Talk:Ermac/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Freikorp (talk · contribs) 11:58, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Rather than bring trivial issues up here, I will just make minor changes to the article myself. You are most welcome to revert any changes I make, and we can instead discuss the issue here. You are also welcome to address concerns as I list them; there's no need to wait until my review is finished before addressing any issue I raise. Freikorp (talk) 12:44, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   "The enigmatic Ermac is a conglomerate of the souls of deceased Outworld warriors" - this introduces "Outworld" to the article but does not state what it is. Readers not familiar with the series will have no idea what you're talking about.

   Added brief description of Outworld. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "are slain by the eponymous pairing" - is the word eponymous really necessary here?

   Replaced phrase altogether with brief description of these characters. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "in the game's Konquest (training) mode" - just describe it as the 'training' mode. The reader isn't going to care what the training mode is referred to in-game.

   Fixed. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "Ermac then battles Ashrah, who wrongly believes he also is a demon and seeks to kill him, but she is defeated" - I'd explicitly clarify that Ermac defeats her, assuming that that is the case.

   "of which only seventeen total out of 63 were created" - the grammar here is bad. Also the wording is inconsistent. Don't say "seventeen" and "63" - format them both as numbers.

   "to obliterate Jax's arms" - I'm somewhat familiar with Mortal Combat, so I have an idea of what you're talking about. Other readers, however, will not. You should clarify that Jax's arms are bionic.

   "illustrated by Anna Christenson and animated by Daanish Syed" - why are you mentioning this when? Especially since neither appears to have a wikipedia article. It's not notable; lose it.

   "destroying her father Jax's arms in the MK2011 timeline before" - I don't think it's necessary to clarify this was in the MK2011 timeline since it has already been mentioned that he did this. I'd just say he destroyed her father Jax's arms and leave it at that.

   Fixed. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "of a postmatch code ("Ultimate Kombat Kode") along with Mileena and Classic Sub-Zero" - you really don't need to mention what the code was, and non-gamers might be confused by the relevance of the the "Classic". Details of other characters is off-topic anyway, so you could just say he is one of three unlockable characters, without mentioning who the other ones are.

   Fixed. I guess I should realize that this isn't MK for Dummies. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "in which he is a boss hidden inside a statue at the Warrior Shrine whom players battled after unlocking him." - seems like too much detail, I'd just say he is a hidden boss character.

   Done. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "He was one of three post-MKII characters in the game with Kabal and Quan Chi." - I think this is overdetailed. Also it's unreferenced. I'd lose it.

   Gone. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   You don't need to mention the name of the episodes ("Abandoned")("Overthrown") especially since there are wikilnks. Also the information "serving as a stand-in for Jade)[note 6]" as well as the note itself, are off-topic. I'd lose them.

   Removed the aside about Jade entirely, along with other extraneous detail in the section. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "to defeat Ermac with a headscissors takedown before" - we really don't need to know the name of the wrestling move, just say they defeated him

   There's too much detail in the merchandise section. We really, really don't need to know things like the dimensions of the magnet. At the very least removed some of the details of most mentions, though you could condense it much further. For example, at JV my merchandise section reads "Valentine has been featured in various Resident Evil merchandise, including action figures[83][84] and card games.[85]". I don't really think the reader needs to know what the action figures look like. If they're really interested, they can go to the reference.

   Merchandise section pared to minimum. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "Mortal Kombat. Creating serial killers before GTA was swimming in Rockstar's nutsack." Personally I think this is hilarious. Other editors would argue it's too crass to appear in an encyclopedia. I had a source which stated JV's revealing costume was 'inappropriate for a zombie apocalypse unless she was planning on cock-teasing all the zombies to death.' I added it purely because I thought it was funny; some of my reviewers strongly disagreed and it became an issue of contention which ended in me removing it. I'm not going to make you remove this, I just thought I'd mention it. You could just reword it to say that source "humorously credited Mortal Kombat as creating serial killers before Grand Theft Auto", or something similar.

   Removed cultural impact section entirely, but I'll work on integrating the Cracked quote back into the article. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   I feel like I'm drowning a bit in the amount of quotes and rankings in the 'Critical reaction and popularity' section. This section could be condensed. Once again I'm going to cite JV. The reason I'm doing this is not because I believe I'm better at this (my reception section looked similar to yours when i first nominated the article), rather because the nomination has received what the coordinator says it has received the most in-depth review of any video-game related article. My comments regarding JV's attractiveness, for example, is condensed to "Valentine has featured in several lists that rank characters by their sex appeal.[71][72][73][74] In 2011, The Escapist's Lisa Foiles said she was "one of the hottest female character designs ever".[75] Just because you have several sources saying he's the sixth best of 73 characters etc doesn't mean you have to mention every source in detail. As I have now done, you can just group several sources together and give one or two examples.

   Done. I'd read on other GA reviews in the past that we had to explain why someone was voted the Xth-best game character. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

   "slow-motion extraction of his opponent's entire digestive trac[t]." - as per MOS:PMC, you can just correct this spelling mistake without placing it in brackets, since it's a trivial mistake.

