Help:Featured Song

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Featured content
Previous featured content:
Article Song Image Video Quote
Current featured content:
Article Song Image Video Quote
Help editing:
Article Song Image Video Quote
2024 featured songs
January February March
April May June
July August September
October November December

To edit the Featured Song page, see here.

The featured song section of Weezerpedia provides a short summary of a song page, and is changed every month. It pulls its data from a template page that can be changed to showcase different songs that Weezerpedia has entries for. This page can be found at Weezerpedia:Featured song.

Instructions

Getting started

Choose a month

Check out the table on the Weezerpedia:Featured song page, and find a month that isn't complete yet. Category:Incomplete featured content lists all featured content pages that need editing.

Let's say you select March 2023, for example.

Choose a song

Choose a song that you would like to showcase on the Main Page of Weezerpedia. Be sure that the article describing the song is up to Weezerpedia's standards. If it isn't, edit it! If you feel like changing the featured song and can't think of one to use, people always seem happy to give suggestions in our Discord server. Let's say we're going to feature "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori."

What you'll find on an "incomplete" featured page

Prior to being edited by users, featured content pages are all created by site admin at the beginning of the calendar year and left "incomplete." Looks like this:

Featured video help 4.png

If you open up a page like this to edit it, you'll see:

{{Template:Featured page header|year=2023|month=March|pagetype=song|edited=}}
<onlyinclude><includeonly>{{Weezerpedia:Featured song February 2023}}</onlyinclude></includeonly>

Looks kinda confusing and strange! Don't worry. All you need to do is...

Copy from a previous month

The easiest way to feature a song is to update the wikitext from a previous month. You can pull the formatting from a past month, replace a few details, and you will have a readymade page!

Sticking with our example above, we'd navigate to Weezerpedia:Featured song February 2023, hit edit, and copy everything there. We'd then dash back to the March 2023 page, and replace all the content there with the wikitext on our clipboard.

Update the featured page header

Our page will now look like this (only an excerpt included for sake of saving space on this page):

<noinclude>{{Template:Featured page header|month=February|year=2023|pagetype=song|edited=yes}}</noinclude>
{{Featured song code|songname=Getting Up and Leaving|spotify=https://open.spotify.com/track/2ax0HKoaMTrJBFX9gEC9mE|youtube=|image=Weezer Pinkerton.jpg}}
"'''Getting Up and Leaving'''" is a [[Weezer]] song written in [[1993]] by [[Rivers Cuomo]] and [[Patrick Wilson]]. 

"Getting Up and Leaving" was one of fifteen songs considered for the band's debut album. A pre-production version done with [[Ric Ocasek]] was recorded on [[November 8]], [[1993]] at S.I.R. Studios, but the song would not make it to the formal album sessions. This version, unlike later recordings, was said to have a "classic Weezer breakdown" similar to those of "[[Surf Wax America]]" or "[[Holiday]]". Unfortunately, this version has yet to surface, as it was not released on the deluxe edition of The Blue Album or as a b-side.

...
{{Featured song links|Getting Up and Leaving}}

The "featured page header" template gives this page its basic structure. You only need to update one small piece of it: change the month name to the month of the page you're editing:

{{Template:Featured page header|year=2023|month=March|pagetype=song|edited=yes}}

Update the "Featured song code" template

Headline

There is a headline above every featured item on the Main Page, as well as an accompanying image. These are easy to set up with our copy-and-pasted wikitext. Look to the second line of wikitext on your page. Using our previous example, it looks like this:

{{Featured song code|songname=Getting Up and Leaving|spotify=https://open.spotify.com/track/2ax0HKoaMTrJBFX9gEC9mE|youtube=|image=Weezer Pinkerton.jpg}}

The "spotify" and "youtube" parameters are a little confusing:

  • spotify - Preferred template. Enter a link to stream the song on Spotify:
Featured song help.png

Note: The link generated by selecting "Copy Song Link" generates a URL that is too long for our template!

https://open.spotify.com/track/2dLrkKiddmHEYAQ7fUwfxw?si=6fa790803c2b4425

You can cut everything off from the ? character on (including the question mark):

https://open.spotify.com/track/2dLrkKiddmHEYAQ7fUwfxw

Since this was a song that is on Spotify, we're leaving the YouTube parameter blank. By filling in the spotify parameter, the template will automatically generate a Spotify logo that - when clicked - links to the URL for the stream. Note: if not being used, the "youtube" parameter should remain blank.

