Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Steely Dan/archive1

Steely Dan

1. I believe it meets the criteria.
2. The subject is a major band. Fenrir2000 15:29, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support I think Steely Dan meets the required criteria. I have found it to be a well written source that covers the bands entire career and does not leave out any obviously missing information. It is easy to understand, has a good layout and contains a lot of content. The trivia section does not seem to be a bother but I am not sure if it should remain (at least in its present form) if the article is to be featured.Devin 20:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. As glad as I have been to see The Music of My Life reflected in the Main Page FAs over the last year (Genesis, Phil Collins, Pink Floyd and Rush) and as much as I like the band this article needs work.

  For starters:

  Gaucho gets very short shrift compared to the other albums. Why no cover picture? It almost feels like the editor or editors who wrote the section were trying to get through it so they could get to the other stuff they were most interested in. But it was their last original album for years and generated two Top 40 singles.

  Peacock terms and POV: "The reasons why this group of songs is so remarkable are twofold"; "This collection is the raw genesis of the surgical and sardonic musical style that Steely Dan would become known for". "Although some doubted that they could last as a studio-only group, Becker and Fagen proved their critics wrong in spectacular fashion with the 1977 release of their sixth LP, the dazzling, jazz-oriented Aja, which saw them using the services of top-notch jazz and jazz-rock and soul musicians" Either source those statements or get them out of there.

  And speaking of sourcing, it's very spotty (by which I mean nearly nonexistent) throughout the entire album section: "It's clear in these recordings that they're formulating their piano-driven jazz/funk/rock which comes on their first album, Can't Buy A Thrill." To whom?. "it would soon become obvious that Fagen's voice was in fact ideally suited to their material" Again, to whom? "Becker and Fagen were dissatisfied with the sound of the album (caused by a faulty DBX noise reduction system) and for years refused to listen to the album in its final form." Source? The whole "Second Arrangement" story and Karen Stanley need to be sourced too.

  Clunky prose: "The movie was one of the year's worst box-office disasters but the song was another hit, barely missing out on the Top 20 in the US and was another minor hit in the UK, and the group still performs it today"; "Becker and Fagen had planned on leaving ABC for Warner Brothers and wanted to release the next album on it, but MCA claimed ownership of the material and blocked Fagen and Becker from putting it out on any other label"; "His girlfriend at the time, Karen Stanley, was found dead in their shared Upper West Side Apartment, of a drug overdose."

  The post-Gaucho section talks of a "reconciliation" but there is no evidence of any friction between them in the text (and I don't think I remembered any at the time; they just wanted to do their own things for a while and stayed in touch).

  The Trivia section, as the talk page suggests, cannot pass FA in its present form. First, it reiterates the information about the Keith Jarrett lawsuit already in the article. Second, some of the trivia in it is unsourced. Third, a lot of it is really germane to specific songs and should and could really go into articles about those songs (if they don't exist, create them).

  Most importantly, I think you need to withdraw this nomination and take it to peer review, as there is no indication this was done and it is usually extremely helpful when prepping an article for a run at the golden star. Daniel Case 01:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Oppose: Some image do not have source information. --Abu Badali 12:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I suggest you take another look at the article. The image use has been cleared up and most (if not all) of the problems mentioned are fixed. Devin 15:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Source is ok now. But images violate Wikipedia:Fair use criteria item #1, as free photos of living persons can be created (See #8 on Wikipedia:Fair use#Counterexamples. Consider contacting them at their website to release some image under a free license. See WP:COPYREQ for tips on doind that. And let me know if any help is needed. --Abu Badali 16:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Oppose for now pretty good article but I think that any article with a remaining "Trivia" section is short of FAC. Either that information is too trivial and should be deleted or it is relevant and should be incorporated into the article (or the appropriate subarticle, say for that Cousin Dupree thing). Pascal.Tesson 21:54, 9 October 2006 (UTC)