Wikipedia:Peer review/Starship Troopers/archive1

Starship Troopers

I have to start this request for a Peer Review with an apology. I made the last request back in December when this page was obviously nowhere near FA status, and consequently received minimal feedback. However this article has improved a lot over the last two months and was recently nominated to be a Featured Article. Unfortunately, it failed to get enough votes and so I'm coming back to you, hat in my hand, asking for your advice and criticism. For those of you unfamiliar with the topic, Starship Troopers is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about futuristic warfare from an infantryman's perspective. It helped created a sub genre of literature known as military science fiction and is the only science fiction novel on the reading list at all four United States military academies. However, the novel is extremely controversial, and has been called militaristic, fascist, and even racist by many of its detractors. Palm_Dogg 09:51, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

As has been already pointed out in the FA nomination, there seem to be quite a lot of images of covers of the book in the article and I'm not sure their use qualifies as fair use. It seems to me as if they're used more for decorational purposes than to illustrate the points of the article. The fair use rationale on all images states they are "illustrating how different individuals have visualized Starship Troopers", but they are spread rather random throughout the article and there is no mentioning of any cover in the article. They certainly are not used to illustrate anything in the sections they are placed in. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 11:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

True, but the Wikipedia Template:bookcover does say we're allowed to use book covers "to illustrate an article discussing the book in question". I should add that I originally used images from the films, anime, and comics, but other users objected to using pictures from non-literary sources. *sigh*. I just can't win this one, can I? Palm_Dogg 13:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Sure, in general I agree, but the many covers in the article seem excessive and unnecessary. Most of them just jam the article and don't add anything informative to it. And as you brought that up, there's no mentioning of any of the US comic books in the article. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 14:29, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, you're definitely right about them cluttering up the article so I've tried spacing them out a bit. I do think they add to the article, because in addition to being visual aids, they give multiple different perceptions of the powered armor (My personal favorite is the Polish version). I still have to rewrite the "Themes" section, so when I finish with that I think I'll redo the footnotes so that they're 'concentrated.' Palm_Dogg 15:38, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• Several short sections (reception, some of the adaptations).
• Usually these articles have a list of references in culture.
  • OMG! NO WAY! You should have seen this page when I took over. At least 1/3 was taken up by Warhammer 40K and Halo fans. I had to create a seperate page for it all called Books, films, and games influenced by Starship Troopers. Palm_Dogg 14:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
    • There should at least be a quick section using {{main}} or {{details}}. I don't think the list is so long that it can't be boiled down to a section within the page. Circeus 15:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Done. I'll see what I can do. Thanks for your input. Palm_Dogg 15:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC) Palm_Dogg 02:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
• It'd be nice if identical notes could be concatenated (see meta:Cite/Cite.php for how to do this).

Haven't read the article in details yet, but these would be nice to correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Circeus (talk • contribs)

• Done. Will try and tighten up/merge the shorter sections. Palm_Dogg 14:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• As Fritz said further above - there are 12 (!) book covers. There should be one book cover. Book covers must have a fair use rationale, and more than one is really pushing that. I quite like the article itself, although some of the sections could be merged. Do not small-font your notes, it is poor style (font should be a minimum size, particularly for those with vision problems). Proto||type 15:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Notes have been smalled in several FA already without problems. Since the technique always involve scalable fonts, the reader is able to jack up the text size (and if he has vision problems, he probably does it by default). Circeus 15:50, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I have a problem with so many book covers and no other images. SilkTork 17:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC) I have just swapped two book covers for two other images. The same could be done through the rest of the article. SilkTork 17:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The non-English book covers could be reduced and merged into a single image for the purpose of demonstrating the various languages into which the novel has been translated. Apart from stills from the movie or possibly a pic of Heinlein, however, I'm not sure what other images you're going to find. — RJH 17:19, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm loathe to use anything from the film for two reasons: one, this article is about the novel, not the Starship Troopers "universe"; second a lot of Heinlein fans hated the Starship Troopers film and might take it personally. ;) Palm_Dogg 17:47, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not like there really need to be that many pictures in the article, anyway. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 21:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

• The main reason this article failed in its FA nomination was a lack of copyediting. Would anyone here be able to help with that? Palm_Dogg 15:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)