Talk:Dunces and Dragons

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Good articleDunces and Dragons has been listed as one of the Media and drama good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 19, 2014Good article nomineeNot listed
February 15, 2021Good article nomineeListed
Current status: Good article

GA Review[edit]

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Dunces and Dragons/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: ChrisGualtieri (talk · contribs) 05:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC) I'll do this one. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Good Article Checklist

  • Well-written -the prose is clear and concise, respects copyright laws, and the spelling and grammar are correct; and it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
  • Verifiable with no original research: it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline; it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines; and it contains no original research.
  • Broad in its coverage: it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
  • Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias, giving due weight to each.
  • Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
  • Illustrated, if possible, by images: images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content; and images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
Good Article review progress box
Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()
3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()
Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed
  • Disambig links: Checks out OK
  • External links:Checks out OK
  • Reference check: Checks out OK
No immediate concerns with the references were found. All checked out as working without redirects, 404s or other errors. Consistency in sources' date formatting was also checked.

Review details: "upclose" should be "up-close". The text for Squidward is a surprise link for Squiddy, please address this. The modified character appearance should be noted and not uncovered upon mouse-over or clicking of the link. Also this does not provide the necessary context for printed versions of the page. Something I do with my GAN reviews. Same goes for King Krabs. Around this time the plot summary prose has flow issues, "There they meet Squidly, King Krabs former jester locked in the tower for a bad joke playing a clarinet. SpongeBob, Patrick and Squidly are sent King Krabs who orders them to be executed because of an insulting song they perform in front of him." This should be broken up. It is a run-on sentence, but it flows awkwardly. Same with "Planktonimor" and "Black Knight". Wording choice, "A duel ensues, with SpongeBob ultimately winning due to his karate prowess. After the battle, SpongeBob decides to spare her life." this makes it seem like SpongeBob would kill the Black Knight and seems to a bit dramatic. Is this an accurate description of the events? More prose issues, " The dragon eats it and likes it that it becomes obedient to SpongeBob, zapping Planktonimor."

Duplicate source duplication: "Nickelodeon also tied-in with Burger King to release a toyline based on the episode for promotion.[7][7] The toyline consisted of 20 different figures.[7][7]" More of a concern is that the plot summary includes text that is currently used on the Spongebob Wikia. Could you please explain this? The title is clearly a pun on Dungeons and Dragons, yet the numerous cultural references are absent, reducing some of the context and brilliance of the writing. In fact, the plot summary seems to have been written by an entirely different editor and just doesn't meet the requirements for a GA. Could you please re-write it? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 01:43, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ChrisGualtieri. I have fixed the source duplication and the plot summary. Do you think the plot is now acceptable or should be revised again? About the SpongeBob Wiki, I am very sorry for not changing that before. BTW, yes it is a play on "Dungeons and Dragons" but I don't have sources about it. Mediran (t • c) 07:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not able to re-write the plot summary for you because I have not seen the episode in question, but the prose is somehow actually worse than when it began. I do appreciate your attempts to change and reduce some of the issues, but even the opening sentence has some issues. "In the episode, SpongeBob and Patrick are arriving to a stadium to watch a jousting tournament." - "The episode begins with SpongeBob and Patrick running to the Medieval Moments restaurant to watch a jousting tournament. The announcer calls for two members of the audience to participate in the tournament and both SpongeBob and Patrick eagerly call out and flail their arms. They are selected and put on sea horses and given lances before being told they are in the tournament. As they protest, the sea horses charge without warning. SpongeBob and Patrick are thrown out of the building and into the 11th-century Bikini Bottom. For falling from the sky, a group of knights surround and imprison them, with Squidward's ancestor, Squiddy. Squiddy..." Since I believe it is the 11th and not 8th century Bikini Bottom... some other issues with the plot's prose remain. Just please keep working on it, it is the major stand out section now. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:47, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You've worked on it a bit, but there is a lot to do. Should I fail this rather than continue to hold it indefinitely? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It has been another week. Sorry, but I have to fail this because there has been no activity. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Dunces and Dragons/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vaticidalprophet (talk · contribs) 05:35, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA review
(see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, spelling, and grammar): Good.
    b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): Fits the basic MOS criteria as relevant to GAs.
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): Good.
    b (citations to reliable sources): Good.
    c (OR): No issues.
    d (copyvio and plagiarism): No issues.
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): Everything the casual reader wants to know.
    b (focused): Stays on-topic, doesn't get distracted.
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias: Not particularly a topic that tends to end up in the crosshairs of NPOV disputes anyway.
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.: Stable, no issues past those normal for articles that attract the attention of children.
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): Appropriate fair-use rationale.
    b (appropriate use with suitable captions): No issues.

Overall:
Pass/Fail:

· · ·

This is a good attempt, but has a number of issues in prose and referencing that need to be addressed before it makes GA.

