Talk:Rawson Stovall/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 09:37, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Ping me if i don't get to this within a week. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:37, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• Okay, generally speaking no prose gripes until the first paragraph of the 1982 section. I revised this a bit so the narrative is more clear, and the year 1982 is included in the body
• "Stovall thought an article could not hold all information" this is confusing, and not clearly supported by the source, which only says that he thought the Wylie was too small (I fixed the spelling in the article btw)
  • This is in the New York Times source: The way I thought, an article couldn't hold it all, Rawson said. Mom came up with the idea for a column. Movies have reviews; why not games? I decided to get rid of all of the parts about the Wylie because the details weren't that necessary
    • There was no need to do that - the wording just needed clarification. It's interesting detail, and your changes have now rendered the text out of sync with the sources: his mother didn't suggest he write a column, she suggested he write a single article. It was Stovall himself who thought he had more to say than that. She didn't suggest he write for the Reporter-News, she suggested the Wylie and he wanted the Reporter.
      • Readded. The source said that she was the one who suggested the alternative, too
• The Computer Generation source includes a bit about him hosting a little mock TV show in class, which might be interesting to include
  • It's already in Early life: In fourth grade, Stovall and two friends hosted mock television skits about video games for class.
    • Ah yup missed that, sorry.
• You may want to move the bit about wanting to buy a computer to design games before the sentence about "His mother suggested..." for better flow. Currently we're going from motive to action back to motive again; better to explain motive at the beginning then move on to action.
  • I couldn't find a way to do so that fit, but cutting a bit allowed me to move it all into one paragraph
• Your next paragraph quickly jumps from first sale in one local paper to "Newspapers often rejected Stovall". This is a bit jumpy - the reader doesn't even know he was selling to any other papers. Is there any information about his decision to expand outside of Abiline? Even a short bit like "Emboldened by his success, Stovall attempted to sell his column to other papers, which often rejected him because of his age." helps provide a smoother transition. (I'm not sure what's supported by the sources so I'll leave that to you).
  • Just went with Stovall attempted to sell his column to other newspapers, but was usually turned down because of his age
    • Sure, works
• "Stovall was the youngest person..." - this is abrupt. What did he get the award for? Surely not the column, that wasn't volunteer work?
  • According to the Texas Weekly Magazine ref, he raised over $5000 for his city's mental health association. He wrote in his review compilation book (accessed on the Internet Archive) that it was actually before he started his column. I removed it because the award wasn't relevant to his journalism career and isn't that notable
    • Could you not put it in the Early life section? It's pretty interesting! He's 10 years old and he's hustling like a madman, and not just for his own benefit.
      • Added to the end.
• "His mother credited his success..." - same thing, this is abrupt and we immediately move away from it. I've noticed this seems to be somewhat recurrent; I'm sorry if I appear to be picking on it but it's noticeably jarring.
• Do we know when he Tonight Show appearance actually was?
  • A clip posted to YouTube dates it July 1984, but this is not stated in the source. Mentioned in Texas Weekly Magazine (available at newspaperarchive.com)
• Vid Kid's Guide should be italics if it's a book. I'm curious - was it 80 brand-new reviews, or was it a compilation of 80 existing columns? If it's the latter, saying he wrote the book isn't quite correct and it should be revised to say that Doubleday published an anthology or compilation of his writing.
  • In the introduction to his book, he wrote All the games reviewed in this book are ones that I have enjoyed playing and chose to review for my syndicated newspaper column, "The Vid Kid"., so I've changed the wording to what you suggested
• Why is Ref 13's title bolded?
  • Unbolded.
• Is that really everything to say about him after 1985? I suppose if he stopped being a public figure, it makes sense.
  • These are all the sources I found covering his later life.

Okay, that's all I got. I made some tweaks as I was going along; feel free to revise or discuss them. I'm open to discussion on anything I brought up here. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:18, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@Premeditated Chaos: I think I've addressed all of your suggestions — VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 08:28, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

• Mostly looks good, although I responded to a couple of things above. Couple more things I noticed on re-read:

• There's some detail in Ref 7 worth mining:

• Dad had some education in journalism and provided valuable advice - worth mentioning, as so far only mom figures in his career
• The rental business that enabled him to try out games to review

• I moved the bits about his maturity/personality to a new paragraph at the bottom of the career section, as they seemed out of place where they were.

• Cheers. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 16:19, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Premeditated Chaos:  Done! — VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 06:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  Missed the responses in your first ring of suggestions, working on it now — VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 10:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  No problem, sorry about the late response - haven't had the brain juice. I think we're good to go here! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.