User talk:Btljs

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—Noldoaran (Talk) 23:52, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)

I've reverted your edit of the football/soccer page. The issue you raised has been exhaustively explored/debated/researched by a large number of people on wikipedia. The phraesology in the article reflected the consensus reached after that examination. Association Football was the official name. It isn't anymore. Soccer is not a slang term. It originated as such but is now used in practice as the name for the sport in many parts of the world where football in fact refers to a native sport - indeed many native football sports are far older than football/soccer.

This page has been one of those 'war' ones for quite a while, where arguments revolved for much of the time around 'it is soccer. No it is football. No it is soccer. No it is football' for much of the time. (It was headwrecking!) So what is there is a consensus and it is also what various football/soccer organisations agreed was accurate. The version you added in was mentioned ages and ages and ages ago and was described by many as not accurate enough at best, some thought even inaccurate. (critics included people involved in the management of the sport.) I reverted the page to remove that before 'world war III' erupted on the page again.

Best of luck FearÉIREANN 17:32, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"I'm sure these arguments have been put before but I'm not about to wade through pages of debate to find them."

If you are unwilling to research the debate so far you have no right to join it. The compromise was agreed on by the community and lacking any new evidence must stand. Soccer is of course slang but it is a legitimate word well over 100 years old that has been used to describe the game (see contraction of aSOCCiation football just as rugger is rugby). Bob Palin 16:12, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Via Gellia

I think we need to merge you stub with stuff I've put in the John Gell article. Most sources agree it was Phillip Gell who made the lead-ore road, circa 1790, but there's also the possibility that the track existed as early as 1720 for stone from Hopton. Suggest we clip my stuff into your free standing article, and edit slightly. Linuxlad 09:27, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

British counties - again!

Hi Btljs,

This topic has become a hot potato all over again. There's been constant discussion and argument for weeks. We've now reached a critical point and are having a straw poll on a particular issue to see if we can make some progress that way; if this fails we may need to go to official mediation.

Would you be willing to take a look at the straw poll and consider voting? It was posted on the policy talk page on 22nd August 2005. Many thanks Chris Jefferies 23:37, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Btljs! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot notifying you on behalf of the the unreferenced biographies team that 1 of the articles that you created is currently tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 15 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:

1. Rory McLeod (singer-songwriter) - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

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Re: Sales figures in Best Selling UK singles

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List of twin towns and sister cities in the United Kingdom (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

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Proposed deletion of Chu King Hung

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1983 in British music

Hi – if you have a spare five minutes sometime could you please cast a quick eye over this page? I've redone the four tables (number one singles/albums and year-end singles/albums): let me know if the structure and everything looks OK and I'll carry on and do the other years in the same style... no point me barging on ahead and then having to change every year's article because there's an error in the format, better to agree on the format first. One thing I'm not so sure about is how to structure singles and albums that are number one over the Christmas and New Year period and span two years – do we split their weeks at number one over two articles (as I have done here) or group all their weeks at number one in the year that they reached the top? Thanks. Richard3120 (talk) 09:37, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that. :-) I tend to agree about splitting the number ones over two years – for example, having "Save Your Love" listed for just one week at number one in 1983 but in the 'Weeks' column adding in brackets afterwards something like "(3 weeks at no. 1 in 1982)", although that might make the column a little awkward. I'll have a think about adding total weeks at number one in brackets – it becomes more tricky for albums like Thriller or Can't Slow Down which were also number one on entirely separate occasions in 1984, and then you have to decide whether to include the total weeks at number one within that year (1983), or in total overall (1983-84).

I'm only going to concentrate on the charts for the moment, although there are other areas of these articles that bother me: for instance, the award ceremonies section, which can never be complete. In recent years one glaring omission to me is the MOBO Awards (surely far more significant than the Popjustice award), but really you could then ask why stop there, there are also Jazz Awards, the World Music Awards, BBC Folk Awards, Gramophone magazine's classical music awards (a far more serious affair than the very populist Classical Brits)... one big problem here is deciding at what point it becomes relevant to British music – by their very nature the World Music awards contain virtually no UK artists, it's simply a UK awards ceremony. I think you'd have to have a cutoff point where the awards are solely or primarily directed towards rewarding British artists, with the occasional specific international award, like the Brits. Still doesn't explain why the MOBOs and Folk Awards have been ignored, though. Richard3120 (talk) 11:55, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Best selling singles of the 1990s

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1987/1988 in British music

I've seen the changes Hadji87 made and that you reverted on 1987 in British music – could you please take a look at the changes he has made to 1988 in British music and see if it needs changing as well? I'd do it myself but my internet access is a bit limited at the moment and I can't spend too much time online. Thanks. Richard3120 (talk) 22:09, 28 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Richard3120: Well it's betwixt and between - he's put in the correct first week of the year and left the others so it appears that there was a number 1 for a day. I've done the singles and I'll get on to the albums later. Btljs (talk) 11:06, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Discussion

