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Who to do bios for?

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Thanks Jim! If the only bio to be found for an artist is all hype "ready for the big time - just waiting to get signed, hint, hint" - is the preference to leave the page blank, or do you want us to go ahead and use it?Jenny (talk/contribs) 04:50, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

I started looking up some of these "artist who need bios" and wonder how to handle an artist that 10 plays, with 322 listeners and the only four songs are left rated 0-1-2 and 4...maybe the EJ removed the rest of the album. If music is borderline not WWR quality, do we have a page where we can place them as we run across them, so Jim can decide if we even need to bother with a bio ? OldGowl (talk/contribs) 05:19, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

My approach is to rewrite the hyped bio and take out the hype.

I don't take much time with artists who only have a few tunes on WWR and whose biographical info is difficult to find. Other folks might take a different approach.

We probably ought to discuss our approach and get some consensus. sparx (talk/contribs) 06:11, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

I find the whole concept of hype to be subjective. I agree with not spending much time on artists who don’t have much music here and/or it’s all rated low. I do think one of the first steps is to check the artist page history to make sure the bio wasn’t deleted (accidentally by bots). Kelli (talk/contribs) 07:08, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

I agree with Sparx. I think we should come up with a viable strategy and get consensus. I wouldn't even mess with the "hype." "What's one person's garbage is another's treasure." Same is true with musical tastes. I suggest that once an artist is played n times, up to a pre-determined threshold, and the tunes are rated below a pre-determined threshold, then we delete. I'd have to give the number of songs some thinking before I'd use it as a reason to delete. Kimchifox (talk/contribs) 07:55, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Since it is the goal to have the artist ultimately work on their own pages with updates, photos, concerts, etc. I have to agree with Kelli about(in regards to empty bio pages)
1) first checking the history, to see if the artist might have removed the Bio for some legititmate reason & consider not updating the bio
2) or see who edited the Bio before replacing it with something else that "we" might think sounds better, but will not set well with the artist.
OldGowl (talk/contribs) 08:56, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

My comment was in reference to bios being accidentally deleted by the bots. I also agree with your comments. Kelli (talk/contribs) 09:04, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Deleting artists

• This is a great discussion! I hope to contribute when I have a bit more sit-n-think time.
• Quick reply about deleting artists who have only a few songs not highly ranked and/or a genre (rock/death metal/etc.) that we don't do much of ... remember the {Delete|Optional reason to delete} template! You can put that template on any page - artist, album, song, userpage ... anything! What happens is that I go through the list of items up for deletion and based either on the reason or what I determine the probable reason is, I delete the item. If someone flagged an artist who was semi-obscure, had low rankings, etc. there's a very very good chance I'd just delete them. Even if they were highly ranked, but Category:Obscure, I would still (sadly) remove them. We have X hours / day to help working independent artists. X is never enough. So we maximize helping those who try to help themselves (by having websites, places to buy their CD, etc.) - the rest will hopefully happily find homes on other webcasts.

So, please do not hesitate to put a {Delete|optional reason to delete} tag on any artist you think we can't help. If there is some question in my mind, don't worry, I won't delete them without community input. Thanks! Jim (talk/contribs) 10:16, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Define Hype

I would like a definition of hype as used on WWR. Thanks. Kelli (talk/contribs) 09:33, July 3, 2008 (AKDT)

Kell-I don't think you will find a good definition of hype, just a gut instinct. I sure hope that whatever I say will be added to by Jim, but just think of it as as being the stuff written by a publicist with the intent of selling that artist and then magnify that. Even though almost all bios are that to a certain extent, the ones that are too much hype are the ones that we are talking about it here, I believe. These are the ones that are way overboard on trying to impress with accomplishments or are clearly a huge advertisement for the latest CD, which doesn't make sense as a bio because it is going to be out of date the minute that the next CD is out. Also I would say that a large amount of the quotes from outside sources... you know, those things that sound like mini-reviews... would be considered hype. One of those quotes might work on occasion but a whole string of them is overkill. Sometimes it is sufficient to just delete some (heh... or a lot) of the bio and end up with something that it is short and sweet. Someone should be able to read it before the song is over. Now, of course, this is just my 2 cents and the approach that I have been taking. I figure anyone who wants to know more will follow those external links and find it all out there, anyway. LuAnna (talk/contribs) 05:57, July 5, 2008 (AKDT)

Some of it is obvious. I think album information should go on the album page (we are trying to help artists by selling CDs). I have an issue with quotes/reviews being called hype (wouldn't that make listener comments hype?). I guess it's subjective like pretty much everything. Kelli (talk/contribs) 06:36, July 5, 2008 (AKDT)

I agree about putting the extensive album info on the album pages. We've not dived into that much yet.

The difference I see in using quotes from other publications and listener comments is that promo writers use them to add a sense of authority to their promotion. I'm not sure that works so well on WWR, because I've noticed that most Wheatniks are the kind of folks who shun authority. sparx (talk/contribs) 06:19, July 6, 2008 (AKDT)

I think if I were a musician and some well-respected artist raved about my music, I’d want to advertise it too. Quotes don’t usually seem like hype to me unless there are an excessive number of them. Anyway, I agree with your list below and definitely think we need some guidelines. Stuff like this (as well as negative song tags, bashing musicians in chat, etc.) have me worried that we aren’t making a comfortable environment for the musicians who we are supposed to be helping. Kelli (talk/contribs) 08:25, July 7, 2008 (AKDT)

I, too, feel we could use some guidelines on hype, both for us WWR editors and for the artists that we imagine will want to write and edit their own material. It seems to me we'll have problems keeping them on-board if we delete too much of their material without stating why. (Right now most of the artist page bios are copied from their websites. We're hoping that changes, right?)

This is one area where we are very different from wikipedia which doesn't allow any self promotion. So, we can't fall back on any wikipedia guidelines.

To me it's mostly a matter of degree. WWR helps promote artists by allowing them to have their songs and information here, but we don't want excessive promotion, which we would call hype. I just don't see how it can't be a gray area. (Even in professional publishing we go round about what is hype (an ad) and what isn't.)

Some things that tip me off to hype are:

• Lots of superlatives - "best", "most awesome",
• Lots of name dropping
• Long lists of awards

sparx (talk/contribs) 06:19, July 6, 2008 (AKDT)