Talk:Rand Paul/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Designate (talk · contribs) 01:37, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   The word Paul appears 171 times in this article. That number should be cut in half. Aside from that, the prose isn't great but it's good enough for GA.

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

   The committee assignments are uncited. They also need a timeframe (e.g. "113th Congress, 2013-2015"), since the assignments change every two years and can become outdated quickly.

   C. No original research:

   I'm baffled by this sentence: "Although the Paul campaign later removed the video from YouTube, Paul's Democratic general election competitor put it back up on October 20 after Paul had taken exception to the Democrat making an issue out of Paul's own college-age actions." The citation just links to the removed video—it's the first time I've seen a dead URL be intentionally used as a citation for the fact that a web page was taken down. This whole sentence should be removed, though; it's entirely WP:OR and superfluous.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   What happened to the 2010 general election? The word Conway is only mentioned once in the whole article. The campaign itself should be at least a paragraph, if not a whole section. What about the debates? The coverage? The issues? The polling? And I mean the real campaign, not the two anecdotes, speaking of which:

   B. Focused:

   The BP oil spill and civil rights sections are much too detailed. It's undue weight. They should be a few sentences maximum, summarize them. The BP oil spill section is particularly excessive: it mentions he "generated some controversy" but doesn't even mention what the controversy was or who was offended—the word controversy implies a debate, not just the fact that he said a thing about a thing. Unless it affected the campaign I'm not sure why the BP quote needs to even be mentioned.

   The CRA quote got a lot more coverage, so it should certainly be mentioned, but it only needs to be a few sentences, not a whole subsection.

   The entire "Political positions" section is undue weight and it should be greatly reduced. Remember this is a biography, not a voter's guide. Paul is notable for what he's done in the Senate (and elsewhere), not for having a list of opinions. See other GAs and FAs on major figures like Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, John McCain. The political positions sections are general overviews; they're not split into dozens of sections to cover every conceivable issue, and they take a back seat to the biographical and career information which is what Wikipedia is meant to focus on.

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

   The campaign section doesn't read as neutral right now, for the reasons I mentioned.

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   The article is pretty thorough and well-cited, and there's been plenty of talk page debate to get it into a good shape. But there are balance issues that need to be fixed. I'll put this on hold. If you have any comments feel free to let me know. Thanks!

   That's a big improvement, especially for the campaign section. I still feel the "Political positions" section is too long for the reasons I mentioned. —Designate (talk) 00:59, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

   Much better. With the latest revision I think this article meets the GA criteria. Good job. Designate (talk) 21:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)