   Removed as part of quote trimming process. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   "Uproxx ranked it fifteenth in their 2015 rating of the seventeen fight scenes from both Mortal Kombat feature films" - Fifteenth in terms of what? The fifteenth best fight? Context needs to be given if this is to be kept.

   Ranking removed but opted to keep character description.sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

   There's too many quotes althroughout your reception section. It's good to use some quotes, however, in general, summarising the quote into prose is preferred. "I only had a slight idea of who they were and by no means could I tell them apart" - is a prime example of a quote that you can easily get rid of. You could drop the quote and just expand the prose to say "and Theodore Bond of Letterboxd faulted the similarity of Ermac and Rain's costumes, saying he had difficulties telling them apart."

   Quote editing is currently in progress. Done. Removed a good chunk of them and kept a few while reducing their wordiness. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   Important: Your references must be formatted consistently. By that, I mean you can't use Template:Cite web for some websites and not for others. Many of your references are formatted using this template, while many others are formatted without any template, such as "Ermac Archived 2015-06-10 at the Wayback Machine—Giant Bomb. Retrieved June 5, 2015." You need to pick one method for all website sources, and I thoroughly recommend you use Template:Cite web.

   Done. The inconsistency was borne from laziness on my part. :) sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

   When using template cite web, the "|work=" parameter must be filled out consistently. By that, I mean you can't describe one website by the name of the site (I.e ref no.1 "GameSpot") and the next with .com suffixes or just the base URL. For example, "Kamidogu.com" should be shortened to just "Kamidogu", while "arcade-museum.com" should be changed to "The International Arcade Museum". "MKSecrets.net" would be changed to "Mortal Kombat Secrets", though I don't think that website is reliable anyway; I'll get to that later.

   Fixed. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

   As a rule of thumb, any kind of blog website is unacceptable to be used as a source as per WP:UGC. Jerad Marantz' blog is no exception, and also it doesn't appear to directly back up some of the claims it is used for.

   I don't think CreativeUncut, would be considered a reliable source. Though you are welcome to get a second opinion from WP:RSN or project video games on this source or any other one that I question.

   Try and cite voicing credits to the actual game itself (see the JV article for an example).I don't think BehindtheVoiceActors.com is a reliable source, and while Twitter can be used that tweet itself doesn't fill me with confidence.You can normally view the credits for games on YouTube.

   Done, and infobox fully cited. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 03:00, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

   Why does this citation: "Mean Machines Sega #42 (April 1996), p. 18" link to this website: [1]? In any case, all printed sources should be formatted with either Template:Cite book, Template:Cite magazine or Template:Cite journal.

   MMS citation fixed. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 03:00, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

   I'm pretty sure MKSecrets.net does not satisfy WP:RS.

   Cracked.com is not a reliable source: see this discussion here.

   Removed all Cracked.com mentions. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 03:00, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

   I'm pretty sure 'Mortal Kombat Warehouse' is not a reliable source, however, it looks like you could cite the information this source is used to back up straight to the games themselves.

   Game Rant, Moby Games and Dorkly.com are not reliable sources as per Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources.

   Total Mortal Kombat probably isn't a reliable source.

   Fighter's Generation probably isn't a reliable source, however, since you're only really citing an image from the game anyway just cite the game directly.

   Rq87.flyingomelette.com is not a reliable source, though you could just cite the episodes directly.

   Get rid of ScreenUsed.com. It's probably not notable enough to mention the outfit was sold on this site even if you had secondary coverage of this happening.

   I'm pretty sure Nerd Reactor is not a reliable source.

   I haven't even looked into whether 'Ata-Boy Wholesale' is a reliable source yet, but whether it is or not seems irrelevant at this stage as the source doesn't back up the statement. It doesn't say anything about a magnet for sale; it's just an image.

   Segment removed from merch section, as a reliable replacement couldn't be found. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:34, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

   B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

   "He was one of three post-MKII characters in the game with Kabal and Quan Chi" is unsourced.

   "His UMK3 backstory was unchanged in the 1996 compilation title Mortal Kombat Trilogy" is unsourced, and probably also unnecessary overdetail.

   Removed. Couldn't find a source and this basically applies to all returning (U)MK3 characters in the game anyway. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 03:00, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

   "Many elements of his Deception design were maintained for the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot" is unsourced. You might be able to source this to the game itself.

   "In a departure from his in-game designs, the character ..." is unsourced.

   Removed. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:36, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

   "they were not seen in the film" is unsourced. You can, of course, just cite the film itself.

   Done. I had no idea you could cite a film or game straight-up. Good to know. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 01:36, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

   Last major dispute appears to be 10 years ago. Stability check passes.

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   There's a good selection of images which I believe there is acceptable justification for. I definitely wouldn't add any more fair use images though.

