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HI there,

I have recently transferred an updated version of the 96th Academy Awards from User:Birdienest81/sandbox twenty-nine. I have been working on the article slowly but steadily since May 22. I was not able to do so earlier because I had intermittent computer problems for the first five months of 2024, but now my computer is working to the point I can do substantial amounts of editing. The original pre-copy-edited version of the article is still kept on over at User:Birdienest81/sandbox seventeen. It is of my understanding that this Oscar ceremony had been a previously failed FLC back in March because the original nominator did not make any significant changes to improve the article as suggested by commentators. I was going to help but as I said, my computer kept freezing. And the original nominator all but abandoned the nomination. So I took it upon myself to improve the article. Hence I found many of the citations did not support the statements that were being made, and there were no alt text for the pictures. So I made a complete overhaul of it.

Now, is it possible that you could help me add some finishing touches particularly with regards to Jonathan Glazer's speech and the critical reviews. For Glazer's speech, I followed how I wrote the description of Michael Moore's speech at the 75th Academy Awards and the ensuing reaction. I was wondering if there is something missing or is it adequate enough. Also almost all of the critical reviews of the ceremony were on the positive side. I cannot find a single negative review from a reliable source. If you could help me finish the improvements to this article, I'll promise to name you as a co-nominator when the article will be submitted for FLC. I am aiming for a July 29th submission for FLC. I surely would appreciate the help.

--Birdienest81talk 07:42, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Birdienest81: I think both of these issues would be fixed by returning the "Critical reviews" section to be more in line with how it was during the first FLC (where it was just "Reception"). As I noted then, I thought it did a good job capturing the specific parts of the ceremony that drew positive and negative responses, and it's also much more engaging. This would also be a good place to put Glazer's speech – it drew a response, but the response was basically "some people supported it and some people didn't", which easily fits into a single paragraph, and I don't think that warrants its own section.

I think some of the issues here are a side effect of an overly formulaic approach to writing these sections. Please don't take this personally, but I feel like every ceremony's reception section has become exactly one paragraph of positive reviews and one paragraph of negative reviews, with a few fairly generic quotes in each paragraph. We shouldn't promote a false balance – based on Rotten Tomatoes, the clear majority of reviews were positive, so we shouldn't go scrounging for negative reviews. It's also really difficult to judge the overall reception from year to year when every year looks so similar. The 75th ceremony is a good example of the pitfalls; it says it received a positive reception from most media publications but has a paragraph for negative reviews that is just as long, the quotes are generic (there were several heartfelt and memorable moments – like what?), and I'm left with no real impression of what it was actually like.

Again, I think returning to the old section would fix this; since very few reviews are entirely positive or entirely negative, you could talk about the specific parts critics liked and didn't like instead of boiling their responses down to a single sentence each, making the entire thing much more engaging and resolving the "issue" of not having many overall negative reviews. RunningTiger123 (talk) 02:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]