User:Michael.gary16/Liquid democracy/Matthew.meyers5 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Michael.gary16


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * "The general public could also make detrimental mistakes 'about matters of the common good' due to simply not having enough accurate information about the issue. Another issue is that people's subjective interests that come into play while they are voting could 'shape the welfare of their community', especially if one person has his/her own vote on a matter plus multiple others from delegation. Finally, liquid democracy faces the issue of scale. In large nation states with millions of voting citizens, it is likely the body of 'liquid representatives' (those who have been delegated other citizen votes) will be significant. Consequently, deliberation and representation become pertinent concerns. To achieve meaningful deliberation, the liquid representatives would have to be split into numerous groups to attain a somewhat manageable discussion group size. As for representation, liquid democracy suffers from a similar issue facing electoral representative democracies where a single individual embodies the will of millions. Liquid democracy has been argued as a remedy for many issues plaguing democratic systems world-wide, however, critics question the normative attractiveness of a delegative, proxy democracy."


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Liquid democracy

Evaluate the drafted changes
Before I start talking about the proposed changes, I notice that you haven't put your proposed changes in a sandbox draft, so I copied the two paragraphs it seems that you added based on checking the history of the article. I would recommend putting everything that you have written in your sandbox so that it is easier to isolate.

I think overall the changes are really good. You definitely pose some common criticisms of liquid democracy that were not already raised in the earlier version of the article. I have a few very small and nitpick suggestions that could make it more clear, but since they are primarily stylistic all of them are entirely up to you. I think that you shouldn't use as many quotes as you do. Typically, you should summarize and synthesize different sources and only say a quote when the quote itself is significant and you could not convey the full meaning by summarization. The quotes in the first paragraph especially really take you out of the article and disrupts the flow of ideas. I would also suggest changing some of the wording of the first paragraph. The first sentence, especially is written in a confusing way. You don't need to say detrimental because the word mistakes already implies detrimental. Additionally, the phrase "due to simply not having" is a little wordy and could be rewritten, possibly as "due to insufficient accurate information" or "as they will not have enough accurate information."

On the second paragraph, I would remove the word finally. Because anyone might edit the article at any time, this paragraph may not be the final paragraph for long. It also has the air of a persuasive essay rather than an expository reference article. You can say "issues of scale" rather than "the issues of scale." You can also delete the parenthetical description of the word "liquid representatives" because it should be clear based on the rest of the article. If it isn't, you may want to find another spot in the article to define it when it would be less obtrusive. I think the rest of the paragraph could also be a little bit cleaner, maybe by removing words and phrases like "As for representation" or even the sentence "Consequently, deliberation and representation become pertinent concerns" because it doesn't add much to the information and is a little bit too opinion-based for Wikipedia. I would also change the last sentence, and maybe move it to the lead section because I don't think there is any part of the lead section directly referencing this portion of the article. It doesn't really follow from the rest of the paragraph, but would be an excellent sentence for the lead section to summarize this part of the article.

Overall, this is a really great start to your edits. I made a lot of suggestions, but they are almost entirely changes to wording, which I can be particular about. Because they are so specific, feel free to ignore any of my suggestions if you prefer a different style of writing. I can't wait to see where the rest of your work goes with this!