Wikipedia:Peer review/The Exorcist/archive1

The Exorcist


I've listed this article for peer review because, after first adding relevant material to it when I created Paul Bateson in 2019, and then more on the audience reaction to the film when I was surprised that it wasn't in the article much, but being otherwise impressed with its scope, I realized it would be an excellent future FA candidate. I set a target date for getting it there by the 50th anniversary date of the film's release: December 26, 2023, when hopefully it can go on the Main Page.

To this end I took care of two things earlier this year: getting it moved so it has this standalone title (accomplished about nine months ago) instead of "(film)" as the dab term, and getting a video clip of the arteriogram scene into the article, which I got done around the beginning of a summer. I thought that was all it was going to need was some copy editing, and at the beginning of September I set out to do that.

I thought I'd be done within a few days. Instead, seven weeks later, here I am, finally bringing it here around ... Halloween, ironically enough. Bringing the article up to what I think will meet FA standards, especially for a film this historically important, required a lot of expansion, as the source material had barely been tapped IMO. It turned into a major overhaul and expansion, more than doubling the size of what was already a pretty big article. I know it's long, but I believe it is what we would expect this article to be.

There are still some specific issues that I will be opening have opened a section on the talk page to talk about, and linking when I do.

Thanks, Daniel Case (talk) 02:41, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720
Here are some comments after a quick skim:


 * MOS:PLOTLENGTH suggests plot sizes of 400-700 words. At 725, this plot is slightly over that but, more importantly, its length and number of parargaphs discourages me from reading it. Is there any information in the plot that can be cut?
 * The casting section is quite long. Is this much information needed for this article?
 * The Direction section is quite long. Is there a way to reduce this, or split out some of the information into another section?
 * Watch out for MOS:SANDWICH, which I see on my screen in the "Filming and locations" section
 * The "Exorcism scenes" section is quite long. Is there a way to summarise this information, and avoid the smaller paragraphs?
 * Watch out for MOS:OVERSECTION in the "Home media" section. Multiple sequential one-paragraph sections are discouraged.
 * "Legacy" section is quite long. Is there a way to summarise this information, or split it into sections?
 * "Sequels and prequels" is quite long. Can this be summarised or split into sections?

That's what I have. My main concerns are the length of various sections and multiple small paragraphs of 1-2 sentences. The citation needed templates also need to be resolved (which I think you know about already). I would also work on summarising the information and deciding what information, if any, can be cut from the article or WP:SPINOUT. Z1720 (talk) 21:43, 6 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you for getting back on this so quickly! In response:
 * I didn't write the plot summary, and while I did trim it down a bit a couple of months ago, as I generally do I tried to preserve the original author's work as much as possible. But, yes, I think it would be no problem to take 25 more words off and format the grafs better.
 * As for casting, while my first response was "But I worked so hard on this! Why should I have to cut any of it?", I later recalled that at the time I wrote it I didn't think I'd be expanding the article as much as I ultimately did. So we'll see what level of tightening can be done.
 * I did, in fact, move a lot of stuff out of "Direction" to elsewhere in the article already.
 * What kind of screen are you looking at the article on? I'm aware of SANDWICH as I often point it out to other people, and while sometimes one or two lines getting caught between images is forgiven, in this case I do not see any lines getting sandwiched (although the line ends may give that impression, I'll allow).
 * My goal with the "Exorcism scenes" is to break it up a bit with a video clip of the levitation scene as that tends nicely to illustrate what's described in the text (and, if we include a video, must be). Once that's done, we might well be able to shorten the section by maybe taking some of the quotes out.
 * Yes, if you go to my notes for this on the talk page, you'll see I have the same issue with the home release section. I really do think we can tighten it up, but I'd like to have that flag on the flagpole to see if anyone salutes (or not) before I do that myself.
 * Yes, I have been thinking we could subsection the legacy section, too.
 * I have tried to write about the sequels and prequels only to the extent that their story relates to the original film (both on and off-camera) ... remember, no one making it expected they'd be launching a franchise. Maybe it could be split, I agree.
 * Ok. Generally we're on the same page here ... thanks for the impartial eye! Daniel Case (talk) 03:40, 11 November 2022 (UTC)