Talk:United States vice-presidential debate, 2016

Concerns about tone and undue weight
Yesterday, I removed most of the content from the "Debate" section of this article, as it almost entirely consisted of original research. The primary author of this article, Vermicious Knids? reverted me, asked that I bring any further concerns to the talk page, and has since made some changes to the content. He/she added some referencees and addressed some concerns that I had with neutrality, but there are still issues with tone and undue weight. I respect Vermicious Knids' desire to have a discussion about this and also see that he/she is a fairly new editor. So I'll explain some of my concerns.

While I'll admit that I haven't been heavily involved with any politically-themed articles in the past, an article of this sort should, I believe, rely primarily - perhaps exclusively - on analysis from news commentators. Currently, the fourth sentence of the "Debate" section calls the debate "incomprehensible". This is sourced with a Huffington Post article, in which Rachel Maddow does use that word to describe the debate. But rather than quoting Maddow, our article currently presents the opinion as original analysis.

Another problem is that the third sentence of the "Debate" section presents quotes from Kaine and Maddow, without any analysis. It may be that these quotes could be seen as an "important" moment in the debate, but we shouldn't select for ourselves which moments deserve special notice. The quote is sourced with this Los Angeles Times article called "The most important exchanges of the vice presidential debate, annotated". However, this article is merely a transcript of the debate, highlighting certain moments that the Times considered important - and the quote that was selected for inclusion in our article is not one of the highlighted statements.

I've removed the quotes and also re-written the section in which the debate is called "incomprehensible". There's still one unreferenced sentence, summarizing the topics discussed during the debate - I'll leave this in, as it seems appropriate to have such a sentence, and I'm sure that Vermicious Knids should be able to find a suitable reference. --Jpcase (talk) 14:56, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I developed this most of this page immediately after the debate, so there were not many sources available to cite. I appreciate the neutrality concerns as that was not my intention, to be anything less than neutral.  I will source the remaining uncited information.  --Vermicious Knids? (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 20:15, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply and glad to help out. Just a suggestion - you may want to create any future articles in your sandbox, until you've had the chance to collect references. Although the downside to creating a new article in your sandbox is that other editors won't know to help out. So ultimately, it's your call. --Jpcase (talk) 20:37, 7 October 2016 (UTC)