Talk:AtariWriter/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Viriditas (talk · contribs) 23:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

• Reviewer note: I have downloaded the Furr 2016 interview by Savitz as an AI-generated transcript by Riverside for reference purposes to crosscheck and verify the material in use. Viriditas (talk) 01:20, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• Note: I expect to have this finished in 24 hours. I will be dipping in and out within that time period. Viriditas (talk) 01:39, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  Working on finishing and wrapping up this review in the next three hours. Viriditas (talk) 22:02, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well, I thought I would be able to finish this. I think I’m about 90% complete, but I’ll have to drop it for the moment and come back to it later or tomorrow. Apologies. Viriditas (talk) 01:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  Final read through and copyedits in progress. Viriditas (talk) 20:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Comments

Infobox

• What was the thought process behind choosing the current infobox image instead of the original box front, cartridge, or screen shots over at Inverse ATASCII? Viriditas (talk) 00:55, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
• Initial release 1982; 41 years ago. I'm not seeing this in the rest of the article. Body text says "1.0 was released to production in the spring of 1983". Perhaps this is a typo? Viriditas (talk) 01:35, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  As far as I can tell, "initial release" is used here to mean any period within the pre-alpha to release window ("Programming took place during the summer of 1982 and internal testing took place during the fall of 1982"). So I assume this is not a typo. Would be nice to have clarification on this. Viriditas (talk) 22:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  I still find this confusing as it appears, based on other sources, to have had an official release in 1982, but we don’t see any indication of this in the article. Please clarify. Viriditas (talk) 01:05, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Lead

Resolved

• The wording of the lead is problematic for me, but I'm wondering if this is my own bias, perhaps from an American English POV. Examples:

• The program was fast and easy to use, while still allowing the creation of fairly complex documents. While still allowing for the creation of fairly complex documents? Viriditas (talk) 07:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
• It was a huge success for the platform, with at least 800,000 examples sold. Examples? That sounds so strange. Do you mean units? Viriditas (talk) 07:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
• An author of an add-on printer pack estimated he sold 25,000 copies through the Atari Program Exchange and direct. Does "direct" here refer to Direct selling or something else? A final upgrade was AtariWriter 80 of 1989, which added support for the XEP80 80-column display. "A final upgrade was" reads strangely. Would it help to write "A final upgrade was released in 1989 as AtariWriter 80"? Viriditas (talk) 23:29, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• Note, I fixed the lead for word flow and prose. Please review my changes. Viriditas (talk) 19:47, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

AtariWriter

• This did not include any foreign language versions, French, Spanish, German and Italian, or the later versions like Plus and 80.[12] Given about 4 million machines sold in total,[13] this represents a significant portion of the entire Atari fleet. I note there is no source at the end of the paragraph. Is this a WP:CALC or an unsourced statement? How do you think this should be handled? Will others see this as OR? Viriditas (talk) 01:29, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Printer drivers

• The decision to only support Atari printers was a terrible one, one that every product review harped on. Factually, I don't have a problem with this; but we are supposed to use a more formal, encyclopedic tone. Don't assert that the choice of printer support was a terrible one, attribute it. Of course, you do this ("one that every product review harped on") but it should be stated in that context from the beginning ("Every product review noted that Atari's singular support for their own printers alone was a bad decision"). Just an example, but you get the picture. Viriditas (talk) 21:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

AtariWriter 80

• The program was apparently completed in November 1987, but for unknown reasons was not released until well into the late summer of 1988.

• Are you sure the reasons are unknown? Black Monday occurred the month before, in October. My recollection from that time is that the economy didn't improve for many years after that. Certainly, that would explain the delay. Are there refs to support this? Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

ST Writer

• Concerned about the same issue that caused the Atari 800 to be seen dismissively, they had programmer Dan Oliver port the existing assembly language. Please remember to prompt the reader, as they may have no idea what you are talking about. Briefly remind us what the issue was that led to the dismissive comments. Was it memory? A lack of business software? Whatever it was, say that. Viriditas (talk) 00:26, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
• By this time it had garnered a major following of its own, and the replacements were seen as second rate in comparison.