No I can't because I cannot recall where it is. I do know the discussion has taken place as I was party to it. Finding it might take some time. --Falcadore (talk) 11:07, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here is another example of where the corrective action has already taken place. --Falcadore (talk) 11:11, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The issue that every table in WP should change was not explored as those discussing it were not in a position to perform that duty. --Falcadore (talk) 11:12, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Btljs. Here are the original discussions at WP:VPT in June and August, a discussion on User:Tvx1's talkpage, the discussion at WP:F1 and the subsequent bot request. User:Mdann52 offered to write the bot, but to date we haven't seen anything. DH85868993 (talk) 12:19, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I started one, but it seems a lot more complex than it first seemed.... I can't seem to get the code to be reliable enough for wide use. I'm trying to polish it, but the issue is the vast amounts of different coding used about the place is insane, so that makes the task more complicated. --Mdann52talk to me! 12:43, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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List of Platinum singles in the United Kingdom awarded since 2000

added links pointing to Omg, Survivor, Madonna, Aqua, Journey, Usher, Eternal, DO, Bad Boys, Sam Smith, Halo, Levels, Roar, James Morrison, Plan B, John Newman, Sonique, Chrome, Killers, Stan, Estelle, Someone Like You, Stay, Wonderwall, Royals, Rockstar, It's Like That, Killing Me Softly, Michael Andrews, So What, Firestarter, Beautiful People, Poker Face, Dark Horse, Valerie, Duffy, Bonkers, Wannabe, Eamon, My Love, I'm Yours, The Monster, Better Off Alone, Stay With Me, Written In The Stars, Let It Go, Wild Ones, Wherever You Are, Don't Stop Movin', Hideaway, In For The Kill, All Of Me, Prodigy, La La La, Love Me Again, The Climb, Magic, Pass Out, Troublemaker, Thinking Out Loud, Sound Of The Underground, Give Me Everything, Louder, Just Dance, A Thousand Years, Eric Turner, Next To Me, Good Feeling, Too Close, Talk Dirty, Shake It Off, Gotta Get Thru This, The Boy Is Mine and Black & Gold

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2014 in British music charts

Just wanted to say, fantastic work on getting 2014 in British music charts into shape – I appreciate it's a huge task, not just because of a certain person's efforts to overdo things as much as possible, but also the added complications of having now to include streaming, and multiple cross-referencing due to guest artists, cover versions, etc. Well done, and happy New Year to you! :-) Richard3120 (talk) 17:30, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Richard3120: Thanks and the same to you. I'd wondered what OCC would do about end of year song charts ever since July - and they didn't disappoint - managing to make an already complicated situation just that bit worse by adding just the July-Dec streaming. Now we have not 2 but 3 different 'sales' figures to deal with on each song. Btljs (talk) 18:12, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's ridiculous – deciding that 100 streams equals one physical sale is purely arbitrary, and as you say (and have shown in the table), there are now two different year end charts for singles, depending on what form of "sale" the song came in. What a mess... at least from now on the streaming will count for the whole year. Richard3120 (talk) 20:58, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List of singles which have spent the most weeks on the UK singles chart

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List of best-selling singles of the 2000s

Hi Btljs, I think I'm going to make some changes to the List of best-selling singles of the 2000s (decade) in the United Kingdom chart, if that's OK with you. The current list is based on the positions announced by Radio 1 during the last week of December 2009, which means it is obviously missing sales from the final week of the year. Music Week published updated charts for the top 100 singles and top 100 albums of the decade in the issue dated 30 January 2010. Unsurprisingly, most of the 2009 singles moved up a few places in the revised chart, but there were also some major changes to a few other records: "Gotta Get Thru This" dropped from 61 to 71, "Anyone of Us" fell from 57 to 61, "A Little Less Conversation" was moved from 31 to 38, and most notably, Black Eyed Peas' "Where Is the Love?" dropped from 25 to 42. And obviously, every other record in between shifted up one place to accommodate the fallers.

I'd held off making any changes to the article for a while because although in theory the Music Week chart should be the more accurate one, with sales right up to the end of 2009, I wanted to determine whether those changes in position were genuine or the result of "computer technical errors", as they often like to blame them on. Looking at the 2012 OCC list of the 150 best sellers of the 21st century so far, however, it looks as though the OCC are sticking with their revised positions from the latter chart. For example, Sonique's "It Feels So Good" was at no. 35 in the 2009 Radio 1 chart. In the 2012 list, she is only just behind (no. 85) the Black Eyed Peas (no. 81). If "Where Is the Love?" was really at no. 25 in 2009, ten places ahead of Sonique, the only way she could have gained on them in the three years since is if "It Feels So Good" had sold more on downloads than "Where Is the Love?" during that period – which, given Black Eyed Peas huge popularity and more easily downloadable back catalogue, compared with a song which has had almost no radio play in more than a decade and an artist who has released nothing since to keep a high profile, seems extremely unlikely, to say the least. It seems far more likely that BEP were at no. 42, and have since gone past her on downloads. The other singles that were revised downwards, their 2012 positions are also more consistent with the Music Week chart than the Radio 1 list.

