Talk:The Phenomenauts

Articles for Deletion debate
This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 21:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

POV
This article reads way too much like a fan site. I won't prune it now, but if those involved editors would clean it up a bit that'd be great. If not I'll take some of the worst of the material out. Things like fictional bios and the gadget thing...thanks. Rx StrangeLove 02:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
 * We need the band members real names, if anyone wants to create articles on them. i removed the redlinks until then. surely somebody knows who they are, unless they are the Residents.75.61.132.26 (talk) 06:36, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

False claim removed re NASA wake-up call
The claim that "Infinite Frontier" was played as a wake-up call on Shuttle mission STS-124 (or any other mission) is false; NASA lists all such wake-up calls on their website and the song isn't listed. So I removed that, but this calls into question some of the other material (like the supposed VIP tour) which may be total tongue-in-cheek BS. Rep07 (talk) 05:45, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for posting this! I did not know NASA had that page. It appears you are correct - I was not able to find any official mention of this song being played. I did contact both NASA proper and the Johnson Space Center to ask, but unsurprisingly I have not heard back.


 * I *was* able to find a picture of the band meeting Mark Kelly, at what appears to be a NASA computer room. However, the picture is from a private collection and not a published source. The best public source I have been able to find is this story at Punk News. Perhaps that can be used as a source for them visiting the Space Center, but nothing else? --Culix (talk) 03:23, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

2018 Article Cleanup
I'm doing some article cleanup and editing. I will move some items here to the talk page for discussion and reference. --Culix (talk) 18:57, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay: 240 edits. 6 weeks of work. 81 new references added. 5 libraries. 4 out-of-print magazines. 1 back issue. 3 old record stores. 1 amazing find on ebay. 2 hardcore music audiophile sites. 3 out-of-print albums. 1 amazingly-still-functional Flash .swa file. Two-dozen radio stations. Five dozen emails. 3 separate tracking spreadsheets. 1 extremely kind long-lost photographer. 5 new friends. I'm going to go ahead and call this "good enough" to remove the 'refimprove, article needs additional citations' maintenance template. --Culix (talk) 03:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Removed! There is still work to do, so I will press onward. --Culix (talk) 03:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: We're at 108 references. The article now has six freely usable Creative Commons images and three non-free images to illustrate most parts of the work. Many thanks to the photographers who agreed to license their photos. It has a visual band member timeline image. I have also added four fair-use audio clips to show an overview of the band's musical style, and added subtitles for each. We could add one more and still fit within Wikipedia guidelines, but I will wait on this for now until I have more time. I believe most of the required/desired article sections have been created, and have at least some text inside giving an overview. I migrated the original CC image to Wikimedia Commons. The article is now more fleshed out and comprehensive in scope.


 * Next I will do two separate passes: one to re-visit each of the reference articles/interviews and double check whether more useful information could be used to fill out the article. I will do another pass to copyedit the whole thing and try to make it clear and well written.


 * I ran the article through several online readability scanners, such as Readability Test Tool and Readability of Wikipedia. They reported a Flesch readability score between 61 and 69 (higher numbers mean easier to read - 120 is the easiest). I will work to improve this.


 * It is quite possible that there are more useful references out there, but I believe this is probably enough material for now. My goal over the next few months will be to clean things up and submit them for peer review and assessment. --Culix (talk) 03:37, 4 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I have done several copyedits and brought the article up to scores of 64 and 70.5 on the tools given above. I am also using typely.com to improve some of the "more difficult to read" sections (the tool gives you heatmaps). I will continue, but I believe the article is at least improved enough to be re-assessed. --Culix (talk) 05:11, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Sources that exist but haven't been found yet
There are a few sources I have been able to dig up mention of, but not track down. --Culix (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)


 * 1) Independent Musician Magazine, issue 1. They were on the cover of the first issue. There is a picture on archive.org here.
 * 2) * The WorldCat entry for IMM is here. I contacted all three libraries listed but the German libraries do not have any copies. They said it was a mistake - they ordered a copy back when the magazine came out, but never received one. The Library of Congress says they do have a copy, but it is currently lost due to some moves and relocations. --Culix (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * 3) Zero Magazine, February 2005 issue. It supposedly has a CD review of the Re-Entry release.
 * 4) * There is a picture of the issue contents on archive.org here. Unfortunately I am not sure if the actual review was captured. --Culix (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * 5) Neat Neat Noise podcast.
 * 6) * It looks like they were interviewed 4 times. The mp3 files don't appear to work. --Culix (talk) 02:21, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * 7) ** I was able to locate and contact the host for the radio station, as well as the IT server admin that used to run the servers. Unfortunately, neither of them have a copy of the interview audio files, and the servers have been taken down. Neither of them have been in contact with the interviewer/host for a long time. Not sure where to look next. --Culix (talk) 04:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Items that could use more info
Items that could use a more accurate source or date. --Culix (talk) 19:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)


