Talk:The Second City

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article is a former Chicago Collaboration of the Week. Every week, a Chicago-related article that is in need of substantial improvement is selected to be the Chicago COTW. Visit CHICOTW to nominate and vote for future COTWs. This week's Chicago COTW is List of Chicago Landmarks update. Please help us improve it to a higher standard of quality. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see a list of open tasks. See past CHICOTWs. Note our good articles.
Comedy Portal
This article is within the scope of the Comedy WikiProject, which collaborates on articles related to comedy, comics, comedians, comedy movies, and the like. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Chicago Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles related to Chicago.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.
WikiProject Illinois This article is part of WikiProject Illinois, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Illinois on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.
The Second City was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: May 29, 2007

Contents

[edit] Cleveland alumni

I deleted a list of "notable" alumni from the Cleveland troupe; none of those listed have yet had a significant career outside of SC, certainly not anything near the level of the notable alumni listed from the other troupes. Jgm 00:06, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to Find This Article

How many normal people, ie., people who would like to find out about this group, would think to use the article "The"? Okeh, it IS part of the official name, so I guess we need to leave it in, but there definitely should be a disambiguity page (I haven't a clue how to make one - it's one of the very many great mysteries of Wik). If you look for second city, you come up with a (fairly lame) discussion of a (fairly lame) topic - with no hint of The Second City players/theatre.Kdammers 7 July 2005 07:54 (UTC)

The second city article does include a "see also" link here. Second City comedy troupe also redirects here; anybody searching for "second city comedy" would indeed find this. The other alternative would be to make second city a disambiguation page with links to this article and the geopolitical one. I don't see the need, but if another editor is so inclined . . .Jgm 7 July 2005 10:56 (UTC)
The problem was that Second City was the dab, while Second city (different case) was the other article mentioned. The Second city article did mention The Second City at the end, but for clarity I added a clarifying link at the top of the page. --Arcadian 7 July 2005 11:00 (UTC)

[edit] Cleveland troupe

There is only one explicit mention of Cleveland: in the alumni section. Is it not worth naming the way Toronto is? 211.225.34.175 02:00, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

The Cleveland member is notable, so I don't see why she should be deleted. --Arcadian 04:38, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't discussing whether SHE should be DELETED, rather whether some-thing should be said about the Cleveland group in its own right.

If there's anything to be said about any of the troupes, say it! -- user:zanimum

No, Cleveland does not merit special mention. Mcatlett (talk) 05:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC) mc

[edit] Compass Players

The Compass players redirects here. I think they are worthy of their own article seeing as books have been written about them and while they were the predecessor to Second City, they were mostly different people, did different things, and even performed in a different city for a while (St. Louis). I think a section about the Compass players in the second city article with a completely different main article for the group would be in order.--Twintone 17:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I feel that both pages now contain very similar information. Does anyone feel the information on the Compass Players should be moved to it's own page? Nthitz 03:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


There really isn't that much written on the Compass Players page. They are definitely both worthy of their own page. It would be like combing Second City with the Groundlings.--Twintone 21:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Categories

I've created a for things related to Second City (Category:Second City), and also a category page for all "Notable Alumni" from any of the troupes (Category:Second City Alumni). Please add the Alumni category to any SC people you find or add that are appropriate.

[edit] What About Rick Moranis?

Wasn't Rick Moranis a "notable" alumni of SC Toronto? -- (Crnk Mnky)65.13.21.153 23:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Nope, not according to http://www.secondcity.com/?id=history/alumni/toronto which doesn't list him as a Toronto alumnus at all. --Maelwys 10:41, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's been over a year since the last post in this section, so I don't know if anyone will read this, but Moranis was the only SCTV regular who didn't come from Second City; according to Dave Thomas's book on SCTV, Thomas recruited him from a radio show. Moranis later made one or two guest appearances on Second City, but only after gaining notoriety on the TV show. Minaker 11:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reformatting the Article

I suggest reformatting this article to be in a linear by decade history of the theatre. The list of "notable alumni" can be trimmed down to some of the more famous with a link to a list of everyone. (There is already a category for Second City Alumni).--Twintone 21:27, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Nowhere do I see mention of The Player's Workshop of the Second City and how that has changed. Mcatlett (talk) 05:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] David Koechner and Andy Richter

According to this article, they were both members of the Chicago troupe at some point, but it doesn't say what years they were there. [1] They're both pretty famous; how do we add them to the list w/o the years? Fernandobouregard 07:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't the Second City website have an alumni list? Gorilla Jones 12:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but I was just there and neither of them are listed as alum on any of the alum pages. However, there is an article on the website advertising "alum Dave Koechner's" new movie. So either the alum lists are incomplete, or he was a member for such a short time (or a regular guest visitor but never a full member, or something along those lines) so they didn't bother listing him on those pages. --Maelwys 14:14, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
David Koechner was a Second City Alum, maybe ETC, but I don't think Andy Dick was. He was only IO.--Twintone 19:11, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Failed GA

I have failed this article for GA status because:

It fails criteria 2, in that there are many paragraphs with no reference that could or could not be original research, and several especially glaring sentences: for example, "In the mid-1970s, Second City became a source of cast members for Saturday Night Live which borrowed from the writing and performing techniques pioneered by Second City and other improv groups, and members of the Toronto troupe created the program SCTV." I also feel that it fails criteria 3 in that it is not very broad in its coverage. The sections are small and on the whole I don't get much of an understanding of the subject from the article. DoomsDay349 23:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)