Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Necrid/archive3

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

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 14:47, 9 June 2009 [1].

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Necrid

Nominator(s): Kung Fu Man (talk) 11:24, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Necrid/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Necrid/archive2
• Featured article candidates/Necrid/archive3
• Featured article candidates/Necrid/archive4

I am nominating this for featured article for a third time after tackling any and all issues mentioned in the previous nominations. The prose should now hopefully be up to snuff, and the content of the article sufficient for a FA status article. All resources have been exhausted and so forth, all sources checked for reliability, and all images meet fair-use rationale. As usual any issues come up, mention them and I'll tackle them.Kung Fu Man (talk) 11:24, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

• Support - The article is much improved since its previous FAC, and as the prose was the main problem last time I am pleased to support this nomination now. Graham Colm ^Talk 15:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support, my opinion hasn't changed from the last nomination. — Levi van Tine (t – c) 22:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment. I just copyedited the article, and am leaning towards supporting, but this confused me: "A physical manifestation of the same energy contained within Soul Edge, that is controlled through the jewel on his chest." Does "that" refer to "Maleficus" from the preceding sentence? —TKD [talk][c] 23:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Combined it with the previous sentence, does it flow better?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
    • I added a missing "and". Now it works. —TKD [talk][c] 12:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Check that; I ended up breaking up the sentence again and repeating "Maleficus" in order to avoid ambiguity. —TKD [talk][c] 13:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
      • And reworked again, along with the rest of the article, for flow. The one image in the article has a proper description page and meets the NFCC as increasing the user's understanding of the character's visual appearance. I'd prefer that the references consistently use the cite templates, but that's, in my view, a minor detail. The article appears well-researched and neutral to me, so support. —TKD [talk][c] 02:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support; I supported it last time and it's even better now. Tezkag72 (talk) 23:43, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comments:
  • If you're using {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, and the rest, you should really just use {{cite web}} for the other references and have them all formatted out uniformly.
    • This might be a problem for a short bit...the internet connection at my home has died limiting my time online until I get it fixed. So it might be a short bit before I can convert those...--Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
      • All raw url citations fixed and changed to use cite web. That just took a helluva while to pull off (that and I wanted to finish doing it for Rufus (Street Fighter) first :X).--Kung Fu Man (talk) 20:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
  • "Some reviewers have called Necrid one of the best characters introduced to the series; others deem him one of the worst." - can you just say who instead of the nebulous "some"?
    • Expanded the sentence, does it read clearly? It's kinda early and I was consciously trying to avoid repetitive wording :X--Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Kung, I'm going to make a virtual wiki-stick I can whack you with with big bold letters that sink "DELINK THEM WORDS!" If someone doesn't know what "visual appeal", "power plant", "resurrected" and "limited edition" are, they need to be smacked over to Simple English wiki. :)
    • Ouch :( –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
      • Alrighty, got them delinked.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
  • The prose is still choppy and a bit too passive for my tastes, but I'm not going to torture you by posting line-by-line "spot the corrections" bits at FAC... this time. I'll get to it at some point in the near future. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 03:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
    • I've run through the prose again with an eye towards flow and active voice. —TKD [talk][c] 02:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
      • It looks fine to me now, but Ling is prolly a tougher critic for these things, so I defer to him. That basically takes care of my concerns. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 22:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
• Grammar and punctuation errors further copy edit needed. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 08:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Given that three different copyeditors have been over the text in the last 24 hours, examples would be helpful. —TKD [talk][c] 12:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
• These are from this morning; may already have been fixed. Sorry too busy to do more:

• "While there, his body and mind were warped until he escaped." Warping causes escape?
  • That sentence is rather hard to confuse, but expanded it to try and make it clearer.
• "it was the result a collaboration"
  • adding missing "of"
• "built on—and completed—the design" Purpose of the dashes?
  • Removed the dashes.
• "that the sword's spirit Inferno" punct.
  • Added commas.
• "A physical manifestation of the same energy contained within Soul Edge, that is controlled through the jewel on his chest." Not a sentence.
  • This was fixed by TKD

• manila bulletin? Is this a common source for game reviews? If not, then it makes you look kinda desperate for a source that offers praise...
  • It has game reviews, and is also used in Talim. There's nothing desperate about it, just other sources were repeating the same points.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 16:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
• Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 16:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
• Leaning Oppose:
• 1a, needs a great deal of rewriting.
  • After this many copyedits this sounds...rather odd. But pointing out any issues might help readily.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
    • To be fair, I had a couple simple goofs that I corrected (I'm not the master of cutting and pasting text around in an edit window), and I found a few more redundancies and odd grammatical constructions. —TKD [talk][c] 05:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
• Why are the promotion and critical reception sections under a subheading "cultural impact"? This game character's cultural impact is not significantly different from zero, and none of the text in those two sections asserts otherwise.
  • This would be the first time I've heard of any complaint regarding it, though I'm not sure how becoming synonymous with "shit" for a time amongst people couldn't be considered cultural impact. The section is used without qualm under the same name by several other articles, include FA character article Cortana.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Critical reception is info directly related to the game, not "culture" in general. That someone happened to call the character "shitty" obviously doesn't mean that it's directly associated with feces. Same deal with promo and merchandise. It's all about commercial depictions of the character in its original context as a video game character. Trying to call that "cultural impact" is merely misleading. Peter ^Isotalo 16:53, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
• Why is 1UP.com mentioned in the lede but not the body? Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 03:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
  • It's mentioned there through Retronauts, which is a part of 1UP.com (which is also pointed out in the prose by describing them as "1UP.com's Retronauts".--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comments

• I sincerely hope that I don't have to go plowing through every single cited source. I found a couple clunkers after a moment's search... For example, "Soul Calibur II Updated Impressions" at GameSpot is cited for two assertions. The first is that "McFarlane received sole credit for [Necrid]". However, this is never mentioned at the linked subpage of Gamespot. The second is "GameSpot shared the sentiment in their review of the game" What sentiment? The nearest one is that Necrid is "filler", and that is clearly not mentioned in GameSpot... are there more of these problems?

