Talk:2016 United States presidential election/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Babegriev (talk · contribs) 06:02, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

GA Notice

GA Notice
Hello, I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know I am glad to be reviewing the article 2016 United States presidential election in which you've been a major contributor, and has been nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Babegriev (talk) 06:02, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
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GA Review and Notes

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): Reviewer Comments: Per MOS:QWQ the passage: "was in contact with one or more apparently well-connected Israelis at the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was “going to be defeated unless we intervene” and promised “we have critical intell[sic].” is improperly punctuated. In Results by state section, the passage "This would be the first election in which the winning candidate would lose their home state since Woodrow Wilson lost New Jersey in 1916." uses a conditional tense, when the results of the election should be referred to in the past, as to make it unified with the verbiage in the rest of the article. The last paragraph of Statistical analysis does not follow the method of citation used throughout the rest of the article and breaks the natural flow. Citation 377 is used repeatedly instead of utilizing several sources, or simply placing it at the end of the paragraph to encapsulate the entire statement. There is a forecasting section under Results, however, the entirety of the General election polling heading only consists of a hatnote directing to the main articles. I would strongly advise moving forecasting into this section, and condensing it as there are subsidiary articles covering it in more depth. By placing it as far down on the page as it is, not only does it interrupt the pre-established chronological organization of the article sections, but it also should not be placed under results. If you wanted to keep a section there regarding the forecast compared to the actual outcome, then I could understand it's purpose, but at current, it is confusing and misplaced for the average reader. b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): Reviewer Comments: A few instances of vague terminology per MOS:REALTIME and WP:SAID are used, but do not warrant necessary change as they are appropriate in their context and remain neutral. In the section Electoral College lobbying, "This group's members may have become faithless electors in the presidential election." is in violation of MOS:OPED as it is entirely speculative and contains no citation. In the same subsection above, the frequent single-sentence paragraphs result in a violation of MOS:PARA within MOS:LAYOUT. I would consider rewriting that section, or at least reformatting it. It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): Reviewer Comments: Unremarkable. b (citations to reliable sources): Reviewer Comments: Lack of citation for a direct quotation for the very last sentence of the lead section. While I have no doubt as to the legitimacy, 2b requires all direct quotations to have an in-line citation to it's source. If it is the same as the above citation 22, then this is made distinctly unclear as citations 23 and 24 are presented after the end of the previous quotation but before the next. Please reuse or create a reference for the quotation. "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)" does not contain any form of in-line citation. Reference 311 would suffice, however, it should be immediately after the end of the quote, and not wait until the end of the paragraph, as they are grouped together with sources about later information that are not related to the direct quotation. "awfully good someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country" lacks in-line citation. Results by State table is factually incorrect per the citations provided. Although sources of Arkansas vote tallies through an ascertainment to the senate from the state, this citation is not provided in the Article proper, and the numbers in the table for Johnson and McMullin are thus inaccurate per the cited sources (2, 395 and 450). Please either update sources, or statistics. In the same Results by state section as above in 1a, the passage "This would be the first election in which the winning candidate would lose their home state since Woodrow Wilson lost New Jersey in 1916." contains no citation. I would consider this to be contentious to be said without citation, not for the 1916 date (as a link to that election is provided), but for every election between 1916 and 2016. The citation for Viewership is unclear as it is only under the "legend" title. Some additional content here would be beneficial per GA criterion 1, even if it were a simple explanatory paragraph. The 2016 Presidential vote by demographic subgroup table should include a linkable citation to the Edison exit polling. I would suggestion reusing reference 494, however, the link should be directly with the table. While it is implied that the contents of the table are from the above source(s), it is ambiguous. c (OR): Reviewer Comments: There is no evidence of Original Research per WP:OR d (copyvio and plagiarism): Reviewer Comments: All major violations flagged in Earwig's Copyvio Detector were properly cited and referenced quotes. Other discrepancies were common phrases and, thus, do not constitute WP:COPYVIO. With over 600 citations, there are no evident plagiarism violations, as all content has been attributed appropriately. It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): Reviewer Comments: This article goes into a great deal of depth and covers a very intricate and complicated topic well. While there are several subsidiary articles to this main 2016 election page, this article does a remarkable job at covering most all of the general aspects that would be expected of an article regarding an election. b (focused): Reviewer Comments: As mentioned above, there are many subsidiary articles to this main topic. Each of those articles has a summary section with a proper hatnote (or intext hyperlink) directing to the in-depth article. There are no significant tangents, and all additional detail to elements pertaining to topics beyond the main topic are beneficial and constructive, rather than distracting. It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: Reviewer Comments: This article is of a political nature, and is thus inherently susceptible to the dangers of bias. By having a community that spans both sides of the political aisle, as well as an international community that are completely removed from U.S. politics, the article as a whole has done a very good job at using neutral language, and reporting on only the facts as presented by the sources listed. I have found that overall, the sources used are somewhat left-leaning, and as a result, the article has a slightly liberal lean. That being said, I am nevertheless considering this article impartial as an active effort has been made to list both sides of political discourse evenly and accurately. Charged language and speculation is avoided well, except as listed above, and the statistics are taken from legitimate reporting agencies. No article involving politics will ever be completely free of bias, but this article does it about as effectively as possible. It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: Reviewer Comments: Although there is a fair deal of general discourse on the talk page, even regarding some critical aspects of data, this is to be expected of any page that is of such a general topic that has high traffic of views and edits. From an assessment of the past 500 edits: warring occurred in May and October of 2019 and again in February of 2020. All incidents were fairly brief and ended in a moved discussion. This being said, self-policing, in conjunction with site moderation, have forced all recent discussion into the talk page, instead of through constant reverts, and the use of democratic consensus regarding changes warrants stability in my eyes. Ultimately, failure of GA criterion 5 requires that disputes interfere with the day-to-day reading experience. Political articles, as with all things of a political nature, will have disputes that may never resolve. This fact of life should not withold GA status from an otherwise good article. As an aside: Thank You] to everyone who has cleaned up vandalism and grammar whether manually or through bot automation. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): Reviewer Comments: All images are in the public domain or are Creative Commons attributed. Although some are trademark protected, GA does not require assessment of such conditions, but only copyright. b (appropriate use with suitable captions): Reviewer Comments: Party Conventions Map (Under Party conventions) does not contain a caption. Otherwise, all images in this article relate to the main topic and enhance the content.
Overall: Pass/Fail: Reviewer Comments: See below.
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Additional Comments

