Talk:List of songs about animal rights

Criteria

The current article has a hidden note, stating: Before adding a song, please verify that it meets these requirements: 1.) It was made by artists with articles on the English Wikipedia. 2.) It has at least one paragraph or several lines referring to animal rights and not a vague mention. 3.) Do not add songs about vegetarianism or veganism that don't address animal rights directly (e.g. "Be Healthy" by Dead Prez or "Meat Free Monday" by Paul McCartney). 4.) If a song deals with experimentation on animals, give preference to the term "animal testing" instead of "vivisection" or others to maintain neutrality and consistency in the list. Otherwise, discuss it on the talk page and change them all.

I'm concerned that criterion 2 seems to require WP:Original research, making it invalid. Could we replace it with something like Only add songs which a reliable source has described as being about one or more animal rights issues, i.e. questions about how we should treat non-human animals? From my spot checks, the references provided for the current list all satisfy this criterion, and it would address the concern raised at the AfD discussion that this list has vague selection criteria. FourViolas (talk) 18:09, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Sure, I agree with that. Ojo del tigre (talk) 04:18, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

As a reminder, we can't be using poor quality sources. Things like blogs, are really never ok, and things like interviews and links to lyrics are not going to pass WP:DUE or be independent in cases where an artist's page was linked to. DUE is policy here, and that bar is a bit more stringent since we are dealing with a topic that frequently goes into fringe territory (ALF, PETA, etc.). On that note, things like ALF or PETA are never going to be reliable sources for establishing weight. In the most recent cleanup, I removed sources that basically only name dropped the songs as a rough cutoff for what made it through the first round. Please be more careful about sourcing in the future, and if anyone wants to include specific sources, do that individually and ideally on this talk page so they can be assessed instead of needing to go through a huge blanket revert to fish it out. That's why I also restored to the last clean version even though there was mention of new sources. It's impossible such changes out at this point. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

1. Agree that blogs are not RS—I've probably restored some later in the alphabet as I go through your mass deletions, but I'm planning to get them all out.
2. WP:DUE is a policy for balancing opposing positions on some disputed question. It doesn't apply to the majority of lists, as the only question to dispute here is "is song X animal rights-related?" An interview with the songwriter should be presumed to resolve this question regardless of where it's published, unless there's reason to suspect the interview is falsified or if a reviewer or critic argues in a RS that the author is wrong about their work. It's arbitrary and unnecessary to declare, as you did, that animal rights-related publications are unsuitable for an article on animal rights-related culture; remember that reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective.
3. Ojo (the primary page author) and I just came to a loose consensus that the sourcing criterion for inclusion should be a RS statement that the song is about AR. If you want to introduce a new "more than a name drop" criterion, it's your responsibility to provide an argument to change that consensus from the status quo.
4. The lede may be longer than necessary, but there's no need to cut it back aggressively as you have; plenty of featured lists start with a 3-4 paragraph lede with background information and historical discussion about the group, e.g. Academy Award for Best Actor. See WP:LEADFORALIST. FourViolas (talk) 01:46, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and undone the continued edit warring (really, knock it off after so many cautions). The WP:BURDEN is on you to gain consensus for the edits here rather than disruptive blanket restoration (which you were already warned not to do). Reincluding so many blatantly inappropriate sources makes it impossible to assess newer intermediate edits and disrupts the page. If you want to reintroduce a source, you need to do it here individually so it can be sorted out. None of the edits you've restored are in any sort of status quo yet, nor has anything you've said above changed that. It's possible I took out a decent source or two, but considering all the junk to sort through, you can't blame the person cleaning all those massive edits up. That's when you need to go in and work on individual entries.

For WP:DUE you're missing a large chunk of that policy. It ultimately affects whether verifiable information meets the threshold for inclusion in an article. You're mistakenly arguing that something is verifiable, rather than due weight. If sources deem a particular song to be important to the topic beyond passing mention, then it's met due weight for inclusion. We can't bypass that, nor can the recent discussion you started here change that either. WP:FRINGE organizations like ALF and PETA really have no place as sources in an encyclopedia outside of rare circumstances, especially when it comes to matters of weight for inclusion of content. We rely on secondary independent sources to pick things out for us instead. If you want to change that, you'll need to fundamentally change how that policy works. Not to mention that most sources I removed either were not independent or only gave passing mention that didn't even satisfy the criteria that's been used. On that note, I've restored the previous version of criteria 2 because it does not violate WP:OR since it's basically saying assess DUE.

