Talk:Blanks 77

Unsourced material

Greetings. I noticed this article has a lot of unsourced material. It doesn't read quite so much like a resume as Marty Munsch; however, unsourced material must be removed immediately. Please source this article and remove original research to comply with Wikipedia guidelines, in particular the statements in the opening sentence about the dates the band was/is active and the claims that they have "appeared on numerous compilations", "toured Europe twice", "the U.S. countless times". What compilations? Where in Europe? How many times and where in the U.S.?

If these claims are sourced by verifiable and reliable sources, then this band meets the notability requirements for biographies of living persons. Please refer to WP:BLP for more information. If the material is not sourced, it can be challenged and removed. If the subject does not meet the notability requirements, the article can and will be nominated for deletion. Xblkx (talk) 10:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I will try and find some sources to address your concerns. Colinclarksmith (talk) 15:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I added some references (of varying quality) to the article per your request. I think the article still needs some heavy work and hope to contribute to that sometime in the near future, but for now hopefully the additional references are sufficient to satisfy your concern regarding notability. Colinclarksmith (talk) 15:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the effort to begin addressing the concerns I raised. I realize that it can take time to establish notability and get an article to fully comply with Wikipedia guidelines by removing original research, using verifiable references (i.e., not a blog, forum post, or non-notable site). It is good to know that someone is willing to put some effort into it, so I am willing to be patient as progress continues to be made. One option is to remove unsourced statements and add them back in later. I think this band does meet the notability requirements if the supporting references are good. I'm still learning the process and criteria for evaluating content myself. If you are interested, I've decided to take a renewed initiative at getting Marty Munsch cleaned up which had repeatedly been marked as in need of various work (and 'someone' just deletes the tags). An experienced editor SQGibbon has taken a lot of time and written in great detail with inline examples and explanations of why specific material can or cannot be included in an article. And then we can chop out the [fill in the word of your choice here]. We are discussing it on my user talk subpage User_talk:Xblkx/Marty_Munsch and it is very educational. I hope it is as helpful for your future editing as it has been for mine. Please continue to work on it and hopefully recruit some editors familiar with the subject to help out. Rock on. Xblkx (talk) 02:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

References requested

I added a citation-needed request later in the article, but perhaps the most important claim in this article that needs sources is this one in the second paragraph (related to what I added later):

The band has appeared on numerous compilations, toured Europe twice, the U.S. countless times, and shared the stage with other well-known punk acts such as The Misfits, Rancid, The Murdered,

This sentence asserts three things: that the band appeared on numerous compilations, that they toured Europe twice, and that they toured extensively in the U.S. I have no reason to disbelieve this, but these claims all need a reference to a reliable source. Proving these things by definition proves notability.

I'm also having some confusion about the 1st reference ("Crawl Into Your Nightmare Produced By Marty Munsch 1997."). The reference is just text (i.e. a footnote) and it's not clear what that is or how the producer is relevant. Is this is a compilation album? If it's text (a title, but not a citation) that is significant, it may belong in the running text to make a specific point rather than as a reference (or as one of several references to 'numerous compilations'. Is this related to the "shared the stage" part? Or is that just self-promotional material by Munsch (that he produced the album "The Murdered")? Remember this article is about the band Blanks 77 - focus on the topic. Delete Munsch's edit if it is irrelevant/unsourced.

Also, the statement "1977, the year punk rock is considered to have officially started, was added on to the name." needs a source to substantiate that. I know for a fact that The Ramones are considered 'punk' and I have a framed photo on my wall of them from 1976. The band Blondie was almost "accused" of being punk by 1977. Maybe what the band was referring to is that it was catching on in the mainstream, especially in the U.K. ("Never Mind the Bollocks" by the Sex Pistols), or the origination of Social Distortion in the movements in California . Elaborate/clarify on this with a verifiable reference. This was a major event in music, I'm sure there are sources for this. I "personally" think it "started" earlier, but clarify more specifically the assertion being made: it is relevant to the article.

Most bands who have toured internationally have an independent discography that would list how many compilations they have been featured on (and which ones) that would remove these relative and indeterministic terms. Any of that would be really good information here - this article is not listed as low importance so if you could clarify and source any of this, that would be a great improvement.