• What does "it" refer to here? This could be confusing. Viriditas (talk) 01:44, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

• He continued releasing the product through a number of major versions, even adding a limited GUI for menu access, with the last releases well into the 1990s. Any citation available for the last statement? Viriditas (talk) 22:21, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Reception

• It looks like you sorted the reception section by publisher and date, but have you considered restructuring and grouping it instead by the type of criticism? The benefit of this kind of approach for the reader is mostly in efficiency, in that they don't have to wade through the same type of idea or feature in each paragraph, but instead can read about it once. For example, you mention ease of use in multiple paragraphs. Instead of grouping these paragraphs by individual publishers and date, you could instead present the information by benefits and drawbacks. Just something to consider. Obviously, the retrospective, summary review in the seventh paragraph doesn't need to be moved or grouped. Viriditas (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• The product is described as being easy to use and foolproof due to the many checks to prevent data loss. Many readers won't understand what "many checks to prevent data loss" means. Please consider using different words. Viriditas (talk) 19:26, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Description

• Why do you put a description of the software at the end of the article? This seems odd to me. Is this a standard layout for software-related articles? Viriditas (talk) 20:06, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• The description section appears fully sourced in the bibliography, but isn't referenced in the section. I take it this is because the description is being used analogously like a synopsis or plot section, and while this may be standard, I don't think the analogy holds. The reason this works for literature or art is because the subject of the article is the primary source and is easy to verify. But if you try to make the analogy that the software is the the primary source, the analogy falls apart because the software is antiquated and difficult to verify, let alone run without an emulator. If this is standard practice for software-related articles, I'm not going to object, but I did want to make a note of my concern. Viriditas (talk) 20:43, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Notes

Resolved

• According to Furr, they contracted with Datasoft. According to earlier versions of this document, they hired Robinson after his agreement with Datasoft ran out. It is likely this refers to later versions of the program, which were written by a different company started by Robinson. Additional references here would be useful. It's not exactly clear what you are talking about. Please consider rewriting this note. What do you mean by "this document"? Not sure if we need "additional references here would be useful". Viriditas (talk) 19:53, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  If this is intended as a self-reference to the article history, then please remove it per MOS:SELFREF. I'm not sure why this is even relevant without external sources. When I run into issues like this on articles, I will move the material to a new section on the talk page so that it can be preserved. I suggest you do the same. Viriditas (talk) 19:05, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

• I removed the substantial entirety of the self-reference, which was out of place. If you wish to restore this info, please do so in a way that doesn't refer to previous versions of the page history, and instead focus on the general topic instead. There are ways to create a well-formed footnote that will preserve the original information you wished to convey. Viriditas (talk) 22:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Citations

• I don't understand why you use page numbers haphazardly. At first, I thought it was because you used the full page numbers in the bibliography, which makes logical sense. But then I noticed you switched back and forth. I recommend doing one or the other. In this case, just add the page numbers to the citations so that it is consistent. I had to track down a quote because you misspelled a word. Having the page number would have made it faster to review. Viriditas (talk) 20:36, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  I mostly fixed this issue. Viriditas (talk) 01:01, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

External links

• Includes TV advertisement with Alan Alda. I'm surprised there's nothing about the marketing and advertising, including this ad, in the article. At the bare minimum, you can mention the ads (if only using them as primary sources), but my guess is that there's good secondary sources on the subject. Viriditas (talk) 20:01, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  Additional examples of ads found at Inverse ATASCII, as you are already aware, so there’s a lot for its own potential section. You also don’t talk about actual cost. Viriditas (talk) 01:02, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  Just so I'm clear, I was talking about creating a new subsection, not adding new external links. Viriditas (talk) 20:43, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Criteria

• Well-written: Minor issues that can easily be resolved. Several questions about this criterion are located in the above section.  Passed
• Verifiable with no original research: References.  Passed Reliable sources cited inline.  Passed No original research.  Passed No copyright violations or plagiarism. Earwig's Copyvio Detector returns false positives at 6.5% (violation unlikely)  Passed
• Broad in its coverage: No mention of marketing and advertising? Actual product cost for the consumer?  Passed
• Neutral: I'm not seeing any red flags or issues at this time.  Passed
• Stable: No edit wars or content disputes.  Passed
• Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

• Media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.  Passed
• Media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.  Passed

• Comments. I think this article is close to passing. After substantial copyedits, I see only three minor issues. Well-written: I'm not a fan of the current reception section. I've left comments up above proposing one potential fix, but there are many different ways to handle this. For me at least, I'm not a fan of reading the same or similar piece of criticism in each small paragraph, differing only by the name of the publication. The way to do it (IMO), is instead to structure by type of criticism (positive and negative), and to state that point only once. Opinions may differ on this, so I don't see it as deal-breaker, but I am curious as to how you see it and if you think it is fine the way it is. See my many comments up above, as there are new ones regarding this criterion that have yet to be addressed. I'm still very confused about the official release date in 1982, as this isn't reflected in the article. Broad in coverage: I think I could conceivably pass this the way it is, but as I said above regarding the external links section, my preference is to see content material about marketing, product costs, and advertising, not additional external links. If you don't think this is doable, I understand. Description section: Is there a reason this is at the end of the article? If this is the convention for software-related topics, let me know. Do you think that's the best place for it in the article? It's okay if you answer yes, I'm genuinely interested. You may want to look closely at my copyedits and make any necessary changes or revisions. Thanks for your work on this important subject. Viriditas (talk) 01:57, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Sorry for my tardyness, I've been busy with holiday issues and am just getting to this now. This is a suberb review BTW. I have performed many of the smaller GR and wording issues from the original list. A number of the original questions above are "why is it this way?", and the simplest answer to that is "because that's the way WordStar and Microsoft Word and even Electric Pencil are organized". I'm not convinced this is the best way to organize such articles, but this is generally the way it is done. A counterexample is WordPerfect, which separates the article into blocks based on the version of the software, but within those blocks we still see the history at the top and the description following. This seems like something someone should research - are people on the page to read the history or the description? In any event... as to the rest in the para directly above:

