Wikipedia:Peer review/2001: A Space Odyssey (film)/archive1

2001: A Space Odyssey (film)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because extensive improvement by many dedicated editors has, in my opinion, brought the article close to an FA level since the last FAC review in 2005, but I feel that input from a wider group of editors would benefit the article greatly before another FAC nomination is attempted. Criticism on all aspects of the article are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks, Shirtwaist (talk) 10:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments from Jappalang

I suggest withdrawing this peer review request, as this article is still some distance from FA quality; it has several issues that do not comply with policies and guidelines, which FAs are supposed to be exemplary of:

• many paragraphs and sentences lack citations (Wikipedia:Citing sources), the worst of which is the Interpretation section (to be detailed later) -- The interpretation section is merely a summary for the full article, linked at top of the section, dedicated to the interpretation of the film, but I'll add cites anyway.
• possible original research: because statements are uncited, they could be personal judgments or conjectures and not published information; Interpretations are supposed to be compiled from reliable sources, not the personal original opinions of editors.
• violations of Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria; fair use of copyrighted images are meant to be stricter than the assumed accepted practices of US law. Many images here simply illustrate scenes that can be described with words (violating NFCC criterion 1) or are not supported by significant critical commentary in the text (NFCC 8). -- All images illustrate specific article content and were posted with fair use rationale required by WP, this is common practice in numerous FA articles. An article about a film world-famous for its iconic images should contain some of those images.
• incorrect interpretation of sources: where in Steven Pietrobon's resume does it state that he was a NASA scientist? Getting a "NASA Research Assistantship" does not make a scientist out of an assistant. Done
• copyright violations: that youtube link is a copyright violation since neither Apple nor MGM (if it was taken from the film) authorised its uploading there; the same goes for the pages that post entire scans/transcripts of articles from MAD magazine, Playboy, and other magazines. -- "Mad" and "Youtube" cites removed, "Playboy" citation refs the magazine's own website, which is acceptable in WP as far as I know. Done
• sources of questionable reliability: Wikipedia defines "reliable" in a slightly different way. A source is reliable if it was heavily relied on by others (mostly because it is an expert on the subject and is often quoted). How are palantir.net, cinezik, Askville, starshipmodeler.com, avrev.com, and other assorted websites reliable? Please refer to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-07-28/Dispatches on how sources are generally judged at FACs.
• several cleanup templates and tags are in the article. I only saw one cleanup template, which was fixed, working on tags.
• much of the prose are short paragraphs, coming across as stubs or items inserted haphazardly without a clear organisation.

All these are serious failings and should have been cleared. Jappalang (talk) 22:51, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs

• Jappa hits the broad strokes. It might have been near-FA quality in 2005, but standards have risen since then. The article really needs a rewrite and reorganization. Much of the scope of the film is given short shrift, while other parts (the nukes in space) swallow up seven paragraphs. I suggest workshopping the entire article on the talk page, and inviting broader discussion at WT:FILM, because this article needs more work than a peer review setup can address. My final recommendation is to look at other (recent) film FAs for inspiration; articles like Star Trek: The Motion Picture focus on production aspects, while articles like Changeling (film) also focus on themes and critical reaction in a way that a groundbreaking film like 2001. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:48, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I would say that the scientific accuracy section also is overly lacking in citations even though having two close friends in the aerospace industry (I myself worked for NASA for 2 years) I am convinced of their correctness- I fully realize this gets no mileage here on WP. Some stuff like how Dr. Floyd's pen floats should be dropped, absent a good source. However, I suspect that the "Interpretations" section that User:Jappalang has pegged as "the worst" re sourcing would actually be very easy to source given a bit of research. It seems the pics could be salvaged by expanding the captions on the pictures. There are good reasons for most of them, it just needs to be spelled out in the captions. Some of the short paragraphs strike me as justifiable, but many are not. Here I will not elaborate my opinion as to which is which.

As for the sources, specifically. The Cinezik source is utterly dispensable- the same info (about SK's use of Blue Danube) can be easily found many other places. This is probably also true of the Askville reference about diffusion of light.

However, avrev is a standard online film review site which is focused on DVD and Blu-Ray reviews, cited in just over 50 Wikipedia articles. Much of their reviews are focused on the quality of the transfer since they only review DVDs and Blu-Rays. Publications that confine their reviews to DVDs and Blu-Rays are frequently entirely online. The author of the review for "2001" that is cited here is a Hollywood cameraman who won an Oscar for Technical Achievement "for refinement to a dual-screen, front-projection image-compositing system". Dang it, this is a reliable source!!

Palantir.net is a website devoted solely to 2001. It's main compiler has published also about 2001 in a publication called DFX (for Digital Effects). He did an honors undergrad thesis on 2001 (which counts for less). As I understand WP Policy, if a self-published source has also published in what are considered reliable sources, then we allow the self-published source. So I somewhat defend this one as well.

The use of Starship Modeler is IMO a gray area. They have one of the only photos in the world (very rare) of one of the actual models used for the earth-satellites that is not a screenshot. They are writing about an interesting subject which hardly anyone who fits WP criterion for reliability even discusses at all. There may be a case against their inclusion, but I would mourn their loss as I would not at all mourn the loss of Askville and Cinezik.--WickerGuy (talk) 17:00, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Retraction. Cinezik is a website of a major French print magazine on the usage of music in film. Well-known in Europe if little-known in USA. Although the info cited from it is easily available from English language sources, it is absolutely a reliable source, no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. That only leaves askville.com as the source we must absolutely do away with.--WickerGuy (talk) 19:40, 18 October 2010 (UTC)