Talk:Syd Barrett/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 10:27, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

As a longtime Floyd fan but not a contributor to this article, I'll start this off.

• Second lead paragraph : "Besides being a pioneer..." is too much of a fan's POV. If you can source the claim he is a pioneer in this music, then fine, but Nicholas Schaffner's book claims AMMusic were the pioneers of this style of music, who the Floyd then took as inspiration.

 Done yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 12:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

• Early years :

• "... although research on Syd Barrett genealogy has not found any relation yet" probably doesn't need to be there - this might not be correct later and it doesn't really tell the reader anything

 Done yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 12:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

• "He liked Edward Lear" needs a citation

 Done Couldn't find a ref. Removed. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 19:59, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

• London underground : What's the relevance of Peter Jenner going on to manage Ian Dury in this article?

 Done Removed. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 12:33, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

• Solo Years (1968-72) : "it is believed that he wrote few new songs after he left Pink Floyd." Says who? This needs a citation or clearing up.

 Done Coudn't find a ref. Removed. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 20:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Final recordings" has a citation needed tagged on it

 Done Couldn't find a ref again. Removed. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 21:04, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Withdrawal to Cambridge" also has a citation needed tagged on it

 Done yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 20:03, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Legacy" / "Complications" also has a citation needed tagged on it

 Done yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 20:52, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Musical and pop culture influence" - none of the named influences have any references tagged, possibly violating WP:BLP (it doesn't say when they expressed an influence from Barrett, and they might have changed their mind since, albeit unlikely).

 Done Finished. 22:23, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Commemoration and recent events" has a redlink

 Done yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 12:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Filmography" : "Syd's First Trip" is a redlink

 Done yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 12:30, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

As this is the first GA review I've done, I'd prefer to defer a final decision to a mentor. --Ritchie333 (talk) 10:27, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Finally finished. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 22:23, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Good work. There were a couple of other things I found, but I haven't had a chance to list them. They were all MOS things and a few missing references. I was hoping to list them before you'd finished the list, but unfortunately real life intervened. Sorry about that. --Ritchie333 (talk) 22:32, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, here are the next batch of comments. I've been through the article thoroughly and listed everything I can see. Some are very minor to do with punctuation, but it's important we get these to pass the GA.

• The second paragraph of the lead contains only one sentence. This would be preferable to split into multiple sentences and combine with the third paragraph.

• "BlackHill Enterprises and gigs" - 15min should read "15 minute"

• "Tonite Let's All Make Love in London" - one sentence reads very badly, with many spelling mistakes. Would recommend changing to "Here, the band recorded a 16 minute version of "Interstellar Overdrive" and another composition, "Nick's Boogie".

• "....and the footage was used in the film" does not need a comma after it - would recommend changing to ", which was used in the film"

• "Record deal". ",however" on the first line should be the start of a new sentence. "Later in February" should just read "In February" (no preceding text mentions anything happening specifically in Februrary '67)

• "at the lead of Waters" - confusing verb, change to "at the suggestion of Waters"?

• "Mason on the choice of "Arnold Layne"" - doesn't have a finite verb, change to something like "Referring to the choice of "Arnold Layne", Nick Mason said"

• "...recording an album,. Which meant" - the punctuation is wrong here, no full stop and capital 'w'

• "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" - "By the time the album, Piper" - doesn't need "Piper" as the preceding paragraph establishes the context of what album this section is talking about

 Done Everything above. Working on the rest. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 13:06, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Barrett's departure from Pink Floyd" - can you get a second source for his behaviour being partly attributable to drugs. It's a well known opinion but can be considered negative in tone, so I think it needs to be very watertight to give proper weight and NPOV. The later "Mental state" paragraph seems to directly contract this, with Gilmour saying his mental breakdown would have happened anyway.

I can't find a second ref for this. Should I remove it? yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 14:14, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Solo years (1968-72)" The punctuation in the first sentence needs looking at

• "The Madcap Laughs" - "...was in a mess of a state, from taking heroin, apperently" - "apperently" should read "apparently" and I would probably just take out the reference to heroin completely

• "Jokes Wild (Gilmour's old band)" should read "Joker's Wild"

• ",however, the latter is on bass" reads confusingly. Change to "Gilmour himself played bass."