   Not to worry, I'm definitely done. I'd kind of gone overboard with them beforehand and removed some after the peer review. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 22:45, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

@Beemer69: I've completed my initial prose concerns and source reliability concerns. As you can see, this article needs a fair bit of work. I haven't actually made an active check to see if sources back up what they claim to, and that source review is, believe it or not, me going easy on you. There are probably half a dozen other sources that quite possibly aren't reliable but I'm willing to let slide at this stage if the worst of the sources are removed. I also haven't touched on issues like layout; for example, "Legacy" should be a sub-section of "Reception", not "History". I'm happy to leave this open for a while for you to work on the concerns I've listed above, however, be advised those are just initial concerns. Once they are addressed there will be more. I am more than happy to answer any questions you have to help guide you along the process. Alternatively, if you don't want to feel rushed, you can just ask me to close the nomination, at which point you can work on all the concerns entirely at your convenience and just renominate it again once you're done. You would be most welcome to contact me directly when it is renominated and if I am not overly busy I would happily review the article again. But don't feel like I'm trying to pressure you into doing that. By all means, if you think you can knock out the initial concerns in the next week or so, give it a shot and we can go from there. :) Freikorp (talk) 12:45, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Improvements are looking very good so far. All I'm seeing remaining from my initial concerns are at least one stray reference that isn't formatted correctly (I.e Ermac concept sketch by Justin Murray) and some sources that aren't described consistently in the references (I.e Kamidogu.com should just be Kamidogu. UGO.com should either just be UGO or UGO Networks). As a rule of thumb if it has '.com' on the end it should be changed, though there are exceptions, like 1UP.com since that's actually the name that it is referred to as. I'll be off Wikipedia for the next day and a half but will check back on this when I return. Freikorp (talk) 00:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Beemer69: Just ping me when you think you're done and I'll have a look over the entire article again. :) Freikorp (talk) 01:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Freikorp: Ready to go. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

OK. I'm really impressed with the amount of work you've done improving this article. That being said, for future reference, an article should look something like this prior to nomination. :)

• Rather than explain my concerns about wording in the lead, I've just tweaked it myself. Fell free to reword it and we can instead discuss the issue here.
• "For his "Inner Workings" Fatality in the game" - as the first mention in the body, wikilink "Fatality" to the appropriate article (even if something is wikilinked in the lead it should still be wikilinked at tis first appearance only in the body). You also need a short explanation of what a Fatality is in order to cater for a general audience who would be unfamiliar with the franchise.

Done. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• "Ermac repeatedly bangs his head onto the ground until it explodes into a bloody mess" - just to clarify, is he banging his own head on the ground? Or his opponents?

I removed it altogether, as it (to me, anyway) didn't flow as well anymore since the cleanup, plus the HKs were a one-game wonder. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

• I'd move the 'Design' subsection to a new section entitled 'Design and portrayal'. I'd also move any information regarding who has voiced or played the character in film to this section. So you'll mention what films etc the character appears in in the 'In other media' sub-section, though was actually plays the character will be in a paragraph in 'Design and portrayal'.
• It has been argued that articles on video game characters should not have gameplay sections. I won't make you remove it, I just thought I'd let you know. I think the Gameplay info would be placed best as a sub-section of 'Design and portrayal'.

Done. However, GAs like Lars Alexandersson have gameplay sections, so I'd like to keep this one though I've trimmed its length. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• I was going to say "Ermac and several Mortal Kombat characters were parodied..." doesn't really fit into the sub-section 'Promotion and merchandise', since i'd argue it's neither promotion nor merchandise, though on closer inspection "Dark Side of Gaming" is not a reliable source anyway as per Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources, so you'll have to lose this information in any case.

Gone. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

• I'd consider losing 'Promotion and merchandise' altogether. I'd probably ditch the "In 2011, PlayStation: The Official Magazine published ..." sentence as it doesn't really fit well with the rest of the paragraph, and I'd just turn the two sentences on merchandise into another paragraph of 'In other media'. For the record the paragraph would probably fit better in a 'Legacy' section, but we don't have one and I'm not going to make you create one at GA level.

Done. At the risk of sounding like I'm making excuses, there aren't enough resources to have a legacy section for Ermac that would come close to that of Jill V's. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• Ref 26 (John Tobias's tweet) isn't formatted with Cite web. Also the date is inconsistent. (I.e 2014-03-04 and December 18, 2013). You need to pick one method of writing the date for the whole reference section.

Fixed. Didn't even notice it and no idea who even did that. I always write dates out. sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 02:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, I think that's everything. Once those issues are addressed I'll do some spot checks to make sure sources back up what the are supposed to and if that all checks out we should be good to go. Freikorp (talk) 10:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Okie. I'll get cracking on it tomorrow. :) sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 04:16, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

This is looking really good. I'm happy to pass it now since there's only half an issue remaining, and that will be easily fixed. As a final comment, I'd consider losing all the unofficial abbreviations in the infobx (I.e MK:DotR, MK2011 etc etc) and instead only clarify who voices and portrays the character in the paragraph within design and portrayal. You could probably do the same for motion capture, and you could probably also limit 'Designed by' in the infobox to the original designer, rather than listing every non-notable person who has worked on every game. Well done overall. I'm very pleased to promote your first GA article. :) Freikorp (talk) 13:33, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Whohoo!!! Awesome! I'll continue working on it today as there's some last things that need tying up, including what you just mentioned. Thanks so much! sixtynine ^{• speak up •} 14:31, 14 October 2017 (UTC)