Who pimped out the dubstep wikipedia article?

[kaini]

I think it's fairly well known I wrote most of the early content of the first editions of this page, though it's clearly moved on a long way from there. Bigup to all the pimpers.

One point i have issue with is the intro:

"The first reference to dubstep in the UK national press as a genre, or sub-genre came early in 2004. The Independent on Sunday commented on a 'whole new sound', that it said was being called by five names:"

As we all know, dubstep started to define itself - in style if not yet in name - around 2000. Ghost 001 is a good starting point imho. So I resent the suggestion that the genre needs to rely on a piece in the IoS, four years after it started, before it could officially "exist".

Why should whether it's been picked up by a broadsheet have any more weight to it's existance? I for one was writing about it in the "national press" in 2001 - i put El-B in The Face for example.

So cant we ditch this bit about the IoS? I happy to edit the page but wanted to seek feedback from fellow 'steppaz...

hey martin, big respect for being the person who originally took the article beyond stub status. it references a bunch of your articles on blackdown now as well, you might have noticed

i agree that the intro is a little clunky. i think what's being done there is trying to establish what wiki defines as notability early on in the article, but it does scan a bit misleading. i'll give it a tweak later...

[31g]

Blackdown thank you for writing so much of the article, I think Wikipedia is really lucky you decided to do that.

(I'm User:P4k on Wikipedia)

[blackdown]

i agree that the intro is a little clunky. i think what's being done there is trying to establish what wiki defines as notability early on in the article, but it does scan a bit misleading. i'll give it a tweak later...

OK so what can we do to shift it down the piece a bit. Can I dig out old features ie El-B in The Face?

[kaini]

yeah, that'd be great. a few quotes, and the right date/issue number, and we're sorted

[autonomic]

here's the 2002 xlr8r issue for reference, if needed. that's when the term is generally considered to have been coined.

http://www.riddim.ca/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=37

[autonomic]

Just had a look at the article. I give up. I really can't understand why Riddim.ca keeps getting deleted from there. There's a total of 85 articles on the site, plus 21 artist profiles. Never mind that the Hyperdub articles hosted at Riddim always manage to stay up and that Pearsall's Plasticman interview is used a footnote for the article. I thought we'd discussed that Kaini. Gutterbreakz shouldn't have been deleted either. Yet, Boomkat is there.

While I'm at it, the North America section is very spotty. Jason Mundo (Dallas), Keith P (Dallas), DeepSix (Hamilton/Toronto), Joe Nice (Baltimore - btw, I believe "Dubstep Ambassador" was coined in his first interview at Riddim.ca) and G Notorious (Boston) are amongst the earliest people playing and making (proto-)dubstep in North America after 2000. People like Dave Q (NYC), Kuma (Vancouver) and myself (Ottawa) come along after that (2003-2004), putting out mixes, promoting, writing and making links with the UK. There were also significant single contributions from producers DJ Abstract (Tempa) and Eric H (Hotflush). Then there was a third wave of producers, DJs and promoters beginning in late-2005/early-2006, that includes people like Matt Carl, Sek, Parson, Bowzer, DZ, etc.

[blackdown]

xlr8r piece should definitely be of central importance in the top.

there's no reason why Gutta and paul's links should be deleted. Wiki-guys can we deal with this?

on a US tip, what about Goldspot too?

[autonomic]

thanks martin.

and, wiki guys, if it does get dealt with, is there a way of permanently marking something as being legitimate content? it seems that just when you've convinced one editor of an inclusion, another comes along and changes things.

previous thread on this: http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t ... =wikipedia

[seckle]

is there a way of permanently marking something as being legitimate content? it seems that just when you've convinced one editor of an inclusion, another comes along and changes things.

i've been saying this for a long time. many pages on wikipedia are locked from editing.

i understand that the whole "creative commons" concept means that the "community" as a whole has a say in regards to the definition of an entry, but there must be a quota or a limit. the chief problem with all the re-editing of this page over the last two years, is that the people doing it are putting in their labels, radio stations without any real sense of the history of this genre. this kind of promotional based thinking is detrimental to everyone.

there should be one or two main editors of the page, and every new proposed re-edit should go through them.

[seckle]

what i don't understand about the wikipedia system is that a genre like RNB, which is nearly 50 years old can still be edited?????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_and_blues

but, islam is locked from redefinition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam


it can't be one set of rules for certain subject matter, and another set for everything else. it's a bit ridiculous.

respect to kaini for doing up the current page though. big look...

[autonomic]

sorry, deleted (i hit quote instead of edit)

[ozeb]

this brought a smile to my face today... love that many journalist crew are in this thread discussing how to increase the fidelity even further.

See? the internet is more than just for porn

[cure]

this brought a smile to my face today... love that many journalist crew are in this thread discussing how to increase the fidelity even further.

See? the internet is more than just for porn

all we need now is pornstep and we're set.

[31g]

While I'm at it, the North America section is very spotty. Jason Mundo (Dallas), Keith P (Dallas), DeepSix (Hamilton/Toronto), Joe Nice (Baltimore - btw, I believe "Dubstep Ambassador" was coined in his first interview at Riddim.ca) and G Notorious (Boston) are amongst the earliest people playing and making (proto-)dubstep in North America after 2000. People like Dave Q (NYC), Kuma (Vancouver) and myself (Ottawa) come along after that (2003-2004), putting out mixes, promoting, writing and making links with the UK. There were also significant single contributions from producers DJ Abstract (Tempa) and Eric H (Hotflush). Then there was a third wave of producers, DJs and promoters beginning in late-2005/early-2006, that includes people like Matt Carl, Sek, Parson, Bowzer, DZ, etc.

