Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/12 Gauge (album)/archive1

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

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 13:40, 15 February 2011 [1].

12 Gauge (album)[edit]

Nominator(s): Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:15, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it exemplifies a well-researched and well-written music album article on Wikipedia. The article itself has been absolutely stable since its GAN. The information provided within the article showcases nearly every possible bit of information on the creation of the album without going into drastically over-detailed passages. I have read several FA-rated album articles and I feel 12 Gauge (album) is something that can be molded into an even better article. Thank you for your time. Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 23:15, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disambig/External Link check - no dabs or dead external links. --Pres N 01:23, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Prose not good enough. Here are examples at the top; I can't imagine it gets better after this most exposed part of the article:

Why are those commonly known countries linked at the top. "Finish" maybe, but please not "United States", "Europe", "Japan" et al. "melodic death metal" is the stand-out link, along with the band's name; they shouldn't be diluted by useless blue. I'm trying to work out how to avoid bunching "Finish" and "melodic death metal", but I can't see a way; it's ok.
Don't we say "recording" nowadays, since vinyl records hit the can? "to create a record that had more elements of thrash metal than their previous records". Can the close rep. of "record/s" be avoided?
"Lead guitarist Antti Kokko composed all but two tracks, the latter which were composed by"—"the latter which" is a problem. Do you mean "all but two tracks, which were composed by"?
Ungainly noun + -ing: "Despite guitarist and lead vocalist Pekka Kokko employing higher vocals on their last release". Despite the use of ... by ...?
Redundant wording ("a mix of") and poor logical connection ("though"): "The album received generally favorable reviews by a mix of European and American critics, though a minority considered it better than either of its immediate predecessors, For the Revolution or The Black Waltz." Tony (talk) 08:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tony! I'm honored you took a look at this article. I read on your profile how you "review the prose of nominations by analysing the weaknesses in a sample of the text as representative of the whole", and, along with everything else you wrote, I now better understand where you're coming from. I am excited to be a part of something so professional; you guys really take Wikipedia to the highest level, and if I can't thrust this article to that standard, then so be it, but I will absolutely give it my best effort! Thank you for your comments; the attention to detail was wonderful. I took it upon myself to revise the entire article in accordance with some of your suggestions, trimming the fat, so to speak.

In regards to your notes:

The release dates for these countries was "padding". They simply aren't necessary, so I removed them entirely. In an attempt to separate out the "blue" a bit, I moved the first [[Finnish]] link to the occurrence "Finland" in the second paragraph. I can move it back to the beginning (the first occurrence) if you think that is better.
That's a great point. "Record" is used almost colloquially, but to be more literal, I've changed all noun occurrences to "album" or "recording". "Vinyl" is still used where appropriate.

3–5. I took these suggestions and used them as an "idea" of what FA level writing should be like. I've corrected these sentences and followed through by editing the entire article with your suggestions in mind. I know the article is now tighter (and lighter?) and less grammatically awkward than previously; I can only hope its standard has been raised in doing so! If you find the time to at least take a look at the lead one more time and let me know if it was improved or not, I would be so grateful. Thanks Tony! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The rationale on File:Pekka kokko 12 gauge music video.png is not particularly useful. A specific rationale explaining what this image is adding to this article is needed. J Milburn (talk) 18:23, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi J Milburn, thank you for catching this. I updated the "purpose" within the rationale in hopes that it explains what the image is adding: as an illustration to the text discussing the camera's effects in the video. I also uploaded the image a short while before I became far better at reducing image sizes (or uploading them at reduced sizes in the first place), so I also took care of this. Thank you so much for catching this! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 21:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Chzz

(above changed to L4 subsection, for clarity; if that's a bad idea, pls remove the L4 and change back to ''' Chzz ► 18:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]

