Wikipedia:Peer review/Donkey Kong (arcade game)/archive1

Donkey Kong (arcade game)

I plan to eventually nominate this to Featured Article Candidates. In the meantime, what needs improvement? Is everything understandable to someone with little video game knowledge? — BrianSmithson 12:49, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First off, it looks like you've done a good job with the rewrite. I haven't given it a thorough read yet, but three concerns:

The lead section needs to be a little bigger.
I can almost guarantee there will be complaints about too many fair use images. Perhaps we could nix/trim the gallery under Licensing and ports?
As strange as it sounds, this might be too well referenced. Ex: There's one paragraph with ten sentences, eight of which have inline citations (seven are consecutive)! Many of the footnotes are mere pages away - perhaps some consolidation could take place?

Anyways, thanks for updating this article - my feeling is that this will end up becoming featured. --Pagrashtak 07:11, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review! To address your comments:
- Perhaps a paragraph about clones/ports/sequels belongs in the lead. A sentence or two could be added to the third paragraph regarding the trial, as well.
  - Yeah, every major section should be touched on in the lead section.
- I agree about the images. I removed the level gallery (thinking that one image of gameplay would suffice), but someone added it back in. I'm not sure whether it would be best to go down to one gameplay image and one port image at this time or wait until someone objects on FAC and thus have more weight behind the decision.
  - I see that — you can throw my weight behind the decision too if it helps.
- As for references, there are two camps on Wikipedia at the moment, the "reference everything" group and the, well, "reference a few things" group. I lean toward the former. :) At any rate, have a look at Dixie (song) for another article I wrote and got featured; it's got way more notes than this one. My practice is to reference statements that 1) Give precise numbers, like sales data; 2) Quote people, even indirectly; 3) Speak to someone's motivations or emotional state; 4) Are surprising or potentially contentious. I'll give the article one more look to see if any of my currently noted statements do not fall into these categories. (Still, it's worth noting that "too many references" isn't a valid objection on FAC as far as I know :)) — BrianSmithson 15:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm seeing more and more objections on FAC that aren't really valid... anways, have too many references is by far better than too few. I do notice that the "reference density", if you will, is much higher for DK than "Dixie". This is probably something we can leave for now and see what the opinion is at FAC. In the meantime, though, if there's anything that's easy to consolidate, it wouldn't hurt. --Pagrashtak 20:23, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - I've reduced the references. I basically took footnotes off of anything that didn't really fit into any of the categories I outlined above. There's some stuff that could be contentious, but I can support it if anyone questions me. (For example, there is some confusion from article to article about when the names "Pauline" and "Mario" were given to the characters.) — BrianSmithson 19:32, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The #Note section is totally weird. What exactly is "Kohler 39", "Crawford 94", "Kent 211"? Plus, there is no links for these notes. ^KILO-_LIMA 20:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- "Kohler 39" refers to page 39 of the book by Kohler. So, you just have to look down under References to find what book that is. I much prefer this style of notation to repeating all of a reference's particulars each time a reference is made to a work. It saves on KB, and it's a style used quite often in scholarly publications. As for the notes not working, I'm not sure what you mean. Just click on the hyperlinked note number and it zips you down to the notes. Click on the ^ symbol, and it zips you back up to the text of the article. — BrianSmithson 22:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One more minor comment - it would be nice if you could add ISBN numbers to any book references you can, as shown at Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style#Books. --Pagrashtak 05:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've never understood the need for ISBN in Wikipedia articles. Is there any book store, online or in real life, that can't look up a book by its title and author? Perhaps there's some other value that I'm missing. :) At any rate, I don't have access to all the books at the moment, but I'll see what I can do. — BrianSmithson 16:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One advantage: If a book is reprinted, the page numbers can change; having the ISBN will nail down which version you used. --Pagrashtak 00:36, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks better with the reduced references. I think you'd be safe closing this peer review and nominating to FAC whenever you feel ready. Pagra shtak 23:03, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]