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Rate Your Music.com rankings

Several months ago I began going to various album pages and adding rankings that albums have achieved on the website Rate Your Music. As I expected, they were all soon deleted on the grounds of not being notable. I let the issue go at that time since I understood why, but I've always thought that it was worthy of serious discussion, and now I'm bringing up my reasons for why I believe that www.rateyourmusic.com rankings should be allowed on these article pages. Many articles on Wikipedia, and indeed many music articles, have "user" or "reader" opinion poll results, such as various album articles that have where this certain album placed on a reader's poll. For example, this paragraph on Automatic for the People:

n 1997 Automatic for the People was named the 18th greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millennium poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Q magazine readers placed it at number 7. In 2003, the album was ranked number 247 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

While indeed these were polls commissioned and "hosted" by professional and critical magazines, the opinions were still those of the readers. There was no critical opinion involved in these polls at all, yet the rankings on a website like Rate Your Music, which combines the collective opinion of hundreds, even thousands, of users, "readers" so to speak, are not allowed to be represented. What makes them any different? If, for example, the collective opinion of over 12,000 people (probably more now; I can't check since the website appears to be down right now) on Rate Your Music has resulted in OK Computer being rated #8 on the best albums of all-time, how is that not as relevant, if not more relevant, than the opinion of a single critic on Allmusic or in Billboard magazine? Or any less relevant than this reader's poll from Q magazine that has decided that Automatic for the People is the 7th-best album of all time? I hope that this can be seriously debated. bob rulz (talk) 10:25, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Simple. You need a secondary source to indicate that the ranking is notable. Aside from that (and really, that's the most important point, but there's more things to consider), RateYourMusic is a user site, and does not have editorial oversight like a magazine does. Also, magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin have established the notability of their critical voices, so the opinions they express will have more weight than those of that site. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:08, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Again, what makes this different from a user poll presented by a magazine? They both deal with popular consensus, and I'm sure the magazine editors don't swoop in and use their oversight powers to change the results of a reader poll. OK Computer, for example, has 12,292 votes that as a consensus has given it an average score of 4.38 out of 5. Even when this is weighted, it places it as the #8 album of all time. From a consensus of thousands of people. I know I essentially just rehashed the argument I used originally but I just don't see how this is any less notable than said reader polls. Just because it's not printed and put on a magazine rack doesn't mean it's not a notable fact that shouldn't be considered. It's overwhelming popular consensus. bob rulz (talk) 11:28, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

This is reliable source and documentation matter; sheer numbers don't indicate importance. Rate Your Music isn't notable as a major indicator of critical consensus. This is also why we can't cite Last.fm rankings. Rolling Stone, no matter what your feelings are on the magazine, has a long notable history and an established critical weight. Rate Your Music does not. In any instance, if you're going to cite reader polls, it's best to find a secondary source to indicate that an item's placement on it is noteworthy. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I hate to bring up the old cliche here but who exactly determines what is and isn't reliable? Sure, Rolling Stone magazine has a long and lucrative critical history and (for some reason, but let's not get into that) is generally well-respected, but if I simply include a sentence in an article that says something like, say, Users of Rate Your Music have ranked Funeral the top album of 2004, and then provide a link to the list that confirms this, I don't see what the big deal is. A source would be provided and it would be made clear that it is a consensus of the users and that no critical opinion is involved. I know there's a lot of Wikitechnicalities to deal with on the notability issue, but to me a strong consensus is very notable. And regarding last.fm, I wouldn't object to a statement that said something like "so and so is the most listened to artist on the popular music website last.fm", and then provide a link to prove it, but that's a different issue. bob rulz (talk) 12:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not encyclopedic. Who cares what users of some irrelevent site say? It simply doesnt belong in an encyclopedia. Please note Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Unless a second party source has mentioned it then it remains original research. --neon white talk 12:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree completely with WesleyDodds, Rate Your Music is self published and of has no encyclopedic worth whatsoever. The difference between this and say an Ipsos MORI poll is that they are a professional research business and therefore can guarantee that the results of polls are based on a broad section of society with little to no chance of vote rigging, stacking or otherwise false voting. A poor site like Rate Your Music (which is basically just a counting machine at the core) can make no such guarentees which is why it is completely unreliable. --neon white talk 12:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Completely unreliable? Certainly your reasoning doesn't equate into "complete unreliability". If these ratings can't be allowed then I think every single other user/reader poll not conducted by a research organization should be removed from music articles as well. I don't consider it an indiscriminate collection of information, nor do I think it is in anyway a "poor website" (what does that even mean, anyway?) nor do I believe it to be an "irrelevant" site. Who determined that it was "irrelevant"? How is it a "poor website"? I mean, I guess I can't speak for everyone, but if I were looking for critical opinions of music, and I was looking through Wikipedia music articles and found a link to this website, I'd go "oh hey, this one music critic said it sucked but these thousands of people think it's pretty good." I don't think including a sentence like I previously described above, making it perfectly clear that it's not a critical opinion and providing a clear source, would harm the "integrity" or "quality" of the article in any way. If we're going by "encyclopedic worth" here then I don't think that readers of Rolling Stone magazine rated "x album" the best of all time has any "encyclopedic worth" either. bob rulz (talk) 12:37, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to include mention of the RYM rank if the album is among the top 25 albums of all-time. (I have 22 of the top 25 albums!) When you look lower than the top 25, you will see, for example, Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations is ranked at 33rd all-time with only 248 ratings. However, the aggregate rating should absolutely not be mentioned, since different users use different metrics in ranking albums. (Abbey Road and Highway 61 Revisited are both ranked higher than The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady even though the latter has a higher aggregate ranking. This is because of how RYM weighs the user ratings.) However, the album's rank, based on thousands of ratings, and in comparison to other albums that also have thousands of ratings, gives a very good idea of how the album is perceived.

