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 not promoted by GrahamColm 16:35, 1 November 2012 [1].

KMFDM[edit]

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Nominator(s): —Torchiest ^talk_edits 22:15, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because the last time I nominated it, it was in pretty good shape, and received a lot of attention and improvement during that nomination. It received no supports, but no opposes either. I don't think there's much more, if anything, that needs fixing or changing at this point, so it should be ready to pass. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 22:15, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I am sorry that no one has picked this up, after 11 days. I am inexpert in this field, but I have made some prose comments on the lede and first few sections. Unfortunately, my time is rather limited at present. I hope that someone with a bit more knowledge will take over and review the article thoroughly; on the face of it, it looks pretty thorough, though the prose may need some further attention.

False subjunctive in lead: "the latter of whom would leave and rejoin the group several times over its history". Should read: " the latter of whom left and rejoined the group several times over its history".
"by 2005 achieved a consistent line-up..." Either: "by 2005 had achieved a consistent line-up..." or "in 2005 achieved a consistent line-up..." but not as given presently.
"KMFDM is considered..." This formulation always provokes the question: "considered by whom?". Music writer, critics, commentators etc - gives us something specific.
"Members have recorded under many other names..." By "members", do you mean the whole band, or individual members, or sub-groups?
Confusing wording: "KMFDM was founded in Paris, France, on February 29, 1984,[1] as an art project between Sascha Konietzko and German painter/multi-media artist Udo Sturm to perform for the opening of an exhibition of young European artists at the Grand Palais." I assume the intendied meaninig is "KMFDM was founded in Paris, France, on February 29, 1984,[1] by Sascha Konietzko and German painter/multi-media artist Udo Sturm, as a performing arts project for the opening of an exhibition of young European artists at the Grand Palais".
Why use the recently contrived "initialism" instead of the established word "acronym"?
Did Konietzko write " DA-DA-esque" in that form, rather than "Dada-esque"? Perhaps this is a translator's error; even so, I think a [sic] is called for. (The correct term is probably "Dadaist")
"Soon afterwards..." Needs clarifying; soon after what? Soon after the 2003 interview? Or after the initial performance in 1984?
" The next album, What Do You Know, Deutschland?, was recorded from 1983 to 1986, with some songs done before Esch was a member of the band..." There must be a better way of phrasing this; "with some songs done" is simply ugly. How about something like: "The next album, released in December 1986, was What Do You Know, Deutschland?, which incorporated songs recorded by Ensch before he was a member of the band".
A "second UK release"? When? And the old subjunctive problem: "would go on to design" → "went on to design". And "thenceforth" is redundant.

Note also that the link on William Wilson leads to a disambiguation page. Brianboulton (talk) 15:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for taking the time to give me some notes. I've corrected all of the items above. In particular, the information about the 1983–86 recording was more confusing than I realized. As for the initialism bit, that was in the article before I worked on it, but it seemed like the slightly different flavor of the word was more accurate. Since you're not the first reviewer over the years to remark on it, though, I changed it. Thanks again! —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:11, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. Interesting band (using the term loosely). The research looks fairly thorough (though with at least one issue, see below). The history feels a bit disjointed in places, but I may struggle to come up with conrete suggestions, sorry. Other issues (only up to Adios):

maybe you've had this discussion in a previous FAC, but I'm going to put this out there: this article relies 26 times on a self-published source that may be by the band itself (i'm running on the domain name - the page itself tells us disturbingly little about authorship etc). Why should we be confident about this source?
~~lede: toured more than two dozen times" Maybe specify toured internationally? It wouldn't seem notable to me a band touring its own country that often.~~
early years: "Konietzko adding audio treatment to five amplified bass guitars". Ok, this should mean there were five bass guitarists, but none are named. And Konietzko is doing... what exactly? What does "adding audio treatment" mean??

