Talk:2016 United States presidential election/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Babegriev (talk · contribs) 06:02, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Additional Comments
Let me preface this with an apology if anything here is repeated from above. When conducting this review, I simultaneously took general article notes and notes specific to GA criteria. I will also say that this article is very in-depth and is a good resource for anyone looking to study the 2016 general election.

Lead Section
Everything is fairly eloquently written, and the introductory paragraph is remarkable, the content of the lead degrades progressively the deeper you get into it. When assessing this article, I followed the style of User:Hamiltonstone who reviewed the 2008 presidential election GA nomination, and assessed this from the perspective of a non-US reader or a reader who lacks significant political knowledge. This mentality is going to be especially applied to the lead section. The term "free media" could mean very different things depending on your prior knowledge on the topic. Is it media that has no cost? Is it media that can be practiced without restriction? Is it media that is paid for by someone else? The context from this paragraph does not suffice to make the term common knowledge. I would advise a link to Earned media is included, if no additional context is provided. I digress that the citations provide more clarity, however, for a reader whose first experience with the 2016 presidential election is this article, they should not have to jump into citations for an easy-to-digest executive summary in the lead section. On the topic of impartiality, the section does a good job (for the most part) at providing cases for and against either ticket. I would advise including a reference to concerns regarding Hillary Clinton's health during the campaign alongside the other arguments for opposition, however I will defer to the consensus of the talk page. Finally, there is one failing condition per GA criterion 2b, being the lack of citation for a direct quotation for the very last sentence of the lead section. While I have no doubt as to the legitimacy, 2b requires all direct quotations to have an in-line citation to it's source. Please consider revising.

Primary process Section
This section seems extremely out of place and does not fit the style of the rest of the article. I was expecting it to summarize the primary process in the united states as a whole, just as the Background section gave context to the presidential election process in the united states. It seems as if the contents of this section could be better integrated into the "primaries" section of each party under the Nominations heading. I like the idea of having the primary section there, as context should be given regarding the primary election overall, however, as it is written currently, it seems clunky and does not match the flow of the rest of the article. I would consider revision.

Overall Linkrot
WP:LR is not a disqualifying criteria for GAs. That being said, it would be completely wrong of me to not point out that several of the links that I assessed from the citations lead to dead links. Among the ones I recorded: 243 (Good4Utah), 401 (dcboee), 408 (in.gov), 441 (vtelectionresults), and others that require paid subscriptions that are not appropriately marked (e.g. 244 (Financial Times). Additionally, the sources to the FEC website in the Campaign finance section all go to the same search page instead of their respective result pages for the candidates in question for the election year in question. Archive links ought to be considered and links overall should be reviewed in more depth.

Campaign finance Section
This is another section of the article that caught my eye, particularly the chart. The sources have become so out of date that the numbers in question cannot be verified through the listed sources. While I personally trust whoever originally compiled the figures from these legitimate sources, if archived links are not provided, the data cannot be verified. Also, given that the statistics for the 2016 election have been finalized with both the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics, I would strongly suggest that the data in that table be updated to reflect accurate final sums.

Overall thoughts
As a politically-minded resident of the united states, a lot of this content made sense and was entertaining to read. I think this article is definitely on it's way to earning GA status. Many of the elements that I have held this review for are simple fixes, and with a bit of general cleanup and attention, can be rectified without too much effort. The graphics and other media compliment the content well. The layout, for the most part, is intuitive and easy to follow (excepting the ones I have discussed above). I'd like to conclude that this is not an exhaustive list of comments, but is what I had found thus far and was enough to come to this conclusion. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns and I would be more than happy to reassess this article after the changes above are made.

All the very best,

Babegriev (talk) 06:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC)


 * thanks for the review! I'll work on addressing all of these issues within the next few days. Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 15:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Update 9/8/20
Just an update, I will be taking another in-depth look on the 11th of September to make it an even 14 days after initial review. There are still a few problems that stand out, particularly regarding criteria 2b and 6b. Thank you! --Babegriev (talk) 01:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Secondary GA Review
As per notes I, III, V, and VII under 2b and criterion 6b above, this article does not meet the 6 GA criteria at this point.

--Babegriev (talk) 07:29, 15 September 2020 (UTC)


 * hey, I'm sorry for the lack of progress and very late reply - after making the nomination, I got far busier with school than I anticipated. Anyway, I've addressed pretty much all of the issues you brought up - would you recommend renominating? (not sure of the process here). Thanks Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 05:28, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Elliot, I'm currently in the middle of some college work and will be busy for the next day or two. I have seen this message and I will take a look at the article as soon as possible. I want to take enough time to really look through the article again and give some good feedback. Feel free to give me a shout if there's any concerns. Babegriev (talk) 21:24, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * makes sense, no hurry - I know what it's like to be in the middle of a lot of work myself. Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 16:28, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you immensely for your patience, that was a long wait. As per the initial review, the article overall was very good, and all of the notes that were most important have all been addressed. I cannot find anything after reading through the article, with the exception of the captioning of the party convention map, however, I've gone ahead and made that edit myself since it took a matter of 30 seconds. The article is written from a very neutral perspective, overall, and the few missing citations that would have lead to the slightest implication of bias have been addressed. Article is illustrated very well, and the section organization has since improved. Likewise, the inconsistencies with the voting statistics seem to have been resolved. Besides that, this article seems to be in a very good position for reassessment. Thank you for your contributions, and best of luck.