Talk:Full Impact

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I added {{cleanup-tone}}. Parts of the article sound fine, but other parts sound a little too informal – even melodramatic – for an encyclopedia article. -- Gsp 13:29, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd be happy to re-word, but I can't really see what you mean. What portions would you consider "melodramatic", for instance? Maury 18:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for adding the template without giving specific examples here first. Here are a few:

  • Adjectives like "infatuation", "utter", "great", and a few others. Now, this is just my opinion, and I'm probably being too nitpicky and making distinctions that are way too trivial, but to me these words sound either vague, subjective, or extraneous. You'd be hard-pressed to find words like these in other encyclopedias like Britannica. In particular:
    • infatuation - What exactly is considered an infatuation, and in what way was this manifested by Ashton-Tate? Did they devote 100% of their resources to the Mac market? Or was this measured in products released, i.e., Ashton-Tate released 10 products for the Mac in the '80s, while other companies released 5 products for the Mac and 5 for the PC? This is elaborated later in the article, so it's not that big of a deal. Also, I know that in many cases, further details are not available, making it impossible to be more specific.
    • utter - Same reasons. What is utter? 99% of the marketplace? 70%?
    • great - Again, same reasons. What exactly made it great? Great as compared to what?
  • "It was not long before their plans started to fall apart." - Preferable would be, "After x months, disagreements arose between Ross and Wigginton," or something along those lines. Otherwise, what is considered not long? Is 3 months not long? It is for some things, but not for others. And in my opinion, "fall apart" sounds informal. (This is actually one of the things I considered to be melodramatic because when I first read it, it sounded like something that came from a soap opera. I take it back -- I think I was being unfairly critical. And after reading it a 2nd time, it didn't sound as bad as I thought.)
  • "just when the product was finally ready to ship" - Sorry, but to me this also sounded more dramatic that it needs to be. Something more matter-of-fact would be, "Shortly before the product was ready to ship, Ross sued Ashton-Tate, further postponing the product's shipping date. Ross claimed he had..." (I realize here that "shortly" is also non-specific, but unless there's a way to re-word it without being vague, it'll probably have to do.)
  • "With that out of the way" - Informal. Could be omitted altogether.
  • Use of the second-person - I think it can be avoided by using "users" instead of "you", e.g., "allowed users to have eight 'subsheets'", "allowed users to include other objects", etc.

There are a few others. It just sounded more like an article from a magazine to me. Please don't misunderstand me -- like I said earlier, this is just my opinion. Aside from the changes I mentioned, it's a fine article, and a lot of the changes are really insignificant. Feel free to ignore anything I've said. :) -- Gsp 09:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


All excellent suggestions, let me see what I can do. Maury 12:39, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] external link

do not exist 84.16.123.194 (talk) 18:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)