Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Official Classical Singles Chart/archive1


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

The list was withdrawn by The Rambling Man via FACBot (talk) 00:31, 26 April 2018 (UTC).

Official Classical Singles Chart

 * Nominator(s): A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 20:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

The Official Classical Singles Chart was a short-lived record chart in the United Kingdom. I believe that this article fully summarises the history of the chart and its number ones, and I welcome any feedback. Thanks! A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 20:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Support Courcelles (talk) 05:36, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Query - not necessarily a deal breaker, but is there anything which says what would be considered a "single" for the purposes of this chart, in terms of track length (would a movement from a symphony which was 15 minutes or more long be eligible)? How about genre (how was a single categorised as "classical"?)?  I personally wouldn't classify the Military Wives track as classical, but clearly somebody did :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:41, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've found some chart eligibility rules that I think answer your questions. I've summarised them in a couple of notes at the bottom. Thanks, Chris! A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 11:40, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Perfect :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Support - can't see any issues -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:54, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I know that you've closed these comments, but I'd really like to discuss the year headers further. It's been a week, and there's been no further discussion either here or on the MOS:DTT talk page. I only really removed them because I was concerned that there might be accessibility issues, but, having reread MOS:DTT, I no longer think that that's the case. I would much rather fix them than remove them entirely, as, in my opinion, they serve a useful purpose to our readers. They sort correctly by No. and by date, and they move out of the way when sorted by anything else – this seems perfectly logical and intuitive to me, so I'm not sure how they can be said to be sorting improperly. I welcome your thoughts on the matter. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 09:34, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I have put the year headers back in. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 11:41, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Fine, I think it looks dreadfully clumsy when not sorted chronologically but clearly others may think differently. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:44, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

you need to find some more reviewers for this as it's been stalled for two months now, or else I'll have to archive it with insufficient weight of consensus to promote. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:46, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll post this at a few relevant WikiProjects. I'll try to find some time to review other FLCs over the next few days as well. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 11:14, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The entire Official Classical Singles Chart section seems to be based on a single primary source. Tagged accordingly. Please attend to this issue. For the time being I'd not (yet) support this being labelled FA, for this and other issues. These other issues can be detailed later: not sure whether the hurdle of giving more appropriate references to the "Number ones" section can be handled. If not, this FAC (i.e., as a list) seems moot, making redundant to detail further issues. If not proposed as a featured list, I'd suppose this would have to go through GA procedure first (where it would normally fail for more than half of its content being referenced to self-published, promotional and/or blog-like sources). --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:08, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose promotion in present state, per comments of Francis Schonken above.--Smerus (talk) 12:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what to tell you both. Citing the number ones section to the publisher of the chart is pretty standard for lists of this type (e.g. the number ones section in this FL is cited exclusively to Billboard, this one's to the Official Charts Company, this one's to AMPROFON, this one's to Oricon, this one's to the official Goan website, and so on). Most of this information can't be sourced from elsewhere, and removing it would be a disservice to our readers. Nominating this article for GA status would not be appropriate. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 14:18, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The list is at the crossroads of classical music and more popular genres. In classical music standards for references of lists are pretty high (see e.g. List of chorale harmonisations by Johann Sebastian Bach), and apparently much lower at the other end of the spectrum. Maybe some middle ground can be found? --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:39, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I would say that a lot of the songs in this list are really "classical" in name only. Many of them are basically just pop songs that are capable of live performance in a concert setting, hence why they were included in, for example, the soundtracks to Fifty Shades of Grey and Love Actually. There's obviously a chasm of difference between Bach and, say, the Military Wives, hence why I believe that the current level of sourcing in this article is sufficient. But if the consensus leans in the opposite direction, then so be it. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 15:50, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Re. "... a lot of the songs in this list are really "classical" in name only" – probably. I couldn't find a reference to the chart at the Gramophone website, so in sum:
 * the chart was not really successful in its natural habitat (discontinued after less than three years for "... lack of media interest ...")
 * apparently never even superficially entered "classical music" surroundings (lack of independent reliable sources: afaics not even a single one after its launch)
 * or, a notability maybe not all that much higher than an average Amazon bestseller list. Above you spoke about "... a disservice to our readers ..." – I'm not sure what service we're rendering the readers by serving them extensive detail that can not, not even minimally, be sourced to reliable secondary sources, about something that never really was a thing, and is, in the Wikipedia article, almost "hyped" into having been one. It all made me think about Wikifonia, an article I started on a blue Monday many years ago. Looked very promising with media attention at the time of launch, etc. At least it existed for seven years. But not FA material after its demise. Klara's Top 100, excuse my Dutch, with articles in leading newspapers throughout the time of its still continuing existence seems, imho, much more eligible to build a FA FL upon. I think the content of Official Classical Singles Chart should be seriously cut down until *no more than half* of it is only sourceable to self-published, blog-like and/or promotional material. It might still be considerably larger than the Wikifonia article; but with the current detail & sourcing it seems too bloated, which is a formidable contra-indication against FA FL promotion. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:33, 16 April 2018 (UTC); updated per below 20:00, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Just noting that you seem to be arguing against FA promotion, this is nominated for FL. You might want to read the significant differences between FA criteria and FL criteria.  Your objections do not seem based in the actual criteria for what makes something an FL.  (Though they would stand well if the FA criteria were what was being judged.)  Courcelles (talk) 19:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * No, err, the lead section of the FL criteria starts: "A featured list exemplifies our very best work. It covers a topic that lends itself to list format (see MOS:LIST) and, in addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia content (particularly naming conventions, neutrality, no original research, verifiability, citations, reliable sources, living persons, non-free content and what Wikipedia is not) a featured list..." – I emphasised the ones where it most obviously fails (for "what Wikipedia is not" e.g. WP:NOTREPOSITORY – that is, for detail that can only be retrieved from the web archive... for the entire content of the actual list). So I changed FA→FL above, while it obviously applies either way. This does not, imho, exemplify "our very best work". --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:00, 16 April 2018 (UTC) Additionally emphasized "no original research" in the quote of the FL criteria intro above: not really consistent with WP:PRIMARY ("... be cautious about basing large passages on [primary sources] ...), which is a part of the WP:NOR policy. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:19, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

