Wikipedia:Peer review/The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim/archive1

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to bring the article to GA-Class. I was actively involved in the writing of the article preceding and shortly following the game's release. I've recently done a rewrite of section 6, Reception (haven't gone into 6.1 & 6.2), and a tidy up of the Gameplay. Popular culture will probably have to go. I'd like feedback on how I can improve the other sections, particularly Development and Release. Plot certainly would need a cull.

Thanks, CR4ZE (t) 05:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

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• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]
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-(t) Josve05a (c) 02:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs

Hit me up in a day or two if I haven't started posting anything. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

• Ok so on a look through this is a fairly solid start to an article, but I'd say it needs some work for GA class and beyond.
• Content
  • A big issue I'm seeing throughout is that the article isn't entirely comprehensible if one hasn't played the games (or the series). Take for example, this passage: The player was caught in an Imperial ambush while attempting to cross the border into Skyrim, on a wagon with several Stormcloak soldiers, Ulfric Stormcloak himself, and a horse thief. They are all headed to Helgen to be executed. "Stormcloak", "Ulfric Stormcloak", and "Helgen" are thrown in with no introduction; similarly there is no introduction for what the civil war is, who it's being fought between, what Tamriel is, Mer, the Blades, Greybeards, et al... The entire plot section needs to be rewritten so that it's understandable for someone with no prior knowledge.
    • As a point to addressing some of the issues with the plot section, I would cut the voice actor mentions as it's repeated later on and seems oddly picked (as in mentioning characters such as the Blades who play a very minor role in the story, but seem to be mentioned due to their voice talent.)
  • The prose in general is a bit clunky, though that's not as large an obstacle for GA class. I would suggest trying to reword as many sentences as fits to active voice to cut down on some of the repetitive sentence structure.
  • Parts of the article still need to be updated; the soundtrack was released in 2011 but the prose still says All copies preordered before December 23 will be personally autographed by Soule. The add-on section needs particular attention.
  • In terms of overall content, there seems enough to consider it broadly comprehensive for GA criteria. The reception section is fairly well-formed, although I think it could do with an opening paragraph that sums up critical reception before diving into the various aspects of the game.
• Images
  • I'm a bit iffy on the use of File:Skyrim dragon language.jpg and File:Jeremy Soule - Sons of Skyrim.ogg--they both have some development info attached to them but not much in the way of reception content to help justify them per WP:NFCC. I think a better image than File:Skyrim game world.jpg could probably be used to showcase the game's graphics--we don't see much of the world in that shot.
• References
  • Most of the refs appear to meet reliable source requirements on first glance: the ones I'm not familiar with are Attack of the Fanboy, Sixth Axis, Nexus Mods, and Geekosystem. Might wanna' double check those meet WP:RS. I did a cursory spotcheck on referencing and didn't see any issues but I wouldn't swear by it.

If you have any questions, ping me on my talk—I don't watchlist reviews. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 04:02, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the peer review. I would like to discuss your concern about the prose being "clunky". Would you be able to elaborate on this point? Where in the article are you mostly seeing the issue? If it's a concern with the Plot, yes, I plan to rewrite it, but I think Gameplay is quite concise and I don't think it suffers from the problem of alienating the non-gamer as much as Plot does.

Would an opening paragraph in the Reception section be necessary? Generally these paragraphs read "this game received critical acclaim" and "it earned [scores] from Metacritic and GameCritics". That information is supplied in the reviews table. Do you mean having an opening paragraph which is a summation of the following paragraphs?

In terms of the supplementary media, I agree that File:Skyrim game world.jpg is a poor addition to the article. It's hard to make out what's in the picture and there's no HUD. I will certainly attempt to replace this screenshot. I don't understand your ambivalence to File:Skyrim dragon language.jpg and File:Jeremy Soule - Sons of Skyrim.ogg however. As discussed in prose, the dragon language actually makes use of an alphabet and lexicon created by Adam Adamowicz with a specific design to emulate the claw markings of dragons. It'd also be nice to have his work exemplified in the article as he has since passed away and the development of the language would have been a very meticulous process. Likewise for the theme song sample; because we have good information about how it was created, it is nice to provide the reader with an example of what it sounded like. Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say there isn't enough reception content?

Thank you again for the comments. CR4ZE (t) 05:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the images, it's certainly "nice" to have the images. But WP:NFCC puts as the threshold that non-free content has to be well-nigh essential to the article to the point that removing it is heavily detrimental to the article as a whole. I'm not sure it's proven that's the case here. To my comment about reception, if you could find info that specifically discussed the dragon language design or talked about how significant the title track was, that would bolster the argument that the content is important enough to retain.

As for the prose, what I mean by clunky are places where thoughts take more words than necessary to express, where the connections between sentences are unclear, and where transitions between paragraphs are off. A lot of the prose for example depends heavily on comma splices. Another example: A main quest is assigned to the player at the beginning of the game, but it can be completed at the player's leisure, or ignored given the prerequisite that the first stage of the quest is completed. is a mouthful. You could make it more straightforward by rewording it to something like this: The game's main quest can be completed or ignored at the player's preference after the first stage of the quest is finished. (of course, staying within sources—which reminds me, for audio podcasts, etc. where there's a long chunk of stuff being referenced, putting in time markers and a quote is very helpful for people trying to verify the citation.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:24, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

In this diff, I have tightened up the prose in Gameplay sections. Are there any other sections you can see that are unnecessarily wordy? Bar Plot, as I know this needs a rewrite anyway. CR4ZE (t) 06:40, 20 December 2013 (UTC)