Wikipedia:Genre warrior

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: Don't alter genres without specifying a reason why, try not to base your arguments on personal beliefs or feelings, ensure that your claims are verified by reliable sources, and seek consensus on the talk page before making controversial edits.

A genre warrior is an editor with a single-purpose account (or IP with no account) that spends most of their time on Wikipedia altering the genre field of music infoboxes, changing genre categories, or changing genre-related prose. In more involved cases, these editors can be blocked for their disregard for or ignorance of the community's policies regarding no original research and neutral point-of-view. Sometimes when a source is provided, the cited genre can still be challenged as original research or synthesis depending on how the original source itself is worded.

Genre warring is disruptive to articles, because the changes have to be reverted. Warriors waste the time of other editors, because it must be spent reverting these edits and some then feel obligated to add the affected articles to their watchlist, thus adding to their workload.

If a disagreement arises over how a source categorizes an artist, album or song, do not edit war over it. Instead, take the issue to the talk page, and start an RfC, if needed.

Official standards and guidelines

No original research or synthesized claims

Any genre description must be sourced. Wikipedia prohibits original research, unverifiable claims, and conclusions that are not explicitly stated by the sources. Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it.

That said, a genre description should reflect the consensus of music writers and fans, rather than giving undue weight to any particular journalist or review. Just because music journalist Chuck Eddy included Teena Marie's Emerald City in his book of the 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in The Universe doesn't mean it's appropriate to add "heavy metal" to the genre description in that album's infobox.

Examples of synthesized claims

Partial attributions

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When classifying music, sources must explicitly attribute the genre to the work or artist as a whole. One may sometimes encounter non-definitive language like

N ... balances the line between indie pop and electronica ...
N ... antecedent to the later noise pop of Sonic Youth ...
N ... nearly proto-punk in its harsh vocals ...
N ... combines elements of folk, jazz, and hip hop ...

When you see a source mention a genre, it must use direct language. Like so:

Y ... the album is a quintessential example of avant-rock ...
Y ... a successful fusion of jazz rap ...

Descriptors should also not be combined with styles (i.e. "gothic pop" should not be attributed to a source who writes that a "gothic" song is pop; the phrase "gothic pop" must be unambiguously referenced as the kind of song it is).

Presuming synonyms

Editors should not attempt to "correct" sourced genres that redirect to a seemingly synonymous term (such as "classical rock" to "progressive rock" or "bedroom pop" to "lo-fi"). In most cases, it would be a misrepresentation of the cited material. Just because Wikipedia might state that "baroque rock" and "baroque pop" are equivalent terms doesn't mean the author of the cited source would also agree to that claim.

Red flags

Attributions that are not as obviously explicit depend on the context of the claim. One "grey-area" case would be if a source merely observes a potential or reputed attribution, such as "has been called [genre]" or "could be classified as [genre]". It must be considered whether the genre may be a "red flag". For example, even though Pet Sounds is sometimes advanced as an early emo album,^[1] including "emo" in the album's infobox might not be seen as the best idea.

In case of dispute

Adding references to reliable sources will usually result in a total cure of the disease, especially if the inline citations are included in the infobox. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources for a list of some good sources to cite for genres.
If the above does not work, discussing the matter on the talk page should help remedy it.
Ban all mention of genres in the infobox. (This was proposed and implemented for several weeks in late 2008, but the community "loves to hate" a good genre warrior, thus the decision was reversed.^[2])

If symptoms persist

Use a (specialized) warning template to tell genre warriors that their behavior is a problem.

If a warrior continues reverting to their bad edit after being told to stop, then their actions can be considered disruptive. It is not a form of vandalism, and should not be reported to WP:AIV. If the problem becomes disruptive enough and the editor has not engaged in conversation on the topic, you may consider reporting them to WP:ANI. A genre-warring-specific block message template exists at {{uw-gwblock}}.

Behavior pattern and motivations

Although there is no scientific explanation for this odd behavior, experts in the field have offered ideas. These include:

Professed expertise

Genre warriors almost never provide sources beyond their own knowledge, blogs, YouTube and social media. Reliable sources and consensus are alien concepts to them. They are determined that their favorite group should be characterized according to their opinion and take it as an insult if any other suggestions are made.^[3] According to some genre warriors, reliable sources are wrong and professional music journalists know nothing about music compared to them and hold 'grudges' or are 'out to get' a particular artist.

Laziness

Genre warriors are often too lazy to prove their claims with reliable sources. This also means they usually stick to editing the infobox, rarely digging into the meaty text of the article. It is possible that such warriors are attracted to the bright colors of the infobox itself. Large quantities of text might be confusing or intimidating to some warriors.

Even if the infobox contains an editors' note advising of current consensus amongst editors (sometimes following much metaphorical bloodshed) and to discuss change on the article's Talk page, the genre warrior will almost always ignore the note and change the genre anyway, because they know better.

Personal feelings

Genre warriors enjoy the music of a particular group but would feel (choose one: ashamed, emasculated, belittled) to have the music—and by extension, themselves—categorized in a usually undesirable genre (for example: bubblegum pop, glitter rock, hair metal, show tunes, nu metal, emo, etc.).

Conversely, they may often dislike a band, and so they change their genre to one of the aforementioned undesirable genres.

A special brand of genre warrior, the religious warrior, can spend all their time editing articles to add or remove references to religion from a band's genre as the genre may clash with their personal religious beliefs.

Desire for inclusiveness

Genre warriors tend to either:

(1) prefer monolithic labels rather than subtlety, e.g. by reducing one band's output to a single genre, e.g. "Metallica = heavy metal". Heavy metal is a wide-ranging genre that can be narrowed down to more specific sub-genres like thrash metal that describe Metallica by the consensus of the music community. But on the other hand...
(2) insist on applying every genre they can think of to an infobox, possibly for the avoidance of doubt, e.g. "The Beatles = skiffle, pop music, country music, psychedelia, progressive rock, Merseybeat, rock music, baroque pop, folk rock..." Just because the Beatles, a consensus rock and pop band, did a few songs that briefly experimented with country sounds does not mean that they should be labeled as a country band forever.

The spawn of the warrior?

"Genre Fiddlers" - These make small, minor edits, to genres that are so insignificant that they seem pointless.^[3]

Userbox

Code

Result

This user does not like
GENRE WARRIORS.

Usage

Notes

^
See
- Simpson, Ernest (September 20, 2004). "The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds". Treblezine.
- Hart, Ron (April 12, 2016). "The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds Celebrates its 50th Anniversary: Artists Pay Tribute to the Eternal Teenage Symphony". Pitchfork.
- Cureton, Sean K. (May 16, 2016). "Brian Wilson Alone: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds 50 Years Later". Audiences Everywhere.
^ See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music archives 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
^ ^a ^b Suggestion 1 for behavior

[1] See
Simpson, Ernest (September 20, 2004). "The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds". Treblezine.

Hart, Ron (April 12, 2016). "The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds Celebrates its 50th Anniversary: Artists Pay Tribute to the Eternal Teenage Symphony". Pitchfork.

Cureton, Sean K. (May 16, 2016). "Brian Wilson Alone: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds 50 Years Later". Audiences Everywhere.

[2] Simpson, Ernest (September 20, 2004). "The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds". Treblezine.

[3] Hart, Ron (April 12, 2016). "The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds Celebrates its 50th Anniversary: Artists Pay Tribute to the Eternal Teenage Symphony". Pitchfork.

[4] Cureton, Sean K. (May 16, 2016). "Brian Wilson Alone: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds 50 Years Later". Audiences Everywhere.

[2] See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music archives 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.

[behavior-3] Suggestion 1 for behavior

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