Wikipedia:Peer review/2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries/archive1

U.S. Democratic Party presidential nomination, 2004

I think this article is getting pretty close to featured article status, and I'd like to encourage a new look at it. I spent a fair amount of time this summer piecing together a coherent narrative of the election from the timeline articles and so on. Other contributors built a state-by-state results table that's a fantastic example of how to present complicated data in a way that tells a story of its own. -- RobLa 00:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of great things about this article. However, there could be more sources for some statements -- e.g., "Edwards' late stage momentum, as well as his departure from the negative campaigning which characterized other leading candidates, carried him into a surprising second place finish in Iowa..." Who suggested that (I do remember it was the CW at the time, of course.) The "implicit" Carter endorsement of Dean was very controversial, indeed, I think the Dean people said Carter had endorsed, but then Carter later said he wasn't going to endorse anyone (a bit of embarassment for the Dean campaign.) Also missing the "Dean scream" moment post-Iowa. What else, hmmm, there seems to be little mention of the televised debates, could possibly be expanded. Great table! Despite my criticisms, this is a terrific article. Sdedeo 01:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the speedy feedback. Comments:

Re: Edwards. This section was copied from the John Edwards article, and is probably the spot in the article which needs a little tighter integration, but I haven't figured out exactly how I'd want to change it. Regarding the lack of negative campaigning, I found an NY Times article which should be a good source: [1]. I'll work it into the bibliography. Please look out for others you think need a citation.
Re: I don't remember that level of controversy around the Carter quasi-endorsement, and I was paying pretty close attention back then. The campaign itself didn't spin it that way: [2]
Re: "the scream". I debated whether or not to include this. I fought pretty hard to make sure it was included in the Howard Dean article, which bordered on breaking out into an edit war. But, of course, that was when Dean was still nominally a contender, so it hopefully won't be as controversial now. In this article, I don't think it deserves more than a sentence or two, if that, and it's hard to explain in less than that. I'll give it a shot, though.

Again, thanks for the feedback -- RobLa 01:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Carter. I just remember overhearing an NPR interview with Trippi talking about that being a bit of a screwup, but I think you're right, it's definitely not a major thing. A great thing about the article is that it stays focused on just providing a timeline and large-scale overview.
Good luck sourcing! I'll take a look later to see if I can find anything else. I don't think events need to be sourced, but opinions often do.
Dean scream. To me it seems like a big deal; to put it another way, at the time, it seemed to many outside observers to seal his fate; at least it definitely gave legs to a lot of things that were only under the surface before. I remember "dialing for Dean" for a few later primaries, and that came up a lot. Perhaps you could find a newspaper article from just after that talks about it?

Best of luck. Sdedeo 08:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely recomment including the Dean Scream. Fairly or unfairly, it eliminated him as a viable choice for many voters. Johntex\^talk 23:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I included it, and addressed all of the other specific feedback. There's probably still some citation work that needs to be done, but I'm not planning on doing that right away. -- RobLa 07:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OK - here we go!

~~First sentence is a one sentence paragraph! That's a no-no :).~~
~~For an article of this length you need a good two solid paragraphs. Right now you've got two ultra-short paragraphs and a medium-sized one~~
"Candidates enter the race" - ~~needs a better title~~. Too many paragraphs that are too short
~~"Nomination race overshadowed by Iraq War" - POV title. Paragraphs here are OK size but could be better~~
In general you need longer and less paragraphs
"Candidates" - too list-heavy, needs an intro and context
"Vice Presidential candidates" - maybe this should be a subsection. too list-heavy and could use a better intro or something
~~"State-by-state results" - One sentence paragraph. Also, that table is fantastic, but it's also HUGE - anything you can do to trim the size without losing info is good~~
~~"External links" - "Footnotes" should be a seperate section. Also, you should probably use lists instead of subsections there~~

Hope that helps, take care! Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 09:39, 30 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback, Ryan. Comments:

Re: introduction. I beefed this up and reworded a bit, hopefully addressing the issue.
Re: Paragraph length in general. This article says a little bit about a lot of topics, because that's the nature of this particular subject. That's naturally going to lead to smaller paragraphs. We could say more about those subjects, but then we'd have to cut subjects, which I don't want to do. For example, the Dean Scream should be the first thing to go if we need to edit out whole paragraphs.
Re: "Candidates enter the race" title - will change to "The race begins" or something like that
Re: "Nomination race overshadowed by Iraq War" title - can change to "Iraq War", I suppose. I don't really think that there's a NPOV problem with the current title, though. It does state a point of view, but it's quite neutral and innocuous, I would think. I'm not going to put up a big fight for it, though.
Re: candidates list. will provide intro. Needs to stay as a list or table - converting to prose would lose information. That said, it admittedly needs organizing work.
Re: VP candidates. My inclination would be to nuke this altogether, perhaps including a bit of prose above.
Re: State-by-state results: I really don't see any good way of altering this table.
Re: external links/footnotes - fixed

I'm probably going to putter around here and there on this article for a little while, as I've got some other projects I've got to finish up on. If no one else gets around to finishing up work for FA status, I'll eventually get around to it. Thanks for the input -- RobLa 07:11, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As for the paragraph length in general it's not too bad anymore. I'd still try to combine them any chance I got though. It doesn't look too bad though - great work! Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 15:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]