Albums worthy of receiving their own TV Tropes article?

Glancing at a few random pages there seems to be a lot of Zero Context Examples. This Is A Trope: "Song" doesn't tell anyone anything.

Also, some pages have a track list and band members involved, does that make for a good "template" for what we'd like album pages to look? I made pages for a few RockOperas a year or two ago, wondering if I should update them if we're going to create a standard.

Funny thing: I was making Abigail, and I thought having a whole section devoted to listing the band stretched the page too much, so I put a float box on the side to hold them instead.

I think it looks much better. I was thinking of going through the list and doing that to all of them (or at least the ones I feel like doing).

It looks nice. My concern is mainly whether or not it's information we need on our articles. We Are Not Wikipedia / Musical IMDB / whatever. If it's not a problem I wouldn't mind trying to standardize the album pages, and I think the floating box looks better and gets us to the tropes faster.

Some of the Zero Context Examples are self explanatory. I do try to avoid them, but I mean: Self-Titled Album speaks for itself. Do we really need a redundant text behind it in the lines of This album was named after the band itself? The same for Break Up Song. Sometimes you can add a bit more about the lyrics, but usually most of them are about the same topics anyway.

Yes, we could put a hide banner there for easy measure of the track lists, but honestly: nobody is going to confuse our pages with Wikipedia, because they are obviously far different. In fact, we have albums here where the Wikipedia equivalent is in fact far more minimalistic in comparison. Our advantage is that we can go in more detail about the songs, the themes, the album cover, the odd moments, ... whereas Wikipedia only does that with albums by iconic artists like the Beatles, David Bowie, etc,... A track list is useful, just as a reminder what songs are exactly on that album. Every book or site that talks about a music album will provide a list of the tracks, so we have no excuse not to do so either. Adding the complete lyrics of every song: THAT would be too unneccessary encyclopedic and there are enough sites who already provide that info. If we quote lyrics it should be in function of a global theme about the album or to illustrate the topic of a certain trope, if not self explanatory from the song title itself. But only a few necessary lines.

edited 8th Nov '14 6:01:37 PM by Patachou

Well, I took care of The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden, and I'm more than a little worn out from troping.

I'm finding the fact that the band's main page also has the album's artwork a little confusing and distracting. The standard is usually to have a wide shot of the band members during a photo shoot.

On the other hand, Eddie really is the strongest visual cue the band's got going for them. It'd be nice if someone could find a picture with all the members that has a portrait of Eddie behind them.

edited 9th Nov '14 3:40:13 AM by Alucard

@ Alucard: Thanks for adding The Number of the Beast! I cannot tell how grateful I am that it's finally part of the collection. You only forgot to categorize it at the Classic Albums page too. But no worry, I've done it already. Take a good rest now, you've earned it. Is British Steel by Judas Priest next?

The Duplicate Image problem can be brought forward in a forum, if you want. (Though the image of Legend and Bob Marley, as well as Bad and Michael Jackson are also the same). There are plenty of images of the band and Eddie to be found on the Net to replace it on Iron Maiden's page.

@ The rest: Bleach by Nirvana and Cruisin' With Ruben And The Jets by Frank Zappa are also up as of now.

edited 10th Nov '14 1:13:30 AM by Patachou

It looks like Bluesno1fann thinks that template listing "Principal Members" is superior to my float box system.

But go look at Operation: Mindcrime, an album article written before this project to write all these album articles started (there are probably more, but this one shoots to mind). There is no established template here.

So, does anyone mind if this topic doubles as the Trope Repair Shop for a moment?

edited 10th Nov '14 4:28:04 PM by Alucard

At this point, let's agree to disagree and leave it as it is. You can have your floatbox on your Iron Maiden album article, and the Abbey Road template stays as it is

And to Patachou, I've just added British Steel by Judas Priest. More tropes need to be added on it though.

Now to focus on finishing Pink Floyd's discography...

edited 10th Nov '14 7:19:04 PM by bluesno1fann

@ Blues No 1 Fann: for your addition of British Steel by Judas Priest.

@ The rest: I've added a long requested album too: Sandinista! by The Clash.

I think I might just start a cleanup thread in the appropriate section when I have time to write up a post for it (and I'll do that, don't worry about doing it in my stead). These album articles need both cleanup and some degree of uniformity.

edited 10th Nov '14 10:38:46 PM by Odd1

Just finished More and Obscured by Clouds by Pink Floyd. More tropes do need to be added though.

Now for the Post-Waters Floyd albums....

Why am I seeing so many song titles in italics? Only the Album Title should be in italics; the "Song Title" should be put into quotation marks.

I'm a bit fussy, as you can tell.

Not just you. That is supposed to be the standard format in this wiki.

I'm also a bit fussy over the capitalisation of titles as well.

I'm guessing that one's just me, though.

edited 11th Nov '14 4:17:12 AM by MrLavisherMoot

I'm not sure on the formatting for starting a new article, but if someone creates one for any Byrds album, I can help add examples.

Agreed with Mr. Lavisher Moot on the album titles italics part.

And to Colonel Cathcart, why not make articles for The Byrds albums yourself? I'd be more than happy to contribute as well. Mr. Tambourine Man through Sweetheart Of The Rodeo in particular are essential albums to add.

Speaking of The Byrds, I think it's blasphemy that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young still haven't got a page yet...

Like I said, I would make them except I'm only one or two steps above hopeless in formatting them.

Hi, everybody! I just did an enormous cleanup of nearly all the album pages. I have provided images and track lists if those weren't already there. I've removed the YMMV tropes and/or removed them by better tropes. Album Cover Designers as a trope has been removed too and replaced by putting the info behind Design Student's Orgasm instead. I've added info to the Zero Context examples or removed them otherwise. And I've used more uniform ways of writing down titles ("..." for song titles).

There are some albums I skipped for now, but most of them have been done. It's possible I overlooked some little things, but I've been working three days non-stop on all these pages, so give me some credit. If you do find something that ought to be removed or added, just take the necessary actions yourself. That would save a lot of time.

Right, I'm going to rest now for a while...

edited 14th Nov '14 5:18:11 AM by Patachou

Don't work too hard on these pages. You know you can ask us for help. Rest a while. Congratulations.

Holy crap, man, that's awesome. You definitely didn't have to do that at all, but it's really appreciated.

Here, as a reward.

That's pretty damn awesome, Patachou! Cleaned up a few of them as well.

Just did A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. Just gotta do The Endless River and I'm done with Pink Floyd's studio discography!

Hi, appreciate the gratitude , but I felt somebody had to sacrifice himself to do it. As much as I liked Odd1's initiative to bring it to a forum I thought things might go quicker if one person did a lot instead of a few people do only a couple of pages at a time over a period of months. And it had to be done now, because otherwise the same kind of mistakes would be made over and over again by other tropers looking at these articles for inspiration to create their own. It was a lot of work, but at this moment we only have 200 or so articles about albums. In a couple of months or so that amount may have risen considerably and the clean-up process would have been even more enormous...

Ah well, back to creating new ones...

I think long conceptual albums that were pulled off particularly well deserve their own section on the band's page, but not an article.

If we can have pages for insignificant television episodes and crappy fanfics, we can have pages for albums, landmark or otherwise.