 * 1) More accurate join/leave dates for some band members.
 * 2) *Corporal JoeBot 1.0 leaving and Corporal
 * 3) *JoeBot 2.0 joining (some time in 2006)
 * 4) *Chief Engineer Atom Bomb joining
 * 5) *Professor Greg Arius joining (sometime in 2002) and leaving
 * 6) *Fritz M. Static joining or leaving.
 * 7) **It sounds like he went on tour with the band until the end of their 'Operation: Europa III Tour' from Nov 13 to Dec 3 2014. But I haven't been able to find anything to be sure. Haven't found an announcement of him joining either. --Culix (talk) 19:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 8) *Deck Chief Nick Wayzar leaving (sometime 2011?)
 * 9) *Agent Ion O'Clast joining or leaving.
 * 10) **I haven't been able to find any good sources or dates for this. --Culix (talk) 19:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I would like to note for band member join/leave dates: I have found that many bars/pubs/venues post on their site when the band has a show. These have been a reliable reference for citing the fact that a show happened at that place on that day. However, they have not been a reliable reference for determining which members were part of the band at that time. I have seen e.g. shows from 2015 that quoted an old 2003 press release, claiming 2003 band members. So I will attempt to clean up and not use venue press releases for band membership. They still seem to be good for other things. --Culix (talk) 04:52, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Claims that need sources
Here are some items that need a source or reference. Moving to the Talk page for now since I haven't been able to find anything. --Culix (talk) 19:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)


 * 1) Claim: Rockets and Robots was well received by and played on many local radio stations, including "KUSF, KSCU, KTUH (Hawaii), KZSU, along with Live 105 and "Channel 104.9″ in San Francisco".
 * 2) * I found references for two stations: KSSU and KALX. I am unable to find anything for the others. I contacted two dozen local radio stations but was not able to dig up much. Most stations don't have records going back this far, or don't have the time/space/people to keep detailed records. We might still have success looking at archived pages for Live 105 or 104.9. If anyone else knows a good way to find sources that would be great. --Culix (talk) 19:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 3) Claim: "The Command Center was featured on the Discovery Channel"
 * 4) * I can't find any information on what show, what year, or anything. I contacted the company but unsurprisingly did not receive a response. Perhaps the original poster could shed some light. --Culix (talk) 19:13, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 5) Claim: "Re-Entry album garnered regular rotation on XM Satellite radio"
 * 6) Claim: "Mission received play on MTV-U, Fuse, and various reels and video shows across the country"

Archived / Removed material
Items that have been removed from the page, but archived here in case anyone needs them.


 * Old Links
 * The Phenomenauts Broadjam page
 * The Phenomenauts MySpace page
 * Phonocaster Archived reference
 * This does not seem to contain any new material, but might be a useful old article for interest. It looks like much of this Wikipedia article might have been copy/pasted at some point from promo sources like this. --Culix (talk) 19:42, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Silver Sprocket interview with AR7

Audio clips for Musical style section
Some thoughts on selecting audio clips to fill out the Musical style section. MoS - Music samples talks about including a small number of relevant samples to showcase an overview of the band's style and work. Picking four or five songs to showcase everything is probably a tough task for any band, but here are some thoughts:

--Culix (talk) 03:29, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * With five songs we could showcase one song from each album released so far, which would be a good overview
 * We should be able to choose pieces that use different styles, to cover the range of styles the band uses
 * Top picks based on relevance to the band, sound style, frequency of play, and available critical commentary could be:
 * For All Mankind: Science and Honor. It's the band's motto. Important to their outlook. I placed this into the Promoting Science and Learning section so it can also stand out from the musical style overview and help broaden/fill out the article.
 * Re-Entry: Mission. Possibly the most media-covered single from the band, and included on the most compilation albums/plays. It's related to their big move sneaking into the Warped Tour so it relates well to the band's history, and shows off some new-wavy type music style.
 * Rockets and Robots: Galactic Pioneers. This song contrasts well with Mission, showing a much more rockabilly type style, so it helps broaden the overview of the band's musical style. From what I can see in playlist histories and youtube concert recordings, it's also played quite frequently and sometimes used as a closing song for live sets, so it's pretty relevant.
 * Electric Sheep: I'm torn between Particle Accelerator and Fly Through The Sky. I feel like we want to use a song that's fast and punky here with a fast drum beat, to contrast most with previous songs and show the band's broad style. To me, If You Want It doesn't contrast as far from Mission. I Am Not Robot is a good example but has a slower drum beat. Particle Accelerator is longer than Fly Through The Sky by 41 seconds, so that gives more space to actually use a decent length audio clip. I tried taking some slices out of Fly Through The Sky, but had a hard time fitting anything inside the time limit. I've gone with Particle Accelerator for now.
 * Okay, so the audio clips were deleted as non-free content. They were indeed non-free content. My understanding at the time was that short, low quality music samples were considered "valuable addition to articles about bands", based on the Manual_of_Style/Music_samples. However, it appears that WP:NFCC is more strict than this.
 * So, how to set this article up correctly.
 * I have gone through Manual_of_Style/Music_samples, WP:NFC, and and WP:NFCC, to build a better understanding of Wikipedia policy and intent. I also read through a few dozen other cases where editors discuss audio samples, such as the the Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions archive on "contextual significance".
 * I believe it is reasonable to make a case for a single relevant audio clip, which I will do below. I'll put it in a new section, for easier reference. --Culix (talk) 04:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Case for audio clip of "Mission"
I would like to make a case for inclusion of an audio clip for the Phenomenauts song "Mission".


 * This song was released after the band added a fifth member playing keyboard. It is an example of their synth/new wave style, incorporating keyboard sounds.
 * The song has received commentary from reviewers, such as saying it "added an extra layer" of sound to the band.
 * I have incorporated commentary into the article, such as a reviewer saying that the song in particular was "an excellent example" of versatility, as well as talking about how the song incorporated styles from several music genres (second paragraph).
 * The song was notable for being included on the Warped Tour 2005 compilation CD. The music video for the song was also on the front page of both YouTube and Myspace in 2006, where it received more than 430,000 combined views.
 * This is the shortest of the original audio clips, at 14 or 15 seconds. This helps to respect fair use. --Culix (talk) 04:44, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Update on audio steps and rework
I have been working to improve the article and make it appropriate to use a single audio clip here. Collecting all of the steps here in one place:


 * Did a lot of reading of Manual_of_Style/Music_samples, WP:NFC, and and WP:NFCC to better understand Wikipedia norms and how to handle this.
 * Worked to improve the article to reference only the single, most notable event where including of an audio clip would be most impactful
 * Created a post on the article Talk page outlining a case for why I believe inclusion of a single, short audio clip would be appropriate.
 * Posted on Media copyright questions, asking about best practises for including audio.
 * Asked the admin for a review of my re-work
 * Asked for and kindly received a review and feedback on the article
 * Attempted again to ask the admin to have a look and ask if restoring the file would be appropriate (my post appears to be hidden under the "misplaced draft" template at the end)
 * Posted again on Media copyright questions to ask for the best next step
 * Posted on Requests for Undeletion to ask if this was acceptable to undelete and try re-working into the article. Nicely, the file was undeleted for use.
 * Continued to work at improving the article, referencing the single audio clip I am requesting here, to make it appropriate and fair use

I believe with the rework and working this into the article, this should now be okay. Feedback is welcome if there is more I can do to improve this. --Culix (talk) 16:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Article Review
Hello. I am about to post on each of the WikiProjects linked by this page to request a review and reassessment of the article. I will also request a peer review. I am creating a new section here to make it clean and easy to leave feedback.

This article has been largely untouched for the past 6-10 years, and I recently made a number of edits. I have added: 109 references; five new free images; 3 new non-free images; four sample audio clips (all within fair use sizes); subtitles for the audio clips; and a band member timeline chart. I have added roughly 4,000 words to the article. I have grouped it into sections, and tried to do several passes at copyediting. I would like to propose it could now be rated as A class. Feedback is quite welcome and I will keep working on it. Thanks! --Culix (talk) 05:18, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

The road to GA
I believe I can improve this article to Good Article quality, and submit for review. Here are the known tasks I want to complete before that happens. Suggestions are welcome. --Culix (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * 1) ✅ Get proper licensing for the vehicle photo, and restore the image. This was recently deleted. The photographer was kind enough to re-license under CC-BY-SA, so it can be used on Wikipedia. The ticket is now through OTRS..
 * 2) ✅ Get proper licensing for the Professor Greg photo. That is this image, currently used in the "Expansion and mini-albums" section. Permission is now through OTRS.
 * 3) ✅ Make a case to include one audio sample. I believe the article currently has enough citations and reference material to justify the inclusion of one audio clip. I believe this would significantly enhance a reader's understanding of an article about music. I have made a case here for including the audio file and requested some feedback. Update: File has now been restored. I updated the section above with the list of steps and actions I have taken. Updated the fair use rationale for the file itself. Hopefully this is good. Feedback is welcome if the rationale needs work. --16:38, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * 4) Find one more image to spruce up the article. I have some ideas for this. It might be nice to work in something that is visually different from the other images, to give the reader a break.

