Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of trends in music (1980-1989)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was delete all. Sr13 23:32, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Timeline of trends in music (1980-1989)

 * – (View AfD) (View log)


 * Nomination also includes

Completely unsourced list of indiscrimate information that is clearly original research. Part of a whole collection that needs to be looked at as a group. Spartaz Humbug! 20:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete "US 70 to present" as there has not been enough distance for an objective look at the material, resulting in POV-pushing and original research. Indifferent on the others, but would be inclined to keep if the material could be sourced. -- saberwyn 22:33, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete 70's and 80's. Weak Delete on the rest; they are not filled with fancruft mash-notes, but they are not sourced, and it's unlikely that they will be. If someone starts adding sources, I'll shift to Weak Keep on the older ones. Horologium talk - contrib 01:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment The problem with these articles is that they are too ambitious in their scope, and consequently have little information in them. Instead of concentrating on a geographical region or a general genre, they attempt to cover all regions and all styles of music, and as a result have no focus and appear to be a random cobbling together of factoids, unsourced ones at that. I'd prefer to see smaller, more focused articles, which are easier to source and maintain, and are more likely to draw people who are knowledgeable about that particular subject. Huge and diffuse categories tend to produce huge, diffuse headaches when they grow out of control, like the newer articles in this series have demonstrated. Horologium talk - contrib 01:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Horologium has hit upon much of what I felt, looking over these articles. Look, you might be able to have some articles on the musical trends with articles organized around chronology, or you can do it based upon geography, but realistically, you can't include both in the same article without it becoming either too long or too thin.  My own thinking is that these articles are not so much about trends as they are about events.  Maybe some type of retroactive music almanac can be created, listing significant events, but I don't know.  I would guess that articles based upon geography would likely be more interesting reads, but that becomes increasingly problematic with the increasing interconnectiveness of the world.  (I'm sure that there are iPods in Addis Ababa playing many of the same songs as are playing on iPods in Kansas City.)
 * I'm slightly—only slightly—disinclined to endorse deletion across the board for one reason: The articles dealing with older periods should, I believe, be salvagable.  Why?  Because unlike the articles on music of the nineties and music of the aughts, we do now have the advantage of perspective on the sixties and perhaps the seventies.  So I'm going to wait until I read more comments before I decide how to vote.
 * Regardless of the outcome, I do want to demand the following of whomever will either save or resurrect these articles: Write them in prose.  These articles have been called out on the carpet ostensibly because of their lack of sourcing and their POV style.  These indictments are true, but the same can be said of many other articles that embarrass us less.  Why?  Because it is obvious to anyone with average intelligence how they were written:  Thoughtlessly, one line at a time, by one editor per line.  They simply do not read like articles.  I do endorse having someone keep all the old copies and then taking a great deal of time, offline, working to create some well-flowing, well-organized articles on these topics.  Such articles would have a better chance of surviving scrutiny.   Unschool 04:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all. I had hoped that some of these would be better than the now-deleted 2000s or the 1990s articles.  There have been things written about trends in the development of music and the evolution of new styles.  Unfortunately, these articles don't have anything to do with that.  Each of them is an unsourced, uncited list of arbitrarily selected historical one-liners.  This is a timeline, not an article on trends, and even then its lack of sourcing and arbitary selection would seem to make it unworkable at best and novel synthesis at worst.  Serpent&#39;s Choice 02:15, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all, indiscriminate OR lists, as the nom indicates. This isn't the correct way to approach this topic, as I stated on the DRV for the 2000s list. --Core desat 06:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - so one of the main problems listed with these articles is that the title, "timeline of music trends", doesn't correctly cover the info in the articles. Well then maybe instead of deleting them, the articles' titles should be changed to "-s in music" (which is a redirect to all of them), since this is more inclusive.-- Azer Red  Si?  19:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * What we end up with then is a properly named collection of unsourced drivel. The biggest problem is not the name, it's the content. If it were only the name that were the issue, then anyone could have renamed it, under WP:BOLD. Here, however, we have a problem with name, scope, and content. As I pointed out earlier, I am not strongly opposed to the pre-1970 articles, although they have the same structural issues as the newer ones. But unless somebody starts sourcing them, they should go away. Nobody has speedied them, which gives editors time to address the issues raised in the AfD. Another issue is the lack of discussion; only one of the talk pages has more than one comment, and it is in the most recent of the group, which is the least salvageable. People are just adding stuff to the pages without explanation or discussion. Even the edit summaries are weak; most of the summaries with content refer to disambigs or grammar changes, not added content. Horologium talk - contrib 20:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all per Serpent's Choice. No clear standards are being used to determine what is in and what is out of these articles. Virtually anything that was recorded or released in a given year could be included as starting or participating in a trend. --Metropolitan90 06:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all. I'm convinced. Unschool 02:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.