Talk:Average Joe

GA Nomination: Pass

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

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

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

7. Overall:

   a Pass/Fail:

Overall, I believe the article is extremely well written, and well sourced. It was a pleasure to review. I declare this GA nomination as passed. Keep up the excellent work! Kyra_~(talk) 19:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why this page is listed as controversial- from the history of the page it seems that the controversial template was included as a result of a copy/paste error. I'm revoving the template for this rason. Bestchai 01:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC) bestchai

Yes it was pasted from another article. Thanks for your efforts! Signature^brendel 03:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Image

I think this image could be added: . Image:Average Joe copy.jpg S♦s♦e♦b♦a♦l♦l♦o♦s ^{(Talk to Me)} 22:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Joe Average vs Average Joe

Wiktionary gives Joe Average and Wikipedia Average Joe. Are they both interchangeable? 16@r (talk) 16:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Joe Average is an actual person.--24.85.68.231 (talk) 23:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Review: Pass

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Culture and Society" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have made several minor corrections throughout the article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2007. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. This article would benefit with updating of the statistics in the article. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 06:41, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Joe Sixpack?

I see no mention of this term in the article, yet John McCain and I'm sure many others referred to the term several times in the campaign. Here are two news articles I pulled up right now that mention the term: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-devin/mccain-campaign-mentions_b_133179.html and http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-beer_presidentsfeb12,0,3215027.story

I'm sure that merge requests have been discussed hundreds of times, but I would like to ask why Average Joe, Joe Schmoe and John Q. Public are not merged into a single article.

Indeed, the header of this article refers directly to Joe Schmoe as an equivalent term. If these terms are all different, might it make sense to list a comparison between the terms, why you say "Average Joe" instead of "Joe Schmoe"? If they are the same, I could imagine seeing all of the terms as sub-headings under a single one of these articles. 136.152.170.253 (talk) 01:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Two separate topics?

It seems to me that this article has two different topics: the phrase 'Average Joe' (and the stereotypes that go with it), and the analysis of what an actual 'average American' would be. These should perhaps be two different articles, as the content in this article about the phrase 'Average Joe' seems oddly placed when the rest of the article is about demographic statistics. On the other hand, perhaps that part of the article is the problematic part: in extracting from various statistics a profile of an 'average American', aren't we doing original research (specifically, original synthesis)? Does anyone else share these concerns? Robofish (talk) 01:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

John Doe, John Q. Public, Joe Shmoe...

There are many articles on Wikipedia about variations of "Average Joe", icluding

1. Joe Bloggs
2. John Doe
3. John Q. Public
4. Joe Shmoe

I think they should be merged into this article. HeinzzzderMannn (talk) 23:28, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

• Support a merger of all except John Doe (who is anonymous, not average). In particular, the list of foreign variants should not be duplicated as it is here and here. The issue of merging has also been previously discussed here. —  AjaxSmack  02:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. As mentioned above by AjaxSmack, John Doe is not synonymous with Average Joe, neither is Joe Bloggs, I don't know about the rest. Joe Bloggs is the British/Australasian version of John Doe. Joe Bloggs could be merged with John Doe, but neither should be merged with Average Joe. -- Patchy1 REF THIS BLP 08:21, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I needed to find what Joe Schmo means in English as I could not understand an English text fully without knowing why and how this name is used. The fact that Joe Schmo has "his own" article saved me a lot of time. Now I a) Can undestand the text I was reading fully. b) Found an equivalent in my mother language (Czech: Pepa Lopata). c) I am going to study the other names separately, as soon as I have finished reading the original text that lead me here. Thank you for keeping it separately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.100.0.70 (talk) 19:01, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Patchy1. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:36, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Who is Joe?

This article did not indicate the etymology behind why the name "Joe" was chosen to be connected with the adjective "Average." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.201.143.119 (talk) 14:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Unrelated

This has lots of stuff about average people/families, but not much about How Average Joe came to be, or what he signifies. What's going on??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.29.165 (talk) 00:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Variants in other languages / Russian

Who the hell is Вася Тапочкин (Vasya Tapochkin)? Never heard this one… Stansult (talk) 01:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Australia

Never heard of Fred Nurk or Joe Farnarkle.--Jeffro77 (talk) 16:45, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't add up

Married couples with no children were the most common constituting 28.7% of households. It would nonetheless be inaccurate to state that the average American lives in a childless couple arrangement as 71.3% do not.

The first figure is households, the second is being applied to people. Stevage 10:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC) Also, the whole statement is wrong. Of course, it doesn't make sense to say that the average American is childless. Average usually implies median or mean. 0 is neither. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greensto (talk • contribs) 16:21, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be fixed or removed soon? 2011 guys. This is 2013.2A00:C440:20:151:9096:BE43:4191:DCA8 (talk) 17:18, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Income and education

I realize this article was probably written by U.S. people and for U.S. people, and so it should probably fit the U.S. way of comprehending the concept of the average citizen, but in my opinion there are a few quirks that should be fixed (and why is this a good article? I see crude excel graphs, fuzzy, inconclusive discussions and too much information with little actual relevance).