• ", on the released versions a number of them..." - Make this a new sentence

• "But perhaps wewere trying to punish him" should read "we were"

• "Start and final recordings" - "Monck described how disastrous it was in a 2001 TV interview for the BBC Omnibus series documentary 'Crazy Diamond'." This doesn't really tell us anything. Either take a quote from the documentary, citing it as a source, or leave it out.

 Done Everything above. Working on the rest. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 14:49, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Withdrawl to Cambridge" - "induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" needs a citation. Povey's book probably has one I can dig out.

Could you ref that? Sadly, I don't have Povey's book. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 14:49, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, when I clear the loft this evening I'll dig out my copy. --Ritchie333 (talk) 16:22, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Aah thank you so much. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 18:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Compilations" - The paragraph about bootlegs has no sources

• "Creative impact" - "His experimentation was partly inspired ... " this sentence doesn't seem to end properly. Can you check the punctuation on it?

• "Musical and pop culture influence" - Jimmy Page, Brian Eno and The Damned have no sources against them.

• "Townshend called Barrett "legendary" " - no source

• "the title track [Wish You Were Here] being specifically about him" - no source. I'm reasonably sure the Floyd themselves have said Barrett is only one inspiration for the song, and other feelings of absence generally contributed to it - so I would doubt this sentence

• The sentence about Barrett being portrayed in Rock 'n' Roll needs a source

• "Barrett's use of psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, during the 1960s is well documented." I'd remove this sentence - "well documented" is subjective

• "Commemoration and recent events" - "The sentence about Rock 'n' Roll" is already mentioned in an earlier section

• The sentence about Paul Weller's single needs a source

• Reference 110 don't follow GA standards. It should be an external link, then the name of the source and the date ie : ["Syd Barrett, Founder of Pink Floyd band, Sufferer of Schizophrenia, Passed Away this Week."]. Schizophrenia Daily News Blog. July 2006.

 Done Everything above. Working on the rest. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 14:18, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• The book references (Schaffner, Watkinson) should go in a separate "Bibliography" section.

• The article could do with some more photographs to break up the flow. There are a number of Creative Commons-licensed photographs of Barrett we can use (see here)

Based on this, I am going to call the GA nomination On hold until these actions are completed. Once this is done, I'll re-review the article again and see how it stands. --Ritchie333 (talk) 16:03, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

([1] looks ideal, but has no date or location?) Martinevans123 (talk) 16:24, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The only thing to watch out for on Flickr is people have a tendency to slap any old CC licence without really having the correct authority to do so. Still, I think a photo of Barrett in his prime (ie: during the early Floyd years) would benefit the article and could be justified as "fair use". --Ritchie333 (talk) 17:11, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

um, so, has this image had any old CC licence slapped on it? how do we tell? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I've just tried it out with the image you linked to. What happens is that Wikimedia Commons has got a list of images that it already knows the licence is wrong, and blocks it immediately. I assume that the Flickr Upload Bot got hold of them, somebody noticed, and tagged it, otherwise the bot would upload it again and again and again.

Many thanks for trying that. That is useful information to know about that process. I am not surprised since the image looks like a professionally-posed studio photograph. I wonder who took it and when. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

A couple of things have been tripped up by DPL - "Malcolm Jones" and "Willie Wilson" in the context of this article don't have Wikipedia articles (the latter probably could get one given his work with Gilmour's solo albums and the Floyd's Wall tours, but that's not a discussion for here). I would remove the wikilinks. --Ritchie333 (talk) 10:08, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Nudge. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 14:12, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