So I propose we alter the chart to reflect the Music Week list, which has the advantage of being a verifiable source. The top 20 is unaffected, and this will be the part of most interest to casual readers anyway. The current version of the article needs to be corrected anyway, as it has been "Beyoncé-fied" at some point: someone has moved "If I Were a Boy" up to 33 and introduced "Single Ladies", which was never in any of the charts, in its original position of 56. In the same issue of Music Week is the updated decade album chart, which can be used as a verifiable source for the corresponding albums article. Cheers. Richard3120 (talk) 17:46, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Another example to back up my theory that it was the Radio 1 list with the glitches, not the Music Week list: Radio 1 had BEP four places ahead of the Baha Men... in 2012 the Baha Men are 14 places ahead of BEP. Do we really think it likely that in 2009–12 there was a sudden surge of interest in downloading "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Richard3120 (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Richard3120:All sounds good to me. Btljs (talk) 13:49, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks – I now have some issues with the corresponding albums article, which I have flagged up on A Thousand Doors' talk page, if you'd like to take a look, as he seems to have been keeping tabs on that article. Richard3120 (talk) 21:40, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Official Album Streaming Chart

Regarding the Official Album Streaming Chart article, tt's been speedy deleted because of being recreated in the same fashion it was when there was consensus to delete at WP:AFD. How do we determine that this chart is less notable? Well, as with any article subject, we determine notability by providing many (4-5 minimum usually) reliable third party sources that discuss the subject in significant detail. This has not been present in any version of the article. Try creating something more like that at WP:AFC. Every version of the article had the same problem - minimal content, minimal sources, (and almost entirely first party), and a random pic of Ed Sheeran. That's not enough to prove notability. As I said, if you feel that strongly on it, you can create a rough draft at WP:AFC and try to get approval through there. Sergecross73 msg me 18:05, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Most articles start a bit sketchy. I'm not arguing that it couldn't be put up for deletion at some point, but not within 2 minutes when clearly there are people like me trying to contribute to it. I didn't recreate it, I was trying to edit it and it disappeared while I was actually making changes. Please reinstate it so that I can continue to edit it. Btljs (talk) 18:17, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your sentiment, I feel that towards articles sometimes too. But the difference here, is that it was just deleted at AFD. People are not allowed to recreate articles that had a consensus to delete like that. If there was a consensus to delete in the past, then you really need to start off right off the bat with something that clearly meets the GNG. So, this is why I recommended building up a draft at WP:AFC, and then presenting it to one of the volunteers there once it's in actual GNG-passing shape. Sergecross73 msg me 18:28, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So someone else recreated it before me then because I only recreated it in the process of editing an existing page. That explains why it all happened so fast. I'll leave it to them to resubmit then, as it wasn't my page in the first place. Btljs (talk) 18:32, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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UK Charts

So the Official UK Chart is now moving from Sunday to Friday afternoons... so what date do we now use for the official chart date? What is the sales week now, Saturday to Friday? Friday evening to Friday afternoon? And will this provide Hadji87 with new ways to confuse matters on Wikipedia articles? Richard3120 (talk) 19:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Richard3120: OCC have this week's chart as 5-9th July so I'm assuming Fri-Thu. The global music release day is Friday so it makes sense for this to be the beginning of the week to give stuff a full week to register on the charts. Btljs (talk) 19:43, 9 July 2015 (UTC) (All OCC chart runs have restarted at 1 week, I notice!) Btljs (talk) 19:54, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How do you mean, restarted at 1 week? Richard3120 (talk) 20:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the pop-up box for each entry in the chart. Eg. "Not Letting Go" has 2 weeks in the chart, 1 run of 1 week at number one and 1 run of 1 week at number two. Only really matters when I'm updating List of songs which have spent the most weeks on the UK Singles Chart, I guess OCC's software relied on a 7 day difference to work out breaks. Btljs (talk) 20:25, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See, this is why when we were discussing it, I always wanted to use the dates w/e Saturday as used in various chart books - relying just on the OCC's website leads to problems, at least the books never changed their dates. However, as Guinness and now Virgin seem unlikely to produce any new versions of the Hit Singles and Albums books, I guess the OCC is now the only chart repository left. Richard3120 (talk) 00:50, 10 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I know what you mean. Although, merely being in print hasn't prevented chart guru Alan Jones from publishing contradictory 'facts' at different times according to the chart blogs. I confess myself a pedant who hates ambiguity & vagueness. I hate the whole sales versus chart sales (including streaming) thing, not because I have some puritanical view that the chart shouldn't include streaming--it should in order to be as relevant as possible--I just wish they had come up with new terminology and stuck to it rather than sometimes using 'combined sales' or 'chart sales' or just 'sales' when they can't be bothered. I do think they should have applied a cut-off point though or some songs are never going to leave the charts because you buy something once but you could stream it forever. After a year Thinking Out Loud is down at number 49 in sales but no. 25 in streaming and this differential is going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on. Eventually, the singles chart will look like the albums charts with a clutch of perennial favourites hanging around in the lower reaches for years, creating a barrier that new artists will have to break through. Surely they need a way of identifying new streams rather than songs just stuck in people's play lists? (Sorry I digress) Btljs (talk) 09:58, 10 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is why the compilers of chart books gave up – things like selling a million or spending x weeks in the charts aren't so special any more. 15 weeks used to be a long run for any record in the top 75, and there were only about 80 million-selling singles in the first fifty years of chart history. Now we have absurd situations where a song like "Don't Stop Believing", having sold barely a bean in 27 years, becomes a million-selling single almost entirely on downloads and streaming in the last five years, and spending more than 200 weeks on the chart. (I wouldn't mind so much, but I can't stand the record...) Richard3120 (talk) 16:55, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, the number of million sellers has more than doubled in the last ten years and nearly as many of those are for records released before the millennium as since. We're not far off having songs that have a million 'chart sales' just from streams - a song as popular as Uptown Funk in a year's time could break the 100 million streams barrier. It does, however, serve to illustrate just how extraordinary The Beatles were: nobody today can match their sales from a time when you had to walk into a shop and part with quite a lot of cash to buy a plastic disc which was only available for a few weeks before being deleted. Btljs (talk) 21:45, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to connect the Beatles and downloads... all 17 of the Beatles' number one records came in a period considerably shorter than the period in which downloads have been included in the charts to date.

