X live albums" categories and remerge them to live albums. Ive neither created a precedent "live albums by artist" categories (again, they were around before me, and I nominated them for deletion in the first place), nor have I stated that I don't think every artist who has a live album needs to have a live albums category; I was ambivalent. It is correct that someone who sees the scheme will create the live albums for an artist because their favorite artist has released a single live album, but that's always a risk you run; any unnecessary categories can be deleted in CfD or the consensus could be to leave "[Artist] albums" just for studio albums and create "[Artist] EPs/live albums/compilation albums/remix albums/video albums" as they are released. I see a case for that as well. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:26, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

---

Do you think that all artist album categories should have a subcat of live albums (assuming they have live albums)? Or should there be a numerical jump-off point (either by amount or percentage)? -Freekee (talk) 04:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Good question That's a very good question, so I started--mostly--with artists who had large enough discographies that diffusing them would be almost entirely non-controversial--e.g. Merzbow or John Zorn. And with the exception of this single post to my talk over the past two months, I've had no complaints. As to whether or not it should be extended to all artists, I'm on the fence: I can see it being a useful categorization scheme as well as being unnecessarily narrow in many, many instances. Of course, small categories are justified by being a part of a larger scheme, so... Anyway, I haven't really ventured into the territory of categorizing smaller albums-by-artist categories for exactly this reason. Do you have any input? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:07, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

My initial answer to your question was "no, I have no input." After thinking about it for a while, I'm still not sure how much I care.

Here are two choices:

1. Categorization in live albums by artist cats. This ensures that we can find all the live albums through cats.
2. Create these cats only when the artist's albums cat gets too big.
3. Do not have cats for live albums. Not really a choice, I don't think.

With the second choice, you should probably place the individual album article in a live album cat, which begs the question of how to set them up.

I kinda prefer the first, though that's more rules, and splits up the artists albums cats. -Freekee (talk) 02:04, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

The Christmas albums by year is great, though I'm annoyed by having both "by year" and "by decade" cats. The live subcat seems okay. Shouldn't live Christmas albums be a subcat of Christmas albums by genre, rather than in Category:Live albums? Should we put all the subcats of Category:Live rock albums in Category:Live rock albums by subgenre or something? This would make it a genre-only category, and then the band-specific cats, like "live Queen albums" can be in a their own cat, rather than be mixed with subgenres. It just looks weird. Why is 20 the magic number for breaking up categories. I think it should be more like 200 (a full page). I don't think a discog cat with thirty albums is unwieldy, even if ten of them are live albums. -Freekee (talk) 00:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

If this scheme is going to be standardized, rules need to be put in place and the statement "Each album page should be placed into two categories, Category:<Artist name> albums and Category:<year> albums" will have to be changed. However, unless it is all or none, no one is going to be consistent with putting albums in Category:<year> live albums (or other similar) just based on the number of album articles an artist has. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 22:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes You are correct that the wording of WP:ALBUM should be amended, but that is a simple matter. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:26, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Once consensus is reached, which is hardly the case so far for either way. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 08:06, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I support the splitting of categories into Category:Live albums by artist, Category:Compilation albums by artist, etc. I find the "too small" argument unconvincing, especially when we're supposed to create subcategories under Category:Albums by artist for recording artists and bands, even if they only ever release one album. By splitting by type of release (live, compilation, etc.), it would become easier to navigate through categories like Category:Live albums and Category:Compilation albums; the subcategories of Category:Live albums by artist, Category:Compilation albums by artist and so on, would all fall under WP:OC#SMALL, just like the subcategories of Category:Albums by artist do. — ξ^xplicit 07:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

"Other" Album Class in Grid

Resolved

 – Redrose64 (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

In the assessment grid for the project there are currently more than 800 album articles classified as "Other" in the Class column. I browsed through a selection of these in a cursory fashion, and most of the ones I looked at have received legitimate Class assessments such as Stub, Start, etc. I can find no spelling or formatting errors in the respective talk page Album Project boxes that might throw off the bots. So many, if not most, of these 800+ articles should appear with their proper class numbers elsewhere in the grid. Does anyone know why this is happening? DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 02:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure that the assessment stats grid isn't recalculated every time that an article is assessed, but must be rebuilt periodically. Judging by the page history, rebuilding is performed automatically by User:WP 1.0 bot, on a daily basis, and the last such rebuild was this one.

I suspect a buggy 'bot, certainly there are other wikiprojects where the actual category for unassessed articles is empty, or nearly so, but the grid shows many unassessed articles. Perhaps only a partial rebuild is performed? I'd love to know how to get those grids thoroughly recalculated... --Redrose64 (talk) 14:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the stats grid is updated every day (roughly), but I don't think that's the only issue. For example, if you look at the grid right now, there is one article in the grid box for "Other" class and "High" importance. That happens to be Talk:Menace II Society (soundtrack) where the assessment (Stub/High) has been in place since January 2008. Sorry I didn't mention the timing angle in my first comment, but this is certainly a long-term issue, and not one in which the stats on certain album articles are temporarily out of whack for a day or two between bot calculations. DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 15:06, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

That just happens to be the one which I examined! That's why I suspect that only a partial rebuild is performed daily; certainly there is nothing wrong with the usage of the {{WikiProject Albums}} template on that album's talk page. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I've left a message at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index#Degree of update. Hope that's the right place... --Redrose64 (talk) 17:04, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

This was  fixed early this morning: the "Other" row has disappeared. Some of my assumptions above were incorrect; see thread linked in previous post for details. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Nice work by all involved. Thanks Redrose for asking the proper questions over at the Editorial Team page. I'm not much of a techie so I have no idea what happened, but it's cool to see a nice clean grid. --DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 18:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Why does our infobox support singles and songs?

