Talk:Sacrifice (2005)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Batard0 (talk · contribs) 19:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

This one's been sitting around for a while - it's the oldest outstanding nomination in sports and rec - so I'll take it on despite not knowing much about professional wrestling. I'll post some initial comments in a bit.--Batard0 (talk) 19:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria The article's not bad, and I think will meet GA criteria with some substantial improvement. It needs work particularly on the quality of the prose and conformity to the Manual of Style.
 * 1) Is it reasonably well written?
 * A. Prose quality:
 * The prose generally fine, but needs some work before it can be called reasonably well-written. Here are some suggestions:
 * This is a quibble, but in the first sentence, I think it's clearer to say it was "a promotion that took place" rather than "promotion, which took place". The comma disrupts the sentence a bit, when the goal of the first sentence should be to get across what this is and where its significance lies as efficiently as possible.


 * Wouldn't it be more ac curate in the second sentence of the lead to say "first show in the Sacrifice series" rather than "Sacrifice chronology"? A chronology is a timeline (this is appropriate as a descriptor in the infobox), but it seems to be the first in a series of events, not a timeline.


 * I think "Tag Team match" should be "tag-team match". Tag Team is not a proper noun and needn't take capital letters. Since "tag team" here is a compound adjective, it should take a hyphen ("tag-team").


 * The first sentence of the second paragraph could be made simpler. You're dealing with four people, and it gets confusing. I would suggest putting a full stop after "match," i.e. " "The main event was a Tag Team match between the team of Jeff Jarrett and Rhino facing the team of Raven and Sabu, in which if Jarrett pinned Raven he would earn a future NWA World Heavyweight Championship match." and then the following sentence would be: "If Raven pinned Jarrett, however, he would not receive one for an entire year."


 * It's not clear what "he" and "one" refer to in the sentence just described. Should it be, ""If Raven pinned Jarrett, however, Jarrett would not get a championship match for an entire year."? Generally "he" refers to the subject, not the object, so if you're talking about Jarrett, you should spell out his name.


 * In the following sentence, it's better to say "took place" instead of "were held," since the latter is in the passive voice.


 * "Number one contender" should be "number-one contender," since "number-one" is a compound adjective."


 * "Special Guest Referee" needn't have initial caps and does not need to be linked, given that there's no wikilink for it. Same goes for "Tag Team," which should be hyphenated. So: "B.G. James was special guest referee for a tag-team match."


 * It should be "the latter won" at the end of this sentence, not "the later one."


 * The final sentence of the second paragraph is confusing. It should probably be, "Austin Aries was the chosen opponent; Daniels defeated him at the event." Or something like this, but not "chosen opponent, who was..." because this is a confusing construction.


 * I'm having trouble understanding the first sentence of the final paragraph of the lead. What does "Sacrifice is marked for the Finals of the 2005 TNA Super X Cup Tournament" mean? I wish I could offer suggestions, but I'm not sure what it means for Sacrifice to be "marked as the finals." And why is "finals" taking initial capitalization? Perhaps you should delete this sentence.


 * I'll have more comments on language later. There are a bunch more issues to resolve.


 * Under "background," I think the prose would flow better if you simply say that TNA announced it would hold a PPV event titled Sacrifice rather than saying it was a press release. The fact that TNA made the announcement in a press release is tangential, I think, and disrupts the flow of the section.


 * For the sake of clearer writing, it would be helpful to eliminate the use of passive voice in the "background" section wherever possible. So: "TNA created a section covering the event on its website." and "TNA created a poll on its website" and "TNA planned a 30-minute pre-show." The use of the passive is a bit overwhelming here.


 * This bit: "TNA released a poster sometimes prior featuring" I think should be corrected to: "TNA released a poster before the event featuring..." "Sometimes" is not the right word here.


 * In: "A poll was created by TNA on their website to determine then-TNA X Division Champion Christopher Daniels' opponent in a non-title bout for Sacrifice, in what was promoted as an 'Internet Dream match'." The words, "in what was" are unnecessary.


 * The writing is a bit clunky in the final two sentences. I'd recommend using a semicolon and editing out a few words, as follows: "Austin Aries, Jay Lethal and Roderick Strong were the candidates in the poll; Aries won, thus setting up a match with Daniels."


 * Moving to the Storylines section, in the following bit: "Sacrifice featured nine professional wrestling matches and one pre-show match that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines", the word "different" is extraneous and trips up the reader. I'd suggest removing it.


 * In "Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated into a wrestling match or series of matches", I'd recommend making some edits to the second part so it reads more clearly. Perhaps something like: "Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that culminated in wrestling matches."


 * In "The main event at Sacrifice was a Tag Team match between the team of Jeff Jarrett and Rhino and the team of Raven and Sabu" I think it should be "tag-team match" (without the caps and with a hyphen). You also don't need a wikilink on tag team, since that was previously linked.


 * You're missing a word in the following sentence: "This match was the result an existing rivalry between Raven and Jarrett over the NWA World Heavyweight Championship which Raven held." It should be "the result of an existing rivalry." While we're at it, though, I'd suggest changing it to "This match stemmed from" rather than "was the result of," because saying "result" implies that one thing forced something else to happen. Maybe that's the case, though. I leave it to you.


