User talk:OmegaWikipedia

My RFA

Thank you very much for your vote on my RFA, it is now one of the most supported RFA ever, and it couldnt have happened without your vote. I look forward to serving wikipedia. Again, thanks. →Journalist >>talk<< 16:30, 1 October 2005 (UTC) [reply]

Hi Omega

Regarding the Carey single that isn't released yet, unfortunately I do think you should have kept "is not a crystal ball" in mind before you made it. As for the others, if they get developed more, I will cretainly change my vote. :) I promise to keep a watch on the pages. --Jacquelyn Marie 19:19, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know what I said before...

..but I just saw this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Music/Notability_and_Music_Guidelines/Songs#Response_.231), which I felt was very unprofessional and downright messy.

For the last time, I am not jealous of your* articles, and certainly not of the number of them. I gues I'll have to be blunt now: the articles are poorly written, gushing with fan language and lacking in the way of honest objectivity. I requested assistance because I prefer working in a team, and so that I can get fact-checking, grammar, and wording assistance from others, and also so that the contributions are not "all mine", and any article can be listed any number of times on AfD as long as nominations are in good faith and not immediately succeeding each other. Also, I never ordered anyone to do anything; I believe I informed you that we needed work done on other R&B artists, but it was certainly not an order. I must have typed all of this 50 times within the last 2 days, but you still do not listen. This is far from nonsense; this is a serious problem, and I am hardly the only person who thinks this.

Someone else in fact came up with a perfect word to describe it: "fanglut". If you want to create a massive amount of pop music articles, detailing every single release and otherwise in exhaustive detail, you would be well-advised to start a pop star wiki over at WikiCties, where you can include pretty much anything youd want to. Here, we need decorum and consistency.

I don't have any bias against any articles, but I do realize that not every single ever released deserves a Wikipedia article. I could sit and write OutKast articles all day long, but there is no point. The group is covered in enough detail already; the only thing that would really need ot be done would be expanding their album pages. There's no need for seperate articles on each single they ever put out, and, were it done, I deal with them just the same as I had been doing.

(*) Re: "your articles": The articles don't belong to you. Mine don't belong to me. You don't have the right to "protect" and try to blame people for attempting to undermine your work. There is a reason why Wikipedia is not a face-to-face project, and a reason why we do not have any attributed authorship.

I've talked until I was blue in the face to you, and so have several other people. I have had enough of it all, and I am going to handle it, for the better interest of the encyclopedia. I'm not doing this for myself, or even my own personal benefit; I'm doing it for the sake of saving the music side of this project before it implodes and de-evolves into a free-hosted fan site. --FuriousFreddy 02:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't lie.

Check the message right above this one. That negated any "agreement" we had. Besides, the articles aren't neccessary anyways; if I didn't nominate them, someone else was going to do it. --FuriousFreddy 16:06, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When it was written is of no concern to me; it's the fact that it was ever written. Don't write fancruft articles, and I (nor anyone else) won't nominate them for deletion. That seems simple enough.

I find it...perplexing...that you think I'm vile and hateful, or that I'm doing this only to hurt you. I'm not over here going "okay...how can I mess with him today?" I'm over here going "he's filling the encyclopedia with fancruft, and we need to get it under control if we are to have some sort of credibility as a scholarly reference. Maybe he doesn't understand what encylopedic writing is all about...maybe he just doesn't care. In either case, something needs to be done." (and that statement can be applied to many, many, many other problematic Wiki editors. In other words, "don't feel special.") This is an encyclopedia, not a fan wiki for usic artists. If you want to contribute fan information, you can start a fan wiki at WikiCities. It's free, it's built just like Wikipedia, and you can set (some of) your own rules. --FuriousFreddy 16:38, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A chronic liar? A cheater? A deciever? A heartbreaker? No, I'm the nicest person, but also the most serious person, you could ever meet. This is about whether you're wrting fancruft or not; the reason I was willing to leave it all alone is because I didn't feel it was worth the stress of trying to talk sense into your head. But, after talking it over with other editors, that would be giving up, which achieves nothing.

