Talk:Cross Days/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Moisejp (talk · contribs) 05:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I'll be reviewing this article for GA. It might take me up to a week to complete the review. よろしく. Moisejp (talk) 05:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, there are two disambiguation links and there appear to be at least several dead links. I'll look at the more closely during my review and maybe help you fix some of them if I can. Moisejp (talk) 05:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * The lead does not summarize the info in the article well enough and is too short. Well written. Follows MOS.
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * Everything checks out.
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * Good coverage.
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * NPOV.
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * Stable.
 * 1) It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * Images have FURs and adequate captions.
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * Let me know which links are dead and I'll find alternatives. Thanks for the help! Valce Talk 22:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Valce. If you click the "external links" link in the Toolbox above you can see the status of each reference. The red ones are definitely no good, the beige one in this case is also no good, and some of the light green ones may be no good, while others appear to be OK. For example, refs 46 and 47 redirect to a page saying you have to be 18 to access (I understand that's for legal reasons—so likely it's OK—I'll look more into it later). Anyway, during my review I'll be going through each page to check the information matches, and indicate specifically which pages are problems, but if you want to get a head start on checking and changing some, you can. (By the way, for dead links, you can try them on the [Internet Wayback Machine] and sometimes they work.)
 * Also, by random spot checking of a few pages, I noticed that some of your sources are blogs. Occasionally blogs are acceptable, but more often they don't meet Wikipedia's policy on reliability. I haven't checked each one at all carefully yet, but if you wanted to, you could get a head start on thinking about whether these sources seem to meet Wikipedia's reliability standards and be prepared to defend them if you think they do. Moisejp (talk) 03:44, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, by random spot checking of a few pages, I noticed that some of your sources are blogs. Occasionally blogs are acceptable, but more often they don't meet Wikipedia's policy on reliability. I haven't checked each one at all carefully yet, but if you wanted to, you could get a head start on thinking about whether these sources seem to meet Wikipedia's reliability standards and be prepared to defend them if you think they do. Moisejp (talk) 03:44, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, as I go through the article, I'm going to list some issues here. Here are my first batch of comments:
 * The lead is too short, and doesn't adequately summarize the article. See WP:Lead. The article is 30,000 bytes. Although it's not an absolute rule, the recommended size of the lead is about three paragraphs. Right now you have two short paragraphs. I think the Trojan scare would definitely be worth mentioning, and possibly a very general sentence about it being set in a high school the plot revolving around different possible romantic/sexual couple forming among a defined group of girls and boys.
 * Also, it's optional, but a lot of people prefer not to put citations in the lead. Since the lead is a summary of the article, everything gets cited in the body of the article, and the lead doesn't get cluttered up with citations. But again, that style is optional, so I'm not insisting on it.


 * The Gameplay section currently lacks citations. Moisejp (talk) 05:10, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Some more things:
 * Reference 5 is no good, and I couldn't find previous versions on the Internet Wayback Machine. Another source will be needed for the PalaceGame release.
 * I wonder why of all the info in the infobox, only the rating and Windows platform are sourced. I'm not saying I'd necessarily expect to see everything sourced, but it seems inconsistent that only these two pieces of info are in the infobox. Well, I notice some of the other info in the infobox is sourced outside of the infobox. What if, for consistency, you sourced the rating outside the infobox and removed the sourcing from the Windows platform inside the infobox?
 * Ref #9 doesn't link to the info given. With the Internet Wayback Machine I was able to find the info: . So it seems that now miscgamer.com redirects to tsukikan.com. Tsukikan.com looks like the official website for a company, which is fine. But miscgamer.com at least appears to me to be a blog run by an individual and thus probably does not meet Wikipedia reliability standards, unless you have evidence that the author is a professional expert in the field. If not, we'll need a new source for this one, too. Moisejp (talk) 05:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This sentence seems imprecise: "A concurrent radio drama broadcast during development and the game's original soundtrack was published by Lantis, as were three novels and other print." The radio drama and the soundtrack appear to be published by Lantis, but not the books. Also, so that readers don't have to navigate too much within the Japanese website, it might be better to separate the CD source from the books source.
 * Ref #10 looks like a very interesting site, but at first glance it does appear to be a personally run blog. I would need evidence that the authors are professional experts in their field in order to accept it as a reliable source.
 * Ref #11 doesn't look very WP:RS to me, but do you have any evidence it is? Moisejp (talk) 06:23, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

More:
 * Ref #14 "Otaku News Notes" appears to be a personally run blog and most likely does not qualify as a reliable source.
 * Ref #17 appears to be the same as #6 and should be merged.
 * Ref #18 doesn't seem to show the info stated.
 * Ref #19 the title is presently "CrossDays 動作チェッカー". Should it be "CrossDays 修正ファイルダウンロード"? Or "CrossDays壁紙ダウンロード"?
 * Refs #21 and 22 are from cartoonleap.com. Unfortunately, it looks like a personally run blog.

