Wikipedia:Peer review/The Simpsons/archive2

The Simpsons

This article (which I consider extremely well done, had a previous Peer Review back in January of 2005, which only listed one complaint, references (which were added). There are a huge number of articles devoted to this base one (one for each episode, and the huge number of phrases and neogloisms it coined), and it even has its own stub type! I would like to see what kind of support I can drum up for this, so if you'd help it achieve FA status, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks, [[User:Mys e kurity|Mysekurity]] ^{[[additions | e-mail]]}_{02:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)}[reply]

To get through FAC the images will need more jusitification for why they are fair use in this article. See Columbine High School massacre for a recent FA with well referenced fair use images. Image:Simpsons Hollywood Walk of Fame.jpg, for one, almost certainly does not meet our fair use guidelines, as it could easily be replaced by anyone with a camera. Several sections have little or no content, ones like Guest celebrities and Episodes either need to be merged or expanded. There are also too many lists and not enough prose. The Comes, Music, Video games and Books sections all need more description. The Similar TV shows list is also odd, and needs some references and description. Some like Family Guy are obvious, but Frasier and Alf? In general the article needs some formatting work. Most prominently there are a lot of one or two sentence paragraphs that need to be merged or expanded. - SimonP 14:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What should be done before this can become a featured article:

Needs to have a LOT less trivia. There's a glut of this spread out through the article, like the NRA4EVR one-off gag, or mentioning that Skinner sounds like Charles Kuralt or used to act like Norman Bates, or the bits about 3-D animation. It makes the thing a drag for non-Comic-Book-Guys.

Yes, I think all of these should be moved to Trivia about The Simpsons. -Kaizersoze 23:40, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Needs a brief (one or two paragraphs) section on how the show is produced (e.g. the roles of the executive producer and the writing staff, table reads, voice recording, animation). A lot of this information is spread throughout the article, but it should be gathered into one section.

I agree. The "Production/history" section still needs quite some work. -Kaizersoze 23:40, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The "cultural impact" section needs more details on how the show has influenced television and animation. Stuff worth mentioning might include how it started a boom in animation geared towards adults (South Park, King of the Hill, Family Guy), how it was part of a late-'80s/early-'90s shift from sitcoms about priveleged families (Family Ties, The Cosby Show) to sitcoms about working families (Married With Children, Roseanne), and how it was the first successful U.S. comedy series with neither a live studio audience nor a laugh track (a landmark move that preceded The Larry Sanders Show, Scrubs, Arrested Development, etc.) Like SimonP says above, the "influences/influenced" section needs pruning, and whatever's left needs to be justified with references (for example, Ricky Gervais has publicly claimed that The Simpsons was an inspiration for The Office).
Needs some space-cluttering things removed. I'd suggest getting rid of the oversized box listing the animation, some of the promotional images (the characters banner, the 350th episode card), and maybe the not-especiall-interesting Walk of Fame star. (A picture of the Simpsons jet would be a great way to illustrate the show's popularity, though).

The characters banner was meant to illustrate the vast number of secondary characters on the show, the 350th episode promo artwork was to illustrate the longevity of the series. I agree with the Simpsons plane image, but I think the Hollywood Walk of Fame star should stay. Only a handful of animated characters/series have received stars, and I believe they received them much after the fact. The Simpsosn got their star during the height of the show's popularity, which is what makes it so unique and notable. As for the box listing the animation studios, the font size can be made smaller. -Kaizersoze 23:40, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Some mention of how the show is particularly popular in the U.K. (moreso, it seems, than in the U.S.) I'm told TV ratings and per-capita merchandise sales are both considerably higher in Britain than in the States (references anyone?)
The "fans' criticism" section. Oh god, this needs work. There are as different many opinions on when The Simpsons started to decline, if it ever started to decline, and if it ever stopped declining, as there are Simpsons fans. There need to be more factual assertions in here (things like Harry Shearer's recent comments on the show, etc.) and less of the "some say/others say" equivocation that is all too typical of poorly written Wikipedia prose.
All of the home video/DVD stuff, save for one brief paragraph (a sentence or two) needs to get moved to The Simpsons DVDs, whose name should be changed to reflect the inclusion of VHS. Does any other show have such a lengthy section for its home video version? I think that such a page (or a new page, or several new pages) should be created for the video games, books, and comics. Keep the article about the show itself, and leave the merchandise to brief mentions.

Exactly. I've always thought there should be separate pages for various Simpsons merchandise (because let's face it; there's a whole lot of it). I created the video game/DVD section in the article many months ago, when there was much less information, but now many of these things can be sorted out into various different articles. -Kaizersoze 23:40, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck; we have a lot of work ahead of us, but I'd love for this to be a featured article one day. Andrew Levine 03:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]