As for the lead, this is a list, not a main article. Also be mindful of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. If someone wants to include that content, it belongs in a music and animal rights article, not here. If the lead needs to be fleshed out more (which it doesn't look like) one needs to propose edits instead of blanket restoring that. This isn't an article to go into the history of the topic. The works cited section also keeps being restored; such sections are not used when you have a reflist already. This is why editors need to slow down and not blanket revert the initial cleanup. If another blanket revert occurs, we'll likely need to lock the article to force editors to gain consensus for their new additions at this rate. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:39, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Adding on after the mention of LEADFORALIST, but the trimmed version is more in line with that guideline, especially since the title does most of the explaining already. As mentioned already, this isn't the place to expand on lead content as a broad background. List leads are supposed to be to the point. If someone wants to expand on that, this really isn't the type of article to do that.

For reference, I went through all the references this time starting with cleaning up those in [my first pass], but also taking more scrutiny to the remaining sources in a second round. The first round stuff should be pretty straightforward, but the some of the second round stuff could be worth discussing. There was a bit of a mess to clean up due to having both a works cited section and reflist, but that should be fixed now too. The sources that remain generally give some depth in the discussion of an individual song beyond passing mention. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:02, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for putting so much time into this, I sincerely appreciate your effort even if we disagree on who's disrupting whose efforts to make the article as good as possible. It's hard for all three of us to conveniently negotiate your earlier 60,000-byte mass deletion, and I appreciate your patience.

I can't keep spending so much time on this myself, but deleting almost the entire lede is really not an improvement nor in line with guidelines. The MOS says that stand-alone lists should always include a lead section just as other articles do, and the full version of the lead does just that, giving a highly abbreviated overview of the importance and historical trends of animal rights-related songs. It's well-sourced (mostly to academic publications) and on-topic, and your editorial preference for hosting it at a non-existent page doesn't justify its removal. FourViolas (talk) 12:45, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Also, I think you're misreading the original version of criterion 2 slightly. Ojo's original criterion was about the lyrical content: Before adding a song, please verify that [...] It has at least one paragraph or several lines referring to animal rights and not a vague mention. This is what I thought would require OR in most cases, and wanted to replace with a criterion requiring a RS for the fact that the song is AR-related. The "not just a passing mention" criterion you're using would add to the revised criterion: Before adding a song, please verify that [...] a reliable source has described it as being about one or more animal rights issues, and the source includes at least one paragraph or several lines referring to the song's connection to animal rights and not a passing mention. FourViolas (talk) 13:02, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

First, please remember that when new edits are being introduced, the burden to gain consensus is on those who want them if the edit is disputed. In new articles, that can mean starting with essentially a stub and working up. Ojo del tigre introduced the content as well as additions by you, but now we're in the D phase of WP:BRD, not BRRRR. . . You've been warned many times not to reintroduce the content without gaining consensus, so this shouldn't be any surprise. For the lead, the removed text is essentially a content fork. I've already rehashed that a few times now, but this is not the place to expound on the information that's been included so far there.

As for the criteria, that could be simplified to basically say Before adding a song, please verify that [...] a reliable source has described it as being about one or more animal rights issues with more than passing mention of the song.

Also, please remember to be wary of combining sources into a single ref tag, though I haven't had a chance to followup on recent changes. Sources like google books were often not combined into one reference because they have different page numbers to link to. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:38, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

I see BRD differently here; the BOLD move, in my opinion, was unilaterally deleting the original page creator's long and fully-sourced lead. You've repeatedly asserted that this material is inappropriate here because a) it's not strictly necessary to make clear what the list includes and b) is "essentially" a WP:CFORK, but a) LEADFORALIST implies that this is the minimum function a list lead must serve, not the maximum allowed, and b) it can't possibly be a content fork of music and animal rights if that article doesn't exist—at most, you could argue that that page should be created and this material moved there. FourViolas (talk) 16:59, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

That's getting into ignoring the spirit of the guideline. The current version at least solves the problem of having a lead that ended up functioning as a fork rather than the intro to a list. And no, we don't shift the burden around like that. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:52, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Again, it can't possibly be any kind of fork if the material it's supposedly duplicating doesn't exist elsewhere!