• Generally the "rule" for reception appears to be to summarize the review in-place. You can see this not only in the other word processing articles, but videogames and other software articles as well.
• As to the marketting, I simply don't have enough materials to do anything useful here. The historical materials I found just don't get into this very much.
• But that does leave us with one major issue outstanding: the release date. The date in the infobox is the one taken from the splash screen, which says copyright 1982. But as you noted, this is not what is stated in the interview with the project lead. It is also worth noting that the first reviews appeared in May 1983, with comments like "I received this a couple of hours ago", but given the months-long lead times in magazine publishing back then I'm not sure it really narrows it down much. I think maybe the best solution is to put a EFN note on the 1982 date, along the lines of "The copyright is from 1982, but xxx says it was first sold in early 1983." That would be in the infobox and lede, the body does already talk about this a bit (perhaps to be expanded?). Let me know what you think!

Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:16, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. There's some useful information about marketing and product cost available in the literature:

• In the 1980s, computer companies often used celebrity spokespeople to sell their products. These included Dick Cavett (Apple Computer), William Shatner (Commodore International), Isaac Asimov (Radio Shack), Roger Moore (Spectravideo), and Bill Cosby (Texas Instruments). Atari also regularly made use of celebrities in their marketing campaigns. When AtariWriter was released, actor Alan Alda was at the height of his career and at the end of the almost decade-long, television show M*A*S*H (1972–1983). According to American advertising executive Mary Wells Lawrence of Wells Rich Greene, Alda was hired as the official corporate spokesperson for Atari by Steve Ross, in a five-year contract worth $10 million that would have produced television commercials for the company until 1988. Alda's relationship with Atari was first announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983, with a successful series of commercials on television launched that same year. In an ad introducing the collaboration, Atari explained their decision to use Alda as their spokesperson, noting that Alda had a high Q Score, making him the "best known, best liked television personality in America" at the time, and described their ambitious plan for advertising their hardware and software products across the print and television spectrum with a massive campaign. In one print ad, the software was promoted with the headline "AtariWriter makes it easier to be a better writer", with an image of Alda sitting in front of the computer holding the software. Alda offered a celebrity testimonial for the product, telling readers, "You get to spend your energy on ideas rather than typing". AtariWriter was advertised for about U.S. $99.95, which was considered half the cost of one of its competitors, LetterPerfect, which retailed for U.S. $200. This "under $100" price point was marketed to consumers as a "family budget price", with one ad saying "You can't find a friendlier, more powerful word processor at twice the price".

@Maury Markowitz: Viriditas (talk) 22:49, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Note, I didn't mention the television advertisements specifically, but I think it's perfectly acceptable to summarize and describe them and point to the primary source links. My guess is that there's probably a lot of sources in the advertising trade literature from the time considering how big of a star Alda was when the ads originally aired. That's one of the main reasons I'm asking for this to be added. This was a big deal, and the ads were everywhere. Scott Mace of InfoWorld argues that the ads were too sucessful as it led to major shortages in Christmas 1983, with Atari unable to deliver their hardware to the people who wanted to buy it. I didn't add that part up above because it wasn't about the software, but you are welcome to write this any way you want. Viriditas (talk) 23:52, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: I know you are offline, but when you get back, how do you feel about adding a portion of the above to the article? Per the review, my only concern is noting the main aspects of the marketing and product campaign and costs. If you can add some aspects of this (as shown in the above example), I will go ahead and pass the review. Let me know what you think. I leave it to you to decide which part is relevant or needed. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 02:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@Viriditas: Sort of back. I love the stuff you found, and edited it down for inclusion. See what you think! Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks great. Aside from a small copyedit that is needed, it is ready to go. Will update shortly. Viriditas (talk) 20:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the article is good to go now. Thanks for your hard work. Viriditas (talk) 20:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

References