Talk:Problemista

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Film: American

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Reception section[edit]

The reception section starts out by saying that the film is receiving generally favorable reviews, yet it currently highlights three middling reviews with negative pull quotes (Gonzalez, Debruge, Willmore). Seems incongruous. 104.247.235.183 (talk) 16:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh good, an edit war with an anonymous IP.

This is small but tiresome. If individual editors can simply add a pull quote from any review they choose, it is very easy to create a misleading view of a movie's critical reception. I'm surprised there's no existing broader policy on this -- or is there? Distingué Traces (talk) 22:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, there is a policy about this, and it is the Neutral point of view, which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic both report that the film has generally positive reviews, and both are reliable sources as described at Wikipedia:Review aggregators. Accordingly, it is a violation of NPOV for an individual editor to add quotes from three negative reviews because that clearly skews the section in a non-neutral direction. Cullen328 (talk) 00:30, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first review is negative, the second contains both praise and criticism, and the third is a relatively neutral observation. There is nothing preventing other editors from contributing other quotes from other reviews if they feel it more accurately characterizes the reception. 24.38.179.20 (talk) 02:02, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify: It was also my intent to present the information from a neutral point of view. I did not delete or refute the rotten tomatoes rating, nor editorialize the quotes. They are presented solely as the opinions of individual reviewers. Surely editors are allowed to make piecemeal edits -- not just sweeping, all-encompassing surveys of all reviews, with all points of view at once? 24.38.179.20 (talk) 02:32, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to attempt to resolve this, but I really don't appreciate the dismissive, superior attitude toward my preference to use an IP. If you're editing in good faith, please exercise some civility as I will, in turn. 24.38.179.20 (talk) 02:17, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also Note: Though you have described my reversion as an edit war, it did not seem that way to me. Your edit notes stated "gonna be bold here and delete" which indicated that you were not certain it was appropriate to do so. 24.38.179.20 (talk) 05:01, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody cares that you choose to edit from an IP addresss. What I and others care about is your willingness to violate the Neutral point of view, which is a core content policy, and to edit war to keep your policy violating content in place. Cullen328 (talk) 07:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Distingue Traces cared enough about IP addresses to make a disparaging comment, which is why I responded to their message in that way. I do not believe I have violated the neutral point of view policy, and don’t understand your objection, so please do not accuse me of “willingness to violate” anything. Kindly assume good faith. 24.38.179.20 (talk) 08:08, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you feel that my edit is flawed, I would appreciate an effort to reach a consensus toward fixing it, rather than just deleting my work and treating it like vandalism. 24.38.179.20 (talk) 08:52, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To weigh in, we have to have proper WP:BALANCE in the "Reception" section. Metacritic shows that the breakdown of reviews for this film is 23 positive reviews, 3 mixed, and 1 negative. So to properly balance this section, it would need to sample numerous positive reviews in addition to potentially a mixed one. Based on the breakdown, a single negative review is a tiny minority not appropriate to include at all. I would also recommend sampling the positive reviews first before sampling a mixed one, to ensure prominent placement of the majority view over the minority one. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for explaining. I am new to editing, was not aware of the breakdown requirements, and was dismayed that other editors felt no need to address my explanations or engage my questions.

Two follow-up questions: rotten tomatoes has a different proportion of “fresh” to “rotten” reviews. Is that also acceptable to use?

also, many positive reviews contain consistent criticisms, about issues like the director’s inexperience. (At the top of RT, for example, a top critic says “I want to Torres to become a better director” in a review marked positive). May this information be included or does it have to be all “positive? 24.38.179.20 (talk) 18:33, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help!

The problem with Rotten Tomatoes is that it categorizes a review as positive or negative, no matter what. The overall score is based on that simplistic ratio. There's no direct way to tell from RT if a film got "mixed" reviews. Ideally, the average rating can be used as a metric, but RT does not identify the rating for every review or show anything like a distribution graph. It's fine to report the overall score, though I very much prefer explaining every time how RT's system works (since it is simplistic and since we should share commercially-oriented content with care). Metacritic is more useful for guiding this encyclopedic approach.

As for specific reviews, the review's own grade or score (or the aggregator's score for that review) can be used. Like for this film, it looks like Metacritic scored the Wall Street Journal review as 100, so we wouldn't expect any specific negative critiques from that. Below 100, depending on how much that review will be sampled, such critiques could be a small part of that. We have to balance in two ways: proportional coverage of how critics received a film overall, and when sampling a critic, having proportional coverage that represents their score as closely as possible. Some "Reception" sections just quote one sentence from one critic after another, which can be limiting, while other sections may do 2-3 sentences summarizing it. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 21:41, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for taking the time to explain, that really helps to understand the problem. Just for the public record on this talk page, I noticed the simplistic RT system and thought it was misleading, so attempted to add some nuance and balance with common criticisms I observed. I didn't intend to misrepresent the reception. I'll make sure future contributions follow the balance convention. 24.38.179.20 (talk) 23:44, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If there is a consistent praise or critique, is it acceptable to include reviews that are not "top critic" or on metacritic? Also, is there a page that explains this already to avoid wasting your time on these quesitions? :) 24.38.179.20 (talk) 08:32, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have guidelines at MOS:FILM § Critical reception. Unfortunately, the way RT is used in a lot of articles is problematic, with an obsessive use of {{Rotten Tomatoes prose}} that controls how an editor can write the text (requiring that editor to tediously override it). It stems in editors who are so used to RT that of course they know how it works (and me as well) but it's simply not encyclopedic text for a global layperson audience. I have a personal essay where I cover this more: User:Erik/Best practices § Review aggregators (though pardon its incompleteness). In essence, you have the right to phrase RT and/or MC in another way that makes (more) sense, just beware certain editors prowling endlessly to force the template use despite no consensus for its universal use. Push back on them.

Regarding citing specific reviews, the sampled reviews themselves need to be reliable sources. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates many reviews, most of which we would not cite directly. It's just that the RT score is so ubiquitous that we tolerate these non-reliable reviews as data points that feed that score. I think all reviews under Metacritic are reliable, and they have their own score, so I find that better guidance for writing the section. But if a review isn't on MC or a RT Top Critic, it can still be sampled if it meets WP:RS. Sometimes real-world summaries of critical reception help. Like RT's Critics Consensus can be a guide too. If it mentions that critics liked a film's visual effects, it would make sense to sample a critic and go a little in depth about why it was liked. Basically, find real-world rules of thumb to follow whenever possible. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]