I agree, I have no problem with music going digital, it's a sign of the times, and to be honest it's helped songs like "I Feel Love", "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" and "Fairytale of New York" become the million-sellers they always deserved to be, after several decades. On the other hand, a download costs 79p in some places, about the same as a single in the golden year of 1978 when the likes of Wings, Boney M. and Travolta and Newton-John were selling literally millions of singles. But 79p then was a good chunk of pocket money as a kid, you really had to think about the records you wanted to buy. Whereas now 79p now represents next to nothing, a kid can download half a dozen, and if he or she doesn't like them, just delete them off the hard drive and no big loss from the piggy bank. So trying to compare single sales then and now, the goalposts have been moved. Anyway, I'm getting far too "it were all fields round these parts", so I'll stop now. Richard3120 (talk) 20:50, 13 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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List of best-selling girl groups (again) – merged table of physical and digital sales

Hi, just wondered if you'd had a chance to look at the table I created in my sandbox? I'm thinking we should probably state "that have sold more than 10 million records worldwide" to cut off the bottom end of the current physical sales table, as that seems to be where most of the arguing (and bad editing) is taking place – it has the advantage of being 25 items long which seems a good round number to have as a cut-off. The band I still think are missing from this table are the Bangles – apparently the press release for their 2003 album Doll Revolution stated that they had sold 23 million records worldwide, which sounds about right (more than 10 million in the US according to RIAA certifications, double that for the rest of the world sounds right). But there is no place I can source this, so they will have to stay out of the list for the moment, unless we are allowed to cite the press release, which was included in the limited edition version of the album. Richard3120 (talk) 14:54, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120 Sorry, I keep putting it off. It looks a lot better than what is on the page at the moment. Which refs still need checking and I'll try to have a look at them this weekend? Btljs (talk) 16:01, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, just wanted to make sure you were aware of it. As for the references, probably all of them! I've done some, but the ones for Korean and Japanese groups are the hardest to check, unless we can run them through a translator... Richard3120 (talk) 16:09, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Uptown Funk sales

In the reference it says: "'Uptown Funk' now has sales of over 2 million in the UK". http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a667956/hot-damn-uptown-funk-is-the-5th-biggest-single-in-uk-history.html#ixzz3m8M3fVZ4

(talk page stalker) This would be a better reference to cite, but you are correct. Richard3120 (talk) 03:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks MarioSoulTruthFan and Richard3120. I've put this better reference in. I struggle with wording now that 'sales' include streaming; I only reverted the edits before because the text said 'purchases' which a stream is not. The article talks about the sales from the record company's point of view; they get paid for streams so they are a sale. This is more like what used to be called 'shipments', ie. 'sales to trade' as opposed to 'retail sales'. Btljs (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, the reference is better indeed. Yes it's tricky the vocabulary now, I think real sales are around 1,4 million in UK. But now they count streams to, so there it goes. You welcome, keep up the good work. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 21:39, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reference errors on 3 October

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Song disambiguation

While you chat with them, Richhoncho and In ictu oculi are moving articles on an industrial scale.[1][2] The guidelines they cite to justify this say exactly the opposite of what they claim, but who reads guidelines? They're on autopilot and don't even write edit summaries to explain their reasoning. The third blind mouse (talk) 12:20, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Who is this Third Blind Mouse account? Btljs - If you have a particular edit in mind discuss it on the article Talk Page please. BTW / FWIW: A recent song can be an absolute majority topic in reliable sources, and therefore possibly a Primary Topic. But the onus on always is on showing that. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:12, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

