Talk:2009 New Jersey gubernatorial election/GA1

GA Review

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I'll be conducting this review. I have not yet finished, but here are some comments thus far. Please respond to them line-by-line and I'll strike them as we go along. Good luck!

General

• Regarding the citations, some of them use Template:Cite news and Template:Cite web, and some of them are mere URLs. The latter cites should be changed to the templates.

• Of course. This one will take a while, so I hope you won't mind my putting it off until tomorrow. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Lead

• It was my understanding that in a lead, you only have to cite something that could be met with skepticism, or was such a specific fact that it warranted a citation. But in the first paragraph, you cite simple facts like the names and numbers of challengers, the fact that Christie won, and the percentages. All of these things are more than covered by the body of the article, and cited there. Do you feel these citations are really necessary in the opening paragraph?

 Fixed I agree. I've removed one reference accordingly, moved a couple of others to other places in the article, and left two. The ones I left support some of the numbers given, which I think is a good practice even in the lead, while the other supports a claim that could be considered mildly extraordinary (and therefore is left in per WP:REDFLAG). A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• "While polls taken during most of the campaign showed Christie in the lead, polls taken over the last two weeks leading up to the election showed a much closer race between Corzine and Christie. In these most recent polls, Corzine led in some, Christie led in others, and still others indicated a statistical dead heat." I think this could be worded slightly better. I recommend, "Although most polls taken throughout the campaign indicated Christie was in the lead, the race became much closer in the final two weeks before the election. Near the end of the race, different polls placed both Corzine and Christie in the lead, whereas others described it as a statistical dead heat."

 Fixed Good idea. I changed your sentence a bit, but overall it is better. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Major candidates

• Perhaps you should wikilink "Freeholder" to Board of Chosen Freeholders, since I find most people unfamiliar with New Jersey politics have no idea what a Freeholder is.

 Fixed Good idea. It's easy to forget that only NJ has this particular layer of government. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Other candidates

• You have a mixture of present tense ("is running under") and past tense ("was unanimously selected") in this section. There needs to be consistency, so please make sure everything is changed to past tense.
• This link, this link, this link, this link and this link (currently refs #9, #12, #13, #17 and #19) are all dead. Can you replace them?
• There is also a lack of consistency here in that some of these candidates (Cullen, Leinsdorf, Parson, Stein) are listed in full sentences, whereas the rest are listed in a "Name - Party" sort of format. They should all be the same format, one or the other.
• Can you find a reliable secondary source to replace the primary Gary Steele source? I guess you could argue this source is acceptable, but a newspaper article or some other secondary source would be better.

Write-in candidates

• Again with the tenses. You have present ("is running") and past ("ran a write-in campaign") where they should all be past.
• Again, like the Gary Steele source above, I think this source and this source should probably be replaced with reliable secondary sources if possible.
• What makes this source and this source reliable sources?
• External links within the body of the article, like Johnsonsville Press and Popular Capitalist View, are not allowed and need to be removed. Also, are those news publications, or web sites? If they are the former, they should be italicized?
• The bullet point about Klapper includes a disproportionate amount of information compared to the others. Any particular reason for this? If not, it should be scaled back. Also, the reference to "Mr. Klapper" should just read "Klapper".

Primary Election Candidates

• Again, I see you used politickerNJ.com a number of times here. Can you demonstrate why this is a reliable source, as opposed to some blog or website? It seems to me most of this information could be cited by newspapers or other reliable publications rather than this site anyway...
• All the other candidates without Wikipedia pages are not wikilinked, but for some reason there's a redlink for Jeff Boss. Unless there's a particular reason for this, I'd remove it.
• This link (the one for Merkt) redirects back to the main page, not the article cited. Can you fix that link? If not, remove the URL and use it as an offline source...

More to come! — Hunter Kahn 04:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey, Hunter. I've now returned from Montreal and will begin addressing your concerns shortly. Thanks for doing this review. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 21:15, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• No problem. Sorry, I didn't know you were away. I haven't finished my review yet, but I didn't want to continue until I knew for sure you were going to respond. Thanks! — Hunter Kahn 21:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• And I'm sorry for not getting back to you until now. I guess I wasn't expecting such a prompt response; the last time I nominated an article for GA status, it languished at GAN for about three months before it was reviewed. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

On hold

According to the Linkchecker, there are a lot of dead links—28 all told; another eight need to be formatted. This will not pass GAC unless those can get taken care of. For that, I am imposing a deadline of 8 days. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 15:49, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

• Since the 8 days have come and gone, I'm going to go ahead and fail this for now. But the article has a lot of potential, so please don't get frustrated. Once you fix the above comments and dead links, I'm sure it will be ready to nominate again. Best of luck! — Hunter Kahn 05:08, 13 May 2010 (UTC)