As for how much material is appropriate for the intro to a list on WP, look through a random consecutive five articles of Category:Featured lists:

• Gene Kelly filmography has a three-paragraph, 251-word intro briefly summarizing his career and professional accomplishments
• Paul Kelly discography has a four-paragraph, 591-word intro summarizing his career history and contextualizing important releases
• List of international cricket centuries at the Kensington Oval has a three-paragraph, 400-word intro giving background on the venue and highlighting and analyzing important items
• List of Governors of Kentucky has eight paragraphs, 587 words, of prose explaining what the governor does, historical events relevant to the office and how they affected it, and giving interesting facts about particularly notable Governors
• Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor has a three-paragraph, 313-word intro explaining how the award was established and administered, and highlighting notable entries

Now which do those more closely resemble: your one-paragraph, 102-word intro which barely mention music or musicians at all, or our five-paragraph, 399-word overview of important themes, historical developments, and particularly notable bands in this topic?

At this point my argument is not WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS; it's the overwhelming consensus of the Wikipedia community that a well-written list article's intro should provide many paragraph's worth of background, discussion, and analysis. Your unilateral repeated deletion of this well-sourced, on-topic material on the basis of what is clearly a minority opinion about the appropriate size for a list lead is disruptive. FourViolas (talk) 00:28, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

No, it was functionally acting as a fork, or in WP lingo, a WP:COATRACK to a degree. This is a list article, not a main article where we do more exposition. Instead of making OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments (which the above still functionally is), focus on the content itself. It was overly broad for the intro to a list and isn't a place to hang those hats of the history, etc. to that degree. If someone wants that much detail on that material, that's their burden to work on a separate main article. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:43, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, now we're getting somewhere. COATRACK is a quite different policy, and it doesn't apply to most of the lead, which is tightly focused on animal rights-related songs, their common themes, and the bands who wrote them.

But I agree there was a little off-topic material, as is to be expected in a first-draft lead written under pressure of an AfD: perhaps you didn't notice that in my recent revisions, I removed some material about the legislative achievements of the animal rights movement, the growth of PETA, etc. I daresay there’s a bit more to trim, and it would be nice to add some material about specific songs relative to the group: e.g. Paul McCartney’s assertion that Bungalow Bill was among the first animal rights songs [1], and Ambrosch’s that the Smith’s Meat is Murder was probably the first pop song to use that phrase [2]. And I like Newslinger’s suggestion of separating out a short History section. But it’s hard to make those improvements when you keep unilaterally deleting the material as we try to work on it.

I don’t know where you get your confident pronouncements about the way “we” do things (especially since you’re so averse to comparisons with other articles), but with Newslinger there’s a clear 3-1 consensus for restoring and improving the longer lead. Please do not continue to disruptively remove it. FourViolas (talk) 22:13, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I noticed you tried to edit war in the content without gaining consensus here, so I have removed it yet again. Seriously, knock if off. So far, you are the only person on this talk page to object to trimming down the lead, and it's your burden to deal with those problems if you feel so strongly about it. Also keep in mind that even if there were others here, we don't go by WP:VOTE. We stick to WP:PAG (i.e., the way we do things, not OTHERSTUFFEXSITS) and avoid things like undue expositions for a list article. If you really want to get into history and all of that, you're really suggesting a broader music and animal rights type article at this point. Here, we are dealing with a list where the lead should concisely point the readers towards what it is about and anything important about the songs in that list. This list however, is not a sandbox. Much of that material needs to go to a sandbox or a separate article if you really want to focus on that. You've already been made aware that a lot of the lead content has been disputed, so if you remember the times I've linked you to WP:BRD, you generally want to propose new edits on the talk page if you feel strongly about something. This doesn't need to be as difficult as it's been so far. There may be more that could be added to the lead after this, but we do need to keep WP:DUE for a list in mind versus a full article. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:52, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Ojo del tigre, you wrote most of the material and have been WP:THANKing me for arguing for its inclusion. Would you be all right with moving the material to an Animal rights in music page? I don't see any serious problem; I'd say the lead and §History material could remain unchanged, and we could expand the article with sections on each tradition listed (folk; punk with subsections anarcho-, ska, vegan straightedge & hardline; rock). The only thing we'd have to pay attention to would be CFORK; we'd have to look around as we went, adding {{main}} templates and possibly doing some selective merges.