Join date for Ripley Clipse
I see recently that this edit modified the start date for Ripley Clipse. That is great if you have a reference! But I do not have one. If you have a reference for the earlier join date, please let us know! For now I will comment on the contributor's page (it was a raw IP address), and revert until we have a ref. --Culix (talk) 03:21, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Some comments
I've started to look at this article. I'm going to do it in a few sweeps, if that's alright, and I'll post my comments here.
 * "History" and "Commando performances"
 * "The Phenomenauts perform under a space and science fiction persona." Something about this sentence seems off, grammar-wise.
 * ✅ I wonder if "mini-album" should link to Mini-LP? Or perhaps something else?
 * This sounds good to me. I added a link. However, do you think we should use something else if the Pre-Entry album was not actually released in a vinyl format? The only copy I was able to find (and purchase) was in CD format instead. Discogs only lists CD format. The AllMusic entry says "Pre-Entry [EP]", but I am not sure if I can verify whether it really was released on EP or not. Amazon says "EP", but I am not sure how to verify if that is actually the case, or if they are just copy/pasting the text. --Culix (talk) 19:26, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, this archive.org entry for the band's website says "EP-CD", so that suggests both formats. Also this archive.org entry for the Springman record label site says "Pre-Entry (CD/EP)". So I'm fine leaving the link and wording as-is, if you think that is appropriate. --Culix (talk) 19:39, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * IMHO, I'd go with EP, since that seems like the de facto way of ID'ing a record/album of about 4-6 songs.-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  01:30, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. The link has been fixed! --Culix (talk) 03:29, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅. "who later went on to win a Grammy as an audio engineer for Green Day." Is this supported by footnotes 18 and 19, or does it need its own?
 * Thanks, good catch. I had added the reference to Chris Dugan, but hadn't actually added it to this page. Fixed! --Culix (talk) 19:05, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅. "At launch the physical copies..." I'm assuming 'launch' is referring to the album release? I feel like 'release' might be a better word here.
 * Yes, I just meant "when the album was released". I may have been trying to mix up the prose and not always use the same words. Sounds good; changed. Thanks! --Culix (talk) 18:54, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅. Is Electric Sheep better described as an EP? Or a mini-album? Four songs seems too short to call it a bona fide album.
 * Sounds good, I have changed it to "mini-album". Let me know if you prefer something else. I was just using the wording from various music stores and sites when I wrote that sentence. --Culix (talk) 03:34, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * "Escape Velocity was reviewed saying it stepped away from the "pure rockabilly music" of their previous albums." Grammar of this seems off.
 * I tried copyediting this. Let me know what you think. --Culix (talk) 03:37, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * There are several instances where you quote prose wholesale from previous sources. While the quote marks are there, and you've cited it with a footnote, I think these instances could be better integrated into the article by paraphrasing the content.
 * Sounds good. I can make some runs through the article and see what I can convert to paraphrasing. I wasn't sure what the preferred style was for Wikipedia, as I have seen both. But I'm happy to do this. --Culix (talk) 18:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

More to come! This is a really interesting article.-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  20:27, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey! Thank you very much for taking a look :) I appreciate it. I'm happy to go through and improve/respond to each of these. It might take me a few weeks. --Culix (talk) 18:47, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As for some of the strange phrasing, during my research it appeared that at one point several large chunks of article prose were copy/pasted wholesale from some kind of advertising or marketing copy, which is not great. I have worked to remove that and re-phrase, copyedit, and outright rewrite some of the material. However, some bits may remain. I'm happy to keep working at it. Just wanted to provide some context. --Culix (talk) 18:51, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * No worries. That's the trouble with an open site like this. I admire your diligence. I'll try to resume looking at this soon.-- Gen. Quon   (Talk)  01:31, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Video game screenshot - released as free work
I am very happy to report that the screenshot for the video game Space Flight has been released under a Creative Commons license. I contacted the original author and creator, and they were very gracious to release it for use. Thank you! I will update the article shortly to include this. --Culix (talk) 03:59, 9 March 2020 (UTC)