Talk:Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: January 15, 2020. (Reviewed version).

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

The case of the possible sweepstakes

I was looking through the portfolio of a former Poptropica developer, and I found this file named "HardLuckEggHunt.jpg." It invites players to count how many eggs are hidden in the book and enter their email address to win a "Wimpified" portrait. Did this ever happen? I have found two sources implying that it did, and both of them included a link to https://wimpykid.com/egg-hunt/. While the game's title screen is similar to the one on the developer's site, it has no sign of the sweepstakes. I checked http://web.archive.org/ for an older version of the game, but I didn't find anything.

Did these sweepstakes ever happen? Can anyone find proof? If they did happen, are they worth mentioning on the article? Scrooge200 (talk) 02:10, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Good point. The one who sees you sooner is the one who is I know the best wiki (talk) 08:13, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Abigails betrayal

Why did she do that? ThomasTheTrainGuy (talk) 11:16, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Well, as far as I know, the author just made her do that.

LPS and MLP Fan (LittlestPetShop) (MyLittlePony) 13:48, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

The third wheel being part 1

Should the third wheel be called hard luck part 1 guys? ThomasTheTrainGuy (talk) 12:45, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I don’t really think so; we need to call books by their original titles. LPS and MLP Fan (LittlestPetShop) (MyLittlePony) 13:48, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Review

• The lead needs expansion. It should be a summary of the article. A general rule of thumb is one sentence per paragraph though the paragraphs in plot are quite short so two sentences would probably suffice.
  • As the book is rather unremarkable, there is not much to elaborate on. I added a short plot summary.

The short plot summary is good. The release date is OK for that section (though not necessarily what I'd have chosen). That just leaves a sentence summarizing the reception section. Also the two citations are completely unnecessary as all the information presented is neither controversial, nor a quote, and summarizes cited information from the article. Barkeep49 (talk)

Y Done.

• MOS:NOVEL has a bunch of useful suggestions for this article. For instance Development should be called Background and sales incorporated into reception.
  • Y Done.
• The sources seem to suggest there's enough content for a Themes and/or Style section.
  • There definitely isn't.

Having put this on pause for a bit I can tell you that there definitely is. It won't be long but there is stuff from sourcing to support (including some of the sourcing you dismiss below) and is needed for a GA book. As someone who writes articles about picture books I understand what it means to come up against a paucity of sourcing, but that doesn't mean that there isn't information there to be had. Barkeep49 (talk)

Really? Can you give me a few?

• While Plot sections in general don't need a source since you're quoting the book you should in-line cite it as you would with any other quote.
• However, most, if not all, the quotes could be replaced by a summary.
  • Y Done.

Good job overall. The final quote at the end strikes me as a bit long but perhaps is necessary to express the idea. Barkeep49 (talk)

• To that end I don't understand what purpose the Irish Independent is serving as as a source in that section
  • The peer reviewer suggested that I add citations for the plot. I do not believe it is needed, but we could keep it just in case.

The peer review is wrong. I've gone ahead and removed them. You do still need to cite the book, however, for the quote about family being forever. Barkeep49 (talk)

Y Done.

• So there isn't a character section. That's good. It does mean that you need to introduce the characters in the plot section. For instance I know the Wimpy Kid series so I know who Greg, Rowley, etc are but a reader might not.
  • There are not many characters to introduce, but I did elaborate on Fregley a bit.

The line about Rowley also helps. How old is Greg in this novel? Barkeep49 (talk)

It is never explicitly stated, and I want to avoid speculation.

• How does looking at a photo album help them descover that his grandmother has lost her ring? This sentence is confusing for me "On Easter, while looking through a photo album, the family notices that Meemaw had accidentally hidden her diamond ring in an egg."
  • Y Elaborated.
• Similarly confused by "To avoid breaking up his family, he hides the egg in his mother's closet, where he knows nobody will look."
  • This is connected to a subplot where Greg goes in the closet and finds his mother's parenting books. I decided to just stick with the book's few main plots and left out quite a few sub plots because they'd make the summary too long. I kept 90% of the subplots in for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down, and that overly long summary should speak for itself.

Your tweak fixes this and overall I'd say you did an excellent job summarizing the plot. Barkeep49 (talk)

• The Development (Background) section could use some tweaking. It should provide summary overview of information, so is it important to note when the cover art was revealed? For an example of a good Background and publication section see The_Lightning_Thief#Development_and_publication
  • I don't entirely get what the connection is here.

This section needs some improvement. I used the Lightning Thief as an example of a good one so you'd know what to look for in the sources. Barkeep49 (talk)

• Given when the book was published I'm surprised to see so many offline sources. Like I'm guessing this is the same article (under a different headline) for the Oregonian source? https://www.oregonlive.com/books/2013/11/diary_of_a_wimpy_kid_author_je.html
  • Seems like it. Should it be linked instead?

Yes. Barkeep49 (talk)

Done.

• The Guardian is a RS. It deserves a quote.
  • Y Done. I worked with what I had, considering the short length of the review.

The one word quote works well. Barkeep49 (talk)

• Why is the Irish Independent given so much space compared to other sources?
  • It's the longest and most comprehensive one.

The way to use that extra depth would be in the Style/Theme/Writing section that's needed. It should not get UNDUE weight in this section just because it's longer. Barkeep49 (talk)

• If you put the book into this custom search engine you'll find a bunch of unusued sources. For instance there's definitely stuff from the Roger Sutton interview which should be in this.
  • You can only go so far before running out of reliable sources. The Sutton interview covered the series as a whole and had nearly no information on Hard Luck specifically.

Fair on one level but another has information about how Kinney views the character of Greg and his approach to writing which could fit in the Background/development section. Barkeep49 (talk)