Talk:Voyager (video game)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jaguar (talk · contribs) 18:00, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I love Voyager. I'll take a look through this article in will leave some initial comments in a few hours or even tomorrow. I will mainly focus on copyediting issues. Judging by the size of the article the review shouldn't take that long. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 18:00, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

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:

   It is well referenced.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Yes, well referenced.

   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:

First of all I want to say well done on creating and building this article to a GA standard, it is rare for an article to be created an nominated for GA in less than a week! Even though I mainly focus on copyediting I have spotted a few issues with this article before it can be passed for GA:

Initial comments

Lead

• "...in their attempts to rescue members of their team from the Kazon" - the Kazon link directly links to Voyager's first episode, Caretaker which is confusing as that article does not describe the Kazon themselves. List of Star Trek races doesn't describe the Kazon either so this isn't really a problem. If you can change the link somehow, that would be great but this is only a minor problem! Kazon is linked again in the Overview section...

• I linked to the Caretaker episode because the Kazon entry on List of Star Trek races also links to that page. I could link the list entry instead, if you think that's better. Also, I thought it was standard protocol to wikilink once in the lead and once in the body. They must have changed that since I last edited. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:27, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

• No, the linking twice thing is still true. --PresN 00:19, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• "Instead of exercising direct control over the actions of the cast, the player provided general and high-level orders, which were then carried out automatically." - were those orders carried out by the crew? And what is 'cast' referring to? The cast members of the actual Voyager program or the crew of the fictional ship?

• Clarified.

• "Voyager was the first game in a multi-title agreement between Viacom and Looking Glass" - do you mean Looking Glass Technologies?

• It's been standard on all of the articles I've written about Looking Glass to mention their name in the complete form (which, here, is in the first sentence of the lead), then to abbreviate it to Looking Glass. I find that it makes articles less repetitive, and I haven't run into problems with it at FAC.

Overview

• "Interactive scenes between decision points included puzzle solving, combat and the use and combination of items" - 'and the use and combination' doesn't seem to make grammatical sense. How about Interactive scenes between decision points included puzzle solving, combat and the use of a combination of items

• I can see how the phrasing could be confusing to those unfamiliar with adventure game tropes. It's typical in the genre for the player to use items on the environment, but also to combine them into composite items that serve a new purpose. Hence, "the use and combination of items". I tweaked the phrasing to make this clearer.

• "The Incredible Machine-style "tech sim" puzzles were a main feature in Voyager" - it would be best to explain what The Incredible Machine series were before opening the sentence!

• I generally prefer to let wikilinks do the talking, to avoid off-topic tangents. I added a little bit, anyway.

• "This was an attempt to avoid hammerspace and the protagonists "stealing everything they find", two issues that Dickens said were common in the adventure game genre." - again this isn't great grammatically. You should mention that the person in question (Dickens) was the Producer for the game in this sentence to avoid confusion.

• Dickens was introduced as the producer in the previous paragraph. In my experience, it's normal to introduce a subject once with their full name and title, and then to abbreviate it in further mentions. This is the pattern I followed in all of my Looking Glass FAs.

• "The game's characters and pre-rendered backgrounds were created in 3D Studio and Alias" - this makes it sound like they were more created in a place. Can you mention that they were programs/software?

• Changed to "with".

• "Three members of the Voyager team—Chey, writer Ken Levine and designer Rob Fermier—became close during the game's development" - close? As in friendship or simply they were working close together to achieve a goal?

• Clarified.

Images

While it is not compulsory for a Good Article have images, is it possible for this article to have any? I understand that this was a cancelled game, but are there any leaked screenshots of the game that can be uploaded to Wikipedia? I once created a similar article, Project Dream that was a cancelled game for the N64 and it had at least one known leaked image that was accepted on the article. If you can't find any images, it's not a problem but most Good Articles do have at least one image.

• Images exist, but their copyright status is highly questionable. The only screenshots of the game appeared in the September 1996 issue of PC Gamer US, and it's generally frowned upon to include scans of magazines in Wikipedia articles. The other option is concept art of the game posted by ex-employees, which is stored on this fansite. The art itself appeared on the artists' websites, but the sites are gone and the Wayback Machine didn't actually save the images. So, the two options are a cropped magazine scan or a barely-reliable concept sketch. If you think either of those could pass, I'll use one.

On hold

The prose flows very well in this article and the text itself is concise and easy to understand. I must congratulate you for building this article to a good-standard in such a short amount of time. The article itself is short and the only problems with it really is the length and some of the copyediting issues (which I mentioned above). I understand information on cancelled games are usually scarce so I recognise the great job you have made at getting a lot of information out of it and putting it into an article! Apart from the imagery (which shouldn't be a problem - I don't think it is anyway) if the article should pass the GAN then a small extension should be made on content and all of the copyediting issues should be addressed. I will put this article on hold for seven days. If all of the issues have been addressed by then I will be happy to give this GA status. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind review. I've responded to your concerns above. As for expanding the article, I'm not sure what else I could add. I've bled my existing sources dry, and I'm not aware of any other sources that I could use. As it stands, the article is 831 words, which makes it longer than all but one of Wikipedia's very short featured articles. If more information comes to light, I'd be glad to add it, but I can't add what doesn't exist. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:27, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Close - promoted

Very impressive! Well done on not only building this article to a GA standard but also creating it and submitting it for a review within days! Thank you for addressing all of those points I have mentioned above. You're right, size and amount of content doesn't really matter as this article complies per the good article criteria now. Pictures aren't a problem, especially in this subject as information on cancelled games are very scarce. I think I was wrong about a couple of things such as linking the Kazon and Looking Glass etc... but let's leave that behind as this article is now a GA. Well done :) ☠ Jaguar ☠ 13:58, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 16:29, 4 March 2014 (UTC)