Wikipedia:Peer review/Pillow Pets/archive1

Pillow Pets

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… I have gone to the point where I can't think of how to contribute to this article since my last edit. I believe that the article has potential for GA status since Pillow Pets are selling millions of units now (I just couldn't find a reliable source for this for inclusion in the article). Anything you'd like to suggest will be fine, but I want to find ways to make sure that the prose is readable, the sources are reliable, and the sections are expanded more. I believe that the awards section specifically needs more attention, though.

Thanks, Bulldog edit my talk page da contribs 01:08, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Belovedfreak

I can see that a lot of work has been put into this article so far, but it will need a bit more before a Good Article nomination, I think. I will go through by section and make some more specific comments but one of the biggest problems I can see is that you could really do with some more independent secondary sources. At the moment, the content is quite reliant on primary sources (ie. the official website). When I read it, I couldn't help thinking that it would make quite a good press release. That's not meant to be a criticism of the writer, but more a reflection on the dominant source material. This may be a problem with the topic: I notice that WikiProject Toys has no featured articles at present, and only a few good articles. One that I think is quite comparable to this, is Flavas. They were only released in 2003, and it's a very short article with not too many references. Sindy has many more. Since Pillow Pets also date from 2003, you may struggle to find enough secondary sources to get to GA, although, it may be possible to get a good, short article like Flavas.

Infobox

I see you've requested an image on the talkpage. I think it's unlikely you'll manage to get a free image in a case like this, but you could use a non-free image under fair use, either of the brand logo, or the toys. See Wikipedia:Non-free content for more on this.

Lead

One point looked for at a GA review is that the article complies with WP:LEAD. You need to make sure that the lead isn't just acting as an introdution, but summarises the main points of the rest of the article. At the moment, there is quite a lot that is not mentioned in the lead. You also need to be careful not to mention things in the lead that aren't mentioned (and expanded on) later. Because of the way the lead works, it is often not necessary to include citations in the lead since the information there should be cited later, and removing cites from the lead can make a slightly easier read for our many readers who won't even get past the table of contents.
"Pillow Pets are a brand..." - "are a brand"? "is a brand"?
"Made of high-quality chenille..." - high quality? This is not mentioned again, and not cited, and to be honest, I don't know much about chenille... does it have different grades? Is there low-quality chenille? It sound a little bit promotional to include "high quality", unless there's a good, encyclopedic reason for doing so.
Be careful of overlinking (this applies throughout). Don't link common words that a reader is unlikely to need or want to click onto. For example, there's no need to link United States (especially not three times), or children, Christmas, donation, website, puppy, warehouse, game, hat, etc. Also check that links go to relevant articles. For example, does the article at kiosk tell us a great deal about where these products were sold?
The article would benefit from a copyedit throughout to eliminate awkward phrasing. It's quite common when an article is mostly written by one person as it can be hard sometimes to see exactly how to improve the prose when you've spent a long time on it. Consider asking another editor you know writes well to have a look at it, or perhaps ask the guild of copyeditors? I'll try to highlight a few examples.
"Originally devised by Jennifer Telfer in 2003, she decided..." - she wasn't originally devised by Jennifer Telfer was she? (grammar)
"Their continuing popularity has spawned other companies to manufacture fraudulent Pillow Pets" - use of spawned here is not right

Idea

"Pillow Pets were thought up one day in 2003..." - not very encyclopedic language
"The Telfers were on their way to developing the products" - again, doesn't sound very encyclopedic, nor very accurate, since they were already developing the products weren't they? Not on there way to doing so.

Success

This heading isn't very neutral. I'm also wondering if perhaps this section could be merged with the previous one which only has one paragraph.
"She then discovered that if she kept selling the pets past Christmas, Pillow Pets would become a successful product." - this is slightly strange, I'm not even sure what it means really. That if you keep selling a product, you will be successful? Isn't that how business works?
"US$300,000" - you don't need to state "US" here. It's an article on a US topic, so that's implied unless stated otherwise (as well as being the most commonly used dollar currency internationally).

Updates

The bit abotu online communities is veering on promotional, and I'm not sure how notable it is these days that a company has a facebook page & twitter acocunt.
The bit about "partnering" with the American Red Cross makes it sound a bit more significant than maybe it is. All I can gather from the website is that they are donating some money to the Amrican Red Cross, and I can't find anything in independent secondary sources about this.

Donating

Again, this section seems to be perhaps making things seem a bit more ntable than they are. What would probably better than isolated stories would be secondary sources that show the company is known for its involvent in charity work, or something about the collectability of the products.

Awards

This would probably better as prose than a list. Awards are sometimes formatted as lists, but with only four, it would probably work better as prose, and with the years that the awards were won included.

See also

This is not necessary; you have already linked stuffed toy in the article. "See also" is for other article that may be relevant but haven't been appropriate to link to in the main text of the article.

References

The references could do with more information included. It's good not to see bare URLs here, but we really need a bit more than just title and retrieval date. Include, where possible, the names of authors, the title of the work (eg. newspaper or website), the date that the work was published.

Good work with what you've done so far. I don't envy you - it's always harder to write decent articles when sources are in short supply! I don't usually watch peer reviews, so if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at my talkpage.--Beloved Freak 20:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]