Talk:Indie folk

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 April 2021 and 21 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Panopit. Peer reviewers: Alteevo.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:25, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Maybe April

Plenty of sources say this group is indie folk. That they're described as "country indie folk" still means they're "indie folk".--Tomwsulcer (talk) 10:15, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@Tomwsulcer: Hello and apologies for the belatedness and length of this reply. Please note that I had neither objected to the number of sources provided nor contested their reliability. Putting aside the primary quote issue present in the Billboard article, the problem common to both cited sources is that they use the same insufficiently explicit wording in describing the relation of genre to artist. In the realm of music genres, such wording can manifest itself in several ways: it often arises from an author, in writing about a musical work, describing abstract elements ("feel", "mood", "edge"); parts that do not comprise its entirety (rhythm, chorus, break); using adjectival forms ("bluesy", "funky", "jazzy"); or other non-definitive wording ("influenced by", "has elements of", "-inspired"). All of these are virtually always insufficiently explicit, and citing sources that use such inexplicit language will often result in misrepresenting whatever the author has written, at the risk of violating WP:STICKTOSOURCE. Another form of insufficiently explicit wording may occur when an author, in attributing a music style to an artist or musical work, strings together multiple genres in such a way that their intended meaning is vague, which is unfortunately the issue that both of the Maybe April sources suffer from. (The concept of non-definitive language in relation to music is well-detailed in WP:EXPLICITGENRES, which I would strongly encourage you to look at.) The description "country indie folk" has multiple interpretations, none of which are necessarily intended by the author. The intended meaning may be "folk music (traditional or contemporary) that is influenced by both country and indie music" or, what I suspect is most likely, an indication that the author has identified qualities or characteristics of country, indie, and folk music in the output of Maybe April, but does not wish to definitively identify them with any of those styles. A third possibility, the one you apparently hold to be correct, is that the author means "indie folk that is country-influenced"; however, this is nothing more than your original, subjective interpretation. All of these, including the one which I consider most likely, must be disregarded, as they are the result of inferring meanings not explicitly given in the text. If the description was instead "Maybe April, a rising indie folk band known for its country-inspired instrumentation" or something similar, the intended meaning would be clear, and this issue would not come into play.

In the future, please respect the generally agreed-upon process of achieving consensus when editing disagreements arise; restoring your preferred version after you have been reverted is almost always seen as disrespecting consensus. Instructing me to "make a case on talk page" in order to preserve the status quo is a reversal of this process (BRD, not BDR); the burden is on you, should you wish to make a change that is not agreed with, to seek a compromise through discussion, not the other way around.

In lieu of performing a revert, I first attempted to find a reliable source explicitly describing the band as indie folk, to no avail. This likely means that either the group is indie folk but has not yet attained a level of notability at which a reliable source would make note of that fact, or that the group's music, while not unrelated to indie folk, would not be classified as an example of the genre. In either case, Maybe April should not be added to the list of artists until a reliable source can be found that directly calls the band indie folk. Thank you for your understanding. LifeofTau 04:58, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh nonsense. You have a predetermined view about what is and isn't indie folk. It is not us as Wikipedians who define genres, but the sources, and there are numerous sources describing Maybe April as indie folk such as here and here plus many more in trade announcements such as here and here and here and here. Whether it's Americana indie-folk or country-indie-folk, it's still indie folk.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 09:12, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

@Tomwsulcer: Your continued reinstating of your preferred version demonstrates that you do not intend to respect the generally-accepted consensus process. Frankly put, your personal opinion is entirely irrelevant to the situation; regardless of however long your tenure on this website is—as long as your change does not have consensus, it is a disruptive edit that cannot and will not remain implemented. Any further attempts to reintroduce original research without consensus will not be tolerated. Begin an RfC if you feel strongly enough about this, but repeatedly restoring contested content is an incredibly poor method for achieving your desired outcome.

To address your reply, I have yet to listen to a single note of Maybe April's music; everything written about the sources in my reply is based entirely on the specific language used in the relevant text. I am entirely open to the possibility that Maybe April is indeed an indie folk band—if this was not the case, as you have insinuated, I would not have conducted research specifically to find reliable sources demonstrating such (as noted in my previous comment). Your "trade announcements" consist of Revolvy, a well-known WP:MIRROR of Wikipedia that cannot be cited under any circumstance, and three promotional websites that are unreliable (I can explain why if you are interested, but it is mostly irrelevant as they all use the same ambiguous language, boiling everything down to that single issue). I understand that music-related articles are a relatively new area for you, which is why it may be of benefit to heed the advice of those who have spent most of their time editing pages such as these. Please understand that the description "indie country folk" is ambiguous, and inserting your own personal interpretation into the article as fact is engaging in original research, because you are arbitrarily selecting the final two words and assuming that the author intends for them to be a single compound word. That is akin to reading a book in which the author writes of someone's "violet-red-orange shirt" and concluding that they mean the shirt is a purplish red-orange. Again, I urge you to read WP:EXPLICITGENRES if you haven't already—the concept of explicit wording is not something I just concocted for convenience's sake to support a "predetermined view"; it is generally accepted among music editors and explains why not just any sentence mentioning both musical work x and genre y in the same sentence can be used to support x being an example of y.

It is evident that other editors have expressed exasperation at your apparent habit of disregarding BRD whenever you believe your addition is "right" and in your apparent belief that any addition of references must not be reverted unless there is a consensus for the revert itself . You will find that this practice and belief are not supported by any policy or guideline and actively work against the goals of this website. If this is how you you choose to conduct yourself on Wikipedia, you will likely continue to receive pushback from other editors against your behavior. In the interest of more amicably resolving this dispute, I am requesting a third opinion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#Third opinion(s) requested for editing dispute at indie folk, where I have attempted to describe the matter in as neutral a manner as possible so as to avoid canvassing. Again, respect the consensus process and refrain from reintroducing original research without consensus; it will not be tolerated. LifeofTau 03:17, 4 August 2018 (UTC)