Very pleased this has been revised. hamiltonstone (talk) 22:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"is typically given the loose translation of "no pity for the majority"" - source says "loosely translated means...", which is not the same thing at all as "typically given..." Need some other sources that use that translation.
"Soon after the first performance, Konietzko joined up with Peter Missing in his new band Missing Foundation in Hamburg". Were it not for the wikilinks, this would read that the band name was "Missing Foundation in Hamburg". Try "Soon after the first performance, Konietzko went to Hamburg, where he joined Peter Missing's new band Missing Foundation"
I know it can be hard to find the right place to put isolated, but relevant, information, but the following is jarring in its tacking on to an unrelated para: "Watts left the group after working on just three songs[7] to start his own project, Pig."
~~who is Dave Thompson that we care what he said? A music critic? Rock music writer? Need to specify.~~
~~"found that Wax Trax! had filed Chapter 11 in November 1992". Lay person/non-US reader will have no idea what "filed Chapter 11" means.~~
"was featured in the film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and was the first single from its soundtrack". I'm curious here, not saying this is wrong. But how does a movie company release a single from a soundtrack? Isn't it just a single by the band? I can understand how one may market a single from the movie, just not how it gets released as such...
" Tim Skold, formerly of the band Shotgun Messiah, helped write "Anarchy" for the Symbols album, and became a more active participant for the band's next album.[43] The album's opening song "Megalomaniac",..." Excessive repetition of "album", and it isn't clear from which album "Megalomaniac" is the opening song: Symbols or whatever comes next (did I miss the title?)
"contains the grammatically correct form of the band name's meaning, which according to Konietzko was done to confuse people who told the band that its name was wrong". How would that confuse them? Wouldn't it make it clear rather than confuse? I'm confused. ;-)
The article seems ambiguous about Tim Skold's status. He "became a more active participant" in the next album; but a little later we have "as written almost exclusively by Konietzko and Skold". Was Skold a songwriter, or a band member, or both?

May come back another time to do more. Regards, hamiltonstone (talk) 23:30, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. I am working through them now. I can address your first question about the website. KMFDM.net began in 1997, and has always been run by KMFDM main man Sascha Konietzko. You can see this archive of the homepage that was captured the same date (April 8, 1997) as the history page I'm using as a reference. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 04:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've addressed most of the issues you've mentioned above. On the bass guitars part, nothing I've ever read about the performance has indicated there were guitarists playing the basses. I'm pretty sure Konietzko was running a centralized system to play them all himself. Not sure what the audio treatment means exactly either, as that's pretty much all that's in the source. On the confusion part, fans who know (or think they know) German have always complained that the original phrase is grammatically incorrect. However, it was always intended to be that way. The nouns in the name were reversed to their correct positions to confuse fans about whether the original wrong name was intentional or not. Not sure how or if I can add all that into the article. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 05:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and on the "Megalomaniac" single, this is all the source says: "Now, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation hopes to do the same when the album ships gold later this month. The first single, KMFDM's 'Megalomaniac,' is currently spinning on rock radio around the country." So, not sure what else I can say about it with that. I'll see if I can find another source for this and for the bass guitars part. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 05:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Well, a few points. First, thanks for starting to tackle my suggestions. Second, I'm not very comfortable with extensive citation of a site written by the band's lead. Probably OK if confined to some bare factual stuff. We'll see what other editors think. Third, don't include in the article stuff that you can't clarify. If we can't make sense of the sources, we shouldn't reproduce their ambiguity, we should omit it. Finally, I didn't explain my issue with the name very well. The article says "typically given...". This implies that the majority of sources writing about the band use that translation. For the Wikipedia article to say "typically given..." we then need either multiple third party sources that are using that translation (thus demonstrating it is typical), or one third-party source that itself says that this is the "typical" translation. At the moment we don't have either. Hmm, I wonder if that was any clearer? :-) hamiltonstone (talk) 11:32, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Almost everything using the primary website source is relatively uncontroversial stuff like dates. I switched a few statements to the Allmusic biography source though. I've also added that source to the translation claim. I rewrote the soundtrack single bit to make it clear it was just a radio release, not a physical single. Still trying to figure out what to do about the "audio treatment" part though. Thanks again. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:27, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some thoughts (and that's all these are, not trying to get into arguments or anything; any replies will be helpful):

