User talk:HasBeen

Wikipedia as a commercial advertising space
Wikipedia isn't exactly a commercial advertising space, as you may seem to indicate. Besides the general rules you've indicated, there are also the strict rules of WP:CORP (Notability of companies and corporations). There you can read the following statement : advertising is either cleaned up to adhere to the neutral point of view or deleted. I haven't read your article, neither did I delete it, but if the article didn't conform then it was rightly deleted. Otherwise complain to the admin who deleted it, but don't make a separate article with your complaint. Besides, in the end, after the voting process, the article Rich Girl wasn't deleted at all. JoJan 14:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and it is very interesting to note that you have confirmed my suspicions. The very broad idea of "corporations of note" certainly favours big record labels. Indeed, their heavy web-presence makes verifying the half-truths and wild, commercial exaggerations in their press releases as simple a task as turning to that other great corporation, Google.

I am not complaining that I lost the debate on GS's single advert page, in retrospect given that I am up against her e-team and her professional marketing people, how could I win?

I am asking for clarity that in fact Wiki is open to abuse from Public Relations teams. So far I see little evidence to the contrary.

One clear way to stem this abuse would be to outlaw individual pages for commercial products such as current singles. This information could quite easily be stored in their bio. I have yet to hear a single argument against this suggestion, let alone a valid one. --HasBeen 09:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I advise you to bring these arguments to the Village Pump Village pump (proposals) and start the discussion there. You certainly have a point. Let's see what others think about this. JoJan 09:54, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * No article on or All Shook Up or Smells Like Teen Spirit or the Run DMC/Aerosmith version of Walk This Way? What kind of encyclopedia is that? And why is your concern limited only to songs - perhaps we should have no articles on individual short stories because that's unfair to independent publishers; no articles on individual movies because that's unfair to indie filmmakers; no articles on Microsoft Word because that's unfair to small software houses; no article about the Republican Party because that's unfair to anarchists? (OK, I got carried away ...)
 * Obviously there's a complicated gray area here; it's not black and white, and errors can be made about whether an individual article should or shouldn't exist. Wikipedia's popularity has made it susceptible both to teenagers pretending to have a band at one end, and record company PR firms at the other. There will always be a struggle to balance them, particularly as technology makes everybody in the world a record producer.
 * Could we worse, though. Take a look at the recent edit history of Nostradamus if you want to see a mess! - DavidWBrooks 12:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you all for your insight. I'll take it to the pump! --HasBeen 08:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Gwen Stefani
Do you honestly believe that the Wikipedians editing the Gwen Stefani song articles are her marketters? You are sadly and poorly mistaken; it is also a disgusting assumption. I must note that you haven't complained about the Beatles "marketters". I find that humorously perplexing. &mdash;Hollow Wilerding. . . (talk) 21:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

This is not a personal vendetta against GS. (PS your personal tone is very idicative of an e-teamer; if you're not, you may want to check that attitude at the door. This is a serious issue, not some petty fan fight.) The commercial for her latest single just happened to flash up on the front page masquerading as a legitimate entry on the same day an article myself and others were working on got canned due to the very same reasons that I am arguing for here.

As for the question of "where to draw the line", let's start at repositioning singles into band bios and move on out from there.

I absolutely agree that all songs should come under bios. This would guard against such bald marketing infiltration into the project. That nobody addresses this question directly is telling as to the extent of infestation.--HasBeen 08:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

User conduct
It is a personal attack to accuse everyone who disagrees with you about music-related articles of being a paid marketing flack (or "e-teamer", in your unique lingo). Please refer to WP:NPA and cut it out. If you continue this nonsense, I'm opening an RFC. Firebug 21:57, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, I'll give it up. --HasBeen 08:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Celine Dion article...
Heya HasBeen :-) I'm copying you in on a message I sent to Tsavage - I was wondering what we should do to get that Celine Dion article up to scratch. I guess what I'm asking is: at a bare minimum, what information about her music do we need to include in the article? Incidently, I have no axe to grind about this article (I'm not actually a fan), but I feel it would be a pity if User:Journalist, who spent a fair amount of effort on the article, wasn't made precisely aware of precisely what should be included. I think your suggestion has a great deal of merit, btw. That's why I'm going straight to the horses mouth!

I'm hoping we can all work together to get this up to scratch. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Our industrious friend has addressed much of the suspect sourcing, so in that respect we are streets ahead. What would make this article tick for me is that it be more informative than her own website without stretching over 30Kbs. She is a widely recognised singer, although her most easily recognisable work is intimately bound to the success of another medium. Perhaps if the article told us more about her non-film work, really pushing, say, the live angle perhaps, then we would be mining a source of information not readily available to the public. I will post this on the talk page too, and have a work with the Performing Arts people here in the UK to see if we can get something together re: live reviews etc. --HasBeen 10:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)