Talk:Canvassing (Parks and Recreation)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Canvassing (Parks and Recreation)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Hey, there,

• The lead could use some copyediting, specifically, "... to seek supporting for an upcoming town meeting" and it can lose the "find they" in "but find they end up drawing more critics", for concision. I'd also add Leslie's job title to establish who she is. I assume the general reviews were from critics. Also, personally, I'd lose the comma before the "but" and put a no break space in 900 000. The cast are listed in the previous episode's article's lead and should be here as well.
• In the plot section, I'd again establish who Leslie is and who she's played by. A little more copyediting may help, I wouldn't start a sentence (first paragrah, last sentence) with "But", for example. There are some run on sentences which could be broken up and some others come across a little informal. I wouldn't characterize Tom as speaking like a hustler, as I recall the joke was that he was speaking like a Wallstreet character or, in any case, someone much further up the ladder than himself. Either way it's POV, so I'd try to find another way to phrase that. There's a contraction in there, "she's". "One leaving resident" is a little awkward.
• In production, it's not a .pfd copy of the meeting, it's a copy of the flyer for the meeting. That said, I'm not sure it's significant enough to include in the section at all. One, it's one prop of dozens created for the show. Two posting it on the website has more to do with marketing, and it's tangential even towards that. I'd emphasize the deleted scenes rather than that they were put on the official website. Start the sentence with something like, "Two scenes were cut from the episode...", maybe mentioning that they're available on the NBC website after the description since that doesn't have anything to do with the production either. In the article for the third episode it mentions that this was originally intended to be the third episode, that's worth mentioning here too. I'd also mention the episode order and deleted scenes briefly in the lead. Overall, I realize you don't have a lot to work with, people don't report on single television episodes much, but it's hard to characterize this as "broad coverage". I'm sure good articles have been passed with less, so I can live with that but, in future, it might be better to wait until after the DVD release so at least you might have some commentary tracks or interviews to build something off of before going for GA. Humbly suggested, of course.
• I see many television articles have cultural references sections but it comes across as pretty trivial to me. I guess I can let this slide seeing as it's only a GA review but if you could someone indicate the significance of the items that would be great. I'll at least recommend including that Leslie catches April and Mark during office hours, as sometimes readers skip directly to a specific section it helps to reestablish these kind of things. The MOS says the lead should summarize the entire article but I'm not sure how you'd summarize any of this there. Also, that should be "a children's adventure novel"
• A lot of blog references, which is fine when they're carried by newspapers, I believe, but, again, after the DVD release there'll be DVD review sites with articles too. Again I'd recommend a no break space. Why'd you change it to 2.2/7 instead of 2.5/8? (Also, I have no idea what those number mean.) The one in "1 million" should be spelled out. I like semicolons as much as the next guy but I'd recommend breaking up that sentence and rewording. Referring to the pilot episode as "the pilot episode" and then "'Pilot'" looks a little weird, I'd keep as "the pilot episode". I think you meant to say "the same" timeslot — timeslot doesn't need to be hyphenated. The references check out, although, TV Squad gives me pause. Their Wikipedia article doesn't indicate that they're any more reliable than any other random blog. I think the article can survive without their review.

Anyway, some good work here. I hope this is helpful and I believe the standard operating procedure is to leave this open for 7 days. Doctor Sunshine talk 00:31, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

• • I think I got everything. Thanks very much for the review, my Parks and Recreation articles aren't getting read very quickly. You are probably right about the idea of waiting until DVD, but I also think there's some merit in updating the articles as quickly as possible with the best information possible. Regarding your comments on the Cultural References section, I can understand the positive and negative arguments against it, which is why I only ever include information that is cited properly with legitimate sources. The only suggestion of yours that I really disagreed with was listing the cast in the lead section. I listed them in the Pilot article because they were first introduced in that episode, but I don't think they should all be listed again in "Canvassing". Would we then have to list them in every single episode? I also think it's a bit redundant since the actors are all identified in the plot summary as well. If this is a sticking point for the GAN approval I will add it, but I don't really think it's necessary. Thanks again! — Hunter Kahn _(c) 00:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you did too. Glad to do it. Yeah, this one was pushing two months, I noticed. On the cast, my thinking was that every article should be able to stand on its own, the reader not having to click around to find out what they want to know but when in doubt check some FAs. So, you're right. I'm sure it would get tedious reading the regular cast over and over in every episode's article, especially long running series like The Simpsons. I guess the thinking must be just about everyone is going to click through the main article to get to an episode anyway. The article looks great and congratulations on your 25th(? Wow, that's the silver one, innit?) GA. (I'm not going to bother with one of those templates but it'd be all s.) Doctor Sunshine talk 07:26, 14 June 2009 (UTC)