The prose quality is inconsistent, and in particular there's a number of issues with run-on sentences. For instance, the second paragraph in the lede:

In the episode, SpongeBob and Patrick travel back in time, where they find that Mr. Krabs' ancestor is the ruler of the kingdom, which is being attacked by Planktonimor, Plankton's ancestor, and an evil wizard. SpongeBob and Patrick, assisted by Squidly, a jester and ancestor of Squidward, and the Dark Knight, Sandy's ancestor, must rescue Princess Pearl, ancestor of Pearl and King Krabs' daughter, who has been captured by Planktonimor.

is pretty questionable. If you read those sentences out loud, you'll notice they're overlong and have a poor signal-to-noise ratio. This is particularly important in the context that a lot of the audience for this article will be quite young and struggle to understand overlong sentences. Even for an adult audience this is difficult to comprehend -- for instance, it isn't clear until reading the plot summary whether or not Planktonimor and the evil wizard are the same person. Another low-quality sentence is:

They are to be executed for insulting him with a song but Princess Pearl, the 11th-century ancestor of the present-day Pearl, reminds King Krabs of the prophecy that two brave knights, having fallen from the sky, will be sent by the king to defeat the evil wizard, Planktonimor, Plankton's ancestor, who terrorizes the kingdom with his dragon jellyfish.

That's 58 words! Not only does this include the content of at least two different sentences, most of those words aren't going towards any particular content at all. For instance, most readers will be able to gather from context that Princess Pearl is the ancestor of the modern Pearl. While the preceding sentence ("Eventually, the king, Mr. Krabs' ancestor, King Krabs, orders SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidly to the throne room.") doesn't have length problems, it has a similar issue with repeating information and using an awkward amount of punctuation. In general, this is a recurring issue with the way the article draws connections between the modern characters and their historical counterparts. For instance, "As SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidly near Planktonimor's tower, the guard, ancestor of Sandy Cheeks, the Dark Knight, blocks them." is ambiguous to an unfamiliar reader as to whether "the Dark Knight" refers to Sandy or her ancestor.

Ambiguous and poorly written sentences also recur later in the article, such as with:

The prizes were a trip to England, Spain, Germany or Mexico plus spending money, a family trip to Orlando at the Nickelodeon Hotel, and 2,000 fans got the SpongeBob SquarePants: Lost in Time DVD.

This should probably be three sentences. As is, the "overseas trip" and "interstate trip" at least seem to be describing the same prize, and it segues awkwardly into the lesser prize of the DVD.

There are also some more minor issues regarding encyclopedic wording. For instance, in "5.2 million kids 2-11", "kids" should be replaced with "children", and in cite 19, 'Spongebob' should be capitalized.

Past the prose issues, there are also issues with the citations. Concerningly, a number of the citations appear to be entirely lost. By my count, 4 out of the 21 total cites, occuring 8 times in the article total, are only available through HighBeam -- a service that ended access last December. These cites aren't available through any of the usual archives I've checked, meaning they're at risk of being completely inaccessible. This might be a trivial issue, but it also might end up requiring some fairly substantial revision of the impacted sections. There are also some issues with 'naked URLs', specifically in cite 24. More peripherally, there's room to criticize the number of cites that go to Twitter and to press releases, but in context I think these are used acceptably.

This might look like a lot, but I'm confident most of these issues are surmountable. Best of luck! Vaticidalprophet (talk) 06:34, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your work here! Good progress, but I still have some notes. The improvements to the second paragraph are excellent -- no issues there. However, there are a couple sentences where the attempt to fix them instead made them more difficult to parse. For instance, the first paragraph of the plot summary previously ended like this:

They are put on seahorses and given lances. The seahorses charge without warning and SpongeBob and Patrick are thrown out of the building into 11th-century Bikini Bottom.

No issues there, and accordingly I didn't bring it up in my review. The post-revision version:

After being put on seahorses and given lances, the pair are thrown out of the building into 11th-century Bikini Bottom due to the seahorses charging without warning.

This has similar issues to some of the sentences I called out in my first pass. The sentence is made of more unnecessary compounds, and the passive voice weakens the impact and understanding of the text.

Regarding the references, I did search archive.is for reference text. The issue I ran into was that those references didn't give the full text, and now the full text seems to be completely lost. I'm unsure how much of an issue this should be treated as, and I think it might need a new set of eyes on it, so I'm requesting a second opinion regarding the HighBeam references (and to a lesser degree the prose quality). Vaticidalprophet (talk) 00:38, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]


This has troubled me, I'm afraid. I don't think I can pass the article in its current state, and I don't have the expertise to suggest anything that could make it passable myself. You're right that it's been a while, so I'll give it three more days from today to find a second opinion (on account of it's already been here for some weeks), and if not I'm afraid I'll have to end this review. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 08:47, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Second opinion[edit]

@Some Dude From North Carolina: Everything looks good, but has issues needed to be fixed:

@Chompy Ace: All  Done with these edits. Some Dude From North Carolinawanna talk? 00:25, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Vaticidalprophet: Is this done? Chompy Ace 12:41, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Vaticidalprophet: Courtesy ping in case you didn't get the first from the 2nd reviewer. Some Dude From North Carolinawanna talk? 23:30, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Been thinking about this. I think I'll have to recuse myself from deciding GA status, with a vote of no confidence as to my own personal opinion. I don't think the prose can meet GA to a degree that I can shepherd it to, but I also don't think at this point I'm the right person to make that decision. If @Chompy Ace is willing to pick up the matter of deciding whether to promote, I'd be grateful. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 23:34, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Chompy Ace: Courtesy ping in case you didn't get the first. Some Dude From North Carolinawanna talk? 15:28, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Passed the GA review. Chompy Ace 20:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty sure that this shouldn't be categorized as sword and sorcery[edit]

The "sword and sorcery" categorization feels off to me. Could anyone please tell me if I'm right?--Thylacine24 (talk) 00:21, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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