Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Peer review/Club Penguin

Club Penguin edit

I worked on this article, and I am submitting it for a peer review so I can see what improvements need to be made for it to become a featured article. I hope someone can tell me what those improvements are. --Ha dg er 03:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I might be being a bit too harsh, but if I'm going to be completely honest I'm surprised this passed GA. There are multiple issues which usually stop articles from passing GA straight off (too many short sentences, inadequate screenshots, gameguide issues etc).

Perhaps most worrying is the lack of thorough sourcing: most things are sourced, which is good, but there are a large number of unsourced sentences which need citations (even if that means repeating a sentence you used at the beginning of the paragraph).
- Question: Can I please have some examples of unsourced sentences? --Ha dg er 04:21, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Most of the "Subscribed membership" section. Last two sentences of first paragraph of "Environment" section. Parts of the "Items" section. 2009 section of "Coins for change". These are the only ones which leapt out at me, and they may been sourced, but the sources might not be in obvious places (don't be afraid to stick a citation and the end of one paragraph and after the first sentence of the next). Una Laguna^Talk 11:05, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A very large number of sources used are primary sources - these should only ever be used as a last resort and, if possible, not used at all.
- Comment Okay, I'll try, but it will be hard, because when I search "Club Penguin", most results are blogs (not just the official one, but fan-blogs). --Ha dg er 18:13, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment I'm working on getting the sources. Good thing What They Play is a reliable source (otherwise, I wouldn't have even started getting the reliable sources). --Ha dg er 00:34, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The article has too many one- and two- sentence paragraphs. These disrupt the flow of prose and make the article less pleasant to read. Consider merging short paragraphs together. Example: why do the last two sentences of the History and development section need to be separate paragraphs?
Too much of the article is an indiscriminate list of information, and too much of it is in bullet-point form (most pieces of info are usually more pleasant to read in regular prose format). For example: why do we need to know the individual amounts Coins for Change raised for each charity? A simple description of the game mechanism is needed and maybe an overall total raised or some similar nice, quick number, but this section can be easily summarised in one or two paragraphs.
On a similar note there's lots of game-guide-esque info. An encyclopedia article doesn't need to list and describe each of the rooms in Club Penguin. For example, there doesn't need to be a list of the different puffles (simply a brief description of what they do, and if they are restricted to paying members or not).
There are two screenshots but neither of them show what the general gameplay looks like - such a screenshot would be a great aid in readers understanding what the game is like.
I'm going to split my issues with the lead section up into multiple points for easier digestion:
- The lead section doesn't seem to be particularly well-structured. Currently the flow is: basic info (title, developers, release etc) -> gameplay -> development/history -> business model -> history -> gameplay/child safety -> criticism. The basic idea of a lead section is that it gives a short overview of the whole article without going into too much detail. Some bits seem to go into too much detail, while others seem a bit skimmed over.
- There's what looks to me like a POV issue: the game's criticisms are briefly described, but no positive points made in reviews are mentioned.
- Going back to the conciseness issue, there seems to be a bit of overly-flowery prose:
  - Using cartoon penguins as avatars, players waddle around, chat, play minigames and participate in other activities with one another in a snow-covered virtual world. - This reads more like a blurb from the back of the game's box: it would be better to say "Players use cartoon penguin avatars" and mention that the game is set in a winter setting (if it's a video game, then it's pretty obvious the player plays in a virtual world!)
    - Done. I kept the virtual world explanation. See Wikipedia:State the obvious for more information about why I kept the virtual world explanation. --Ha dg er 04:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Nevertheless, the game has had a degree of criticism, including claims that it teaches consumerism[8] and that some players "cheat" to improve their status. - The same information could be conveyed by something like "The game has been criticized for teaching consumerism and allowing some players to cheat."
    - Done. I removed the word "some", though, because that would lead to confusion of people thinking things like "which players?". --Ha dg er 04:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Words which aren't commonly used, like "avatar" and "cheat", need to be linked to the relevant articles (in this case Avatar (computing) and Cheating in online games).
  - Done. One use of "cheat" wasn't linked because of Wikipedia:Linking#Repeated_links--Ha dg er 04:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- As a summary of the article, the lead section shouldn't need any citations since all the information in it should be mentioned in the main body of the article.
  - Comment I will put the text in the lead section into the main body of the article, but maybe there should still be citations so people don't argue over citation being needed for the lead section of the article. I will remove them for now after mentioning things in the main body of the article, but if they should be re-added, tell me. --Ha dg er 01:40, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - Correct - my original comment was unclear: you're allowed to have a lead section without citations only if the same information appears with citations in the main body of the article. Una Laguna^Talk 08:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - Well, I kept the citations anyway (even though I included some things from the lead section of the article into the main body of the article), so I'm pretty sure that part is Done. --Ha dg er 18:04, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Reception section seems a bit thin on the ground on the positive reception side: if the game has been "generally well-received", I would expect more of the section to be describing the praise the game received. A glaring omission is what video game reviews say: is the game easy to play, are there any bugs, is it fun to play etc. These questions would all be addressed by mentioning the key points made in some reviews of the game.
As "Club Penguin" is the title of the game, it should be italicised throughout the article.
- Done. --Ha dg er 20:57, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The basic structure of the article does not conform to the standard video game format. When all the unnecessary details have been reviewed, many of the sections will be too small to warrant their existence as single sections. Have a look at Anarchy Online (a Good Article) to get an idea of what sort of structure to give the article, although note that as no two games are identical there may be slight differences between the structure of Anarchy Online and this article.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Hope this helps, Una Laguna^Talk 19:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Thanks for telling me the errors! I am okay with it. Anything to help make it a featured article would be okay. --Ha dg er 20:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]