Talk:Self Made Man (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Self Made Man (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk) 00:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   See below

   B. MoS compliance:

   See below

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Generally OK, but not perfect. You may want to swap out some of those sources if you're looking at taking this to FA. Not sure there's room for "As of January 2010[update], members of the user-contributed television review sites the Internet Movie Database and TV.com rated "Self Made Man" at 7.9 and 8.8 (rated "Great") out of 10 respectively.[11][12]"- they're just not reliable.

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   Can't help thinking there is not enough on the writing in the production section.

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   I would not be opposed to a non-free image in the infobox- perhaps one illustrating the 1920s scenes, preferably with a shot of the Model T-888. Also, see the note below.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   On hold.

• "20th episode (eleventh of the" inconsistency between words and numerals- MOS say anything?
• "Cameron's" linky?
  • Same applies to the other character names. As someone who's never watched the show, I'm clueless.
• "Eric (Lush)" Links and actor's full name would be good.
• "her Human disguise" Any reason for the caps?
• "(Stashwick)" Again
• "to its original" What is being referred to by "it" here? The Model T-888?
• "posttraumatic stress disorder and having" after having? And wouldn't this fact fit better in the production section?
• "When the T-888, as Myron Stark, meets Rudolph Valentino (Branden R. Morgan) at the premiere of The Sheik, this is the first occasion of the series referencing a real-life person." This doesn't read well.
• "in this episode" Repetition
• "series' second" -> "series's second"
• Inconsistency in the italics of "Television Without Pity".
• "which time Arnold Schwarzenegger will still be the Californian Governor". would, rather than will. That's a curious tense...
• Why the bold in the refs?
• ""The entire idea of Cameron would not work, conceptually, if [Summer Glau] were not able to pull it off as an actress. And she does, continually surprising with the nuances of her performance."[7]" Could that quote be attributed with more than just a reference? As in, a prose attribution?

I would prefer to keep all of my replies here below, and not intersperse them in your comments above. I'm sorry if that complicates things.

• 2B: The TV.com and IMDb collective ratings appear to be prevalent, and I couldn't find any geas prohibiting their usage. As for their complicating any planned FA processing, I don't intent to do so any time soon with any article, much less this one. Also, I haven't updated the "as of" date, since February is almost over. Would you prefer I do so, and just update again in March in a few days, or hold off?
• 3A: I looked far and wide hoping to expand the "Production" section; I perused the episode's DVD set and searched the tubes, the former had nothing, and the latter is what you see. Do you have any suggestions as to where I should look further? There aren't any books about the series (Amazon.com nor Google Books), and I already scoured Google News, and the product thereof is already in the article.
• 6B: I can't find anything in the prose the understanding of which would be improved by any non-free media, but that's only my reading and a little further vetting I had performed; if something visually or aesthetically pertinent in the article doesn't make enough sense to you, please let me know and I'll look into it. I'm generally not sanguine on using NFC unless something in the article describes or discusses it with reliably sourced critical commentary. You also said to "see the note below", but I didn't see anything in you unnumbered bullets referring to any imagery/NFC.
• WP:ORDINAL does have something to say on the matter, and I've adjusted the opening sentence accordingly. For what it's worth, I was taught to spell out 0-12, and use numerals for anything higher; that's why it was the way it was.
• In the lede, I've wikilinked character names; however, in the "Plot" section, all characters with articles (or sections of articles) are wikilinked already.
• I forewent linking and listing the guest-starring actors' full names since they were already linked in the infobox under guest stars. I don't know of any SOP/MOS one way or the other, but I'll wikilink them for the time being barring any objections.
• "Human" is capitalized ... out of habit of writing re: science fiction, I suppose. All other species' names in Sci-Fi are capitalized ("Cardassian", "Delvian", "Ewok"), so I capitalize "Human" for ... equity? consistency? Anyways, no prob, I've smallened it.
• I can see that sentence having difficulty; I've added to it for: "The T-888, having accidentally killed the architect of a downtown landmark (Pico Tower) crucial to its original mission".
• The original source described it as: "this scene was originally crafted with the knowledge that John is [...] still reeling from PTSD and killing Sarkissian", which I read as two separate events. Reading the original (or checking the source) would you read it differently? As to whether it would fit better in the "Production" section; it was originally, but that section is already rife with one. sentence. facts. about. the. episode., I thought it would fit as well immediately after that to which it was referring.
• I agree, and your prodding allowed me to write: "When "Myron Stark" meets Rudolph Valentino (Branden R. Morgan) at the premiere of The Sheik, this is the first occasion of the series referencing a real-life person." Is that better?
• Quite right. Culled the second.
• With regard to Wikipedia:APOSTROPHE#Possessives, I'm employing practice #2 (under the second bullet), and doing so consistently throughout the article as far as I can tell.
• The italics are the result of the {{cite web}} template not conforming to apparent standards. While websites aren't italicized apparently, the template's "work=" variable automatically does so. I can't (or at least, don't intend to try to) modify the template, and the prose is not italicized per the Television Without Pity article itself.
• I don't understand re: the tenses. Schwarzenegger will still be the governor on New Year's Eve 2010, that's cited in the article.
• The bold ref is the result of wikilinking the episode in {{cite episode}}; since it would just be wikilinking back to the same article it's in, it creates bold text instead. I removed the variable.
• Well, the prose already talks about how apparently awesome she is, so I didn't want to harp on in that paragraph. I also wanted to show the actress being discussed (since we had the libre imagery to do so), and thought the quote from the same IGN article would make for a more interesting caption than just "Summer Glau (2006)", which is what I originally used. Are you suggesting I source the quote in the caption, move it back into the prose, or just get rid of it altogether? Sourcing it in the caption would lengthen an already large caption box, I think moving it back into the prose would just be beating the point, and ... well, I just like it and don't really want to lose it outright. What do you think?

