User talk:Willoughbee

Welcome!
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Carbon Leaf
Again, welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for updating the page for Carbon Leaf. I like reading Wikipedia at work when I have a minute but I generally don't have time to do a lot of research for expansions on articles. So it's good to see the page for one of my favorite bands being updated and worked on. As far as your request for constructive criticism, here goes... (note: Not all of these things have to do specifically with your edits to the article. I just read over the article and these are the things that popped out at me)
 * References aren't normally inline like you have them in the intro. See WP:CITE and Citing sources/example style for info on how to create a references section and put refs at the bottom of the article.  For a good example to see what I mean, look at the article for Pink Floyd.  It's a featured article so there are quite a few references there.  It's great that you have references for the stuff but it breaks up the flow of the paragraph/sentence to be reading along and then have a reference to kind of skip over.
 * Words like "beloved fan favorites" should probably be taken out. They are "weasel words".  They sound like advertising in a way and they don't say, for example, what fans thought of them as their favorites.  They are beloved by whom?  Random people or actual music critics?  If by critics, who said that the songs were their favorites and when?  See what I mean? See WP:WEASEL for more info on this.
 * The trivia section can probably be taken out entirely and all those bits of trivia worked into the text of the article in some way. The bit about the song off of Echo Echo being used in a movie can be moved to the band history where it talks about that album.  The bit about the name can be moved to the history.  The part about the American Music Awards can be moved to the part of the history that discusses that.  Even the bassists thing can be worked in.  While I think trivia lists are fine sometimes, most times they can be worked into the flow of the article to give it color.
 * You're right, the top image isn't the greatest. I wouldn't mind at all if it were changed out.  But...  Just because an image is on a band's website, that doesn't mean that it's a "promotional image".  I'm actually having trouble getting a couple other users to understand right now that they can't just grab an image off a person's web site and say it's promotional.  Those images are generally copyrighted by either the artist or the photographer that took the picture and may not be relased under a license that allows them to be used for promotional work of our nature.  But if you email the band or their managers, they will usually either send you a couple images that are promotional material (usually stuff that they send to newspapers and radio stations to advertise the band coming to town).  I've had good luck so far with this method for both The Bacon Brothers and Family Groove Company.

So, yeah, don't by any means think that by pointing this stuff out to you that I am trying to put this task onto your back or anything. It's just that you asked for a critical view of the article so I had a few minutes and put together this list. That and I tend to tell people what I think, even if it's more then they were really looking for. :-)

If you need any help with anything or have any other questions, feel free to ask! Dismas|(talk) 01:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Wait. You know the band?!  You lucky so-and-so!  :-)  Well, that's really cool.  Tell him they need to come play Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont again, will ya?  And about the article, yeah, take your time, get to know your way around and such.  Wikipedia is a pretty cool project.  And that page on their site is perfect for getting images from.  I hadn't been to their site in a while so I hadn't seen that.  Dismas|(talk) 04:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)