Do yourself a favor: copyedit the articles yu have written. Fact-check. Cut out extraneous information. Redirect articles about songs that didn't hit the Top 40, or songs that are covers of others. Only worry about listing significant statistical information; remember you're writing for the general public, not Mariah Carey fans. And don't take personal ownership of articles; they don't belong to you. For as long as you feel like people are out to get you and "your" articles, you'll never be able to understand the issue. You need to make it a top priority to do all of these things, because if you do not, someone else (amybe me, maybe not me, but most likely me and quite a few others) will. That being said, I've got to get back to work now. --FuriousFreddy 17:02, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've never once claimed ownership of any of the articles I've worked on, nor have I gotten mad if anyone edited them. You have added unverified and non-factual informatio nto some of them, which I corrected just as I have done anyone else. I have never gone back and reverted a useful edit to any page (and about 80% of all edits have proven to be useful). I have to clean out the Michael Jackson page once a month, because it gets overloaded with excessive detail on albums that have their own pages, and with POV language.

Furthermore, I do not write articles with fancruft. Everything I write is verfiable fact (and I make sure of it), and if there is any doubt, I always get second opinions or fact-check and reference. Perhaps you should take a look at Wikipedia:Fancruft and see what exactly I mean by that term. I'm not being a hypocrite. --FuriousFreddy 17:26, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You know I didn't write that. Yes, I've been editing those for months, and, if you notice, every time I edit it, I reword it. I've been tracing back over these articles to do full-fledged edits for the last few days. Just yesterday I went through all of the Marvin Gaye articles. I did some minor cleanup on these; since you think it's not enough, I will do some more. That's not fancruft, it's POV writing. It's still not acceptable, and I am working on it.

Oh wait, its R&B its ok. Pop music sucks and R&B rocks. Thats what youre thinking. This is so biased and you know it. But of course, you'll probably defend these articles. Meh

If you really believe I think that, then you'll believe anything. --FuriousFreddy 22:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

...so, what you're actually blaming me for is...not being fast enough of a one-man cleanup taskforce? I know BrothaTimothy writes articles with biased language. At the same time, he doesn't revert my chages when I clean them up, so I made it a secondary task to go behind him and clean them up. You, on the other hand, have been known to revert any change that you don't like to your articles. I wouldn't be making an issue about your POV writing if you'd let other people correct it without complaining.

The Jackson 5 articles are being updated as I find time; my first directive was to give them infoboxes, and I corrected the POV that I did find as I sped-read the prose. I'm not allowing any POV writing; I just haven't gotten around to correcting it. I've got several thousand other articles on my watchlist, including some of the most vandalized articles in the encylcopedia. GIve it time, and the POV language wil lall be gone.

Now let's see you do the same thing.

This is something a child would do--accuse me of "allowing" POV in an article just because it's about R&B (but wait...last time I checked, Mariah Carey was an R&B singer, too. And Whitney Houston as well). I have this image of you as a fifteen-year-old or so kid who doesn't quite understand how to work with others. I may very well be wrong, but that's the image you present.

Oh, and I removed the bit about the arpeggios hitting Alicia Keys because, as you now know, she didn't compose the music of "Fallin'" from scratch. Nothing hit her, but possibly a recollection to hearing James Brown's song. --FuriousFreddy 23:43, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Not watching

If you're talking about the edits on Shake It Off and We Belong Together I've already conceded them to you, and have agreed in the toning down of the sections like the live performance section, and I haven't reverted them back. You stopped reverting and "conceded" only when Mel Etitis intervened.

If you're talking about the single articles, I believe the charts should be seperated, but I'm not following anyone around. The articles have been on my watchlist for months, and you can look at the history if you dont believe me. Ive been editing them for a long time, and Im not following anyone around. That doesn't mean you are automatically exempt from abiding to Wikipedia policy. See Talk:The Trouble with Love Is. I have already explained to you why those edits violate Wikipedia policy. As usual, you aren't listening.