Well, Valce, I've only gone through about a third of the references, and quite a few of them appear to be sources we can't use. I believe it will be challenging, although not necessarily impossible for you to find substitute references for all of these. Thus, before I spend any more time reviewing this, I would like to see all of the issues brought up so far addressed. If you manage to do so, I'll be very happy to go through the rest of the sources to try to see which other ones may need fixing, and whether there are any other issues in the text itself which may need addressing. In the meantime, I'm putting this article On Hold. Many reviewers give about a week for the nominator to fix up the issues. I'm happy to keep this review open as long as you are actively working towards addressing the issues. Moisejp (talk) 06:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Valce. OK, some more points I notice as I go through the article:
 * I think you made a mistake with your ref #2, which just links to the Wikipedia 0verflow article, which I'm sure isn't what you wanted.
 * In the References, could you make all the date formats consistent? It should be yyyy-mm-dd (see MOS).
 * I've just been trying to dig around in the different manuals of style on here, including Manual_of_Style_(anime-_and_manga-related_articles) and Manual of Style/Japan-related articles to see if I could find anything about possible conventions for including little translations for Japanese used in the titles of websites in References, but couldn't find anything. Do you know of any policies about that? I notice Shuffle! doesn't use them, but they do spell out the Japanese into romaji. Well, I don't have a super strong preference—I thought it'd be a little bit nice for people who can't read Japanese, but I guess if they can't understand the content of the websites anyway, maybe it doesn't make much difference if they can read the website titles.

I'll get to looking at the rest of your refs soon. Moisejp (talk) 05:26, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey there. The second reference isn't a mistake, it's a video game citation. I wikilinked the developer. I'll go through and fix all the dates. Valce Talk 05:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, I see, it's a video game reference template. I'd missed that. Thanks. Moisejp (talk) 06:35, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'm hoping we can finish off this review very soon. I'm working my way through the article again. Right now I'm checking the prose one more time, and then I am going to go through the remaining sources (actually, since some of the sources have changed, I'll probably go through all of the sources).
 * The last paragraph of Gameplay now has sources, which is good, but the longer first paragraph still doesn't. I guess you're still working on that. If you can't find sources, hmm, maybe consider rewriting or simplifying the section in a way that you can support it with sources? The info that's there now does seem kind of vital, though.
 * "Cross Days follows Yuuki Ashikaga, a bespectacled young lad whose withdrawn school life turns incubus when his affection for two girls attracts the unexpected drama of other people." Could you consider rewriting this sentence? I had to look up "incubus" and I'm not sure what "attracts drama of other people" means.
 * In the Characters paragraph, you have " Chie Ashikaga, the mildly abusive older sister of Yuuki, and Kyouichi Kasannoin, Nanami Kanroji's boyfriend,[5] having only previously made cameo appearances in the School Days anime,[6] eturn to make more prominent roles, as does Ai Yamagata, a character last seen from Summer Days. Rounding up the set of new cast is Ion Ishibashi and Kira Youka, two friends of Chie." I guess [5] is meant to be the source for everything until that point, and then [6] for the one point about the cameos. What about everything after [6]? Moisejp (talk) 16:45, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * "On March 29, 2010 0verflow announced that an outdated DLL had been released with retail versions of the game. A 372 KB replacement was provided via download." DLL currently links to a disambiguation page. Should it link to Dynamic-link library?
 * "Interestingly, the intrusive nature of the trojan was found stated in the installer's software license agreement." I agree that that's interesting, but as an objective encyclopedia, we can't say that it was "interesting". The best solution would be to attribute the opinion to someone. Or possibly remove the sentence, because if you just remove "Interestingly" the sentence falls pretty flat.
 * My interpretation was that the first trojan was released by an official company involved (but this is not stated explicitly in the text—it probably should be) but that the second trojan was a scam by an unrelated company? If so, this should be clarified, too. Or, if it was an official company that released the second trojan, I'm not sure about the word "extorted" because those affected with the trojan were trying to illegally download the game, so it is not clear whether the company may have had the right to demand compensation.
 * I'm not sure about your Reception section—it probably needs to be rethought or clarified. It begins by saying that "Cross Days was met with critically mixed reception." Then the next two sentences don't talk about reception, but about delays. Then the next sentence about Getchu.com talks about sales.
 * "Based on the premise of the game, Cross Days was published into a manga." "Based on the premise of the game" seems unclear to me.
 * "Released as a first and second disc on June 23 and July 21, 2010, respectively,[43] the set contained thirty-two segments of the broadcast, comprising the sixty-four total that were aired." The first part of the sentence was copy-edited by me. But about the second part of the sentence, does it mean each disc had 32 segments? I guess that must be what it means, but I don't think that's what it says.

