Wikipedia:No one cares about your garage band

Although there are a great deal of subjects that no one cares about on Wikipedia, with garage bands this is especially important to keep in mind, given that nearly ¼ of new pages are about said garage bands. Here, Newpage Patrollers can learn to spot garage band pages, and creators of said pages can learn why their page was speedily deleted.

Typical Characteristics of Garage Band Pages

Remarkably, although pages about unknown garage bands appear from editors all over the world, a great many of them share several characteristics:

• Lack of capitalization: People making articles about their garage bands generally forget that capitalization of proper nouns is one of the underlying principles of the English language, and will thus forget to capitalize the name of their band in the article's title (i.e., "Bringers of Darkness" will appear as "Bringers of darkness").

• Lack of any formatting whatsoever: As 99.9% of garage-band-page-creators have no prior experience with Wikipedia and its formatting system, garage band pages are often devoid of the markup present in standard pages. Some common characteristics include:

• • Lack of sectional division, sometimes putting everything in one paragraph
  • Lack of any internal links, infoboxes, categories, external links (except occasionaly to the band's MySpace page), or anything besides test.
  • Putting in the wrong number of equals signs when making headers, resulting in things like == MEMBERS =
  • Using absurd and haphazard numbers of carriage returns
  • Excessive use of exclamation points

• Trying (and failing) to dramatize the band or its members: Many garage band pages will include a poorly formatted list of the band's members, along with their "accomplishments", such as

Members: Tim kingsworth - guitarist born to rock, tim has written many of bringers of darkness's best songs including "my love is like ten thousand arows"

barett lee- bass player the best bass player in idaho is barett lee, his awesome riffs bring bringers of darkness's songs together

wade wilson- drummer

antonio perez- keyboard

• Use of the word "hardcore": All garage bands, even if they are not "hardcore" seem to love to describe themselves as such.

How Do I Know if Anyone Cares About my Garage Band?

A good rule of thumb is: they don't. However, if you must know, here are some ways to tell if your article is worth mentioning on Wikipedia. If one or more of these applies, then no one cares. (More formal definitions can be found here, but you don't want to hurt your brain slogging through that, do you?)

• You've never put out a "real" album: Putting out a real album means having the album released by a record company, or at least put into wide distribution by an independant label. Burning CDs of your songs on your computer and trying to sell them, or releasing your music onto a podcast or your MySpace page doesn't count.

• Your band is looking for people: A sizeable percentage of the Wikipedia pages about garage bands announce that they are "still looking for a drummer", or something similar. If your band is still looking for a member, then no one cares about it.

• You've never gone on a "real" tour: Like real albums, going on a real tour does not mean playing at your high school dance, city park, etc. You must be invited to play at a musical venue of real significance to count.

• You are not making any money: Whether it's because you're just jamming with your friends instead of actually being a band or simply because no one will pay money to hear your music, if your band is not making any money, we do not want to hear about it on Wikipedia.

• You just formed the band yesterday: Stop, sit back, wait a while, and see if you are actually going to make a band, because chances are, you're not. Wikipedia is for bands that are, not bands that are going to be.

• Your only distingushing characteristic is your placement in a Battle of the Bands competition: Unless you placed first (and sometimes even if you placed first), no one cares. Battle of the Bands competitions are small farces designed to showcase local talent, not land you a record deal. Even if you placed first, it doesn't mean anything: your band is still unknown, and there are thousands of better ones out there.