 * In the next sentence, I suggest saying Raven defeated Abyss "in a dog-collar match to retain..." since we already know that this happened at No Surrender. I suggest putting "dog-collar" in lowercase, since this isn't a proper noun.


 * The next sentence needs a comma to separate the distraction from the action that followed, i.e. "After the encounter, Jarrett distracted Raven, allowing Rhino to attack Raven from behind."


 * In the next bit we say "Jarrett and Rhino attacked Raven again, claiming he had no allies to help defend him". The second part of this is confusing. Did Raven have no allies to defend him or not? Was this a physical or verbal attack? Clearing this up would help. It would be clear enough to say something like "Jarrett and Rhino claimed Raven had no allies to defend him," if that's indeed the case.


 * In the next sentence there's a grammar issue: "Cassidy Riley had previously pledge allegiance" should be "pledged allegiance."


 * In the next sentence, there's also an issue: "Rhino and Jarrett attacked Riley, believing he would aid Raven in someway" should be "aid Raven in some way."


 * This whole paragraph is confusing, primarily because there are so many people involved. Is there a way to simplify it to stress the most important theme? My recommendation would be to try to state what happened in a single sentence at the top of the paragraph. Maybe something akin to, "The main event at Sacrifice was a tag-team match between the team of Jeff Jarrett and Rhino and the team of Raven and Sabu. The central theme of the match was an ongoing dispute between Raven and Jarrett, two of the TNA's biggest stars." I don't know if this is correct, however.


 * After making a thorough review, it seems there are more issues with clarity and conciseness than I originally thought. I am going to put this on hold for a few days to allow time to address some of these issues. The prose is a problem, and I think the article would benefit considerably from a close edit that simplifies descriptions where possible and eliminates obvious errors such as missing words, grammatical problems and spelling mistakes. I could list everything here, but it would take hours. Almost every sentence in the article has some kind of linguistic issue. That said, these aren't incredibly serious issues and I believe they could be fixed with enough time and effort.


 * B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
 * MoS compliance also needs a bit of work.


 * I think "professional wrestling matches" need not be wikilinked at the end of the first paragraph to Mock combat. You've already linked to professional wrestling, which covers it.


 * I also think "card" needn't be linked. Readers will probably know what it means, and if they don't, they can easily infer it. The term isn't directly relevant to the article's notability, per the MoS.


 * More comments on this later.


 * "tagline" needn't be wikilinked in the Background section.


 * In the "Storylines" section, I don't think the "See also: Professional wrestling" adds anything. Professional wrestling has already been linked.


 * In the same section, I don't think "storylines" needs to be linked in the first paragraph. It's not specific to professional wrestling storylines.


 * 1) Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
 * A. References to sources:
 * Refs are all there.
 * B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
 * The sources appear to be a reliable as one could hope for for on an article like this.
 * C. No original research:
 * There's no evidence of OR here.
 * 1) Is it broad in its coverage?
 * A. Major aspects:
 * It covers the major aspects of the subject's notability and is quite detailed.
 * B. Focused:
 * The focus drifts in some parts, but this is easily fixed. I'll get to this later.
 * 1) Is it neutral?
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * Neutrality isn't an issue.
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * No edit wars, etc:
 * Very little talk on the article and no edit wars.
 * 1) Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
 * A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
 * Images are from commons or have good fair use rationales.
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * Suitable illustrations.
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * We're not quite there yet, but I think with some significant but not major work this should meet the GA criteria. More suggestions to come. and I'm putting this on hold for a few days to see if some of the issues above can be addressed.--Batard0 (talk) 10:44, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Update

We haven't made any progress resolving the numerous issues with this article, so I'm going to fail it and suggest that you undertake a thorough rewrite and submit it again. The specific grounds for failure are as follows.


 * On the prose: GA criteria require the prose to be clear and concise. The prose in this article is neither. There are many instances of confusingly constructed sentences and phrasing that is overly verbose. Moreover, the article contains numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes.
 * Example: "Sacrifice is marked for the Finals of the 2005 TNA Super X Cup Tournament." It's unclear precisely what this means.
 * Example: "the later won" where it should be "the latter won."
 * Example: "Rhino and Jarrett attacked Riley, believing he would aid Raven in someway." "Someway" isn't a word.
 * Example: "TNA released a poster sometimes prior featuring ... " "Sometimes prior" is grammatically incorrect.
 * Relevant GA criterion: "the prose is clear and concise, respects copyright laws, and the spelling and grammar are correct."

Example: There's a section titled "Miscellaneous" that covers TNA's commentators and crew. Its title itself is probably a good indication that it shouldn't be there. It begins with the sentence: "Sacrifice, as well as the pre-show, featured employees other than the wrestlers involved in the matches."
 * On focus: The article veers off in many places into details that confuse the reader
 * Relevant GA criterion: "it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail."

The article has acceptable references, its photographs are fine, it doesn't appear to have neutrality issues. So it ticks many of the boxes. The problems especially with language and focus are going to be hard to overcome, however. Almost every sentence in the article has an issue with clarity, conciseness or grammar. There is too much unnecessary detail. On these grounds, I think the best course is to fail the article. I'd encourage its resubmission once these issues have been resolved and the article is closer to meeting the GA criteria. Best of luck.

--Batard0 (talk) 03:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)