If you'd rather keep it here, there is, of course, no policy or guideline that forbids having more than a few sentences of background, history, and context on a list article. The MOS guideline on lead sections for stand-alone lists says that Stand-alone lists should always include a lead section just as other articles do, meaning WP:LEAD applies without modification, and that says a lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points—recommending a WP:LEADLENGTH of not more than four paragraphs, but still a useful and complete summary. The policies Kingofaces43 has cited in favor of removal, CFORK and COATRACK, respectively can't possibly apply—LEADFORALIST even goes to the trouble to clarify that we should not make a fork between a topic that has a separate Wikipedia article and a list complementary to that topic—and only apply given the premise that animal rights in music should be treated separately from the "group or set" of animal rights-related songs, a premise that was rejected in the AfD. If they continue to remove material, we can pursue WP:Dispute resolution, either by asking for additional opinions at the parent WikiProjects WT:SONG and WT:WPAR or by starting a WP:RFC. FourViolas (talk) 13:04, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Personally I would appreciate a bit of context for the list. I think it would benefit from a themes section (briefly covering the common themes of the genre) and a history section (covering the evolution of the genre). I have to say I sympathize with Kingofaces43 to an extent because there is a lot of WP:SYNTHESIS in this version. Are there are any sources that give a concise and coherent overview of the genre that we could use to shape the commentary? Betty Logan (talk) 22:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Section 4 of Pieslak (beginning p. 42 in this version) is a good place to start. Simonson has a some basic background too. Could you be a bit more specific about where you see the text combining material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources? I read it as mostly a list of separate verifiable facts organized in arbitrary order in the lead, and organized chronologically in §History. FourViolas (talk) 01:51, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

I have no problem in creating an article that gives a context to the list. In fact, since they nominated the page and until this version I realized that there was enough information to make it (even with the little time I had to look for it), and a few days later (or that same day) I began working on it. There are enough sources detailing the history and consequences of animal rights in music.

My problem is the wholesale removals of content by Kingofaces in the middle of our edits trying to improve it. For that reason I stopped making the article, assuming that it would also be nominated or that 80% of its information would also be removed. I have agreed with every argument raised by FourViolas here and I thought that a few paragraphs and a history section were fine. Now I think we can create the article (Music and animal rights), but I still can't understand that sourced songs are not allowed because they simply don't have a detailed explanation, and even if they do, they are removed because they come from sources like PETA or interviews (which, again, are allowed per WP:BIASED, especially on a list article). Ojo del tigre (talk) 15:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

I thought the lead was more or less ok to be fair. The only sentence I would have removed is the bit about inspiring vegans and animal rights activists because this is not a feature of the actual list. The lead should summarise the list which I think it did for the most part. The main problem I have with the history/chronology section is that presenting it as a timeline implicitly makes connections between different periods and eras and gives the impression that AR music evolved as a series of movements. That may be true—I don't know enough about the genre to argue either way—but I think Wikipedia is shaping the narrative a bit too much. Rather than falling into a cycle of edit wars or starting new articles we can construct the lead on this talk page and get that sorted and then focus on the history. I will have a crack at it later and we can build on that. I am also going to make the table sortable too if there are no objections. Betty Logan (talk) 15:33, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

• @Ojo del tigre, FourViolas, and Kingofaces43: OK, I have had a go at cleaning this up. I think we should re-join the lead and history section since there isn't that much content really. Going over it carefully there wasn't as much synthesis as I thought, but there was excessive promotion of bands which I have removed (readers can click on the bands links in the table below, and if they are not in the table they shouldn't be in the lead anyway). As you can see below the lead is a lot more concise and I have cut anything that doesn't really provide further context for the list. Obviously my version doesn't have to be the final word on the matter but I hope it is a step towards a compromise. It is important for the lead to provide context but it needs to stay on the point. Betty Logan (talk) 23:25, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Animal rights has been a subject of both popular and independent music since the 1970s. Associated with the environmentalist musical counterculture of the previous decade, animal rights songs of the 1970s were influenced by the passage of animal protection laws and the 1975 book Animal Liberation. Paul McCartney has cited John Lennon's Bungalow Bill, released in 1968, as among the first animal rights songs.

Popular themes include anti-whaling (prompted by the Save the Whales movement), opposition to hunting, animal testing and vegetarianism. Bullfighting has been a prominent theme in Spain and some Latin American countries; while folk and pop music have traditionally identified with bullfighting traditions, several ska, rock and punk groups have emerged which oppose them.

Anarcho-punk and veganism have a long association dating back to the 1980s. During this period, American hardcore punk and straight edge scenes became increasingly concerned with animal rights, spawning the vegan straight edge and hardline punk ideologies. An increase in Animal Liberation Front activism in the 1990s corresponded with the rise of vegan straight edge and hardline bands. The more peaceful Krishnacore subgenre, which also advocates vegetarianism and animal rights, developed around this time too. The association between punk subculture and animal rights has continued in the 21st century, with vegan punk festivals including Fluff Fest in the Czech Republic and Verdurada in Brazil.