Great, that's everything for the prose itself. I am now going to look at the sources. Moisejp (talk) 18:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Alright, let's see.
 * Changed DLL to link to Dynamic-link library (thanks that was an oversight)
 * Changed "the set" to "each album" in Audio CDs
 * Changed "premise" to "story" in Manga
 * Changed "incubus" to "awry" and "attracts drama of other people" to "begins to affect his relationships with his friends and peers"
 * Added citations for characters after reference 6 (though I didn't feel this would be necessary since they make appearances in the List of School Days characters).


 * With the aforementioned changes made, what's left is the Gameplay section, Reception, and Trojan scare. The only piece of information worth citing in Gameplay would be the endings, since it would be unnecessary to cite the workings of a visual novel since it has its own article. Unfortunately, 0verflow never released an official account of the endings; unofficial and unprofessional sources have though, but you told me I couldn't use those.


 * There are varying accounts of the trojan horse story, most of which are only consistent across self-published blogs: that there was 1 trojan that started out, then later on a second similar one was found that tried to scam money from people. Because again, those are self-published blogs, according to a BBC News article I found on it, there were multiple copies of the trojan with varying names of erotic games other than Cross Days and that once information was published to the web, the user was presented with either an email or a pop-up that asked for monetary compensation to take the information down. I followed this game throughout most of its development and I can dig up the 0verflow site as far as deep as I can go, but I don't ever remember seeing the company officially acknowledge the trojan. I'm leaning toward the BBC article more though, what about you? You can find it here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8622665.stm)


 * As for reception, I'll do what I can to find official reviews of the game.

Hi Valce. OK, I'm working my way through your sources right mow. Regarding your comments above, and regarding the sources:
 * I'd still like to see a ref about visual novels in the Gameplay section. Can you use this source, which is used for the Visual novel article? This source seems to be OK.
 * About the trojan, if you use the BBC source with the two sources you have already, can you put together a complete enough summary of the story? If it means leaving out any details that aren't included in the sources, that can't be helped. We have to just go with the info we have in reliable sources.
 * About ref #11, the source only says that the publications came out in October (not specifically October 30), and it doesn't seem to mention what the specific content of the publications was.
 * Unfortunately, your ref #14 seems to be dead.
 * "Trial versions of the game, released to about 125 select retailers, were disclosed by 0verflow on December 26[16] and at Comiket 75.[17]" On ref #16 I counted about 95 retailers. Did I miss the others somewhere between refs #16 and 17?
 * Can you merge refs #19 and 20? They link to the same site. Maybe you can call the title "What's New" for both of them. Also, why don't you use the same one for ref #21, because it's there that it says it was 10/30, not the link you presently have for ref #21.
 * "NetAgent reported that at least 661 had been extorted, totaling a payout of at least ¥3,833,800 or roughly $49,912." I found those figures in the source but I didn't see any mention of Cross Days. Did I miss it somewhere? Also, I don't think you should mention the dollar exchange because exchange rates can change rapidly. Moisejp (talk) 22:00, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Your refs #27 and 28 go to the same link, and both of them say March 19 as the release date. There's no mention of December 18 or January 29. Also, among that set of sources, I didn't see mention of the first date, February 27, 2009. If you have trouble finding sources for all six dates, why don't you just say that release was delayed multiple times and not get into specifics? Moisejp (talk) 23:16, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I know on your talk page you said that Getchu.com is a redistributor of visual novels and other domestic anime products. That sounds good to me inasmuch as the site's status as a reliable source. But in terms of their sales being notable, are they one of the major sources of visual novels in Japan, then? If so, maybe you can make a little note of them when you mention Getchu.com. Otherwise, readers won't know that its sales are relevant. Or if they aren't one of the major sources of visual novels, mentioning them as an indication of the sales of Cross Days would be problematic.
 * For ref #35, I don't see anything about August 10. It just says the October edition (Volume 5) is coming out in August, doesn't it?
 * For ref #38, I didn't see anything about it being published by Kinema Junpousha. Also, there's no mention on the site about the year. Just checking, but is it definitely 2010?
 * For ref #40, I didn't see anything about an October 22, 2010 release date.
 * About the soundtrack, I think you need more references for the dates. Unless I missed it, there's nothing about June 26 in your sources or about 0verflow's announcement being on April 16. Maybe you should just simplify the section and say that it was released on April 21 period. (Or if you want to find more sources for the dates, that's fine, too, of course.)
 * In the Merchandise section, about the dakimura, the Japanese source says 抱き枕カバー. I don't know much about these things, but I imagined it just to be like a pillowcase that fits on the dakimakura, not the dakimakura itself. But, again, I don't how dakimakura are usually sold, so I could very well have imagined the wrong thing.

