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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 01:41, 11 March 2008.

ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[edit]
Jmcc has notified Geuiwogbil, Sdornan, Ember of Light, WikiProject Video Games, Hermione is a dude, MTd2, 209.253.119.2, Koalorka, NTK, Yanksox, Awareshiftjk, Piotrus, 124.191.74.29, EnemyOfTheState, Zidel333, Eusebeus, Tempshill, Nydas, 76.186.199.89, Masterhomer, 58.111.132.29, SGGH, 66.234.51.139, Petepetepetepete, Oberiko, and Marskell.

I nominate this article on the grounds that it fails to meet the criterion of high quality writing. A featured article should have prose "that is engaging, even brilliant, and of professional standard". In my opinion any article that contains sentences over 50 words long has not been properly edited. By no stretch could the word "brilliance" be applied. For example the summary contains too much detail and yet does not summarise the whole article. The key issue should be concisely and clearly stated in the first or second sentence. As I understand it a publisher of a game was forced to re-rate a game because someone else had modified it without permission. Instead the article's second sentence could best be described as oblique, saying "In their press release on the decision, the ESRB called attention to the presence, in the published edition of Oblivion, of game content not considered in the ESRB review." This failure to explain clearly and concisely this decision by ESRB persists throughout the article. The article also uses jargon which is not linked to another Wikipedia article nor is it explained in the article itself. It should be possible for someone to read a featured article on a subject with which one is unfamiliar without losing the will to live after a few sentences. JMcC (talk) 12:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response by Geuiwogbil

  • Jmcc, some of your notifications are untrue: User:Petepetepetepete, for example, has not "made comments about this article on its talk page". The only comments he has made of any relevance were two (1, 2) postings to the Village Pump. Please ensure that all your comments are entirely accurate. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 17:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • First rectifiable point: "the summary contains too much detail and yet does not summarise the whole article". Sub-point: What would you like covered in the lead that is not covered at present? What details would you like removed? Geuiwogbil (Talk) 15:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Second rectifiable point: the "key issue should be concisely and clearly stated in the first or second sentence". It is stated in the first and second sentences: the ESRB changed the rating; the ESRB did so because the game contained content not in the package Bethesda sent them. Now, the thought that the "publisher of a game was forced to re-rate a game because someone else had modified it without permission" is not true: the third party distributed a modification that unlocked an unused file via third party channels. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 15:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Third rectifiable point: "The article also uses jargon which is not linked to another Wikipedia article nor is it explained in the article itself." If you would identify this jargon, I could explain it. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 15:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some further issues not explicitly raised here, but previously mentioned on article talk:
  • There are "too many" quotations "interspersed with the text", making this article "difficult to read". Using "loads of" quotes also "calls into question" whether this is really a "neutral article" or if it just recites what "people say about themselves".--Nydas(Talk) 22:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sourcing isn't the problem, it's the way they're selected and worded that's the problem. The quotes used in this article (and the rest of the wording as well) make it seem like ESRB are a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats over-reacting. For example, repeatedly quotifying the phrase 'pertinent content' makes it seem more outlandish than it actually is.--Nydas(Talk) 09:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not yet satisfied. In this case, excessive quote use injects non-neutral points of view and blubbery bureaucratic language into the article. The quotes in this article make the ESRB seem like reactionary, small-minded twits. They're a government agency, so they can't use the sort of emotive language that their critics use, leading to a fundamental imbalance.--Nydas(Talk) 19:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for taking the time to review this article, Jmccc. I believe it would have been possible to resolve these issues on the article talk page before bringing them up to FAR. But its done, and we're here, so lets see what can be done. I do hope we can resolve these issues quickly and efficiently. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 15:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I notified the recent contributors using article stats script but as Geuiwogbil requested I have also informed the project group. Few other people seemed to make significant many contributions. I think much has to be done to this article rather than quick fixes, hence its nomination for a review. I do not want to spend too much time re-writing an article of minor importance. The summary is trying to tell the story rather give in three of four sentences an outline of the events and their importance. Geuiwogbil states that my attempt at summarising what the article is about was incorrect. This seems to reinforce my point. If I have not understood what the article is about from the summary, then the summary has failed to its job. The fact that only the bizarre ruling by the US agency applied to this game is an important point that should be in the summary if only to show that it is a parochial event. If you cannot find terms such as modder in a conventional dictionary, it needs a link or an explanation. I have never said that the quotations are a problem, though they do make the article more difficult to read. JMcC (talk) 16:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have rendered "independent modder" as "client". I'm not sure that captures all the reverse-engineering nuance of the original term, but it provides the basics. Another possible term: "consumer"? Geuiwogbil (Talk) 16:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • There was no general problem with your summary: you seem to have captured the basics of the affair. Where you were incorrect, though, was in detail. That is something that would have been resolved by closer reading, not something you could have taken in all at once. I am open to suggestions, however, on how you think the phrase might have been better rendered. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 16:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know you have not said that. I am bringing it up as an issue that others have noted in regards to the article, and as one which would perhaps be relevant to a FAR. This is a general review. Geuiwogbil (Talk) 16:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The summary is trying to tell the story rather [than?] give in three of [or?] four sentences an outline of the events and their importance." I'd like some clarification as to what this sentence means. You are referring to WP:LEAD, correct? Geuiwogbil (Talk) 16:37, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I made some edits, and I think the article is now up to FA standards. It is not abnormal for an article that has recently been featured to go for FAR. A lot of people who haven't read the article before read it then, and offer comments and suggestions. User:Krator (t c) 16:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, OK. Thanks for the clarification, Krator. (Krator has made some clarifying edits to the lead, and some dequotifications elsewhere.) Geuiwogbil (Talk) 16:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I have included a couple of links which I feel appropriate:

