Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Nothing to My Name/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 promoted by Karanacs 17:39, 2 March 2010 [1].

Nothing to My Name edit

Nominator(s): rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Featured article candidates/Nothing to My Name/archive1

A short but in-depth article on an old but important song. It's been through GA and PR, and I believe it's as comprehensive as it is ever going to be (information on sales and 'chart performance' is difficult to find for music in China even today, much less 20 years ago—I'm not sure if charts even existed). It might not quite fit the templatic form of many music articles, but its current form seems to be working fine for what it is. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: No dab links, external links and alt text seem fine. Second image is tagged appropriately - I'll leave the first for someone with more knowledge of fair-use rules. Contractions should not be used in article text - please remove "couldn't". Nikkimaria (talk) 14:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't share your views on contractions, but in this case it doesn't make much difference to the flow of the article and it's not worth making a big deal over, so changed. Thanks for your review, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Media review: Two images. Alt text provided for both.

File:CuiJian blindfold.JPG: Single cover (fair use), used as main infobox image.

Usage: Good, standard.
Rationale: Good.
Alt text: Good. Please provide English translation or prose explanation of the Chinese characters. The vast majority of the alt-text audience will have no knowledge of Chinese, and it is not immediately self-evident that the characters give the song title and performer's name (they do, right?).

File:CuiJian1 2007 Hohaiyan.jpg: Cui Jian in performance.

License: CC-SA 2.0. Verified.
Quality: Good.

One audio sample (fair use): File:YiWuSuoYou sample.ogg. Selection is standard and good.~~, but there are two problems:~~

