Talk:L.A. Noire/GA2

GA Reassessment

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This article had two tags on it. One for the plot being too detailed and one for the reception section being a quote farm. I fixed up the plot section as best I could, but the reception section is a bit more tricky. The whole section is pretty much a series of quotes and needs to be completely rewritten. AIRcorn (talk) 23:12, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

• Agreed that the Reception is poorly written (see advice at Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections) but the question is whether such writing is afoul of the GA criteria. Unless you're making a copyright argument, it's a little bit of a stretch. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 18:23, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
  • @Czar: Excessive quoting is a copyright issue and a prose issue (Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style and may be a copyright infringement). Also see the fifth bullet point under reception at the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Video games. These are both issues that fail the good article criteria. It is a common problem in all reception sections (video games, films, TV etc), but this is one of the worst I have come across. Apart from the first paragraph (two sentences) every other one in this section is a long quote. So no stretch, and if the article wasn't in reasonable shape (after I fixed up the plot) I would quick fail it. As you are one of the more prolific video game editors I am a little worried that you don't realise this. AIRcorn (talk) 20:02, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

I literally wrote the MoS section you referenced above, so I don't think you need be worried. And though I think WT:VG would say I'm rather known for being a stickler about Reception section prose, I still wouldn't quickfail on overquoting. It's within a reviewer's discretion to say this fails the the GA "well-written" criterion, but I've also seen plenty of GAs pass with Reception sections like this. So yeah, semantics. It should be cleaned up, but as I said, I think you'd have to position this as a copyright issue in terms of what exactly fails the GA criteria. czar 20:11, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Are you sure we are looking at the same section. There are 818 words (not including the sales sub section or heading). Of those 501 words (61%) are direct quotations. A lot of the rest are just leading up to these quotations, i.e IGN said. That includes the first paragraph which is an introduction and the last that gives sales figures. The middle is almost exclusively made up of Revierer one states "......". Reviewer two concludes "......". Reviewer three states "..." etc It quite clearly fails the MOS guidelines I referenced and the WP:GACR (which I am well familiar with). If you are a stickler I am even more worried. AIRcorn (talk) 20:34, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

🙄 My only point was that it should be discussed as a copyvio issue, not a matter of prose czar 21:44, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

• I tried to remove the quotes but keep the same sentiments, but it definitely needs a copyedit as I wasn't able to devote as much time as I'd like to it. @Czar: Any chance that you could take a look at what I wrote and clean it up a little bit? @Aircorn: Let me know if you have any comments or concerns and I'll try to directly address them. Don't think this article should be thrown out as a GA just because of the reception section and I want to work to keep it. Nomader (talk) 17:41, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

I am not on any witcher hunt trying to delist articles. I am just working through old Good Articles with cleanup tags. Fixing what I can where I can and trying to get other editors interested in fixing ones I can't. I am not in any rush to delist this and will have a look at copy editing myself if czar or you don't get around to it. The rest of the article looks good, although I wouldn't mind if someone double checked the plot. I only played the game for a while (barely scratching the surface according to the plot here) so was just working off what was already presented when I trimmed it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aircorn (talk • contribs) 20:03, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

No worries! You did a great work so far with the plot section, and let's be real, none of this would have happened if you hadn't nominated this to GAR so you have no complaints from me. I'm going to keep tweaking over the next few days as well, I'll put any other changes I make on this page. Nomader (talk) 20:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

It's a good first step, but it still reads like potpourri. Probably needs to be rewritten from the sources. I'd recommend splitting into themed paragraphs—perhaps one on the facial recognition technology and/or cinematic qualities, one on the gameplay, one on the plot, each with signposting/topic sentences. (Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections has advice to this effect.) Happy to take another look once you make another pass czar 20:35, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Yep, this was very much a "take the quotes and make them not quotes" pass-- I'll work on it in the next couple of days. Nomader (talk) 23:13, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

@Czar: Sometimes you've just gotta say you don't have it in you to do it and my real life job is becoming a bit more pressing recently. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to do the ce of the reception section if you want to take a crack at it. If life opens up I'll just do it and then note it here. Nomader (talk) 21:32, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Thx for the ping but I'm also unlikely to spend time on this any time soon czar 02:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

At the end of the day the good article process is just a means to article improvement. It may lose its greem spot, but it has been improved, which is the main thing. Thanks to everyone for their help. I will run through all the GAR's I started over the next few days and close them. AIRcorn (talk) 03:08, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• @Nomader and Czar: I rearranged the paragraphs a bit to try and improve flow and theme. It is not perfect and I agree that someone will have to actually look into the reviews to expand on the themes. I have done all I am willing though. I think it is good enough at the moment, but will give you two (and others if watching) a chance to respond first. AIRcorn (talk) 04:42, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

"some reviewers thought that the game had too many redundancies" only one source is cited for "some". Ya, it still reads as disjointed but if you withdraw your nom, it's not something I'd pursue. czar 09:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I think this is much, much better. Still has some work but I wouldn't delist it anymore. Nomader (talk) 14:38, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Kept General agreement that although not perfect it doesn't need to be delisted. AIRcorn (talk) 00:09, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

  Aircorn - You may need to officially close this GA, unless there is more information/changes needed regarding this being a GA (Not jumping on your heels, but stumbled across this conversation, and it seems like it's run it's course. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:43, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi again Lee. I have closed it. That was what I was trying to get across with my bolded kept above. I updated the template at the talk page here. I usually integrate it into the article history, but am trying to get a bot to do it so thought I would leave that one as an example of what the template looks like without integration. AIRcorn (talk) 19:43, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Aircorn - I assumed you had closed this; but it still shows as being live on the article itself (As it is still showing as "under GA reassessment". Do you not have to add {{subst:GAR/result|result=outcome}} ~~~~ to the GA page to get a bot to do the rest? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:53, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

The wording on the talk page says The article was kept as a GA. If someone takes up my bot request that will just be removed and become part of the article history. If no one does then I will do it manually at some point. There is no need to do anything else to this page. I suppose you could archive it if you want with {{archive top}} {{archive bottom}} if you were worried people would think it was still open. AIRcorn (talk) 20:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

FYI, just followed the instructions on the GAR page. Hope it worked, but we should be good to go. Nomader (talk) 00:54, 8 May 2018 (UTC)