User:Richhoncho the three edits of this new account are all to Btljs' Talk Page. Btljs, sorry to ask but have you by any chance also received email communication from the Third Blind Mouse account? It could perhaps be a pop music editor experienced in past issues related to the past "primary song" idea which was rejected by the community? Does the style ring any bells? In ictu oculi (talk) 17:19, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Means nothing to me, save I have never moved articles "on an industrial scale." Richhoncho (talk) 06:55, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Richhoncho I don't know who this is. I checked the links they gave and I can only think they are misreading page moves where you have corrected capitalisation etc. that are already qualified as (song) etc. Btljs (talk) 07:05, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear: I may disagree with various editors at various times about specific articles, but I object to being conscripted into somebody's personal vendetta. If the OP has a problem with other editors, I suggest they raise it in the relevant places. Btljs (talk) 07:10, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I appreciate what you're doing, but you may want to look at this. The third blind mouse (talk) 11:18, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The third blind mouse And you may want to look at WP:SOCK. You shouldn't be using an id. just to post on my talk page and I will report it unless you either stop or show that you are a genuine editor of articles. Btljs (talk) 13:34, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

User:Btljs thank you. Re this new single purpose account an SPI at this stage probably isn't justified. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:38, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hold Up a Light

Hi Btljs. Please don't move pages by copying and pasting. For proper attribution, the page history has to follow the article. This is done via page moves. Please see Wikipedia:Moving a page for information as to how to move a page. If you are unable to move a page over a redirect, please get an administrator to do it for you in the future. This is done by listing the page at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests. Thanks, -- Diannaa (talk) 01:17, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• This was a Richhonchero move that Btljs reversed. I tried to explain it above. The third blind mouse (talk) 01:25, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

User:Richhoncho have you ever been called "Richhonchero" (is that Spanish?) by any other user than this new account? User:Btljs since edits appear to be continuing in the same vein, please ignore what I said above about an SPI not being justified. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

only used this name. Richhoncho (talk) 12:43, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Those girl groups again

Hi – you may have noticed that an admin has closed my RfC with no consensus, apart from to remove the physical and digital sales tables at the top of the article. As far as I'm concerned that's a great result, because it was always the most contentious and least reliable part of the article, and now I won't be responsible for having merged or altered it, or have to face the angry missives from South Koreans. I'm now hoping to get the remaining year-end charts from the 90s updated by the end of this year: having done the 1999, 2000 and 2001 charts this past week, I found that at some point somebody had replaced Westlife's album in the 2001 list with Slipknot, which at least gave me a good laugh before I changed it... if you're going to be a Wikipedia vandal, at least be a constructive vandal with a sense of humour. Richard3120 (talk) 02:57, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120 That's so much better now, but I wonder how long before someone tries to recreate the overall sales table. Sorry I wasn't much help, been a bit busy recently. Singles sales in Korea are crazily high aren't they? It has fewer people than UK but songs regularly hit 3M sales List of best-selling singles in South Korea - "Moves Like Jagger" 5.2M! I guess they're falling now like everywhere else as there are no songs after 2012. I'm really hoping they don't release the tracks from Adele's 3rd album for streaming straight away as it would be so refreshing to see some undiluted sales figures for a change. Btljs (talk) 08:25, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, somebody probably will try and recreate it, but at least we can now point to "RfC consensus" as a reason for deleting it again.

You are right, it will be interesting to see how 25 performs, and not just the singles – she's probably the one real modern-day album megaseller around at the moment, and if it doesn't sell in great quantities we can probably say the game is up for the album as a complete entity as we know it. As for an idea of how sales are without streaming included, I believe Little Mix's last single was released as download only for a week or two before streams were included, and look how that charted... particularly as it was following a number one record and with no parent album out yet to divert sales away from the single. Richard3120 (talk) 14:41, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120I think Progress is the best measure for 25; it sold half a million in its first week and a million in the first three weeks. I would think 25 should easily match that all things being equal - the wait, the secrecy, the drip of teasers, have all built up for a perfect sales storm. But the key thing is a lot of early sales are usually based on pre-conceptions rather than whether anyone actually likes the content, so if streaming is available too soon then presumably a chunk of people will listen once and then not buy and not repeat listen. This could seriously affect sales. The opposite is true as well of course - I think Ed Sheeran has benefited from a continuous presence for the last year in the media and the charts which has made Thinking Out Loud a million seller and kept × selling all year. Thinking Out Loud could become the first song to achieve 1M in downloads and 1M in stream-equivalents (unless one of the Adele tracks does something amazing). The other unknown about 25 is what the Christmas market will be like post-CD for what would traditionally have been a family stocking-filler - I guess they will get physical copies out into supermarkets along with whatever CGI action flick is out on DVD - come to think of it, they'll probably get vinyl copies out as well (I hope to retire on the proceeds of my parents' record collection if I can get my hands on it before my siblings!) I think I'm rambling. Btljs (talk) 08:33, 22 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In contrast, I can't even give away my late father's record collection, not even charity shops want it. That's because it's mostly the least collectible style of vinyl – 1960s easy listening... and I don't mean anything cool like Sinatra or Dean Martin, I mean orchestras like James Last and Ray Conniff, and lots of Readers Digest box sets. Even worse, more than half of it is records that he picked up in Colombia when he first met my mother... I think it's fair to say the market in Britain for 1960s Colombian easy listening vinyl is somewhat niche. Richard3120 (talk) 14:22, 22 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reference errors on 16 November

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List of best-selling albums in the UK

Nice work adding the sales column, but I can see a problem here. I added the sales figure for Brothers in Arms which was cited in Music Week earlier this year (and which you can read here), but that would then jump it to sixth place in the table above Thriller and The Dark Side of the Moon... because we can infer from this article that Thriller had sold 4,273,800 copies by May 2012, and The Dark Side of the Moon had sold 4,240,620 copies by November 2014 (according to this analysis in Music Week, reprinted in full here).

