Talk:2014 South African general election/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 13:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to review this.

From a cursory look at the article, it looks complete and well-referenced, which is what I would expect from an article detailing a modern political event. One of the problems I see is that a lot of the pose has obviously been added in real-time by editors, so we're left with list that read "On [date], [event]. On [date 2], [event 2]". For a good article, this will need to be copyedited to be more easily readable to someone looking at the election in a historical context. I don't think this is an insurmountable problem, though.

As you're on break, I'm happy to put the review on the back-burner and work on it in the background, with the idea that it will be finished awaiting feedback on your return in the New Year. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:15, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

* Normally I'd say "it'll be worth an explanation of who 'x' is", but in the case of Nelson Mandela I'm going to assume the reader knows exactly who he was, so that isn't relevant here. * The article body lists many controversies and public reactions. I think it would be good to put a sample of these in the lead, though I'm not sure myself which are the most important.

Comments on the body will follow. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the lead section adequately summarizes the contents. The infobox uses the 5% rule, and the results of the election are clearly and succinctly laid out further down the article. Royal Mate1 21:36, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

However, the lead should not "tease" the reader into requiring to read the article to discover it was more controversial than would appear to be the case from just that opening. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 16:19, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Electoral system

* "Two hundred members are elected from national party lists" - this fact is not in actually in the source given at the end of the paragraph, though I suspect nobody with a reasonable knowledge of South African politics would challenge this * The remainder of information in this section is unsourced. Again, this likely to not fall into the "information challenged or likely to be challenged" for a South African, but it probably does for foreign readers not familiar with the system. A citation to the basic makeup of politics would be useful for a reader to learn more.

Will take a look at the electoral commission's website. They should have this info. Nathan121212 (talk) 17:33, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that looks like an acceptable source, I was suspicious of the domain name but I checked it and it's an internationally recognised body, so it checks out okay. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 19:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Political parties

* The first four paragraphs are unsourced. A similar problem to above - this really need citations * "33 parties had registered candidates for the national parliamentary election" - the source also says that this was a record number of parties, a fact which would be worth including

New parties

* This section contains several entries that are not obviously sourced

Alliances and defections

* "NUMSA plans to establish" - I think for consistency, using the past tense would be more preferable here * As I hinted above, this section reads too much like a bulleted list eg : "On 6 February 2014" ... "On 11 March 2014" .... "On 12 March 2014". For a long-term encyclopaedic view, you probably don't need the exact dates. I would cut out the dates and list the facts in chronological order, ideally combining individual sentences together

Endorsements

* "A Financial Mail editorial published on the same day, which cites ... state" - this should use past tense. Same problem with the next sentence.

Changes to electoral legislation

* This section can probably be merged with the "Electoral system" section above

Voter registration

* "On the weekends of 9–10 November 2013 and 8–9 February 2014 all voting stations were opened for new voters to register and for those who moved residence to re-register in their new voting district." - this claim doesn't appear to be cited in the next inline reference (in the sentence after) * "approximately 2.3 million new voters" - why then, does the Business Day live source say it's about 1 million. If sources contradict the figure, use "between 1 and 2 million" or some variation, including all figures listed in sources. * "and are aged 18 or older will be eligible to vote for the first time" - should be past tense, the election's been and gone * "The following table shows the largest voting stations abroad" - per WP:LIST, this would be better represented in prose. I'd pick off London as being the most significant place for ex-pat voting, include Dubai and Canberra, and group the remainder as "other". WP:CALC says you're on safe grounds adding up individual figures given in sources as long as it's clear that the information can be verified and recalculated by anyone.

Opinion polling

* There's too much whitespace at the start of this section. I'd put the table inline with the prose, using the "thumb" parameter

The footnotes for the table should go in a "Footnotes" section right at the end of the article

Done Nathan121212 (talk) 21:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be worth briefly explaining who Africa Check are and why their opinion is relevant here. I was unsure of this until I looked at the source.

Done Nathan121212 (talk) 21:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about the "Provisional ballot" section. It's still an opinion poll, and unless it has extreme prominence above and beyond all others (and it doesn't appear to), I'd probably just get rid of this section. Now, the actual result is more important.

It's actually the provincial ballot. The one with 9 tables of results so I think it's a bit of a big enough deal to keep in this article. Nathan121212 (talk) 20:46, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Campaign

* The "Debates" section should be rewritten as prose

The "Controversies" section really needs to be cut down in size and reformatted, as it still looks a bit too much like a list of "On [date], [x] happened". I think the information about public marches and violent protests is important and should be included, but I think things just need to be copyedited down to give a general view of things. If you can get rid of all the mentions of "In [n] April 2014", that should be a step in the right direction

Voting

* "Approximately 27,000 South Africans registered to participate in the national election in the international voting phase" - this is redundant, we were told this in the "Voter registration" section * The "Election-related offences" and "Incidents" sub-sections are both quite small and can probably be combined

International special votes

* The last sentence in this subsection could be combined with the previous one.

