Wikipedia:Peer review/City of Blinding Lights/archive1

City of Blinding Lights

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Hello everyone, I've listed "City of Blinding Lights" as a peer review request for several reasons. The article has recently undergone a major revamp in an attempt to bring it up to a decent standard quality. Once the major reconstruction was finished I listed it as a Good Article nominee, and it passed with flying colours. Looking at some of the current examples, I think that the article is now at a place where it could potentially become an FA, but before nominating I would like some feedback on how you think the article currently stands. Is there a section I'm missing? Some detail that needs to be added? Is the prose confusing or badly worded? Is there any part of it that needs tightening up? Are the citations all reliable? Are the soundclip rationale and alt text appropriate? Any and all feedback that can be provided on any aspect of this article is very much appreciated.

Cheers, MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 03:16, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Good work! The article tells me everything I could imagine knowing. I do half wonder, not coincidentally since I've been the primary editor of The Devil Wears Prada, if anyone has noted in a way that we can use that the song's use in that movie evokes the same themes as Bono says the lyrics do, but in a more downbeat fashion ("I see you in the clothes you made ... What happened to the beauty inside of you?" has a more accusatory meaning in the film, since Andy has just been accused by Emily of selling her soul). At the very least it might be interesting to add the sourced bit from the DVD commentary in the DWP article, where the director, David Frankel, says he fought for the song in the soundtrack after using it in a montage of scenes he shot during location in Paris.

I don't have the Devil Wears Prada DVD on hand but I do think that it would add a bit more to the article. I'm not sure how well the accusatory meaning could be sourced, but if you could add in the bit about how hard David Frankel worked to include the song it would be very much appreciated. MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 19:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Scratch that; I reworded what you put in The Devil Wears Prada film article and modified the reference so that it now includes the director's commentary track. MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 20:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

That's all you really need; I think that a director's reasons for using a certain song in a movie are encyclopedic enough to include in an article about the song, especially when that use of the song has been repeated in an episode of a popular TV show taking off on the movie. Daniel Case (talk) 21:17, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, now that I think about it ... you may want to find some way to add a free image there won't be any doubt about before you go to FA. Not only could the picture taken at the Wachovia Center show stand to be cropped in a bit, it may potentially not be a free image since the ticket terms usually preclude commercial reuse of any pictures taken. Perhaps there's some free images of the younger and contemporary Bono you could use?

Cropped as suggested; I don't think that the images will be of too much concen; U2 has always been very open about allowing their fans to take and use images, and live concert shots haven't been much of a problem in previous FACs for U2 and No Line on the Horizon. If a problem does come up then I guess I can always substitute it for this image; since the image is in the public domain I thought it would be a good way of helping to visualize the music video without actually taking a screenshot. MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 19:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Whatever U2 thinks about it doesn't matter legally ... the venue sets the rules, usually. I admit there's some disagreement over this here ... some people believe that no one else can restrict your ability to license your own image as you see fit, provided there's no third-party copyright involved; while my side of this points out that attending a concert or sporting event is a purely voluntary act and doing so gives assent to the terms under which your ability to selectively copyright an image is limited. The problem is that those policies were instituted to prevent people making direct commercial use of those images for their or their employers' own personal gain; no one anticipated an environment whereby people would make those images free for commercial reuse by others without any expectation of compensation themselves. It's a legal gray area.

But, in any event, you've addressed it. Daniel Case (talk) 21:17, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Image of young Bono from 1983 added to be safe (good idea of including it since a similar image was an inspiration for the theme). MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 20:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

You might also want to write a section that sort of takes a reader through the song (I might be willing to write one if you find that difficult). Daniel Case (talk) 18:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I did consider doing a section that takes the reader through the song, but other song-related FACs haven't contained them in the past and I couldn't think of anyway that it could be properly sourced.

Thanks for all of your feedback so far! MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 18:32, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

In the old days I would have said well, we can cite the CD. But now we have this at Ilike, which to my understanding is done with the copyright holders' permission so it's OK by WP:EL. (I really don't see why song articles don't have narrative descriptions of the song ... one of my favorite Beatles' books, Nicholas Schaffner's The Beatles Forever, has some great ones in this department. At the very least we can tell people what instruments they're hearing (although I can see where things might get subjective and run afoul of WP:OR). Daniel Case (talk) 21:17, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, would you be willing to write it for the article? It sounds like a good idea but I'm not particularly sure how it would be done. You seem to have some experience with it. If it is just the instruments though, isn't that already covered in the Personnel section at the bottom? MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 21:22, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

This is how I would start it:

{{quote|The song begins with a single electric guitar harmonic that slowly builds to feedback. After several seconds, a rhythm guitar part begins, playing an alternating pattern of chords and muffled strings, and then a piano begins playing a nine-note descending theme. [Whatever number of seconds it is], a lead guitar begins playing the chorus [[melody line. Then the vocals begin ... (and so forth)}}

Think that format would work? Daniel Case (talk) 00:03, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that format would work pretty well taking care not to stray into OR. What section would you be puting it into? Composition or a new one? MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 00:26, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

After reviewing the stuff at WP:SONGS, which does say "write a description of the song", I see that creating a separate section with the word "song" in it is discouraged (why? At WP:WPARCH, we have no problem with a section headed "Building" describing the building), so I will just start that under composition and theme, probably giving the music and lyrics separate subsections.

One of my ideas that also ties into the image thing is something that I think we could do with song articles more ... use a free image to illustrate the words. For example, in the U2 song department, "Until the End of the Worl" wouldn't be hurt by adding an actual image of Gethsemane. And who says we can't have a little stacked image, in "Beautiful Day", of Bedouin fires at night or oil fields at first light, if we can get those images?

So I'm thinking about how we could illustrate a lyric from the song ... probably by taking one of our many New York City skyline at night photos and running it through a star filter and pumping up the highlights to express that "city of blinding lights" idea (it's otherwise not an easy song to illustrate: "Neon heart dayglow eyes/ City lit by fireflies"? I'm at a loss). Daniel Case (talk) 04:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I took a quick look through and I have to admit that I'm already quite partial to these two images; this one of the Brooklyn Bridge, which the band played under (as noted in the article), and this image of Manhattan. I think that both bring across the "city of blinding lights" part and they both have relevance to other parts of the article (I somehow don't think that images of a banner advertisement being dragged by an airplane {We're advertising in the skies} or a clown laughing {Don't look before you laugh} would illustrate it quite so well, =P). MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 04:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I LOVE that pic of the bridge. Let me see if later today I can give it some dazzle. Daniel Case (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

For now, I've added a star-filter effect to the Midtown pic per this tutorial as it was smaller (the bridge photo is an 11MB panorama; it will take more time). Unfortunately I can't upload at the moment because of the server upgrade. Daniel Case (talk) 23:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Awesome, I'm looking forward to seeing it! MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 00:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

In a few edits, I just added the pic, gave it the chorus as a caption, and wrote that expanded narrative description of the song to give the images and quote box more room without squeezing so much text. I hope you like it. Daniel Case (talk) 05:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much for that you did with the song description and the image. It's added quite a lot to the article and it looks much better as a result. I can't thank you enough for all that you've done! MelicansMatkin (talk, contributions) 06:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)