Wikipedia:Peer review/Stone Temple Pilots (album)/archive1

Stone Temple Pilots (album)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This GA album article has been solidly stable for pretty much a year now, and I think it's time to kick it up a notch and prep it for FA review. I've done two (failed) FA reviews for another article, so I'm somewhat familiar with the prose issues (flow and grammar!) that can always be tweaked. But I thought this time I'd go the PR route before I attempt FA—learned a little lesson there, methinks. My goals are to tighten the article a bit as well. Any edits I've done in the last couple days have been to prep it for PR. From this point forward, I'll most likely be concentrating on prose, triple checking the citations, etc. Essentially, I'll be working constantly before, during, and after any comments here at PR.

Two things before I continue:

1. I believe that my writing style has a slight dependency on quotes/quotations. I will do my best to incorporate this information in my own words if I find a quote to be more or less unnecessary. Please feel free to point out any quotes you feel aren't needed or are just puffery or should be "absorbed" into the text better.
2. At the moment, I believe there are two {{citation needed}} tags. These are brand new, temporary, and I tagged them myself due to a dead link. They are connected to information that's pretty filler material at this point and will most likely be removed entirely.

What I'm looking for is essentially a super B-class checklist, I think: Does the article seem comprehensive? Was there too much information, does it get bogged down with facts at any point? Or is the information spread out nicely, and you learned about the album without feeling overwhelmed? One goal here, as said above, is to tighten the article and I may get rid of some superfluous information that seemed important at the time but now, a year later, is probably junk. Are there any terms that you may not be familiar with, like genres or production lingo that I have a tendency to ignore out of familiarity, but that you may notice sticks out like a sore thumb?

FA really emphasizes excellent grammar, and I would love to have several reviewers keep an eye out for any awkward phrases (any grammatical issue) that I most likely haven't noticed simply because I'm "used" to the way I write. How is the style of the article? Several FA reviewers use the term "flow" and as it stands, this article is probably on the clunky side. It was written with the facts in mind, and to regurgitate the facts. One thing FA reiterates is the usage of simple English, so I will undoubtedly by rewriting as much of the article as I can in an easier-to-read format.

In conclusion, I want the article shorter, but just as comprehensive. Any help, even the tiniest most random thing you wish to contribute, will be immensely appreciated.

Thank you – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 09:37, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Bradley0110

First of all I'll say I know exactly what you mean when you say you're used to the way you write. I can't count the number of times an obvious error has been pointed out to me that I haven't seen because when copyediting my own work I've read what I want to read. Alas. The article was a pleasure to read and though there are grammatical issues, they did not make me want to vomit.

As I read the article, I didn't so much get the impression that there was that much of a problem with flow per se, but there's something about the language itself. It has a too much of a narrative style, like the voice-overs on Behind the Music. Although the band's reformation does make a good story, it's important to present the information factually.

You've got a lot of conditionals in there that don't need to be there, e.g. "Scott Weiland would hear new material from Robert and Dean DeLeo while the band performed sound checks during the tour, but he would not collaborate in the songwriting process until he was through promoting his solo album, "Happy" in Galoshes." Weiland heard new material but did not collaborate. "Woulds" appear throughout the article and need to be changed.

As for the quotes, my philosophy on using them is a bit like using a non-free image; is the only way to get the correct meaning across to the reader to use a quote? If not, it should be paraphrased. For example in the background section, probably the only thing that should have the quotation is the Robert quote at the end of the section. Other quotes can simply be recast as prose; in the fourth paragraph you could just put "Weiland later clarified that he did not want to work with Atlantic because he did not know any of the staff, though since the original negotiations he had become familiar with the label's personnel." (or something along those lines).

In terms of "puffery" quotes (your word!), consider whether they are just being used for decoration. You've got a pull-quote from Robert in the Background section. My eyes are drawn to it immediately, as it should be with a pull-quote, yet I don't understand the context without having read the section. If you feel this quote is important, maybe you could describe it a bit more in the quote box (e.g. "Robert DeLeo in the Toronto Sun on the band's reformation").

The reviews section is primarily where quotations are most likely to be used, but, again, some can be paraphrased, e.g. "USA Today's Jerry Schriver praised the band for releasing a "cohesive, self-produced reunion album", but admitted the tracks were not "timeless". The songs were found to be "pleasant" but "disposable" and inoffensive. Schriver commended Dean DeLeo for keeping the "well-constructed tunes" moving forward, despite Weiland's lyrics." There are a lot of one-word quotations in there and the prose of the article would definitely flow better if it was either rephrased or the quotes around single words just removed.

Re the citation tags you've added, I wouldn't consider information about a limited-edition cover to be "filler". I notice that the Peters Billboard article makes reference to "a deluxe version with expanded artwork" and then mentions Target. If you rephrase the sentence in the article you could probably weasel this in as a reference, if you cannot find another citation. There are a few reference issues that I think will come up at FAC. There are a lot of citations to GrungeReport.net (sometimes formatted as "GrungeReport.net" and "Grunge Report.net" - this needs to be consistent). Is this a high-quality reliable source? What standard of fact-checking do they have? In the references section, websites like GrungeReport.net, Blabbermouth.net, Allmusic, PopMatters.com, etc, should not be presented in italics.

The factual style of the writing is generally good and unbiased. One thing that stuck out was "The album was prevented from reaching No. 1 by the television soundtrack Glee: The Music, Volume 3 Showstoppers." The use of "prevented" makes it sound like the sentence was written by a very disgruntled hard rock fan! I don't see that much production lingo but the music-specific language is written well enough for the uninitiated to understand what it refers to.

As I write this review, the article is at 4272 words and c.88kb (the high file size compared to the word count is presumably due to the use of cite templates). What sort of size were you looking for when you say you want it to be shorter? I'll put this PR on my watchlist so I can come back to your responses. Bradley0110 (talk) 12:29, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Two Hearted River

• When I write "Critical reception" sections, I organize them by positing a few theses and then backing them up with examples, lest the section read like a list. I think you'd do well to try that here. (See Lions (album) and By Your Side (The Black Crowes album) for my examples.)
• Those music samples aren't going to fly with the captions you have now, because quoting lyrics is less intrusive than reproducing music when it comes to illustrating what influenced the lyrics. I try to include quotes from critics in my sample captions to justify the samples, because hearing the music is necessary to evaluate the validity of the critics' statements.
• Do we need the "Release history" section, given that you've covered the highlights in prose earlier? I'm of the opinion that listing, say, the release date in New Zealand provides no further insight into the album beyond what's already written in the prose.

Nice work overall. I'm going to tackle a few MOS things myself. By the way, if you'd like to reciprocate, By Your Side (The Black Crowes album) is up for peer review... :) Two Hearted River (paddle / fish) 12:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)