Wikipedia:Peer review/Dreaming of You (album)/archive4

Dreaming of You (album)

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because the last one did not received a review because I had too many open. I would like this article to be a "FA" status

Thanks, AJona1992 (talk) 20:34, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

{{doing}} Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:36, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

• One circular redirect (need to remove the link to the song, since it is just a redirect to this article). See here

• Notes Will get on it, once your review has been done. Thanks, AJona1992 (talk) 15:48, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks as always for your work on Selena related articles. Here are some suggestions for improvement - I think this article still has a long way to go before it would stand a chance at FAC.

Lead

• At FAC, all of the i's have to be dotted and all of the t's have to be crossed. Let's look at the first sentence of the the lead to start. It is:

  Dreaming of You is the sixth and final studio album and second posthumous album by Mexican American Tejano pop singer Selena, released on July 18, 1995, by EMI Records and EMI Latin.

• According to WP:LEAD the lead is a summary of the whole article and nothing should be in the lead only. However, I cannot find any statements in the body of the article that say this was her sixth and final studio album, or that it was her second posthumous album. I do note that there is the {{Selena}} template at the bottom, but it shows this is her fifth (not sixth) studio album from a major label (and her 12th if her 7 independent studio albums are counted). The template also lists an upcoming untitled Selena studio album, so is it even her "last" such album?
• Please also note that as a summary the lead does not need to have references except for direct quotations and as cites for extraordinary claims (as everything in the lead should be in the body of the article and cited there). It is OK to have refs in the lead, just not required in most cases.
• Second sentence of the lead is the album's re-release. My preference would be to put the most important things in the first paragraph of the lead and to also keep the lead somewhat chronological - this does not seem that important to me (why have it in the first paragraph at all) and chronologically it seems like it would be a better fit much latyer in the lead.
• Third sentence is Dreaming of You is known as a double album with previously unreleased English and Spanish language tracks and previously released tracks that were given a Caribbean remix with dance hall and reggae.[1] First, "is known as" makes no sense - the album is either a double album or it isn't (and I would link double album). Second, and I noted this in the earlier PR I did, the bit about dance hall and reggae is just awkward at the end of the sentence (yes, I know it was changed slightly from "like dance hall and reggae" before to "with dance hall and reggae now, but it is still not grammatical. FAs need a professional level of ENglish - see WP:WIAFA 1a.
• I still do not understand this Dreaming of You made the second-highest chart debut after Michael Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I.[2][3] Since they both debuted at number one, how can one be higher than the other? This needs to be clarified and reworded.
• The second and third paragraphs of the lead just seem to be a lot of it did really well when it was released and set this record and this other very slightly different record and this third record, and it sold this much in this time period and this much in a different period and and and... Agh. Pick the best sales stats and give those. Say that sales may have been underestimated because of the kinds of stores it was sold in. Pick the best one or two records and say those - again the lead is supposed to be an inviting and accessible overview of the whole article - this is too much detail. Were she alive, even Selena might get bored reading these paragraphs (was it also the top selling album for artists with only e and a in their one word names? ;-) )
• At the same time, the lead does not mention a lot of headers from table of contents. I saw nothing on the planned tour, or the artwork, or composition, to name a few points that should be in the lead.
• My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way

