Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sesame Street/September 2004

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Sesame Street[edit]

  • My pet, I think it's pretty good. -- user:zanimum 02:00, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Mostly good article. Two points. One: Get rid of the word 'edutainment' in the opening paragraph - it's ugly, links into a stub and screams 'this article is for Americans only', which it shouldn't be even though it's about a US programme. (It's also duplicating what's in 'History of the show', it doesn't seem so bad there.) Two: The dead-end linked characters (particularly the secondary ones) could do with some pruning (or writing up if they actually are interesting). If those two (small) things one thing are is changed, I'll alter my vote to 'support'. Jongarrettuk 18:35, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • How does the quality of a linked to article effect the quality of a candidate? I'll get on to the characters, but as a comparison, Belgium has redlinks to its people within the main article, yet it's featured. -- user:zanimum
      • It just looks like too long a list. I admit it's a bit niggly. To be honest, I'd probably change to support if only my first concern was addressed. Lists not perfect, but look ok enough to me now for me to withdraw this part of my objection. Jongarrettuk 00:41, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Fully support, if you shift the "History of the Show" to towards the top of the article. Great article! Incidently, I like the "edutainment" word in the lead section. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:06, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Support now, my objections having been met. Filiocht 12:33, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC) Object for now. The lead section is a bit short and there are no references. Also too many lists, I think the minor puppers and humans migh be left out at no great loss. FYI, the US version was on both British and Irish TV for years. Filiocht 08:18, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Object. Request to post this on Wikipedia:Peer review first. Some issues: 1) No references. 2) Images should have captions (and sources for some images are a bit vague). If possible, the screen captures should be replaced with better images. 3) The list of characters should be dropped to List of Sesame Street characters, and replaced by a brief discussion of all the characters now listed under "Primary Puppet Characters". 4) See also lists and random facts seem to be inserted at various places in the articles. These need to be grouped together, unless such a see also belongs to a certain section (such as the list of characters). 4) The broadcast history and Regional variations of the show sections both tell the same story, but of different countries. 5) There needs to be a history section. Jim Henson is mentioned only twice, briefly. 6) A section such as "controversy" seems a bit out of place. It seems to imply there have been several controversies, but only one is discussed. If there have been more: discuss them, if not: include it in the history section if deemed relevant enough. 7) Is there info on viewing numbers? Are they growing/stable/declining after 35 years? And internationally? Jeronimo 09:57, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Object at the moment. The section with links to character lists is messy and there's a lot more to be said about merchandising. I'm happy to support this otherwise. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 08:31, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. Would be good to make the photo captions full sentences (cf. House style), however. Mpolo 09:25, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • NOTES: References have been added. Nielsen Ratings have been added. Characters have been abbreviated and clustered. Broadcast history adjusted. Non-screen capture images added. History moved. However, edutainment is the hot term for this sort of thing, and has been since the mid-1990s, at least. Ugly word of not, it's educational entertainment. -- user:zanimum
    • Love your work :-) - Ta bu shi da yu 08:22, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Still object to 'edutainment' as it's too American and so screams 'this article is for Americans only', whereas featured articles should be for a world audience Jongarrettuk 16:08, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • Are you say the term is not used in countries other than America, or are you saying the edutainment page only has American examples? Within America, Thomson Learning and Prentice Hall textbooks, and Princeton U all use the term. Hong Kong Baptist University (Department of Computer Science) site, within the Hong Kong Education City site uses the term. [resources.ed.gov.hk/com-lit/it01/glossary_link.htm] The British edition of Macworld [www.macworldextra.co.uk/showme_ browse_results.lasso?caturn=20117] and the British Hutchinson Encyclopedia [1] (used at an ISP site named Tiscali [www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/ dictionaries/computers/data/m0045464.html]). Actually, the first result for edutainment in an international Google search comes up with the relatively irrelevant Surf Stallion Image Gallery, from Australia.
Within the realm of television, a search for "edutainment+TV": #2 is from Singapore, #7 from Israel, #10 from Finland. #9, although the site is hosted in the US, is a UNICEF conference in South Africa. -- user:zanimum
  • I wasn't going to comment more, but zanimum has requested I do, so I shall. When I first read the article, the word 'edutainment' in the lead sentence stood out to me as unusual - it is a recently coined portmanteau word, and whilst no doubt used in the TV industry and TV guides in the UK and in other countries, it is hardly common - it also screams out 'Americanism' (and by this I never meant to imply that the word is only used in America-n I know full well it is used in the UK, though not often :) ). Put simply, the phrasing you use in the first paragraph distracted me, nearly putting me off reading the remainder. Which is a shame as the rest of the article is very good. Because having that word so early on put me off the article, I oppose it becoming a featured article. May I propose a different construction along the lines of: 'Sesame Street is a television program which led the way for many of the modern shows for young children that combine education with entertainment.' Jongarrettuk 18:08, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)