Wikipedia:Featured article review/Wii/archive2 - Wikipedia


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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 1:15, 7 March 2021 (UTC) [1].

Notified: jhsounds, WP Video games, talk page 2020-10-25

This is a 2007 promotion that was last reviewed in 2012, with no major contributors still editing it. It has taken on some cruft since its review eight years ago, and should not be difficult to restore if someone will undertake improvements.

  • WP:NOTPRICE needs review.
  • There are citation needed tags.
  • A MOS review is needed. Samples only: WP:WAW ... The USPTO said they would accept Nintendo's trademark filing if the company disclaimed exclusive rights to the word "remote" in the term and if the word “remote” ... with curly quotes as well. Spaced WP:EMDASHes.
  • In the "Launch titles" section, MOS:DONTHIDE and a footnote
  • Incomplete citations everywhere.

This should not be a difficult restore if someone will undertake the work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:09, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    • I'm doing a quick scan related to the prices but I'm not seeing an issue. As a home consumer electronic and particularly with video game consoles, listing the base cost in major release regions is a common practice; the price is noted by most sources and used to compare to other consoles (at the time of its release), so the brief list in the infobox seems appropriate within the context of NOTPRICE. But perhaps I'm missing something elsewhere. Same with noting the typical game price. --Masem (t) 17:13, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • These citations are going to need a thorough going-over. I'm not familiar with video game sources, but there's a lot of malformed ones, and references such as "RawmeatCowboy (April 13, 2008). "Korea – Wii launch date confirmed, and more info". Go Nintendo. Retrieved January 17, 2015." look iffy. There's several others I suspect to be blogs. There's a handful of missing citations. I'm seeing sourcing as the primary issue here. Hog Farm Bacon 16:04, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yep. Big citation cleanup needed, obscuring the WP:NOTPRICE problem. I see at least one press release citing a price. Wikipedia policy (emphasis added) calls for

      An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is an independent source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention. Prices and product availability can vary widely from place to place and over time. Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices and availability of a single product from different vendors or retailers.

      but with incomplete citations, it is difficult on a quick glance to determine if prices comply. And, while it is possible that mainstream sources do exist for some of these prices, it is not apparent that they have been used, as most use of prices seems to be either product reviews or press releases, rather than mainstream independent media sources. The use of the template:cite press release would be a good thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm working on a major rework that's addressing sourcing problems (lots of sources that today, we'd not accept at VG/S nor as RS) as well as lacking information we know now (eg after Iwata's death, a lot of his involvement in the Wii's development was better known). There's a bit of Nintendo-fanboy-ism in this which needs to be worked out as well. It is an important console to VG history and thus needs good documentation, but there's some of this that gets a little odd in some places, which I am slowly working through. And yes, I will fix the issues on the price sources, I know I can get third-party RSes for that. --Masem (t) 17:41, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, when I starting through, this clearly was a FAC from a different era. It's not terribly far off, but it is going to take more than just a few fixes. I am working on it though, so don't rush to demote, please. BTW, I have fixed the prices issue (press releases nixed, and have third-parties to even address the cheaper costs relative to other consoles). --Masem (t) 18:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SandyGeorgia: Obviously I'm still working on this to drastically improve it, but I do have a FAC question to ask related. The current Sales section is currently relatively duplicative (to an extent) of the Wii sales article, but in terms of notability, the latter really shouldn't be standalone. Now, across both there is some additional "fanboyism" elements to strip and focus on the big picture - something I've had to do over at the Nintendo Switch page for comparison. I am thinking of bringing in the Wii sales page into this article as to reduce redundancy, but is there any allowance for the table on the Wii sales page to be started in a collapsed state? Or (and I haven't investigated this in detail), collapsing the middle section and leaving lifetime sales (last row) visible. I know I can show the entire table but I'm curious if there's allowance for collapsing anything. --Masem (t) 22:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SandyGeorgia: I'm still working on this but one thing I noticed in trying to fix citations is that the Citation Bot link up on the template here (the one I recall using to check for missing/broken refs and to quickly find the ones missing information) is no longer present? Is there a replacement? (This and a MOS check should be all that's left, the CN issues are fixed as well as my overall rework to remove the fanboy-ish coverage). --Masem (t) 20:36, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many missing publishers and incomplete citations, sample, "Anniversary Bundles and Wii Remote Plus Confirmed for US". Too many for me to clean up.

