Because Every Work of Art Should Be Judged By the "About the Author" Section

Apr 30, 2004 17:27

Today I received an email from the wonderful people at download.com.


The level of the submitted information and the quality of the writing are a
couple of the many factors that help us determine which artists we should
feature on Download.com Music. It is recommended that you edit and resubmit the
short and long descriptions of your artist bio (for example, you may need to
use complete sentences). We also recommend that you write at least one complete
sentence for the short description and long description. Artist bios that do
not meet these minimum guidelines may be removed in the future.

It seems to me that crafting an artist bio is essentially an artistic endeavor. The biography is meant to present some impression of the artist to those who read the page. The "quality" of the biography then only concerns the impression that is actually created in the minds of readers, the artist's original intent, and the interaction between the two. The very idea of using "minimum guidelines" that make no reference to these concerns is ridiculous. According to the standards proposed above, it is perfectly acceptable--perhaps even laudable--to write such tripe as "We are four morons from Ohio who just want to rock like Limp Bizkit!" but an *intentional* sentence fragment meant to convey something more through the very nature of its incompleteness is grounds for removal.
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