Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Peer review/Black Marsh

Black Marsh

I've been working on this article on and off for a month or so, receiving some good feedback from the WikiProject The Elder Scrolls. I just did a quick copyedit and was wondering what you fellows thought the article would need to get it to Good Article quality or greater. I believe the key issues would relate to WP:WAF, formatting and section breakdown, the concision of the article and the lead section, but, really, any contribution would be great. Geuiwogbil 19:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh wow. Oh WOW. This is something else. I can't tell whether to send it to VfD or FAC. Unfortunately, the more I read, the more I lean towards the former. Then again, I didn't particularly care for Spira (Final Fantasy X) either so I may not be the best judge of these things. It's well-written, if a little dense, but I don't yet see how the region itself passes WAF or FICT. For example, there's a mention of a PC Gamer review that refers to Morrowind's racial tensions. But that doesn't have anything to do with the Black Marsh, because it's part of the series' history as a whole. A note on the difficulty of animating the Argonians: again, nothing to do with the Marsh... Egads, theres a reference to the TES forums. Ew. Nope, not seeing anything else that isn't documentation gleaned directly (or indirectly) from the games and their literature. Conclusion: It's an amazing piece of fancruft. Send it to an Elder Scrolls wiki where they actually want to see a massive deconstruction of every piece of information ever put to pixel regarding the area. Nifboy 21:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you find the density a particular problem? Any particular passages you could cite out? I'm somewhat sorry that this article's subject has not been influential enough to merit significant outside contribution in anything other than cursory ways which tie in only barely with the interior threads of the fictional universe, but that is the problem with so many things these days, isn't it? I believe there was a discussion some time ago as to which parts of the TES universe deserved to be kept, and I believe the series of regions associated with the series made the cut. If you want to bring that issue up, I believe there are other venues. Meanwhile, I believe this page is primarily, and I'm something of a n00b so I might be wrong, a forum to approach various methods of improving articles. Do you think this should perhaps be merged into a greater article, on all the regions of the ES universe? The lead paragraph of this article and all the other lead paragraphs would serve quite well in such an organization. In any case, are there any stylistic concerns you want to bring up? Thank you for your contribution, you've been a charm. :) Geuiwogbil 23:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The density is really only a problem because there is so much volume to the article. Consider that there is two or three times the text dedicated to Argonians than its own article has; this isn't a problem with the article itself. Rather, the problem is the redunancy and disorganization of information amongst all TES articles, which I usually find is a symptom of sprawling topics. Consider the history of {{RuneScape}} which got far less mercy than TES ever will. Merging can be a fine prescription, but repeating this mess shouldn't be necessary to accomplish it. Nifboy 00:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Notability is not a policy. WAF and FICT are not policies. It is policies what determines allowed content, not advices, guidelines and essays - they are only designed to make policy compliance easier. As long as an article is policy-compliant, all guidelines go to rest. This article is among the most policy compliant among ones related to fictional universes, so, if you want to criticize one, this is the one you shouldn't. It's generally a good idea to restrict comments to ones on actual content, not on fictional problems (since they also hardly pass WP:FICT), just for the future. Thanks for the useful notices, anyway. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:35, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

For your perusal, I submit: Tikal the Echidna and its associated talk page. Note it has failed GA (and FAC, several times, as I recall) for exactly the reasons I specified above: Failure to provide real-world context and information (WAF and FICT). If you want to pass GA/FAC this is not the subject to do it with. Nifboy 00:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

In any case, GA is not an end by itself (and this article is not nearly close to FAC anyway). It doesn't really matter how many articles pass voting at some wikipedian group, it only matters how many really satisfy these standarts. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 00:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the article. :) The FA submission did not seem to particularly hinge on the issue of real-world relevance, and instead fell on section 2a, and the issues of referencing. Only one editor mentioned real-world relevance, and that editor did not think to even sign his comment. The meat of your suggestion here, though, was really about the talk page on the article, beginning where Hoary tells the article it cannot ever bring itself to be a good article, ignoring the previous section which stated "what I saw is very good. Referencing the problem areas and please re-nominate!"

But, while we're on the issue, I feel like making a completely roundabout mention to another article for the purposes of instructing someone I implicitly feel has not understood the policies and guidelines of our encyclopedia. Have you checked out the Bulbasaur page? I'm not one to bring up old disputes, especially ones that have spilt so much digital ink, but the article simply fails every test I know for notability. It isn't even a good article. It begins by noting Bulbasaur's place in a fictional world, a warning bell if I've ever heard one. It generally fails to convey the impression that Bulbasaur has ever been noted outside the fictional universe. A promising reference is made to Bulbasaur by Time, but the article merely mentions the name Bulbasaur once! That one reference consists of the entirety of real-world references to Bulbasaur! The remaining 32 in-line citations variously refer to the in-universe material itself or material gleaned from those in-universe sources. Wow. We have episode summaries, pokedex entries, game guides...and a reference describing the Pokemon series as one of the highest selling the world has ever seen. It doesn't even mention Bulbasaur. Impressive. Let's look at the content of the article too, we might find some real-world info nestled in there with all the cruft.

