Talk:Great American Song Contest

Contested deletion
This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... (it is a competition for songwriters that does not appear on existing lists or information. I can remove the prizes if they are seen to be promotional, but I included them to show the low prize money for this kind of competition. Other music competitions are listed, and I created this article because there is a gap, not for any other reason. There are numerous music competition articles in Wiki, but they focus on performance rather than craft. The prizes seem to be the main issue, I will remove them, but my intention was not to promote this in any way. I have no affiliation with this organisation and came across it while researching a different article. There are numerous articles about music competitions but this one is missing, yet it exists and has done for years. I am interested in music, World and Americana, but I don't have any association with any band and I am not in the industry. I will revist this article if you allow me some time and will check and edit it further unless you delete it) --Bloggermelive (talk) 06:04, 26 July 2020 (UTC)Bloggermelive (talk) 19:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC) I have removed everything I can find that might seem promotioal and rewritten the article. Please recheck it? Bloggermelive (talk) 19:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Contested deletion
This page is not unambiguously promotional, because it has informative value, other competions are listed but this one is missing and it has been re-written. It is topical because it led to a song being added to the Nelson Mandela Memorial collection and important to the Nelson Mandela memorial as well as South African music history. A number of Winners of this competion now have careers in the industry. Please check it and remove the deletion notice if the rewritten article now resolves earlier issues --Bloggermelive (talk) 21:20, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Notability?
I've tried searching for info on this contest, but couldn't find anything that came even close to proper RS mentions. (There were some hits for artists where it is mentioned in passing that they took part in the contest, but those were in articles about the artists, not the contest.) The closest thing I could find was a '10 hottest contests' listing in Student Magazine, and have added that to the article, but TBH I'm not sure how RS it is. Hence, I've tagged the article for notability per WP:GNG. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:00, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Great feedback and very useful, thank you. It has been hard to write about this competition without sounding promotional (I have no links with the competition at all, my intestest is songwriters, specifically Americana, and South African music and culture.) Songwriters are often in the background hiden behind a recording artists name, so this is an important initiative because it's about songwriters rather than performing artists. I have added the name of major artists who are back the initiative to explain the gravitas and importance of this competition, and added information about songs that made it into the media and memorial archives that otherwise would likely have been lost otherwise. Would you look through this again and see if there is anything else I should add? BB King himself was a judge one year - So it's major songwriters developing songwriters and so hard not to sound promotional. It is a unique and important competition that limits entries rather than chases them, and it does a great job backed by the best in the industry. I will think on this further and continue to develop the article. Bloggermelive (talk) 17:27, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Just adding that I can see that part of the issue I have is assuming that readers share background information which is general knowledge to some. I certainly needed to expand and explain relevance more Bloggermelive (talk) 17:30, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi I'm in no way passing judgement on the 'importance' etc. of this contest, only on its WP:NOTABILITY as defined under Wikipedia rules. The problem this article has is that it is only citing primary sources, either the event/organiser website, the artists themselves, someone's Facebook profile, etc. What's needed is references to (reliable) newspaper/magazine articles or books, specifically discussing this event as opposed discussing eg. an artist and mentioning in passing that they took part in this event. I tried, and failed, to find such sources; the best I could do was the Student Magazine article, and it's a pretty weak one.
 * On a separate but related point, if there are notable people associated with this event, and you want to do a bit of 'name-dropping' (and I say that in the nicest possible way, for lack of a better expression), then it only really has the desired effect if those people have their own Wikipedia articles that you can link to (although even then this does not negate the need for references). If they don't, and you link to their own or other external websites, then IMO that rather has the opposite effect, plus that it could also fall foul of the WP:EXT external links policy. HTH, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 05:49, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks again, I think I am learning. I have changed links from artist pages to their Wiki articles, I thought the reverse was initially the prefered style. I have added 2 book citations about the contest. They are trade reference books as expected as the nature of these contests are naturally closed rather than stage events (with an audience) Bloggermelive (talk) 01:54, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Another user (see history) has kindly added more information and I believe notability and stand alone citations criteria have now been satisfied Bloggermelive (talk) 21:33, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

The yearly Songwriters Market is an independant, industry typical publication which has no connection to the contest in the article. It is verifiable and regularly updated with new editions Bloggermelive (talk) 21:48, 23 August 2020 (UTC)