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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Graham Colm (talk) 06:30, 5 September 2014 (diff).

Hasil Adkins

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Nominator(s): — MusikAnimal talk 01:38, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about Hasil Adkins, a musician who helped spawn the psychobilly genre. Growing up rural West Virginia in the midst of the depression, Adkins found his passion as a musician and learned to play multiple instruments simultaneously, what became a trademark of his. For the next 50 years he constantly wrote and performed, his songs often pertaining to chicken, hot dogs, aliens, sex and decapitation. He was rediscovered in the late 80s and managed to grow a cult following before being fatally ran over by an ATV in 2005.

Coming from start class, over the past 10 months I have completely rewritten it, and it attained GA status this past May. Not much has changed since then, but as far as I can tell it meets all FA criteria. An effort to get a peer review unfortunately yielded no feedback. Since the rewrite, I am pretty much the only substantial contributor to this article. I am aware of how untraditional this must seem, but hopefully this does not go against what is expected from a featured article. Thanks for any and all feedback! — MusikAnimal talk 01:38, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Retrohead

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  • The lead, at least in FAs, should summarize the article, thus exclusive information shouldn't be featured there. The birth date should also be mentioned in the opening sentence of the 'Personal life', which means moving the cite there as well.
  • The lead could use some expansion. How about mentioning he lived in poverty and that he briefly attended school, for example?
    Per WP:LEADLENGTH I don't want to expand beyond two paragraphs. The existing two could of course be expanded, but I'm not sure how to approach it. I added that he grew up in poverty; touching on his school attendance may not be best as that is actually disputed amongst different sources. I tried to adhere to WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY and summarize in a neutral way, skipping things like his mental illnesses and run ins with the law. Should I get into specifics like that? — MusikAnimal talk 17:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, you have a point. Giving weight the article's length, two paragraphs might be the optimal solution. As for the article's body, I'll avoid stand-alone sentence to be in separate paragraphs (last sentences from 'Personal life' and 'Musical style') even though they discuss topics that are not closely related.--Retrohead (talk) 07:06, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I prefer to see the musician's life in one section, and his musical legacy in a separate one. The sentence about his death should be moved in 'Personal life', and the section should be consequently re-named only as "Legacy".
  • It is useful to incorporate alt text in the images for screen readers.
  • There are number of words that should be de-linked, since they appear to be common words: poverty, given name, meat, liquor, cigarettes, decapitation, comedic horror, sex, heartbreak, aliens, hot dogs.
  • The last three of the 'External links' should be titled.
    Those weren't that useful anyway, so I removed them. — MusikAnimal talk 17:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Legend has it that he... I see this is borrowed from his website, a primary source. This kind of sources can not be used for telling legends about the artist himself; not to mention this likely falls under trivia.
  • An incident occurred in 1957 when he and three friends drove a car off a mountain. This incident needs to be more detailed. Surviving a literal fall from a mountain seems supernatural to the casual reader in the state it is written.
    I've expanded on this a bit, but unfortunately there's not much more to say than what's there now. Adkins' life is full of farfetched and mythically proportioned stories like this. This particular one was reported in the local press so I added it, others just hearsay. With Adkins it's hard to know what's true and just a myth, so I tried to only say what we know for sure. — MusikAnimal talk 17:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Retrohead: I've addressed the above concerns as best as I could, leaving comments for the ones I'm not too sure about. Any additional input is greatly appreciated! — MusikAnimal talk 17:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few more notes MusikAnimal:

  • "His genres include"–think "he performed/played" would be a better option. To label the genres as his might mean he invented them.
  • midst of the depression (lead)–we should have a link here to the Great Depression. Otherwise, the reader might assume he had psychological depression.
  • where he lived his entire life–I suggest spent instead of lived
  • "toured with "dancing go-go chickens"→are you allegorically saying that he was eating chicken on the tour?
  • improvised studio might be better over a primitive studio
  • is Elmo Williams worth a red link?
  • Ok, since not everyone knows "Blue Suede Shoes" is an Elvis Presley song, I think it would be better to write that Adkins covered artist such as Presley and the author of the second song listed in 'Musical style' besides singing his own material.
  • I did some copyediting on the audio file description and titling, as well as some on the prose. Just to ask, is the date of 10 May 1991 really needed in the image caption, or could we write just the year?
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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