In response to neon white's concern about vote rigging, etc.: RYM does not release the algorithm they use to rank albums, so it would be difficult for any vote rigging to occur. It also takes other factors into account to prevent abuse—see the RYM chart FAQ. Realistically, do you think anyone would be that obsessed with affecting an album's RYM rating? — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:32, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the aggregate rating should not be mentioned due to the weighting system used. However, what about also mentioning, say, the top album, or top 5 albums, or something similar, for each year in addition to the top 25 or so overall? While I understand the objections to including RYM rankings on Wikipedia, I will argue that there really aren't very many, if any, websites as popular as RYM that serve the same function when it comes to rating and reviewing music. bob rulz (talk) 14:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I considered that briefly. Look at 1951: number 4 has nine ratings in total, and only one of the top 5 has over 100 ratings. Anyway, going back just 50 years, this means we are counting 250 albums. I think if we include the top X albums by year—or even by decade—the data becomes too unreliable. This is why I limited it to top 25, not top 50. (And what do we do about years like 1909, 1911, … when only one album was released?) — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 16:35, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

This might sound a daft question: If they use an algorithm to rank the albums rather than a simple vote count but they don't publish the algorithm, how can we be sure it's a reliable method? --JD554 (talk) 14:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a reasonable question. I thought of addressing it in my original comment. What do you mean by reliable? We could ask the same question of whether allmusic or Piero Scaruffi or Robert Christgau or any other reviewer is reliable. I suppose I am familiar enough with RYM that I trust the rating system, in general. But my trust in it isn't a convincing argument. You can see in the top albums chart, the trend is for albums with higher user ratings to be ranked higher. You may not agree with the specific rankings, but you should definitely see that trend. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 16:35, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

FYI: Robert Christgau's reviews are notable because most of them were published in the Village Voice, one of the main voices in American music criticism. This is why I'm working on guidelines for music articles. WesleyDodds (talk) 21:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

That wasn't a shot at Xgau—I could have said Blender or Rolling Stone or NME. I was questioning the idea that being in an established publication means the reviewer is more reliable. The publisher is probably more reliable, but is the reviewer? Isn't the normalized opinion of thousands of people inherently more reliable than the opinion of one? — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The established publication may or may not be more reliable, but their opinion has more weight since they are established as notable in their field. The heart of the matter is whether or not Rate Your Music's statistics are notable, and nothing demonstrates that they are. Read the Wiki guidelines on what sources to cite. WesleyDodds (talk) 22:29, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

You know, the Rate Your Music article doesn't establish the notability of the site, so it's arguable if it should even exist, much less be used as a reference in articles. WesleyDodds (talk) 21:52, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

