Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Amor Prohibido/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 10:00, 6 June 2018.

Amor Prohibido

 * Nominator(s): – jona  ✉ 22:34, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

This article is about the fourth and final studio album recorded by American singer Selena before she was shot and killed a year later. The album transitioned Tejano music from a moderately successful regional scene, into a powerhouse genre. Amor Prohibido is a culturally significant album that helped solidify Selena as a leading performer in the Latin music market. Still popular today, it sporadically makes appearances on Billboard's music charts, while its singles remain popular in Hispanic and Latino households. I decided to nominate Amor Prohibido for FA, after receiving positive encouragement from editors to do so, despite a rather lackluster peer review (it didn't generate any interest ) – jona  ✉ 22:48, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Comments from Aoba47
I love Selena and this is probably my favorite album by her. I will try my best to help with this, and it is great to get a chance to work with you again on something. My comments are below:
 * Please look carefully at this sentence (After achieving a fan base EMI Latin was aiming for, company president Jose Behar wanted to take advantage with another studio release.). The opening dependent clause is describing Selena, but the structure connects it to Jose Behar. It should be revised. Also, the “take advantage” part is somewhat awkwardly placed into the sentence. I have a similar issue with a similiar sentence in the “Production and development” section.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * For this part (to help with the writing), I think you can just say (to help with writing) as “the” is not really needed.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * For this part (The recording ended up being a more mature sound with), I think that “having” would be a better word choice than “being”.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I am not certain about this part “its lyrics speak”. I have been told in the past to not personify lyrics with this particular verb.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * For this part (the highest-ranking album by a Hispanic performer), I am not sure about the link to “Women in Latin music”. It is a good article, but I interpreted “Hispanic performer” to mean out of all Hispanic singers, male and female. The link here just feels a tad force to me. I have the same issue with the link in the body of the article.
 * Fixed. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Please link Selena on the first instance you mention her in the body of the article as the lead and the body of the article are treated separately.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * For this part (In a 2002 interview he said), add a comma between “interview” and “he”.
 * Fixed. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * This part (Pérez found his behavior nothing out of the ordinary) reads a little awkwardly to me. Maybe (Pérez found that his behavior was nothing out of the ordinary) instead?
 * Fixed. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * For this part (Her grandmother was forbidden to formulate a relationship with him), I would just say “form” instead of “formulate”.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * This sentence (Her grandmother was forbidden to formulate a relationship with him because of her social class and described it as "forbidden love”.) seems rather repetetive. You repeat that the relationship was forbidden twice in the same sentence. I would revise the sentence to avoid it.
 * Can you elaborate where it is written twice that the relationship was forbidden? – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I have concerns with the placement of the “Fotos y Recuerdos” audio sample and the Chris Pérez image according to SANDWICH.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * For this part (The latter genre is used heavily throughout Amor Prohibido.), I would just say the genre instead of “The latter genre”. You provide so many genres in the previous sentence that I am not sure what you mean by this.
 * Latter (in this context) means the genre that was immediately just said prior to the opening of a new sentence. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The link for “Tejano” in the “Composition” section should be removed and put in this sentence (for which A.B. later told her it could be included in Selena's next Tejano recording) as it appears in an earlier section.
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I would link “mariachi”.
 * It is in the list of genres in composition. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I am not certain about the structure of the “Reviews” subsection. I would suggest that you look to Copyediting reception sections as a resource for structuring a reception section. The first two paragraphs appear like a rather random assortment of critics and their quotes, while the third paragraph jumps around a lot from listing its legacy/impacy to comparing it to a J-Lo album. There is not enough of a cohesive narrative here, and I would suggest looking over this again for improvement.
 * I tried my best at this one, took over an hour, but hopefully it flows better. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Would the first sentence of the third paragraph be more appropriate for the “Recognition” section as it more about the album’s legacy?
 * Not exactly, those reviews were mostly just statements about the album and not how it impacted anything in particular. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that you look at this part (Prior to peaking at number one, A.B.). I understand what you intended, but if you read the part literally, it means that A.B. peaked at number one.
 * Fixed. – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Great work with this article as a whole. I have some concerns with the prose as there a few areas where it should be improved to meet the requirements for a featured article. I would also request that you look at the “Reviews” subsection and rewrite it to make a more cohesive narrative. This is what pops out for me during a first read of the article, and I would be more than happy to provide more comments and suggestions once you have addressed everything. I hope that this review helps, and you have a wonderful rest of your day and/or night. Aoba47 (talk) 23:31, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your review! I have gone through your review and hope it now satisfies the FA criteria. Best – jona  ✉ 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Wonderful work with this! I learned a lot from reading through the article. Makes me want to go and listen to a lot of Selena music now lol. I support this for promotion based on the prose. Aoba47 (talk) 04:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I appreciate it. Best – jona  ✉ 14:52, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Image review - the images generally look fine, but I can't find any indication that this image should be CC licensed on its source page. FunkMonk (talk) 12:16, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I have removed the image. Thanks for bringing it up – jona  ✉ 14:11, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Ooops, scratch that, I see now that the permission was obtained through OTRS, which makes whatever licence the website shows irrelevant. It should be ok to put it back. FunkMonk (talk) 14:18, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Haha, I'll bring it back. Thanks – jona  ✉ 14:20, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Comments from Cartoon network freak
Support: I don't see any major flaws with this article, having edited the page by myself a little (feel free to undo). I'm thus supporting its promotion to FA status. Although I'm not an experienced FA reviewer or contributor, it think Amor Prohibido is really great work,, and I see it evolved significantly from the times I've reviewed it against GA criteria. Best regards; Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:45, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your support! Best – jona  ✉ 16:04, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments from magiciandude

