Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Discography of Final Fantasy VII/archive1

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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 User:SandyGeorgia 02:18, 28 September 2008 [1].

Discography of Final Fantasy VII[edit]

Nominator(s): PresN (talk)


Hi, long time listener, fist time caller. I'm trying here...something new, unfortunately. This, if it passes, will be the first "discography" article to be an FA rather than an FL. The reason that it is here is because most "discography" articles are a series of tables, whereas this article is a whole mess of text, structured as an article, with the only tables being collapsed tracklists.

The article is a current and recent GA, and has a completed peer review here. The article does not use date-linking in the article itself, to save on bluelinks, but does use them for consistency in the references, as 'cite web' links dates. Said references have been looked over by me to ensure they have all of the data required/possible. There is a single image in the article, used in a similar vein as a box cover or album cover would be used in a video game or album article, and has a single music clip, used to demonstrate the "MIDI" sound used in the original soundtrack rather than traditional cd-quality audio. All other fair use media has been removed.

Ealdgyth posted his usual reference questions at the PR, so I will answer them here to preempt any re-asking.

Whew. That's a long nomination, but I think (hope) that I've covered all of the bases. With that said, have at it! I'll be standing by to respond to any concerns. --PresN (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

comment more appropriate venue may be Wikipedia:Featured list candidates Fasach Nua (talk) 11:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, it's an article. Giggy (talk) 12:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few quick comments from Giggy

  • "He did, however, find the tracks to be "beautiful"" - why the however? It's not contradicting anything prior.
    • Reworded that sentence.
  • "who while feeling that the soundtrack to Final Fantasy VI was better," - is fear the best choice of word?
    • Umm...there's no 'fear' in that sentence.
      • Sorry, disregard, was skim reading too fast. Giggy (talk) 00:50, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and saying that "depending on how willing you are to spend money" they made the album worth purchasing" - not inherently a positive comment.... maybe change the context it's presented in.
    • Reworked sentence; it's not supposed to be entirely positive, he's saying that the other tracks are fluff, so it whether you want to spend that much money on three really good tracks.
  • Possibly just refer to reviewers by surname after you've named them in full once?
    • Why not, done.

