Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Eric B. & Rakim discography/archive1

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

The list was promoted by Dabomb87 17:36, 19 February 2012 [1].

Eric B. & Rakim discography[edit]

Eric B. & Rakim discography (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):
—Michael Jester (talk) 03:58, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because I have worked on this article extensively, and I feel it meets the featured list criteria. All comments are greatly appreciated. Thanks to everyone in advance.
—Michael Jester (talk) 03:58, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Quick comment – In one of the reference 7 cites, the owner of Allmusic is listed as Prometheus Global Media. Elsewhere in the refs, it's given as Rovi Corporation. Would you mind double-checking that one cite to make sure the owner is correct? Giants2008 (Talk) 04:30, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from —WP:PENGUIN · [ TALK ] 20:04, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments - great work on this list. I did a copy edit and improved the prose.
  • I saw that, and I have to disagree with the commas. Since there are appositives in the sentence commas should be there.
    —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 16:58, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tend to avoid commas in those areas, but feel free to restore them. I look at them as superfluous. —WP:PENGUIN · [ TALK ] 17:12, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like the lead sentence to list the releases in order as they appear in the list/table of contents. In other words, just switch around "nine music videos" and "fifteen singles".
  • It might be a good idea to say who the group is compose of maybe in the first sentence? That might get a bit too run-on, but seeing how this is a duo, it wouldn't be bad.
    • Wouldn't it sound repetitive saying "Eric B. & Rakim, a group made up of Eric B. & Rakim,"?
      —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 16:58, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "From 2001 to 2010, five compilation albums have been released" - I'm not sure about this, but don't we have some MOS:NUM policy on this—that we use endashes to write a range, so like "In 2001–10, five compilation albums were released" Nevermind, reread WP:YEAR.
  • In the Music video section, is "Unknown" the name of a director? If not, then wouldn't people confuse the word for one? Consider using dashes in its place and have a note at the bottom of the table maybe?

End of comments. Thank you. —WP:PENGUIN · [ TALK ] 10:13, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support and happy holidays! —WP:PENGUIN · [ TALK ] 20:04, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you, WP, for taking time to review this article, and hope you have a happy holidays as well!
      —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 20:52, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from I Am Rufus • Conversation is a beautiful thing. 18:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments - I have very few issues with the page - however, there are still a few things I am not sure about.

Apart from that, the page is excellent. I Am Rufus • Conversation is a beautiful thing. 13:07, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support – excellent page. Great work! I Am Rufus • Conversation is a beautiful thing. 18:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 08:27, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments

The Rambling Man (talk) 19:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Goodraise (talk · contribs)
  • No picture?
    • I have not found a picture that I can use. I've checked Flickr and Google Image Advanced Search.
      —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 00:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Disappointing, but I suppose a picture isn't absolutely necessary for this kind of page.
  • "None of the albums charted." – Exchanging the for these might make this a little bit clearer.
  • I don't use a screen reader, but I suspect users of such software are likely to miss explanatory text to a table if that text is stored in the very last line of that table.
  • The see also section is redundant to the navigational template. It should be removed. (See WP:SEEALSO.)
  • Allmusic often uses > in place of dashes or colons. They should be replaced. (See MOS:QUOTE.)
    • I'm confused? I use ">" in the Allmusic references.
      —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 00:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reference titles are quoted text. When quoting text, we adjust it to our house style. For instance, we don't keep ALLCAPS for words that aren't abbreviations. Likewise, we shouldn't keep website specific styles, like using > instead of dashes.
        • The Allmusic references are fine. There is no ">" or dash in the title on the webpage; ">" has been used for I don't know how long. It's never been a problem before.
          —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 03:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • It's a problem now.
            • How? The use of ">" also helps clarity of the article. Having "Classic – Eric B. & Rakim – Overview" makes it looks like the main article is "Classic", then I clicked "Eric B. & Rakim", then clicked on "overview", which not the case. The use of ">" makes it known by everyone that the title of the page is "Classic – Eric B. & Rakim" and the sub-section "Overview" is clicked.
              • Having a consistent style across Wikipedia or at least across individual articles is desirable, if only to make us seem more professional. Using greater-than signs this way is highly unorthodox. But what do I know. Let's just dump the MoS and do whatever we please.

Goodraise 00:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Revisited. Goodraise 02:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Revisited. Goodraise 03:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Revisited. Goodraise 14:33, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Revisited. Goodraise 05:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Revisited. Goodraise 21:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
TRM asked me to take a look at the question of dashes, and I'd like to make a couple of observations:
  • Visually-impaired users are generally quite savvy about the use of abbreviations, so I'd generally expect most visitors to assume that a dash meant "no value" (or more specifically in this case "did not chart") because it's such a common usage of the dash both here and on other websites. As a result, I would be much less concerned about anyone missing the key in this particular case.
  • The recommended style at DISCOG has taken on board so many improvements to meet accessibility concerns, that it seems almost churlish to point to the dashes when there has been so much effort put into decent captions, column and row headers, accessible colour schemes, proper lists, etc.

