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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pyramid Head/archive1

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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 Dabomb87 01:16, 8 January 2011 [1].

Pyramid Head edit

Pyramid Head (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Kaguya-chan (talk) 19:37, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A judge of men and a faceless, voiceless executioner...One of the more disturbing monsters to grace the Silent Hill video game series is Pyramid Head, arguably best known for his appearance in the second installment of the series. I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that it meets the FA criteria. Currently an A-class article, it also recently underwent a peer review. Please enjoy this article and all comments are welcome! Kaguya-chan (talk) 19:37, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just some initial comments (sorry I wanted to do a full run through but have to run off quickly):

  • What makes Doris C. Rusch a commentator worthy of note, to the point of giving her views a whole paragraph? The article doesn't say and the absence of a blue-link otherwise lends itself to the suggestion that she is not a significant commentator.
  • "he has since been cited by reviewers" do we need "since"?
  • "Of the creatures that appear in Silent Hill 2, only Pyramid Head features an "overtly masculine" appearance" The source says he is the only overtly masculine enemy. Are there non-enemy creatures?
  • A number of mentions of "Pyramid Head" could be changed to "he" to avoid repetition, assuming that he is an appropriate pronoun. See for example the first three sentences of "Design and characteristics"
  • "According to him". "According to Ito" would be better here, I think.
  • "twenty five" needs a hyphen. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:25, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yay for first comments!
  1. Summarized into a sentence and merged with the other paragraph.
  2. Done.
  3. No, all the creatures are out to kill James.
  4. Done.
  5. Done.
  6. Done.
Kaguya-chan (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Withdraw. Too much citing to online fanzines rather than reliable sources such as mainstream publishers and academic journals. Statements such as: "University of Leicester's Dr. Natasha Whiteman theorized that because of the character's "dark ambiguity", "his female admirers can use him to explore and discuss their own fantasies and visions of sexuality".[31]" should be sourced to something other than an online fanzine. Preferably, a paper published by the University of Leicester. This statement: "One commentator remarked: "Pyramid Head is a dark canvas we can use to project our sexual feelings, and the addition of violence makes it a lot less clear-cut. If the sexual violence in Silent Hill were more realistic, say if the victims were responding by screaming, would that still be attractive?"[45]" One commentator? Who? Once again this statement has been sourced to a fanzine. Articles at the FA level should cite something other than pop culture sources such as online fan magazines. Maybe in 50 years the academic presses will have gotten around to Pyramid Head but for now, thumbs down. Withdraw. 56tyvfg88yju (talk) 13:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for commenting. The Escapist is an online magazine, not a fanzine, run by a staff.[2] Did I give it too much weight? Probably. So, I have condensed the paragraph into a sentence or two. Kaguya-chan (talk) 14:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstand. The article should be withdrawn until the subject has been treated with depth in reliable secondary sources such as academic papers and the mainstream press. At FA level articles must be sourced to something with more substance than an online magazine. This article has a superficial quality about it. I suspect there is little coverage about the subject and that the academics have yet to tackle this one. Until they do (and you can access and use their analysis), the article should be withdrawn. 56tyvfg88yju (talk) 19:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To a large extent I agree with this, which is where I'm going with the Doris C. Rusch issue. There's nothing in the article or the source it cites that explains why she has any credibility on the subject at all (she might of course, but we need to know). The same goes for sources like this. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Had an edit conflict. Anyway, Rusch "holds a postdoctoral position with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in the Programme at Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Before that she did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology at Vienna University of Technology. Her current research investigates the metaphorical potential of games and how it can be used to produce a wide range of emotionally satisfying, thought provoking and insightful experiences. Although her work is theory-driven, Rusch aims at applicability of her research to actual game design with the goal of pushing the boundaries of games as media. Rusch has an eclectic background, having completed studies in German Literature, Philosophy, English and Comparative Media at the University of Vienna, where she also received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics."[3] Leigh Alexander has written for Destructoid, Paste, and Gamasutra, where she is the news director.[4][5][6] Kaguya-chan (talk) 20:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Articles on video games use the best reliable sources which do end up being mostly online sites that the VG WikiProject has gone through to cull over the years to those that we know have editorial practices and history of being accurate and reliable (see WP:VG/S). When there are print or academic sources for a topic, we jump on them, but we can't always rely on these to be there. --MASEM (t) 22:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That may be but at FA level something more is expected. The article is at GA level and should remain there. It's basically a brief character description with a list of "appearances" and a few superficial reviews from gamers. Why is it necessary to promote this to FA? The article has a superficial quality and lacks academic analysis and disinterested criticism. It isn't FA ready and probably won't be for many years. 56tyvfg88yju (talk) 23:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're being a little unfair here. There is no reason that articles on subjects which have received little to no attention from noted academics cannot be promoted to featured article status. (No opinion on this article at this time, just trying to respond to 56tyvfg88yju). J Milburn (talk) 01:11, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I ran the article through Coren's tool and Earwig's tool and nothing showed up in regards to plagiarism with those tools. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:49, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Like I explained above, the author of that is Leigh Alexander, who has written for has written for Destructoid, Paste, and Gamasutra, where she is the news director.Look for the bio at the end[7][8]
  2. Games Radar is considered a reliable source by the Video Game Wikiproject, per this discussion.
  3. It is a CC-distributed book. The publisher, ETC-Press, is "an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)"[9]; the author of the essay is Doris C. Rusch, who "holds a postdoctoral position with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in the Programme at Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Before that she did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology at Vienna University of Technology...Rusch has an eclectic background, having completed studies in German Literature, Philosophy, English and Comparative Media at the University of Vienna, where she also received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics"[10]
  4. Ref 13 is a making-of video, found on the DVD release of the Silent Hill film. I'll go fix the formatting of that ref in a little bit. Sorry about that.
  5. After doing some searching on Waltz's Twitter, I found a direct link to the interview, so it's not like it was made up. It's an interview with him at Comic Con, used for his opinion on a comic book he wrote.
Hope that helps. Kaguya-chan (talk) 17:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I'll leave the ETC-Press for others, but I'm not really persuaded by the others. Writing for sites that I'm questioning isn't exactly going to show she's a reliable source. I wouldn't object to the gamesradar is it was just being used to source that the site found the subject one of the scariest villans in some list of scairest villans, but you seem to be using those entries for more than that. The fact that the video game wikiproject considers it reliable isn't necessarily going to mean it meets the FAC requirements of high quality and reliable. How much control does this publishing company actually exert? As for the link to the interview on twitter - how do you know that's his twitter account? And what qualificiations does the interviewee have to make sure that the interview is reliable? Ealdgyth - Talk 17:33, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

After thinking for a while, I have decided to withdraw the nomination. Thank you to everyone who took the time to review. Kaguya-chan (talk) 19:49, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]


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