I think I replied to, if not addressed all of your input. Let round two begin!  :^) — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 02:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, replying in the same way- feel free to split this comment or answer in the same way (probably ignoring the resolved comments...) J Milburn (talk) 10:28, 25 February 2010 (UTC)-

• The TV.com and IMDB ratings, being user-submitted, are unreliable. Effectively, we don't care whether a bunch of IMDB users liked the episode or not.
• Can you at least say who the writer was in the production section? Whether they are a regular writer for the series? Some stuff like that?
• I can completely appreciate that view. It's actually rather refreshing... (The bullet is the one concerning the caption)
• Thanks
• Ok
• Thanks
• Thanks
• Ok
• Perhaps ""Myron Stark's" meeting of Rudolph Valentino (Branden R. Morgan) at the premiere of The Sheik is the first occasion of the series referencing a real-life person."
• Fair enough.
• Then don't use the template, or put both names in the "publisher=" field. It italicises it because it assumes it will be a newspaper or the like.
• Re the tenses, "will still" is very certain- he could die, and the note will become outdated in less than a year- "would" will always be right, even if he dies, and even if it refers to a past event. What we're doing is looking back to how things looked when the episode was written, not looking forward to guess what will happen in the future. See what I mean?
• Thanks
• Source it in the caption- you could possible cut the quote a little. I agree a quote is better than just a random statement saying what the picture is, as it shows why we want to see the image, but a random statement in quote marks is perhaps not very understandable to someone who is not familiar with referencing (the majority of under 18s, and a good few adults, I would guess), who may well assume the quote is "Wikipedia's opinion". See what I mean? I'm just trying to make the article a little bit more accessible.

Woo-hoo! Round 2. Let's do this! (I will skip the "done" bullets, but will be duly verbose in my other responses to elabourate to what I'm referring.

