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Like a Rolling Stone

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I post this on behalf of the WikiProject Bob Dylan collaboration team, which consists of Mick gold, Rlendog, Moisejp, Allreet, and myself. We have been all working hard on the article for the past few months, with the ultimate goal of FAC. I'm interested in hearing any feedback, be it praise or criticism, as any input will help. I'm hoping others from the collaboration team will also post here, expressing what they're specifically looking for in this peer review. Until then, anything helps, and we'll appreciate even the slightest input that any of you have on this.

Many thanks, I.M.S. (talk) 20:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question: The article has an "Under construction" banner. Is this still in force? The text needs to be in a more or less stable state for its peer review, so I suggest you remove the banner. You can always replace it after the review. Brianboulton (talk) 19:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's simply there to alert users that the article is currently the focus of the WikiProject Bob Dylan collaboration team. I'll remove it if you like. - I.M.S. (talk) 03:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed "under construction" banner to enable peer review to proceed. As Brianboulton says, we can always replace it after peer review has made suggestions. Mick gold (talk) 13:17, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: This is much improved snce the last time I read it (for the previous PR), here are some suggestions for improvement based on FAC criteria.

The language is good, but I think it still needs some polishing before FAC - getting to WP:WIAFA Criteria 1a is often the most difficult part of the article improvement process. For example, the lead sentence could be tightened to just "Like a Rolling Stone", a song by American songwriter Bob Dylan, is one of his best-known and most influential compositions.[2][3][4]
Would it make more sense to call it "Columbia Records" in Dylan recorded "Like a Rolling Stone" a few weeks later, but Columbia, unhappy ... - see WP:PCR too
I mentioned this in my previous PR, but I am not sure that the Springsteen quote belongs in the lead - the quote does not specifically say that the song is Like a Rolling Stone and it seems a bit too detailed for the lead, which is supposed to be a summary of the article. Also this is the only place in the whole article where Springsteen is mentioned and the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article and not have anything new / solely there.
If you want to keep the quote in the lead, perhaps if the snare shot in the song were mentioned earlier? Or perhaps if a shorter version of the quote were used in the lead and the whole quote was used later in the article? So something like As Bruce Springsteen recalled in his 1988 speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the first time he heard the song "that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind ... Dylan freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body."[12][13]
I would add the year in Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the number one song on their "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.[17] I would add years in other places like the Playboy interview too.
I think Al Kooper needs a bit more background when introduced.
When I read this I thought who is Arthur? Is this a first name or last name? In the days following the rejection, Considine took a discarded acetate pressing of the song to Arthur—then the hottest disco in New York.
ALT Text is nice, but the caption says Dylan performs "Like a Rolling Stone" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, backed by Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper and the alt text points out there are four people in the image, so I think the caption should all of them. Might also want to identify who is who by instrument - assume Kooper is on the organ, for example.
The Cover versions section seems to me to be weighted a bit too much towards the foreign language bands. What is the criteria for inclusion of a cover? My guess is that many more covers have been released than the ones mentioned here (and by the way, The Replacements covered it too, changing the lyics to "Like a rolling pin").
Did any of the covers ever chart anywhere?
The external link checker finds one dead link.
Amazon.com as a source? I think the names of newspapers and magazines need to be italicized too. I also think that abbreviations like CBC and NPR in the refs need to be spelled out.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Ruhrfisch, I think that's very helpful. Lots of good suggestions for copy editing. Mick gold (talk) 13:32, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Those are some very fine suggestions, Ruhrfisch. Thank you for reviewing! - I.M.S. (talk) 22:58, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
- What makes the following reliable sources?
  - http://www.irishcharts.ie/search/placement
  - http://www.bjorner.com/songss.htm
- Newspapers and magazine titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using {{cite news}}, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper
- Decide if ou're going to do your shortened footnotes in Last name (year) format or Last name Title format, and make them all the same.
- Please spell out abbreviations in the notes (I noted NPR, but there may be others)
- Current ref 81 lacks a publisher
- Sources that are in languages other than English need to have that language noted in the reference

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 16:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Ealdgyth, thanks for your comments. I write in response to your query: What makes Bjorner website a reliable source? When Bob Dylan article last went through WP:FAR, I defended use of Bjorner as WP:RS. I reproduced an email I had received from Michael Gray, one of the most distinguished critics of Dylan's work. You can find the email here: [[1]]. In part, Gray wrote: "For myself, I found in the course of researching the 800+ entries within The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia that Mr. Björner’s work was both extraordinarily useful as an assembling together of otherwise widely dispersed facts and figures and phenomenally accurate. All his listings are of verifiable facts - which musicians played behind Dylan at what concerts, what songs were performed on different individual nights of a concert tour, etc. - and it seems to me demonstrable that www.bjorner.com is an invaluable source, built up with great care by someone who knows and disseminates freely a vastly greater amount on his topic than any mainstream publication such as The Times or any mainstream media organization such as the BBC." I believe Gray's view was accepted by other editors involved in FAR of the Dylan article. best, Mick gold (talk) 08:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To determine the reliability of the site, we need to know what sort of fact checking they do. You can establish this by showing news articles that say the site is reliable/noteworthy/etc. or you can show a page on the site that gives their rules for submissions/etc. or you can show they are backed by a media company/university/institute, or you can show that the website gives its sources and methods, or there are some other ways that would work too. The best method is a mix of all of the above. It's their reputation for reliability that needs to be demonstrated. Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches for further detailed information. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Two testimonies to Bjorner's website. In The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, a key Dylan reference book by Michael Gray, we find the following description of Bjorner's website:

The result is the enormous and invaluable website www.bjorner.com, which (so far) offers a detailed run-down on every Dylan year from 1958 to 2005: offering a catalogue of his recording sessions, his concert performances—listing every song performed in every concert—plus his record releases, books published by and about him, tapes newly coming into circulation, and more besides. The detail is extraordinary, and the level of accuracy phenomenal. There’s also a section of Olof’s site with transcriptions of Dylan interviews from the 1960s to the 1990s, and a vast listing of cover versions of Dylan songs by other artists (accessible by song or by artist). Truly a gigantic undertaking, maintained to a very high standard indeed. (The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 2006, p. 50)

Bjorner's website info is also published by Hardinge Simpole. [[2]] who have made Bjorner's website available as hard back publications.[[3]] Hardinge Simpole have a strong chess list, they also have specialist lists in travel, Buddhism, and Bob Dylan. Mick gold (talk) 15:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]