Talk:Microsoft Office XP/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Enterprisey (talk · contribs) 04:26, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll review this. This will be my first GA review, so I will be asking for additional opinions on WT:GAN at various points. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:26, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

From the first two read-throughs, this article reads well and looks like it covers the topic thoroughly. I've put comments on specific sections below.

(Lead)

• Microsoft incorporated several features to address reliability issues... Feel free to skip this point as it might be a nitpick, but you may want to add an example of one of said features. I'd expect reliability issues would be fixed outright, not addressed by additional features!
• The Office Assistant... "Clippy" is the more well-known name for the feature - maybe add a parenthetical note to explain this?
• ...which was a key element... I assume that the word "which" is referring to the fact that Clippy/the Office Assistant was disabled for Office XP. Either the noun phrase right before the "which" should refer to the fact that it was disabled, or the sentence should be reworked. Possible splitting of the sentence (without dealing with the previous bullet point): "The Office Assistant, introduced in Office 97 and widely reviled by users, is disabled by default; this change was a key element of Microsoft's promotional campaign for Office XP."
• viewed as inaccurate when compared with competititors'... Could be shortened, maybe to "viewed as inferior to competititors'".
• As of May 2002... Do we have more recent statistics? Maybe some source has the total number of licenses sold until now.

History

• ...the company's .NET strategy The .NET wikilink is unhelpful, since the article only talks about the software framework. I think it would be helpful if the term ".NET strategy" was explained (in the context of Office XP).
• a subset of features Did you mean "a subset of the features Microsoft demonstrated were designed in accordance...", or that Microsoft hadn't finished all of the features that would be designed in accordance with the strategy? The word "reported" also complicates the meaning.
• ...with a particular emphasis on NetDocs You don't have to explain this at this point in the article, but NetDocs is a form generator and it's confusing to me how Microsoft would do that integration. Honestly, this point is a nitpick, so ignore it if you want.
• Office 10 was slated What point in time is this referring to? I don't think we're still talking about the meeting in July 2000, but dating the press release so the reader can see at which point the feature was planned might help readability.
• Microsoft intended to rebrand the new product... The citations here are a bit wonky (and I couldn't load the cited page) - does the winsupersite.com citation really support the first two but not the last two? Also, "Office XP" should probably be cited, as that name was ultimately chosen.
• introduced several improvements to setup tools Two interpretations possible: did the Custom Maintenance Wizard by itself allow setup components to be modified, or did the "several improvements" accomplish this? (Also, I think "which" should be used instead of "that" - I didn't change it myself, since I'm not sure how you're going to redo that part of the sentence.)
• Office XP was released Any more details on the release? I feel like there's at least one (interesting) statement that could go here for complete coverage of that part of the history.

Service packs

• Client and Administrative (Full File) updates... Explain this a bit? I couldn't find an article to link this to either.
• could not be rolled back I made this change (the original wording was "could not be removed"); revert if necessary.
• Full file updates require... Not sure if the full release history for Windows Installer 2.0 is necessary; maybe it could be abbreviated.
• Service Pack 1... This sentence could be broken up.
• The Administrative Update... Explain the Administrative/Client difference? Maybe in the same place where you put the explanation for the "Full File" term.
• as well as exclusive stability improvements Not sure what sense "exclusive" is being used in.

User interface

• Office XP supports Word choice - maybe "uses" or "presents"?

I'll get to the rest of the article later. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Addressing your comments (1)

I am sorry if this is not how one should discuss such matters, but I wanted to address your comments before it became much later. I have edited portions of the article as per many of your comments. Unaddressed issues with the article that were reflected in your comments are discussed below. (IanWilliam20 (talk) 02:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC))

Lead comments

• Feel free to skip this point as it might be a nitpick, but you may want to add an example of one of said features. I'd expect reliability issues would be fixed outright, not addressed by additional features! There were new features (such as Application Recovery) designed to specifically to address reliability concerns. I did not think that an example was necessary, though I could add one if you would prefer this.
• "Clippy" is the more well-known name for the feature - maybe add a parenthetical note to explain this? Should I only add the word "Clippy," itself included in parentheses? I would hate to add more information to the introduction than is necessary.
• Do we have more recent statistics? Maybe some source has the total number of licenses sold until now. I am afraid that May 2002 is the most recent date that I could find. I have searched more than once.