 * Comment I think you should mention where the source is getting the 1.5 million copies from, since the article mentions sales for 1.2 million copies from Nielsen SoundScan. More to come... Erick (talk) 13:34, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. – jona  ✉ 23:14, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yo! Sorry for the lack of response. I just had an idea. I would mention the album second-highest certified Latin album by the RIAA and I would use this as a source. How does that sound? Erick (talk) 21:35, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks for that suggestion. – jona  ✉ 15:23, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support Great job Jona! Erick (talk) 18:02, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs
Sorry for the late response, I had written something up but lost it in a browser crash. Serves me right. I think the article is pretty strong, although mainly I have some niggling issues with prose that's holding me up.
 * Prose :
 * I think there's some general weakness with how this article is organized. On a macro level with subsections it's fine, but I get bogged down a little in some choices in between. Some examples:
 * The singer's brother, A.B. Quintanilla, felt it was important that the music he produced for Selena remain fresh.[4] EMI Latin had insisted on a Grammy Award-winning producer to work with Selena on the album. A.B. felt he had to outdo himself to remain her principal record producer.[6] Selena agreed that A.B. knew her musical tastes and vocal range.[7] I think this sequence feels out of order and a bit open-ended. EMI Latin insisting on another producer seems like it should come after the details about Quntanilla's efforts; Selena's comment doesn't seem to connect in the same way (if it should go anywhere, it should be after the comment about EMI) but it's also weird the prose doesn't spell out what the resolution of EMI's requests were.
 * In a 1994 interview, A.B. told KMOL on his song selection saying how if he catches himself humming a tune the next day "then it's catchy" and if he doesn't, he "wouldn't use it." He would use a tape recorder to hum a melody before creating a title and concept of a song.—I'm not sure why details like who this interview was given to and when it was is really important details when we just want to know about the topic at hand. Throughout there's a lot of unnecessary and complicated phrasing that could be simplified, e.g. Quintanilla described his song creation process as humming melodies into a tape recorder before creating a title or concept. If he catches himself humming a tune the next day "then it's catchy".
 * In general I'd try to reduce some of the quotations and just paraphrase where possible. Leave the quotes for stuff that's difficult to parse another way, or exceptional language.
 * This paragraph just comes off as very repetitive and should probably be condensed or rephrased instead of X said Y over and over: Amor Prohibido was recorded at record producer Manny Guerra's studio in San Antonio, Texas and was engineered by house engineer Brian "Red" Moore.[15] Pérez wrote that the singer "never complained about her mix or the sound onstage" calling this "rare" among singers.[16] He added that he never heard her say: "I don't want to do that." He said it was common for her to arrive at the studio during the album's production, "hum her part a little", telling them not to worry about her because she will "know what to do when [the band is] ready to record", and then "go off to shop at the mall."[16] Pérez said the band never "had to ask [Selena] to change something in the studio" as she "track[ed] her vocals by herself, and she would be the one who would request a second take" in order to "add little harmonies she'd create" during recording.
 * Pérez found that his behavior was nothing out of the ordinary and worked on the song with Vela throughout the night "coming up with drum sounds and programming the pattern for it," finalizing its structure before sunrise.—why would his behavior be out of the ordinary?
 * My assumption from listening to the liner notes is that A.B. often approaches the band to change or tweak something with very little time before they are due to record an album. But, that is my assumption since Perez did not explicitly say that. – jona  ✉ 22:50, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * At the time of Hynde's refusal, the band had $475,000 (1994 USD) of pre-sale copies in a warehouse that included "Fotos y Recuerdos".—until this point, you have not actually named the song, and it's not entirely clear that "Fotos y Recuerdos" is the cover in question.
 * Overall, Amor Prohibido is a Tejano recording,[42][45] encased in an "authentically Tejano sound",[46] that fuses "cross-cultural [music]",[11] which uses a minimalist style that was quintessential in early 1990s Tejano music. This is one of several run-on sentences. Cut things up and either make multiple sentences or drop trying to cram as much into one.
 * You alternatively refer to people by last or first name (A.B. for example.) This should be made consistent and use the surname throughout.
 * I only do that for Selena's family since they all share the same surname. – jona  ✉ 22:50, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There's a lot of sentences in reception that boil down to sales increasing after her death, and should probably be synthesized rather than split up.