Masem that is all I have time for right now; I think cleaning up the citations before going in for MOS checks and copyediting is imperative. I am concerned that we might want to ask Miniapolis, who copyedited this article the last time it was at FAR, if they might run through it again, as I am finding too many prose issues. But cleaning up the sourcing and overlinking should happen first. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:39, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping, SandyGeorgia. Let me know when you're ready for the copyedit. Stay well and all the best, Miniapolis 23:50, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a prose check would help as I have had to take my hand to fix sections (putting in more reasonably appropriate material for an encyclopedia), and I know I suck at first pass writing. I'll ping VG to see if someone else can also check. I will be doing the source check with the EL tool tomorrow, there's too many to check through and verify right now in addition to completing incomplete references. But yes, it is far closer than it was. --Masem (t) 22:59, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also will check the dup wikilinks (now have that script, very useful I see). --Masem (t) 23:01, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem, if you don't get any bites on the copyedit, let me know and I'll make time. My FA chainsaw is rusty but I bet it still works. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 00:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Jaguar

To compliment Sandy's initial points above I am concerned that this article doesn't meet any of the FA criteria and see that the issues are not restricted to its prose. I will list some broad issues found from a cursory scan:

  • The lead doesn't comply per WP:LEAD. It is far too long at the moment and is riddled with cruft. Are the model names "RVL-101" and "RVL-201" important enough to be chucked in there? While it does make a show of summarising the article the prose is not concise enough to allow for snappy information-taking
  • The main body of the article (particularly the history section) relies too much on quotes and doesn't flow well. It all needs rewriting from an historical viewpoint
  • The majority of the article still gives an impression of it being written in 2007 - reading it feels like we're locked in those dismal years of recession! The launch section contains too many precise dates, some sentences remain in the present tense and generally the focus gives too much weight to how much the console was sold for. This benefits nobody
  • The article contains inconsistent measurements and conversions. Even the prices aren't formatted consistently ($ - US$; £ - GB£). Lose the country prefixes if they are mentioned in the context
  • The hardware section is imbalanced and the whole structure far too choppy. Even discounting the cruft there are several unsourced parts
  • The specifications should ideally be in prose format, though I know how much of a pain this is. A FAC reviewer would most likely request it
  • "Built-in content ratings systems" just contains a list of national rating boards. This isn't necessary
  • The Media support subsection is trapped in time, littered with banalities like when things were released
  • The table list of launch titles shouldn't be in the article, if anything it should be in its own or in List of Wii games or the like
  • The reception section needs nuking and rewritten from scratch
  • I believe enough time has passed to warrant a legacy section in this article. The Wii had a profound impact on gaming and yet it's not clear if this article mentions anything
  • The latter half of the article isn't structured well. After the reception section it jumps to legal issues, and it doesn't feel right that the article closes with "Homebrew and emulation". The final stretch of the article should have a Legacy section, and in it could contain its successor and a few points regarding homebrew
  • The images contribute to the cluttering and general disorientation of the article. There are two images of queues outside and inside shops at seemingly random points, poor quality images like someone holding a remote to a TV (you can't even see anything!) and two bland photos of CPUs. I know there are better pictures out there
  • The sources are also formatted inconsistently, many are missing publisher fields and there isn't even a bibliography subsection - two unused references are lumped right above the citations

