Wikipedia:Peer review/Rage Against the Machine/archive1

Rage Against the Machine

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for September 2008.

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I've listed this article for peer review because…

I think this is a good article, approaching feature quality, that probably needs some tightening up. Specifically, I would like to know if this article maintains a NPOV throughout, or if it is overly biased in favour of RATM. Also, any advice about prose issues would be very helpful.

Thanks, AutomaticWriting 20:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Hullo. Hope this helps.

Lead:

sometimes abbreviated RATM or Rage Rage is such a common word as to make notation of this abbreviation meaningless. I would use RATM rather than Rage when using an abbreviation in the article, it's too fan-ish (but fine in the quote later, obv.)

The band's continual members are Not sure what you mean here, but i don't like it. Perhaps "core members"? Or just "members"? If you're making the point explicitly that the lineup has been unchanged since formation, i feel you'll have to do so in a separate clause. "The band's lineup, unchanged since formation, consists of" or "The band's lineup in every incarnation has consisted of" or similar.

drew inspiration from from early metal instrumentation Again, this meaning is unclear on a few levels. I presume you mean something like "were influenced by heavy metal". Do you also mean something specific, for instance brand of guitar or some such? In any case, the slangy, hip abbreviation to "metal" will probably have to go. "Heavy metal" is square, but so are encyclopedias, after all.

The group's music is distinguished primarily by de la Rocha's rhyming styles, powerful stage energy and Morello's unorthodox guitar techniques Is that de la Rocha's energy, or the group's? If the former, then "de la Rocha's rhyming styles and powerful stage energy, and Morello's ..." If the latter, then perhaps "is distinguished primarily by its powerful stage energy, by de la Rocha's rhyming styles, and by Morello's unorthodox guitar techniques".

Zack de la Rocha started a low-key solo career A bit vague.

Early years (1991–1992)

de la Rocha was free-style rapping Link to Freestyle rap?

Inside Out: I might have mentioned this as de la Rocha's previous band along with info on Lock Up, i.e. before meeting of morello & de la rocha, then explaining connection to RATM name after. But no biggie.

The blueprint for the group's major-label debut album, demo tape Rage Against the Machine, was laid on a twelve-song self-released cassette, the cover image of which was the stock-market with a single match taped to the inlay card. Problems here. Needs rewording, probably into three sentences. Grammatically you're saying the demo was laid on a twelve-song cassette, which doesn't work, sounds like it was physically put somewhere, for one thing. You mean they "laid down" 12 songs to cassette, and this was their demo tape. Use "recorded" to avoid the "laid" jargon. "the stock market" Which? Try "a stock market floor" if that is what is meant, perhaps with a wikilink. "the cover image of which was ... with a single match taped to the inlay card" Strictly speaking the match isn't part of the cover image, is it? Perhaps avoid linking these grammatically. How about "The blueprint for the group's major-label debut album was a self-titled, self-released demo tape made in 1991. The demo Rage Against the Machine featured twelve songs, and had an image of a stock market floor for its cover. A single match was taped to each inlay card." Or something like that, yanno. It's pretty cool. (Actually looked up the image, and it depicts newspaper reports of what i would call stock market tables, stock market quotes or stock market results, not a stock market at all.)

Mainstream success (1992–2000)

Text is squeezed between image and song file, image is on left below subsection header, both these things are discouraged by our MoS somewhere.

attempted to hang inverted American flags from their amplifiers (a sign of distress or great danger)."[10], a protest against having Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host Clean up the period and quote mark, probably lose the comma too and say "as a protest"

selling 450,000 copies the first week and then going double-platinum Bit vague and slangy to me, perhaps because i am not american. I would have said "in its first week, and certified double platinum by the year's end"[1] <-- warning: long-ass URL

Break-up and subsequent projects (2000–2005)

on September 12 and 13, 2000 Looks funny to me, maybe repeat September, or use 12–13, though somebody else will probably tell you that implies they played for two days straight.

The band vowed to have a "one-album-per-year" schedule, until the departure of Chris Cornell on February 15, 2007.[19] Implies they knew Cornell would leave on this date when making the vow, reword.

He first participated in Billy Bragg's Tell Us the Truth tour[20] with no plans to record,[21] but later recorded a song for Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11, "No One Left". Maybe it's just me but this led me to think the Moore album was connected to Bragg.

but the album will probably never be released Why's that? Don't leave me hangin', bro.

Reunion (2007–present)

and were confirmed on January 22.[30] The band was confirmed to be headlining the final day of Coachella 2007 Realize these are prolly two separate confirmations, but still a bit repetitive.

in Chicago as one of the headlines (Radiohead, Kanye West and Nine Inch Nails being the other three) for the 2008 Lollapalooza Music Festival "headliners" i should think. and maybe move the parenthetical info to end of sentence.

Political views and activism

Actually earlier i expected a line or two on this each time it related to a mentioned release (literature displayed in debut liner, leonard peltier, eurocentric curriculum, bulls anti-cop, "people of the sun" or whatever, "sleep now" vid etc.) but i guess that's summary style. It means you don't know quite what's so political about them musically. Also i really hate the distracting big blue quotes here, i'm a plain ol' blockquote kinda guy, but hey.

The Reading Festival crowd on the August 22, 2008 overwhelmingly agreed. Hrmm. maybe they applauded or whatever but this is a bit smug. Is it from the NME source? Also is an extra "the".

2000 Democratic National Convention

This seems rather a large section, were you there or something? ;)

2008 Republican National Convention

Better, but still too detailed. Descends to the level of boring protest stories, especially when yer not talking about the band. Say this many fans caused a ruckus, this many arrests. This isn't indymedia.

Other activism

Good, but i found the last paragraph a bit large to digest

OK, I'm done. Take it FWIW as a second pair of eyes. Impressive article! 86.44.27.188 (talk) 19:14, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

After a moment's thought, I wanna re-enforce the idea that you need more on their work, both in terms of music and of lyrics, for this to be top notch. It's most of your lead paragraph, but that isn't reflected in the article sufficiently, in my view. I'm sure there are good sources on this, and prolly even academic ones, which would make a nice change for an ostensible "pop culture" article. Your pal, 86.44.27.188 (talk) 19:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks dude. I'll get on to it as soon as I can. AutomaticWriting 20:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)