I begin hopeful, but as I read further it gets worse and worse. "Biological characteristics"? Of a fictional creature? You must be pulling my leg. But no, we have quotes from the video games and anime, giving such invaluably encyclopedic tidbits as "When battling in the video games and anime, trainers can release the stored solar energy as a powerful Solarbeam attack. Bulbasaur can also attack using seeds from this bulb, sapping health from the opponent. Bulbasaur are able to extend two vines from themselves, both for attacking and for manipulating objects." I move on, wounded from the cruftiness of the whole passage, to the next section, hoping to find some real-world respite. Oh, how naieve I am. A whole seven paragraph section, the weightiest of the article, dealing with Bulbasaur in the video games. I skip it. Nonsense. The next one's no better. Bulbasaur in the Anime. Shudder. Skip that as well. Next: Bulbasaur in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. That still exists? I limp on, ragged and wearied by the Out-Universe perspective on entirely In-Universe events, to the last section: In Other Media. Perhaps here we will finally find Bulbasaur's lasting influence on Pop Culture, something so salvage from this un-Encyclopedic minutae of Poke-facts. "Bulbasaur is also featured in several Pokémon manga. In Pokémon: Pikachu Shocks Back, Electric Pikachu Boogaloo, and Surf’s Up, Pikachu!, which loosely parallel the storyline of the anime, Pikachu is separated from Ash temporarily, and travels with a Bulbasaur to a secret Pokémon village in the mountains." Joy. More crufty facts from pieces of the Poke-universe. Verifiable? Referenced? Stylistically correct? Yes. Encyclopedic? No. Hey, he was a McDonalds toy in a foreign country! That's certainly enough real-world relevance for me! Now every Mattel car can have a FA!

The whole article, not a single scrap of interpretation or real-world relevance, except that one Time piece. I mean, all this cruft is certainly acceptable. It just isn't good. Having more than a few paragraphs that don't directly relate to our world isn't good encyclopedic writing. My conclusion: A well-referenced piece of gamecruft. Transwiki to the Pokemon Encyclopedia, where they actually want to see a massive deconstruction of every piece of information ever put to pixel regarding the creature. The Japanese wikipedia has one article for all Pokemon. Why don't we? Speedy merge and delete.

Seems I got completely off-track. Where were we? Oh yes, a peer review. Do you have any specific areas of concern regarding the prose? Geuiwogbil 01:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Nope, my concerns have been made known. Nifboy 02:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your contribution. ^_^ Geuiwogbil 11:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I feel a bit like arguing on it at the moment, just on myself. You press heavily on the fact that this article, as well as Bulbasaur, describe fictional universe. But what is the difference between information about some place in works of fiction and some real place? The obvious difference is that you may actually visit a real place, but can only read, hear, or watch something about a fictional one. However, there are a lot of places in the real world you can never visit. You can't visit Sparta or Troy, you can't visit Zlatoust-36 or Shikhany, you can't visit Charon or Pluto, you can't even be sure that they ever existed. You can only read about them. So, for you, they are same as fictional, and only difference is based on a single bit "real/not" set by an arbitrary selected source, and therefore imaginary. So there is no actual difference. There is another one, though; another one which sets the very requirement of notability. It is how many people are interested in learning about a certain subject. In listed cases, they never can visit these locations, only read about them, but sometimes they are interested in them. That's why Bulbazaur has a featured status, and why Shikhany will never be - because the former is more interesting to people, and so more notable. And, believe it or not, Black Marsh is also more notable today than Shikhany. Hey, BTW, isn't it towncruft? CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure you guys are thrilled to hear from me again (^_^), but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't being misunderstood: The quality of the prose is really really good. I just have such an organizational bug that makes me see this article as two parts History of Tamriel and three parts Argonian (and maybe one-half part Arena) that I don't see much left over for the marsh itself. Nifboy 17:09, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to comment, the lead might be broken up into two paragraphs. It's a pretty chunky block of text at the moment. --Zeality 18:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I've been orbiting around and coming back again once more to the site, so I haven't had much time to check over the article in the meantime, and thus have probaly suffered a permanent disconnect with the prose. But, from my current vantage-point, it seems that your comments are reasonable. I've trimmed off the excessive Native Life section and shuffled it in with the "Races of The Elder Scrolls" and "Argonian" articles in a jumbled fashion, and removed a paragraph from the history section commenting on the role of Argonians in the Empire outside of Black Marsh. (Which, as a matter of course, should not be included in the Black Marsh article.) Split the opening paragraph clean in two as well. A particular problem with the lead is that it seems to summarize the article in a different method than the article itself. Is this a bad thing?

Anyways, I've attempted to address your concerns in that half-hearted way which is so typical of me. Any thoughts on the furtherance of your schemes or on any problems that have cropped up during my weak reshuffling of the article? Thanks again for your comments! ^_^ Geuiwogbil 23:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)