Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Characters of StarCraft/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 17:35, 10 March 2008.

Characters of StarCraft


I'm nominating this article for featured article because I believe it meets all the Featured Article criteria. FightingStreet (talk) 18:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * According to articlestats and the article talk page, S@bre and The Clawed One are by a long mile the significantly principle editors of this article; are they aware it has been submitted to FAC, do they agree it's ready, and do they agree that it should be submitted to featured articles rather than featured lists? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:16, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's an article, not a list. See Characters of Final Fantasy VIII for an article with roughly the same layout. And I did post a message on The Clawed One's talk page as his name appears on the Template:Maintained of the article's talk page. FightingStreet (talk) 21:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a list. The most recent VG characters article of featured status is List of characters in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow (a featured list), which had its nomination failed because it wasn't an article and was subsequently sent to WP:FLC. I thought this was already decided upon. Sephiroth BCR  ( Converse ) 04:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Characters of Final Fantasy VIII and Characters of Kingdom Hearts both passed FAC without trouble, and the nomination of Castlevania: Sorrow apparently didn't affect them (one could easily have launched FA reviews). I disagree with you that it was "decided upon": on the contrary, users acknowledge that the definition of a "list" is still pretty blurry (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games). Until "list" is clearly defined, this probably shouldn't affect this nomination. FightingStreet (talk) 09:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The nomination for List of characters in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow didn't affect them because the discussion at WT:FAC took place after both Characters of Final Fantasy VIII and Characters of Kingdom Hearts had already passed FAC. I find having a featured article nomination failed on the grounds that the article was actually a list to be fairly authoritative. Consistency is important here - having articles with practically the exact same structure and going through different processes that depend on an arbitrary decision by one user is not a good thing. Sephiroth BCR  ( Converse ) 19:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - Looks really good, I've wondered why they haven't nominated it already! :) Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - great read, looks great. Although I think the links to subsections in the lead should go away.Samuel Sol (talk) 20:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment: As one of the principle authors of the article, I've got to say that this may be a bit early. I'd imagine that the article's quality may decrease significantly after the release of SC2 until that the information can be properly and encyclopedically implemented, and I was also hoping to give a thorough copyedit before submitting to FA as well - the review for good article for Sarah Kerrigan made me think that the wording in this article may need tweaking for a bit less of an in-universe style and better context before FA. Oh, and we've been treating it as an article, not a list. Hell, we were following Deckiller's advice and using the featured article Characters of Final Fantasy VIII as our exemplar. However, if consensus here goes that this should be promoted in its current state, that's fine by me: I'll address my own personal concerns with the article whether it becomes an FA or remains GA.

By the way, give me a little while to sort out the external links in the references. I'm a little hard up on time for major editting to articles at the moment. That, and my local BT transceiver thingy has been down for over 24 hours, meaning I have no Internet connection at home at the moment - with luck it should be up again by the time I get home, but if it isn't, my ability to address any concerns in this FAC are obviously severly limited. -- Sabre (talk) 11:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Neutral - good, but I don't like the graphic: little images without thumbs, many bolds... MOJSKA   666  (msg) 13:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose - The writing is fine, but the images are too small and there are around 40 dead links. --Slicedpineapple (talk) 16:03, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose Please fix all 30 or so references from sclegacy.com. The current links show up as 404 errors. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 22:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Weak Oppose The dead links are an obvious issue, as is the grammar and timeliness (I suggest waiting for Starcraft 2 to come out.) However I believe this article can stand as an article, not a list, as pointed out earlier. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk  ) 00:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comments
 * Has the great "Is the Internet Movie Database Reliable" debate been settled in favor of it being reliable?
 * This site http://www.sclegacy.com/index.php looks like a fan site to me, is it reliable for what it is sourced to it?
 * StarCraft wiki is used as a source for the comparison of a character to Patton.
 * As noted above, the links to StarCraft Legacy are dead. Sons of the Storm is also dead linked.
 * http://www.atamaii.com/starcraft-031108a.html is probably marginal for referencing that it's the first of the series. Ealdgyth | Talk 21:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose Prose and external links issue highlighted above. Others have addressed the latter, so here are some examples of where the writing needs improvement:
 * "The universe also contains a whole host of minor characters, but these characters are of much lesser significance within isolated areas of the general story." "Lesser significance" conflicts with the next phrase: "isolated areas". I'm guessing what is meant here either "are of much lesser significance in the general story" or "are significant only within isolated areas of the general story."
 * "However, as Phinney was not involved in StarCraft: Brood War; Chris Metzen alone is credited for the development of the plot in the expansion." Why "however"? Seems pretty unnecessary, since readers will be searching for a contradiction and won't find one. Also, is there a reason why it's "is credited"? Is there doubt about this? Finally, spot the wrong punctuation mark.
 * "Despite the series' success globally, particularly in South Korea, Blizzard Entertainment has not made any major comments regarding the development of the characters and the storyline of the StarCraft series." Again, the sentence sets up a contradiction, but none is made. Why would global success (by the way, "series' global success" is to my ear more elegant than "series' success globally", especially to break up the "s" sounds) necessarily imply the latter part of the sentence? Further, spot the ambiguity concerning "development of". Finally, what are "major" comments? Are you sure you can be so definitive in that Blizzard not made any major comments? Or does more research need to be done for this section?
 * "...interviews with the two of the voice actors..." "the two"?
 * "Clotworthy also stated how the concept art for the game - usually used for the visual development of characters and locales in games - was used by him in order to develop the personality of his character." Link concept art, rid redundancies, and use active voice to shorten this to: "Clotworth used the game's concept art to help develop his character's personality." Note that em dashes should be used, not hyphens, for parenthetical clauses.
 * "It is also implied by some of the authors of the novels that the development of the characters in their books was also influenced by Metzen[6][7] as well as Andy Chambers and Evelyn Fredericksen. This is particularly notable for characters later appearing in the games, such as Valerian Mengsk." Confusing. Who are Andy and Evelyn? Explain what "influenced by" means. "Later" appearing? For the books, are these new characters, or ones already in the game? The passive voice (is/was...by) and the repeated (and unnecessary) use of "also/as well as" mar the first sentence. Budding Journalist 02:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, it looks as if Starcraft Legacy's site was been down only recently (maybe it's a temporary issue?). Google's cache shows that it was able to crawl it on March 7. Budding Journalist 02:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment: I'm working on the images, aiming to replace the thumbnails with one or two screenshots of multiple characters, and I'll get to work on the issues highlighted above as soon as possible, which unfortunately won't be until next Thursday when I have a new modem delivered to replace my previous one that just fried itself - until then I'll be unable to make any substantial edits: I can't do it from my college computer. As for the issue of SC Legacy, when boiled down, it is essentially a fansite, but its news content is verifiable as it usually sources it. The other references are for the story side of things, and they're directly transcibed from the game and as such its far more convienient than quoting entire conversations in the reference template itself to make a point on the plot. The references are dead here because the urls moved and I've yet to update them. Personally, based on the extensive issues above and my current inability to get online at my home computer, I'd prefer to have this nomination withdrawn until I am in a position to address concerns with the article, as well as my own personal concerns that I raised above. -- Sabre (talk) 11:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.