True it's one of a large number of sites that are about as encyclopedic as tags at lastfm, user ratings at amazon.com, user content at sputnikmusic, itunes or mp3.com charts or anything on any user driven social networking/industry advertising site. --neon white talk 22:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The fact that we're even debating whether an article for Rate Your Music should even exist on Wikipedia is proof to me that Wikipedia has been bogged down by far too many technicalities. I still stand by my argument. RYM is incomparable to last.fm, Amazon.com ratings, sputnikmusic, iTunes charts, etc. The entire purpose of RYM is to rate music, and there is not another website as popular as RYM that does what it does as effectively. It's the only popular website that I'm aware of whose sole (or at least primary) purpose is to rate and rank music. bob rulz (talk) 03:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

We know what the site does. Why you think this should be part of an encyclopedia is beyond me. It's just not the place for indiscriminately collected info from random websites. --neon white talk 23:57, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't make it notable per Wikipedia guidelines. Notability needs to be established by secondary sources. Please review Wikipedia:Notability. WesleyDodds (talk) 04:33, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7

Since I have everyone's attention here, I wanted to explain that part of the reason I'm so busy lately is that I'm trying to select article versions for the Wikipedia 0.7 physical release. All WikiProjects have been notified of the articles in their respective scopes that are selected for inclusion, but few have selected good versions of the selected articles to use. This is very important, and I suggest you check out the talk page of whatever music WikiProject you are a member of (and really, any WikiProject you participate in), find the section with the heading that begins "Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for . . .", and read the instructions. Honestly, this is more important than the infobox debate right now, and we all should be contributing to this. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about the Wikipedia 0.7 project (physical release) but there's not much more time to get involved with it and I guess I don't need any extra motivation. bob rulz (talk) 12:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

WesleyDodds: Please use the Music Noticeboard for this. See the instructions in bold at the top of this page. --Kleinzach 14:24, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm working under the assumption more people are reading this page right now than are reading the noticeboard. Also, everyone should have notified about this already; I'm just pointing it out to them again because very few article versions have been selected. WesleyDodds (talk) 21:49, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 have already done their own notifications to the individual projects (sent out by SelectionBot in September). This project is not involved because it doesn't do assessments. It's for inter-music project discussions. --Kleinzach 23:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Which is why I posted a notification here. WesleyDodds (talk) 04:29, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussions here. Notices there. Got it now? --Kleinzach 05:08, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I doubt many people read that noticeboard as are looking at this page right, which is the intention. I know what noticeboards are for, but the fact of the matter people have not been addressing this matter. So far of all the music WikiProjects, only WP:ALM has been actively preparing for this, and I wanted to make sure people are on the ball. No need to drag out the obvious by bringing up the noticeboard repeatedly. If necessary, I can show people what to do right here. In short, what's the most effective way of getting things done, and are people going to do it? That's the last I have to say about this topic, and it's really pointless to reply if you don't have anything to say about the matter. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

All the assessments have disappeared

Well, I didn't check all of them, but it appears that articles with the template { {Classical|class=B} } now display as ??? This article has not yet been rated on the assessment scale.

Worth fixing... --Ravpapa (talk) 10:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Tours

What are the guidelines and formats for articles on tours? Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 03:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

We don't have guidelines. Another thing to add to the list. In the meantime, I suggest checking out List of Nine Inch Nails tours, a Featured List on the topic. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:26, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Linking common terms

I've noticed in pretty much every article (musicians, songs, albums, so on) have common linked term such as American, UK, countries (in release histories and such), etc., and my question is, since there is a script to unlink these common terms, is it correct to unlink them completely from these type of articles? DiverseMentality^(Boo!) 23:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, apparently. WesleyDodds (talk) 23:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Not just in music-related articles.The last item of Wikipedia:OVERLINK#What_generally_should_not_be_linked suggests that to readers of the English language Wikipedia, these terms would already be familiar, and I've seen some Twinkle users going round unlinking them. To be honest, what do they add? I wouldn't mourn their loss, but you may wish to raise a community-wide discussion on that. US and UK may be fairly obvious, but Azerbaijani-based musicians may beg to differ, and the question then is where the line should be drawn. --Rodhullandemu 23:19, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Rodhullandemu, that's the problem with the script (or maybe it was intended this way?). It delinks the common countries, I shall say, but not countries of rarity (I'll learn to get better words later). So I really don't know where to draw the line, and I think I will bring a community-wide discussion later on tonight. DiverseMentality^(Boo!) 23:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