Antti Kokko was the main songwriter for 12 Gauge, writing riffs and melodies in his home, which were then worked on with the band in their rehearsal space - the source for this says, Usually Antti has made something in his home and then we process the song in our training camp. But I have done some songs as well as Marco. We add together the drums and basses etc. I think this might be drawing too much of a conclusion, to assert that he wrote "riffs and melodies" - I don't think that specific claim is in the source. I was actually considering how best to rewrite the sentence, to avoid "worked on"; I was thinking of Antti Kokko was the primary songwriter for 12 Gauge, writing riffs and melodies in his home, which were then developed by the band in their rehearsal space - but, as I'm not sure the claims are verifiable, I thought I'd ask here instead.
Two songs were composed on keyboard:[2] "Godeye" and "Sacramentum".[3] - I can't see any point to the ref [2], which actually only seems to say, "in very rare cases a keyboard". If the sleeve note does indeed verify that both those tracks (and only those tracks) were composed on keyboard, then just ref 3 should suffice.
Several of the guitar techniques used on the album were given names - there is no reference to show this; the references show a dictionary definition, and a link to a YouTube showing the technique, but there is nothing to verify that these names were given to the techniques. Who gave them these names - the band?
All web links have the link inside "quotation marks", except for the streaming videos; I would think these should be consistent.
Some of the web links have clumsy double quotation-marks, for example "Kalmah to Shoot New Music Video for "12 Gauge"". - I believe there are ways around this; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotations within quotations. Chzz ► 16:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Chzz, thank you so much for your time in making these comments. I have addressed them as follows:

The source actually did specify that most of the songs were "based on Antti's riffs and melodies". So what I did was put quotation marks around the phrase "riffs and melodies" and added the quote to the reference. However, adding the quote to the reference is probably not needed, right? For one, it possibly confuses other ten or so citations for that one reference. So maybe I should just remove the quote from the reference. I loved your word choices, so I went ahead and used them ("primary" and "developed by").
Great catch, this is a bit of awkward research on my part. I have the liner notes and nowhere in there does it say that Marco Sneck composed "on the keyboard". It does credit him as songwriter for two songs, but he could have composed them on a harmonica for all I know. I undoubtedly took information from one source (liner notes) and combined it with info from a second source ("in very rare cases a keyboard") to make my own conclusion... an WP:ORIGINAL SYN. Mea culpa! I rewrote this part, eliminating any parts about the "keyboard", since it is ultimately unimportant.
I broke the one video reference into three parts and added quote parameters to each. I rewrote the sentences to avoid claiming the Kalmah actually came up with the names, since I guess we really don't know! Because this is a video, I'm having difficulty determining where I'm not drawing conclusions. I rewrote everything also to avoid any potential WP:OR, but this is a gray area for me. When I watch the video, it's perfectly clear to me, but unlike a written article, there are no words that actually specify what each Finnish word is referencing. Do you think I'm okay here, or not?
Regarding web links inside quotation marks, another great catch! This seems to be an inconsistency between templates. I started a discussion on the Cite video template talk page, but in the meantime, I manually added quotation marks to the video titles. I cannot remove qms from any of the {{cite web}} templates.
Similarly, the double quotation marks seem to be an issue I can't resolve immediately. In the meantime, I switched out all quotation marks within the title= parameters to single quotation marks (as they should be, at any rate), and as a test, I added a space, and that failed. Just now, I tried adding {{s}} and {{space}} templates in the hopes of creating an easier-to-read "qm within qm" issue. This is impossible (I think) for me to resolve; I started a discussion on the MOS talk page regarding this and offered a possible template solution.

I hope I have responded to all of your suggestions accordingly! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 04:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The solution to spacing out the single and double quotation marks within a template was suggested by JohnBlackburne (talk · contribs) on my discussion: simply affix a   at the end of the parameter. Works like a charm. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 18:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

a) I don't think it necessary to quote "riffs and melodies", no. b) My very pedantic issue was that SOURCE: Usually Antti has made something in his home + SOURCE:Most of those songs are based on Antti’s riffs and melodies does not necessarily add up to ARTICLE:Antti Kokko [...] writing "riffs and melodies" at his home, which were then developed. We are inferring that the 'something' was the riffs and melodies, I think? I agree, this is pedantic, so feel free to ignore me; really, I just wanted to try and clarify my concern - but, it is pretty trivial.
Cool. Happy with that.
I am not confident enough to proffer a definitive opinion; if I had to choose, I would err on the side of caution and not add that info. But, please, ask a more experienced FACer about that specific point, later in the process, or on some appropriate noticeboard, if you can find someone with a clue. (Sorry to remain grey)
Great, fixed, thanks. Common problem, with template disparities; personally, I just use {{citation}} for everything to avoid that very issue.
Sounds like you're fixing this; good stuff. Chzz ► 19:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Meta-comments: My comments were based on a quite brief study of the article, and were by no means comprehensive; I just fancied poking around here in FAR, noticed a few points, and thus stated them here. I hope to have helped, albeit in an extremely minor way. I am extremely grateful to Keraunoscopia (and all other editors) who make the effort to create such beautiful articles. It absolutely is worthwhile. Keep up the fantastic work. Feel free to ask me stuff on my talk, any time. Chzz ► 19:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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