Local special votes

* "Former President Thabo Mbeki cast a special vote on 6 May as he was attending a World Economic Forum meeting in Nigeria on 7 May" - as we've mentioned several dates here, the last "on 7 May" could be written as "on polling day" instead to avoid repetition * "The local special vote phase of the election took place on 5–6 May 2014, accommodating over 295,000 voters" - I can't find the 295,000 voters figure anywhere in the two sources cited

Voting day

* I wouldn't bother mentioning "7 May" anywhere in the section; we know what the date is having been told it several times earlier

Has there been any more news about the KwaZulu-Natal shooting? The source says the defendant charged with the murder denied it.

Results

Where is the table summarising results from 1994 - 2014 sourced from?

Removed. Nathan121212 (talk) 21:14, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This section really suffers from being too much lists, not enough prose. I can't think of a good article (both in name and in sprit) that could be used as a template, but to give an example, United Kingdom general election, 1997 (one I personally remember well) starts off with a summary of the major changes in the electorate, given particularly significant points. Then it goes on to the tables.
Unless there's something about South African politics that I'm missing, I would just stick with the main national results table and leave it at that. Going back to the previous example, there is a spinout article List of MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1997, so perhaps List of provincial results of the South African general election, 2014 would be the answer.

I'm not too sure about this one. All previous articles have listed the provincial results. On voting day, voters filled out 2 ballots, so 2 results should be displayed. Nathan121212 (talk) 21:14, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reactions

The text here should be put it as prose, not lists. In particular the use of flags is generally restricted to tabled lists where a text description can also be given.

Done. Nathan121212 (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Agang SA reaction source goes to a login page

Fixed Nathan121212 (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The African Christian Democratic Party reaction is cited to a YouTube link. You should avoid citing YouTube like the plague as most links are either unreliable sources or copyright violations. I'd get another source if at all possible.

Fixed Nathan121212 (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are all these international reactions necessary for the article? I'd certainly include reactions from neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, maybe the other African countries, possibly the UK and US, but I'm not sure about the others.

Sorted by continent putting Africa at the top. Nathan121212 (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The many mentions of "Jacob Zuma" should simply be "Zuma" per WP:LASTNAME, unless they are occurring in a direct quotation.

* King Abdullah of Jordan is a disambiguation page - this should be Abdullah II of Jordan, though I would pipe the link to say "King Abdullah of Jordan" anyway Done Nathan121212 (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC) * "BBC's Andrew Harding said that there was no massive change in the elections compared to previous years" - the source also mentions that support for the ANC dropped since 2009, and that he thought the party had "spun" their 62% of the vote as a victory despite the many controversies (most listed in this article). That's worth working into the article.[reply]

Aftermath

* This section has quite a few short sentences. It would be worth combining them. * "demanding the release of the suspects arrested on 8 May 2014" - use "the previous day" instead of the specific date here

Summary

I've gone through the whole article. I'll be honest here and say there is a lot of work to do to get this to GA status. The main work is the formatting and presentation, which is relatively straightforward to fix once you know what you're doing. Another key issue is the focus, which does drift a bit in places, particularly when documenting a series of events over a time period - that'll need to be sorted out. There are a few issues on unsourced content, though the sourcing I've found is generally good, as one ought to expect from an article on a major political event.

Anyway, since the article has been queued for review for so long and you've been patient with this review, I'll put it on hold, to give you time for improvements. The standard turnaround period is seven days, but to be honest I don't mind if it takes longer than that. Provided everything can be closed down in about two weeks, that should be okay.

I look forward to your feedback soon. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 20:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchie333: Hi, sorry for not being very participatory and being quite slow with improvements. I've hit my data cap this month (2nd in a row) and will hopefully be able to fix these issues in the first 1 - 2 weeks of January. Thanks for your patience and the thorough review. Nathan121212 (talk)

@Ritchie333: I had some time on a computer today. I have performed most of the improvements you have suggested here. Can you please have another look? Thanks - Nathan121212 (talk) 17:03, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Nathan121212: - I've gone through the points I raised earlier and checked them against what you've done. I've struck off everything that I agree is now resolved, copyedited a few things in the process. It looks like the main thing is the formatting and stripping out some of the lists, and getting rid of some of the tables. Once that's resolved, I think we'll be a lot closer to a GA. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 19:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchie333: Hi, would you be willing to take another look so soon? I've taken care of most of the raised points, the others which I have not changed have responses above. Nathan121212 (talk) 21:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Nathan121212: I've had a look through, and I think the only thing that's really stopping this from reaching GA status now is the National Council of Provinces results lists. I appreciate the other election articles have them, but none of the ones I checked are GAs, and especially for the 1994 one, which is an incredibly important event in South African history, the tables of statistics really do dwarf the prose and leave me a bit disappointed I didn't learn more. We can take it to a second opinion if you like, but I'm really going to have to take a stand on this one as I think it stops the "focused" part of the GA criteria being met. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 14:58, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. I'll try to get this fixed tomorrow or the day after. Nathan121212 (talk) 07:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchie333: I have now split the article. If you can offer any advice for the intro in both articles, it would be appreciated. Nathan121212 (talk) 13:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Nathan121212: That looks fine. I've added a bit more in the lead; the only other thing to do is just summarise the results generally. I spotted another dead link this morning (not sure how I missed that first time around), but I've resolved that. So, after a far too long await, I'm happy to say I can now pass the review. Well done! Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:49, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot. Happy New year! Nathan121212 (talk) 13:31, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]