• "Necrid, the other McFarlane character", that line is pretty blatant and that paragraph follows the one on Spawn. Retronaut's statements might've been a better citation (they referred to it up front as him "polluting" all three versions with his design), but most of the references cited cite him as the sole creator without noting it was actually a collaboration.
• "His monstrous form makes him look somewhat out of place among Soul Calibur II's cast." That's the line being cited there, which was a similar sentiment to the previous one (that he looked out of place). Looking at it now though I've changed "the sentiment" to "similar sentiment". Just bad wording on my part, a lot of this was done in the wee hours of the morning one night.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

• Lotsa talk about how necrid was "unbalanced" but no real explanation of how or why. Unbalanced visually, or in terms of power [google for "When his full arsenal is employed, Necrid is hands-down the most powerful character in Soul Calibur II"] or in terms of move-sets [google for "if Namco introduced new move sets that weren't well-researched, which in turn broke the character balance (ala Necrid in Soul Calibur II)"; I saw another one, too, but didn't copy it..]

• Since the opinion is his gameplay is unbalanced reworded the sentence to encompass that, does it work?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

• I did a small amount of rewriting. Revert if you dislike. I think the whole thing needs more rewriting for flow etc. I saw grammatical errors as well. I fixed a couple, but I think others remain. Gotta work now. Cheers. Ling.Nut (talk) 09:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

• Only changed hairless back to bald, seems to imply something different. Thank you for fixing the misquote, not sure if that was my fault or an old copyedit, just know it's been there for ages...--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The bit about only McFarlane being credited is.. well, if it isn't WP:OR (and I think it may be), then it's certainly "on the warning track". The other problem I mentioned was not fixed by the "similar sentiment" hedging you employed. Similar to what? No one else mentioned "filler", and since that is the last clause before the cite, that's the sentiment that logic would suggest that others share. In general, great care/precision should be used when citing things; you run the risk of putting words in peoples' mouths. Of course, no game reviewer is gonna care. No Wikipedia reader is gonna care, either. I'm trying to holding you to academic standards, and perhaps I shouldn't be trying to do so... even so, parts of the article are still too vague, choppy etc. Forex, what does "out of instinct" mean? What instinct? Why does he have this instinct? It's far too vague. I saw one source somewhere that said that in his initially mentally altered state, Necrid perceived all other people as enemies (sorry, I didn't write it down!). If you're gonna try to mention some vague "out of instinct" idea, you need to explain it clearly, and you need to cite it very carefully. And so on. Ling.Nut (talk) 02:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose, 1c. I posted some comments about the prose on the article Talk page after the last failed FAC. I'm unsure if these were addressed satisfactorily (there was no response) but I'd like to look at the research and sourcing. After considering Ling.Nut's concerns above, I decided to deep-dive into a sample section to examine the quality of research and accuracy of representation. I picked "Gameplay". Based on what I see, I'm going to oppose this nomination until a neutral party can audit the sources and make sure they've been accurately represented. If this section is any indication, a lot of work is needed. Examples:
  • "Using a fighting style Yotoriyama described as 'horrific splendor'" is a mischaracterization of what Yotoriyama says. He refers to Necrid's fighting skills, which is quite a different matter. You even wikilink "fighting style" which leaves the reader with the impression that the source said anything at all about fighting style.. which is a fair bit apart from fighting "skills". This is sloppy application of research that basically produces WP:OR.
  • "Through the jewel on his chest, he can control Maleficus" The source you list for this statement mentions neither jewels nor Maleficus.
    • I'm...actually not sure how that happened. The references must have gotten mixed up somehow. Fixing...
  • In fact, with statement like "creaming pants", it's a wonder Minkley is considering a good source or serious journalism at all.
    • He's a writer for Eurogamer as well, which the wikiproject notes as a reliable source too.
  • "The majority of Necrid's attacks are copies or derivatives of those used by other characters in the series." Original research, no source.
    • That's actually meant to be covered right here as a reference, though the IGN reference works better for it.
      • The only thing I see there even remotely close to what you write in the article is "His borrowing of certain moves and weapons" which is a huge leap. I hope you understand where I'm coming from here; this example is quite indicative of how liberally the sources have been interpreted throughout the article. It needs a lot of work to get up to an acceptable standard of research and sourcing. --Laser brain (talk) 17:57, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
  • "However, his weapon appears and disappears into his hands ..." I wasn't going to comment on prose, but...
    • What's wrong with this? Tezkag72 (talk) 15:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
  • As for the rest of the two paragraphs, sourced to game guides, which is probably fine for basic statements. But, what is GameNOW? A magazine? If so, page numbers, publisher, etc? A web site? URL?

--Laser brain (talk) 17:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• • • Responded to some of the above.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:38, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• This nomination has sucked in reviewing resources for 26 days. Please prepare future nominations to a higher standard before launching them; that would be fairer to other nominators and to our hard-pressed reviewers. Tony (talk) 15:07, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

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