Giggy (talk) 12:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • All concerns addressed. --PresN (talk) 16:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support; it's looking pretty good and I have no outstanding concerns. Giggy (talk) 13:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I am very impressed by the radical improvement of this article over time, from less than a start to its current condition, which I believe fits the criteria for a featured article; well written, minimal images, lots of reliable sources, and so on. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 20:50, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is hidden text throughout, and numerous WP:MSH issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Que? I'm not sure what you mean- the only hidden text (and by that I assume you mean the <!-- --> tags) is the "(see wikiproject albums)" tags that are automatically put in when you use an album infobox template. I'll take those out, is that what you meant? And I have no idea what you mean by heading issues; as far as I can tell I'm following all the rules for that. Could you specify? --PresN (talk) 21:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm sorry, but I don't know how to make it more clear, as there is extensive hidden text in almost every section, in track listing sections. And almost every section heading violates repeating words from higher in the hierarchy or the title, per WP:MSH. Since the article title is "Final Fantasy VII", those words should rarely (or never) be repeated in section headings. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:32, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ah, so you're saying you have a problem with the tracklists being collapsed? Well, I'm afraid I can't agree with you- on my (wide)screen, un-collapsing the tracklists take the article from being 6 page-downs long to 15- a 250% increase. As far as renaming the section headers to be a description of the album rather than the proper name of the album in order to avoid re-using the term "Final Fantasy VII"... sure, I can change that. --PresN (talk) 00:03, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Image:Final_Fantasy_VII_Original_Soundtrack.jpg‎ - needs a verifiable source per WP:IUP vis-a-vis WP:NFCC#6. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 04:14, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hmm, done, but this whole fair use nonsense is very self-contradictory. When you upload an image as an album cover, it labels the source as "highly recommended", not required. I believe this is because the actual source of the image, and the copyright holder, is not the site that the image was found at, or the person who scanned it in. As such, I've tagged it as coming from rpgfan.com- which it certainly could have come from, and is where I would have gotten it if I uploaded it, but I don't know where seancdaug got the image from 3 years ago, and I'm not sure how inventing a source or replacing an image with an identical image with a source is of any worth to Wikipedia or anyone. But hey, them's the rules, thanks for checking on it. Don't mean to yell at you, you do a good job, just grumbling. --PresN (talk) 04:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, the policies (IUP and NFCC) are in alignment; whoever writes the template/upload scripting just isn't reading them. ;) ЭLСОВВОLД talk 04:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • I'm still not persuaded on the reliablity of the following sources. Please not that to determine the reliablity of the site, we need to know what sort of fact checking they do. You can establish this by showing news articles that say the site is reliable/noteworthy/etc. or you can show a page on the site that gives their rules for submissions/etc. or you can show they are backed by a media company/university/institute, or you can show that the website gives its sources and methods, or there are some other ways that would work too. It's their reputation for reliabilty that needs to be demonstrated. Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches for further detailed information. And note that having a wikiproject say its reliable isn't enough.
Otherwise sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. And note I'm a she, not a he. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • "..show that they are backed by a media company/university/institute"
rpgamer.com- owned by Craveonline Media, LLC.
rpgfan.com - owned by Cerberus Media Group Inc.
    • Other
squareenixmusic.com- now back up, about page says that they have "achieved critical acclaim from famous composers, eminent producers, and industry sites", a claim that is backed up by their interviews page, listing interviews they have done with notable people such as Yasunori Mitsuda Thomas Boecker, producer of the Symphonic Game Music Concert series. Their submissions guidelines are here, in which they specifically say that they edit all reviews for factual accuracy.
    • soundtrackcentral.com- I could have sworn that they had a fact-checking policy up somewhere, but I can't find it now. I'm going to go ahead and remove everything taken from there, which fortunately is only a couple of sentences, though I'm not sure how "reliable" a source you really need for a review of a soundtrack album... Anyways, sorry about the she/he thing, I knew that, just slipped my mind. --PresN (talk) 21:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I just like teasing folks about it, it cracks me up sometimes how we assume that names ending in a vowel are female, names ending in a consonant are male. Anyway, on those media companies, are they well known? Or are they formed just to back those sites? on the squareenixmusic site, I think we'll leave that one out for other reviewers to decide for themselves. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:04, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Lord, the rabbit hole goes deeper. CraveOnline LLC is a subsidiary of AtomicOnline, LLC, which is a smallish media conglomerate that runs several dozen sites in three distinct areas (men 18-34, women 25-54, teens) with 13 million+ unique pageviews a month across their main sites. article talking about them. As for Cerberus Media Group Inc., I cannot find any information about it online; I have emailed the site owner to see what he can tell me. --PresN (talk) 03:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I don't know how helpful this will be but you may want to take a look at some game review sites for their take on the music. A lot of reviews critique the musical ambiance and I know IGN in particular has reviews of specific albums, though whether these particular albums are listed, I am not sure. Axem Titanium (talk) 13:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I have no outstanding concerns. The article addresses all of the albums nicely. However, I do believe this IGN article may be an interesting addition to the article. Guess which album is #1? Good job guys. -- Noj r (talk) 05:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ooh. That's nice! Thank you very much! Added to the article in a jiffy.--PresN (talk) 16:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your welcome : ) -- Noj r (talk) 23:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Everything looks in order to me, and it's a strong, well organized read.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 00:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - The prose is somewhat dense and muddy, especially with "Final Fantasy... Final Fantasy VII" as every fifth word in the lead. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Can we please get rid of all the collapsible sections... sometimes by literally getting rid of them, and sometimes I guess by rmving the collapsible option? For example, the "Track Listing" sections are lists, pure and simple, and should be moved off to separate pages. The collapsible option.. does that cause problems with WP:ACCESSIBILITY? Can sight impaired folks reaad all that via a reader? I'm feeling doubtful... I left a note at WT:ACCESS. Ling.Nut (talk—WP:3IAR) 03:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would have thought that if the "collapse" option made it unreadable to a reader, it would have been disabled a long time ago... also, I'm at a loss as to how I would go about removing the tracks of the albums in question to another article. --PresN (talk) 14:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They answered your question; it's not an issue for screen readers. --PresN (talk) 14:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments:
  • Leaning Oppose but it's time to go to bed now. More later.
  • Note that I struck the "leaning" bit but not the Oppose. Sorry. Ling.Nut (talk—WP:3IAR) 22:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The track listings, collapsible or not, are unaesthetic and distracting. Again I strongly suggest that we follow Wikipedia:Embedded list by moving them off to their own "list article". If this is an article, it's an extremely list-like one.
  • "Uematsu has not been involved in" ...who?
  • "Creation and influence".. you mean, who/what influenced its creation, or who/what did it influence? Suggest using more precise term...
  • "ranging from enthusiastic praises to disappointment" ...awkward.
  • "...composed by Nobuo Uematsu and produced by Uematsu and Minoru Akao. It was originally released on February 10, 1997 through DigiCube and later reissued directly by Square Enix on May 10, 2004. Composed by Nobuo Uematsu and produced by Uematsu and Minoru Akao" redundant. Nontrivial prose problems very early in the aricle.
  • "The original release has the catalog number of SSCX-10004, and the re-release has the catalog numbers of SQEX-10001~4." Trivial detail that bogs down prose... belongs in a footnote or delete. in fact, ditto for the next few sentences. A picture of his work space? <begin reductio ad absurdem>Next we'll have a collapsible list of all the illsutrations? </end> Ling.Nut (talk—WP:3IAR) 15:26, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Putting the tracklists in a seperate article from the albums is something I would very much oppose.
  • Uematsu is mentioned in the very first sentence of the article.
  • Renamed to Creation and Development.
  • Redundancy fixed.
  • Please tone down the sarcasm. I'll consider removing the material. --PresN (talk) 16:58, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, I did CTRL-C, CTRL-F, CTRL-V on the second instance of "Uematsu", and inadvertently copied the space after his name. That's why I didn't find the previous instance when searching. My mistake.
PresN, you say you would be opposed to rmving the lists, but you may want to consider the possibility that the various Wikipedia guidelines etc. are more important than our personal preferences. They exist by consensus, and generally exist for a valid reason. This is an instance of "Don't be afraid to kill your own baby", and axiom well-known to fiction writers. Ling.Nut (talk—WP:3IAR) 00:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Prose polishing throughout is required, as evidenced by these issues just in the lead. There are skilled word-smiths among editors in this field; please locate them, since you're probably too close to the text by now.

  • Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Hyphens now has a new example from your second sentence. Avoid multi-whopper adjectives (which should be hyphenated, in any case, when before the noun they qualify): "a four-CD soundtrack album" --> "a soundtrack album of four CDs". I see the adjective "single-disc" in the very next sentence, which is good.
  • "Piano Collections Final Fantasy VII, an album of piano arrangements of select pieces from the soundtrack was released in 2003 by DigiCube, and released again in 2004 by Square Enix." Comma required after "soundtrack" (it's a nested phrase). REreleased AGAIN? Can we do without "rereleased" altogether? There's a lot of releasing going on here; can you change one to "launching", and/or even another term? Consult your thesaurus.
  • The second paragraph is a real yawn. It's just a long long list, and is tedious to follow. This is the lead, which is meant to paint the big picture. I wonder whether it's kinder the readers and truer to WP's requirements for article structure to summarise the point here, which is that there was a succession of releases in blah blah, by a number of blah blah. Then something about how these are evidence of the popularity blah blah. Give the release details in a list further down. Bullets are more acceptable well away from the opening, BTW.
  • "The original music received very positive reviews, with reviewers finding many of the tunes to be memorable." Pity that "reviews/ers" is repeated. Please see these exercises in eradicating a gawky expresssion (with ... noun ... -ing).
  • Please audit for prompt repetitions throughout: other ... other. It may be OK here if there's no neat way of rewording, but I see the tendency to repeat elsewhere.
  • The last "also" is redundant. Tony (talk) 04:40, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've gone ahead and reworked the lead to try to follow your and others' suggestions; I'll continue the process with the rest of the article. --PresN (talk) 05:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Weak oppose - This is another one I found on the feedback needed template. In addition to finding help to polish the writing, I believe that deeper improvements are needed here. Keep in mind that I have limited experience with reviewing music articles.

  • "These are to date the only albums that Uematsu has been the sole composer;..." Feels like a word is missing, possibly of. I think it could be, "These are to date the only albums that Uematsu has composed by himself;..." If this is used, might want to tweak the following part to avoid having himself and him back-to-back.
  • To expand on Tony's opinion that the lead is bland, I would like to see more on the style of music featured on these discs throughout the article. There's a little on this in Creation and Development, but more would be great. For this to pass FAC, straight lists of albums and tracks are not enough. All music featured articles worth their salt discuss musical themes in some way, and I don't see why this one should be any different.
  • Creation and development: "There was a plan to use a 'famous vocalist' for the ending song as a 'theme song' for the game, but the plans were dropped due to time constraints and thematic concerns." Problem: we have plan and plans in the same sentence, which throws off the flow of the sentence. A fix is needed.
  • Albums: This would be a perfect place for the music description I requested earlier. That would be a lot more interesting than a bunch of release dates, track stats, and catalog numbers. I see a couple nice facts about artists as this section goes along; more of that would be great.
  • "The album (Advent Children Original Soundtrack) spans 26 tracks on 2 discs..." Numbers lower than 10 are usually spelled out, so this would optimally be two.
  • Reception and legacy: "Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack was very well received by critics." Very is redundant quite often, and I think it can be removed here. Hyphen for well received?
  • 20020200 music from FINAL FANTAST: Could you please remove the all caps?
  • I must admit that I feel slightly uncomfortable seeing only first names given in the squareenixmusic.com reviews. It doesn't fill me with confidence that the site is reliable.
  • I also agree with the other reviewers about the number of lists in the article. To paraphrase your own argument, this is FAC and not FLC. Having a track listing and infobox for every album just seems like overkill to me.

Overall, the article just doesn't wow me like a featured article should. Parts of it feel formulaic to me. I wish there could be more in here that's similar to the paragraph on One-Winged Angel. To me, that kind of information is what I'm looking for in a music FA. Good luck with providing it. Giants2008 (17-14) 04:02, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose I'm sorry, but I think all discographies should be featured list and not featured articles. They serve two different purposes, and there is very little uniformity besides being in the same type. Also, there is an incredible reliance on primary sourcing. I also don't think the formatting (with the constant use of "show" boxes) would be appropriate for a featured article. Sorry. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:30, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The article's title seems to suggest the article only deals with music from the video game Final Fantasy VII, as does the introductory sentence. I don't know if there's anything that can be done about that, but there should be a way of letting the reader instantly identify the article as one that deals with both the music of FF7 as well as that of other games and media of Compilarion of FF7. --Hydrokinetics12 (talk) 00:40, 27 September 2008 (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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