It would be very best practice to place an informative key immediately before the table that it refers to, so Goodraise is not wrong to raise the issue. You could suggest removing the last line of the table and placing it an explanatory sentence before, but frankly, I think there's so little to be gained in explaining such a common meaning that I'd prefer to congratulate the nominator for their diligence in meeting so many other important aspects. I would certainly support this nomination on accessibility grounds; it's really almost as good as it gets (well, you know I'd prefer the year in each row, rather than row-spanned, but that's minor). For the record, I think all of the contributions here have been valuable, and I'm heartened by the amount of collegial work that goes into this process. I hope I haven't trod on anyone's toes with my comments as I appreciate the effort the nominators and reviewers put in. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 21:52, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At issue here aren't the dashes, or the doubtful necessity of explaining them, or where such explanations should be placed. It's where such explanations should not be placed. While these particular explanations may not be crucial to the understanding of the tables in this article, there are lots of tables on Wikipedia which cannot be understood without proper explanations. Featured lists serve as examples. Any imperfections we tolerate in them may, and often will, propagate to other lists. Therefore, "almost as good as it gets" isn't good enough as far as I'm concerned. Goodraise 23:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that featured lists are used for examples. With that being said, a FL discography is an example for other discography articles. So, with that being said, it should be good enough. I highly, highly doubt someone is going to use a discography article to model something like list of castles in England (something that needs a key to describe the table). That user is going to model their list with another article within that WikiProject.
—Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 04:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You are mistaken if you believe that featured lists only influence lists of their particular kind. To give just one of many examples: An editor pioneering a type of list is likely to look at featured lists of other types for guidance. Goodraise 14:33, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've never seen something—or heard of something—like that. Why would a user try to base a list of castles article off a hip hop group's discography page? If one is going to attempt to bring a list-class article to featured list, they're going to model it off of a similar list.
—Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 21:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Have you ever been to a restaurant? If so, have you ever ordered less than the whole menu? It may be hard to believe, but it's possible. Goodraise 05:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not a restaurant. Anywho, you're obviously not going to change you mind no matter what I say, so I'm going to stop trying to convince you. I do appreciate your other comments however.
—Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 06:12, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support - If RexxS says that it's not a big deal to have the dash explanation at the bottom, then I'm willing to look past it, though I agree that table explanations should be before the table, not after it. The list as a whole appears to be on the same level of other DISCOG FLs. Note that you have a bunch of redirect links, which should be changed if they were not intentional- specifically, (in order) R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, Dutch, New Zealand, Dutch, New Zealand Singles Chart, Swedish, and Hot Rap Tracks in the lead; in the first table the NL, NZ, SWE, CD, CS, and LP links; CD in the 2nd table; US Rap, NL, and NZ in the 3rd table; NL and NZ in the 4th; and The Official Charts Company in the references. Eric B. and Gold in the template at the bottom, too. Some of these are just capitalization errors, so I doubt they're on purpose. It's not worth opposing over, but you should get them fixed. Also, consider archiving your links with web.archive.org or webcitation.org - it's a pain, but websites move, change, and die over time, and your citations then turn into deadlinks- don't let it happen to you! --PresN 21:04, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you PresN for your comments. I believe I have address all your comments. I have started to archive most of the links. Some of the archived pages are messed up in someway, so all links in this article will have the archiveurl parameter. I do have one question though. Why is it bad to have redirects in articles?
—Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 03:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here you go: WP:NOTBROKEN. Goodraise 13:15, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Goodrasise. I'll read it when I get home.
—Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 17:22, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
NOTBROKEN actually is telling you not to "fix" redirects- my counterarguement is since double redirects don't work, you're relying on people fixing the redirects when they rename the target page- if you link to Compact disc, which redirects to Compact Disc, and someone moves that page to CD (disc), your link gets broken. More importantly, though, in my opinion, is that if you have a lot of redirects there's a strong chance that you don't know for certain that your links are all going where you meant to. That's why I don't oppose for redirects, or even require that you "fix" them, but I do prefer at the FL/FA level that editors know for sure what they're linking to. --PresN 20:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, definitely use the archiveurl parameter- webarchive tends to drop the page style from websites, so you get the text but poorly formatted; webcitation tends to do better, but you have to ask for it first. It's just better than being left with nothing if the link goes down. You can also, if you like, add in |deadurl=no, which formats the citation as "url, archived at archiveurl on archivedate" instead of "archivelink, archived from the original on blah"- totally optional, though. --PresN 20:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments (I only read the lede)

  • I think webcitation.org is down so I'm looking at the original for Ref 1. Eric B. & Rakim formed and were signed by Zakia Records in 1985.[1] The following year, the duo signed a deal with 4th & B'way Records. is a bit clumsy. For the first sentence, it doesn't quite say they were signed by Zakia, but that their first single was released by Zakia in 1986. For the uneducated, what does "signed" mean? With the second sentence, what is meant by "deal"?
  • It would be interesting to see how an album "spawn"s!

That's it. Matthewedwards :  Chat  14:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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