Wikipedia and Bands
August 1st, 2006 by MrsBarnesWhen you are looking for information about a band, what do you usually do?
Until recently here was my method:
* Check their Myspace
* Search for yahoo or google interviews
* Check their homepage for?a bio
* And if I was really motivated: Go to their label’s page and read their page about the band.
I dont remember how, but somehow I started finding the wikipedia pages for different bands. They are FILLED with lots of detail mostly, and tons of links to other sources. See,?on wikipedia, pages?work like this: Once the pages are set up, everyone has the ability to edit it. An artist’s page might be started by a band member, just filling in a couple of details. Then a serious fan may come along and fill in more, and add some links. Later on, someone from the label notices a couple of details in the article are off so they fix those, and then add the label link, etc.? After a few rounds of this, you have a source of pretty reliable information.
You may be thinking “why this isn’t abused?”; “Why dont we have band pages for every crappy band in every small town, and self serving useless links all over the place on wikipedia?”. Well because, there are tons of dedicated regulars on the site that patrol for things like this. Articles are only left up if the artist or person really contributed something or achieved something significant in the music industry. So if your best friend makes a page for his garage band, it wont stay there for too long.
Today when I was researching some bands, I found that?even though?they were signed and touring - there were no articles for them. Seeing that, I did my part, and went and researched a bit and added some basic info/bio stuff?and links to their main label websites. That’s how the community works. Since I find it useful , I contribute when I can. Someone might see my short articles and feel like expanding it for the next person that searches for that band. The more people doing that, the better source of info it turns into!
Maybe you’re a huge fan of a band, and know every detail about them? Well go check wikipedia and see if the article is detailed enough or even exists. Add a little to it! There are great articles on wikipedia about how to do this!
…and?next time you need to know where a band is from, or what label they are on, try searching on wikipedia. Way faster than waiting for myspace servers to fix themselves, or figuring out if the homepage is a .net or org or “thebandsucks.com”!
Technorati Tags: wikipedia, myspace, music, band, band biographies
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August 2nd, 2006 at 2:23am
This is a great article !