Talk:Alapalooza/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: ThaddeusB (talk · contribs) 04:02, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello. I will be conducting this review. I am reading the article now and will post my initial comments sometime tomorrow. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:02, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Initial comments

The way I look at writing an article, there are three major components: the content (i.e. all the facts), NPOV, and the prose. My initial thought is that the content and NPOV are in good shape, but the prose needs some work. In the past, when I've listed specific complaints off the bat people have been overwhelmed thinking they article was well short, when actually not a lot of work was needed. As such, I will start by outlining what I belive to be the shortcomings of the prose in general terms:

• In the lead, there are a few sentences with three or four mostly unrelated clauses that make it hard to understand.
• In the body, there are one or two sentences which lack grammatical context (i.e. contain a pronoun or "this" with unclear meaning.
• Throughout, the distinction between the music collection and the video collection is hard to follow. That is, I am unsure if some sentences are about the songs or the videos for the songs.

Most likely, a careful rereading of the article now that its been a bit since you first wrote it will make what I'm talking about apparent.

I don't think there is a huge amount of work left to be done to achieve GA status, but will hold off on a thorough review until an attempt at addressing the prose through copyediting has been made. I look forward to working with you to make this a GA. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:41, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Haha, it's tough to overwhelm me on GA, but I appreciate your approach and I believe that a review should always be done in whatever style makes the reviewer most comfortable. I went through the article and of course you are right; the article I read seemed a lot better after I spent several hours working on it and just wanted to be done with it for the day then it does now, haha. I went through the whole thing specifically looking for (and hopefully addressing) the issues listed above, but also doing a general copyedit to (again hopefully) make the rest of your job easier. One thing I wasn't sure about, however, was where the distinction between the album and the video collection was blurry. Some specific examples here would probably help me clear up any issues (it's one of those things as the writer, I guess, where it's obvious to me what I'm referring to, so I could be not catching it). Thanks for the review, looking forward to seeing more! Canadian Paul 17:56, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Your copyedit cleared up the confusing video/songs parts. I've now done my own copyedit, which hopefully improves things a bit more. :) I have a few questions/requested tweaks remaining:

• "Yankovic's 1992 album Off the Deep End, his best-selling album since 1984's "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D, had revived his career and displayed his versatility after the commercial failures of his 1986 work Polka Party! and his feature film UHF." What do mean by "versatility"? "Revived" is self-evident but how a commercial success shows versatility needs explained or removed.
• "...B-side to Off the Deep End's "Smells Like Nirvana", "just in case there..." - the back to back quotes (for different reasons) is perhaps a bit confusing
• "He recorded all of his original tracks, except "Talk Soup" and "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", by the end of 1992 and recorded most of the rest in July 1993" - "most the rest" appears to refer grammatically to original tracks, but I'm not sure if that is what was intended. If so, what doe sit mean to say "most of the rest" when referring to only two tracks? If not, clarification is needed
• "For the music video Yankovic chose Mark Osborne and Scott Nordlund to produce a claymation feature that parodied scenes from the movie" "chose ... to produce" is awkward for me. Perhaps a clarification is in order - did Yankovic come up with the concept and just ask for help making it happen or was more creative freedom given? Since the video was nominated for a Grammy, it is probably an important distinction to make.
• "Having always wanted to write a tribute to The Flintstones" - this is a very minor point, but do you mean the show (which is what the wikilink points to) or the characters form the show. If the former, it should be italic.
• In the paragraph that starts "The album's polka medley..." most of the text is about "Livin' in the Fridge". As is, it would be better for the polka song sentence to come last as to not give the impression it is a topic sentence. However, it might also be a good idea to explain why you write "the album's polka medley" as if it is a normal thing (I realize it is a normal thing for Weird Al, but the reader might not), especially considering the "medley" has only one song in it.
• Entertainment Weekly praised the videos for "Jurassic Park" and "Bedrock Anthem", but felt that overall Alapalooza: the Videos was average, referring to the claymation video for the former as "clever but toothless" - I'm not sure how "clever but toothless" is consistent with "praised"; perhaps a reworking of the material is in order