• Kk, I've removed the IMDb and TV.com user ratings for the time being.
• The writer was twice mentioned already (in the "Plot" and infobox), but I rewrote the "Production" section into two paragraphs. The first deals strictly with the personnel involved in the production and now says: ""Self Made Man" is the third T:TSCC episode written by Toni Graphia, whereas it was director Holly Dale's first foray into the Terminator franchise."
• I really don't like how using "meeting of" sounds, but in an effort to condense the wordiness, how is: ""Myron Stark's" meeting Rudolph Valentino (Branden R. Morgan) at the premiere of The Sheik is the first occasion of the series referencing a real-life person."
• Guess what I found? {{noitalic}} allows me to keep the variables where they are for formatting/ordering, but prevents the italicization. Ta-Da!
• I see what you're getting at with regard to the tenses, and I understand your point now. I'll swap that up.

  

  "The entire idea of Cameron would not work, conceptually, if [Summer Glau] were not able to pull it off as an actress. And she does, continually surprising with the nuances of her performance."

  —Travis Fickett (IGN)^[7]

• Okay, so I didn't like trying to truncate the quotation itself, but really like how my citation-in-quote/caption came out. I've employed it here to the right, tell me what you think!

That should be a reply to everything you had (that wasn't just a confirmation to my previous). Let's see what you think! — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 17:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, round three of replies :)

• Thanks
• Much clearer, thanks
• Fair enough- I prefer your proposed wording to the current one.
• Nice.
• Thanks
• Yup, looks very professional and really draws in the reader. Nicely done.

Swap out the things you said you would, and I'm happy to promote. Some thoughts should you wish to improve the article further-

• There are a lot of redlinks- writing a few articles (or, if the subjects aren't notable, providing a clause of context if appropriate) would improve the article slightly
• One line paragraphs are often frowned upon
• Any expansion possible would be a positive- I appreciate there's perhaps not much more out there, though. I gather there is a Terminator fandom, so books will probably be out in years to come.
  • On that note, some context on where the episode fits in to the overall series/plot/universe, with references, may be appropriate
• Have an experiment with different ways of showing the reflist- I personally like two columns, but that may not be super appropriate here
• Sandwiching most of the plot section between an image and an infobox could be looked on as poor form
• Lead could do with expansion, and, if possible, refs moved to elsewhere (body/infobox)

However, as I say, I am happy to promote to GA without these improvements, once those small fixes have been swapped in. J Milburn (talk) 17:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I had already swapped them out. Sorry if I was supposed to wait!

• I'll look at trying to source some stub articles for those red links, should I find they warrant. If not, I'll just remove them eventually.
• I went ahead and condensed the "Production" section into one paragraph; you're in the right, I just don't like how it looks that way.
• Yeah, much like there're enumerable Star Trek encyclopedia and companion books, I look forward to similar Terminator merch to allow me to expand. I have a Google Alert set up for the series and episode title, so we'll see.
  • It doesn't really connect to any overlying storyline, it's mostly a stand-alone episode with no connection to the seasonal arc, except for those drawn by the reviewers about the "three dots".
• I generally only double-column the references when they're exceptionally long. Furthermore, it creates aesthetic problems with the Summer Glau image creating spacing issues brought about by second column.
• Eh, I kinda like it. /shrug
• Honestly, I'm ABSOLUTE RUBBISH at writing ledes. I cannot seem to manage to condense/refer to the bulk of the article with the same proficiency of prose I can create in the article bulk. I would be thrilled if you would throw your towel into that particular ring, and help me out!

That should be that, then? Thanks for all your time and input on the matter, I really appreciate it! — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 18:10, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll be honest, leads are something I sometimes struggle with too- I try to mention something from every section if I can, as well as establish proof that the subject is notable. Beyond that, I can't really offer much advice! In any case, promoted. J Milburn (talk) 22:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 23:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

No primary

This episode is not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Self Made Man", see Self-made man (disambiguation), hence given consistent dab (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) with the rest of category. However left redirecting to this episode as the book has a hyphen, cf. minor differences at WP:DIFFCAPS. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Having said that the audio-book for Self-Made Man (book) doesn't have the hyphen either... In ictu oculi (talk) 00:05, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Italics?

Should the titles here have italics? In ictu oculi (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

• Born to Run (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
• Heavy Metal (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
• Pilot (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
• Self Made Man (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)