Autonomic, I mean...it's Wikipedia. Most of it's terrible as a matter of course. We do our best but 1) we can basically only write things that have already been stated in the media and 2) it's not like I get paid to edit there or anything. You're right about the links though, I'm embarassed about that.

Edit--I'm sorry for being defensive about this, I do appreciate hearing what you think of the article.

[kaini]

what i don't understand about the wikipedia system is that a genre like RNB, which is nearly 50 years old can still be edited?????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_and_blues

but, islam is locked from redefinition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam


it can't be one set of rules for certain subject matter, and another set for everything else. it's a bit ridiculous.

respect to kaini for doing up the current page though. big look...

well, i'm not the only one working on it, just as much respect is also due to 31g and zeibura, the other maintainer, and of course everyone else including martin who helped shape the article. yeah those links do deserve a place and they're back in there now. what you have to understand is that there's a constant battle to stop people inserting spammy (as opposed to worthwhile) links to their geocities fansite on burial or whatever, just like you mentioned, seckle. about half of the editing i do on wiki is fixing vandalism or removing spam, and i think your trigger finger gets a bit itchy after a bit of that.

as regards islam being locked, if you look at the discussion page, it gets very heated at times, with a bunch of editors all trying to push their particular POV onto the article. RnB isn't such a controversial issue, hence no lock. in an ideal world no pages would be locked, but we don't live in an ideal world.

unfortunately there's no way of marking something as "fact - don't remove" but the closest you can get to that is finding a bunch of solid references and attaching them to a fact. people don't delete properly referenced material as often, which is why blackdown's interviews are such a useful source for improving the dubstep article.

imma have a look at that xlr8r article and maybe give the intro section a tweak later...

[autonomic]

Autonomic, I mean...it's Wikipedia. Most of it's terrible as a matter of course. We do our best but 1) we can basically only write things that have already been stated in the media and 2) it's not like I get paid to edit there or anything. You're right about the links though, I'm embarassed about that.

Thanks for getting mine and Nick's links back up.

Yeah I appreciate that it's voluntary and your efforts are generally not rewarded. And I'm glad that people with an actual interest in the music are attempting to establish themselves as the editors of the entry. As Seckle has already said, my concern is that editors actually pay attention to the content of links before deleting them, and defer when necessary to those who might be more familiar with the subject matter.

The point I made to Kaini, in a private message, was that, for dubstep, Blackdown blog, Gutterbreakz blog, Riddim.ca and the Hyperdub articles now housed at Riddim, are the media. These are the primary sources that the mainstream press draw on when they write about dubstep, not the other way around. This is, apparently, where Wikipedia's guidelines are out of sync with the material. In the case of, say, the Diabetes entry, it would probably be correct to delete most links apart from those that point to relevant research and support institutions, or major press coverage. In the case of dubstep, mainstream coverage only really begins 5 years after its inception, and even then it's often under-informed (with some major exceptions, e.g. recent Wire articles) or derived from the sites in question.

Second, whenever, I've seen spam links on that bottom of that page (for shops, events, etc.), it's always been very easy to tell them apart from the few sites that contain substantial amounts of original writing. I've always tried to put a helpful description beside the Riddim.ca link, in order to indicate the nature of the site, but that has never helped.

I also understand that it's just Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is also the first place that perhaps the majority of internet users look for information on a given topic, and it only makes sense to direct them towards larger bodies of original writing. A site like Riddim.ca represents the efforts of numerous people, over several years, to chronicle and comment on this music, starting long before it had any degree of popularity outside of London. So, although I'd like to say I don't care what Wikipedia does, ultimately I do because of the time and energy I've put into building a resource that people can use to learn about this music.

So, all of this is not to say that your efforts are not appreciated, because they are, very much. These are just some things to consider while managing the entry.

[kaini]

i do like this diff. it shows the difference between the first instance of the article and where we are now. speaks volumes

dubstep is sort of unique (well, it falls in this weird category along with idm[which is a horrible acronym] and breakcore and the like) in that a huge amount of the scene is internet-based.

[ramadanman]

i do like this diff. it shows the difference between the first instance of the article and where we are now. speaks volumes

dubstep is sort of unique (well, it falls in this weird category along with idm[which is a horrible acronym] and breakcore and the like) in that a huge amount of the scene is internet-based.

i really wouldnt called dubstep a huge internet based scene...

[djshiva]

i do like this diff. it shows the difference between the first instance of the article and where we are now. speaks volumes

dubstep is sort of unique (well, it falls in this weird category along with idm[which is a horrible acronym] and breakcore and the like) in that a huge amount of the scene is internet-based.

i really wouldnt called dubstep a huge internet based scene...

as someone living far far outside of the UK, i would DEFINITELY call dubstep an internet based scene. meaning more that it has become accessible to people all around the world specifically because of the internet, because that has been so many people's first introduction.

many of us did not have the opportunity to first hear this music played out on a system. we just happened across it through other music dorks, pirate radio shows, dubstep warz, etc.

[31g]

I also understand that it's just Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is also the first place that perhaps the majority of internet users look for information on a given topic, and it only makes sense to direct them towards larger bodies of original writing.

You're right, this is exactly what external links on Wikipedia are supposed to be for, as far as I understand it. I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with those links.

For me personally dubstep basically doesn't exist outside the internet (apart from this, thanks abZ), but I realize it's not like that everywhere.