Other than that, the article looks good. The article is kinda on the short side, but seems to cover everything that needs covered. (I will do some basic research to verify this point before passing the article.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:56, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I think I took care of them all:

1. Replaced "versatility" with a direct quote that (hopefully) better explains why the album was successful.
2. Added a word to separate the quotes.
3. That was a tough one to reword, but hopefully I got it this time.
4. Dug up a source that clarifies this.
5. Fixed.
6. Switched it around and added a new source to back up its ubiquitousness on his albums. Hopefully the Wikilink is sufficient for explaining what a polka medley is rather than having to tack that explanation on there?
7. Yeah you're right, I was overplaying the review a bit there. Reworded.

Also, under "Parodies", either I get an extra "]" at the end of the Jurassic Park novel wikilink, or else it's not wikilinked and I can't seem to figure out how to fix that... anyhow, thanks again for your in-depth review of the article! Please let me know if anything else needs to be done! Canadian Paul 15:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

All of my concerns have been addressed. I also fixed the novel's ikwilink problem (at least in Firefox). Now on to the formal review... --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Formal review

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

---

All my concerns prose have been addressed, but my research did turn up one thing the article is missing one one very minor concern (see below)

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Is it normal to include the user generated Sputnikmusic rating in the review box? (I honestly don't know the answer to this Q.)

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   For the most part, the article does an impressive job of making a strong article out of sparse source material. However, in my research I did find there was a "Alapaloza tour" to support the album. That should probably be covered in the article - one short paragraph would be sufficient. Such material can be combined with other promotional efforts, if any are turned up.

   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 suppose a picture of Weird Al could be added, but I don't feel it is necessary

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   Almost there --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding sputnikmusic, the reason I used it was just because I borrowed the format of another Yankovic GA Off the Deep End. I noticed, however, that that review was done almost two years ago, so perhaps the standards for sourcing have changed since then and I can't find anything concrete. According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Review sites, sputnikmusic is good for "staff and emeritus reviews only", which I would surmise to mean that the "User opinion" section doesn't count. That, plus the fact that I don't even use the source in the body of the article, has led me to just cut it out as superfluous.

Regarding the "Alapalooza Tour", I left that out because I'm not entirely certain how much of a formal tour there actually was. He definitely had concert dates after the release of the album, but that's how an artist makes their money and, between Google, News Archives, and Highbeam Research, I haven't encountered any reliable sources that discuss the tour as an entity. There are set lists and tour dates, but not on any really reliable sources. This source suggests that the "Alapalooza Tour" was just a loose collection of concert dates that happened to occur in the year following the release of the album. Even Weird Al's own site doesn't refer to the associated sets (or anything else) as an "Alapalooza Tour", which makes me think that that term is just a fan creation that makes it easy to talk about those particular tour dates. I'll keep looking, but I haven't seen any mention of the tour aside from a very small number of mentions in newspapers (most likely, again, used for the ease of referring to his activities at the time) and on forums, fan sites, and other unreliable sources. Without even official status from Yankovic himself, however, I'm worried that any reference to an "Alapalooza Tour" might border on original research. For example, there's a poster on ebay that mentions the "Alapalooza Tour" but, without official status from Yankovic, it's impossible to tell whether or not that was just made up by the promoter for various reasons. Canadian Paul 15:29, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I am satisfied by your explanation as to why you left the info out. I had seen some newspaper articles saying Yankovic was in town for his Alapalooza Tour, and assumed they knew what they were talking about. From the info you provided, it does appear to be an informal tour. Of course, if you do find something more definitive add it to the article.

I did notice that the album cover is lacking alt text, which I forgot to check earlier. Once that is handled I will pass the article. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Alt text is always tricky... I'm never sure exactly what is needed... I've given it a shot though, what do you think? Canadian Paul 16:02, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me (I'm no expert at ALT text either). Article passed. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)