As for the grounds for your RFC: as I have already told you more than once, you are in violation of the policies at Wikipedia:Harassment (whether you had the pages on your watchlist or not), Wikipedia:Ownership of articles, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, as well as the guidelines at Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms, Wikipedia:Cite sources and Wikipedia:Fancruft. The RFC is going ahead whether you want it to or not. Extraordinary Machine 18:04, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is an obvious problem when one person allows another to edit an article only when an administrator intervenes. This isn't about the conflict at Shake It Off, this is about you and your attitude towards other editors who disagree with you, your insistence on doing things "your" way (even if that way violates Wikipedia policies and guidelines), your constant guarding of these articles as if you own them...of course, this probably isn't getting through to you (it didn't the last half a dozen times, so I'll go out on a limb here), so I'll stop now. Leave me all the messages you want on my talk page, but I refuse to respond to a brick wall. Extraordinary Machine 18:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Boa

Reversions

Can you please stop reverting in the album articles? Please work towards resolving the dispute(s), rather than reverting. Thanks. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 01:51, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your "outside view"

Hello again Omega. Thank you for the kind words on my talk page the other day. I appreciated them but didn't quite know how to respond, so laziness and procrastination resulted in my not responding at all. And while I have a hunch that an RfC on one user is not an appropriate place to praise another user, I also appreciate your comment on me there.

As you know, I tend to agree with Mel on these issues and to disagree with you. Sorry, but I can't sign my name to your "outside view", even though there are bits and pieces within it with which I sympathize and to which I even agree.

However, it's not my agreement or disagreement that I want to write about here. Rather, it's the phrasing of the specifics of what you say. Here's an example: My main issues were about the spelling out of numbers as numerals and remix capitalization. I told SlimVirgin that the MoS allows numbers to be spelled out and provided links.

The first time I read that, I was baffled. "Spell out" doesn't have a precise meaning but I think it has strong connotations of writing or saying something at length. So (in my idiolect, at least) one person might spell out "57" as "fifty-seven", but another person wouldn't spell out "fifty-seven" as "57" (he'd write, represent it, etc., as "57").

You continue: As I mentioned above, the MoS does allow numbers to be written out. [...] Although his manuals may say otherwise, if the Wikipedia MoS says we can write out numbers as numerals, shouldn't we be allowed to?

The first sentence there again suggests to me that MoS allows "fifty-seven" rather than that it allows "57". It's only when we get to the second sentence that we see you have the opposite in mind.

As I recall the argument (and putting aside the style guides and the claimed benefits and drawbacks for the moment), Mel wants one- and two-digit numbers written out ("fifty-seven", etc.), while you prefer (want?) them as numerals ("57", etc.). (I think you also like single numerals, such as "5th", but offhand I'm not sure and I lack the energy to go through page histories to find out.)

Meanwhile, I don't know what you mean by "remix capitalization".

You probably shouldn't edit your outside view, because Anittas has already signed it as it is and others may have signed it too by the time you get around to looking at it. But I suggest that you add a signed and dated clarification below it.

No need to reply; but if you do want to reply, please do so here rather than on my page. -- Hoary 01:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't mind me asking out of curiosity, what do you agree and disagree with on my outside view? Anyway, sorry about the confusion. I should clarify the matter. Thanks for pointing it out. What I meant was I believe that the numbers (in the single articles) should be in numerical rather than written-word form. Like I believe it should be "#57" not number fifty-seven.

By remix capitalization, I mean that I believe all titles in the remix should be capitalized as they are the formal title of a song. Like it should be "Honey (So and So Remix)" not "Honey" (remix). Just as we go "The Roof (Back in Time)" not "The Roof" (back in time) OmegaWikipedia 05:05, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My Humps

Hey! Thanks for the message--I really apprechiate it. Okay, I can understand why we wouldn't be alloud to post them, so yeah, an external link would be just fine. Thanks, God Bless! Matthew.

Mariah & Gwen

Hi! The unreleased song article is much better now. :) I wanted to vote for the Gwen Stefani song, but the voting is now over and it was kept :-) Alensha 10:57, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Federalist No. 10

I've replied to your comment on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Federalist No. 10; if you could take another look that would be great. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:15, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed 6 redlinks and added stubs for another two. A few remain, but these are only in the reference section (links to Supreme Court cases). There are none in the body of the article. Are any other changes needed to get your support? Thanks for your consideration. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:27, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

...just so you know

RfC's aren't toys to be used as empty threats to try and make people back down off of you. You can't threaten me with an RfC (which you don't even have any grounds to file) and think it's going to scare me in any way.

