Talk:Development history of The Elder Scrolls series

Pre GA Review comments

The article is too heavy on text. The sections drag on and on, and makes it boring to read. Please consider dividing into smaller subsections. Also consider adding a few more screenshots or concept art and stuff. You may also consider adding a timeline summarizing the development history. --soum ^talk 07:07, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Good article nomination failed

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

7. Overall:

   a Pass/Fail:

Summary

Reasons for failing and recommendations:

• Section 1a of GA Guidelines: The prose is not wonderful; it is clunky, unwieldy and far too text heavy with very little to break up the text; an article of solid text does not make for easy reading. I recommend the article is broken up into shorter paragraphs for the start, and text breaks introduced, for example, by adding fresh images.
• Section 1b of GA Guidelines: The article does not really follow WP:MoS - the lead section is far too heavy and I believe could be cut down considerably (see WP:LEAD). Elder Scrolls needs italicized in the lead sentence as well, and some of the longer sections, e.g. Morrowind could be broken up into either subsections or smaller paragraphs. There are also far too many redlinks in the article, which should either have articles for them, or have the links removed. The second paragraph from the Background section needs to start with a capital T as well, and what exactly does "happenstance" mean from the third paragraph of the same section? Although not 100% necessary, a See Also section is recommended at the bottom to allow people to quickly go to articles that have heavy relevance to the topic.

• Section 2a of GA Guidelines: Mostly excellent, however, there is the occasional orphaned quote, eg "Computer role-playing games weren't very interesting while we were working on Daggerfall..." and "the best part of Daggerfall". Who exactly said these, as it's not made clear in the text? Make sure that all quotes are referenced to someone.

• Section 3b of GA Guidelines: Although I believe all important topics have been discussed, I am not sure it is overly focused - I am not sure that the background section is really relevant to the development of the games, and comes more under the history of Bethesda Softworks. This section could easily be cut down or almost removed and absorbed into the Arena section, as it's only relevance is that people were unsure of how able the company were to make an RPG after a history in sporting games.

• Summary: On the whole, the article is informative. I do feel, however, that the article should be failed, rather than put on hold; the clunky prose and rejigging to follow WP:MoS may take some time to rework. I do think this article has some excellent promise, but just a few things stop it, in my view, from attaining GA status, and some heavy reworking is required.

-It has generally been referenced well, from reliable and relevant sources and contains no original research that I can see.

-The article does seem like it's written from a NPOV, with both praise and criticism leveled at the development of the game.

-I would suggest that the text is simply broken up more, as the article is an effort to read, rather than a pleasure to, which it should be owing to the good content. As noted from a comment above, this could be done by putting a few more images in, such as concept art, beta screenshots, etc., as long as they are of appropriate origin with either free license or with a good fair use rationale.

-The development of Oblivion section could be cut down a bit owing to the fact it has it's own article.

Thanks for the very hard work of everyone who contributed. Once the points have been fixed, please do resubmit for GA approval. Please feel free to discuss below, or leave me a message on my talk page! Happy editing! Mouse Nightshirt | talk 14:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Could you provide some advisory on what should be done about the "clunky" and "unwieldy" prose? Specific instances? General rules? I'll work on breaking up the paragraphs, but I'm mystified as to what the terms "clunky" and "unwieldy" mean here. Geuiwogbil 15:25, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for not being more specific. By clunky, I mean that it has long, unbroken paragraphs. For example, Daggerfall, paragraph 2, could be split up when discussion talks about release dates. At the end of paragraph 1 and the start of paragraph 2, Daggerfall starts 3 sentences in a row. Minor I know, but the second sentence could be reworded to remove the repetition. By unwieldy, I mean that by looking at it, it simply looks like a huge block of text and is thus uninviting to read. As I mentioned, breaking up the prose with subheaders and images would rectify this. Having had a look at your edits so far, I must say that the article is definitely heading in the right direction. It has become much more focused and the trimming down has helped the flow of the considerably by removing a lot of the superfluous quotes. I hope I've been a bit more specific. Good work so far anyway! Mouse Nightshirt | talk 16:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

But I like superfluous quotations... :P Geuiwogbil 16:12, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

The article is looking much better now. Quotes generally dont bother that much but when done in excess breaks the flow of text. Specialized focus sections could be grouped into subheadings. And as I already said, more screenshots or concept art would break the monotony. --soum ^talk 16:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I've put in some headings. I'm hesitant about adding new images; I fear I could offend our NFC regulations. We're supposed to use as few NF images as possible, correct? We're not supposed to use images in a "decorative" fashion, that is, to break up the flow. 3(a):Minimal use.; and 8:Significance would seem to be in issue here. Umm, besides that, how does it look? Geuiwogbil 17:47, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I've renominated the article. I believe your concerns have been addressed. Geuiwogbil 17:54, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we are to use as little non free content as possible. But using screenshots to visually represent the progress made with the graphics engine is not decorative, its valid fair use. No matter how many words you useto describe the pixel shaders, vertex shaders, normal maps and displacement maps, no one is going to appreciate that unless the see the visuals. Anyways, the decision is upto you.