Does anyone know why {{Infobox album}} allows the Type parameter to be "single" and "song", when we got specific infoboxes for those ({{Infobox single}} – {{Infobox song}})? Example of usage for single: Avengers (single). – IbLeo^(talk) 05:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

History? As I recall, c. 2004, these were the same template and were forked. Note that your example was included in Category:Album_articles_with_non-standard_infoboxes for precisely this parameter. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:22, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's where I found it. You have obviously been around much longer than me so you remember such things. Shouldn't we remover the support properly from the template, then, instead of just removing it from the template documentation as was supposedly done back in 2004? – IbLeo^(talk) 05:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

You lost me The parameter single isn't supported. Try making a fake album article at User:IbLeo/Fake with Type=SLkdfjlskdfjkldf and you will see the same display and the addition of Category:Album_articles_with_non-standard_infoboxes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I know where to find my sandbox, thank you very much ;-) What I mean is that if you put "Type = song" in the infobox of Josephine (song), then it becomes light blue which is the color associated to "song" according to the documentation, instead of abricot which is the color of a non-supported Type parameter. So obviously, at least the type "song" is supported by the infobox which is really not the intention as far as I understand. The documentation also claims that type "single" is supported but this doesn't seem to be the case. – IbLeo^(talk) 14:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah That is funny. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:09, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

This is interesting because I noticed that Avengers (single) was in the list Category:Album articles with non-standard infoboxes and attempted to fix the infobox. But after my efforts in the album-style infobox, the article was still in the list calling for attention. I now see that the solution was to change the infobox template altogether. So IbLeo's question is a good one. DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 17:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

If I understand this discussion correctly, the consensus is that {{Infobox album}} should not support the Type parameter to be neither "single" nor "song" as we have specific infoboxes for those animals. I will consequently—if I hear no wild protests in this space—see if I can get it removed completely from both the infobox and its documentation. – IbLeo^(talk) 19:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

In a nutshell, there are apparently two different ways to do the same thing, but only one is truly legit. The most visible result is that articles about songs (not albums) are ending up in the to-do lists at the Albums Project because of "non-standard" infoboxes. --DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 18:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I have now been looking at the code for {{Infobox album}} for two nights, and damn me if I can understand why it supports "Type=song" but not "Type=single", except that it has something do with a hardcoded exception on the color "khaki" that is used for singles. My conclusion is that the good people who code templates here on WP are true geeks that never bother one minute to put comments in the code :-). So I am not going to waste any more time on this, but if anyone else want to have a go, I wish you good luck! Hrmpf! – IbLeo^(talk) 18:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I have added some instructions to the infobox documentation to indicate that "song" and "single" shouldn't be used with this infobox even if they are shown as possible values, and "song" is supported by the template. – IbLeo^(talk) 17:16, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Good move, and thanks. But I'll bet highlighting the situation only causes the question to come up again soon! --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 22:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, and I wish I could fix it but I don't have the necessary coding skills to do so. It has something to do with code sharing, which in itself is a sound principle. Some of the sub-templates used in the Misc-section—like {{Extra chronology}}—are shared with {{Infobox single}} and{{Infobox song}} so the colors for singles and songs have to be supported. If you have any idea about how to move along from here, it would be appreciated. – IbLeo^(talk) 04:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Tips

Hello guys..Moxy here the guy that does the portals...We have made a Tip/guidelines section to help navigate Wikis vast rules!! Pls if y0u like add this to your project page if it apply to you guys here!!..Moxy (talk) 16:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

?	Use common sense. Ultimately, assume good faith on the part of others, be bold in editing because perfection is not required. See Wikipedia:Editing policy for more information. Before starting a new article! - Notability is a concern that must be adhered to. See Wikipedia:Notability (music) for more information. Need help starting a new article? See Wikipedia:Article wizard it will help you through the process of submitting a new article to Wikipedia.
I.	Use references. This is an encyclopedia, so remember to include a ==References== section listing websites, newspapers, articles, books and other sources you used to write the article. New articles and statements added to existing articles may be deleted if unreferenced or referenced poorly. See Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Cite_sources and Wikipedia:References for more information.
II.	Use proper spelling and grammar. This is a very important aspect of an article. There is helpful guidelines in regards to styles. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (music) for more information.
III.	Use footnotes. Take advantage of the footnote ability Wikipedia has, instead of including html links inside the context include them as footnotes. See Wikipedia:Footnotes on how to use them.
IV.	Write a good lead. Be sure to write a lead that concisely summarizes the entire article into one or two paragraphs, which make sense to someone who may know nothing about the subjects in question. See Wikipedia:Lead section for more information.
V.	Stay on topic. Many articles are criticized for length; sticking to the subject matter helps eliminate this. See Wikipedia:The perfect article for more information.
VI.	Keep it simple. Remember that the average reader should be able to comprehend the erudition. Although you should use a broad vocabulary of regular, non-technical terms, do not provide such a quantity of locutions as to impel those who aspire to derive serviceable information from the article to consult a dictionary.
VII.	Use images if possible. Images enhance articles greatly, but only use them when they are necessary, and ensure that their copyright status has been specified and we are allowed to use it on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Images

Why shouldn't we use the 'Reviews' field in Infobox anymore?