It's very common to see links like the ones you're talking about. The WP:LINKRELEVANT guideline says, "Only make links that are relevant to the context.... It is generally not necessary to link... [items] that would be familiar to most readers of the article, such as the names of major geographic features and locations, historical events, religions, languages, and common professions." I'm reading that to mean that it's okay to undo those links, but I'd be interested other editors' opinions also. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 23:26, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

And the problem with scripts is that they're pretty dumb and are open to accusations of bias. I'd be interested to see where its cut-off point is. "Relevant", from an English-language point of view, is open to interpretation; arguably, the G8 nations should be there, but that would exclude Australia, a significant English-speaking nation. That leads to the question of New Zealand- much smaller, but do we really need to link it? A minefield as far as automated editing is concerned. --Rodhullandemu 23:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

The guideline is talking about something being "relevant" in the context of the article, not about whether a country is relevant or important from a geopolitical perspective. For example, if an article is about a rock group from New Zealand, we might not want to link "New Zealand", because it's a common term that most readers are familiar with. But if the article is about the geography of the South Pacific, then "New Zealand" should be linked, as a term that is very important in that context. Of course this is still open to interpretation by whoever's editing the article. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 23:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I was talking about general familiarity to our readership, not in geopolitical terms. I'd assume that any reasonably competent English language reader or speaker would be familiar enough with the English-speaking world as not to require an unnecessary link; however, within the context of this project, it could be assumed that readers don't need such links. In wider terms, readers who come to Wikipedia as part of learning the English language (and we have an invaluable tool for that), may find such links invaluable in that process; that's why I suggest a wider discussion would have some value. --Rodhullandemu 23:54, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense. Where will this wider discussion take place? I'd like to see it when it happens. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 00:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Several ways; WP:CENT is a forum for wide-ranging discussion, but it might be better to start at the Village Pump to see whether previous discussions have taken place and take it from there. --Rodhullandemu 00:26, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I've added the discussion here for those interested. DiverseMentality^(Boo!) 02:04, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

United World Chart et al.

Can someone please help me remove the United World Chart positions from song articles? There're still over 9000 links to it from article space, and they need to be removed. The same goes for Argentina Top 40 and any other red link chart. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 21:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll gladly help. DiverseMentality^(Boo!) 21:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't that united world chart site be added to a blacklist? Thus stopping people from using it as a source. We can then just remove the unsourced claim as...well unsourced ;-) — Realist² 21:52, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Most of them aren't sourced to begin with, so it wouldn't be very effective. DiverseMentality^(Boo!) 21:54, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Genre Warrior, hmm, I've got a new one, "United World Chart Warrior", hmm, doesn't have the same ring to it. ;-0 — Realist² 21:56, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about you, but I think "Pointless unreliable chart warrior" has a nice ring to it. DiverseMentality^(Boo!) 22:02, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I do my best to remove red-linked charts when I see them. But I seriously think that we need more people enforcing WP:CHARTS. :T SKS2K6 (talk) 22:23, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and exactly how many charts ARE legitimate? SKS2K6 (talk) 22:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Please do not remove UWC from articles, as UWC is under deletion review now Netrat (talk) 16:43, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Instrumentals vs songs

Thom has rightly pointed out that {{Infobox Song}} is used in articles about instrumentals, which is inappropriate. The infobox even has a prominent link to Song, whose lede states "Songs contain vocal parts that are performed, sung, and feature words (lyrics)...". I've suggested that we could add switch to the template so that, if type was set to "instrumental", the infobox would display as "Instrumental by [band]" instead of the current, erroneous, "Song by [band]".

Thom also points out that there are articles on notable instrumentals named with the suffix "(song)", for example: Moby Dick (instrumental), Eruption (instrumental), Jordan (song). I would argue that articles such as those should be renamed as, for example "Moby Dick (instrumental)" or "Moby Dick (tune)" or "Moby Dick (music)" or "Moby Dick (Led Zeppelin)" or some such.

I also note that WikiProject Songs tags articles on instrumentals, even though the word "instrumental" does not appear on the project page!

