Talk:Political Appointments System

Section of salary comparisons

I have temporarily commented out what I feel to be a problematic section with regards to WP:NPOV pending a fix or access to the actual source. I consider the section is highly problematic as the comparisons are not attributed but need to be to stay within policy; ditto the other criticisms and comparisons. I do not have access to the source, as the article (curiously) does not appear to be in the print version. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The idea of NPOV is to express all views. Good or bad. The source is available online. Whether it should be mentioned, doesn't matter. You can equally find sources saying the people complain about it being a waste of tax payer money. That shows the same meaning. Benjwong (talk) 03:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have put it in plain English. I'm not saying I object to the comparisons, or noting there have been criticism. These are opinions and value judgements, and I just want to avoid it the opinions looking like syntheses. Also, when citing comments, we are supposed to avoid weasel words. So, we need to put who criticised, and to a lesser degree who compared those salary levels. Ohconfucius (talk) 05:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Source

The source talks in general terms about the high overall level of salaries, and does not mention the specific salaries. Ohconfucius (talk) 05:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Political Appointments System in Hong Kong/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   I believe there is a consistent capitalization error throughout the article: While you would call a person Undersecretary Chen Wei-on (capitalized), you would not capitalize an undersecretary or the undersecretaries. The word undersecretary is a common noun, and is therefore not capitalized, unless part of a proper noun (i.e. used as a title). This goes for a number of other positions as well. This sentence doesn't make sense to me: "The salaries of undersecretaries were roughly the same as those of directorate four civil servants, with a review in two years, but with no guarantee of a pay rise." The section "Comments of the Chinese leadership" is rather short, and should be moved into another section, or at least knocked down to ===.

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):

   See below.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   This article seems to be very opposed to the scheme, and in my eyes fails NPOV. Both the construction of the individual sections (in relation to order and weight of arguments) and the overall over focus on controversy in my opinion makes the article biased as opposing the scheme. Specifically, the article must reflect that both sides have valid arguments, and not construct the prose to let one side "winn" the debate between sentences in the paragraph. This also relates to the vast amount of prose covering opposing voice of opinion, and considerably less used on supporters of the matter. The lead also fails to mention the arguments of the appointers. I know it is difficult to create NPOV content covering political issues; but to overcome the articles bias, more pro-content must be added.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   There are no images in the article. Surely something must be available, if only of some people involved in the matter, or even an illustration image (such as the seat of the Chief Executive).

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Placing on hold. Please fix up the text as mentioned, find at least an illustration picture, if not some of the involved people, and take a look again to make it less biased. If you have any comments or questions don't hesitate to speak up; and I you want help on structure on the NPOV bit, I can also be of assistance. Happy editing! Arsenikk ^(talk) 20:59, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

   Sorry for this talking forever; I have been too busy in real life to conduct GA reviews. The improvements have addressed all concerns, but I am still uncertain as to the NPOV issue. I will therefore ask for a second opinion on the matter. Personally I feel there is too little opinions from the side of the executive branch, and their arguments to support the office in question. Other than this it is a brilliant article. Arsenikk ^(talk) 13:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

   Here's a second opinion: I agree that the article probably doesn't contain enough arguments in support of this system to have the NPOV needed for GA status. I hope that the nominator of the article is simply inactive due to the past lack of response to your request for a second opinion (84 days!), and isn't completely inactive. I say, put the article back on hold, and if the nominator is completely inactive in this article for 7 days, fail the article. Sort of harsh, maybe, but no point letting the article sit on hold if nobody is going to fix it. I hope I've helped, and I hope I'm not being too forward. Robert Skyhawk (Talk) 05:42, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

And here's a third opinion: this article should be failed. When the nominator returns and considers these comments, he/she can further improve the article and then re-submit. A failed nomination is not a negative thing when constructive suggestions have been given. I'm going to go ahead and fail the article. --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:29, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for all the feedback. Apologies: part of the reason for my not responding earlier is that I had not been watching this transcluded page. I will certainly try to further improve the article, but it's becoming rather hard to find any more from the executive branch, because this really has been an extremely contentious issue in HK, and indeed very bungled in delivery and execution. The govt has been repeating the same or very similar arguments, without advancing the debate much further. The sheer scale of government incompetence rarely seen in the west, lack of accountable govt, and their ability to ride out the storm has contributed to this appearing to be one-sided. Do you think it would help if I put in more instances where the Chief Executive or other govt official has reiterated such and such? Ohconfucius (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I would say there are two main POV issues in the article. First, there is (as you point out) an oversourcing of the opposition's opinion. This may be necessary simply because the Chief Executive's hold a better tactical position by saying little, and thus there may be little comments from them. However, there are also instances in the article where I feel the prose itself is POV. This is both instances such as "No sooner that the nationality row had been quelled, another one erupted over appointees' individual quantum salary levels, as well as whether they were justified." (excellent prose in a non-neutral souce, such as a book, but not the best in an encyclopedia). There are also instances where the text has arguments in the sequence opposition–position–opposition. This tactical build-up of the argumentation will tend to be in favor of the first and last mentioned party, drowning the arguments of the middle party (who loose their credibility in the eyes of the reader since they both are presented making defensive arguments, and then have their defensive arguments countered). When this is repeated several times in the article, if seems obvious to me which side the author(s) have taken, and thus the article fails to be neutral. Since this is otherwise an excellent article, I would recommend finding some more arguments from executives, and then hand the NPOVing over to for instance the Guild of Copy Editors. Writing neutral articles on heated political topics is very difficult, and perhaps the most challenging that can be done on Wikipedia. Good luck, and I will be watching over this page, so please just ask on the talk page if there are instances you want help with. Arsenikk ^(talk) 18:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

• OK, thanks, I see the problem wasn't as simple as the lack of arguments on behalf of the government, but also where they were placed. Some of this was to ensure that events stayed more or less in chron order. I asked for help on this article because this is a one-editor article, so my personal prejudices also came into play. Please note that I have added further huge chunks of text to the article yesterday, and will continue to work on the issues you described. Thanks for all your helpful advice. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)