This is my last attempt (out of many) to ask you to take this matter into your own hands and fix your own problems (which I am not going to repeat or enumerate again: basically, listen to what I, Mel, Hoary, EM, Volatile, and others have been telling you over the past half-a-year. Since we don't know each other, have never seen each other, and don't talk to each other outside of an occasional note here and there on Wikipedia, do you think it's possible that there's a reason why we're all telling you something is wrong? We're not doing it for our health). You're an intellegent enough person to know what you need to do, please do it. It will be beneficial both for you and for the WIkipedia. --FuriousFreddy 04:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go again...

This is hardly an empty threat. Its very weird of you to criticize me of fan-cruft when you write articles full of it too.

Where? Show me; I'd like to see. Do you even know what the word "fancruft" means? See Wikipedia: Fancruft.

And what exactly is the problem? You dont believe there should be sections on remixes and chart perforance, from what I remember. Since this is your personal preferences, its weird to see you claim its fancruft just because you dont agree with it.

No. Go to the library and open an encyclopedia. You'll notice the lack of overly detailed information. That's the level of detail an encyclopediua article should have. As far as the history of culture is concerned (which is why articles are written about music in the first place), all that is need are mentions of peak positions and mentions of notable (meaning released to radio and gaining major airplay) remixes. That's not hard ot understand. Go to Wikipedia: WikiProject Songs. Read what it says there, and how it says to do it. It's not my personal preference (it's neither personal nor a preference), because if it where, how come several others say the same things? An article should not be half or more made up of lists and charts; it is supposed to be made up of prose. The grand sweeping majority of the readership does not need ot know what whoever's single charted on the Hot 100 airplay chart; all that is need are mentions of major national charts and, in the case of the US, the R&B chart, the Dance shart ,and the AC chart. Anything else is too much information, and we've told you this so many times. What is so difficult about simply deferring to the precedents that were already set before you got here? I just had some other guy (see above) run off crying because people told him there were rules to follow. I'm sorry that there are rules, but, yes, there are rules. And we (you, I, everyone else) must follow them, or they need to not edit. Now if you really and honsetly feel I am breaking rules in my editing, show me and I will correct my errors. But otherwise...stop trying to threaten me. It doesn't look good. --FuriousFreddy 04:42, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know regular encyclopedias do not include song articles. My point is trhat song articles should be written and covered in the same way that an encyclopdeia would if an encyclopedia covered song articles. There's not really a comprable example I can point out to you: any coverage of singles elsewhere, allmusic.com included, is literally filled with biased writing (and often gross inaccuracies, which is why I hate using AMG as a reference--it's only about 65% correct).

As far as singles having high airplay, low sales, etc., etc, and things like that...that's what I'm talking about when I talk about overinformation. None of that matters to a reader, and can end up confusing them with over information. They don't need ot know whether a song got to number one by sales or airplay (unless it specifically lacked one or the other or there was some extraordinary circumstances surrounding either item). A lot of the singles articles read like score card analyses, not scholarly writings about musical recordings. You have to write the articles like you were doing a college english composition paper, in that same style and voice. Professional, succinct, and unpadded. About Carrie Underwood's song, just say it hit number one for one week and that's enough. The chart trajectory is too much, and you know this because I know you originally didn't want to include it. And...the "reign" of Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together"? Although that's a mild example, that's exactly what we don't want to do here.

As far as important remixes, what I meant by "the ones that are relased to the radio" are the ones that actually are commerically promoted by the label and are widely heard by audiences outside of clubs. A list of all 20 - 30 remixes of a song is less than neccessary, and serves little honest educational value to the user (really, any list of anything serves little educational use to the user, because unless they are thoroguhly engrossed in the subject at hand, they are not going to read it. There's a Wikipedia project page that says something to the effect of "Keep the user in mind", I'd try and find it but it's getting late). There's a lot of information available on anything and everything, but there must be some discression in as far as what to include and what not to include. The guidelines don't say it shouldn't be included becasue it never says that it should be included. WHen articles on songs and albums approach 30K and 45K, one should realize that there is a problem at hand. That's what the RfC would be about: getting updated guidelines in place, so that there is consistency for all of the singles articles in the entire encyclopedia.

I still want to know what "fancruft" articles I wrote (and/or apparently edited) and where they are.