are you going to attempt to address the opposition and tagging, or should I withdraw this nomination? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:28, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's how I'm addressing the tagging: I've been through and checked all 65 of the featured lists that we have of this type (i.e. music charts), and 59 of them (>90%) cite information about chart placings to the company that compiles the chart, as this article also does. That's to say nothing of the 228 artist discographies we've featured, many of which do the same thing. So the implicit consensus of the last 10 years seems to be that this level of sourcing is perfectly acceptable for articles of this type. At the risk of sounding elitist, how can one editor who's never even reviewed a featured list nomination before come along and decide that the way we've been reviewing and promoting these lists for the last decade has been wrong? Doesn't that make something of a mockery of the entire FL process? As far as I'm concerned, the tag never needed to have been placed at all and can be removed (although this should probably be done by someone other than me). Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 23:54, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I wasn't taking a side, I was simply asking if we, as a community, were still advancing this nomination. Your analysis is fair, and we often use primary sources (e.g. look at the Nobel Prize lists) when the content isn't controversial.  Let's hope some other editors get involved with this review to move it from its current stagnant position.  The Rambling Man (talk) 00:05, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * For clarity, I've compiled two of Wikipedia's top five longest lists (and many more). I've commented in FAC and GAC procedures, and wrote a GA. I've no problem using primary sources (within the limits of WP:PRIMARY) as my work shows. Here I commented on the specific issue of providing referencing in long lists.
 * I'd like to invite to look a bit less at WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS type of rationales. Most of these don't really compare, and I'll try to explain that a bit more precisely. When I look at Official Classical Singles Chart, what I see is:
 * A list article that struggles with WP:GNG. I don't really see "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". The most independent reliable source is, afaics, the The Daily Telegraph article – which however doesn't seem to add much to the press release talk that can be found almost word-for-word in other sources from around the same time, as quoted in the list article.
 * →I invite A Thousand Doors to find more independent reliable sources. The OCC's own admission, when closing the chart after less than three years, "... lack of media interest ...", seems to me to say as much as... there is a lack of independent sources covering the chart's short existence... List of number-one Billboard Top Latin Albums from the 1990s (and other examples listed above) seem to struggle less with this problem: they seem to have made a lasting impression as evidenced by multiple independent secondary sources used in these list articles. So that's why these examples don't really compare as far as I'm concerned.
 * A list article that struggles with WP:PRIMARY, notably the "Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them" part. For this aspect Nobel Prize lists are a bad comparison: maybe such lists are compiled to a large extent from primary sources, but when the Nobel Committee drops a pin there's a host of secondary sources reporting on it, detailing the colour, make, and size of the pin in lengthy articles. So even if such lists themselves are compiled from primary sources, there would be no problem to find the same information in secondary sources in multiple languages. For Official Classical Singles Chart the situation seems fundamentally different: *can* it's information also be retrieved from secondary sources? Having to go to the web.archive, manually changing dates is the only option offered for verifiability of the data in the list... did perhaps no secondary source ever report on the chartings during its short existence?
 * →I invite the FLC initiator to find more reliable secondary sources which may have reported on the chartings. If the surrounding text is clearer that there are plenty of such sources regarding the chart, that would make a huge difference.
 * As said above, the list article as it is now, with the two above issues as they are now, this seems like Wikipedia hyping something which in a more neutral perspective would fall wholly within the folds of history without much of a lasting effect. I'd really like to read more about a lasting effect of this chart, if any, so please tackle these issues if possible, instead of just denying they are issues. Thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:53, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

are you going to try to work through any of the issues raised by the two opposers, or would you prefer to withdraw the nomination at this time? The Rambling Man (talk) 08:49, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Doesn't look like this nomination is really going anywhere, and I've got one or two other lists that I'd like to nominate, so this one may as well be withdrawn. I'll open up a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Record charts and see if we can reach consensus about the original research issue, then I'll re-nominate at a later date. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 10:03, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The Rambling Man (talk) 10:08, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.