I am currently working on the prose as we speak and will address all these issues within 24 hours. Thanks for your review, I really do appreciate it. – jona  ✉ 15:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Media :
 * Most of the media looks fine. I'm not sure File:Amor Prohibido (song sample).ogg meets NFCC requirements; the song has some details in the article but it's not a major facet of the reception section and it's certainly less important than the title song.
 * The sample of "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom" illustrates a critic's review of the tracks on the album who found the song to have a number of arrangements that differentiates it from the first four tracks (including the titular song) on the album. – jona  ✉ 15:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)


 * References :
 * What makes the following publications/published works reliable? Puro Tejano, Infobase Learning (Jones 2013), Robbe 2000, Neon Tommy?
 * Puro Tejano was the definite source for all things Tejano music, the radio host had a syndicated TV show called Puro Tejano and personally interviewed Tejano artists. The source used in this article comes from his interviews with Selena and her brother whose comments were used to improve the article and not that of the host. According to Jones' "about me" page, she graduated from the University of Southern Maine attaining a masters degree in creative writing and has published over 500 articles for Cricket, Highlights, Humpty Dumpty, The Writer, Writer's Digest, and Woman's World to name a few. While Ms. Robb writes scholastic biographies on pop culture though her creditals and education is not available online as with any scholastic author, though I am willing to remove her work and cited information if there is still a question about her reliablity. According to their website, Neon Tommy is an "online publication of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism". – jona  ✉ 15:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I haven't yet performed a spot-check on sourcing looking for close paraphrasing or bad attribution, and hope to get to it this weekend. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 17:21, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Oppose
There are significant prose problems with this article: "Pérez wrote that the singer 'never complained about her mix or the sound onstage' calling this 'rare' among singers.[16] He added that he never heard her say: 'I don't want to do that.' He said it was common for her to arrive at the studio during the album's production, 'hum her part a little', telling them not to worry about her because she will 'know what to do when [the band is] ready to record', and then 'go off to shop at the mall.'[16] Pérez said the band never 'had to ask [Selena] to change something in the studio' as she 'track[ed] her vocals by herself, and she would be the one who would request a second take' in order to 'add little harmonies she'd create' during recording." This inflated trivia, in which 130 words are used to cover what might be contained in 30, is just one example – there are several similar cases where much inconsequential detail could be reduced or omitted altogether.
 * It is, I feel, rather too long for an an encyclopedic summary, partly due to some excessive overdetailing of minor issues which make reading the article a somewhat indigestible experience. For example:
 * There is far too much use of verbatim reported speech, all through the article. You tend to illustrate almost every point by quoting exactly what someone said or wrote, instead of paraphrasing in your own words. The required encyclopedic tone is missing – the article reads more as though it was from a music magazine. This overuse of quotations is illustrated in the following sentence taken from the Composition section: Her "powerful" and "emotive" overdubbed vocals were found to be "low [and] sober", sung in a "desperate" and "sentimental" way. That's five quotes in a sentence of 20 words!
 * A few random examples of substandard prose:
 * Songs, such as "Tus Desprecios", about dysfunctional and volatile relationships has a storyline typical of mariachi recordings".
 * "Daniel Bueno, who organized the event, told The Washington Post in April 1995, that Central Americans dislike Tejano music and found that the singer added reggae and tropical music flavored tracks that helped her to appeal to Central Americans."
 * "The vast majority of contemporary reviews were positive and the album received widespread critical acclaim": that's just saying the same things twice.
 * "It finished 1994..." – paragraphs should not begin with a pronoun.


 * General readability: Some of the paragraph lengths are horrendous; in particular, look at the Commercial performance section. These great walls of text are very off-putting to the general reader, and need to be subdivided.

The article has obviously been well researched, and is written with a commitment to the subject which is admirable. However, my rather speedy examination of the prose is enough to convince me that the prose needs considerable further  attention before reaching the high standard required in a featured article and I do not think that at present it meets FA prose criteria. Brianboulton (talk) 19:32, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Coord note
I'm concerned that this nom has been open almost two weeks and we're finding so many fundamental prose issues, so I'm going to archive this and ask that the issues be dealt with outside the FAC process. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:00, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 10:00, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.