Talk:Congressional stagnation in the United States

Untitled

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus. —Nightstallion (?) 09:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Title, page move

Per my comments at WP:PR I think the title of this article is not neutral and may still count as original research (pending your reply at PR, and presuming you can cite an example of "Congressional stagnation" being used to describe this phenomenon of incumbents being re-elected). I think it should be moved, to something like "Re-election rate of U.S. Representatives." Kaisershatner 16:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but i think a more suitable title would be "Incumbent electoral eadvantage in the United States Congress"? Still to POV? As i think that title is more appropriate Thethinredline 18:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a pretty neutral title, but does it really summarize the subject of this article? Before we move it, maybe discussion is in order (see WP:RM and Wikipedia:Naming_conflict. I think the process may help us figure this out. Kaisershatner 16:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

• Talk:Congressional stagnation in the United States — Congressional stagnation in the United States → Incumbent electoral advantage in the United States Congress – Neutrality of title — Kaisershatner 16:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose. I don't see any neutral point of view issue, and while I'm not stuck on the current title, I don't see any real improvement in the proposed change. Gene Nygaard 17:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - I don't see any neutrality issue either and think the suggested title is much too verbose. Worldtraveller 17:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support - Calling this "Congressional stagnation" strongly implies it is a bad thing that Representatives are generally re-elected. It may even be a bad thing, but a NPOV would not imply this in the title. Also, I think "Congressional stagnation" is original research, as I have noted at WP:PR. The term is not in common usage, google hits = 27 of which several are wikipedia. There are theories about this, but "Congressional stagnation" is not an established one, and it is certainly loaded with negative connotations. Kaisershatner 19:35, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I like the new diction. -- Reinyday, 21:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support Although the term "congressional stagnation" is definitrly not an original term i coined for the writing of this article, i only wish it was, (several of the works I have used and cited use the term, primarily works by Michael Malbin and James Campbell) I think that if several wikipedians have seen a PoV issue here, moving it to a title which is considered to be more neutral can only be beneficial.Thethinredline 20:14, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I like it, too. —Nightstallion (?) 09:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

• User:Worldtraveller makes a perfectly good point when he says that the new title is too wordy, i don't think it's ideal either. But consider the following information that needs to be included in the title:

-It is dealing with 'electroral advantage' of incumbents.

-It is case specific to the United States.

-That it refers only to the House of Representatives.

It's kind of hard to make the title more compact than the newly proposed title.Thethinredline 20:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Great Article!

Wow, this is facinating! I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a table that would show the replacement rate of members of Congress in past elections. Chadlupkes 02:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

As the creator and primary contributor to this article i've been meaning to do that for a long time, however circumstances largely out of my control have limited my time on wikipedia (getting married and becoming a father for instance) but it's on my todo list. Thethinredline 21:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Quickie suggestion

I'm just passing through categorizing articles for WP:UCGA, and I was checking the quality of the article given the age of the GA. There's nothing wrong with the quality of the article, but you may want to check your references -- I think that sometime since this article was written, the method of using in-line citations and referencing works has changed as the current article "suggests" there's 50-odd reference but in reality only about a dozen. (eg we now have <ref> tags and the citation templates) Easy to fix, and nothing to ding this articles' GA for. --Masem 19:33, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Power Seeks Power

The notion that there is some sort of conspiracy or inordinate hidden design at work in the stagnation of the Congress has been bandied about. And most certainly political parties are conspiracies by definition if they seek to implement government by minority in a nation that was to have operated in the opposite. Since the mid 1970's this has been the case for the Democratic party and it was always the case for the Republicans. And if I were to try to put these statements in the article I would get NPOV stickers all over me. To me the statements are akin to claiming that water is wet. I can find no reference because the concept is axiomatic. I am here due to your reference to the "Congressional Apportionment Amendment" which I have recently redirected to "Article the First". For it is the lack of choice in electing our representatives that is the true cause of the stagnation. And while abject malfeasance such as crimes and misdemeanors may loose an election regardless of money, the money wins in almost every case. The situation deteriorates due to the limitation of representation in the House of Representatives and the huge and increasing size of electoral districts. Until 1911 the membership of the House increased (insufficiently I might POV) as population increased. This served to keep districts smaller and it is the smallness of districts that will allow people of limited funds to present themselves for consideration among their constituents. And, of course the rising number of members also served to defeat incumbency in that new seats are opened where there was no incumbent. Limiting the House to 435 members as was done in 1929 defeats both of these checks on incumbency. In 1929 the TwoParty grandfathered themselves in, locked the door, and tossed the key.

Article the First

Please note that "Article the First" revises the "Congressional Apportionment Amendment" in a very serious way. The actual amendment had nothing to do with apportionment of power among the states as the now redirected "Apportionment" article boldly claimed. "Article the First" was about essential liberty and the voice of the common people in THEIR government. These statements, unlike my earlier statements herein above are well supported by the history and the congressional records. One thing that seems to be inaccurate here and in most supposed analysis of Article The First is a claim that the amendment would force an increase in the representation (House membership) to 6K members. The current unamended Constitution ALLOWS a House of 10K members but does not compel it. Article the First (unless it is interpreted as an algorithm) ALLOWS a House of only 6K members. The effect of ratifying Article the First if interpreted as an algorithm would be to create a house membership of 1600 members. And if not interpreted as an algorithm the amendment would be absolutely moot. The current "no more than one for every 30K" is obviously more generous than "not more than one for every 50K" in the amendment. Neither statement compels the government to do anything about the ridiculous "one for every 700K" we currently have. The alteration and crippling of the Article the First happened because of incumbency in the first place. While the people wanted assurance of representation and the people's conventions (ratifying conventions) made this clear, the amendment was sabotaged by an aristocratic committee and then rejected by, not the people, but by the incumbent members of the state legislatures. The people of America got ripped at square one by the tendency of those in power ever seeking to protect their power and to add to it. We all have this same disease. Some are more afflicted than others. --The Trucker 16:00, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Congressional stagnation in the United States/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, listed below. I will check back in seven days. If these issues are addressed, the article will remain listed as a Good article. Otherwise, it may be delisted (such a decision may be challenged through WP:GAR). If improved after it has been delisted, it may be nominated at WP:GAN. Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   The lede section is too short.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   There is a great number of inline references, but there is a peculiar referencing system used here, where inline citations point directly to the sources (books) rather than to individual references. The main problem with this system is that individual references don't point to page numbers in the books used, so they become virtually impossible to trace for the interested reader, or indeed to verify.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   As noted with a tag, the "Increased incumbency advantage as a positive development" needs expansion. More seriously though, in my view, is that the article provides no historical background for its main claim. "Congressional stagnation" is said to have been an increasing tendency since the mid-70s, but there is no historical background to show what the situation was earlier. A graph would have been ideal for this purpose.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   As mentioned above, a graph would have been useful.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Lampman (talk) 18:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Since no improvements have been made to the article over the last week, I will now delist it. Lampman (talk) 23:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)