Hi,

I was wondering why we're not meant to use the 'Reviews' field in Infobox anymore (although most albums still do)?

On the article about the Josh Ritter album So Runs the World Away there is an empty gap (you can see it here: http://twitpic.com/1nqmhx/full), which in my opinion looks really bad, and un-wikipediay. It can be fixed by putting the reviews in the infobox (you can see that here: http://twitpic.com/1nswtn/full). But because of the consensus not to use the Reviews field of Infobox album anymore, I can't get rid of the gap.

What can I do?

JoseySmith (talk) 23:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

This appears to be an accessibility issue. What browser is being used to view the article that shows the gap? Does it look the same in different browser? What is the resolution of your monitor? There are various factors that can explain why this problematic gap appears and could potentially be fixed with altering the coding of the {{Album ratings}} template. — ξ^xplicit 23:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

See here With some more information here and here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The big white gap appears on Internet Explorer 7, between the heading "Release and reception" and the text "The record's release was met with ..."; basically, the start of that text is horizontally aligned with the upper edge of the {{Album ratings}} template. The gap does not appear under Firefox 3.6.2 or Chrome, where the text begins immediately under the heading, as normal. All of these are for Windows XP, and whether the skin is Monobook or Vector makes no difference. It's worse at higher resolutions - but you've got to get the screen right down to about 640px wide before the gap becomes small enough to disappear, at which point the infobox is about the same width as the text in the lead section. One fix would be to move the "Release and reception" section down, so that other sections use up the remaining space to the left of the infobox; but that doesn't always work: try looking at Led Zeppelin II in IE7 - the image in the "Album sleeve design" section pushes the {{Album ratings}} template downward, so there is a white gap between the heading "Release and reception" and text to the left of the template. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

There was a long discussion about it which you should find in the archives if you're interested, but basically it was agreed that the ratings shouldn't have such prominence in Wikipedia articles, as Wikipedia is not something like Allmusic. Its purpose is not primarily to provide a review of how good someone thinks something is, but to provide information in a more encyclopedic manner. I agree with the change. Ratings rarely tell the whole story, and it's far better to see them alongside Critical reception prose that presents the reception information in a balanced and informative manner. You're right that not all albums use the new layout yet, but they're getting converted when opportunities arise. About the gap in the article you mentioned, it's OK in FF, Opera and IE8. I do see it in IE7, but why would anyone use IE7?!! But anyway, the problem will go away once the article's developed further and there are more sections. (Try it by editing the page in IE7 and hitting Preview.) Currently there's plenty of stuff in the lead that never gets a mention in the main text. Per WP:LEAD, the lead should only summarize what the article already says. A couple more points to elaborate upon in Release and reception:

• Released as part of Record Store Day in the United States.
• The vinyl record came packaged with a CD version of the album as well.

And some signs of a burgeoning Composition and recording section:

• Ritter said of the album that it "marks the beginning of a new period in [his] life,"
• ...and that overall, "the songs are larger and more detailed, and feel to me as if they were painted in oil on large canvasses."
• Ritter got the title from a line in the third act of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Just a couple of suggestions at a glance. There's probably a lot more that can be said apart from those if you want to develop the article more fully. PL290 (talk) 15:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

(1) It seems to me that there should be some way to fix the technical issue of the "gaps" in the articles when viewed in Internet Explorer version 7, but I'm not sure of the best way to get help with this. Upgrading to IE version 8 would be a reasonable work-around for most people, but it would be better if the display worked in IE7 also. (2) The archived discussion about moving the reviews out of the infobox is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 33#Reviews in infobox: scrap?. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 19:57, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for replying. I will have a look at developing the article. JoseySmith (talk) 23:27, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

At one point there was a consensus not to detach the reviews field from the infobox if there wasn't enough content to separate the two boxes. Aesthetics should always be taken into account, and having two different-sized boxes touching looks bad. —Gendralman (talk) 14:52, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Pink Floyd

This is extremely silly that I'm even here, but to humour the belligerents, why not? I have two users currently trying to tell me that the Pink Floyd studio albums More, and Obscured By Clouds, are not studio albums, because they're soundtracks. Both of them complete albums, of course; both of them recorded in the studio completely by Pink Floyd. And, as I have said, using that twisted logic, then The Wall is not a studio album, as it is a soundtrack. Of course The Wall is a studio album, just as More, and Obscured By Clouds are. But for some strange reason, these two feel that 2 of their studio albums that are also soundtracks are, somehow not studio albums, whilst another studio album, which is also a soundtrack, is a studio album. Anyone?Mk5384 (talk) 20:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I would tend to draw a distinction between an album of music scored for a movie vs. an album of of music used in a movie. Look at how it is broken down in the Queen discography; A Kind of Magic was music written specifically for The Highlander but it is still considered a regular studio album, while Flash Gordon is more of a traditional film score. So for this case, IMO More should not be considered a studio album but Obscured... would. Tarc (talk) 21:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Why not both? As you correctly pointed out, these albums are not live--they were recorded in-studio. At the same time, they serve as the musical accompaniment to two films, so they are soundtracks as well. I don't see what the conflict is. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what the conflict is either, yet 2 users are, pardon the reference, raving and drooling over the fact. As I see it, they are both studio albums, whilst still being soundtracks. Other Pink Floyd projects, such as Zabriske Point, and Tonight Let's Make love In London, are soundtracks, yet are not Pink Floyd studio albums, as they are compilations.Mk5384 (talk) 21:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Studio album, while admittedly a tiny, unreferenced stub article, says what I expected it to:

A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio, as opposed to a live recording made at a performance venue or a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material.

Perhaps those saying otherwise would explain the rationale. PL290 (talk) 21:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I was just looking over this page and noticed this discussion. I would consider Pat Garret & Billy the Kid by Bob Dylan a soundtrack and studio album (I think it's classified as both on wikipedia as well) which I believe is the same sort of thing as these Pink Floyd albums, so I'd agree with you as well. Kitchen roll (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is a fundamental difference between The Wall and the other two. Pink Floyd were commissioned by Barbet Schroeder to write and perform the soundtrack music for films already in production (More (film), August 1969 and La Vallée (film), July 1972), which were contemporaneously released as soundtrack albums (Soundtrack from the Film More, July 1969 and Obscured by Clouds, June 1972). In the case of The Wall, the album came first (November 1979), and Pink Floyd The Wall (film) very much later (August 1982). It's therefore not a soundtrack album. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

What does this have to do with whether they are studio albums, i.e., albums recorded in a studio, or not? --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 21:40, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

More and Obscured by Clouds were written for films: they are soundtracks. The Wall was not written for a film: it is a pure studio album. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:46, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not disputing that. Are you saying that "soundtrack" and "studio album" are mutually exclusive categories? IMO, they are not. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 22:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

As someone with studio experience, can I just point out that practically all releases at some point see the inside of a studio, no matter where they were recorded. Many of the albums in Pink Floyd's discography contain sound effects or music not recorded inside a studio. I would consider a studio album to be one where the band have specifically congregated to create a wholly new album, composed by themselves, recorded in a studio(s), and released specifically as a "artist" album. Parrot of Doom 22:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Why all those "extra" conditions? Why not just "where the band have specifically congregated in a studio(s) to record an album"? --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 22:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't particularly care. The problem here is that at some point a decision was made as to the numbering of these albums, and nobody has really questioned that. This user, instead of raising the issue first, has simply stormed in, insisted his version is correct, and refused to discuss the matter first. The entire Pink Floyd studio album chronology is now fucked because of this. Parrot of Doom 23:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The Wall was, indeed, written for a film. The film happened to be released later for various reasons. It was, however, always intended to be a movie. That doesn't change the fact that all 3 in question are studio albums, plain and simple.Mk5384 (talk) 23:41, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

What is your source for this assertion? Parrot of Doom 23:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

It's in the book Saucer Full Of Secrets. By the way, More, and Obscured By Clouds both meet each of the criteria you have set for what you yourself say you consider to be a studio album. This is one of the strangest debates I've ever had.Mk5384 (talk) 00:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

What page? Parrot of Doom 00:30, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Let me add something else. The fact that "at some point a decision was made, and nobody really questioned it", is far from a plausible reason to continue with something that's incorrect. I have not "stormed in here" (again; my opinion of how you seem to feel that you own the article). And I have no idea why I would have been expected to "discuss the matter first", in making so simple a correction. It is in no way "my version". And finally, the statement about "the entire Floyd chronology being fucked", is ridiculous. Several of the albums were off by 2. Nothing to hard to fix.Mk5384 (talk) 00:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You know what? I don't care what you think. Really. I'm sick to the back teeth of people like you spouting this "ownership" business, its lazy and insulting. You're clearly incapable of any kind of rational debate, and I'll waste no more of my time with you. I have more appearling things to do, like clean the toilet. Parrot of Doom 00:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The fact that your "sick to the back of the teeth with people" leads one to believe that I'm not the only one "spouting" about this "owership business". If you get that much of it, perhaps you should take a look at yourself. Saying that I'm "clearly incapable of any kind of rational debate", and the like, is just childish. In any case, the Floyd chronology that was "completely fucked" is now "completely fixed.Mk5384 (talk) 00:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

• This is becoming supremely unhelpful, and is veering into WP:ABF territory. What we have here is a simple distinction between whether an album recorded in a studio for intended use in a film is a studio or a soundtrack album. To me, it's clearly both, although our infoboxes don't make that unnecessary distinction. The Wall is clearly a studio album, which later spawned a film, much as did Tommy. That doesn't make the latter a soundtrack album. Some common-sense would be welcome here, and the distinction seems to be supremely unnecessary, since it is our readers, and not ourselves, whom we are seeking to provide for here. Rodhullandemu 00:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