History comments

• The .NET wikilink is unhelpful, since the article only talks about the software framework. I think it would be helpful if the term ".NET strategy" was explained (in the context of Office XP). Yes, I will try to edit this to be more clear.
• The citations here are a bit wonky (and I couldn't load the cited page) - does the winsupersite.com citation really support the first two but not the last two? Also, "Office XP" should probably be cited, as that name was ultimately chosen. I have not removed the previous citation from the first two; however, I have added an additional citation for "Office XP" that shows the speculation regarding this name. Unfortunately, none of the references list all of the names; therefore, I cannot only include one.
• [...] did the Custom Maintenance Wizard by itself allow setup components to be modified, or did the "several improvements" accomplish this? I have changed this to "Beta 2 introduced several improvements to setup tools. The Custom Maintenance Wizard, for example, now allowed setup components to be modified after their installation, and the setup process of Office XP itself used a new version of Windows Installer."
• Any more details on the release? I would love to include such information, as Office XP is one of my favorite versions, but I did not find anything that I thought could be added.

Service pack comments

• Explain this a bit? I couldn't find an article to link this to either. I think that I should revise the sentence so that it becomes part of the other sentences that explicitly mention the differences between Client and Full File updates. I have not done this as of yet.
• Not sure if the full release history for Windows Installer 2.0 is necessary; maybe it could be abbreviated. I included that information because of the various differences between Windows Installer in the versions of Windows that Office XP supports. I would really like to retain that information within the article, but if you do not deem it necessary I might try to change it. Perhaps I should shorten Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME to Windows 9x?
• This sentence could be broken up. Should it be similar to the sentences for SP2 and SP3?
• Explain the Administrative/Client difference? Maybe in the same place where you put the explanation for the "Full File" term. I think that I can accomplish this by combining the sentences, as mentioned before. It would also be helpful if my terminology were consistent.
• Not sure what sense "exclusive" is being used in. "Exclusive" means that these fixes were not released before SP3.

Thank you! (IanWilliam20 (talk) 02:29, 29 December 2017 (UTC))

Taking over the review

Enterprisey has agreed for another reviewer to finish this review as it's been sitting for so long; I'll take it on. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:15, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I saw above that you weren't sure what the best way was to respond to the reviewer's points -- it's entirely up to you, but a common approach is to interleave your responses with the review bullet points. If you sign each comment then each point becomes its own thread and it's easy to see what's addressed and what is not.

• Suggest moving the fifth paragraph of the lead up and appending it to the third paragraph; those are rather small paragraphs, and per WP:LEADLENGTH we should try to keep it to four. The service pack history is a reasonable fit with the list of versions, even though it slightly breaks the chronological sequence.
• During this period Office 10 was characterized as an interim release between its predecessor, Office 2000 and a future version, and would include new formatting options...: suggest "and was planned to include".
• If we're going to mention Clippy by name in the lead, we should do so in the body too.
  • I apologize if this is not what you meant when you wrote about interleaving responses with bullet points; I am unfamiliar with such things but I wanted some way to address what you have written. When you wrote that Clippy should appear in the body as well, where exactly did you have this in mind? I only added it to user assistance. (Ian Wolfman (talk) 02:33, 11 March 2018 (UTC))

    Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Re Clippy, I just meant that we should only include material in the lead that is in the body, so we just needed to mention it somewhere in the body. The "User assistance" section is a good place, so that's fine. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

• Not required for GA, but FYI, you have two dead links, in footnotes 22 and 31 -- if archive links are available that would be nice.
  • The two links have been updated. I did not use an archived link for the Microsoft Office 10 Preview article because the Internet Archive was not displaying it properly. Additionally, while Microsoft's description of changes in Microsoft Office XP SP1 was updated to use an archived link, this too is not rendering properly (I have always had such issues with Microsoft Support articles and thee Wayback Machine, as indicated in the discussion pertaining Microsoft Office Picture Manager). (Ian Wolfman (talk) 02:33, 11 March 2018 (UTC))

I went through the points Enterprisey raised above, and all of them seem to be fixed or adequately addressed in the replies. The article's prose isn't very fluid, but it's hard to write engaging prose about a technical topic like this. I think this meets the GA standards; once the minor points above are fixed I will promote it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:46, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Ian Wolfman: pinging just to make sure you see this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:48, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Everything looks good now; promoting. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2018 (UTC)