Wikipedia:Peer review/The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series)/archive1
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series)[edit]
I've spent quite a bit of time on this one, using the original recordings, the script books, the three published biographies of Douglas Adams and the Pocket Hitchhiker's Guide as sources. I personally don't think it's quite ready for an FA nomination yet - I think some of the prose could be cleaned up just a little, and I'm not sure how readers will take to having references to books directly in the text (it seems that we've gotten away from that, in prose, and are just going for footnotes). It IS referenced, the photos DO have rationales posted, and it just passed WP:GA. I would love to get this to be the FIRST radio series feature article on Wikipedia though, so any and all comments are welcome (but be a little gentle, ok? ;). --JohnDBuell 17:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
- Oh my...its a Trivia section. --Osbus 21:40, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, trivia sections are bad form, although it looks to be in prose now. Just remove the trivia header and convert the subsections to top-level and/or integrate them somewhere. See an example of what we try to do with trivia sections on Wikipedia - I haven't yet finished with Lucy though. Moulder 10:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- In this case it's always been prose. I don't understand what the big fear of a 'Trivia' header is, provided it IS prose, not bullets. I always understood the problem was with too many bulleted lists, and not enough prose... --JohnDBuell 11:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- Even if (to paraphrase) that which we call a trivia section by any other word would read as poignant, it's really about how you say it in this case. An example is an edit I once saw on my watchlist for evidence of evolution changing a section called "evidence from paleontology" to "evidence from fossils" - it's just not as encyclopedic-sounding. At least that's the official rationale. I suppose if this in a longer article a background/miscellaneous/other (depending on the type of article) would be okay, but personally, I do think the article flows better now sans trivia label. Anyway, good luck, I like. :)
- One other thing is that I reversed the citations and ref tag; the ref tag could also optionally be in a separate "notes" (sub-)section, but WP has no official rules about citation style - one of our weaknesses IMO. Moulder 13:46, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- It looks visually distracting to me to have notes AFTER the references list. The "References" are works that are not directly cited in the text, and thus not footnoted, and are mostly an exact list of the recordings, with ISBNs (though a couple of them are out of print). I don't see where having Notes and References as their own sections should be a problem, the main Hitchhiker's Guide article is set up in exactly the same way, with the same rationale. --JohnDBuell 15:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- Sorry, my fault! I should have looked more closely before commenting, because I was thinking of some other articles where the ref tags are for references to the references listed. In that case you're right. (On a related note, it's always seemed counter-intuitive to me to have inline citations as footnotes, which are usually reserved for notes in the sense of the one used in, say, encyclopedia. It does help manage the references, although they still become quite a mess in larger articles if you wish to cite an existing source earlier in the text, but I'll stop before I get into a full-on tangent. :P) Moulder 17:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- Well the bottom line is that it does look a lot more readable to have the notes in one section and the references or bibliography or whatever we're calling it this week in its own section! ;) --JohnDBuell 20:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- Sorry, my fault! I should have looked more closely before commenting, because I was thinking of some other articles where the ref tags are for references to the references listed. In that case you're right. (On a related note, it's always seemed counter-intuitive to me to have inline citations as footnotes, which are usually reserved for notes in the sense of the one used in, say, encyclopedia. It does help manage the references, although they still become quite a mess in larger articles if you wish to cite an existing source earlier in the text, but I'll stop before I get into a full-on tangent. :P) Moulder 17:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- It looks visually distracting to me to have notes AFTER the references list. The "References" are works that are not directly cited in the text, and thus not footnoted, and are mostly an exact list of the recordings, with ISBNs (though a couple of them are out of print). I don't see where having Notes and References as their own sections should be a problem, the main Hitchhiker's Guide article is set up in exactly the same way, with the same rationale. --JohnDBuell 15:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- In this case it's always been prose. I don't understand what the big fear of a 'Trivia' header is, provided it IS prose, not bullets. I always understood the problem was with too many bulleted lists, and not enough prose... --JohnDBuell 11:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, trivia sections are bad form, although it looks to be in prose now. Just remove the trivia header and convert the subsections to top-level and/or integrate them somewhere. See an example of what we try to do with trivia sections on Wikipedia - I haven't yet finished with Lucy though. Moulder 10:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
- I did a lot of editing for date and ref formatting. The 2nd para of intro reads like a history lesson vice a summary of the article. The para beginning "Maggs stated in the new script" has two quotes that don't have footnotes. Refs should be in cite php format, esp if you want FA, some are just basically a web address. Doesn't matter if refs and notes are in separate section or not. I think the scope is good and a with a little copyedit will be fine.Rlevse 01:35, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
- Well, the page is intended to be a history of the radio series, without really explicitly saying as much. It's a sub-page to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and a super-page to the 1978/80 and 2004/05 radio series (which are linked so that they can be viewed in more specific detail). The link you pointed out was a goof, it looks like I copied and pasted it twice. And that sort of "old-school" inline citation naming the book and page I'll fix and change to using ref tags. Thanks for the help and advice, as always! --JohnDBuell 02:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)