Highly Biased Band Biographies

Hello,

Mm. I think there's a balance between helpful enthusiasm and excess accolades we're aiming to achieve with the bios (and I say this as a moocher-collab who is no good at these things). I mean, yes, factuality is the prime point, but useful information getting an impression of the band's career, their perceived highs, their most important works etc..

Anyway, I think a bio should probably be written by an avowed fan, who's well-acquainted enough with the material to give a momentary overview, a brief comment on what was well-received and maybe the merits of the less well-received ones (a little personal opinion is both fine by me and pretty much unavoidable), and objective balance with importance, context, and novel background information.

I mean, I could write the above paragraph about Dream Theater, it wouldn't have the expertise, appreciation and contextual knowledge (as someone who doesn't really listen to prog metal or metal in general) to write a fair overview.

Yeah, the problem here is just about threefold. One: there are a lot of bios, and a lot of those are of bands that we haven't a lot of information on. Two: it takes a bit of time and effort making finickity edits, and it somewhat cheapens the original honest work to remove a comment because it looks sort of approving or negative. I think most collabs would rather just get on with the work. Three: I think personal opinion creeps into any good bit of biographical writing and giving an appropriate introduction to a band, Dream Theater, Gnidrolog or whichever, requires a fan's understanding of the

So, basically, I think we could do with keeping the personal opinion in a moderate way; maybe worth trimming or tidying up on a couple of the more extreme cases (I mean, yes, biographies are biased, yes, they're sometimes outdated, but the enthusiasm's half the charm).

The Neal Morse and Tool bios always irritated me for their overt fanboyism, but it is a widespread problem that, due to the nature of internet business, probably won't be changed very soon. But for most of them it wouldn't even take that much work, they would only have to delete the more overindulgent praise ("[Tool] often spend quite a few years writing and recording their albums in order to make them perfect and there is often a gap of 5 years between each studio album but they are always masterpieces." "It was almost impossible to better the last album but they pulled it off."). Although the Tool bio could also use a total rewrite because it's extremely choppy.

I have to admit I agree with the thread starter, having often noticed exactly the same thing. Personally speaking, I think bios should be as neutral as possible, though not soulless. However, this is a very complex issue, and one that has been touched upon occasionally, without finding a viable solution. With over 4,000 bands in the database, and people working for free, you will agree with me that it is not something particularly easy to handle. 

As Claude said, we are rewriting a lot of bios from Symphonic, but mainly those that are really terrible or contain absolutely no information.

^Agree with thread starter, Raff and NotAProghead. Clearly subjective bios have less information value, since the opinions are disturbing the actual facts of the bio. Obvious opinions should rather be left for the reviews.

I've noticed this myself in Biographies. Not very professional souding some of them.

This is an <abridged> example of what a Biography should look like.

yeah biographies should be unbiased and neutral till you start writing them on a regular basis and you find out a bio that reads like a police report is not really something that is useful or interesting.. an objective bio sounds good in theory but frankly it stinks, doesn't give a sense of the music, and comes off as mechanical and cold.  This isn't Wiki or godamn RYM, it's a prog site that carefully and lovingly documents Progressive Rock.. wait'll you start writing up band bios on a weekly basis and after you've done 30 or 40, you can talk  

Atavachron wrote: yeah biographies should be unbiased and neutral till you start writing them on a regular basis and you find out a bio that reads like a police report is not really something that is useful or interesting.. an objective bio sounds good in theory but frankly it stinks, doesn't give a sense of the music, and comes off as mechanical and cold.  This isn't Wiki or godamn RYM, it's a prog site that carefully and lovingly documents Progressive Rock.. wait'll you start writing up band bios on a weekly basis and after you've done 30 or 40, you can talk