Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Peer review/Grey Griffins

Grey Griffins (book series)
I am about to nominate this article for GA status and I want to know what i need to do to further improve before nomination. King Rock Go 'Skins! 02:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments from user:Yllosubmarine
First of all, this is a good start. The major problems I can see that would keep it from being promoted to Good Article status (as per the Good Article criteria) is its lack of both comprehensibility (3a) and verifiability (2). Here are some suggestions to help expand:


 * The first sentence (Grey Griffins is a novel series written by American authors Derek Benz and J. S. Lewis) leaves a lot unsaid. What is the genre?  Is it young adult as I'm guessing it is?  Is it Sci-fi, fantasy?  Also, the name of the series does not need a reference.
 * The lead is choppy and fragmented. Per WP:LEAD, the lead section should be an overview of the entire article.  There is currently no publication history info in the body of the article, so you should either create a section that will describe who did the illustrations and what Orchard Books is, or just remove it from the lead entirely for now.  Because it is important info, however, I suggest you do the former rather than the latter.
 * The plot intro in the lead gives no context, and I see none in the body, either. What time does the story take place?  Present day?  Where?  Who are the four members?  Kids?
 * I'm very confused re: the layout of the article itself. What is "Guardian of the Codex", "Society of the Black Wolfs", etc?  I suggest you take a look at other novel series articles such as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is GA, in order to get an idea of layout.  A Series uses the following basic outline: "Origins", "Plot summary", "Setting", "Recurring themes and concepts", etc.  This would be a good place for you to start.
 * There is currently only one main reference: the Grey Griffins website. In order for the article to be verifiable, it must include reliable, secondary sources.  For plot point details, you can use the books themselves; just cite them correctly using citation templates.  Formatting is a big deal at for Good Articles.  Do a Google search for reviews from reputable sources/websites about the series.  What do critics think of the novels?  How well do they sell?  How popular are they?
 * Speaking of popularity, there is no assertion of the series' importance. Is this just another Harry Potter ripoff, or is it notable in its own right?  What makes this series different, according to reliable sources?

I hope these comments helped. Best of luck, María ( habla con migo ) 12:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments from user:Dozenthey
Similar to Maria's comments, a good start but it needs a lot of work.

-The plot summary dumps way too many names and details in (the THOR agency, the Codex, Morgan Le Fay... where do these things/people come from, why are they in this story?). I'm having trouble getting a clear, simple idea of what the story is about because in every sentence of the summary there seems to be something completely different going on. Flesh it out a bit more, try to take out details that aren't necessary for a brief overview, or explain them/give them context if they are necessary.

-Also, in the summary of book three, the tenses are a bit confusing, and not knowing the plot, I'm not entirely sure what it means. Does he find the spear during this book, did it happen before, is it a flashback? Make it so that I can follow whats going on from beginning to end of the book without too much confusion.

-The last paragraph of the summary I would recommend that you move into the section on characters, give a brief description of the power each one has, and whether he is a good guy or bad guy, something like that. That would be a good way of giving context without overloading the summary.

-I've also changed the internal links that refer to in-world artifacts attributed to mythological figures (ie the spear of Ragnarok), so that only the mythos, rather than the novel-specific aspect, is in hypertext. I think it was confusing to click on an artifact and be redirected to a page about a myth without specific reference to the artifact.

-The review section:

- Like maria asked, what significance do these books have in culture, is anyone reading them, etc.?

-I'm not sure that "The Children's Literature Review" is actually the reviewer, or at least I can't find any information about this group. I think its just a review from the Border's website under the heading "Children's Literature". You need to look into that, and make sure those reviews are from respected sources.

-I'm not sure I agree that the books were reviewed "fairly", as you state in the intro... the reviews don't trash the novels completely, but they are generally negative ("practically unreadable" stands out).

If you have particular questions about how to rewrite the page, let me know, I'll try to help as far as I can not knowing the stories. Dozenthey (talk) 04:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)