Talk:A Thousand Leaves

Title
"Mille Feuille" is not just a random phrase, it's a type of dessert; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mille-feuille 84.198.246.199 (talk) 06:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned references in A Thousand Leaves
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of A Thousand Leaves's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "AM": From AllMusic:  From Daydream Nation:  From Sister (Sonic Youth album):  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 03:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Ongoing sales figures
Niwi3: was wondering why you objected to my edit on this part, in which I removed the first sales figures: "As of July 1999, the album had sold 54,000 copies in the U.S. according to Nielsen SoundScan.[22] And as of 2005, the album had sold 66,000 copies.[23]" Why is it necessary or desirable to list ongoing sales figures at random points in time in an album article? This seems to me to be a great example of redundant, non-encyclopedic data for data's sake. Is it relevant to the article, at all, what the sales figures were in 1999 compared to 2005? The only relevant information any reader would want to know, as far as seems reasonable, is what the most recent sales figures are. Otherwise, why not find figures and sources to post the sales figures of every year since the album's release? My edit ("As of 2005, the album had sold 66,000 copies in the U.S. according to Nielsen SoundScan") was a reasonable one. Can you comment please?
 * you should explain your edits in the summary box; you removed the reference from the release section, yet kept the actual link in the references section??? It's confusing. Summary boxes are there for a reason, and you should use them, especially when removing propely cited content. In any case, I don't think it's redundant to have ongoing sales figures at certain points in time because they illustrate the album's commercial performance; other articles include sales figures at multiple points. Also, please don't delete wikilinks when terms are properly wikilinked: remember that the body is independent of the lead (which is essentially a summary of the body). Thank you. --Niwi3 (talk) 23:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * On the sales figures, the examples you cited are not comparable, as they deal with huge and noteworthy jumps in sales by millions of copies. This is a random update from six years, that did not nudge the sales figures by any noteworthy amount. Is selling 12,000 copies in six years a noteworthy or encyclopedic fact? I am not going to argue it further here, as to me the answer would be no, it's not very relevant (unless you were using these figures to make another referenced point), but if no other editors besides me think it's fluffy and extraneous, then I will decline. You say "remember that the body is independent of the lead (which is essentially a summary of the body)"...can you please point me to a place in MOS where it definitively states that? I see "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents" but no claim that they are independent. In MOS:DUPLINK, I see "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article". I am not disputing that it's quite possible you are correct, but for my own editing use, as well as this article, I would like to know what your assertion is based on, and why duplicate Wikilinks appearing in both the lead and body should not be rectified.Greg Fasolino (talk) 15:19, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, it's common sense: the fact that the lead is a summary of the body implies that the body is independent and self-contained, otherwise the lead would contain extra info and wouldn't be a proper summary. In other words, the body should say what the lead says and more (that includes wikilinks, which help readers understand the body text). I'm aware of WP:OTHER, but you can see that pretty much any GA or FA has duplicate wikilinks, so it's you alone against thousands of articles. As for the ongoing sales figures, you have a point, although I still think that removing/keeping them won't make the article any better (or worse). I won't reverse your edit if you decide to remove them, but please explain your edits in the summary box (and don't forget to remove the actual link from the references section). Thank you. --Niwi3 (talk) 21:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for clarifying. I see what you are saying. I think I am used to journalism-style leads (being a professional writer) where the lead is just the first paragraph, structurally, that I forget it's looked at differently here. I will keep it in mind. On the sales figures, it's not a huge deal to me either so I will thus leave it be; it just looked somewhat random and unpruned to my eye.Greg Fasolino (talk) 21:52, 21 March 2016 (UTC)