Talk:Jaime Herrera Beutler/GA1

GA Review

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

Reviewer: Ammodramus (talk · contribs) 13:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll take this review, with apologies for the length of time that it's languished in the WP:GAC queue. This will take some work, since articles on current politics and politicians are somewhat subject to POV issues. Thanks to User:PrairieKid, both for nominating it back in August and for the forthcoming responses to my suggestions. I'm looking forward to watching this interesting article improve.

I'll go through this article in detail and post a set of critiques in a few days, probably in on the order of 3–7days. Some of the things that strike me on a first run-through as potentially problematic are:

• Well-written criterion: There are places in this article where the prose could be improved. I've touched up a few of these (lowercase "republican", "didn't", "polices assuring that their community athletic programs to have gender equality".
• Citations: I can see several places where these need to be added, including the tables making up the "Electoral history" section.
• Lead section: Doesn't seem to cover the subject adequately; in particular, Herrera Beutler's political views should be summarized there—party affiliation isn't enough.
• Subject's name: "Herrera" and "Herrera Beutler" are both used throughout the text. This needs to be standardized.

I'll add to these; but for now, I'd suggest a run through the article, tightening up prose, looking for places where citations should be added, and double-checking for POV. Ammodramus (talk) 13:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Howdy- Apologies for the wait. I'm still alive and well. Semi-active but looking forward to working on this article and bringing it up to GA status. WP:Real Life has kept me occupied the last few days, but here I am. I'll try to address your comments quickly and concisely. Thank you for taking the time to do this review! I look forward to working with you. PrairieKid (talk) 22:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and glad that you're still around to work on the article. Sympathize re. real life: I'm currently using this review as a pretext for not getting any real-world work done.

I'm sorry that I had to disappoint you on this one. I hope you won't be intimidated by the length of my critique-- whatever good qualities I have, brevity is not among them. The article's definitely got potential, and bringing it to GA would be a valuable contribution to WP. I'll keep this one on my watchlist, and I look forward to seeing it progress. Good luck! Ammodramus (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Articles about current politicians and political issues can be difficult to get to GA level: they draw edits from a lot of people, who vary widely in their writing ability and understanding of Wikipolicies like NPOV and NOR. I'm afraid that this one isn't ready for GA yet, and it'll take substantial work to get it there. I hope you'll continue to work on it, and will renominate it after you've addressed the issues below; it'd be a very good thing to have more high-quality articles about current members of Congress.

I haven't gone through the complete review process, since it'd clearly take a good deal of work to get the article to GA. In particular, I haven't spot-checked citations for copyvios and for fidelity to sources.

• 1. Well-written

• Clear, concise prose; spelling and grammar OK

--Article uses "Herrera" and "Herrera Beutler" somewhat interchangeably. This needs to be standardized, in one of two ways: either her current name (HB) throughout; or "Herrera" for events preceding her name change, "HB" thereafter.

Will change to Herrera at beginning of Early Life section (as it is her birth name), but will change all others to Herrera Beutler. PrairieKid (talk) 00:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

--Organization of article is somewhat ill-defined. We're told about HB taking her husband's name before we're told about the marriage; and the daughter with Potter's syndrome shows up in two different places. I'd suggest a more chronological approach, with the marriage, the name-change, and the daughter appearing at the appropriate times rather than being exiled to a "Personal life" section.

First mention of both affect tenure. (Her name was legally changed to her husbands for the first. The first about her daughter concerned how Abigail's birth would affect her career.) The second were how they affected her personally. PrairieKid (talk) 00:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

--Same problem with "Tenure" (in US House) and "Political positions" sections: material seems to be somewhat randomly distributed among these.

Not sure I understand here. Tenure is what she has done; political positions are her basic beliefs. Can you be more specific? PrairieKid (talk) 00:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Specifically, the penultimate paragraph of "Tenure", beginning "On January 17, 2012..." appears to be more appropriate for "Political positions", as describing her overall voting tendency (as opposed to specific votes on specific issues).

Something I didn't bring up earlier, but that I'll mention here, is that we don't really have a self-description of HB. Do we have any sources in which she says what she thinks are the really big issues annd where she stands on them, and/or describes her own political orientation?

• Complies with MOS re. lead sections, layout, words to watch, list incorporation

--Lead is probably too short for an article of this length; omits important aspects (e.g. general description of HB's political stance) and includes minor details (e.g. service as Senior Legislative Aide). Needs to be rewritten, focusing on most important aspects of article.

Can rewrite lead. PrairieKid (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

--Need to convert in-text external link (to map of 18th district) to citation; I'd suggest a brief text description of the district, with the map cited as its source.

Where...? PrairieKid (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Section "Washington State House of Representatives", subsection "Elections". Ammodramus (talk) 00:53, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

--Section "Committee assignments" under Wash. State House only lists three committees; this would be very readable in prose format, so per WP:EMBED, should be presented thus rather than as a bullet-list.

 Not doneThat isn't standard for politicians. Will keep as is. PrairieKid (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• No copyright issues

• 2. Verifiable with no OR

• 2a. List of references, in accordance with WP:FNNR
• 2b. Inline citations for: direct quotes, statistics, published opinions, controversial statements, BLP issues

--In section "Early life...", need a citation for "Senior Legislative Aide": this title has been called into question by a blogger. I haven't investigated said blogger to find out how fringe-y he/she is, but when in doubt, add citation. Check capitalization on that title as well: a Google search for ("senior legislative aide") appears to return more lowercase than uppercase uses.

 Done Found cite. Fixed. PrairieKid (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

--In section "Washington State House of Representatives", subsection "Elections", need a citation for statement that Richard Curtis "resigned amid a sex scandal".

--The material in the first part of the "Political positions" paragraph needs a citation. I suspect that it was originally all sourced to VoteSmart, and then someone inserted another statement, breaking the connection between the earlier statements and the citation. This needs to be checked, and citation(s) placed on the material ending with "better known as Obamacare".

Most of that was done during my little hiatus. Will go back and rework. PrairieKid (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

--In section "Electoral history", need citations for the data in the 2010 and 2012 tables

 Done

• 2c. No OR

--In section on 2010 campaign, sentence "Although she received support from state Republican leaders... Herrera stressed her independence..." looks like WP:SYNTH. The cited article doesn't make the "supported by prominent Republicans, but holds fast to her independence" point. Support from Republican leaders is OK; quote about independence is OK; connecting them with "Although..." is synthesis.

• 3. Broad coverage: addresses all main aspects; stays focused

--It's not clear whether the "Tenure" section for HB's stint in the state legislature satisfies this. We've got a description of her first bill, sourced to a GOP website; and of her vote on SB5967, sourced to a story about legislative action at about that time. I don't know whether these measures are widely regarded as the most significant of her legislative career, or whether they (especially 5967) were inserted because the inserting WP editor(s) regarded them as significant. I'd be more comfortable with something sourced to a major news source, looking over her entire state-Senate career and picking out issues X, Y, and Z as the salient ones. A candidate profile from her first run for US Congress might be a good place to look.

--Similar problem with the account of the 2010 election. The paragraph that treats the issues covered in the campaign (at this writing, the third paragraph in the section, beginning "Herrera pledged to provide solutions...") is sourced to two press releases by Herrera and a Columbian story dated July 23, 2010: so 3–4 months before the election. We don't have a neutral-sourced statement about which issues were the most discussed in the campaign, and we don't have anything on Heck's campaign. I'd suggest checking for news articles written immediately after the election, doing post-mortems on the various races, and seeing what they identified as the prinicpal issues and the turning points in the campaign.

--The 2012 election needs more coverage. There appears to be a story here that's not being told: in a district that'd recently been represented by a Democrat, and whose WP page describes it as one that can go to either party, the D's apparently nominated somebody too obscure to rate a WP article and let HB, who appears to be a fairly deep-red Republican, walk away with the seat. There's a see-also link to the article about the 2012 House elections in Wash., but the information isn't in there. We also need something about the issues in the primaries and in the general election.

• 4. NPOV

--In section "Political positions", sentence re. Paul Ryan budget needs rewriting: describes it as "changed Medicare to be a voucher-system", whereas source indicates that description as "voucher system" was used by opponents of the budget, and that Herrera Beutler disagreed with that characterization. Sentence also describes bill as lowering taxes for highest earners, but fails to mention HB's assertion that it would "close many loopholes enjoyed by those corporations".

• 5. Stable: basically, no edit wars

--Article history shows no major changes in about a month

• 6. Images

--Two images, which seems sufficient for article; both tagged with US copyright status (PD).

Not a GA issue, but there seems to be a lot of variation in the citation formatting. There are a few bare-URL citations, and some that only give the newspaper name and date. It'd be a better article if the citation formatting were standardized, and if all citations included (when possible) author names, article titles, periodical names, publication dates, etc.

Again, I hope that you'll keep up your efforts to push this article toward GA status. It'll take some work, but WP would be a better place if there were more good articles about currently active national politicians. Thanks for your work on it thus far-- Ammodramus (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Woh, woh, woh... Hold on a second, the problems above are very simple and easy to fix. I definitely think I could get this up to GA status very quickly if you would put it on hold. There aren't any massive issues. Could you possibly reopen the review and give me a week (or even less) to fix the problems. I really don't see why this was quick failed. Very few nominations are not at least given a small period to fix mistakes, and this is far better than those that typically do. I've worked religiously on this article for almost a year (no major events have happened within the last month) and am more than willing to spend the next week improving it further. I nominated this nearly 5 months ago, and had an understandable period of inactivity. That does not mean I am not able to contribute. Please, give me some time to fix the article. Otherwise, I will just fix the problems and put it up for reassessment, which is simply bureaucratic. PrairieKid (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Publishing a few responses. Will continue now. PrairieKid (talk) 00:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC) Again, publishing a few more. This time, I do need to take a short break. Will be back later. PrairieKid (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey PrairieKid, thanks for your work on this one. It's your right to put this up for reassessment if you like, but FWIW, I agree with Ammodramus's decision to suggest this one be revised and resubmitted. The discussion of the elections seems clearly incomplete--it's unlikely that there were no important issues in either, or no significant criticism of Herrera Beutler--and will need serious rewriting to fix, and these aren't the only issues here.

This isn't any disrespect to the good work you've done on this one so far or hopefully will continue to do; it's just a reflection that this one still has significant work left to do, and this work is best done outside the GA process and brought before a fresh reviewer. And of course, it's just two people's takes, so if you want to get more opinions through a GAR or by resubmitting immediately to GAN, no hard feelings. Thanks again for all you're doing to expand our politics coverage, and I hope you'll be enjoying some good Thanksgiving leftovers tonight-- Khazar2 (talk) 00:57, 29 November 2013 (UTC)