Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati/archive2

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 GrahamColm 21:44, 10 December 2012 [1].

The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati

Nominator(s): Gen. Quon (Talk) 00:51, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With delegate GrahamColm's permission to begin this without the 2-week wait, I am re-opening this FAC for this article. This is the second episode of The X-Files's seventh season. It's an interesting little installment, in that it takes many of its elements from Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ and was co-written by star David Duchovny. It was recently promoted to Good Article several months ago and was also promoted to A-Class within the last few weeks. In the last month or so, it has undergone extensive copy-editing and prose-improvement. I feel that this, coupled with its scope, MoS compliance, images, etc. would make it a perfect candidate for a Featured Article.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 00:51, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose ~~Comments~~ by Malleus Fatuorum

The prose in places seems a little awkward and laboured to me. A few examples:

"Scully shares many parallels with Judas Iscariot, as both are able to successfully call the heroes out of their trance." So the heroes are in the same trance together? How would they be able to unsuccessfully call the heroes out of their trance? And how can you share a parallel?
"... any child employed by the series was required to work for less time than adults". So they were paid in time rather than money? And were they really employed by the series? Seems unlikely.
"Toolan had previously appeared in the second installment of the sixth season episode "Dreamland", and Leitch—who portrayed Samantha as an adult—had previously appeared in the second part of the fifth season opener "Redux". What exactly is "previously" adding here? Nothing?
"The scene where The Smoking Man opens a window ...". The scene is not a place, hence "where" isn't appropriate. Better would be "The scene in which ...".

I want to stress that these are just a few examples of the kind of issues that need to be addressed before this article meets the FA criteria, and are by no means exhaustive, as I haven't looked at the whole article. Malleus Fatuorum 01:31, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I have addressed the issues. For the first, I reworded it. For the second, I tried to clarify. Indeed, children (and adults working for minimum wage) are paid by the hour, and have a time limit on the amount of hours they can work. For the third, I removed 'previously', and for the final issues, I used 'in which'. I would very much like for you to go through and list the issues you can find. This has been copy-edited basically two and a half times, went through peer-review, passed GA and A-class, but I'm sure there are still some issues hiding.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 02:04, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you would like me to go through the entire article and list all the issues I find, but that's not what FAC is about. What I will do though is offer to take one more look when you believe that all the prose issues have been addressed, not just the ones I've drawn attention to. Let me know on my talkpage when you're ready. Malleus Fatuorum 02:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try my best to clear it up. If I may, what exactly needs fixing. Is it just the "awkwardness", or is it my structuring. I guess I find your comment a little vague (no offense, I just want to make this ship-shape!).--Gen. Quon (Talk) 05:27, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let me give you one more example. Look at the first paragraph of the Themes section. How many "also"s do you see there, and how many can you justify? And as I'd already objected to the use of "where" in reference to a scene, why does the article still contain "A scene where Mulder watched himself age was filmed, but later cut"? And what does "The dialogue in the episode proved difficult for the cast members to believably present; fans later had trouble accepting it" mean? What exactly did the fans have trouble accepting? The dialogue? The presentation? And why "later"? Malleus Fatuorum 06:53, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Malleus's better explanation of the same concerns I expressed in the first FAC. (As an aside, Gen. Quon, this page is FAC, not FAR.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a place I should go to get this looked at? I've tried peer-review, but it is pretty much dead right now. It's been copyedited several times. I don't know where else to turn. I don't mean to sound angry, but this is very frustrating.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 20:03, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The video gamers (along with several other content areas-- you aren't alone) need to build up a core group of copyeditors who will collaborate with you to help bring articles to FA-level prose. We used to have Deckiller (long gone), and more recently David Fuchs (talk · contribs) (perhaps you can engage him). Other than that, the age-old advice is to peruse like topics at WP:FA, look at the edit histories of articles there, and try to find folks who are skilled at copyediting. I can spot issues, but I'm not a good copyeditor. Malleus is a good copyeditor, but his time is stretched. What you don't want to do is have folks coming in with limited copyediting skills adding pile-on supports-- get together and spend some time locating people with demonstrated copyedit skills, and we'll more quickly be back to the days when Fuchs used to get a lot of video game FAs through. Other things to try: go to User:Tony1 and read his self-help tutorials. Read FAC every day to pick up on the prose tips, suggestions, and critiques offered by some of the skilled copyeditors here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:43, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome. Those links helped a lot. I will see what I can do.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 21:40, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confident you'll get there-- having more skilled FA writers and FAC reviewers is always awesome! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:49, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do understand your frustration Gen. Quon, I really do. Sadly FA-level copyeditors seem to be in increasingly short supply though, and I don't know what can be done about that. I feel rather mean criticising your prose and yet not offering to help, but I simply can't help everyone. Malleus Fatuorum 22:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the response. I understand; this is FAC and you guys have to be good at catching issues! I'll keep trying to make this better in the meantime.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 22:48, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'd just like to say that Mark Arsten has agreed to copy-edit this, and I am reaching out to other editors for some prose help. Thanks.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 17:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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