I'm not sure we should say that the band toured "internationally". What is internationally with them? When they toured the US in 1990, and were based in Germany, I would support saying that is "international", but then when they toured Germany in 1997 (and were then based in the US), is that also "international"? Considering how often the band moved around (Germany to Chicago to Seattle to spread across Germany/UK/US), it seems tough to call what is and isn't international.
I think the "audio treatment" part makes sense. If the article doesn't state there are bass players, then there aren't any (all other performers are listed either by name or by general mentioning). Would working in a link to Experimental music help any? For example, "The first show consisted of Sturm playing an ARP 2600 synthesizer, Konietzko adding audio treatment to five bass guitars with their five amplifiers spread throughout the building, and four Polish coal miners pounding on the foundations of the Grand Palais, performing experimental music"? Or linking "audio treatment" to experimental music (ie audio treatment)? Or the same, except using electronic music instead of experimental music?
I'd support removing completely the sentence about containing the correct grammatical form and being meant to confuse listeners, etc. It is a confusing statement itself, and I don't think it really adds much to the article. MrMoustacheMM (talk) 00:59, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I pulled the "confusing" part, since it really wasn't that great of a sentence anyway, and the source isn't necessarily top quality either. I agree about the international part, as the band has lived everywhere, in groups and separately, and has had members of at least five nationalities I can think of off the top of my head. Still not a 100% sure on the audio treatment bit, although linking it somewhere could work. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 02:18, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I rewrote the tour part in the lead, added a couple more references to the typical translation part, and added a little more info about Skold in two places. How's it looking now? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 20:56, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I rewrote the first performance section quite a bit, removing the "audio treatment" bit completely, and used a couple new refs. I've trimmed back the usage of the band's history website from 26 to 21, and almost all of it just for dates now; eight uses are for tour dates and names, for example. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:19, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

"Critics consider KMFDM one" to "Critics consider KMFDM to be one"
"29th" remove "th" from it per WP:MOS, even it is a quote
Link people's name, companies, etc., per WP:REPEATLINK, in images
Move image to right side in reception per MOS:IMAGELOCATION
Same goes for album artwork image
Table doesn't meet WP:ACCESS, add scope rows to it ensuring so
Table doesn't meet WP:DTT, add table caption to ensure it does
Per WP:&, don't use "&" unless it is in an official name. That said, in the table I see numerous violations, and such.
"Allmusic" should be "AllMusic"
Too many external links per WP:ELNO. As per WP:FACEBOOK, Facebook links should only be used if there is no "Official website" link, so remove the Facebook link. Same goes for Twitter and Myspace, so remove those as well, and it should be fine
A number of reference titles, and more text, don't meet WP:DASH, hypthen should be en-dash, please check article for all these violations
The publisher for "Billboard" is "Prometheus Global Media", not "Nielsen"
"KMFDM Inc" remove Inc

TBr and ley 16:05, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all the technical comments. I've fixed everything on the list with a few exceptions:

I don't see anything in the MOS that says a quote should be changed if a date has the ordinal version.

Doesn't seem right, though. TBr and ley 04:46, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I changed all the Billboard publishers to Prometheus for the online sources. I left the print journal publisher as Nielsen because they all were published before 2009.

Understood. TBr and ley 04:46, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I can add scope="row" to the tour table because there aren't any row headers.

It goes in the main row of the table. TBr and ley

Let me know what you think about those items, and thanks again for taking the time to comment. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:13, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I've read WP:ACCESS and WP:DTT, and I can't see an example of what I think you're talking about. Can you show me an example of scope="row" being used without row headers, or make the edit? I'm fairly confused about the usage now. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 15:05, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.