Talk:Jim Chappell/Archive 1

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

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This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

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Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Revision of September 2015

There had been a BLP box on this article for five years, with no discernible improvement during that time. The reason for this is straightforward -- there is virtually nothing out there that isn't directly or indirectly a primary source. (This includes the AllMusic biography, which appears to be based on information supplied either by Chappell or by his record company.) To address this problem, I re-wrote the article to make it about Chappell's work, not Chappell himself. NewYorkActuary (talk) 17:37, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a helpful distinction between Chappell's work and Chappell himself; his work is part of who he is, and avoiding any mention of basic biographical information (such as place of birth) doesn't improve the article. Also, it seems counterproductive to limit the discography table to just charting albums, when discographical information is not difficult to come by (certainly, in terms of design considerations, a prose summary of albums, including catalog numbers, is a very awkward way of presenting this information in comparison with a table). AMG does use artist bios as source material, but it has an editorial review process for its biographies. Furthermore, primary sources can be used for non-controversial BLP information; if need be, we could use Chappell's own biographical materials to provide elementary verification of e.g. his early life and training, unless there were some reason to think his own publicity materials were unreliable. So I think the most recent edits are probably a bridge too far, and some restoration of removed material would not be unreasonable. Chubbles (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I'll separately address the two main issues that I think you are raising.

First, the use of the primary-sourced biographical information. I agree that much of that material was not contentious. For example, if Chappell tells us that he was born and raised in Michigan, I'm perfectly willing to believe him. The same goes for his stint in Nashville and at UCLA. The problem I have is that there is nothing out there other than these little 'factoids' that Chappell has put into his press releases. And those little factoids are too vague to be used here. Chappell tells us he was born in Michigan. But where in Michigan? And when was he born? We can ask similar questions about Nashville. When did Chappell go to Nashville? How long did he stay there? If he was making a living at songwriting, who did he sell those songs to? Were any recorded? And similar questions arise with the UCLA job -- when and for how long? Plus, was he the rehearsal pianist or did he accompany the dance troupe in public performances? Did he play selections from the classical or jazz repertoire, or did he write his own music (or improvise it)? These are all legitimate questions for which we will never have an answer. Any Wikipedia editor who ambled by this article before the revision would have been well within his or her rights to tag-bomb the biographical section with vagueness tags (such as "when", "clarification needed", etc.). I disagree with your assessment that removing the AllMusic material didn't improve the article. It did improve the article, by removing material that was too vague to be encyclopedic.

Your second point has merit. When drafting the re-write, I was guided by that statement in the Manual of Style that advises us to limit ourselves to major works when discussing the biography of a musician (sorry, I don't have the precise link at hand). My thinking was that "major works" for Chappell would be the six charting albums, but maybe I was being too restrictive. I also agree that my prose summary was rather dry. Taken together, I think I could have done a better job of tracing the evolution of Chappell's style, even if that meant mentioning albums that didn't chart. Nonetheless, I see no plausible argument for considering any of the self-published work since 2002 as "major". Although I'll be happy to revise my prose and to expand my chart to include Chappell's non-charting albums, I would not discuss or list anything after the 1996 Gallery Records release. I would, of course, keep in the sentence about the existence of that recent work.

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify some of my thoughts. I look forward to your response. NewYorkActuary (talk) 04:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, I agree with you in that I don't support the inclusion of material that is too vague to be useful, but knowing that, say, a musician was born in Michigan isn't too vague to be useful. It's always nicer to know exactly where (or at least city - probably not hospital!), but if that's as precise as the sources are, it's still worthy of mention, as it provides at least some biographical context. I don't think we need to wait for the definitive tell-all biography to provide a couple of sentences of simple personal history, as long as they're supported by citations. As for his post-1996 output...album discographies are rarely useful when "selected"; the point of a discography like that is to provide a comprehensive list of full-length original material. If it's put out on one's own label, so be it. I would probably discourage much discussion of style on these albums in the prose section, since this is the hardest thing to integrate from sourcing, and style discussions for albums not well-reviewed tend to rely heavily on original research. (I generally leave out discussions of style almost entirely in my biography writeups, because it's just too difficult to be precise about and too subject to personal interpretation. Not that I complain when anyone adds good stylistic commentary!) But a simple listing in the discography table, I think, oughtn't be restricted; in fact, I tend to see such restrictions as editorial decisions which themselves tend toward WP:OR, since the criteria for selection are usually based on subjective judgments of importance. One other thought - the table is alright as is in terms of format, but if you wanted to standardize it a bit, the Billboard chart names could be moved into the top row, in a manner similar to e.g. Intro (R&B group)#Discography. Chubbles (talk) 07:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the additional comments. As you can see from the article, I did manage to find out when Chappell was born and I've added the bit about Michigan into the same parenthetical. I regret that we continue to disagree about the other biographical information. About the only thing that I would find remotely notable about Chappell's pre-1985 history would be the songwriting stint in Nashville. But did he actually write any songs? Did he actually sell any of them? As things stand right now, Chappell's stint in Nashville might have been nothing more than a month of pounding the pavement in an unsuccessful bid to either sell songs or get a songwriting contract. Or maybe his stay there was much more successful. And that's my concern here. Chappell's 'factoid' doesn't allow us to distinguish between these two very different scenarios and, thus, is too vague to be useful.
Regarding the discography, I am of the position that Chappell's career as a notable musician ended in 1996 and that his recent work does not merit a detailed listing in this biographical article. I do note, however, that if you take the eleven albums listed here, add in the approximately same number of recent self-issued albums, and then throw in a listing of the 'various artist' albums on which Chappell has appeared, you end up with one heck of a hefty stand-alone discography article. I have no desire to create that article myself, but perhaps someone who reads this discussion might be inspired to do it.
Thanks again for your comments. They helped me a great deal in improving my original write-up. NewYorkActuary (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Discography

So I finally found time to do a little adjusting of the discography. As I've noted before, I think it's important that we be comprehensive in listing Chappell's albums (that keeping an account of major works, such as full-length albums, of musicians is an inherently encyclopedic task), and so I've assembled as complete a list as I've been able to round up of his post-2003 albums. I've also done some adjusting to bring the organization of the chart data in line with general table guidelines. (It's my understanding that some people argue "weeks on chart" is too trivial to include, though I disagree in principle, and have not sought to remove this from the chart as it stands. I believe I have removed no information with these edits, only added.) Hope the edits are satisfactory. Chubbles (talk) 04:05, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Nice work on the table. Although I continue to disagree about the notability of the recent albums, I have to admit -- they look a lot less obtrusive sitting in the table than they did in the original listing. In all, I think we've put this article into much better shape than it was two months ago. I enjoyed working with you. NewYorkActuary (talk) 03:50, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, one of the guidelines that influences me here is WP:NOTEWORTHY; adding Chappell's albums to a discography list isn't the same as making new stand-alone articles for them (where people are much more likely to bring the general notability guidelines into play), and having them in a simple list doesn't create undue weight on his independent career over his more commercial releases. In any case, thank you as well for all your improvements so far. Chubbles (talk) 16:13, 3 November 2015 (UTC)