As for the content, it looks pretty good now; probably will pass GA (I have not looked into the references, I am assuming they are proper). All the best. --soum ^talk 17:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, Soumyasch. I'm pretty comfortable with the number of screenshots currently used in the article, but I'll still give the issue some thought. Problem is, even if I wanted to add further screenshots, I'm unsure of which screenshots would best illustrate the graphical advances made by the game. I believe the references are up to an appropriate standard. Certainly, I've exhausted all the sources I've been able to find on the Internet. Thank you both again for your criticism. I hope I've made the article more interesting, more readable, and more aesthetically pleasing to the general public. Geuiwogbil 20:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

This could have been taken to WP:GA/R considering the fail and corrections all took place in the same day. Regards, LaraLove^T/_C 11:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

I have reviewed this article, and I think that it deserves GA, but I must note that I am giving it the benefit of the doubt. All is good but:

1. The article is way too text heavy. Too many large blockes of texts - oceans of text - it needs to be neatened, properly formatted and trimmed. Yes, trimmed - shortened. Remove the over-detail, and fix this no.1 concern, or this may (and dont be too surprised) end up with a GA Review.
2. The lead needs inline citations and shortening.

These are the only solid issues I could locate, though it is possible that there may be many grammatical or spelling errors in this large body of text, so a final copyedit may be in order. Congratulations to all those involved. Any questions showuld be directed to my talk page. Thanks - GA pass. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:47, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm confused. What over-detail? It's only 26 kb of prose, that's far less than expected of any article. If you could point out examples of "over-detail", I'd be much obliged. But, so long as this article is focused on its subject and does not run into WP:SIZE violations, there is no issue here. How is the formatting improper? Where is the article messy? Where should the article be trimmed? I'm afraid I don't see the issues you're pointing out in the article as it stands. I'll work on the lede, but I thought that, as a summary of the article, it would be assumed on the part of readers that citations could be found in the body of the article; witness, for example, Structural history of the Roman military, a recently-passed FA. No citations in the lede, as the facts are well-supported by the rest of the article. Articles are supposed to be detailed. FAs need to be comprehensive, GAs need to be, at the very least 3.(a) Broad, and address all major features of their topic. If you're opposing based on 3.(b), I'd like you to point out where this article strays from its subject. Geuiwogbil 15:43, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Its hard to specify - the reading is choppy, and there are large bulks of text that are not separated. See the concerns of the previous review to see what I'm talking about here. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 16:39, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Choppy? The only issue the past reviewer had with the article was that the paragraphs were not broken up to an adequate amount. I find it quite near impossible to believe that it is possible to break up the article any further now. Any further breaks would leave the article a mess of one-sentence paragraphs. Please, do specify, or I will think you a patently unreasonable man. I find it hard to believe you've even attempted to read the text when you write such phrases as "it is possible that there may be many grammatical or spelling errors in this large body of text". This is hardly large. I challenge you to find any recently-passed FA that has paragraphs as short as this article has now, or is as short as this article is now. Where do these concerns, may I ask, show up in the MoS?

I'll be gone for the next week in any case, so I will not be able to edit this article until then. Good day, Anonymous Dissident. Geuiwogbil 23:14, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Patently unreasonable? I passed this article, against my better judgement, and I am accused of being unreasonable. And I will take your challenge of finding a shorter FA - todays featured article - An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. While it has longer paragraphs, it is shorter. This article needs more structure. It needs trimming because it is over-detailed in areas. An example, which is something you say you so dearly need, could be Development history of The Elder Scrolls series#Promotion and release. It has extraneous detail; it could be summarised and still be good in perhaps 8 or 9 long-ish sentences. This is a trend which exists through much of the article. This is what I'm talking about. This is why the prose section failed in the last GA. I still do not feel that this issue has been addressed adequately. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I noticed this because it was put up for reassessment and after reading it was thinking that it is an unnecessary content fork. The content here could be summarised in the The Elder Scrolls and each game could have the more detailed information. The problem with the current arrangement is that you end up having to update multiple articles each time instead of just one or two (hence the reason it was nominated for reassessment). It also results in a lot of information repeated. At the moment it comes across like a complex DAB page, especially the way it is set out. AIRcorn (talk) 04:05, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with this. This is just a collection of repeated information that appears better organized in their respective articles: it's a content fork. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 04:27, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Completely agree. It's just a bunch of information from several articles put into one.  — Statυs (talk, contribs) 04:29, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay put the templates on. Will see what others say. AIRcorn (talk) 12:18, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose. There are some things that an article about the development of the whole series can cover that can't be covered in the individual game's articles. This article can cover events such as developmental work between games, actions performed on a larger scale that ties in multiple games, and provide some overall unity of the development of the series. The solution is to improve this article, not merge it.--Futuretrillionaire (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. That kind of information (developmental work between games, actions performed on a larger scale that ties in multiple games, and provide some overall unity of the development of the series) can be covered on the main The Elder Scrolls article. In my eyes, this article is just a copy-paste content fork (and incomplete, by the way, which is enough to make it lose its GA ribbon) from the rest of the articles with a bit of additional information here and there (some of it unsourced too). I don't see why should we keep this as anything but a redirect by now. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 20:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... I suppose the main the article could cover that. I'm still not entirely sure about this. I change my vote to neutral.--Futuretrillionaire (talk) 14:35, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd seriously like to work on this article, but I believe it will be better to improve the main ones :) — ΛΧΣ²¹ 20:30, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Support merge per Aircorn and ΛΧΣ. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support – Part of the problem with this article is that it will necessarily deteriorate over time as more and more games are made for the series, and the newer additions are not as well-vetted as the original GA material. Breaking it into each game's own development will let each section stand on its own; once the game is released, the development for that game is complete. Abbreviated information in the main series article won't have the same difficulties. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 21:23, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Support merge per above reasons; this article would be better summarised as a section in The Elder Scrolls article. The info in each section is somewhat redundant if it just repeated from the individual game articles. The1337gamer (talk) 10:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.