To you, me, and most everyone it's clearly both. The distinction is indeed, "supremely unnecessary". I understand where you're coming from with the ABF, but please realise that I was accused of "making a unilateral decision that will affect thousands of articles", simply for correcting the chronology of a few Pink Floyd albums. In any case, the issue seems to be over, so , all the better.Mk5384 (talk) 01:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

• Can I just point out the following:
  • "French film director Barbet Schroeder had commissioned the group to compose the soundtrack to his new movie, More. EMI agreed to release the record, but, as it was a private commission, Floyd were denied the use of Abbey Road, booking into Pye Studios instead. EMI's willigness to let the band make a film soundtrack, rather than 'a proper record', after their last three singles had flopped seems surprising in the 21st century." (Blake pp 131-132), "Unexpectedly, for what the group considered 'a stop-gap album', the soundtrack made it into the Top 10 in June" (Blake p133). "Although the band made some muddled comments about Obscured by Clouds not being a 'proper Pink Floyd record', and 'just a collection of songs'" (Blake p183).
  • ""Gilmour describes Pink Floyd's experience with More and its successors as 'contract work. You start in the studio without anything and you work until you come up with stuff...It's not the same process as making your own music for yourself: much more hurried, and less care tends to be taken." (Schaffner pp 133–134) In this same book Mason describes Obscured by Clouds as "a sensational LP", and the author is more positive about its importance. (Schaffner pp 155-156)
  • Glenn Povey's Echoes is more focussed on discographies and a precise chronological directory of where and what the band were doing, but it contains sections of prose. I've looked several times and he appears not to mention More and Obscured by Clouds, focussing instead on the band's live work, and their studio time on Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, and DSotM (and beyond).
    • I'm therefore not yet convinced that these two albums should be included in the same chronology as the band's other studio work. Parrot of Doom 09:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Years ago, when I was one of the many "regulars" watching and helping maintain Pink Floyd articles, we thoroughly discussed this issue and developed a policy about the soundtracks. We decided that most artists had their soundtrack work separated out because it did not fit in musically or thematically with their other work, or was difficult, if not impossible, to insert it into a chronology because of the gap between recording and release dates, which are often years apart. Also, some artists' soundtracks are released on other labels from their studio albums, and it becomes difficult to determine the order that albums were released. I have frequently cited Tangerine Dream as an example of this problem; they released soundtracks as frequently as they released normal studio albums, but on many different labels, usually with undocumented recording dates, and the appearance of older line-ups of the group suggested some were actually recorded years before release. We felt that no such problems existed with Pink Floyd's soundtracks, and the fact that there were only two albums to deal with, led to a decision that there was no need to separate them. We also felt that such a separation would create an unhelpful interruption in the chronology chain. This decision was made at a time when I believe the current participants in this discussion were not among the "regulars" watching Pink Floyd articles. So Parrot of Doom is incorrect when he says that "nobody really questioned" this before. It was reviewed quite thoroughly, but that was before his time. I do realize that what we decided back then, can be superceded by what has been discussed since. But here is the policy we used to have, for what it's worth. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 14:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I meant "nobody really questioned this before" - insomuch as I couldn't find any such discussions on the Floyd wikiproject. If there are more discussions I'm unaware of then I apologise for the inference. Parrot of Doom 15:32, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Way back then, rightly or wrongly, most discussions about Pink Floyd related policies took place on Talk:Pink Floyd, not the WikiProject's talk page. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 15:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

What a ridiculous argument. The distinction between "studio albums" and "soundtracks" is arbitrary and unhelpful. Echoes was conceived as a soundtrack, and indeed later used as one. The Final Cut began as a soundtrack, but emerged as a "studio" album. Both of the albums under discussion feature long-standing live favourites; yet have significant differences to the music used on the film soundtracks. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

So

So, can we perhaps clarify how this project identifies a studio album? Is there an industry-wide specification that would help? Do we classify albums based on time spent in a studio? I've had a look around and unfortunately I have not yet been able to find any sources which might improve Studio album, which is probably what we want to do. Parrot of Doom 08:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how an article on "studio albums" would necessarily steer WikiProject guidelines. Nobody was disputing that the albums under discussion were studio albums; the question is, when they are studio albums as well as something else, which takes precedence, when dealing with something that requires one and only one categorization? In this case, the question had to do with an infobox chronology chain. In other circumstatnces it could be about the infobox "type" field, a discography's sub-sections, and let's not forget navbox breakdowns. If we were to develop a policy for albums in general, it would belong in project-specific guidelines about writing album articles, and/or template usage instructions, not in an article about studio albums. As I've already suggested, I can see different answers being appropriate for different artists (and maybe even specific albums), so the answer is, it should be decided on a case by case basis. Therefore it's always helpful to review talk page archives on the artists and albums in question, to see if the question was asked previously, get a recap of arguments presented, and find if a consensus was reached. If it was, the question should be re-opened and new consensus reached, before editing and changing what was agreed upon, of course. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 12:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be quite a matter of personal opinion. Just thinking of a few other artists with complete conceptual "soundtrack albums", I was quite suprised that in The Beatles discography, Magical Mystery Tour is included in their studio albums chronology, yet Prince's Purple Rain is not in his. To my view, the particular Pink Floyd albums in discussion here should be included in the studio album discography as this is how I've always thought of them - an overall concept, and on the whole no different to any other studio album - but my reasoning for this is loose and I can see that other people may have different ideas on this. Another example: I believe The Monkees' Head is where it should be. Rob Sinden (talk) 13:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Allmusic's genre sidebar