I think it's a big task to salvage this in the state that it's in right now. If this article was nominated at GAN it would probably be quick-failed. I am willing to help after I've finished with PlayStation (console) but for this to reach the standards of 2020 would require a lot of work, or a multi-editor project. I'm always sad to see an FA delisted, but if it does happen a better future for this article may await. JAGUAR 00:09, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    • I did get a start on addressing some of these points (mostly on a structural standpoint). I *still* need to hit the sourcing issues. I mean, I rid the Forbes contributor pieces (there's a Forbes staff article in use though), but as I started to parse incomplete sourcing, I'm not very satisfied with the general sourcing used on some sections on the article, which may also be tied to how some of the sections were written. (That said I felt I did already try to re-write the history section beforehand from a historical standpoint, knowing what I knew we had from Iwata's death (his contribution to the Wii) and then what retroactively we knew based on the Switch's design back through the Wii U to the Wii.) But the article was in a far "worse" shape beforehand, while it was FAC passed in 2013, I dunno if standards were lower then or if it was edited since but it wasn't great at all. --Masem (t) 01:08, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      Masem where do things stand on Jaguar’s concerns? Do you still want to save this one? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:16, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • Of the issues: I *have* fixed through the monetary conversions, the hardware section (including removing the hardware specs table), reworked the Media section table, removed the launch title table, added a Legacy section (which could still use some expansion), removed some of the images that were in question, and have done a massive rework of the entire sources to get their formatting complete (via prove-it) and/or replacing poor sources with better RSes, which also has basically had me touch most every other section of the article, save for the Lede and the Reception section. (eg in other words, the point about being in 2007 should also be fixed).
        That would only leave addressing the lede, reworking the development section to remove quotes (but I will add I added those in early stages of fixing this and feel those are actually appropriate considering the confusion/nature of the Wii's name), and the Reception section. The point about the console's cost is something that is standard in how consoles are written about and compared to (eg how take into account the NOT#CATALOG aspect), since these are third-party sources discussing the prices and in comparison to other consoles. I did think I took out a few regions of release that were not the major English-speaking regions or Japan since that list could go on. --Masem (t) 14:17, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • (edit conflict) I would hate to pile work on Masem. Comparing this article to other console FAs like Sega Saturn or Mega Drive illustrate that the issues lie in its content, or lack of. This article doesn't just suffer from prose rot but rather it appears to never have had the quality encyclopaedic material to begin with. I will be happy to work on this as a project after I've finished with both PlayStation (console) and my university work (the latter of course takes more time!) but I think the best option would be to nuke some parts and write from a fresh perspective. I'm not an expert on Nintendo however - maybe there are others at WP:VG who could provide pointers on missing content. ♦ jaguar 14:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          Just to add, I have reworked the lede and also just did a rundown on the duplicate links. --Masem (t) 15:04, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • No edits since 11 December: @Masem and Jaguar: where do things stand, and should I have another look yet? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:18, 26 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have a feeling based on Jaguar's comments that while I've been able to correct the issues that brings the state of the article where it was before the FAR was started to where the issues related to all the "mechanical" issues (source consistency and completenss, sourcing quality and trying to improve on various factors), and acknowledging that I know my writing style does tend to some copyediting, we're looking at a content deficiency that was present that had always been there from when the article was first promoted to FAC but which at that point in time a combination of reviewing standards and expected content for VG consoles articles (particularly with the Wii's importance) wasn't identified. Thus as Jaguar has suggested, needs more work in terms of content completion. In other words, I can't see a route that avoids indefinitely delisting this unless more eyes are put onto it soon (I'll ping the VG project again, but I've pinged for help before), but it should at least be seen that if we get editors to help bringing it back to an FA status is not a starting-from-scratch point. --Masem (t) 01:01, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm going to be pitching in to assist. I think step one, to make this manageable, must be to divide it among us. If myself, you, and Le Panini work on it, this shouldn't take too long, provided we each have a manageable section of the article to work with. Otherwise, it’s going to be chaos — us misusing our time with too much overlap when we need significant coverage. Let me have a look at the article now. I'm going to move this discussion into the Talk page (where SandyGeorgia and any other observers can join us, if they have any follow-ups. ImaginesTigers (talk) 06:09, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • Thanks for helping, User:ImaginesTigers; should you reach that point, please remember that you have two offers to copyedit on this page (Miniapolis, Czar). I will join in when the article has advanced to the point where a review from a non-gamer will help; we aren't apparently there now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:52, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at Talk:Wii#Avoiding the abyss. There's been some good progress. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 08:01, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thoughts
Not sure if you're around, Sandy, so if you don't reply within a day or so I'll leave a message on your Talk about this. The hard reality is that this article does not require a significant amount of work. I can earnestly say that History and Hardware are pretty much FA-ready. Hardware could have some tweaks, but is essentially ready. There are very few sources that I'd consider unreliable and, if so, they could be excised at a moment's notice without damaging the article structurally. The rest of the article is looking better. Legacy and Reception in particular seem strong to me. I think this article does still need a bit of a copy-edit, but after that, I'd be fairly comfortable subjecting it to the review process. The main issue now is some issues with referencing style and, honestly, I don't have it in me to go through them all and fix them. You will agree about the issues with referencing (I can even see some errors), but right now I'm in the middle of tearing Dracula apart. I have to at least finish that before I can touch the references here, because I've torn massive parts out of Dracula and I want it fixed before students start using the article for this semester of schooling. I estimate the references would take a single dedicated user about 2-3 hours to fix. Some are fine, some are not. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 01:34, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I will look in to see if I can clean up references; that's all I can offer (not a gamer). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:42, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Aside from the references, and some minor copy-editing, I think it’s in good shape now, and ready for some interrogation. If you'd rather wait until I have the time to copy-edit it (early February?), I can do that. Otherwise, I'd say you can interrogate it any time you like. If more problems become apparent... I'll post on WP:VG again, but I'm not expecting anything. Thanks, Sandy :) — ImaginesTigers (talk) 01:59, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nikkimaria what is the convention on wikilinking publishers/websites within citations these days? Am I supposed to link only the first, or all of them? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:32, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Either. The rule is consistency. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:38, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia: There is this source about how the Wii was born from Ars Technica that contains quite a bit of info that could be incorporated into the article. This source was also mentioned in the talk page of the Wii article not too long ago. X-Editor (talk) 01:56, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The prose doesn't read to me as "engaging/of a professional standard", mainly due to the list nature of the article (so many subsections and very little connective tissue). This said, not standing in the way of closing. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 06:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the article's structure has markedly improved, but I agree with czar that the overall prose doesn't meet the FA standard. Let's see what people at FARC think. ♦ jaguar 21:33, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jaguar: If this article does end up getting demoted as an FA, It could still be promoted to GA afterwards. X-Editor (talk) 19:24, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Issues raised in the review section included sourcing, style and prose. DrKay (talk) 22:19, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jaguar the Coordinators move articles from FAR to FARC; I see DrKay has now endorsed the move, but in the future, please leave such moves to them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:51, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Gonna go with keep. I'm no expert on video game consoles and their hardware, but this article seems reasonably well-written, comprehensive, and well-sourced. I do think there are some things I'd change (I feel like the "Software" section could be rearranged a bit to eliminate the subsection headers and make it less list-like and the "Critical reviews" subsection could easily be expanded a bit more) but I don't think these are outrageous enough to take away the article's star. It seems to have improved a lot since the FAR was started. JOEBRO64 00:09, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am also at Keep, acknowledging that my standards are lower for FAs that have already run TFA, but I don’t see any problems here significant enough to warrant stripping status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:14, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia: I wouldn't necessarily delist as the source problems shouldn't be too hard to solve. I'll see if I can find more reliable sources to replace the unreliable ones when I have the time, but it'll require some digging. X-Editor (Talk) 06:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Back at Keep, now that Hog Farm’s sourcing concerns have been addressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:55, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Back at Keep now as well. The article isn't perfect, but it's good enough for FA status. X-Editor (talk) 20:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sourcing comments