So the question is whether we alter the positions accordingly in the table (probably a bad idea, as it then doesn't match the citation for the table as a whole) or leave out the older sales figures even though we have reliable references for them. Or you can just remove the Brothers in Arms sales figures, I don't mind... By the way, the same OCC reference for 5.1m sales for Gold and Sgt. Peppers can be used to cite 4.6m sales of Morning Glory. Richard3120 (talk) 02:05, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120 Yes, there's already The Beatles album which is out of position lower down. My personal view on this (and I know it differs from many editors') is that any sourced sales information is better than none, even if it's not up to date and may be at odds with positions given in another source, as long as we include a statement to the effect (which I have, although I'm not sure about the exact wording). The real problems start when we get something like "such and such an album is the Xth best selling in the UK" - then do we move just that album? I'm never that clear how much calculation we are allowed to do without it being OR - some of the 'best-selling' pages have whole lists of Korean chart weeks which have presumably all been added up to get a total; fine, but what happens if one week is missing? Does this render the whole thing unusable? Thanks for the sales refs above, I've put them in - hope that is OK. Btljs (talk) 07:33, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there's a problem with OCC's list putting Dark Side ahead of Brother in Arms or with Alan Jones' figures for the two albums in Nov 2014 and Feb 2015. There's no realistic way that BIA can have outsold DS by such a margin in that space of time (170,000 copies between Feb 2014 and Feb 2015) BIA had seven weeks on the top 100 but DS had more weeks and these days an album only has to sell a handful of copies to make the chart. Not sure what's going on here - maybe a recalculation of earlier sales or Jones at odds with OCC figures for some period in one of the albums' history? Btljs (talk) 08:14, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that Jones says BIA is the 8th best selling of all time, implying that it is still below DS and yet he gave DS a much lower total only a few months earlier. Btljs (talk) 08:22, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, that's a big jump in total sales for BIA, considering it was only supposed to have sold a few thousand from this year's discounted promotion. Presumably over the next month or two 1 will make a big move up the all-time list. Richard3120 (talk) 12:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I found sales refs for all of the list (had to go back to 2009 for a few). Don't know what you think of the layout with the sales date? A bit busy, I think - could have 2.55 instead of 2,550,000 I suppose. I think for albums this way of doing it makes sense as the sales are always trickling upwards and every time an artist has a new album Alan Jones can be relied on to tell us the sales of all their others. Interesting that the most recent album is 21 from 2011; X still hasn't sold enough to get on there - 25 might, given a good Xmas. Btljs (talk) 12:21, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're right – once you add the date of the most recent sales figures in there (which I agree is necessary to explain the discrepancy between position and sales), there's a lot of numbers in that column, and sales to two decimal places in millions seems more sensible. I wouldn't be surprised if the OCC put out an updated list early next year once the sales of 1 and 25 have settled down a bit after the Christmas rush. Yes, interesting (but entirely unsurprising) that the number of albums joining this list has fallen off at the same time as more and more singles are joining the million-sellers club. Richard3120 (talk) 04:38, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1 could get number 3 of the century if it has a really good Xmas. Nice to see the mop tops doing some chart damage half a century on. Btljs (talk) 08:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

disruptive behavior and PA

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Talkback

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Elastic Heart

I would ask that you wait until that certification appears in official site. Tweets are not reliable sources, I have seen other singers tweeted that their songs or albums became platinum, but they never happened. If they are actually certified, it's only a matter of waiting for a week or so. Hzh (talk) 10:23, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hzh Fair enough. I maintain the page List of Platinum singles in the United Kingdom awarded since 2000 and it's just easiest to update it every Friday when BPI tweet all the new awards - I suppose I should check back a week later to see if they've actually added them to the site. I would be surprised if there are many errors as the artists and music journos are all watching the twitter stream and would be pretty upset if they were given false info. Btljs (talk) 10:38, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on how much you trust them not to make mistake. I would say check your previous edits and see if they ever made mistakes, if they never did, then they might be OK, but I still won't take that as gospel and may still need checking later. We have problem with editors using tweets to make edits, but they turned out to be untrue, or we are uncertain as to what they mean - for example here - it was never Platinum in the UK according to BPI, and the sales figure is either Europe-wide or world wide, and not UK sales. Hzh (talk) 12:53, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am going through checking. To be fair, that tweet above is not from the official BPI account - I wouldn't use this either. Reliable sources do make mistakes all the time, and change their minds, about sales figures in particular. BPI and OCC and Music Week all do this. My guess is, that with electronic sales coming in every week for the chart that BPI's Friday updates are pretty accurate. Btljs (talk) 13:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hzh Just to let you know (and record it here so I remember what I've done!) I checked all the 2015 Platinum awards and I had missed 3 (out of 97) but there were no false positives, which is a good sign. Note to self: check 2016 awards next December. Btljs (talk) 23:19, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good, well done! Hzh (talk) 03:16, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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List of best-selling singles of the 1980s in the United Kingdom