Is Allmusic really a reliable source for genre identification? From my experience, Allmusic slaps up to a half a dozen genres (or "styles", they call them) onto any album, essentially blanketing the album in every possible genre it may touch. If an Allmusic review specifically mentions a genre and even delves into why the album is that genre, then I'm game. I'm just curious what others have to say about the sidebar info. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

In most cases the "styles" section seems to cover just about every genre known to man. Surely just because one or two songs may touch upon a certain genre, it doesn't mean the album should be classed as that genre. Otherwise we'd be looking at anywhere between 5 and 10-15 genres per album. I don't think the "styles" section should be used as a reliable source for genres. Bretonbanquet (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I would be comfortable using it cite bare necessities of genre such as an electronic music album or a rock album but I wouldn't get to far when calling things nine different types of hip hop or heavy metal. Feel free to use it as a source, but use common sense and do not go overboard when citing genres. When in doubt of allmusic or any other professionals genre description, look up definitions of that genre and see if it's appropriate. Andrzejbanas (talk) 14:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I've been involved in a number of discussions about this, over at Talk:List of nu metal bands and Talk:List of industrial metal bands, and the general consensus is that the sidebar genre list is not acceptable for use as a source, but reviews on Allmusic are acceptable. I've seen industrial and metal bands with "Rock/Pop" listed as genres on that sidebar, which is clearly nonsense. Torchiest ^talk/_contribs 18:41, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Great, thank you for all the suggestions! I would love to use the consensuses reached at some of these discussions for support in removing certain genres as given by Allmusic. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:26, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I think Allmusic's categorization (specifically, jazz sub-genres) has been mirrored to some extent here at Wikipedia. (Funny you brought it up as I had just mentioned this to someone else the other day.) I haven't seen some of these genres mentioned anywhere else outside of Allmusic (well, and now Wikipedia) - e.g. see these comments, or these. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Album cover size

How strictly enforced is the suggestion that album covers should be no larger than 300 pixels on one side (WP:Albums#Covers)? I ask because on the project page, the example given is a Nirvana album, and that image is 600 × 594 in size. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The infobox is written in such a way that if a |Cover size= greater than 200 is specified, it's forced to 200. 200 is also used if |Cover size= is omitted.

What does cause trouble is if you don't specify the width as a bare integer; ie |Cover size=300px will put the page into hidden Category:ParserFunction errors, as will |Cover size=300×300, whereas |Cover size=300 won't (and will also be treated as if |Cover size=200 had been passed). --Redrose64 (talk) 21:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The guideline is there due to fair use concerns; the example image is in the public domain and does not fall under fair use. Since 99% of album covers are non-free, and their purpose of use is for the infobox, we are encouraging editors not to upload images much larger than what is needed for the infobox. The Nirvana example is an exception, as it does not pass the threshold of originality to be copyrightable (consisting of only simple text); that's why we're able to use it on the template page as an example. We wouldn't be able to use a non-free image in that manner. --IllaZilla (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for your responses! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 10:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

How on Earth do French certifications work?

Someone explain this to me like I'm a 5 year old, because I simply don't get it. I'm trying to determine what the correct certification for Achtung Baby is, but SNEP seems to be confusing me. In 1995, the album was certified double platinum, but a year later, it was certified platinum.

According to the SNEP website, they currently certify like this:

• Gold - 50,000
• Platinum - 100,000
• 2x Platinum - 200,000
• 3x Platinum - 300,000
• Diamond - 500,000

Well, from reading the SNEP Wikipedia article, it seems as if they have re-done their certifications several times. In 1995-1996, this is what the certifications would have been like:

• Gold - 100,000
• Double Gold - 200,000
• Platinum - 300,000
• 2x Platinum - 600,000
• 3x Platinum - 900,000
• Diamond - 1,000,000

Does this mean that the album was certified for 900,000 copies in 1996? Or was the platinum certification in 1996 not an additional certification, but one that was retroactive to the album's release? Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 20:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't look at those links from work, but I'm guessing you're looking at certifications in two different countries, perhaps? Could there be multiple countries that fall under the umbrella of SNEP? Torchiest ^talk/_contribs 16:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Y2kcrazyjoker4, IMHO it is unhelpful to ask the same question at two different places, as you did with this one. It is better to ask it where it most logically fit in (which would be WT:CHARTS in this case) and simply point people to that place if needed. That keeps discussions focused and avoids that different people spend their valuable time answering the same thing. – IbLeo^(talk) 05:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Muze info

Product/CD info by Muze has been removed from Tower.com product pages, which are used as sources for review snippets. (ex. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...) Anyone feel like helping replace the Tower.com links with product pages from other sites, such as Cdwow, silverplatters or 7digital? Dan56 (talk) 22:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

{{album ratings}} — a new column

A while ago, I started a discussion over at Template_talk:Album_ratings#Narrow_Column_for_Citations_parameter.3F about possibly creating a narrow column for citations, because the citation actually references both the rating and the review. So citations don't necessarily need to be tagged on the end of a rating. The points that I had brought up were:

1. This would keep the ratings free from citation-clutter
2. Non-starred ratings, like B+ and Christgau images, wouldn't require parentheses around them, which seem to exist only to "push" the citations away (for example: B+ as opposed to (B+)^[1]
3. I've been seeing more and more articles (including the FA for Janet Jackson's Control) where a space is added between the rating and the citation. I currently do this with my own contributions

Note #3 is an apparent attempt by editors to increase ratings visibility. A third column that would host the citations would help to make the album ratings template easier to scan. Incidentally, I suggested the third column be an optional parameter. Thanks to IbLeo (talk · contribs) for suggesting I come here for discussion. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 06:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Not particularly keen--since entries in the Rating colum aren't all the same width, this would put the inline citations out on a limb, vertically aligned, instead of attached to content they relate to. To me, that seems a bit strange. But anyway, having just looked at a couple of example articles with your suggestion in mind, it strikes me the Source column is the one whose contents the citation should be attached to, not the Rating column. The citation relates to the source (and by implication, to ratings from that source, since that is what the table presents). That would remove the problem anyway, and give the ratings better visibility. Seems preferable to overcomplicating the table by increasing number of cols (and increasing width, a bit). PL290 (talk) 13:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not keen either, but I think it should remain attached to the rating as that is what is being confirmed by the reference. It's like if an article said something along the lines of:

Ira Robbins in Trouser Press, said "blah blah blah".

The reference for that would go after the quote (the equivalent of rating), not after Trouser Press (the equivalent of the source). --JD554 (talk) 13:26, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean up to a point, but isn't that mainly because in running prose, citations are typically positioned at the end of the sentence? So, you might equally get:

Ira Robbins said "blah blah blah" in Trouser Press.

PL290 (talk) 13:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Point well made on my bad example! However, WP:CITE#Inline citations says: "An inline citation should appear next to the material it supports." The information that needs supporting is the rating, not the fact there is a review. Otherwise we could have continued to use the old [link] method. If further information from that review is used in prose that would also have a citation next to it. It's not likely that Rolling Stone magazine's existence is going to be challanged, but the rating they gave an album is. --JD554 (talk) 13:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't fault your reasoning. So this has probably been a red herring and the point to note as far as this discussion's concerned is that neither of us is keen on the suggestion. PL290 (talk) 17:27, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. --JD554 (talk) 18:57, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

You guys make an excellent point: inline citations should be attached to the rating. I was easily swayed, just curious. Thanks for the replies. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 20:52, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Simple word is not taken as article page, but the disambiguation page has it.

I don't know if I can explain this well: I remember reading that for articles with a title like "Confessions", if there isn't an article called like that yet, when creating it, you don't need to specify in parenthesis what it is. For example "Confessions (album)". However in this case "Confessions" the article is a disambiguation page (is it one even if the article doesn't say so in the title?). I have seen disambiguation pages that are called "the title of the article (disambiguation)" and some like "Confessions" that don't. Is there a rule? Can I "move" the content of "Confessions" as it stands now, to a new page called "Confessions (disambiguation)"? Dollvalley (talk) 23:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It's more of a question for WikiProject Disambiguation than WikiProject Albums, but no the disambiguation page should stay at Confessions because there is no primary topic. Not all disambiguation pages use (disambiguation) in the title. I hope this answers your question. AnemoneProjectors 23:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It seems more, from what I've seen, who came first snatched the simple article title, as I haven't noticed many examples of article pages with "simple" titles being the biggest representative or most meaningful of the word. Dollvalley (talk) 23:42, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Usually the page is moved when more articles appear, but not always. Probably should be in most cases. But again this is about disambiguation, not albums! AnemoneProjectors 00:28, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Please see recent related discussion a bit further up this page. It confirms AnemoneProjectors' statement that the primary topic should be the subject of the article "without brackets". If there is no primary topic, it should be a disambiguation page. WP:D is the ruling guideline. – IbLeo^(talk) 04:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Are these album reviews reliable?

I apologize in advance for asking someone to do something which likens to doing my "homework", but I was having doubts about these review sites and was hoping for a second opinion as to their reliability. Quick background: I've found some English reviews for the Finnish album 12 Gauge (album) and I may need to rewrite the entire Reception section because of this (it currently uses German and Finnish reviews for the majority). I'm also very unsure what constitutes a blog since some of them look like "normal" websites (to me). But I would love to add some of these. So here goes:

1. Angry Metal Guy — is this a blog and unusable?
2. Metal Invader — ok review to use?
3. Keep It Metal — URL has the word "blog" in it, but is it a blog?
4. MetalEater — just double checking this site is ok to use
5. No Clean Singing — blog?

