Talk:The Club (Nickelodeon)/GA2

GA Review
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I commented on the previous GA attempt, but made a schoolboy error and didn't check the dates, for some reason I believed there was an ongoing conversation there. I'm quick-failing Nicktropolis because there are several large gaps in the article, substantial expansion and rewriting is needed, it is currently a well-cited start-class article. Turning it around in a short timeframe would be needlessly taxing and an unrealistic goal.

Here's some suggestions:


 * There is no reception section, there is at least one review cited in the article already and I'm sure more could be found to make up the numbers and provide critique. Without reviews a video game article isn't really neutrally balanced.
 * Even though NT is based at a website, it's still a videogame and the videogame infobox contains many useful fields for data which are not in the website infobox.
 * There's a couple of tweaks needed in the citations, such as author name missing, a press release needs citing as one etc.
 * Several of the examples below focus on the article doing a lot of talking but not actually saying much. Describing the way everything works from a more distant view informs the reader, adding loads of named 'things' (whether they're numerous incidental characters, locations, items or whatever) without actually giving a reason for them being mentioned means that the focus is too zoomed-in. A few examples works fine when they're properly explained.

History

 * The majority of this section is dangerously close to being proseline.
 * "Construction of Nicktropolis began in November 2004," 'Development' would sit better than construction.
 * "Nickelodeon's developers Mark Zadroga, Alex Westerman, Deborah Levine, Patrick Dorey, Sean McEvoy, and Jason Root," So who are these people? What are their roles? Their backgrounds? This is just a collection of forenames and surnames with no actual information.
 * "using the TheoSDK and TheoAvatarSDK engines.[6][3] The game was launched in early 2006, and it had no advertising." A reader who doesn't eat and sleep games is not going to have a clue what a TheoSDK engine is, who developed it? If you have no details about the engine then there's a field for it in the videogame infobox. The only acutal information out of all this is that development began in Nov. 2004 and the game was released in early 2006.
 * "On June 24, 2007, the game was featured in The New York Times, with a quote stating, "Pre-teenage viewers have a virtual playground to call their own." [8]" It's a throw-away quote anyway, is that all the article actually says about NT? Does it belong in history?
 * 'Release history' does not contain enough bulk to warrant a sub-heading, what's there could be integrated with the other information.

Places

 * Either this should be a gameplay section and actually contain gameplay data, or the gameplay section is completely missing and this is a separate section altogether.
 * This falls into the classic trap (which virtually everyone falls into, I have too) of listing all of the elements of a particular aspect of a game rather than actually explaining what this all means. The vast majority of it is name-dropping which a reader can safely forget about instantly because they are given very little context.
 * For instance: "The area is divided into 7 subsections, the first being the SpongeBob SquarePants area (Bikini Bottom) includes 7 rooms, which are the General Store, the Krusty Krab, The Reef, Conch Street, which is a portal to SpongeBob's house, Patrick's house, and Squidward's house." General store is fairly self-explanatory, but what's the Krusty Krab for? What do players do at The Reef? What happens when players visit Squidward? Actual information is needed, not empty lists. Try to zoom out and put these different areas in context.
 * There's a lot of very short paragraphs here which could be condensed (though substantial rewriting is needed IMO, not just a little tidy-up), along with some more sub-headings with very little content.

Sponsorship

 * The large chunk of quote could just as easily be summarized in contributors' own words.
 * Doesn't this belong in history?

What I'd suggest doing is:


 * Focus on providing solid development (history), gameplay and reception sections. These are the guts of the article and the ones which video game GAs should all have.
 * Hammer places into shape, step back from list-list-listing everything and remembering the 'point' of the section, to let readers know what they would expect to find and how these things can be interacted with.
 * Utilize the videogame project's peer review and assessment departments, if you get stuck and need further advice then you can always ask on the project's talk page.
 * Have a good look at video game GAs, particularly any MMOs, take a look at how their gameplay/history/reception sections are filled out.

Hope this is of some help to you, thank you for what you've done with the article. Someoneanother 15:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Reply from TheNewPhobia
I'm working on a complete rewrite here. I'm heeding by these tips in the writing...  The New Phobia  (formerly Jonathan) 19:37, 2 November 2008 (UTC)