Talk:Ready Player One

Length

Unfortunately, the article “Ready Player One” is only about 350 words from the rough draft submitted. Therefore it will not get points for having the correct length needed on the final draft version of the article, as it is not 3000 words long.

Structure

In looking at the first of the 3 major components of a good article, this MediaWiki article has a good opening paragraph. The article does a good job of first explaining what “Ready Player One” is to the reader through its opening paragraph. The opening paragraph gives a good overview of what Ready Player One is by explaining the plot of the novel, and how it later became a film. In looking at existing articles on famous novels, such as “Of Mice and Men,” it appears that those existing wikipedia articles have a similar format: first covering the origin of the novel and the inspiration for it, and then having this first section of the wikipedia article cover the plot of the novel. In looking at the body sections of this article, which is the second major component of a good article, this article has room for improvement. There is more than 1 body section of the article, which included “plot” “themes” and “ethical issues;” however, I am a bit concerned that there will be some redundancy in terms of the content that will be covered in “themes” and “ethical issues” in the body sections. Finally, in terms of the third component of a good MediaWiki article, I see that there is a references section, but there are not yet any sources in that section that are reliable sources that relate to “Ready Player One.” The author should consider integrating sources into the opening paragraph, where they state a lot of different facts about Ready Player One, such as “One November 24, 2020, Cline released a sequel to the novel.” Since the other had likely gotten this information from a source, rather than coming up with that piece of information on their own, they should consider adding a reference after that piece of information.

Clarity

One of the key ethical issues that the author points to in their MediaWiki article is “virtual reality.” The author includes a few sentences in the introduction about why virtual reality is an important theme, and how it becomes an ethical issue in the novel and subsequent movie. Specifically, the author discusses how there is a “lack of regulation of major corporations in virtual reality,” which allows corporations to potentially “take advantage of virtual reality and it's users.” While the issue at stake is clear to me, I would love to see the author further touch on what is meant by the companies taking advantage of users through virtual reality. It might be helpful for the author to include a few examples in the MediaWiki article that illustrates this claim. In the final draft of this MediaWiki article, the author should also illustrate that virtual reality technology itself is an ethical issue, as the technology itself is not inherently good or bad; rather the way the users use the technology, and how corporations regulate it, can lead to bad consequences for society (which is something that was touched on in one of the readings for this class).

Objective reporting
In terms of discussing the ethical issues in “Ready Player One” the author does a good job of having an objective viewpoint. The author describes how the company in the novel/ movie is used to represent a greater theme of unethical business practices in technology. This statement is objective; however it could be improved by the author citing their sources and using examples to support this statement. The author also at no point in the MediaWiki article uses the first person point of view, such as using the personal pronoun “I.” In regards to the way that the author has thus far reported about the ethical issues present in the novel/ movie, it would be interesting to see the author include multiple perspectives, such as including the input from multiple literary critics, who might have differing opinions about the ethical issues present in “Ready Player One.” Therefore, while, so far, the author is reporting on ethical issues objectively, their article could be strengthened by the use of sources, examples, and multiple perspectives.