This article, with work, is worth keeping. A word of advice: be careful of Munsch's edits (23:55, 22 April 2008) etc. where tags that are challenging notability, unreferenced article, neutral point of view are simply deleted by his anonymous IP user account User talk:68.193.213.46 -- this user has been warned repeatedly about vandalism and non-constructive edits and I have had enough of it as other Wikipedia users have as well. I am not the first person to add these tags, and if they are summarily deleted, it wastes my time and degrades this excellent resource. He is certainly free to advertise himself elsewhere, but I have seen some of these bands and they are worth having unchallengeable articles that are about the bands rather than about him.... please no more 68.193.213.46 vandalism... I'm not ready to challenge notability here, nor do a line-by-line analysis, yet. But notability has been challenged in the past -- and deleting the challenges unaddressed is not a good idea. I believe in this site and its principles. If you do not throw my work away, I really will help you (and vice versa). Xblkx (talk) 05:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Please note, I forgot to mention: a myspace page is not a reliable reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xblkx (talk • contribs) 06:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, to address your various concerns... I agree that the second paragraph in the article's introduction makes a bold claim that needs more verification. I didn't write this paragraph, but didn't see fit to come blazing into the article and delete or challenge lines, per say. This includes the strange Munsch reference that you seem to be bothered by, as well as the claim to European touring and so forth. I agree that this is all ambiguous and probably extraneous, but my work on the article so far has been to build it up, not tear it down. I don't think that anything in that paragraph is necessary to the article and I would be happy to see someone come in and source it, rephrase it or eliminate it. All that it essentially claims is that the band was prolific and shared the stage with other noteworthy acts - an unimportant point easily disposed of if you find it offensive. Regarding the 1977 claim, it seems to me to be a throwaway sentence as it is not a controversial claim - in punk rock, the '77 tag is an unchallenged and ubiquitous cliche. The claim can be easily verified. Lastly, regarding MySpace page references, I try to use them only in instances when crucial information is posted on them that does not appear elsewhere on the web. If a reliable source references a fact, I will gladly use it over a MySpace page as a reference. However, when information is unavailable elsewhere, and particularly when Wiki users are insisting that specific information in an article be verified, a MySpace article from a reliable source will do in a pinch pending better secondary sources. Also, a reciprocal word of advice for you - when you are writing comments on Talk pages, you will want to sign your comments with a ~~~~ tag for an automatic electronic signature addition. Colinclarksmith (talk) 06:58, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I've done a little more work to address your concerns. Much of the info that you questioned (number of tours, compilation appearances, certain dates, list of bands having shared the stage with, etc.) comes from their official biography from their rapidly eroding, out-of-date official web page. I agree that parts may not be encyclopedic, or might require further verification, and am happy to continue to address specific issues with the article. Oh, and I deleted the Martin Munsch thing, and although I still don't really understand what was up with it, it was clearly irrelevant. Colinclarksmith (talk) 04:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Reply

Hello. I would like to clarify something: I do not find *anything* in this article offensive... I appreciate how much work it is for any band to do what they do, and how much work it is to write a good article about anything. I'm not going to destroy this article. I agree with you that I'm a criticizer more than a constructer, but it is to mobilize some effort and to challenge articles and contributions that are just resume/vanity articles (this article is clearly not one of them but I could not have known that when I made my first entry here). I don't challenge that they toured in Europe for example, but I'm sure someone can substantiate it with a scan or an article and that's something I'd like to read here (was it with GBH??). I'll also admit that I care about the quality of Wikipedia and its editorial standards more than I do about any individual article (not that it matters, but this was inspired by the fact that I personally use Wikipedia for a lot of my own knowledge, and one of my children said "At school, people say everything on Wikipedia is a lie" and after past efforts by me and others trying to improve the Munsch article while 'someone' was vandalizing our efforts, I can see why that opinion exists because we failed to improve that one -- I decided for myself that I needed to learn more and to contribute more here). Wikipedia, to me, is one of the best and most centralized sources of information on the planet right now. I don't mean to come off as attacking this article because I'm not, and for certain, I know that neither you nor any early editor are responsible for 'maintaining it'. I don't mean to appear in any way suggesting there is anything personal here: the only reason I made a notice on this page that some work needs to be done is because I personally want to improve Wikipedia and this article happened to referenced on one of the first articles that for whatever reason, I happened to choose as "I'm starting here." If this is a real article and not a vanity article... it certainly seems to be real, then desireable activity will happen. I've made a similar notice to other articles (some even more famous bands than this one) with no sources at all, which risks the very existence of their articles, and later I will make notices and help improve articles related to other topics that link to topics that interest me.

I agree with you that a myspace reference is better than no reference. It's still not reliable but as I said, *I* personally will not eviscerate content for no reason. I did in fact do some searching around to try to find references for this article and I didn't find much, but again, I'm not familiar with the subject of this article. I presume those who are, at some point (hopefully), will see this discussion and contribute -- that's what I'd like to achieve. Archive.org has archived the entire internet since 1996 or so, I wonder if there would be any earlier versions of the rapidly eroding official site that would have some publicity? Printed articles exist for every tour schedule ever made. I don't have time to look right now. I also googled what we were discussing, "when did punk start" (+variants), most of it did come up 1977 so a set of references could be developed (I'm certainly not going to challenge why this band chose its name! I would just like to see the statement sourced...) Also I'm trying to recall, was anyone in this band in the All Grown Up movie? That reference would be valid as a second source.

Sorry about the unsigned comment. I do sign them, I just forgot, and thank you for the reminder. Xblkx (talk) 06:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I definitely agree that Wikipedia is an excellent resource and deserves rigorous research. I also didn't mean to imply that your business in the Blanks 77 article was eviscerating or anything of the sort, so I'm sorry if that's how any statement I made came across : )

I will try to add a good source to the claim that punk rock is canonically considered to have "started" (more accurately, gained mainstream presence, as plenty of punk bands pre-date 1977). The reference in the second paragraph in the article's header references the entire paragraph, including all claims of touring and bands the band has shared the stage with (the reference is the aforementioned "official bio" from the official page. Whoever wrote the initial Blanks 77 wiki article seems to have simply copied-and-pasted their official bio, and this paragraph is a holdover from that stage. As I said before, anyone is free to delete that paragraph if they think it's not encyclopedic. I don't have an opinion on that paragraph's worth within the article.) I don't agree at all that all tours have printed article sources, especially in DIY punk rock (I personally have been on many tours, few of which were properly documented); but it's a moot point, as the first reference listed acts as the touring claim's reference. I'm not sure what the movie All Grown Up is - if it's associated with the band, by all means add it to the article. Colinclarksmith (talk) 23:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)