Wikipedia:Peer review/Randall Flagg/archive5

Randall Flagg

Previous peer review

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for February 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like for it to become a featured article sometime in the future. Other editors and I have put a lot of work into it, and I would appreciate any further help into making it FA status as I believe it's come very close.

Thanks, CyberGhostface (talk) 22:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Review from BuddingJournalist (talk · contribs) Prose will need improvement before FA status can be achieved. Let's take a look at the lead:
  • "Flagg has appeared in various novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others as in a brief cameo." Replace various with a specific number. Latter half of the sentence has parallelism issues; you can say, for example, "sometimes...other times" or "in some novels...in others". Remove "as" in "as in a brief cameo". This sentence is ungrammatical at the moment.
  • "He often goes under different names, most of which can be abbreviated by the initials R.F." "goes under" is rather colloquial. "can be abbreviated by" is an odd way of expressing this idea.
  • "an accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark" Need a citation for this quotation.
  • "His goals typically center on spreading destruction and causing conflict, usually through bringing down civilizations." Seems like the ideas in this sentence are switched; I'm not familiar with the character, but wouldn't the destruction of civilization seem like the logical end goal, and "spreading destruction and causing conflict" be the means? Also, more word choice issues here. Try a noun ("the destruction of" or similar) rather than "bringing down". "causing conflict" is weak; I'd suggest sowing.
  • "who wreaked havoc after a plague decimated most of the population" Unclear. Did he cause the plague or was he a symptom of the plague?
  • " from reaching the Tower to claim it for himself" Not enough context to establish what this means for readers unfamiliar with the novels.
  • "The Dark Tower expanded upon Flagg's backstory and motivations, as well as connecting his previous appearances together." Parallelism
  • "Flagg has made appearances in a television miniseries adaptation of The Stand" Careful with the out-of-universe prose. This makes it seem like Flagg is an actor. Maybe "was featured"?
  • "as well as having key roles" more verb parallelism issues.
  • "image of a man in cowboy boots, denim jeans and jacket always walking the roads that "came out of nowhere" when he was still in college" Awkward and imprecise. Quotation needs a citation, but the quotation just leaves readers pondering its meaning.
  • I'd recommend a top-to-bottom copyedit based on what I've seen. Go through the entire article carefully, examining sentences thoroughly. BuddingJournalist 19:25, 3 March 2009 (UTC)