Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Portal 2/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 by SandyGeorgia 15:40, 30 May 2011.

Portal 2

 * Nominator(s): M ASEM (t) 16:30, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Likely one of the most anticipated games within the last year, Portal 2 (according to reviewers) took what was a short sweet surprise of a 2-3hr game included within a larger product and managed to expand it to a full standalone sequel with unanimous praise from reviewers. And no cake.

That said, there is a lot of information about this game (it will likely exceed 200 refs at the end of the day). Its at a point where it's stable - the game's been out for a month so all the critical reviews are in, and the only thing of major change I can anticipate is the additional downloadable content that will start this summer, any additional sales figures, and the end-of-year gaming awards; none of these will impact the article to a great degree (in that, I know exactly where to put those and format those.) We're above WP:SIZE but a discussion at WT:VG on this showed there's really no good way to split off information about the article without weakening the article or subsections. One idea was the Development section like there is for Development of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but we'd agreed that really didn't end up as great an article. If size is still a problem, there is likely enough to pull out the Marketing and Promotion section into its own article. We're fortunate that the major characters all can support their own articles and that info has been shuffled off there. Similarly with the Potato Sack ARG that preluded the game's release.

I've done dab and linkchecks, and a member of the LoCE has reviewed the text for copyedits. I know that there's a larger number of non-frees in this that may be of concern, but I believe all the uses are well justified under NFCC but accept any criticism towards reduce those numbers. That said I've hoped to balanced that with relevant free content. M ASEM (t) 16:30, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - there's obviously been a lot of work put into this article, but unfortunately I don't feel it currently meets the FA criteria. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I appreciate that there's a lot of information about the game available, but this article is nearly 150 kB - absolutely huge, needs to better employ summary style
 * There are some inconsistencies within the text - for example, P-Body or P-body?
 * Prose needs editing for clarity, grammar and flow. For example: "Similar to how the student team of Narbacular Drop were brought into Valve to expand their game to the basis of Portal, the team from Independent Games Festival-winning DigiPen student project Tag: The Power of Paint was hired by Valve to incorporate their game's paint mechanics into these new gels"
 * WP:MOS edits needed: hyphens/dashes, wikilinking issues, inconsistent application of possessives ("reconfigured during GLaDOS' manipulations of the component panels, leaving the player free of GLaDOS's observation"), etc
 * Some phrasings are overly colloquial or informal in tone. For example: "Portal 2 continues to challenge players"
 * The text seems to assume some level of familiarity with the game that not all readers possess. For example, what is a "personality core" or a "personality sphere"?
 * Some of the paragraphs are very large and consequently difficult to read
 * Inconsistent formatting of references - for example, refs 1 and 2 lack retrieval dates. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Focusing only on the first point, because I knew this might be a problem, I am trying to find a solution here. As I wrote in the summary, an informal discussion at WT:VG showed that its pretty much impossible to split off any section of this article without hurting the main article or the split-off one (in addition that I'm 99% sure someone will knock that for notability). What has completely isolatable separate topics has been summarized to the point of inclusion in this article, so I can't trim more from those sections.  (I'll try to address the other points later, but the length is the factor I need comments on). --M ASEM  (t) 18:58, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose – sorry Masem, but I agree with Nikkimaria. Not at all engaging. The prose requires a great deal more work; it is impenetrable in parts, lacking logical flow and riddled with jargon. This section, taken at random, illustrates the problems throughout the article: "Several early chambers that the player experiences in Portal 2 were created by reusing Portal test chambers and applying decay, collapse, and overgrowth on them. As an initial goal in the sequel, this was done to give players a sense of nostalgia from the first game and a feeling for how much time had passed. It also allowed the team to avoid the use of the less-resolved textures from the first game, replacing them with higher-resolution dirty and worn-out textures that the newer engine could support." What is decay, collapse, and overgrowth? And all this redundancy a sense of nostalgia from the first game and a feeling for how much time had passed. I think the readers will understand nostalgia. And what does this mean higher-resolution dirty and worn-out textures that the newer engine could support? I think these problems have arisen from an attempt to include too much detail. The article needs a radical copy-edit to remove excessive jargon, improve flow and remove redundancy. Graham Colm (talk) 08:40, 28 May 2011 (UTC)


 * comment - Wow, that's a really long article. However, from a quick glance it seems to me that there are a lot of points in this that are over explained and could be written much more concisely. I'm not sure how much such a copyedit would shave off, but it would certainly be a start. I might have a go and cutting back a bit myself if I have a moment. Coolug (talk) 09:05, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * After thinking about this a little bit more I think you're going to have to be pretty ruthless if you're going to cut this article down, and as someone who hasn't been involved in the article and knows hardly anything about the game anyway, I don't feel particlarly qualified to be the person doing this. But, do you really need to mention all of those reviews? Do we need all that detail on how a band came to contribute a song to the game? Go through the article and ask how important is each part things to the overall strength of the article. Then be bold and just get rid of it, you can always revert changes later. Coolug (talk) 09:30, 29 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment I'm sure we need the pics of either Merchant or Simmons. They are free, but add zero. Ceoil  19:28, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Given that part of the game's reception was the praise for these voice actors, showing who they are would seem to be appropriate particularly since we have free images of both. --M ASEM (t) 19:34, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Just because you can, does not mean you should. At least so, the captions are underdeveloped. Fwits worth I'd prefer both images are kept, I really like both these guys. Ceoil  00:35, 30 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.