Wikipedia:Peer review/Star Trek/archive3

Star Trek
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because… It has gone large changes since its last review, and because with some polishing it could be a good GA, or even FA.
 * Previous peer review

Thanks, Oldag07 (talk) 16:25, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Majoreditor's comments

For starters, the lead is under-developed. See WP:LEAD for details. With some work this can become a Good Article. Majoreditor (talk) 01:25, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Oldag07 (talk) 03:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I removed the semi-automated peer review (SAPR) because it should not be included here for the following reasons: 1) when the SAPR is included here, this peer review request does not show up at WP:PR for others to see it and make comments; 2) this saves space at WP:PR; and 3) this follows the directions above, i.e. "Please do not ... paste in semi-automated peer reviews below: link to them instead." Thanks, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 03:28, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Jinnai
 * Considering their is enough information to have an entire article on it, there is only a breif paragraph on the cancelled Star Trek Phase II. The paragraph doesn't even contain the most basic plot info, which is generally a minimum.
 * Also under parodies cultural impact, Star Ocean has been confirmed by its creators as heavily influenced by the series after commentary on their similarities. 陣 内 Jinnai 01:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This in an interesting article about a series I'm reasonably familiar with. I think it could become a good article with a little more work. Two places that need attention are the lead and the references. In addition, the lower sections contain some repetition of material in the upper sections and should probably be weeded a bit to eliminate redundancy. The prose is generally fine, but I noted a few exceptions and also many small deviations from guidelines in the Manual of Style (MOS). I doubt that I caught all of the MOS issues, but I fixed a few as I went, and I have listed others below.

Lead
 * The lead, according to MOS:INTRO, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main text sections. The existing lead, though well-written, is a bit on the skimpy side. If you can imagine a reader having to make do with the lead by itself, I think you can see why it's not a true summary. It doesn't, for example, contain any information about the who, what, where, when of the fiction. Outer space? Inner space? Green monsters? All set on Mars? Ninety-fifth century? From just reading the lead, a reader would have no clue.

Conception and setting
 * Any reason for linking 1960? WP:UNLINKDATES advises against linking.
 * "Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space... " - Wikilink Western to Western genre?
 * According to this universe's timeline, the first warp flight occurred on 5 April 2063." - Unlink the dates for consistency and to conform to WP:UNLINKDATES. Also, since this is (arguably) a U.S.-centric article, the format should be m-d-y; that is, April 5, 2063, unless the fiction itself consistently used d-m-y.

Beginnings
 * A good rule of thumb for sourcing is to cite every paragraph at least once and to cite every set of statistics, every direct quote, and every claim that is not common knowledge or that might reasonably be questioned. The last paragraph of this subsection is unsourced even though it includes claims like "Marketing personnel of the network complained to management that the series' cancellation was premature."
 * "New techniques for profiling demographics of the viewing audience, would later find that the Star Trek audience was highly desirable for advertisers to the point where Star Trek was considered a highly profitable property." - A bit awkward. Suggestion: "New techniques for profiling demographics of the viewing audience later showed that Star Trek had been highly profitable for advertisers."
 * "Unfortunately, that revelation came too late to resume production of the series." - Delete "unfortunately" since that is an editorial comment not attributed to a reliable source?

Rebirth
 * Three paragraphs are unsourced.
 * "The show was, unusually, broadcast in first-run syndication rather than running on a major network, with Paramount and the local stations splitting advertising time between them." - "With" doesn't work very well as a conjunction. Suggestion: "The show was unusual in that it was broadcast as first-run syndication rather than on a major network. Paramount and the local stations split the advertising time."

Post Roddenberry
 * "After" rather than "Post"? Alternatively "Post-Roddenberry"?
 * "In response to the TNG's success, Paramount began production of a spin off Star Trek series... " - "Spin-off" gets a hyphen. Also, would it be useful to wikilink it, thus: spin-off?
 * "Star Trek saturation hit a peak between 1994-1995." - Date ranges get en dashes rather than hyphens, thus: "1994–1995". This can be shortened to "1994–95", but my preference would be to say "between 1994 and 1995".
 * "UPN announced the cancellation of Enterprise at the end of its fourth season, and its final episode would air on May 13, 2005." - "aired" rather than "would air" since this is all in the past?

Rebooting
 * I shortened the subhead slightly to avoid the repetition of "franchise". Perhaps, though, it would be best to combine this short section with the "Franchise ownership" section under a single subhead, "Franchise" or something similar. The Manual of Style generally deprecates extremely short paragraphs and extremely short sections. Two options are possible: expand or merge.
 * The "citation needed" tag needs attention.

Franchise ownership
 * This section, in addition to being extremely short, lacks sources. It also might be helpful to include the year that Paramount acquired Desilu.

The Original Series (1966–1969)
 * The last two paragraphs lack sources.
 * I'd leave out the internal note, "(See also Awards below.)" Since "you" is implied, this addresses the reader directly with an imperative, which Wikipedia doesn't usually do except in "See also" sections

The Animated Series (1973–1974)
 * The first paragraph lacks a source.
 * "Although it was originally sanctioned by Paramount (who became the owners of the... " - "which became the owner" rather than "who became the owners"?
 * "Star Trek TAS briefly returned to television in the mid-1980s when it was rebroadcast on the children's cable network Nickelodeon per the request of Nickelodeon's Evan McGuire, who had greatly admired the show, even using its various creative components as inspiration for his short series called Piggly Wiggly Hears A Sound, which never aired (Nickelodeon parent Viacom would purchase Paramount in 1994)." - Too complex. Break into shorter sentences.

Feature films
 * "The 2009 film is the highest-earning and best-reviewed of the series so far, even in inflation adjusted numbers[citation needed]." - The tag caught my attention. This sentence repeats the tagged sentence in an earlier section. I noticed some other repetitions or near-repetitions (like the Desilu-Paramount merger claim) before getting to this one. I'd suggest trying to hunt them down and to remove all but the most essential one. They are probably artifacts from many re-writes.

''Books"
 * Sources?

"Notes''
 * WP:MOSNUM says that the date formatting in the citations should be consistent. You are free to choose yyyy-mm-dd or m-d-y for a U.S.-centric article but not a mixture of the two formats.
 * Some of the citations are incomplete. If possible, citation data for on-line sources should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date.
 * I'm not certain that all of the sources cited are reliable sources as described in WP:RS. The self-published essay in citation 3 is an example.
 * Page ranges take en dashes rather than hyphens.

References
 * The items in the list should be arranged alphabetically by author's last name.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 19:23, 12 July 2009 (UTC)