Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2006 New Jersey State Government shutdown/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 15:44, 13 October 2009 [1].

2006 New Jersey State Government shutdown

Nominator(s): Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 15:56, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Featured article candidates/2006 New Jersey State Government shutdown/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because it has been a stable GA for over a year, and I see little chance of additional facts or sources coming up in the future. I have recently made some minor changes to update date formats and alt text for images, but other edits have been minimal. I should have nominated it earlier, but was on a rather long wikibreak for a while. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 15:56, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review: No issues. Stifle (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Done; thanks. Alt text is present (thanks!) but has a couple of problems. First, it repeats the caption (see WP:ALT#Repetition). Second, it has non-visual details like proper names and "in the United States Senate" that cannot be verified by a non-expert who is looking only at the image (see WP:ALT#Verifiability). Eubulides (talk) 19:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have entered more descriptive text for the photos used. Hadn't read all the way through WP:ALT. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 21:06, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, it's getting better. A few more suggestions; please remove the two phrases like "Photographic portrait of" as per WP:ALT #Phrases to avoid. Remove the phrase "Bally's Atlantic City" as per WP:ALT#Repetition. Transcribe the headline of that notice's text, as per WP:ALT#Text. Describe a bit what Corzine looks like (like, he's got a beard, he's balding, he's wearing a black coat and tie), as per WP:ALT#Portraits. The basic idea here is: if the reader can't see the images, what would you tell them over the phone to briefly describe the images? Eubulides (talk) 03:42, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I updated the alt text for the image of Corzine. Does that meet all standards/policies? --ZeWrestler ^Talk 04:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The Corzine alt text is more than enough; if anything, it's too much as per WP:ALT#Brevity and unimportant details like the color of the background should be omitted. There's still that repetition in the other image's alt text, noted above. Eubulides (talk) 16:58, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Updated the alt-text for both images. Does this suffice the requirement? --ZeWrestler ^Talk 22:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - The goal is not merely to satisfy a requirement, but to write an article that represents the best of Wikipedia. I attempted to improve the alt text to avoid repetition, fix misspellings, etc. Eubulides (talk) 23:13, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - I completely agree with your statement. The changes you made look good. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 23:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -
Newspapers titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using {{cite news}}, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper
~~Three deadlinks in the link checker tool.~~

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just clarifying, you want to see changes like [this] —Preceding unsigned comment added by ZeWrestler (talk • contribs)

Yes, that works, although you don't have to have the publishing company at all for most newspapers. It's only useful when dealing with very obscure papers, that might be questioned as to whether they are reliable. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I've made the change to the {{cite news}} per your comments --ZeWrestler ^Talk 03:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dead links have been cleared, except for one that I can only find behind a pay wall. Will change to print reference. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 14:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support - At this time, the issues with the article have been addressed and corrected, I'd now like to officially say I support this article. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 01:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This is an issue of preference with no right answer, but on the Comprehensiveness requirement... this article seems to go for the "sleek summary that gets to the point" style. Nothing wrong with that, but I can't help but feel a little more detail wouldn't hurt. The "Causes" section doesn't detail much about the budget problems, or the politics behind them, other than "Corzine wanted a tax increase, Legislature Democrats dragged their feet." I'll grant that most readers would find that legislative wrangling extremely boring, but perhaps a little more in executive summary style? Most notably, I'd be tempted to move some of the info from the "political influences" section to the causes. Yes, the shutdown may have affected the Senate race... but I expect the legislators were far more concerned about their *own* election (since Florio did get kicked out of office in 93, after all, and it was the exact same issue - a raise from 6% to 7% of the sales tax...). Feel free to ignore me or say the current setup works better, but my two cents. (Also, since I looked it up: The last ref "N.J. Budget With Tax Increases Likely To Influence U.S. Senate Race" is to a dead link. Not that this really matters. Couldn't find an archive.org archive either, alas.) SnowFire (talk) 03:27, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Superb thoughts toward improvement, and I have spent some time trying to determine how it could be achieved. I found, and updated, an archive.org copy of one of the WNBC articles, but not the others. I found new references to replace the others, and have updated them as well. Regarding the other comments, I am having trouble finding sources that make such critical conclusions. While the sources we have support some of the results, and I am sure sources could be found on more of the causes of the crisis at the time, trying to get into a causational relationship in this article would require us to violate either WP:SYN, WP:OR, or both. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 17:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Biased support - As a hater of New Jersey politicians and I live in this dumbfounded state, I will support this article for the FAC criteria and the fact that its a good shot in the face. Also, I have one slight issue. Certain links in citations are used more than once (The NY Times, State of New Jersey). Also, AP Online should be spelled out, even though AP is a common name. Anyway great job with our dopey politics.Mitch32^{(The Password is... See here!)} 01:59, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oddly enough, nowhere in the article is New Jersey linked. Full review coming later. Mm40 (talk) 13:49, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Added the link --ZeWrestler ^Talk 14:25, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.