Let me preface this with an apology if anything here is repeated from above. When conducting this review, I simultaneously took general article notes and notes specific to GA criteria. I will also say that this article is very in-depth and is a good resource for anyone looking to study the 2016 general election.

Lead Section

Everything is fairly eloquently written, and the introductory paragraph is remarkable, the content of the lead degrades progressively the deeper you get into it. When assessing this article, I followed the style of User:Hamiltonstone who reviewed the 2008 presidential election GA nomination, and assessed this from the perspective of a non-US reader or a reader who lacks significant political knowledge. This mentality is going to be especially applied to the lead section. The term "free media" could mean very different things depending on your prior knowledge on the topic. Is it media that has no cost? Is it media that can be practiced without restriction? Is it media that is paid for by someone else? The context from this paragraph does not suffice to make the term common knowledge. I would advise a link to Earned media is included, if no additional context is provided. I digress that the citations provide more clarity, however, for a reader whose first experience with the 2016 presidential election is this article, they should not have to jump into citations for an easy-to-digest executive summary in the lead section. On the topic of impartiality, the section does a good job (for the most part) at providing cases for and against either ticket. I would advise including a reference to concerns regarding Hillary Clinton's health during the campaign alongside the other arguments for opposition, however I will defer to the consensus of the talk page. Finally, there is one failing condition per GA criterion 2b, being the lack of citation for a direct quotation for the very last sentence of the lead section. While I have no doubt as to the legitimacy, 2b requires all direct quotations to have an in-line citation to it's source. Please consider revising.