About time this got properly sorted – I'm sure the sales figures were unofficial so I ditched them. I've just pinged Tuzapicabit because he has the Hits of the 80s book where the top 100 are sourced from, and I wonder if it has an equivalent list for 1980s albums... as it stands, the article has no sourcing for that top 20 chart whatsoever, so I'm wondering where it came from.

I'm pretty sure the 1990s singles list will have to be cut down to a top 20 as well, as that's the only official chart I can find... and I've never seen any official chart for 1990s albums. Richard3120 (talk) 22:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120 The 80s singles page is a whole lot better now. Let's see how long before someone adds in sales figures again. Btljs (talk) 22:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think they will – these pages don't seem to get a lot of views or changes. Not like List of best-selling girl groups and the persistent IP from the Philippines who keeps insisting TLC have sold more records worldwide than Destiny's Child (maybe they have, but there's no official source to prove it, and they never provide a citation). Somebody threw Baccara and Sister Sledge off the UK girl group singles list as well because there's no citation for them, although I can work out easily from Gallup figures that they must both have sold more than 640,000 copies and therefore rightfully belong there. Richard3120 (talk) 22:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

One of my pet hates is the AmericaniZation of the past: I saw a countdown of the top songs of the 80s voted for by a supposed UK audience on some channel or other in the summer and it had 'Billie Jean' at 2 and 'Every Breath You Take' at 1 (or similar) and I thought that's people being revisionist based on US media in the decades since. That top 100 rather supports my view: BJ at 88 and EBYT not even in the top 100! Other songs like 'Come on Eileen', 'Don't You Want Me' and 'Tainted Love' which were huge at the time now get ignored. Just like Football stickers because they didn't have them in the US. Btljs (talk) 23:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Which is odd, as all three of those songs were huge hits in the US as well (the first two were number ones and I'm sure "Tainted Love" was a million-seller). "Every Breath You Take" wan't a particularly big seller despite four weeks at number one, because it was over the tradtionally low-selling summer period when everyone is away on holiday: it was only the 16th biggest-seller of 1983. Kind of depressing that "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is the Police's biggest seller as I think it's quite possibly the band's weakest ever single (likewise the accompanying Zenyatta Mondatta album, where it's quite obvious Sting and the band couldn't be bothered, either musically or lyrically), but it was released at the point when the fans would buy anything by them.

I know what you mean about the revision of the past. Still, it works both ways – if the Americanisation of the 1980s obliterates all memory of the likes of Jive Bunny, Goombay Dance Band and Joe Dolce, then I'm all for it. Richard3120 (talk) 23:50, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"British English"

Hi, could you take extreme care in your edits not to Americanize the text. We Brits write odd things like "Bloggs proposed that the ..." and "He spoke to the zoologist Smith ...". Paradoxically, British zoologists like Cott and Kerr wrote "animal coloration" (without a "u") just as we write "decoration", so there's no logic to it. At any rate, please don't take any "the"s out unless you've checked three or four times and are sure it's not a weird British usage! Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:29, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) Or indeed, "...Americanise the text". ;-) Richard3120 (talk) 09:43, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't me - I am British. Can't bring myself to care much at the minute after this morning's news. David Bowie Btljs (talk) 09:45, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we all feel the loss. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Btljs: absolutely terrible news. Makes me all the more determined to bring the classic 1970s albums to GA one day. But not right now. :-( Richard3120 (talk) 09:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just playing his back catalogue on my Ipod in the car - just took it all for granted really, not only innovative but so many just damn fine songs as well. Btljs (talk) 15:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Decade-end lists