All right, Valce, those are all my comments for the article. If you can address all of them satisfactorily, Cross Days gets a GA. Moisejp (talk) 06:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, let's see.
 * Took a look at the 1up reference. It works, explains the function of the game enough.
 * Merged 19 and 20 and 21.
 * The game's multiple delays were reported across a lot of circles so I feel it's noteworthy. I found all the missing date changes posted by 0verflow using the WayBackMachine. Because they don't have much of a use in Reception, I moved all of them to development.
 * Reference 14 wasn't dead, there were two l's in html. Fixed.
 * Rewrote the trojan scare section with a lot more thoroughness. Come to find the virus has it's own article. As for the NetAgent source: I took another look back and I'm confident I misread the information. I don't think there was a second virus; from what I can see, the 661 figure is the amount of people who actually did pay to have their information taken down, but I could be wrong. Until it can or can't be verified, I'll just leave it out.
 * For citation 11, I changed it to October and reworded the sentence so it just states that articles were written about the game, not the exact content of them.
 * For the trials that were given out, yeah I counted 95 too. I seem to remember citing to separate pages with the rest of the stores, hmm. Well I could dig it up later I'm sure but for now I'll keep it at 95.
 * Changed Reception to Sales, since that's all that's really relevant at the moment. Moved the part about venues into Development.
 * Reference 35 (now 36): There were only 2 volumes of the Cross Days manga published. In the "Publicity" timeline I cited, on April, May, June, July and August 2010 there was an individual serialization of the manga published in Comp Ace (コンプエース), a magazine. The exact August date I used could've come from unsourced material so I'll just take out the day.
 * Reference 38 (now 39) fixed. I found the book on the publishers site.
 * Reference 40 (now 41) fixed. Found the date.
 * Audio CD reference: I see what I did. I forget at times that this company doesn't always reiterate the date they posted an update on that updates landing page. It was posted on their game blog so I'll just use the merged 19, 20, 21 citation again and move the previous citation to the end of the August 21 date. I also found the June 26 date.
 * About the dakimakura. You're probably right, I've just seen the word used interchangeably to refer to the pillow or the case. I'll specify they're cases.
 * For the Getchu.com. To be honest, I'm not all that familiar with their business except that they are frequently cited in other articles (like Shuffle) in Reception or Sales since they do rank visual novels by the month and then overall year. I did, however, perform an Alexa rank on them and they come up as the 7,325 most visited site in the world and 773rd in Japan. I figure that accounts for something, considering the millions of websites in the world. While it wouldn't be necessary to mention their rank, maybe I could, like you said, put a note that they are an established professional distributor?


 * That should be most if not all of the fixes for now. If I happened to miss any, let me know and I'll get them fixed. Thanks for the help. Valce Talk 10:28, 26 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Great, Valce. Everything looks good. I did some final copy-editing and am comfortable the article meets GA requirements. By the way, I removed the last sentence of the first paragraph of the Gameplay section. I felt that it didn't really add much, and the tone of it felt kind of OR-y. (If you strongly disagree, you could put it back, but maybe try to find a reference for it?) Great work! Moisejp (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)