Wikipedia:Featured article review/Animaniacs/archive1

Animaniacs

Featured article candidates/Animaniacs

Featured article review/Animaniacs/archive1

Notified: User talk:RetiredDuke, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animation, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television

RetiredDuke (talk · contribs) reported on issues in April, including missing citations, fancruft, and unreliable sources. Here's what I noticed:

Content

"Cast" is very choppily written and has a [citation needed].
"Animation" section is too short and has a "better source needed" tag.
"Ratings and popularity" has one unsourced chunk of text.
Below that is a giant-ass awards table which should probably be split off or condensed. Said table is also unsourced.
"Home media" has multiple [citation needed] tags.
The entire "Merchandise" section is just a bunch of lists.

Sourcing

Many of the sources are either the episodes themselves, social media about the show, or DVD commentary. This in and of itself is not bad, there's just too much of it.
Citation 18 (Denver Post) needs a page number.
Citation 21 "Credits from various episodes" is vague and should be specified or removed.
Citations 36, 50, 55, 59, et al.: is Toon Zone a reliable source?
Citations 38-41 are just random clickbait listicles and should not be in the article.
Citation 42 (Baltimore Sun) needs a page number.
Citation 54 (Keyframe) appears to be some sort of self-published directory listing.
Citation 60 (Freemont Abbey Arts) is missing a work/publisher credit.
Citations 64 et al.: is TV Shows on DVD a reliable source?
Citation 70 is an Amazon listing and should be removed.
Most of the video games are cited solely to Game Rankings (is this an RS?) or other databases. I feel like this should be traded out for something better or removed if there isn't much to say about the games beyond that they existed.
Same with the albums. If there's nothing other than an Allmusic listing, this can probably go too. Not every promotional tie-in needs to be noted if there's nothing to say about it.

There are also stability issues, as users keep re-inserting vague claims about its quality, most of which are sourced to Wordpress blogs or unreliable-looking listicles.

As a 2007-era FA, this one has gathered up a lot of cruft, especially after the recent reboot and continued '90s nostalgia that permeates every corner of the Internet. (Spoilers: I never liked the show, but that has nothing to do with the FAR.) Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:32, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ETA: Removed Amazon and AllMusic references, also one bit of informal language ("farmed out"). All other issues still persist. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:49, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ToonZone: "this website is a not for profit fansite" Early 00s e-mags can be fine provided they were published by a real publisher not self-published. This source should be removed entirely.

For a 90s era TV show, the highest quality sources are print media: magazines, newspapers, and books. Some of the sources are pretty good, and the book by Sandler published by a university press should be cited more often in the article. A lot of the newspaper coverage can be found on online archives like newspapers dot com.

Someone added "becameing one of the best cartoons of the 1990s ever made" and no one else noticed it. The closer I look, the more problems arise.

Too many of the images were in-universe with lofty descriptions, and I have removed many of them and replaced them with out of universe images of show staff and locations. It's written too much from a fan perspective with fanwiki stylings. Harizotoh9 (talk) 14:26, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re-wrote sections, trimmed down sources and removed the Toon Zone source entirely, so one of the most major sources of the article has been replaced with CN tags, meaning it's likely won't pass FA review and will need a complete re-write. The page also heavily cites the show itself, or press releases from the show, or DVD extras and commentary from the show, meaning it's leaning too heavily into primary sources rather than third party sources. I also noticed pages for Yakko, Wakko, and Dot which almost entirely cite the show itself and should probably be merged into here. Harizotoh9 (talk) 19:17, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not opposed to the characters being merged/redirected, as a quick glance at each article shows little real-world notability or secondary coverage. But that can be its own discussion. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a quote that was commented out attributed to "TV Guide Vol. 45 1997", which is actually a decent quote from the show runner but it lacks any details about the article name or author. Going to Google Books I can confirm the quote is real and contained within TV Guide's Vol 45 collection, but it doesn't allow previews thus I can't gleam more info from it.

For stability, would it be uncalled for to just block IPs from editing the page since they have a habit of including low quality information? Harizotoh9 (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]