Wikipedia:Peer review/Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)/archive1

Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
This peer review discussion has been closed. I'm looking for suggestions to improve the article. I'm a big fan of the show (and should be getting the call to be a contestant any day now!), and I've been making improvements to it over time. There aren't any current game show articles even close to GA, so this is pretty much uncharted territory. I know there are a few pieces left to flesh out and source, but I'm seeking current advice on how it looks so far.


 * What does it need more information on, besides awards and accolades/critical reception? Does it need less information on anything?
 * What could flow better, if anything?
 * Frankie Blue and John Hoke composed the current theme, but I can't find any source for this besides the credits on the show's own website. Also, they used a theme by Steve Kaplan for a while, but I can't find anything to verify this. Does the lack of information on Steve Kaplan compromise the article in any way?
 * Is there anything else at all that could be better?

Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 04:09, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this article about a game show that I enjoy from time to time. This is not a complete line-by-line review but a partial list of suggestions for improvement.


 * A dab hatnote should appear at the top of the article. Maybe About? Wheel of Fortune (Australian game show) has an example.


 * I would consider moving "Gameplay" up to first place below the lead and rewriting it with a complete outsider in mind. (See "Gameplay" comments below.

Lead
 * "Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin." - It might help to add the year Griffin created the show. Was it 1975?

Game history
 * "recalling long car trips as a child where he and his sister" - Maybe "during which" (a time) rather than "where" (a place)?


 * "After pitching the idea and being told that... " - Told by whom?

Broadcast history
 * "at 10:30 am (9:30 Central) on NBC" - Non-U.S. readers may not know what "Central" refers to. Could the time-zone differences be made more clear, perhaps by linking to Eastern Time Zone and Central Time Zone (North America)?


 * "The current syndicated version premiered on September 19, 1983. When it debuted, the syndicated version offered a larger prize budget than its daytime counterpart, most notably in the addition of a $5,000 wedge to the Wheel." - What was the prize budget for the daytime show? What was the biggest possible prize in each case?
 * Prizes changed week to week, and the source doesn't get more specific than the $5,000 wedge.

Production staff
 * This subsection needs citations to reliable sources.

Gameplay
 * I'm familiar with the show and how the game is played, so your description makes sense to me. However, I doubt that someone who has never seen the show would be able to understand the game based solely on this description. For example, the first sentence of this section says, "Word puzzles, with blank spaces representing the letters in the puzzle, are presented with an appropriate category." The idea of "appropriate category" is too non-specific to mean much of anything to someone unfamiliar with the game. "Word puzzles" is also a bit too general. Something like "Wheel of Fortune contestants take turns guessing the meaning of a word or phrase that has been spelled out incompletely" might be a way to start. Perhaps just a clear explanation of the basic game would do, and the complications of the details of the rounds, Mystery Wedges, Free Play, and so on, could be omitted or at least compressed. It might help to move the puzzleboard image to this section and to use the idea of the puzzleboard in the game description. Would it be possible, for example, to say what "White Chocolate Mousse" looked like when the game started? Would it be possible to describe an actual game step by step?
 * I tried to re-describe it as best I could. Can you come up with a better description? Also, as for the category thing, I used the rulebook from the 1975 home game to show which categories they started out with as examples. I can't think of any ways to tighten up the writing here, particularly since the ol' Wheel has so many doodads now.

Sets and production information
 * A couple of the paragraphs in this section lack sources. Ditto for the first paragraph of "Puzzle boards" and all of "Merchandise".
 * That I know. I'm working on that. Some of the facts about the puzzle board have been discussed on-air, so things like the change from the 39-space board to 48-space can be cited to an episode. I know there's also at least one episode where Vanna demonstrates how the trilons work.

Footnotes
 * Sequences in all caps are normally changed to Wikipedia house style even if the source uses all caps. Citation 2 would read "Harry Friedman Named Producer of 'Wheel of Fortune'... ", for example.


 * The date formatting in the citations needs to be consistent throughout. Most are already M-D-Y, but citation 35, for example, uses D-M-Y.


 * What makes "about.com" (citation 23) reliable?
 * It's been accepted before. The writer in question has been in the business for 14 years.

Other
 * The word "current", meaning "now", appears in several places in the article. It's generally better to find a way to avoid words like "current", "now", and "today" since they identify no particular time. For example, "The current format uses multiple producers", which appears in the "Production staff" subsection, might say "In 2011, the format uses multiple producers." Or it might be possible to say something like "After X, the show involved multiple producers."

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)