Update this parameter with new info relevant to your song (still "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori"):

{{Featured song code|songname=Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori|spotify=https://open.spotify.com/track/2dLrkKiddmHEYAQ7fUwfxw|youtube=|image=Weezer The White Album.jpg}}
  • youtube - This parameter is used whenever we want to feature a song that isn't on Spotify. Demos generally fall into this category, though studio tracks by more obscure artists do as well when they're not available on Spotify.

Input a URL to link to this song on YouTube. This can be most easily accessed by navigating to the "share" button below a YouTube video):

Featured song help 2.png

Setting "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" aside for a moment (because it would be a Spotify link), let's use "What a Shame" by Sonnyboy as an example:

{{Featured song code|songname=What a Shame|spotify=|youtube=https://youtu.be/apg9WfuPbVU|image=Dadeye.jpg}}

Note: the "spotify" parameter should remain blank this time.

  • image
    • The image you select should be - when possible - artwork for an official release of the song. If no such artwork exists, feel free to get creative. For demos, consider photos of the band recording from that session.

Pause to Preview

To quote User:Deckra:

Preview preview preview.png

It's always a good idea to preview your pages as you go. Take a moment to pause and make sure everything is coming out okay so far. There are three buttons at the bottom of your editing box - click the middle one!

Preview button.png

Everything look okay?

Add text from the article

Lede

So far, our code looks like this:

<noinclude>{{Template:Featured page header|month=March|year=2023|pagetype=song|edited=yes}}</noinclude>
{{Featured song code|songname=Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori|spotify=https://open.spotify.com/track/2dLrkKiddmHEYAQ7fUwfxw|youtube=|image=Weezer The White Album.jpg}}
"'''Getting Up and Leaving'''" is a [[Weezer]] song written in [[1993]] by [[Rivers Cuomo]] and [[Patrick Wilson]]. 

"Getting Up and Leaving" was one of fifteen songs considered for the band's debut album. A pre-production version done with [[Ric Ocasek]] was recorded on [[November 8]], [[1993]] at S.I.R. Studios, but the song would not make it to the formal album sessions. This version, unlike later recordings, was said to have a "classic Weezer breakdown" similar to those of "[[Surf Wax America]]" or "[[Holiday]]". Unfortunately, this version has yet to surface, as it was not released on the deluxe edition of The Blue Album or as a b-side.

...
{{Featured song links|Getting Up and Leaving}}

We need to update the "lede." Lede is fancy wiki/journalism talk for the first sentence of your article. Generally, you can simply copy and paste the lede from the song article you're featuring. We format this text to draw the reader's attention there, so song titles are bolded in ledes:

"'''Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori'''"  is the seventh track from ''[[Weezer (The White Album)|The White Album]]''.
  • The three quotation mark thingys ''''' bold the characters within them - Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori. Note - song titles are always placed within quotation marks.

Gathering all our code up again, here's what our page looks like:

<noinclude>{{Template:Featured page header|month=March|year=2023|pagetype=song|edited=yes}}</noinclude>
{{Featured song code|songname=Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori|spotify=https://open.spotify.com/track/2dLrkKiddmHEYAQ7fUwfxw|youtube=|image=Weezer The White Album.jpg}}
"'''Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori'''"  is the seventh track from ''[[Weezer (The White Album)|The White Album]]''.

"Getting Up and Leaving" was one of fifteen songs considered for the band's debut album. A pre-production version done with [[Ric Ocasek]] was recorded on [[November 8]], [[1993]] at S.I.R. Studios, but the song would not make it to the formal album sessions. This version, unlike later recordings, was said to have a "classic Weezer breakdown" similar to those of "[[Surf Wax America]]" or "[[Holiday]]". Unfortunately, this version has yet to surface, as it was not released on the deluxe edition of The Blue Album or as a b-side.

...
{{Featured song links|Getting Up and Leaving}}

Article body

Here's where you get the most creative license as an editor. Pull content from your page that you think will help give a "nutshell" version of the topic. "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" is a song page in line with Weezerpedia's style guide, so we can readily sift through it a bit. Summarize the main points of the article, and please feel free to copy and paste exact language. Also consider the following suggestions:

  • Delete all "references" in the article
    • We try to cite our sources as best we can in normal articles, but we don't need to do this on the Main Page. References cut up a lot of the text you're likely looking at on a song page. It makes it difficult to read! The "Summer Elaine" page has a reference to the Song Exploder podcast included, which you would cut out if you were going to use this sentence:
In April of [[2016]], however, Cuomo spoke of the song's origins on an episode of the podcast ''Song Exploder''.<ref>"Weezer: Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" ''Song Exploder'', 18 April 2016. http://songexploder.net/weezer</ref>
  • Make edits for style.
    • Adjust for the clunky readability that comes with copying and pasting. Avoid using the song's name at the beginning of every sentence.