Several others (Mel Etitis, Hoary, and several outside people who've read articles when they're listed for deletion) have pointed out the fact that a lot of the content in these articles are unneccessary or padding (several people pointed out that the Whitney Houston Star-Spangled Banner could be easily trimmed down to 2 or 3 sentences and merged, which is very true).

It's not biased for me to think the R&B, Dance, and AC charts are the most important ones: they are. As far as figuring out what needs to stay and what needs to go; those are the only ones worth keeping, in addition to the already important main pop chart and those for intenrational countries. Those are the only ones that get reguar referencing in most other professional music write ups, and those are the only ones record lables usually print in liner notes. I have never in my life seen information on any component charts printed in a greatest hits album discography; not saying that it doesn't exist, but it's highly uncommon.

If a song is notable for its sales records, then there's nothing wrong with mentioning that. I never said there was anything wrong with that. But not all songs are notable for their sales records, and therefore not all song articles need that information. Detailed descriptions of week-by-week sales and chart records aren't neccessary.

Just because there are no rules doesn't mean you can just do whatever; you should use the rules that are given and get consensus on new rules, instead of wanting to do it your way and being mad when several people point it out to you. Ask. If you're consistently having problems with editors saying that you're spreading fancruft--and you know that I'm not the only one who's said aything to you--don't you think that maybe there's a grain of truth to it? --FuriousFreddy 05:25, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In reference to the Mariah Carey articles in question, only the pop (didn't you read where I said the main national chart for each country?), R&B, AC, and dance charts are important as far as the US goes. For different artists, you have different foci. And not everything everyone adds to every article is always important. Just because someone adds information doesn't mean that some one else shouldn't take it and cut it down.

There is no consensus. If there were, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. A consensus means all parties (not one clique of editors) agree on the policies and guidelines pertaining to an issue, and that there actually has been a discussion to establish a consensus. And, again, you know I am not the only one who has complained. Anyone who's complained of what I've done has only done so because I'm actually trying to get them to realize trhat Wikipedia is not a free-for-all and that you can't tell people that they "have to keep this [unneccessary and fancrusted] article" just because they want it, and that "I'm only doing this because I don't like Mariah Carey" (news to me). And if you empathize with that Beautifulstranger person, then you're obviously looking at this issue from the wrong end: he knowingly and willingly broke the policies, and complained whne someone pointed them out to him. All I did was make one post on his user page, and if that's what drove him to quit in a hurry, then that's just too bad. He was a problematic editor who didn't want to follow the guidelines.

..If "Just My Imagination" were full of fancruft, it wouldn't be a featured article. And certainly somone else besides you would have said so; I was surprised at how many compliments it got. Are those Beatles song articles full of fancruft too? What's so fancrufty about the article? The mention of why the song was written only makes sense to include on any article for a song. The fact that I have mention the exact two days the song was recorded; the Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums states that you are to mention when and where a song was recorded in detail. A generic "1970" or "fall 1970" makes little sense, when saying "November 25, 1970" takes up no more space and is no less readable? The mentions of the arranger and the musicians? The Funk Brothers are highly notable: they've had a book and a film made aboutthem, and two of them have won positions in the ROck and Roll Hall of Fame for being nothing but "generic studio musicians", as you say. The mentions of Eddie Kendricks quiting the group during the recording and relase of the song? Every bit of information I ever read on the song mentions that fact, and that is really the most important reason the song is notable: Kendricks rode the success of that song into his own career. That's the sort of information that's important for encyclopediaic coverage of a song. Did anyone important work on it? Why was the record successful, not just how it was successful. What is its impact on culture? On history? On the carers of the persons involved? The very fact that you would even try to state that the article is full of fancruft is ridiculous. It's at a decent but not overly long length, and it covers the song in just enough detail so that there is room to learn more about it elsewhere.

Weren't you the one who objected to the article becasue you wanted a detailed desciption of the song's trajectory on the pop charts (something I couldn't do without paying Billboard to unarchive old 1971 magazine microfische)? You don't think that's fancruft? (I shouldn't all it that--I should just call it excess information). In fact, that's really what's wrong with a lot of the artciles you put together: mush of the material is made up of chart information and synopses of music videos. A reader doesn't get an idea of how the record came together or why it was important (other than how much it sold or how much it was played on the radio).