What is this, a Monty Python sketch? Seriously, I think the only thing we're missing is the Povey source and my comments re the remaining deadlinks. I'll then re-read the entire article and references all over again and we'll put the lid on this. Regarding Pyrotec's comments about the lead below, WP:LEAD is firstly only a guideline, and secondly it only gives guidance up to 30,000 characters, a third of this article's size. I think we have the size of the lead about it right - covering all the major facets of his life, with the bulk of it concentrated around his musical career. --Ritchie333 (talk) 16:22, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I must say, I didn't know about that sketch. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 18:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Pyrotec (talk)

• The lead is intended to both introduce the topic of the article and summarise the main points, in the same proportion as the body of the article (see WP:Lead). The lead is rather "thin", for an article of this length I'd expect to see (say) twice as much, but still in four paragraphs. There is stuff in the article that does not appear in the lead.
• Reference 13 appears to be a link to book (since it states pp. 22–23) but the link does not work. Schaffner 1991 and Schaffner 1992 are used a lot, but there are a quite a few undated Schaffner citations.

• All Schaffner references are (or should be) 1991 - Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey (ISBN 0-517-57608-2) is the only reference work he did. Either make them 1991 or remove them. --Ritchie333 (talk) 12:48, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• I have no knowledge myself, but that does not appear to be the case. There are quite a few references now to a 2005 (New edition) - that has a valid isbn and Amazon has one used copy for sale. If that is the edition that was used, it's not you job as a reviewer to insist that they are changed to 1991: but I do take the point that 1992 could be a typo and should be corrected (to 1991). Pyrotec (talk) 08:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

• There are four broken web links (use the tool box at the top of the page to check them - I did.

• The link checker has consistently timed out when I've attempted to use it. (My broadband connection is flaky at the best of times). --Ritchie333 (talk) 12:51, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Pyrotec (talk) 10:11, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• Mine works so I've just run it for you. Three dead links:

• 103 The Madness and Majesty of Pink Floyd (info) [rollingstone.com] date=5 April 2007 work=Rolling Stone last=Gilmore first=Mikal Dead since 2010-07-02 (404 error)

I've found a new link to it. But you have to be a subscriber to view it [2]. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 17:30, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Alternatively, would this work? yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 17:36, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother with ref 103. Ref 102 (the main ROIO database which is pretty much the authoritative list of Floyd boots for nearly 20 years) substantiates the claim made in the article.

• 131 Tribal: Maze: Daevid Allen (info) [planetgong.co.uk] accessdate=26 July 2010 publisher=Planet Gong 404 Dead since 2011-02-22

Fixed. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 17:36, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

• 175 Strange Fruit Records Radio One Sessions Info (info) [strange-fruit-music.co.uk] accessdate=8 June 2011 date= publisher=Strange-fruit-music.co.uk 404 Dead since 2009-12-06

I can't find a SF Records website. Should I remove the sentence? yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 18:07, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Use the AllMusic source in the referenced article - [3]

 Done Added. yeepsi (Time for a chat?) 18:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Pyrotec (talk) 08:24, 20 July 2012 (U1TC)

Okay, I have added the one outstanding reference to Povey, so according to the GA criteria :

Well-written: (a) the prose is clear and concise, respects copyright laws, and the spelling and grammar are correct; - I have run the entire article through a spellchecker and found around five minor errors that have been fixed

(b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. - Notwithstanding Pyrotec's concerns about the lead, I think we have the balance about right for this

Factually accurate and verifiable:

(a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout; I think all our unreferenced concerns have now been addressed. Particularly good to see each of the artists claimed to be influenced by Barrett getting their own citation.

(b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines; - As above

(c) it contains no original research. - Checked and none found

Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic; - Yes

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). - Yes, as expected I would expect the article to be weighted towards his commercially successful musical career, as it is

Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias, giving due weight to each. - Yes, my concerns about ensuring claims about mental illness and instability were addressed

Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.[8] - I've kept an eye on this and while there have been a few changes, they have been minor and undisputed

Illustrated, if possible, by images - We've done what we can in this area for now. It would be nice for someone to come forward with a free image of Barrett circa c. 1966-67, but we can't use what we don't have.

Based on that, I am going to pass the article for GA status. Well done. --Ritchie333 (talk) 21:24, 26 July 2012 (UTC)