I really, really appreciate any help on this. If I should move this discussion to a help desk, do let me know. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:07, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Whether the sites are technically "blogs" doesn't really matter—"blog" is just a publishing format like "website" or "newspaper". Our guideline for album reviews is based on the site policy, Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources, although it's a little different since we're looking for opinions, not facts. What matters is whether the site has a reputation for being a professional music source. We usually don't consider sites reliable unless you can find other reliable sources that say they are. This discussion is an example of how to show reliability. All those sites look pretty low-budget so I doubt any of them will be considered reliable. —Gendralman (talk) 23:28, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Look "low budget" and therefore unreliable? Angry Metal Guy gets consistently high ratings in Google searches, has gotten high profile interviews, and reviews CDs from every major heavy metal label that there is (receives promo, gets interview access, etc.). Would a snazzier design make the same reviews more reliable? That's totally illogical. Angry Metal Guy has also been referenced on SMN News, Metal From Finland and Blabbermouth 1 2. It has also been referenced as a reliable news source on a variety of Wikipedia articles (not for reviews but for news). Anyway, that's my argument. --130.243.188.177 (talk) 14:25, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I explained what reliability is. Again, all that matters is whether it gets attention from other reliable sources. If AMG meets the criteria then it's fine, regardless of what it looks like. I was just making the point that "low-budget" sites are less likely to get attention from other news sources, that's just the way it is. —Gendralman (talk) 14:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responses. I ended up keeping Angry Metal Guy and MetalEater; the latter was written by a staff member, so I figured it was better than a user-submitted review. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:35, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Studio or EP or both?

So, if an album is comprised of all studio tracks, but it is considered an EP, is it not also a studio album? What if the band includes the EP in their count of studio albums...should we treat it as both an EP and a Studio album or just one or the other? My specific issue is with regards to Rush's upcoming album, Clockwork Angels. The band describes the album as their 20th studio album, but that must include an EP named Feedback. Should we consider Feedback both an EP and a studio album, or do we ignore the band and just call Clockwork Angels the 19th studio album without a citation?LedRush (talk) 14:59, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

A release can't really be both an EP and an album - EP means 'extended play', so it's an extended single format - essentially if it's marketed as an album it's an album, if it's marketed as an EP, it's an EP. If Feedback was marketed as an EP (I could see it being classed either way, although it clearly isn't really an EP in any meaningful sense of the term) then surely it's not counted as a full studio album? The only definitive criterion for deciding whether a release is an EP or album is how it's described/marketed - length, number of tracks, physical format, etc. overlap considerably.--Michig (talk) 16:24, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I understand your confusion–it's a real mess! The lead section of the current revision of Feedback states that "Feedback is a studio EP...", while the infobox says it's an album. Furthermore, in the current revision of the Rush discography, Feedback is listed under studio albums, bringing the count to 19, while at the same time the infobox says 18 studio albums and 1 EP (which is nowhere to be found in the article). Completely incoherent! So what is it—an EP or an album? According to Extended play, "When the Compact Disc became the dominant physical format, capacities increased, with a CD single usually having around 10–28 minutes of music, a CD EP up to 36 minutes, and an album generally 30–80 minutes." As Feedback clocks in at 27:08 I would say that for Wikipedia it is an EP and that the album article and Rush discography should be updated to reflect this. This is consistent with Allmusic] who also considers it an EP. Conclusion: Don't always listen to the band, they don't necessarily know what they are talking about (see WP:SPS)! – IbLeo^(talk) 17:42, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

How can we cite, for example, that Clockwork Angels is the band's 19th studio album, when all sources say it's the 20th? Do we just not mention it at all? Do we call it the band's 19th full length studio album (is that original research?)?LedRush (talk) 18:47, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

In short, yes, we say what it should be, if we need to say it at all. Do articles about albums really need to keep a count of "their nth album" when the count reaches such high numbers? Do other sources, aside from Rush's website, really bother to say it (since you are concerned about what "all sources say")? You could explain it in the article if you're worried another editor will try to fiddle with it, but I'd advise (1) waiting and see if that happens, and if it does, (2) address it with a hidden comment explaining the situation, because I can't see how a visible prose explanation would improve the article. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 22:49, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

On a related topic, the Rush navbox lists "Caravan" and "BU2B" as singles, but this article says "BU2B" is the b-side. This article seems to support that, though the digital definition of "b-side" is less clear. -Freekee (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Well that's an easy dilemma to avoid resolving! Navboxes should not contain redlinks. They are called navboxes because they help navigation to articles. They should not be used for the purpose of making lists; those belong in the Rush article. So those 2 redlinked singles can be removed. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 16:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Duet/collaborative albums

Should the artist names for such albums be seperated by "and" or "&", like on the Distant Relatives article? Dan56 (talk) 17:38, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

"and". See WP:&. – IbLeo^(talk) 17:47, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, in the case of Wu-Massacre, how should the artist section of the infobox be written? Is it how the artists are credited (Meth, Ghost & Rae) or their actual (stage)names (Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon)? Dan56 (talk) 04:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Remember the golden rule: The infobox is there to summarize the article, so it shouldn't provide any content that is not mentioned in the article. I don't know if there are any guidelines out there that indicates how to handle artist pseudonyms, but I would suggest you make this point clear in the lead section. Then the infobox could stay as-is, except that it should say "studio album by Meth, Ghost and Rae" per above MOS. – IbLeo^(talk) 11:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

no_lengths option in {{Track listing}}

FYI, there is currently a discussion on the merits of an option that would allow disabling the length column in the track listing template. – Cyrus XIII ^(talk) 14:54, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:RIAA Diamond award albums

There is an open discussion here regarding the naming of Category:RIAA Diamond award albums, and one of the issues raised is whether "diamond" is a RIAA certification or award. Participation from this project's members in order to help reach a consensus would be most welcome. Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)