Talk:October 1 (film)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Daniel Case (talk · contribs) 05:27, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

OK ... this is a relatively short one, high on the priority list (I'm not sure we've listed any other Nigerian, much less African, films as GAs yet, but even if we have I'm sure more would be nice). As I usually do I will be printing it out, going over it with a red pen, doing a copy edit because for me no GA should fail on those issues, and then coming back within a week with my thoughts and recommendations/suggestions. Daniel Case (talk) 05:27, 24 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you kindly! voorts (talk/contributions) 13:01, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @Daniel Case. I just wanted to check in and see where you are on this. Thanks! voorts (talk/contributions) 23:14, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I will be starting my copy edit later tonight ... Daniel Case (talk) 01:10, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I've reviewed your copy edit and made a few of my own. Looking forward to your other feedback! voorts (talk/contributions) 12:49, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, I'm back. I have to get up early tomorrow morning so I may be a little shorter than I'd like.

I don't use the rubric for assessing GAs ... I prefer to just list things. I start with what I liked about the article:


 * Very on point with the referencing. I didn't find a single occasion to add a fact tag.


 * The voice remains consistent throughout. Granted, it's on the shorter side for GA noms, but even still a lot come to GAN after someone expanded them ... without thinking to look over the parts that were there that they'd kept. As a result, you get facts needlessly restated (or, worse, contradicted), a mix of Commonwealth and US spelling/usage/date formatting (or metric and English units), duplication of first references to people or things (or second refs without first refs), and overall the effect of the article reading as if it was written by two or three people who were not allowed to look at what others were doing. This does not feel that way.


 * The article tells us about everything we'd want a film article to tell us about without getting bogged down in something or going off track (mostly). The copy edit shaved less than 1K off the total article, a good indicator in my experience that the writing was nice and compact (and something that rarely happens when I review GA noms).


 * It seems complete ... I looked at the Hausa and Igbo versions and did not see anything more there (the Igbo version is almost as long and while it seems largely to be a translation of the English version, it has some more sources, maybe some we don't use, that might be worth translating and looking at to see if there's something there we could use here).


 * The references are also well-done ... too often during a copy edit I have to go in and add missing required information like dates, access dates, media outlet or original language (another effect of just expanding something into GA). This did not have to be done here (there was one place where I thought we could add a date, but the original website turned out not to have it).

Now the punch list of things I would like to see done to promote the article:


 * Speaking of expansion, the intro could be longer ... right now it reads like it was once the whole article. It could summarize the movie's production history, reception, release and awards. I have done this for many articles and, if you're not sure you could do it yourself, I have no problem doing it myself.
 * We could also reduce that list of the cast in the first graf to just the three leads per summary style and, while we're at it, we don't need to have them all in the infobox, either. Not when we have the cast section.


 * In the plot section, you say Waziri "narrates" the film. This is usually taken to mean it has his voiceover. Does it? If so this should be made clear.
 * At the end of that section you say "in the present day". Do you mean now, as in 2023? Or in the time frame the film began at, the film's present, presumably after Waziri's investigation has concluded on the eve of independence. If the latter, this should be made clear.


 * In "casting", the article says Daba "last acted in a short film in 1998". Was that the last time he acted in any way? Or the last time in a film? Again, the article could use some clarity on the issue.


 * The photographs need a stronger fair-use justification, which is probably not your fault ... I'll take care of that if you want, not every user knows how to do this right. Is the one of the car a still from the film? If it isn't, and it isn't a free image, I doubt we can use it in the article. (I'm also amused at a 1964 model car being used in a film set in 1960, but then again Animal House has a lot of cars—including the one used in the parade scene at the climax of the movie—that postdate 1962, the year in which the movie's set. Budget).


 * We read at the end of the design section about two songs being used. Are they the only music in the film? Is there an original score? If so, and we can find anything where the composer might talk about it, that would be nice to have. At the very least we can just note that "X wrote an original score" or something to that effect.


 * I have marked the first sentence in "Themes" for several instances of citation overkill. I can see three cites for "sexual abuse of children by religious authority figures". But why are seven needed for "religious and ethnic conflict"? Or four for "politics in Colonial Nigeria". The middle one really seems unnecessary as I can't see that being that contentious and challengable a contention ... it really seems as if someone went and looked those up and desperately wanted to show their work. Three for each might be enough (especially as the first two have the same first three, and/or maybe five for the whole graf.


 * In "Critical reception", might it be possible to include the 61% from audiences at Rotten Tomatoes, as reached from the standard xlinks section at the bottom? Yes, there's no critic score, but we usually do include the audience score, and there's one here. Also, is there anything on MetaCritic? (I could understand if there isn't).


 * I can see why Decolonisation of Africa is in "See also", but I don't see the relevance of the other two historical entries (First Nigerian Republic and Nigerian Civil War) since they happened after the time period of the film. I understand if from a Nigerian perspective they would seem related, but there's nothing to explain this, and maybe they would be better off being taken out.

OK, that's it for the things that need to be addressed.

The only other thing I might want to say, more of an interesting question to me, is about the title: I assume from the use of the DMY format for dates throughout the article that Nigeria, like so many other former British colonies, uses that date format. So why, I ask, is the film's title in the MDY, more American, date format? I assume there's some good reason ... it just seems strange.

Alright ... happy editing! Daniel Case (talk) 04:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the thorough feedback, @Daniel Case. I'll take each of the items on your punch list:
 * Rewrote the lede and removed cast from the infobox.
 * Clarified the voiceover / present day issue.
 * Got rid of the part about Daba's last acting gig prior to the film because the source for that proposition is the director saying that was the last he'd seen him acting.
 * I removed the screenshot of Deola Sagoe in the film. The car photograph is free use per the permissions listed on the Commons.
 * Clarified RE soundtrack.
 * Fixed the citation overkill issue.
 * I think adding the Rotten Tomatoes score would be undue because (1) there are less than 50 audience reviews on the site and (2) I'm not sure how well-known or used Rotten Tomatoes is in Nigeria. I couldn't find the film on MetaCritic.
 * OK, just thought I'd ask. No problem. Daniel Case (talk) 05:10, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Removed the two other historical entries from "See also".
 * RE your other notes:
 * DMY: I believe that was the original date format when I first edited the article so I kept it per MOS:DATERET. Nigeria also appears to use DMY. I'm not sure why the film was titled October 1 rather than 1 October.
 * I think some of the sources that are in the Igbo version of the article were in this one originally, but I removed them because they either didn't support the propositions they were being cited for or they didn't add anything to the article.
 * voorts (talk/contributions) 21:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright! I like what I see and have no other issues. One of the quickest GA reviews I've ever done. ✅ Daniel Case (talk) 05:14, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

It also seems that this is the first article about a Nigerian film to make it GA. Congratulations!

Also, now that it's been promoted, would you like me to nominate it for DYK? I think there's a decent hook or two in this article (maybe about the film having to be put off its original October 1 release date?) Daniel Case (talk) 05:22, 4 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I like the release date idea for DYK. Please feel free to nominate. Thanks! voorts (talk/contributions) 13:20, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It's done! Daniel Case (talk) 22:21, 5 July 2023 (UTC)