Talk:Gunnerkrigg Court/GA1

GA Review

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Hi, I will review your article for GA. I do see some problems with the article and will attempt to list them. Please feel free to contact me with comments or questions. I am not familiar with Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics but I have checked out their guidelines. Feel free to educate me on any specific provisions regarding comics that I may not know about! —Mattisse (Talk) 23:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/exemplars#Comic_book_series sets out a format for an article on a comic book series. This is the closest comparison I could find to your article. As you see, they outline the format of the article. Although guidelines on such a page as Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/exemplars do not have to be followed exactly, usually it is a good idea to follow them as closely as you can.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Style guidance also has good information on editing a comics article. The specific section

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/editorial_guidelines#Plot_summaries has good information on how to write plot summaries as well as how to provide reliable references for plots.

• Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) is recommended by the Comics project as a guide.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/copyright has good information on the use of copyrighted images. You must be able to justify them under a "Fair use" rationale. For a GA article, yours has a large number of copyrighted images. Every image must be justified as needed because the description in the text in the article is inadequate to describe the image without seeing it. I do not think you can justify using an image for each character in the Main characters section. Most of them you have not attempted to describe in the text, so there is no justification for using fair use images. Fair use requires that the use of low-resolution images of a single panel from a comic strip or an interior page of a comic book may be used to illustrate:
  • the scene or storyline depicted, or
  • the copyrighted character(s) or group(s) depicted on the excerpted panel in question.

• According to WP:EL and WP:MoS,there should be no external links in the body of the article. They can be used as footnote references. Otherwise, they should be under a section called External links at the bottom of the article.

• Per WP:RS and WP:V, information must be verified by reliable third party sources. Also, see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/editorial_guidelines#Citations. You have used the creator of the comic for a great deal of the referencing. He can be used for some information but I think you are over using him.

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/References has some suggestions for good sources for third-party material on comics.

• Also, about.com must be used with care and only when it is clear who provided the information. The link http://www.about.com/ is not a reliable source and should be removed. It provides no information anyway so it is no loss.

• Your referencing formatting looks good, as you seemed to have used cite web throughout.

• Some of the wording needs to be improved. I can help you with that. Also, it looks like you have fixed some of the complaints since the last attempted GA review.

• Inverloch and Polish need to be disambiguated.

• All of you links check out as good—no bad links!

I will go through the article several times, look at the references closely and probably add more comments. You have done a lot of good work and the article is quite interesting. —Mattisse (Talk) 23:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments! I am having a look right now at the WPComics links you pointed out. As for the format given at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/exemplars#Comic book series, it looks like it is more geared towards long-running comic strips that have gone through different writers, artists, etc...famous comics like Superman, things like that. In this article, I'm not sure if all those sections would be appropriate. My main models for this comic have been the Questionable Content and Megatokyo articles, as they are both articles on webcomics. But if you think we sh ould try to work this article more towards the exemplar given at WPComics, let me know and I'll see what can be done.

I will probably have to work into trying to trim down the plot summary. It's definitely a lot longer than I originally intended, but it was getting hard to summarize succinctly and still have everything make sense. I'll take another look at it, or maybe just start from scratch, and try to make a really short plot outline, ignoring all the details if possible.

As for the multiple fair use images of the characters, again my model for that was Questionable Content (which isn't GA), but I did all of that when I was first arriving at Wikipedia and not familiar yet with the standards. At this time, I wouldn't really have a problem with removing most or all of them.

Thanks again for your comments. Sorry I haven't been able to address them all just yet; hopefully later today or tomorrow I will have a chance to sit down and work on this a little more closely. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 23:54, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

• I see your point and comics definitely go by different rules than the average article. If you could find an article similar to yours at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics#Outstanding_content, you would have a better model for what Wikipedia considers good. Looking at some of them, I see that they do tend to have more images. But none of them have an image for each character in the sections that describe characters. As you note, Questionable Content has not gone through GA or FAC. Megatokyo is a much better model as it is a FAC and therefore has undergone a rigorous review process evaluating its compliance to Wikipedia standards. It has far fewer images than Questionable Content. Newshounds is a GA from the list of outstanding content. Is it sort of like yours? —Mattisse (Talk) 00:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I think the Newshounds article is probably more similar to this as far as comics articles go (although, just from glancing at it, there are a few things there that I don't want to replicate in this article...the sources are even more skewed towards primary sources than they are here and at Megatokyo, and the Characters section is overly detailed and a bit fanboyish). There are some things there that I don't think we could replicate here—for example, the History section, since Gunnerkrigg Court hasn't undergone major changes or added additional features like that comic appears to have done.
  • The issue with first-person sources is something I've been struggling with for a while. I've tried to limit things like interviews with the creator to stuff like the section discussing how/when he writes the comic and whether he makes money off it, who his influences were, and things like that; in the Reception section and places where the article discusses things like his artistic style, I believe I tried to keep it to secondary sources, although I can take a closer look at that in a moment. In general, with webcomics it seems hard to get good reliable mainstream sources talking about stuff like real-world impact and reception of a comic, as webcomics are very rarely covered in the sort of mainstream media that's usually considered reliable here. I don't really know a lot about the webcomics world, but I think ComixTalk (which I've cited in a few places here) is one of the cites that webcomics people take pretty seriously...so it's probably not as good a source as a newspaper article, but better than a blog.