References

That's getting better, and at this point, I'll settle for that since it keeps things concise. Only two things that might be worth removing. One is source 4 since it's not really WP:INDEPENDENT coming from Greenpeace, and not really needed either since there are other sources. WP:BIASED is one thing, but WP:FRINGE is a very different degree. The other is the very last sentence. When I look at the wikilinks, it doesn't look like they are very solid articles. Unless the foreign language sources are really dedicating some space to those examples rather than passing mention, I'd opt for dropping that sentence. Those should be no big deal for removal if that's the case. Thanks for looking into this. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:07, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I debated dropping the final sentence myself since vegan punk festivals have nothing to do with the substance of the list, but figured I would let you guys make that call. No problem with dropping the ref either. Betty Logan (talk) 03:20, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

If there is no opposition in the next 24 hours I will install the text above with the alterations as suggested by Kingofaces43. Betty Logan (talk) 16:49, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Greatly appreciate the consensus-building effort. I don't see why briefly mentioning the roles of bands that RS emphasize as of particular importance is presumed to constitute "promotion"; I'd say most RS actually structure their coverage primarily around individual bands, including Pieslak, Ambrosch, and Glasper—just take a look at the latter's table of contents.

I don't really see how the verifiable facts of which decades various developments took place in constitute an improper "narrative", but I'm happy to save it for the animal rights in music article if you feel strongly that it does. FourViolas (talk) 22:27, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

So, specifically, I'd want to add

• notably the Spanish rock band Gabinete Caligari in sentence 5—they get several pages of discussion in the best source I've found on bullfighting and music
• primarily through the vegetarian band Crass in sentence 6—many RS attest to the importance of Crass, including many places in Glasper. There's some basis for including Conflict as well, as I initially did along with Flux of Pink Indians and maybe The Subhumans, but Crass are frequently discussed as particularly important and as leaders in this activity.
• initially centered on the bands Earth Crisis and Vegan Reich respectively in sentence 7. It's verified that these bands were crucial to the emergence of these subcultures, and the links provide more relevant information.

I agree, though, that further development of the history and background of the topic should happen at a second article. FourViolas (talk) 17:41, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that none of these bands are actually mentioned in the list, so it's a bit odd to highlight them in the lead. The purpose of the lead is to ultimately summarise the list. That said, I'm not actually opposed to mentioning the bands and nobody is opposed to my actual draft (basically you just want to add more to it), so what I'm going to do is add my version so we have a baseline. If you want to add more to that version then I personally won't revert you, but you may find that KingofAces does. Betty Logan (talk) 17:48, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks. There are definitely RS for multiple songs by each of these bands being animal rights-related, and at least most of them were included before the deletions, but we can fix that song by song and then artist by artist. FourViolas (talk) 21:53, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

List of songs about edible plants and veg*anism

Should we at least begin a Wikipedia article on the other dimensions of being vegan which can be conceptually distinguished from animal advocacy:

• singable songs celebrating the health benefits and aesthetic satisfactions of produce, grains, plant-based diets, etc.
• singable songs celebrating the 'world' as a shared venue with animals as persons in their own right.
• songs about religious vegetarianism AS SUCH, with a section on (but not focusing on) religious hymns (Dare to be a Daniel,For the beauty of the Earth, All creatures of our God and King, Doxology, etc.) that cite edible plants as normative.

IMO we would 'advance the cause' if we could begin developing such a resource. Other better informed 'persons of knowledge' in these specialized domains could (and likely would) discover these online resources (and begin to contribute to to their further development). MaynardClark (talk) 02:33, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Animal advocacy songs

Since so many of these songs are about animal advocacy and lament wrongs done to animals and don't do much to change or even discuss the legal status of animals, are they not really animal advocacy songs, or songs on behalf of suffering animals - sort of like the moaning and groaning that goes on in much folk music or when 'singing the blues'? How many of the melodic laments persuades audiences to apply to law school and push for an expansion of the legally and socially protected status of nonhumans? Can we 'measure' the expansion of social consciousness that is expected to result from these songs? Surely many people could sing Melanie Safka's 'I don't eat animals', but is anyone's influence measurable? MaynardClark (talk) 13:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC)