Talk:Socialist Party of Washington

Note to relatives

If a relative of an active participant in the Socialist Party of Washington should happen to find this page, please do not hesitate to get in touch if you can provide additional information, family photos, etc. which may be incorporated into the public domain. Thanks! —Tim Davenport, Early American Marxism website, Corvallis, OR ShoeHutch@gmail.com Carrite (talk) 16:34, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Socialist Party of Washington/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: –MuZemike 18:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

MoS issues

• Lead too short – the lead is way too short, given an article of this size. I recommend that the lead be around four paragraphs large, encompassing the main parts of the article.
• Organizational history - Utopian precursors: make it into one single section heading that encompasses the underlying origins or the Socialist Party of Washington
• The "Establishment of the Socialist Party of Washington" should be broken up into two or three separate sections instead of having one section with 13 subsections. That would make it a little easier for readers to break down piecewise.

Prose issues

• There are quite a few instances of noun plus "-ing" throughout the article (i.e. with 55 of the organization's members standing ...) tweak those so you don't have them in there.
• Money pledged for the purchase ... drained the colony's resources. - doesn't make sense what the sentence is talking about at the beginning. Please tweak that sentence to make more sense.
• If this was not the original intent of the founders,... subdivision called "Edgewood". - I'm kind of lost after reading the "If this was not ..." part. My guess is that something is not right with how that is written.
• Is the name of the paper Appeal to Reason or The Appeal to Reason, or were they both interchangeably used?
• "Circle City" was the informal name of a group of buildings near the water. - where it's placed in the "Burley Colony" subsection, it seems a bit out of place. Can it be moved to a better location in the same paragraph or another one?
• By 1900, the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) was established in Washington, probably as a continuation ... - I don't think the word probably is the best choice there and creates an air of mystery among readers. I'd like to see that word replaced with something like presumably or something that doesn't make readers scratch their heads.
• In the "Social Democratic Party of Washington" subsection, you first mention the Social Democratic Party of America being established presumably as a continuation of the Socialist Labor Party, but then you go straight to mentioning the Social Democratic Party of Washington. You may wish to tweak that so that readers are not confused into thinking that they're two separate parties. I'm guessing that the SDP of Washington was founded shortly after the SDP of America, though that's not made explicit enough.
• For all the national hoopla - is not the best choice of words to use there; I recommend changing to something more professional-sounding like Despite national attention or something similar.
• The first sentence in the 4th paragraph of the "Birth of the unified party" subsection (From its earliest days, the Socialist Party of Washington ... to erstwhile voters on the road to a future socialist revolution) is a bit too long and should be split into at least two separate sentences.

Coverage issues

• The article talks exclusively about the "radical faction" of the SPW (the "impossibilists") led by Titus, but what about the more moderate faction, the "constructive socialists"? Is there any additional coverage about them? Did they have a factional leader which could be expanded upon?

Verifiabilty issues

• The colonists worked furiously to construct their own community from nothingness. - unsourced
• Liquidation and the settlement of claims took nearly a decade. - unsourced
• If the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony ... drew national attention. - I just want this to be verified as it sounds like it's OR.
• They argued that, through practical experience, ... ushering in the Cooperative Commonwealth in America. - unsourced
• The Coming Nation continued to beat the drum of publicity for the project. - unsourced
• The colony in Skagit County, near the small town of Edison, was established in 1897. - unsourced
• There were many in the new organization ... concentration of model socialist colonies, however. - unsourced
• The entire second half of the 2nd paragraph in the "Burley Colony" subsection is completely unsourced; as I did combine a few paragraphs to make the prose fuller (feel free to split if you feel it's too long; I won't oppose), I have placed {{citation needed}} tags plus one {{cite quote}} tag where I saw fit.
• The first paragraph of the "Birth of the unified party" subsection is completely unsourced.
• The last sentence in the 4th paragraph of the "Birth of the unified party" subsection is unsourced.
• Public ridicule of this sort at the expense ... were red meat for the faithful. - unsourced
• Such activities doubtlessly helped for foster unity within the state's numerically dominant Seattle local. - not only unsourced, but smacks of OR, and I don't know if that should be included in the article at all.
• The first half of the first paragraph and second half of the second paragraph (marked by {{citation needed}}) of the "Factional war commences" subsection is unsourced, but I have a feeling you intended to source that content under "Result of State Referendums in Washington," The Socialist [Seattle], whole no. 146 (May 24, 1903), pg. 2. If so, then just remove the tag in the first paragraph and add an inline citation at the end of second paragraph for consistency.
• There are three passages in the "Decline and move of Titus' newspaper" subsection which are unsourced, marked to {{citation needed}}. Note that I did combine quite a few paragraphs there.

Other things to remember

Note: This is not counted against the GAN, but for future reference.

• Per MOS:QUOTE, unless the puncutation is clearly part of the quotation or is a separate sentence, the end-quotation should precede the end-punctuation. See that section for examples.
• Per MOS:IMAGE, you're not supposed to force specific sizes on thumbnails, as that breaks accessibility (i.e. it prohibits users from resizing thumbnails in My Preferences. Also, for images that are longer than wide, it is a good idea (not a requirement, but helps for layout) to use the "upright" parameter for such images.
• Also, per MOS:IMAGE, faces of people usually look toward the article (not "away"), except in situations where layout prevents this.
• Per WP:DASH, endashes get a space to the left and right of it, while emdashes do not have spaces.
• You only need to use one inline citations at the end of the whatever is backed by said citation, unless there are quotations involved (in which a little more discretion is used). There were a couple of redundant inline citations which I did combine.

Conclusions

Under review. Since the article is over 100KB in size, this may take a while to review, so be patient. –MuZemike 18:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Done through the "Birth of a unified party" subsection. –MuZemike 20:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

failed. I'm sorry, but after going through about 1/3 of the article, there are too many issues in which I see, especially in the prose quality and verifiability concerns. Rather than drawing this GAN out, I recommend that you do the following:

• Do a good copyedit of the article all the way through.
• Nominate the article for a peer review so that you can get feedback from someone else and be able to get other issues corrected in which you may not necessarily see.
• Optionally, nominate the article for a copyedit by the Guild of Copy Editors. That can help tighten up the prose a bit more.

After doing that, and everything looks tight, feel free to renominate for GAN. Regards, –MuZemike 18:02, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Pro forma COI declaration

Although my real name and WP handle are already linked on this page, a brief note here to reiterate the connection as I have footnoted to a non-commercial, scholarly blog which I edit. I'm working on a six volume book project gathering the speeches and articles of Eugene V. Debs and the blog is produced in connection with that. The blog itself includes inline footnotes to primary sources and should be regarded as a reliable secondary source, in my opinion. —Tim Davenport /// Carrite (talk) 19:05, 10 May 2018 (UTC)