Talk:Kirsten Gillibrand/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Kafziel (talk · contribs) 04:38, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I see one minor POV/OR in the lede: "In both cases, her views were significantly defined by the respective constituency she served at the time (i.e., a heavily conservative congressional district; versus the entire state of New York, which is generally liberal). In the House, she was an opponent of strict gun control, and opposed amnesty for illegal immigrants. In the Senate, she has focused on support for gay rights, authored legislation to crack-down on illegal guns and gun traffickers, and changed her views on immigration."

First of all, we need at least one or two sources that outright state that her views were "defined by her constituency" (rather than just changing her mind based on facts, new information, and so on). Like the support for gay rights; are there sources that show that that was never her view until she reached the Senate, and that her stance on that issue is just a product of her politics? Also, cracking down on illegal guns and traffickers is not necessarily at odds with opposing strict gun control; plenty of gun rights supporters are still opposed to illegal weapons trafficking. Listing that as a flip-flop implies otherwise. All that stuff seems kind of sketchy. It's a margin call, and isn't blatantly wrong, but it's not GA quality.

Other than that, some of the prose could use a minor touch-up here or there, but I don't see anything else that should keep it from GA status. Good coverage, good sources, good pics, no edit warring, no maintenance tags. Looks pretty good to me. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 04:38, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments
In the lead I decided to scrap the differences in her voting record from House to Senate because I felt it added undue weight, and didn't seem NPOV. I think the article's met all the qualifications so feel free to start. Grammarxxx (What'd I do this time?) 05:43, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Dead links
One last thing: A few dead links, which you can see highlighted in red at the bottom of this page. If you can either replace or remove them, I think it will be ready for listing. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 15:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done, ready to be reviewed. Grammarxxx (What'd I do this time?) 02:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I disagree with the promotion of this article to GA status. Had I felt it deserved it to be a GA, I would have nominated myself. There are a number of spelling, grammar, and clear truncation errors. I realize I went into a lot of detail in some sections, which probably deserved to be condensed, but a clear consequence of doing so is losing the flow. It also is the reason for a lot of the grammar and wording errors/weirdness. The other thing is this article is missing a lot of content that should be in the tenure sections. They shouldn't be so short compared to the election sections (and the elections were notable enough to require the length they have). Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that someone else has taking an ownership role of making this article better, but I think it was a little too fast and requires more input from others. Thoughts?  upstate NYer  21:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a Good Article, not a Featured Article. By its nature, Good Article status should be relatively quick and informal. Sure, there are improvements that could be made; if it had been nominated for FA, I would have opposed. But it wasn't. The article may not be perfect, but it's still pretty good, and GA status doesn't confer any magical protection on this version of the page. GA is supposed to be fast and it is not supposed to require input from lots of other editors. That's why we invented it.
 * By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by "Had I felt it deserved it to be a GA, I would have nominated myself". Am I missing something? Looking at the page history, I don't see a substantive edit from you since early August. Was Grammarxxx supposed to get your permission to nominate it? On what basis? That's a very strange remark to see coming from a fellow admin, as surely you are aware that nobody owns an article. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 22:08, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I totally hear you on your comments regarding GA expectations. I have a number of GAs and FAs under my belt and have gone through various levels of reviews when it comes to GAs (good reviews and bad reviews). Maybe I just hold myself to a higher bar when it comes to what I submit as a GAN. But I do think that grammar and spelling expectations are and should be similar between FAs and GAs (not prose quality or "brilliant-ness", but we need to at least meet MOS requirements). But my main concern with this article is completeness. Having made most of the content-building edits (regardless of whether it was before August), I know the content that I never got to (content that was missed by future editors as well). What I'm saying here is that while I clearly don't own the article, I do know the article very well. I know what is there and what is missing and the time commitment it takes to get the missing information (the time commitment is what kept this article at the state it was when I last updated it significantly). I was just looking at the GAC and noted citation 7. I'm not sure if that's new or I never saw it before, but I guess it does agree with your logic somewhat. I find that unfortunate, to be honest. Based on that you could write a biography of Lincoln and leave out the part about his assassination. It's just a shame that we cover some areas in this article in (necessary) detail and others with such minimal detail. Based on this article, you'd think the only thing she's done for the last 6 years is campaign. :/  upstate  NYer  01:33, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's as bad as all that; the "tenure" sections have a reasonable amount of detail on what she's been doing for the last six years. Yes, you could write a biography of Lincoln and leave out the part about his assassination. But someone else would soon add the information, because it's important. Since nobody has added anything substantial to this article in quite a while, I took that as an indication that nothing on the level of an assassination was omitted.
 * I'm strongly against holding Good Articles to too high a standard. FA got too hard, so we made GA. If GA gets too hard, eventually that will lead to creating yet another level for "Pretty Good Articles" or some such thing, to serve the purpose GA was meant to do. I already dislike how formalized the GA process has become; it was supposed to be quick recognition without all the piling on. It's just a little green plus sign at the top of the page. It doesn't cost us anything. Anyway, you're free to start a GA review if you want to, but since you're the main contributor and probably would be the one to make the improvements, I don't know why you wouldn't just work on the article instead. At any rate, whatever you decide to do is okay by me. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 14:31, 22 October 2012 (UTC)