I need a break from accounting homework, so I'll give these sources a glance. Not sure about the following:

  • A Critical Hit! - funded through Patreon, looks like something in the bloggish-range, not sure that it's high-quality RS
  • What makes The Inspiration Room a high-quality RS?
  • WP:VGRS says Kotaku is reliable after 2010, but we've got two 2009 Kotaku citations in here. What makes that one high-quality RS?
  • Gamedaily.biz is listed as inconclusive at VGRS, so it's not gonna be high-quality RS
  • Destructoid is listed as situational by author at VGRS, and so that means Jim Sterling needs to be determined to be a RS author. Given that his other contributions to Destructiod have titles like "Videogame characters that look like David Bowie", "Top Ten Legit Pokemon", and "Julia Child's Ghost Penis", I highly doubt we're dealing with anything that would pass WP:SPS here.
  • What makes MaxConsole a high-quality RS?
  • The citation isn't formatted great, but we appear to be citing the New York Daily News. This is a bit on the marginal end for reliability; so what makes it meet the higher FA sourcing guidelines than basic reliability
    • After a further look, this source is just picking up something by an Associated Press writer, so I'd say its fine.
  • What makes gamingdaily.biz high-quality RS? Is this the same thing as the questionable gamesdaily.biz source mentioned above?
  • We've got a 2008 Kotaku in here too
  • What is Money, Inc? The bluelink goes to a wrestling tagteam, this seems to be some sort of obscure web source. Is this high-quality RS?

This shouldn't be hard to fix, but there's some definite issues here. I'm not sure this is quite ready to be kept with this number of questionable sources, but I may be wrong about them or just be a crank. Pinging commenters in the FARC section and Jaguar, the editor who moved this to FARC - @X-Editor, Jaguar, TheJoebro64, and Jaguar:. Hog Farm Talk 05:07, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hog Farm: Thanks for bringing up these issues. I replaced one of the pre-2010 Kotaku sources, replaced the Money, Inc. source, and removed the link to the WWE wrestling team. There are also some refs that need proper formatting. Withdrawing my support until these issues are resolved. X-Editor (Talk) 05:54, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm: I also got rid of the critical hit and inspiration room sources. X-Editor (Talk) 07:27, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Didn't get the ping.) I'll look over this in more depth a bit later, but I will note that Jim Sterling is considered one of Destructoid's reliable authors around the video game space. Sterling's written for other publications considered RSs and was one of Destructoid's editors. JOEBRO64 19:53, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So if several of the iffy ones are gone and Sterling is probably okay, it's looking a good deal better. And the NY Daily News source is off of the AP wire it looks like, so that's okay. Which just leaves MaxConsole, two pre-2010 Kotaku cites, gamedaily.biz, and gamingdaily,biz. So only 5 sources that may need replaced. Hog Farm Talk 20:49, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm: I replaced the Gamedaily.biz source. I'll try to replace more soon. X-Editor (talk) 05:15, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm: And I'm done getting rid of the unreliable sources. All that really needs to be done for me to support keeping this article's FA status is adding the names of the reporters to the references that don't have them and archiving all the sources to future-proof them. X-Editor (talk) 08:03, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.