Talk:1988 United States House of Representatives election in Vermont

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that Peter Plympton Smith's victory in 1988 was the last time a member of the Republican Party was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Vermont? "Last Republican". The Burlington Free Press. December 8, 2019. p. A7. Archived from the original on June 18, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/The Exigency

5x expanded by Jon698 (talk). Self-nominated at 17:31, 20 June 2021 (UTC).

• Jon698, it has been three and a half weeks since you nominated this, and the QPQ, which is supposed to be supplied within a week of nomination, is still not submitted. If you still wish to pursue this nomination, please supply it within the next seven days. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:01, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

• @BlueMoonset: Done. Jon698 (talk) 01:11, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

• Full review needed now that QPQ has been supplied. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:29, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

General eligibility:

• New enough:
• Long enough:
• Other problems: - See comment

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: The article is long and new enough, and most of the expansion has happened within 7 days of nomination. I'll elaborate on the expansion in a separate paragraph. The article is reasonably sourced and is neutral, no obvious plagiarism was seen. The hook is pretty good. It could be fine to add just a few words on Vermont being a Republican stronghold for more than a century, but that's optional. QPQ was provided upon request, so I'm fine with that. The only thing is, I have a little problem with is the expansion.

DYK Check says the article has not been expanded 5x, and raw bytesize only indicates x4,25 expansion. However, the article relies heavily on tables and maps, which are technically not readable prose, so I'll treat it slightly differently. Even with that in mind, some more expansion would be desirable. For example, the results table by municipality includes only two of Vermont's 246 municipalities, so personally I'd either remove it or expand it to include all 246 municipalities, because only two of them (both rural areas and not, say, Burlington, Montpelier or Rutland) look odd (though a table with 246 municipalities, on the other hand, might look a little excessive). If possible, a little more background on primary candidates or maps of Republican/Democrat primary votes by counties would be wonderful. As this is an election, voter turnout is a valuable statistic, too, so it could be included in the voting table (if, of course, Vermont agencies provide such data, which I hope they do, at least on the statewide level). You needn't do all of that at once, though implementation of some points (or other improvements you'd come up with) would be welcome.

UPDATE. Given BlueMoonset's advice (below), the second paragraph should not be construed to be an obstacle in approving the nomination, but rather outline the areas of improvement of the article as identified at the moment of the review. Added 05:05, 24 July 2021 (UTC) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

• @Szmenderowiecki: Can you give me a week to do this. I have been suffering from vertigo for the past few days so I haven't been up to editing, but I feel better. BTW a table with all 246 municipalities would be great as a simple county table isn't as informative since all politics is local. Jon698 (talk) 22:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Go ahead. Get better soon, and I am looking forward to the edits. The DYK nomination is put  On hold pending expansion. Cheers. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:25, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Szmenderowiecki, when I run DYKcheck, it says that there has been a 5x prose expansion beginning on June 14, six days before the nomination occurred, so it qualifies in terms of length and newness. When I take a look at the actual article history, it shows an expansion from 564 prose characters prior to the first edits on June 14 to the current 5389 prose characters, over a ninefold expansion. Raw bitesize is irrelevant at DYK; it's prose characters that count. Courtesy ping to Jon698, who I hope is back feeling much better soon. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:34, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

It does say that, but here's the thing: the article is a list, it's not a plain article, and most of the information is actually contained in the maps and the tables. The purpose of 5x rule is not to expand the prose from 1 sentence to 5 sentences, leave the old tables and post another DYK nomination (I don't suspect Jon698 to be doing that, he's done a decent job here, got new maps and tables as well as some text); it's to greatly expand the scope of information for the readers (rewarding both the reader with a quality article, and the nominee for their work). On the other hand, if a user got 5 new tables and some more maps from 1, I'd have made the nomination pass, even though formally it would probably not include any readable prose expansion. Which is why the "readable prose" criterion sort of sucks in this particular situation. In this case, I see addition of three tables (polling, county results and endorsements), an stub table for municipalities and a few sentences accompanying the results of each primary, the general election and the background. A much better shape than it used to be, though I think a few minor quality fixes as I outlined would be great. The municipality table is arguably the hardest part, as it involves the most toiling over state databases and spreadsheets, so I don't insist on that particular improvement.

If you believe it to be passing the nomination without the improvements, I'll defer to your opinion since I'm a relatively new reviewer, but I see some room for enhancements here without needing to look for the information for hours. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:10, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Szmenderowiecki, thanks for the reply, and apologies for my delay in getting back to you. The one sentence to five sentence expansion is unlikely since there's a minimum of 1500 prose characters required for all DYK nominations. Even if you don't like the "readable prose" criterion, it's how DYK measures, for lists as well as more normal articles, so that's what you need to go by here. If you ever do pass an expansion with new tables and more maps and no fivefold prose increase, expect to have your review reversed: DYK expansion calculation is prose-based only. It's our most immutable requirement.

For the improvements, the standard is more what D7 of the supplementary guidelines posits: Articles that fail to deal adequately with the topic are also likely to be rejected. It's a lower bar than I think you're asking: the improvements you've requested would be welcome and definitely make the article better, but the article seems more than adequate as it stands. Making suggestions for improvements going forward is always welcome, but anything beyond the requirements should be suggested rather than requested. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:46, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

In that case, I have no objections to the nomination. It has  Passed for me. The areas of potential development have been set, and while I believed them to be sufficient to hold the article pending improvements, the advice is to ignore it, and I'll defer to it as promised. The status of the nomination has been changed accordingly. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 05:05, 24 July 2021 (UTC)