Production and development

• The article needs to tell its story in a clear and easy to follow manner, especially for people who do not already know a lot (or even a little) about Selena and her career. I always try to keep Providing context to the reader (PCR) in mind when writing. Although I know a lot about a topic (having done the research), I have to assume the average reader will know little or nothing about the topic.
• I think the story in the beginning of this section is that Selena was a Spanish language artist who wanted to record in English as well. All seven of her indie label albums had been in Spanish and when she signed with EMI, they wanted her to keep making Spanish records. She however wanted to cross-over and record in English. That said, I think the article needs to focus clearly on this album and the history of its development. I fail to see how knowing what festical Selena was singing at when she was signed to EMI helps provide context to the reader, nor am I clear why we have to know what Behar used to do before he was able to sign her for EMI. Plus I really do not understand how Behar, who is described as head of Sony stuff, is able to sign her for EMI (which as far as I know is not Sony). Was he really head of both a Sony branch and an EMI branch at the same time??
• Lots of problem sentences, let's look at one here: Behar immediately wanted to sign Selena to Capitol/EMI that same year, while Sony Music Latin was offering double the amount to Abraham Quintanilla Jr, for Selena.[8] Using both "immediately" and "that same year" is needlessly repetitive - only one needs to be in the sentence (I vote for immediately). Second, and more importantly, the article does not identify who Abraham is and needs to do so. I know from repeated exposure that he is Selena's father and manager, but a casual reader will not and should nbot have to click on a link to find that out.
• Give the year (and month) of release in Following the release of Amor Prohibido, she stated ...
• The article uses a block quote here but the MOS says to use that when there are about 4 or more lines of text in the block quote - here it is less than 1 full line on my monitor.
• Huh??? moment - the story is set in 1994, after the reelease of Amor Prohibido, when Selena cannot get a deal to do an English language record despite her successes. Then this sentence appears Selena was signed, less than twenty-four hours in Los Angeles, with SBK Records, a sub-division of EMI Group, in November 1993[12] to begin recording her first major English language album. First it has the nonsense phrase "less than 24 hrs in LA" (assume this means she was signed less than a day after she arrived there or something similar, but it is unclear now what it means). More importantly, it is the year before everything else that has been going on in the paragraph. Why was she so worried in 1994 when she was isgned in 1993 to do an English record? Seems to at least contradict itself.
• I think this sectionm needs to do a better job of explaining exactly what songs were finished before Selena's tragic death, which were finished after her death, and which were remixes of exisiting songs used to finish the album. I think the Amy Grant song that was never finished could also be added - giving the material a structure and telling a story would help.
• The song Only Love is not even included on this albuim, so it is difficult to see how a fair use sample of it can be included in this article.

General comments

• Watch WP:Overlinking - link once in the lead and once in the body (first time for each) at most (plus links in refs, captions, infobox)
• Similarly avoid linking common terms that add little to the reader's understanding - save links for important things for this article. Does the reader really need a link for "spoken word" to understand that?
• The language is really rough in a lot of places. I do not have time to do a copyedit or even to point them all out. One thing to try is printing the article out and reading it out loud slowly - sometimes that lets you hear problems you miss just reading online.
• Avoid needless repetition. Just in Produiction and development there are the following sentences
  • EMI relented and the recording sessions began.[8]
  • During late 1994, Selena began recording the first song for the album, "I Could Fall in Love".
  • Recording sessions for the album took place during 1994 to 1995 at several recording studios...
  • Selena recorded four songs by January 20, 1995, she began recording songs in late 1994.[16]
• Similarly the track listings for the original album, Japanese edition, and 20 Years of Music edition are all identical for the first 13 tracks - does the article really need to repeat these 13 tracks three times? Why just add a sentence saying the Japanese edition had the same 13 first tracks plus a bonus 14th track and give info on that? or the 20 Years could just add that the spoken liner notes and video were added as bonus tracks (like the lead already does).
• This may be a comprehensiveness issue, but it seems odd that according to the tables it did not chart in any other countries outside of the US (its gold status in Canada is mentioned)
• Or Release history has two big tables, but the release dates are all the same, so each table could be reduced to one sentence saying something like the album was released on DATE in [list of countries with refs]
• Make sure the sources used meet WP:RS. Are all the Amazons really reliable sources for release dates?
• Refs need to be super consistent - just looking at the current refs why is Billboard sometimes italicized and sometimes not, sometimes wikilinked and sometimes not, sometimes given with its publisher and sometimes not? This is checked carefully at FAC.
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:28, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing. Will get on all the issues shortly. AJona1992 (talk) 00:08, 14 July 2011 (UTC)