Primary process Section

This section seems extremely out of place and does not fit the style of the rest of the article. I was expecting it to summarize the primary process in the united states as a whole, just as the Background section gave context to the presidential election process in the united states. It seems as if the contents of this section could be better integrated into the "primaries" section of each party under the Nominations heading. I like the idea of having the primary section there, as context should be given regarding the primary election overall, however, as it is written currently, it seems clunky and does not match the flow of the rest of the article. I would consider revision.

Overall Linkrot

WP:LR is not a disqualifying criteria for GAs. That being said, it would be completely wrong of me to not point out that several of the links that I assessed from the citations lead to dead links. Among the ones I recorded: 243 (Good4Utah), 401 (dcboee), 408 (in.gov), 441 (vtelectionresults), and others that require paid subscriptions that are not appropriately marked (e.g. 244 (Financial Times). Additionally, the sources to the FEC website in the Campaign finance section all go to the same search page instead of their respective result pages for the candidates in question for the election year in question. Archive links ought to be considered and links overall should be reviewed in more depth.

Campaign finance Section

This is another section of the article that caught my eye, particularly the chart. The sources have become so out of date that the numbers in question cannot be verified through the listed sources. While I personally trust whoever originally compiled the figures from these legitimate sources, if archived links are not provided, the data cannot be verified. Also, given that the statistics for the 2016 election have been finalized with both the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics, I would strongly suggest that the data in that table be updated to reflect accurate final sums.

Overall thoughts

As a politically-minded resident of the united states, a lot of this content made sense and was entertaining to read. I think this article is definitely on it's way to earning GA status. Many of the elements that I have held this review for are simple fixes, and with a bit of general cleanup and attention, can be rectified without too much effort. The graphics and other media compliment the content well. The layout, for the most part, is intuitive and easy to follow (excepting the ones I have discussed above). I'd like to conclude that this is not an exhaustive list of comments, but is what I had found thus far and was enough to come to this conclusion. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns and I would be more than happy to reassess this article after the changes above are made.

All the very best,

Babegriev (talk) 06:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Babegriev: thanks for the review! I'll work on addressing all of these issues within the next few days. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 15:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Update 9/8/20

Just an update, I will be taking another in-depth look on the 11th of September to make it an even 14 days after initial review. There are still a few problems that stand out, particularly regarding criteria 2b and 6b. Thank you! --Babegriev (talk) 01:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Secondary GA Review

As per notes I, III, V, and VII under 2b and criterion 6b above, this article does not meet the 6 GA criteria at this point.

--Babegriev (talk) 07:29, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

@Babegriev: hey, I'm sorry for the lack of progress and very late reply - after making the nomination, I got far busier with school than I anticipated. Anyway, I've addressed pretty much all of the issues you brought up - would you recommend renominating? (not sure of the process here). Thanks Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 05:28, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@Elliot321: Hi Elliot, I'm currently in the middle of some college work and will be busy for the next day or two. I have seen this message and I will take a look at the article as soon as possible. I want to take enough time to really look through the article again and give some good feedback. Feel free to give me a shout if there's any concerns. Babegriev (talk) 21:24, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@Babegriev: makes sense, no hurry - I know what it's like to be in the middle of a lot of work myself. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 16:28, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

@Elliot321: Thank you immensely for your patience, that was a long wait. As per the initial review, the article overall was very good, and all of the notes that were most important have all been addressed. I cannot find anything after reading through the article, with the exception of the captioning of the party convention map, however, I've gone ahead and made that edit myself since it took a matter of 30 seconds. The article is written from a very neutral perspective, overall, and the few missing citations that would have lead to the slightest implication of bias have been addressed. Article is illustrated very well, and the section organization has since improved. Likewise, the inconsistencies with the voting statistics seem to have been resolved. Besides that, this article seems to be in a very good position for reassessment. Thank you for your contributions, and best of luck.