Talk:Gojira (band)/GA1

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A GAR request was placed by DannyMusicEditor a while ago, and I ran into it because I saw the article was indeed troubled; in fact, I was wondering how it could have GA status. Turns out this was promoted to GA in 2008, and much has happened since then--including our guidelines.

The GA review was done by ThinkBlue, who may not be active anymore. The article was nominated by Lykantrop, who is now Der Golem, who may also be Concus Cretus. A peer review was done by Laser brain.

The prose is really challenged, starting in the lead already: "prior to releasing any studio albums" is redundant/awkward. The second paragraph has "...to change their name. They changed their name...". The third paragraph starts "The band released their second studio album in 2003, The Link...", and next we hear, "Since 19 May 2004, The Link Alive has been on sale in France" but it's not explained what that is. There's the old "...has also been known to..." In general, far too much of the article consists of announcements and quotes by band members.

Minor copy edits should be made throughout--the lead, for instance, has incorrect single quotes for a single. "The title song "L'Enfant Sauvage" was released" needs commas, traditionally. I see examples of punctuation inside quotation marks. There are two pictures of band members from a show at Rock am Ring, but the captions name the band instead of the individual musicians.

The most serious reason for reassessment is the sourcing: far too much is unsourced. Note the genres--they're supposed to be sourced in the music section, and I was first alerted to the article because of this edit. Currently, the genres are unsourced, and a look at the old version, the one that passed GA, reveals there was never much to begin with. These days some editors accept Blabbermouth as a source, but we shouldn't be doing that in a GA, and this article is littered with announcements from Blabbermouth, which at best are press releases. The third reference, cited three times, is this thing from Metal Storm, and it turns out that this was simply copied from the band's MySpace. Chunks of that text are also found here, which is the fourth reference. Then there's Facebook links, links to Encyclopaedia Metallum, links to articles on the French wiki, bare URLs, etc. The references are, obviously, not done consistently.

Blabbermouth is plenty acceptable in a GA, I've seen them used in FAs like Metallica, but this article does have greater problems than that. It's a shame, cause I really like Gojira. France's finest metal. dannymusiceditor ^{Speak up!} 15:05, 1 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

Oh I disagree on Blabbermouth, and I wish we could do without it. Who's the editor? Who's on the editorial board ? What kind of editorial control do they exercise over user- and company-submitted material? Whose merchandise do they sell? But that's for another time, I suppose. Drmies (talk) 15:09, 1 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

Another place, perhaps, but you could take it up at WP:ALBUMS/SOURCES. Note that I'm talking about albums and not biographies, but usually musical bios take up some information about albums. As a matter of fact, usually the most acceptable use of Blabbermouth is used as a third-party republisher of social media news posts by bands. With absolutely outstanding BLP statements, it is generally frowned upon. In the places I edit, that's usually not the case. Really, it depends on what's being covered. It is concerning, however, that a CTRL+F search brings up 17 hits on that website linking on this article. That's nearly a third of the refs in the article, and I think we rely on it too much. I also see Metal Storm (unreliable), The Metal Forge (questionable, never seen it before), and Terrorizer (I have no idea). dannymusiceditor ^{Speak up!} 15:30, 1 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

I think this article is not up to GA status, and I have doubts about its promotion in the first place. On the talk page you can see comments right after the GA review by Kameejl, which also critique the article. I think I've pinged everyone involved, and I'll also ping a few big shots, and the first ones I found are the judges for the GA cup (3family6, Figureskatingfan, Jaguar, MrWooHoo, who may be able to offer suggestions about content or process. Thank you all, Drmies (talk) 14:54, 1 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

  Delist. I think this article stands no better than a C-Class currently for sourcing concerns above and that the article's prose has been neglected since the L'Enfant Sauvage era. Some of it has become proseline. The style section is okay, but I think it could do better... dannymusiceditor ^{Speak up!} 15:37, 1 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

User:DannyMusicEditor, I put in my order with Amazon, BTW. Drmies (talk) 01:20, 2 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

  As the original nominator, obviously I would be glad to see this article in a GA shape, but clearly it has some issues. Unfortunately I don't have time to do anything about it, so I support whatever action is taken or decision made by the community.--Concus Cretus (talk) 07:11, 9 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

Update. I have worked at it a little bit and think it is almost B-Class now. What looked neglected probably just had too many enter buttons involved. Still not quite GA for reference reasons - unreliability and inconsistent formatting, for the most part. The lead needs tweaked. Does anyone else think it's closer? dannymusiceditor ^{Speak up!} 23:55, 19 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Drmies: I noticed this was still open, and I think it should be delisted now. If I haven't had time to work on it for all this time, we shouldn't prolong this anymore. I'll get this back up someday hopefully, but L'Enfant Sauvage needs serious expansion, any several of the present refs are less than satisfactory. dannymusiceditor ^{Speak up!} 21:58, 14 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

• @Drmies and DannyMusicEditor: Would either of you like to close this GAR? This individual assessment has been open since June 2017 and has been inactive for quite a while now. I think it's fair to say the article should be delisted at least based on my reading of it. --The1337gamer (talk) 08:08, 5 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

@The1337gamer: beat me to it. This had been nagging me for the past few days and I kept forgetting to follow through on letting him know. By the Way, Drmies, did you like Magma? It's a good album, not absolutely incredible level, but probably as good as metal from France gets. "Silvera" was Grammy-nominated for a reason. dannymusiceditor ^oops 13:52, 5 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

• The1337gamer, I don't know exactly how to close these things and I probably shouldn't be doing it since I put it up here. (And I don't have time right now to study how to do it, haha.) Danny, that album got snowed under, meaning moved to the bottom of the pile, in large part because of the invention of the Neil Young Archives, and in another part because I discovered Circle. I tell you what I'm excited about--there's a new album coming, and a show in San Francisco, which is the other side of the world for me. I should get Cullen328 to go in my stead... Drmies (talk) 14:36, 5 April 2018 (UTC)Reply