Talk:Tomorrow's Harvest

Announcement marketing

Might it be worthwhile to include the special 'scavenger hunt/code cryptography' that went into the release announcement?

Ekrumme

Please be careful with anticipated release dates

It's very common for release dates to be announced in various official and unofficial places, and then end up being rescheduled or missed. That seems to have happened here. Editors put announced release dates in to the article without qualifying them as such. Dates were taken from vendor sites as if they were gospel. Then the album ended up being released on different dates.

There was no special early release for Germany and Ireland, despite the early teasing on the iTunes site. And although Billboard had said something about an early release for Australia, it seems that the local record company they referred to is mainly just a promoter and merchandiser, not acting as a record label in this instance; there was no special edition for Australia (surely it would've turned up in Discogs by now). Instead, this company was just promoting the European edition weeks before its actual release...and they only planned to release it early. In the end, I don't see that Australia got anything other than imports, or got it earlier than the 10th—at least, I couldn't find any evidence to say otherwise.

In addition to release date corrections and removing the bogus Germany, Ireland and Australia info, I improved the Japanese references slightly.

Please, folks, when you're writing about a product that hasn't been released yet, just say that any future release dates that have been announced are anticipated (or whatever, if there's a better choice of words). And follow up on it; if the anticipated date comes and goes without a release, change it or leave a comment in the source or a note on the talk page, so we don't spread incorrect info. —mjb (talk) 05:17, 3 July 2013 (UTC) [updated slightly 5 July 2013]

Details in lede and infobox

I edited the infobox to mention all three release dates and what regions they apply to. I've seen this done in many other release infoboxes and didn't think it would be contentious. It doesn't feel right to say it was "released on 5 June" when really that was only true for Japan; the rest of the world had to wait 5 or 6 days, and it was these later dates that the record company officially announced.

I also removed from the lead paragraph the unnecessary detail about the date of release—as all editions were released in June, it's sufficient, and arguably more accurate, if less precise, to just say June. We don't need to say 5 June, and then require the reader to get to the end of the article in order to find out that really, most of the world saw it released on the 10th or 11th.

Likewise, the label, Warp Records, doesn't need to be mentioned in the first sentence. I rarely see that on release pages. The label is almost incidental. Of course it should be mentioned somewhere, but it just seems like unnecessary detail for the lead, which is supposed to be a very terse and focused intro/summary for the topic, so keep it simple. The detailed release date and label info, both of which are region-specific, remain elsewhere in the article and infobox, so I didn't think this would be a problem.

Further, I don't understand why the "Start date" template is being used for release dates (as opposed to ranges). For single dates, you're either supposed to just consistently write dates literally, or use the subst-ed "DATE" template. We needn't have every date be written by a template, which burdens Wikipedia. So when writing dates, I changed a few of them to not use templates.

Despite my justifying most of these changes at the time, nearly everything I did was reverted without explanation. I changed it back and amended my justifications above. Please don't revert again without engaging in discussion here. —mjb (talk) 22:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

"I edited the infobox to mention all three release dates and what regions they apply to." Per Infobox album, "only the earliest known date that the album was released should be specified; later release dates (incl. re-issues) can be mentioned in a Release history section", therefore 5 June is the correct date to use in the infobox.

"as all editions were released in June, it's sufficient, and arguably more accurate, if less precise, to just say June." The lede should reflect the corresponding infobox, not further ambiguate the release date. Hard Candy doesn't state "released in April and June 2008." Yeezus and Random Access Memories, along with countless other articles follow the same guideline.

"Likewise, the label, Warp Records, doesn't need to be mentioned in the first sentence." It's part of MOS:ALBUM to mention the record label and it's included on 99% of album articles.

The use of Start date is for Microformat technical reasons, as seen at WP:UF.

I wouldn't have reverted the edits unless it was with good reason. You were right to remove the German/Irish release dates—despite the fact it was released on 7 June in Ireland as I bought a copy myself on the day, but can't find a RS to support the fact and add it to the article. Hope this clears everything up. Idiotchalk _(t@lk) 00:53, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for replying.

Way back in Wikipedia history, we used to use templates for dates all the time, for i18n purposes, and for time-sensitive statements ("as of 2005" or whatever). But at some point this was deprecated; I remember being pointed to some policy change or Village Pump discussion about it, but that was ages ago and I don't remember the context. I can say it was prior to the push for microformats, so I will take you at your word on the appropriateness of using date templates everywhere now. I was hoping to see some guidance in WP:MOSDATE, but there's nothing; it seems to be expected there that dates will just be written manually.

I really don't agree with the rationale for all the detail in the opening paragraph, or for mentioning only the earliest release date when the later dates are far more relevant, and as I said, I feel the ambiguity/lack of precision in "June" is an ideal tradeoff; it's more accurate than implying that it was available everywhere on the 5th. But as you imply, these are arguments to have elsewhere, I guess, not on one specific article.

I heard from someone else that they bought a physical copy in a chain store in Germany on the 7th as well, but I would say Warp was pretty clear about the 10th being the release date (and 11th for N. America, and no mention of Japan specifically). What I suspect happened is that, as happens with every release, stock arrived at the distributors and at some retailers in advance of the label-authorized release date. Normally it's one to three business days in advance, if I recall correctly. Major labels and their distributors are pretty strict about enforcing the official release dates, hence the fad of midnight sales back when I worked in a shop in the mid-'90s. But the indie labels don't have the resources to enforce release dates, and are thus more tolerant of retailers putting out the inventory as soon as it comes in. I think it's a bit of a philosophical issue, then, as to whether you'd say the release date is really what the label intended it to be, or a date that someone, somewhere, first found the item in a shop. I feel it's best to acknowledge both, saying, for example, it was scheduled to be released on the 10th, but some retailers offered it as early as the 7th in countries such as Germany and Ireland. To resolve this, I'd really like to get Warp's perspective on what happened. —mjb (talk) 16:21, 6 July 2013 (UTC)