I've updated the articles for List of best-selling albums of the 1980s in the United Kingdom, List of best-selling singles of the 1990s in the United Kingdom and List of best-selling albums of the 1990s in the United Kingdom with citations and some lead text, so hopefully now all articles regarding decade-end charts for the UK are "official". On a separate issue I've just looked at the OCC's year-end album chart for 1996 (the earliest year on their website), and... it's different from the chart they published (as CIN) back in 1997. I'm going to have to check all the OCC's year-end charts against the original ones, but I think I'm going to have to write to them to clear this one up. The RIAA also seem to have caught the "rewrite history" bug: their new Gold and Platinum website looks much nicer than the old one, but they seem to have forgotten or ignored the fact that before 1989 the certification levels were double what they are now. And people wonder why it's so hard to provide best-seller lists on Wikipedia when the powers that be keep moving the goalposts... Richard3120 (talk) 16:30, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120 Great work on these - they feel a lot more official and reliable now, given what we have to work with. Interesting that OCC haven't released a sales-only chart for 2015 as they did for 2014. Looks like combined sales are becoming the only measure they're interested in. I suppose when you get What Do You Mean? on a million combined sales and less than 500K paid-for, the balance has tipped firmly over. I was happy to see Bowie pass the 1000 weeks mark on the albums top 75 last week List of artists who have spent the most weeks on the UK music charts. Btljs (talk) 21:47, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Reliable" is a tricky word to use, given the lack of available sales data before 2000 or so ;-)... still, these are all now lists sourced from the people in charge of the charts, and probably as good as they are ever going to get... I'd like to get hold of various British Hit Singles books from 1999 to 2005 (I have 2001 and 2006, the final one) as I believe these include sales figures for the top 10 singles and albums for each year. Otherwise it's a case of whenever a figure for a particular record is mentioned by Alan Jones in Music Week. I've left you with the thankless job of 2014 and 2015 charts – I wanted to check what had been published in Music Week but the British Library seems to be missing all the copies from January 2014, and the January 2015 ones weren't on the shelves yet when I was in town this month. I'll finish off the 1996 to 1998 year-end charts, and then I'm going to get back to album article editing. Richard3120 (talk) 22:02, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Policy discussion in progress

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2015 year end charts

Hi Btljs, how are things? I'm back in the UK for all of June, and went to the British Library this morning and found the copy of Music Week with the top 100 singles and albums of 2015. Both lists match the Wikipedia lists on 2015 in British music charts down to about position 40, but there are a few differences after that for the album chart, and peculiarly the singles chart just seems to have a few random selected positions after 42 - any reason for this? I can update both charts to a top 50 with references, and add the top 10 compilations as well (eight of them are Now albums). Any objection to these changes? Richard3120 (talk) 15:37, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120 Of course not. That's great. I don't know what those random positions are - not me. I put in the top 40 combined and streaming, I think, as that was what OCC provided and of course that means that there are some which are in one top 40 but not the other. However, there are some in there now which are not in the top 40 for either. Much neater to have top 50 - does it break down sales and streaming or just give a combined figure in the MW lists? Btljs (talk) 18:50, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No breakdown - I would imagine that it would be a combined chart, particularly as the top 40 or so positions for both singles and albums replicate what's already in the article. No sales figures given either. Richard3120 (talk) 03:13, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Those girl group lists again

You know the article I mean... A couple of months ago I split the US singles table into two, basically a pre-streaming one and a post-streaming one, and it seems to have shut up the argument about whether Fifth Harmony's singles really are the "best-selling" ever by a girl group in the US. So I'm thinking of doing the same for the UK list, because obviously "Work from Home"'s 748,000+ "combined sales" are not the same as the sales for the Spice Girls, All Saints and others. But I might need your help on the proper wording for these two tables, because being out of the UK I'm not 100% sure what these different sales figures include – could you help me out please? Richard3120 (talk) 22:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Richard3120The BPI did a trawl back in July 2013 to update their awards with all the digital sales up to that point and then in July 2014 they started adding any streaming from the beginning of 2014. So an award made in, say, March 2014 is pure sales whereas one made in August includes streams. I think MW probably started talking about 'sales' which included streams any time after June 2014, although OCC got themselves in a big muddle for the totals for the year 2014 as they first included only streaming from June and then backdated it to January. I think going with two lists is the right thing to do (as I did with the List of Platinum Singles in the UK) but even that doesn't tell the whole story as awards in 2014 and 2015 might have, say, 30=40% streaming and nowadays it's more like 60-70%. Then there are the singles which got the bulk of their sales pre-streaming but only tipped over recently so have a very low percentage of streams. The whole thing's annoying really as you know, and leads to endless arguments on the forums and an endless run at the top of the charts for a strong streaming artist like Drake. At some point you might have to split the album tables as well...Btljs (talk) 09:06, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, now that Sweden and New Zealand have added streaming in the last 12 months, we'll probably have to split those tables as well... and in all likelihood all countries will go the same way in the not too distant future. For the UK, I think it means that for now only "Black Magic" and "Work from Home" will be included in the second table.

I've been discussing something along these lines with another editor... I pointed out that it's obvious every certification awarded from now on will be a sales+streaming one, so it makes sense to change the code in the Certification Table Entry template to make the "streaming=yes" parameter automatic from now on... I can't do the code, but it needs an added line equivalent to "if relmonth/release > June 2014 then streaming=yes" for the UK, and similarly for the US and other regions, with the appropriate date. This is particularly relevant for the US where RIAA now have two separate certifications to distinguish between the old pure sales and the new sales+streaming - a few songs, such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "I Will Always Love You" are multi-platinum under both certification types. Richard3120 (talk) 17:12, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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UK Singles Chart move request

Hi Btljs. There is currently an open move request at Talk:UK Singles Chart regarding capitalisation in the article's title. Since you've edited several music chart-related articles, I wanted to bring it to your attention, in case you have any thoughts on the matter. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 09:49, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Move request made by people who, I suspect, don’t fully understand the place of The Charts in British culture. Btljs (talk) 22:59, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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