I am raising the issue here, with pointers elsewhere, in order that a consensus may be reached on resolving these discrepancies. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:28, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

i personally find it extremely academic - not in a good sense - to assert that instrumentals are not songs. in common usage, outside musicology circles, instrumentals *are* songs. but since it would make excellent sense to change the name of the "song infobox" to "album track infobox", that would take care of the "song/instrumental" non-problem as well. Sssoul (talk) 11:22, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

The word "song" shares its roots with "sung" and "sing". It's not "just" an academic distinction; and as this is an encyclopedia, even if it were, it would be relevant. It's also entirely appropriate for an encyclopedia to follow musicological (if that's what this is), rather than common, usage. Renaming the infobox will not resolve the issue, highlighted above, of linking to an article which - rightly - affirms that songs have lyrics and are sung. There's a reason why we have separate articles for Song and Instrumental. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:39, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

okay so i'm striking the part of my response that you say is irrelevant - if i'm finding it difficult to see what is/isn't the "issue" here, blame it on an overdose of "issues" related to infoboxes these days. 8) the part of my response that you disagree with can stay, though. you wanted other people's views; mine is one. Sssoul (talk) 15:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

To include this, I updated my proposal for separating variables in music infoboxes and renamed "Infobox song" to "Infobox musical composition". A song is a musical composition and "infobox musical composition" can then be used for music with or without lyrics. Weather or not a musical composition is sung is irrelevant. Thats a matter for "Infobox recording". --Bensin (talk) 14:55, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

To inject my opinion into the situation... I think a good solution would be to have a more universal infobox wi a more universal name, for all musical tracks. Then it could have a "background" field, kinda like Template:Infobox Musical artist, into which you could put "instrumental", "song", "remix", "anthem", "traditional", "cover", "hymn" or whatever, and have a different colour for each, it'd be lovely. This would probably only work with contemporary music, but. As for merging with the single infobox, I think a "single?" field with "yes" and "no" parameters (choosing yes adds usage of additional parameters, eg. chart positions) would work. As for the infobox, perhaps, "Infobox:Track" or "Infobox:Musical track"? The definition of track is universal enough; "sound stored on a record". Thom (talk) 16:21, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of a color parameter for infobox song. We have the same for the Musical Artist box, to differentiate between solo acts and groups, and for the Albums box to distinguish between different types of releases (studio album, live album, EP, split release, etc...note that a few of those aren't "albums" per se but still fall nicely within the purview of the project & the infobox). As for Wikiproject Songs, instrumentals, while not technically "songs", still fall nicely within the project's scope and a few minor changes are all that's necessary to help us deal with the "songs vs. instrumentals" technicality. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:54, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Please, no more colours. These colour codes are meaningless to anyone but our editors. But merging these separate boxes is definitely a good idea. Flowerparty^☀ 22:10, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Well then, how about formulating a version of Template:Infobox Song that's designed for instrumentals, and adding it to the template page? Template:Infobox Musical artist does the same for solo artists and groups. They're versions of the same template, but the template page provides 2 example codings tailored to the 2 situations (presenting only the relevant fields). --IllaZilla (talk) 22:34, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

OK; how can we take this forward? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:11, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Removal from the archive

This discussion was archived. It finished a week ago (19 October) and was archived with the intention of reducing the size of the page. Why not start a new discussion? --Kleinzach 12:24, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The last post before you prematurely archived it was a question. That's not finished. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense. Check the dates. The discussion ended on 19 October and was archived in date order. This is another example of why you enjoy the particular reputation you have on WP. --Kleinzach 23:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The discussion isn't finished. Thom (talk) 00:17, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems like it's time you re-read WP:NPA. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 07:43, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The discussion is not entirely finished. It paused at Wesley's promise to create a proposal. Archiving doesn't seem like a problem if its not a policy issue because the discussion can be accessed easily. However, the current topic probably shouldn't begin with "I'm not reading all that". Not quite the right message when "all of that" is a necessary part of the decision making process. - Steve3849 ^talk 00:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC) Misread the section, apologies. - Steve3849 ^talk 00:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

To clarify: the Infobox debate remains open - see above. I've been archiving about a week after a discussion ends in order to cope with the backlog (which at one time was up to about 450k). People have been using this talk page as a substitute for more specific project pages - hence the unusually high traffic. --Kleinzach 01:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC)