Talk:Obernewtyn (novel)

GA Article

I am aiming for a GA article. What do you all think should be added or changed? --Limolover (talk) 08:16, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Two very important things: shorten your plot summary and format your references. If you don't know how, I'll be happy to help you. There are other small things, but fix those first. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 12:50, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with PrincessofLlyr. Also, per 1(b) "it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections" - currently the lead needs to be expanded to "summarize the body of the article". maclean (talk) 15:58, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• So your suggestions are: Shorter summary as in 600-700 words (its about 1400 at the moment)? And an actual introduction. However I am unsure as to which referencing style Wikipedia uses and to what extent. Thanks for your help --Limolover (talk) 06:18, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

• I'll format a few of the refs as an example. For a good idea of how referencing on Wikipedia works, read WP:INCITE. That will give you some good directions. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 14:23, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• I completed the first three on the first section. I'll do some more later. A few of the links were dead, so I found the originals and used those. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 14:43, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Thanks for your help with the referencing. Is it fine now? Not sure if a cached page is ok for the Darwin play (no longer online), but it was earlier. --Limolover (talk) 10:20, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Much better. You did a really good job of formatting all of those. I think the references for the play work fine. Just work through Tea with Toast's suggestions and I think the article may very soon be ready for GA. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 12:52, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Many thanks. I believed I have now worked through all of the suggested changes. --Limolover (talk) 12:58, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, it does look like you've gotten through most of it. If you would like, I could do a complete analysis of the article for any nit-picky details sometime in the next week. I would also suggest asking review from some good copyeditors for other details that I might miss. User:Brambleclawx has worked on several GA's, as has User:Truthkeeper88. Input from either of them, or anyone in the guild of copyeditors, would probably be helpful. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 18:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• That would be great thanks. I have put a general request in at the guild of copyeditors. --Limolover ^talk 10:08, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Obernewtyn (novel)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Tea with toast (talk • message • contribs • count • logs • email)

Overview

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   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:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   While there are many good features of this article, there are too many problems for me to give this passing review. I hope that you continue to improve on this article and perhaps offer it for for GA review again in the future.

Specific issues

• The introduction for the article is too short. See WP:LEAD for more information about what a lead should look like.
• The section "Synopsis" is essentially plagerism as I see that it has been copied and pasted from the Borders reference. It is okay to quote from other sources (generally 1 or 2 sentences, not paragraphs), but you must explicitly state in the text of the article that you are quoting another source.
• "Synopsis" is a synonym of "Plot Summary", so it is not necessary to have 2 separate sections. The plot summary is too long and full of too many details. A good plot summary should only give a broad overview of the story and should avoid "spoilers" when possible. Please see WP:PLOTSUM to learn how to better write that section.

• For the "Awards" section, if there is only one item, it should be written in prose, not in a table. Tables are reserved only for organizing large lists (if a book had maybe 5 or more awards or nominations).
• Reference #4 is a dead link, and ref #18 looks like it is a public forum, and those are not generally considered to be acceptable sources.
• References should be given in formal citation style (Like refs 1-3 are). Bare URLs are not acceptable as they are prone to link rot. Also, when citing the same ref multiple times (as it looks like refs 7, 8, 10, 11 are all the same), please use the format of <ref name = xyz>. You can learn more about this at WP:CITE
• I think there may be a slight bias in the article. The praise for the book is overly glowing. (E.g. " Tamora Pierce warmly expressed", and , "The novel has also been quite popular"). Remove unnecessary adjectives. The only down point mentioned about the book is the very short, last sentence of the "Reception" section. That sentence should be expanded to a paragraph. I think if you search through some more book reviews, you'll probably find a few more sentences to add about some negative points of the book.

I appreciate the work that you have put into the article thus far, and I hope you can use the things that I have listed here to make further improvements on the article. If you have any more questions about this review or about any of wikipedia's policies, please let me know! (The link to my talk page is the brown kanji symbol after my name. It is Japanese for "talk") Thank you for introducing me to this article. --Tea with toast (話) 03:07, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Obernewtyn (novel)/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Yllosubmarine (talk · contribs) 14:42, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I've volunteered to review this article for GAC. I will post my comments within the next day or two, so thanks in advance for your patience. I see this is the article's second nom, so hopefully it won't take much to get it promoted! While you're waiting, perhaps you'd like to help reduce the backlog? María (yllosubmarine) 14:42, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, since this is the article's second nomination at GAC, I believe the article is in fairly good shape. I've read the previous review, and it seems that the previous issues have been addressed. I have some minor comments/suggestions to improve the article even further so that it really shines as a GA. First, here is how it stands against the criteria:

1. Well-written: Only minor suggestions, see below.
2. Factually accurate and verifiable: Yes.
3. Broad in its coverage: Yes.
4. Neutral: Yes.
5. Stable: Yes.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by images: Yes, but see suggestion below.

Image

• The caption reads: "Current modern cover". Because this can become outdated at any time, it's best practice to list the publication details of a specific book cover. According to this site, the image is Penguin Aus.'s 1993 cover; is that correct?

Lead

• I made a couple minor edits here (overlinking, unnecessary quotes and punc. fix for ref tag). Everything else looks good.

Composition

• Isobelle Carmody began writing the book when she was fourteen. -- The lead states this as well, but the reader has to click on Carmody's article in order to put this fact into context, and even then some mental calculation has to be done to discover how long it took between writing and publication. My point is, can a time frame be given? 1977-1985 or whatever the date-range happens to be?
• The quote box ("I dream of those other worlds and places where life is enchantingly complicated...") is such a great addition, but on my screen it's kind of squished underneath the infobox. What do you think about moving it to the plot section, or "Voice and setting"?
• I did some copy-editing here, mainly to remove redundancies in wording. Make sure to check my work and make sure I didn't inadvertently change the meaning!

Synopsis

• Is it "Misfits" or "misfits"? The lead uses the former, whereas the "Context" sub-section uses the latter.
• The resulting large group of orphans is placed in orphan homes and used for manual labour. -- Are they really called "orphan homes"? If so, let's fix the redundancy: large group of children?
• The plot may still be a little overly detailed, though it's not as long as it was during the first GA review. I got a little caught up in the details here and there, and there is some repetition that you may want to comb through. For example, it's noted that "the Herders torture anyone with significant ability", but this fact is already mentioned in "Context". Some extra details may also be unnecessary, such as some of this long sentence: "Elspeth returns a second time to the Doctor’s office, but when Vega, Alexi and Ariel enter, she learns, whilst hiding, Ariel is part of the Obernewtyn family, and that they are searching for a Misfit to help them find the location of Beforetime weapons." There are a few instances throughout the plot that can maybe be cut, but I don't want to do so myself since I haven't read the book.

Reception

• Be careful with paraphrasing. Comparing this section to some of the sources, I see at least one example that needs to be reworded so close paraphrasing isn't misconstrued as plagiarism:
  • Article: "He cited the breadth of vision rich in detail..." Source: "Through the breadth of her vision..."
• These sections are always difficult to write, I know. Be careful to keep the tense consistent, however; in one sentence a review is described in past-tense (so and so said), and the next sentence another review is in present (so and so believes). Just make it more consistent throughout.

References

• Even if an article/website's title is displayed in ALL CAPS, make sure to remove said caps from citations. The cite title for "TALES CAST A SPELL..." is currently all in caps.

I think that about covers it. Here's the diff for all of the minor changes I made; like I said, I didn't mess with the plot details, so you may consider trimming here and there for readability. I'll put the article on hold to give you time to consider my suggestions. If you have any questions, just let me know! María (yllosubmarine) 14:58, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Response

Thanks so much for your review. I believe I have now made all the appropriate changes. --Limolover ^talk 04:57, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks good to me! I changed the new (much improved) image caption to lowercase per the MOS, but otherwise very good job. I believe the article now fulfills the GA criteria, so I'm going to promote it. Great work! María (yllosubmarine) 13:34, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

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