Wikipedia and Music

I know what you mean - worthy, but dull. Even discogs is better cos you get the odd label scan.

It's good when it all kicks off on the talk pages tho!

how many regular visitors does woebot get? i wonder if it would suffice their 'notability' criteria for writing an article about it

a few months ago i was reading the discussion page for 'hauntology', the consensus seems to have been to get rid of it as it wasn't sufficiently clear or popular

i havent dropped by the discogs forum in ages, talk about pedants. always good for a giggle, everyones so serious its easy to get winding

tht said:

a few months ago i was reading the discussion page for 'hauntology', the consensus seems to have been to get rid of it as it wasn't sufficiently clear or popular

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Yes I saw that too. I think if someone re-wrote it from a more explicitly Derridean PoV, at least to establish the term as legitimate, and then brought in all the debate recently as regards music it would probably suit the notability criteria- esp as lots of people fatally misunderstand what its about, a wikipedia entry would be quite useful.

WOEBOT said:

i mean, talk about delibidinising. its like being listed in the encyclopedia brittanica!

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Nah, wikipedia is really messy and anarchic in places, you're never quite sure whether what you're reading is accurate or not. The fact that colleges and universities won't except work that references wikipedia is telling. The sketchiness of it fascinates me sometimes.

i've been on and off involved in a running battle over the dubstep page which was written mainly by blackdown but is managed by one or two know-nothing, power tripping editors who can't tell legitimate links from spam. even after it all seemed resolved the same deletions started happening again. my site (not blog) and gutterbreakz keep getting shafted.

gek-opel said:

Yes I saw that too. I think if someone re-wrote it from a more explicitly Derridean PoV

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Yeah well who is going to do that? No one to my knowledge has yet thoughtfully engaged Derrida's use of the term, least of all K-punk, who sometimes sounds like warmed over Derrida circa Speech and Phenomena -- paying lip service to Spectres of Marx as a 'response to Fukuyama's concept of the end of history' or whatever it was that K-punk wrote, was not, erm, anything remotely resembling an engagement with Derrida's text, much less thought. (If I am wrong, by the way, I will be more than happy to admit it.) The usage of hauntology among music bloggers still strikes me as extraordinarily unclear, and in many cases, just plain confused. If that changes I will take back my words, but I don't see any sign . . . was interesting when Penman noted that accumulating lists with the word 'ghost' in it hardly counts as an argument.

tate said:

The usage of hauntology among music bloggers still strikes me as extraordinarily unclear, and in many cases, just plain confused. If that changes I will take back my words, but I don't see any sign . . . was interesting when Penman noted that accumulating lists with the word 'ghost' in it hardly counts as an argument.

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I agree. It was not a term Derrida himself seemed especially invested in, but even so, it is ridiculous to try to completely wrest "hauntology" from its context in Spectres of Marx just so you can slap it adjectivally onto any popular music with ethereal or "haunted" sonics. What Derrida is gesturing at with "hauntology" has much more to do with Heidegger and Heideggerian metaphysics than it does with Jameson's "nostalgia mode" (which I've seen posited as some sort of parallel to "hauntology"), and I find it completely point missing to think hauntology is so narrow that it can apply directly to a subgenre of music.

P.S. Sometimes when people are using hauntology, it sounds like they're really talking about the trace and différance, if you're going to use Derridean terms.

swears said:

The fact that colleges and universities won't except work that references wikipedia is telling.

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The only place I see Wikipedia taken seriously as a source are on things like blogs and internet forums. It's too unreliable to be used by anyone working in publishing. I work as a fact checker and copyeditor for a number of publishers, all of whom regularly issue strong warnings that Wikipedia should not be used as a source under any circumstances.

I feel kinda paternal toward Discogs because I was in the first 1000 users or something. Totally ridiculous, I know. I wish Discogs would get better artist profiles. There's no reason they can't give good background info on bands but most of them seem to be ripped from PR sheets (or whatever those are called).

Btw, have you seen the shocking amounts of pr0n on discogs? As soon as someone like Samantha Fox sneacks in people post like 10 profile photos. Kinda funny.

squid ink said:

The only place I see Wikipedia taken seriously as a source are on things like blogs and internet forums. It's too unreliable to be used by anyone working in publishing. I work as a fact checker and copyeditor for a number of publishers, all of whom regularly issue strong warnings that Wikipedia should not be used as a source under any circumstances.

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Well, anybody can "contribute" any old bollocks to it can't they? That's part of the charm.