Talk:1844 United States presidential election/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Adam Cuerden (talk · contribs) 01:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Right. Let's begin. This is a pretty good article, and think it will pass shortly, however, there are issues where background isn't explained.

1. The Oregon boundary dispute is mentioned in the lead without explanation. It really needs one. "Northern expansionists, who demanded Oregon Territory" being a particularly incomprehensible bit.
2. For that matter, it'd probably be wise to quickly explain the slave state/free state background to this election in the lead
3. In the first section, "Texas annexation controversies", the "Gag Rule controversies" are mentioned, but not explained. Particularly bad as the information, while in the link, requires reading to the end of the linked article to find.
4. Tyler-Texas treaty: "This, after Tyler became convinced that Great Britain had encouraged a Texas-Mexico rapprochement that might lead to slave emancipation in the Texas republic" - that's phrased a bit strangely. The context is explained afterwards - that there was a panic about the possible end of slavery in Texas - but it's unclear at first reading.
5. "Mexico had outlawed slavery in Coahuila y Tejas in 1829..." is that a lawsuit? If it is, please say it is. The format of Spanish-language lawsuits isn't as common knowledge as the X v. Y of English-language lawsuits.

Think that'll do for the moment. More once that's dealt with? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Adam - I am locating sources with which to respond to your requests. I'll keep you updated. 36hourblock (talk) 17:18, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

No worries. It's clear that this was written by people who really know the subject, it's just a matter of getting the background information in for us peons. =) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:57, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Adam - The "people who really know the subject" are not the editors who participate at Wikipedia. Rather, they are the historians who publish the books on the topic, from which we build the article. Let's be clear about that.

Question: Why has the Reviewer placed the editing requests on the Talk Page? Is this customary? It seems it will confuse the issue if more than one editor is responding to the reviewer at a time...

On Mexican law and slavery: the Republic of Mexico, through its national Congress, outlawed slavery. It wasn't a lawsuit.

I have responded to the first set of GA review requests; I hope these changes make the lead and sections comprehensible. Is it clearer now?

I forgot to put my signature on the foregoing comments earlier this week. Perhaps that's why you were not alerted. My apologies! 36hourblock (talk) 19:26, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Do beg pardon. will check this tomorrow. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 04:21, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Clearly, the reviewer has no intention of completing the process for this GA nominee. Please withdraw the article so it can be resubmitted. Thank you. 36hourblock (talk) 01:07, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• The article doesn't need to be resubmitted. Instead, the nomination retains its seniority, and goes back into the review pool—the current review stops as incomplete. I'm taking care of that now, since Adam has not responded for three weeks after having said he'd get back to this right away on my talk page after I pinged him. (It's been a month and a half since he last posted to this page.) I did another ping over 36 hours ago, saying I was planning to close the review unless he responded right away, and despite several edits in the interim, there's been nothing. This review is now closed. I hope the nomination finds a new reviewer soon. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:34, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, it's been one of the busiest months I've had in years. Probably best it's released. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:59, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, BlueMoonset, for intervening in this matter. I look forward to working with serious-minded editors in improving the article. Cheers. 36hourblock (talk) 01:35, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

You do realise this article has a lot of little problems of language, failure to clarify, and the like, and thus would need hours of work to shepherd to GA? I prefer not to fail articles, but to help them on, but the amount of work needed is large, and that's why I didn't ever get to the review - I'd need a couple hours to go through and carefully document. If you wanted me to deal with this quickly, I could have: Failed on WP:WIAGA criterion 1.

So, if you want a "serious-minded" editor to do with this article what it deserves in the current state, I can. But if you want someone to help you do the work that should have been done before nominating, I didn't have the time.

Quite simply, the infiormation is there, but it's not contextualized, making the article very hard for a non-expert to read. It is constantly dropping the names of 19th-century movements and concepts with the only explanation being links to other articles. A review that would end with this promoted would take days to get through. It has loads of potential, but it's a very long article that's going to need to become a lot longer to be readable by anyone not already an expert, and the only way that's going to happen is to have a non-expert willing to, point by point, read through and bring up every single one of these issues, which will take several days of work by said person. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:06, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The article, Bank War, has failed exactly nothing. As BlueMoonset points out, it remains available for review on the current list of GA nominees - by editors capable of handling mainstream secondary sources on US history.

As to the foregoing tirade by the reviewer who has been relieved of his duties: "Good-bye, Mr. Bond." 36hourblock (talk) 23:39, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I did not finish this because I did not have the time to complete the massive amounts of careful work with you this needs to pass. Given your attitude, I don't think anyone is likely to. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:01, 22 April 2014 (UTC)