  1. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Featured_article_process_reformation_.2F_Recall_of_the_Featured_Article_Director while this discussion is about the FA procedure in general, started by NTK, it contains many comments on this particular articles quality.
  2. and of course, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for obvious reasons.

For my own to cents, I feel the tweaks above should be enough to fix any issues, and I worry that part of the problem is that some people just don't deem the topic suitable enough for FA. I myself almost fell into that trap. SGGH speak! 17:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - After reviewing the article, I have not been able to identify problems with the quality of sources. There are some areas where I feel the citation may have crept slightly over time, or where sentence structure has degraded over time. There are a large number of sentences that have been strung together with four or five commas. There are also a large number of quotes (even quotes within quotes) which could be rationalised. All of these issues could be resolved by a copyedit or peer review to bring it back up to scratch. If required, I would be happy to lend some assistance on this. Gazimoff (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - The sources are lacking in this article; there aren't any from non-gaming related organisations. Here's one from CNN: [1], offering a different perspective, concentrating on Take-Two Interactive. The political fallout also needs to be covered in more depth.--Nydas(Talk) 19:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's more concerning. The article states that the public at large were not aware of the event, inferring that it did not get picked up by the mainstream press and hence why none are sourced. If it was picket up by the mainstream press, who had a different take on the story, it should be included and the article rebalanced to take account of this. That's more than just a simple copyedit. Gazimoff (talk) 20:46, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I think the biggest flaw of the article is that for people not familiar with the ESRB or with video games, the two lead paragraphs (a) don't call out why this event is of any interest, and (b) are super dull (IMO), comprising a narrative instead of telling the reader why it's important. The reason this event riles up some video gamers is that the makers of the game got penalized because of a mod, which raises questions of fairness. Is it fair to rate a game based on content that is not reachable? (This nicely simple question is, unfortunately, almost mooted by the "hanging corpse" art, which, as far as I can tell from the article, is available in the game as normal content, so in the case of Oblivion it's not solely about unreachable content.) I'll try to take a crack at this in the coming week or two but my time is limited unfortunately. Tempshill (talk) 19:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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