First of all, the income section seems slightly misleading. The first paragraph is fine, but why would you in the second paragraph present numbers that exclude "those employed part-time, students, working teenagers, retirees and the unemployed"? By removing all of these people you really aren't talking about the average citizen. This section reads like an attempt to make U.S. Americans look more affluent than they are (and if it isn't then I think a clarification is needed), which is quite symptomatic of how the U.S. likes to portray itself internationally. Similarly, why are not "very young and old persons" considered to be relevant to the concept of the average U.S. citizen? Certainly, Average Joe will during his lifetime experience being very young and very old.

The education section seems similarly apologetic (the economical and educational achievements of the U.S. are really quite decent and there's no reason for being defensive, or whatever this is). This section also starts out fine, but why is there a need to discuss the increasing educational achievement? Does it really need to be said that Average Joe is more educated today than a century ago and that this trend continues today? That information is pretty much a given for any country's average citizen, and it isn't a piece of information that is useful for constructing the present Average Joe. It is useful for predicting the future Joe and should be presented as such if one really thinks this information belongs here. Also, why exactly is this paragraph included?:

"The income of an individual with some college education was also similar to the overall mean personal income. The mean personal income for someone with some college education was $31,054, compared to $32,140 for the overall population, age 25 or older with earnings. The mean income for a high school graduate, on the other hand, was considerably below the national mean personal income estimated at $26,505.[22]"

I think these two sections should be rewritten in a sober way and made more concise. P.S. if my syntax or wording seems weird it's because I'm Norwegian.

Finally, WP:NOTSTATSBOOK

If no-one has anything to say about this I will come back eventually and do some deletions, so please have your say and tell me what I'm missing.

2A00:C440:20:151:9096:BE43:4191:DCA8 (talk) 18:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

At least in common usage where I'm from, Average Joe, Joe Schmoe, etc. is assumed to have a full-time job and a family at home, which is why the very young, the elderly, part-time workers, etc. are excluded. An "Average Joe" isn't average in the mathematical sense, he's average in the sense that he's "just a normal guy", the type of person you'd find if you walked up to the first man you saw on the street, if you catch my meaning. I actually think the article contains far too much information about the statistical average US citizen that distracts the reader from the actual meaning of the idiom. It just clutters and bloats what should be a three-paragraph article (at MOST) in my opinion, and duplicates information that can easily be found else where within Wikipedia and which isn't relevant to the term in question. No real person is actually average in more than a few categories, that's the whole point of saying Joe Schmoe instead of just saying average American. I may need to make an RfC about removing the bulk of this article and replacing it with an actual definition of the slang term, instead of just a confusing mish-mash of statistical data and the actual definition.     — QuintessentialAnomaly ^[talk] 09:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

G Raymond (Canada)

"G Raymond" should be removed. He is a real person (George Raymond at VISA in Montréal) and the shortened version of his name is only used generically on the example card for Chargex/Visa. Nowhere else is his a placeholder name. K7L (talk) 14:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry agree this should be merged with Joe Bloggs , 3 jul 2013 (UTC)

Good article?

I came here looking for an example of a GA in the area of society and culture, and find myself perplexed. The article begins with a term and assumes that there is a commonsense definition which is clear and meaningful, but then proceeds to present demographic data without any references from the academic disciplines that study society and culture. There is nothing to indicate that such a construct (an average American man/woman) is theoretically meaningful.FriendlyFred (talk) 20:29, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, most of the demographic information should be removed., or the whole article should just be replaced with a redirect to John Q. Public which is a direct synonym and has a much better written article, although still minorly incorrect in many places.     — QuintessentialAnomaly ^[talk] 09:10, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

2005

This data is 11 years old! It is no longer accurate.98.210.246.205 (talk) 01:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

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GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Average Joe/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

• Article does not meet requirement 2b. of WP:GA?, sources are reliable but severely outdated, most by a decade or more.
• Article does not meet requirement 3b., "article stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail". The article misses the meaning of "Average Joe" and conflates the term with "average American" by including largely irrelevant demographic information about the average American. These terms are not synonyms.

I think it qualifies as "a long way off" from both of those criteria, so I'm quick failing it.

This article should be a definition of the term "Average Joe". As it stands now, the article is cluttered and bloated with demographic information which is mostly irrelevant to the meaning of "Average Joe". (See John Q. Public, Average Joe's direct synonym)

Average Joe is the "man on the street", the "man on the Clapham Omnibus", etc. He is not a mathematical average. The whole point of saying "Average Joe" instead of "the average American" is to elicit the general idea of "averageness", without the mathematical rigor. There are no real, live human beings who perfectly fit the average, the term "Average Joe" and its variants are meant to reflect that fact.     — QuintessentialAnomaly ^[talk] 12/24/2020

I am implementing this delist following no responses to the above, and concurrence at WT:GAR. CMD (talk) 09:35, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Ref error

@JohnAdams1800: please fill in the ref that you named "CPS 2015". It's currently undefined. -- Fyrael (talk) 03:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)