Yes, unfortunately Newshounds is in the process of being delisted from GA because of its sourcing problems. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:09, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

• • I'm about to start working on trying to write a new, really short plot section summary. It will probably look more like butchering than trimming, but if it's too short we can always add stuff back in gradually. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 00:37, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to try to sum up your suggestions so far and where the article stands on them now:

• Reorganizing to conform to guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/exemplars#Comic book series - no action taken yet
• Cutting down fair use images - all but two removed (one in infobox, one in Setting section)
• Removing inline ELs - should be done; as far as I can tell, they're all out now
• Third-party sources - no action taken yet, still need to decide to what extent the current primary sources are or aren't a problem. In the meantime, I will take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/References
• Remove about.com link - done
• dab two links - done
• Wording that needs improved - no action taken yet, I have copyedited where I run into things but I'm not sure yet which areas you found problematic.

Sorry if that's redundant, I just wanted to get organized a bit! Let me know if there's anything I'm missing there, or if you have any new comments. Thanks! —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:00, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

• That's fine. As far as the organization goes, the guidelines are just a suggestion. Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Webcomics work group may have different ideas, and your own instincts may even be better, keeping in mind how they do things in general. There are forty-some editors in Category:Webcomics workgroup members. You could consider consulting some of them or posting questions on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics which seems quite active. —Mattisse (Talk) 03:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

On hold

Thanks, Mattisse, for taking the time to review this article. If you have a moment, could you list some of the specific changes that you are waiting to see in the article while it's on hold?

If it's a matter of writing style issues and organization, then I can probably address your concerns and make the appropriate changes to the article (although, for the reasons I mentioned above somewhere, I don't think it would be productive to try to follow the exemplar format at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/exemplars#Comic book series in this particular article). If, however, it's a problem with establishing real-world notability or with the reliability of the sources given, there's not much that can be changed about the article at this point, at least not until something changes in the real world (i.e., it gets covered in a bigger periodical or something like that), because this is pretty much most of what's available.

I've tried to look into the reliability of some of the sources, and the most established publishers seem to be this (Tramountanas, Comic Book Resources) and this (Schroeder, ComixTalk); the Tramountanas article was cited in a few of the other sources given, and that website appears to be sort of a news source for other comics websites. The Schroeder article (mostly an interview, unfortunately) was published in a December 2006 "issue" of ComixTalk, as opposed to just being a stand-alone blog post. The stuff from Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards should also be a pretty valid source, as that all goes through review by multiple people (although there's no information or review there about the comic; that source can only be used for verifying that the comic actually got those awards). I still would like to be able to write a brief section (or a few sentences to add to another section) on the artistic style of the comic, but most of the opinions/evaluation of the artistic style are in the other resources, the reliability of which I still have to ascertain.

So anyway, if the issues holding this article back right now are concerns about sourcing and notability, I would imagine there's not much to be done other than wait for something to happen and then re-list the article at GAN after it does. If the issues are more about writing style, layout, format, etc., then I can do my best to address them if you list the concerns here. Thanks again! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - The only issue I see immediately is that the lead needs to be expanded, per WP:LEAD. That should be easy to do with some brief mention of the material in the other sections, especially from Reception which is weighed heavily by GA and maybe a mention that it won awards or mention a specific, prestigious award. The Main characters section looks very good. You have done a good job! —Mattisse (Talk) 22:15, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, delink the dates, per Overlinking and underlinking. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, linked dates...a relic from my early wiki-ing days. Thanks for catching that! Does GA care one way or the other about ISO dates within refs? Those dates are all linked automatically, but if I change them (ie, from 2008-10-26 to 26 October 2008) then they won't be linked, but I don't know if it's worth the trouble or not...I've recently talked to some editors who are vehemently against ISO dates, but I don't know if it's an official guideline or just a matter of personal preference.

As for the lead, I'll get on that right away! Thanks again, —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 22:25, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, the people interested in article writing like the WP:FAC people are against ISO dates, I think because they feel a lot of editors don't understand them. Also, they are adamantly against the linking of dates in references. Some of the templates link dates automatically, and they have been working with the template developers to elimate this. —Mattisse (Talk)

Final GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): Prose is clear and well written b (MoS): Conforms with MoS

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): Adequate referencing is provided b (citations to reliable sources): The sources are reliable. c (OR): Writen from a neutral point of view

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): Provides contex b (focused): Remains fouced on subject of article

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias: Written in a neural tone

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

A very nice article. —Mattisse (Talk) 03:44, 27 October 2008 (UTC)