User talk:Zinger12345

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Hello, Zinger12345, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! Dan56 (talk) 01:57, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
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Review boxes
Review infoboxes are not mandatory, they are optional per Wikipedia's guidelines, which my extension means they are not necessary. In fact, about half of Wikipedia's featured album articles do not use them, nor are they obligated to. This has been hashed out before on Music project talk pages. You say the boxes are "an easy-to-read, visual representation of the critical reception of the album, that fleshes out the best reviews so that one does not have to read through a dense paragraph that details the overall critical reception of the album, so that it in turn highlights the overall quality of the album". That is not necessarily true, and I will detail the reasons below.

Here's the backstory of why those boxes exist in the first place. Originally, reviews were linked to in the album infoboxes. Eventually, the community came to the conclusion that this was not suitable, and that an adequate summary of critical consensus could not be conveyed by listing ten reviews (which is the cap that was agreed on to prevent infoboxes from becoming obscenely long). Now, some editors wanted to continue showing review scores in a template and some did not, so a compromise was reached, making them strictly optional. Still, it was agreed that conveying critical reception in the prose was of paramount priority. To aid the long task of removing review scores from the album infobox before depreciating the field for good, it was decided that in order to avoid discarding potential sources, the review scores would be by default moved from the album infobox to the new review box. Additionally, the ultimate goal is to incorporate those reviews into the article prose.

Now, here are some of the common objections against using the review box. First, it is inherently limited, as the consensus of keeping it to a maximum listing of ten scores still stands. There are far more than ten publications reviewing music out there. Secondly, the guidelines for the review box discourage listing any reviews that don't have scores, of which many exist (there's a good reason for this, as some reviews cannot be accurately described as "favorable" or "unfavorable", not to mention ones that editors might not realize are totally sarcastic). This inherently cuts out some major critical voices. Thirdly, it overemphasizes the scores over the actual content of the reviews, some of which are not wholly reflective of the opinions of the authors (for example, it's well-known that the editors of Rolling Stone assign the review score, not the writers). Fourthly, the main goal of listing the review scores is to help convey what critical consensus about the album is to readers. For a new release that understandably does not have an overview of its critical reception written about it, a review box can be handy (but it's still not mandatory). But in the case of In Utero (album), we have a quote from a book where the author, having researched several reviews of the album and come to a conclusion about them, summarizes the critical consensus about the album in a single sentence, which is thusly cited in the Wikipedia article. This instantly makes this stated purpose of the review box instantly moot. Fifthly, most of the time the reviews listed in the box are detailed in the prose, making the box pretty redundant (and of course, the review box is capped at 10 reviews, meaning the prose gives a better overview than the review box does). Sixthly, a review box can at times grossly misrepresent critical consensus. A chief example of an article where a review box would be misinformative and actually detrimental to an article is Be Here Now (album), for as discussed in the prose, this was a record that received effusive praise upon release, yet which critical consensus quickly turned against. That's why that article doesn't use it.

I notice that you are a new user yet your edits are exclusively focused on adding review boxes to articles. Understand that writing about critical consensus about an album is about far more than listing review scores. In a sense, the scores are the least important thing, what's important is what people say about the album, how they view it, and how those views may or may not have change. Also understand that most if not all of the articles you have added the boxes to have been vetted by our Good Article and Featured Article processes, and they have not found those article lacking in the slightest without the boxes. In these instances, you're just making unnecessary extra work for yourself. WesleyDodds (talk) 03:33, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

First of all thank you for responding, but I have another question, and that is what benefits do review boxes have? To me, a maximum of 10 well-chosen sources can paint a pretty good picture of the overall critical reception of that album; and you haven't responded to my argument that reading through the prose to give a general overview (not a fully detailed analysis, but, rather, a general overview) of the album's critical reception. If I want to read a fully detailed analysis I would read through the prose; and, to me, a well-chosen selection of reviews. I do understand that there is a 10-max cap on review scores in the box, but again, if they are chosen well, then they can provide a good summary of the critical reception. Also, please note that I am certainly not the only one in favor of review boxes, as many other users have expressed an interest in having them. Zinger12345 (talk) 22:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

You know what? I'm done editing these articles, putting the review boxes back on. I think it is obvious that I am losing a battle that is frankly unwinnable. I won't even try to put review boxes back on; instead, I'll look through the history of the article, and view (not edit it back, but just view) the article when it had the review boxes on, so I can at least get a glimpse of them. So, I'm done, and I'm out. Peace. Zinger12345 (talk) 01:37, 27 September 2012 (UTC)