With a little razzamatazz on the "Summer Elaine" copy, here's some short-and-sweet text we can use for the Main Page:

Released in [[2016]], the song's provenance can be traced back more than two decades. The verse lyrics and melody originate in a demo written by [[Rivers Cuomo]] in [[2002]] ([[Catalog O' Riffs]] entry #405, "[[Don't Give It Up (a)|Don't Give Me Love]]"). In [[2015]], Cuomo lifted the chord progression from the song "[[Wikipedia:Walk Away Renée|Walk Away Renée]]" by [[Wikipedia:The_Left_Banke|The Left Banke]], titling an early version of the demo "Awaken Early" (a partial anagram of "Walk Away Renée). The final song's title came from an overheard conversation at a party at Rivers' daughter's school. One mother said that their husband called her "School-Year Elaine" during the year and "Summer Elaine" after the school year had ended, and another mother commented that her husband had two names for her as well, one of them being "Drunk Dori". Cuomo has stated that "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" is his favorite song from ''[[The White Album]]''.

Place the necessary links at the bottom the page

All featured content has some formatting at the bottom of the page. This is intended to:

  1. Allow readers to "read more" and navigate to the full article being featured
  2. Edit the featured article section themselves
  3. Check out past featured articles.

It looks like this:

Featured article links screenshot.png

The code you need to type out for this is super easy:

{{Featured article links|YOUR ARTICLE NAME}}

Using "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" again, this code...

{{Featured article links|Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori}}

...will give you the little links you see at the far right:

full article | edit | previous featured articles


Putting the whole text together one more time, your finished wikitext will look like this:

<noinclude>{{Template:Featured page header|month=March|year=2023|pagetype=song|edited=yes}}</noinclude>
{{Featured song code|songname=Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori|spotify=https://open.spotify.com/track/2dLrkKiddmHEYAQ7fUwfxw|youtube=|image=Weezer The White Album.jpg}}
"'''Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori'''"  is the seventh track from ''[[Weezer (The White Album)|The White Album]]''.

Released in [[2016]], the song's provenance can be traced back more than two decades. The verse lyrics and melody originate in a demo written by [[Rivers Cuomo]] in [[2002]] ([[Catalog O' Riffs]] entry #405, "[[Don't Give It Up (a)|Don't Give Me Love]]"). In [[2015]], Cuomo lifted the chord progression from the song "[[Wikipedia:Walk Away Renée|Walk Away Renée]]" by [[Wikipedia:The_Left_Banke|The Left Banke]], titling an early version of the demo "Awaken Early" (a partial anagram of "Walk Away Renée). The final song's title came from an overheard conversation at a party at Rivers' daughter's school. One mother said that their husband called her "School-Year Elaine" during the year and "Summer Elaine" after the school year had ended, and another mother commented that her husband had two names for her as well, one of them being "Drunk Dori". Cuomo has stated that "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" is his favorite song from ''[[The White Album]]''.
{{Featured song links|Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori}}

Extra mile steps

Update the featured article list

Weezerpedia tries to keep organized records of the content that it features, and we currently do this for songs through the a simple chart. If you can update the chart, you'd be helping our site stay tidy!

You can access the current year's featured article list here.

Table editing

Using 2023 as an example, the table should look like this:

Featured song help 3.png

The column names for this table are listed toward the top of the page, in that first batch of code. They are: Month, Song name, and User. Here's what the code looks like to fill in a new row of the table:

|- this is a divider
| | [[Weezerpedia: Featured song MONTH YEAR|MONTH YEAR]]
| | song title
| | user
|-  this is a divider

Filled in with details from our example above:

|-
| |[[Weezerpedia:Featured song March 2023|March 2023]]
| |[[Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori]]
| |--[[User:HMC|HMC]] ([[User talk:HMC|talk]]) 23:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
|-

The four tildes above create a link to your user page, and provide a timestamp of the edit. The repeating of the month and year in the first row ([[Weezerpedia: Featured article March 2023|March 2023]]<nowiki>) create what's called a "piped link." Everything to the left of the bracket character (<nowiki>|) tells the wiki what page you want to link to, and everything to the right of the bracket becomes display text. The example above gives you this: March 2023.

Preview, save

Here's what the above code (placed in its proper spot in the table wikitext from the above screenshot) will look like:

Featured song help 4.png

Preview your version to make sure it looks okay!

Pat yourself on the back!

Thank you for helping Weezerpedia! Weezerpedia can only grow if people like you help edit and contribute to it. Thanks for your effort!

See also