Talk:Illusory Walls

This review is transcluded from Talk:Illusory Walls/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Thebiguglyalien (talk · contribs) 05:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll begin reviewing this article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm putting the review on hold so the listed items below can be addressed. By far the biggest issue with this article is that several paragraphs consist almost entirely of direct quotes. I'm holding off on reviewing these paragraphs for prose/sourcing until rewrites can take place. The other major issue is that a lot of the information comes from the one BrooklynVegan interview, and it would be good to have other sources in these areas. Besides this, it's lacking some information about pre-recording background and some aspects of its release, and there are a few other minor surface-level issues that should be easy to fix. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:30, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well-written

Prose issues:

• was released, release, and came out on – Choose one for consistency
• Eventually the part that made the song came to him – Besides being the wrong tense, this is informal and should be rewritten. This whole sentence runs on a bit and should be trimmed down.
• Adding this here just so it gets mentioned: It might be confusing for the infobox to link to Thank You for Being Here, since it's just a redirect back to this same article. Likewise, the Thank You for Being Here infobox links back to this article.

Manual of Style issues:

• It's always helpful to look at other album articles that have gone through GA to see how they're formatted: Wikipedia:Good articles/Music#Albums
• The lead should be a summary of the article per WP:LEAD. I suggest moving all of the info in the lead down into the body and then writing a new lead that summarizes each section.
• The reception is a bit spread out. Both the sections "Live" and "Style" talk about reception, but it should probably be confined to the "Reception" section.
• The first paragraph of "Background" is about the release of the songs and would fit better in a "Release" section.
• Most of the "Background" section is about production and recording. It might need to be renamed "Background and recording" or something similar.

Verifiable with no original research

• Standard references list. All sources seem to be legitimate music magazines and websites.
• Most of the background section is sourced to one interview. The section should draw from and summarize several sources.
• There are way too many quotes in the first paragraph of the style section. I recommend deleting that paragraph and rewriting it entirely. Even if they're cited, over-reliance on direct quotes becomes a plagiarism/copyright issue. Summarize the main ideas of the analyses without duplicating them.
• Same issue with the reception section. A few direct quotes is fine, but the majority of each section should be summarizing the sources rather than quoting them.
• All direct quotes need an inline citation at the end of the sentence, even if it duplicates one later in the paragraph.
• A citation would be good for the sentences under "Track listing".

Spotchecks:

• [1] Walsh (2021): Checked all three uses, all good.
• [3] Hakimian (2021): Checked all three uses, all good.
• [8] Sacher (2021): Good.
• [13] Geiger (2022): Checked both uses. First use good. The second use technically doesn't say that they released on October 7, just that this was the planned release.
• Will do a few more should the recommended rewrites and additions occur.

Broad in its coverage

No areas with excessive detail. Areas that may need additional coverage:

• Can a little bit be said in the background section about what the band did leading up to the development of this album? It looks like there were four years between the last album and this one. The stuff about the changing line up seems particularly important for the background section.
• I mentioned a "Release" section above. This section might include info on singles, music videos, performances, promotion, cover art, foreign releases, or anything else sources might have info on. Of course, I recognize that not every single one of these will be possible.

Neutral

No neutrality issues.

Stable

No recent disputes in edit history or on the talk page. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Illustrated

Album cover has valid non-free use rationale. No other images. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Fixed up a couple initial things based on your suggestions. Just wanted to throw a couple questions/comments in.

Since Thank You for Being Here specifically redirects to a section of the article, I felt it was appropriate to guide users to that section. Not having the links in the infobox chronology would break that navigation option which I'd prefer to keep open.

I'm not sure the single source issue in the background can be fixed. I'll have to look some more but I doubt there are multiple sources covering the quotes in this interview. How urgent is that issue?

For the second usage of the Geiger source, I knew that was the case. That's why I included the Bandcamp page which had the same date. I've swapped it for NPR since that's more appropriate, but I don't think the issue you described was necessarily a problem.

I knew going in that the overquoting would be the key issue here. Will get around to fixing that eventually. I've been meaning to with a number of articles I've made where I've done the same thing and know I definitely need to get better about it. Hopefully doing it this one time will help me understand the process enough that the floodgates will open and I'll fix all the rest as well. As for the lead, I've been getting better at those and just didn't come back to fix this one up. That should be easy enough. QuietHere (talk) 19:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the review! I mostly threw this up just 'cause I hadn't done it before, realized this article actually looked pretty good/complete, and wanted to see what the process was like. Figured it wouldn't get an immediate pass, but I'm glad to see it's better than I was expecting.

Don't worry, immediate passes are extremely rare. I strongly recommend finding additional sources that can be used to complement the ones used in writing/recording and style or finding ways to better combine the sources. I realize it can be difficult to find additional sources, but there's a lot of gray area as to how dependent large amounts of content can be on a single source before it becomes a plagiarism issue. As it stands, the writing/recording section has essentially been written by Chris Teti. And I forgot to mention above, the advice at WP:RECEPTION can be incredibly helpful for reception sections. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One other thing I didn't mention above, but is relevent now that I've reworked the personnel section: WP:TRACKLIST says that sourcing to liner notes is "generally assumed and does not need explicit citation in most cases." Assuming that's what you were referring to when you said "A citation would be good for the sentences under 'Track listing'", I think that's a moot issue. Bandcamp covers all the liner notes for the personnel section and the producing credits, and the writing credits come from Tidal. QuietHere (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

QuietHere, just checking in. Do you plan on reworking the article over the next few days, or should I close the review so that it can be renominated in the future? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:55, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, you may as well close it for now and I'll renominate it whenever it's ready. I don't really know when I'll get to it. And thanks again! QuietHere (talk) 03:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. The review will still be here for reference if you decide to work on the article later. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:16, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]