~~It is too long at 35 seconds. We draw a hard line at 30 seconds.~~

~~The rationale must specify the copyright holder.~~—DCGeist (talk) 22:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the review. I've added more alt text for the image and copyright information for the sound clip. I think I can cut it off at about 22 seconds without really losing anything (i.e., it would still contain all the stuff I wanted to point out) so ~~I will do that shortly.~~ rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC) I've uploaded a new version, at 24 seconds, and deleted all the old versions. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Looks great.—DCGeist (talk) 03:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - Regarding the alt text, I actually removed this piece from the text, as I explained at my talk page: WP:ALT#Verifiability requires that alt text be verifiable for a non-expert from the image, and I doubt that a non-expert can verify the English translation from that Chinese text. Also see the examples at WP:ALT#Text, which do not contain translations either. Ucucha 01:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - It looks like Eubilides agrees with that. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        I think the alt text, as it now stands, is excellent.—DCGeist (talk) 03:24, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Queries
- ~~Can we tone down the lead image? Why are we specifying a large image size rather than letting Preferences handle it? On my screen, it dominates over half of the page horizontally.~~
- ~~Can you explain the editorial decision behind all of the Mandarin text?~~ Generally I see translations of the title of the work, but you have it sprinkled all over. Consider that it is mostly a visual distration to most readers. --Andy Walsh (talk) 02:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think inclusion of the original lyrics is warranted, as translations are always sketchy and some stylistic stuff is often lost in the conversion. The mood and register of the original Chinese cannot be quite captured in English translation. I'm a linguist and read a lot of journal articles in a couple languages, and I can attest that it's quite frustrating when someone gives something (whether it's the quote, a name of a source, etc.) only in translation even though you want to see what it is in the original language. Finally, given the subject matter of this article, I don't think it's accurate that it will be "visual distraction" to most readers, just to many.
    - Pardon me if I misspoke—Mandarin would be the spoken dialect and the writing is referred to as Chinese. Is that correct? --Andy Walsh (talk) 04:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - Technically yes, but it's not a problem :) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I have removed two other unnecessary bits of Chinese, though, that weren't lyrics. (The Chinese for "father of Chinese rock" is a common expression but not really needed here; the Chinese name of the album this appeared on is something I added before there was an article about it on en-wiki, but now that there's an article it's not necessary here.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've removed the forced image size from the lead image so it just goes to the default. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I enjoyed reading this and it brought a tear to my eye. It's nicely written and well-sourced. A few minor points: I would remove as many refs as possible from inside sentences, as they're quite distracting. I also don't like to see multiple footnotes next to each other; I prefer to see them combined between one set of refs tags, mostly for aesthetic reasons but also because multiple footnotes can look as though there's something contentious going on, and a whole bunch of refs are needed to settle it. Also, if I were writing it, I would consider placing the section called "Lyrics and meaning" higher, along with the sample; it was a little bit frustrating as I was reading about where and when performed, and the impact of it, still not having heard it or knowing much about what it said. But these are issues that boil down to editorial preference. Overall, I really enjoyed it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 16:45, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the suggestions. Cleaning up the footnotes should be pretty easy. Reorganizing the sections will take a bit more work, but I'll brainstorm for a while and then see what I might be able to do. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Source comments Everything fine. One nitpick though: Why no infobox? It helps with condensing info and for solidifying the non-free cover art's inclusion. RB88 (T) 12:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I reviewed this at Peer Review and am having another look through it now. I would echo SlimVirgin's feedback above about the citations (and the tears). Also agree that an infobox would be useful. Will report back here later. --JN 466 13:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- I chose not to use an infobox because I didn't think it would impart much information that's not already evident—especially in the case of a song like this, where a lot of typical "infobox-y" material is unavailable or irrelevant. Basically, I thought it would be like a disinfobox.
  Looking at the box that SlimVirgin added, I am inclined to still think this way. Here are the elements that were included in the infobox, along with my take on them:
  - Artist: readily available in first sentence
  - Year: readily available in first sentence
  - Album: putting it in the infobox is an oversimplification. As explained in the Release section, although this song was on that album, it's not really from the album (it is 3 or 4 years older than the album).
  - Genre: readily available in first sentence
  - Label: not mentioned in the lede, but to be honest (and no offense intended) is anyone really interested in this anyway? So interested that it needs to be at the top of the article?
  - Writer/composer: not mentioned in the lede, only mentioned in the Release section. But it could easily be worked into the prose of the lede.
- So personally, I still don't consider an infobox necessary, and there are FAs that don't have them (see, for instance, Emily Dickinson). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added one earlier, but if you don't want it, that's fine by me. I like them because you can see the key facts at a glance, and I think they make articles look finished. But I see it as a personal preference issue. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 22:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, I agree that it comes down to personal preference more than anything else. So if it ends up being a big deal, I'll be willing to swallow my pride and put it back ;). Just figured I'd at least open up discussion first. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It looked a little crowded with this article anyway, partly because of the Chinese words template. I tried moving that to various places to make room for the infobox, but it didn't work. The boxes look best on articles with longer leads. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 23:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re-reviewed, added a paragraph summarising the lyrics and made some minor tweaks with Rjanag's agreement. I agree with SlimVirgin that the infobox is a matter of personal preference (my personal preference would be with infobox).
Support. Fine article, and good to have an article on this song here. --JN 466 22:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lean support – Having had no power due to a snowstorm for the better part of two days, I'm very happy that I decided to review this article as my first activity back here, because it is an excellent one overall. It really is a fascinating read. Only saw a couple little style issues. The first was in Release and impact. For reference 12, I'm pretty sure the citation is supposed to go outside parentheses, though I haven't checked the MoS lately. The other, more significant issue is that the alt text is not displaying properly. Only the title of the picture is showing, although I can see that appropriate alt text has been typed in. Unfortunately, I'm not enough of an expert to know what's wrong. Looking forward to fully supporting this once these issues are addressed. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 20:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed the alt-text; the problem was that the picture used to be displayed by itself, but someone later changed it to be displayed through an infobox-like template ({{Chinese}}) that didn't have a parameter for alt text; that is resolved now. As for the reference, personally I prefer putting it inside because I feel it's more "logical", but one little reference mark isn't really a big deal so if someone wants to change it I won't object. The Chicago Manual of Style apparently says to put references after parentheses, but I don't have a copy of it myself so I can't check to see whether there is a difference between sentence-internal parentheticals and parentheticals which comprise a full sentence (which this one is). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:38, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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