Talk:Sky Ryders Drum and Bugle Corps

Encyclopedic quality

@Mpgilbertusa and GWFrog: Hi guys. I've been busy writing Nintendo history and such, sorry. I didn't mean to blow you off. I'm gonna give some pointers here, and I do not mean to sound terse or harsh or bossy, but just direct and literal. That's my way of being friendly and collaborating sometimes by default, just to try to handle business, and I would really like to open up more bandwidth besides that. I respect and admire you guys, and you're better at the history side. I've never been in any drum corps or music major, just studied it for fun. I'm as hard core on Wikipedia's rudiments as I am on the practice pad, and I've drilled these rudiments hard, hard, hard for years. ;) I got serious about Wikipedia just to write the biography of my drum teacher, Mitch Markovich. I bring articles to very high and successful standards, with the idea that they are sufficiently beyond reproach that they stand on their own, and nobody could ever tear them down.

Here are a few general truisms I've discovered about every Wikipedia article I've ever seen about a drum corps, without exception. The two main issues are extreme and grandiose detail (WP:FANCRUFT, WP:FANPOV, WP:PEACOCK, WP:DIRECTORY, WP:WEBHOST) and poor references (false references, poor references, no references, WP:EL, WP:RS). I'm not saying this to complain; I'm saying this because it's a huge challenge to move yourself from promotion and fandom, into the encyclopedia. It's like moving from the garage band to the drum corps (although in this case, one that has no audition standards), where you'll get removed easier than retaught.

The amount, and type, of detail of drum corps articles on Wikipedia range from the grotesquely delusionally unencyclopedic (gushingly promotional, based on fandom, rumors, marketing, and probably cribbed web site content) to the excessively detailed. Every single one of them needs to be gutted, usually totally emptied, and rewritten. The drum corps genre of Wikipedia article is absolutely the worst of the worst of this that I've ever seen, so we want to set a good standard here. But it's too disruptive of a task that's too far outside my domain. And it all comes down to notability. Just because someone else did it, doesn't mean we can do it (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). This article is relatively fact-minded but excessively detailed. This article currently reads like what the organization's own web site "history" page should be (WP:WEBHOST), which we should simply summarize the most world-famous highlights of, amongst many more additional sources besides. Instead, what we're going for is to establish why the corps is essential to the world (because nobody is entitled an article), or what the most reliable sources talk the most about them. That's not to say why they're the best, or being promotional, though there can be an objectively happy overlap. In fact, we're working like our lives depend upon the idea that nobody could ever even suspecting that we're fans. That's how neutral and selective we must be. That's a tough difference to discern. It must be written from a neutral point of view, or a totally dispassionate and factual mentality; and without undue weighting. It's as if someone is *not* a fan, but they're being shown why they should consider becoming a fan someday. And the rest, if it's actually factual, should go on an authoritative web site with published editorial standards, such as the org's own site. See (WP:FANCRUFT, WP:DIRECTORY).

GWFrog had asked me which false references I had deleted on this article. <ref>[http://www.allmusic.com/ AllMusic]</ref><ref>Various Drum Corps International Yearbooks</ref>. A simple base URL to a website is not a reference; it's an external link. The latter reference is a general concept, like....."are you serious? what were you thinking?" You may as well have written this: "See also: Stuff, Things." or "hint: figure it out, duh". Every single Wikipedia article I've seen that's related to drum corps has had <ref>www.dci.org</ref> in it, until I got there. So we're saying "hey guess what, this gigantic organization called DCI exists, with a gigantic web site, so go search it or whatever, good luck." And the latter reference here, was vastly worse than that, officially the worst I've ever seen. That's totally unencyclopedic and disallowed. {{citation needed}} would have been better. References are to be absolute and exact. See WP:CITATIONS WP:EL.

Let me know if I can clarify anything, because this stuff is hard. I don't have drum corps books or Modern Drummer myself, but I have veteran teachers who do. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 13:45, 20 January 2015 (UTC)