Wikipedia:Peer review/Finnish parliamentary election, 2011/archive1

Finnish parliamentary election, 2011
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because its one of the most comprehensive election articles of any non-english speakiing country on wikipedia. its very extensive in its background, campagning issues (which usually lags, but not with this), and the post-election results, reaction, aftermath. i think this is as comprehensive an article were gonna get on the subject (in fact evern better than the finnish article)

Thanks, Lihaas (talk) 20:08, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment: It looks impressively informative. I'll do my best, but the article's length means review by instalments, I'm afraid. First comments in a day or so. Brianboulton (talk) 22:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * cool, thanks.Lihaas (talk) 20:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

First comments: I've had a chance to look over the article. Here are a few impressions:- The lead section is a little confusing to readers who are not familiar with Finnish politics, which probably means the great majority of readers on English Wikipedia. The lead should offer a broad summary of the whole article, rather than pitching in straight away with detailed percentages and other figures. For example, it would be useful to know the context of the election. Why was it called? How many seats did the ruling coalition have in the outgoing government? Which were the main opposition parties? What were the principal issues in the campaign? Having clarified these points you should summarize the outcome of the election in broad terms; the detailed figures of seats won and loss between the parties can be given later. What we need in the lead is, I emphasise, summary information that puts us in the general picture.
 * Lead
 * Organisation
 * The organisation at the top of the article is, well, messy. We have an enormous infox vying for space with the electoral districts map, with the "Politics of Finland" template tucked in, too. I appreciate the necessity of this information, but had you considered an alternative positioning for the map? It could, for example, appear at the end of the article rather than the beginning; that would stop the text from being crowded out. Likewise, the "Retiring incumbents" section and table is very intrusively placed at present, and could easily appear as an appendix at the end.
 * Another organisational problem is that you have a main section entitled "Parties" which contains a subsection also called "Parties".
 * There seems to be rather too much detailed information on peripheral issues, such as the party conferences. To keep the focus of this article on the election itself, I think much of this information could be trimmed.
 * I also think that the information on the parties should be given before the campaign information.

I will add more comments later. Brianboulton (talk) 22:46, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Made some changes to the lead and organisation (moved the Finland politics template lower and cut the result parties from the main infobox). The 2 sections mentioned above ahve been renamed, though the content of the camopaign wasnt cahnged as int he past we had an iassue abot it being pov to mention just some parties (the TF being the notable one which was accused of giving WP:UNDUE weight to their issues.) Is it better now?
 * Also per party info before the campaign section, its generally following format on other election articles. but per WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS we can change that. the overarching party bit is first, only the detailed election specific issues follows as a subsection of campaign.Lihaas (talk) 21:11, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Just dropping off a quick comment prior to reading the article. I have to mirror Brian's comments on the lead, as I find it to be a bit short in length and confusing, especially when in comparison to the size of the article. When you remove the large photograph, you'll barely have two paragraphs there. Not only for its size, but I don't feel its content fully surmises the content of the article's main points. Additionally, there are several small and choppy sentences, that are only tell-tale signs of weak prose. I would advice to enlarge and detail the lead some more, and expand and remove the small and choppy sentences such as "All 200 seats of the parliament were open for election." "Total turnout rose to 70.5% from 67.9% in the previous election." "Corruption scandals also resulted in an anti-incumbency vote." "Incumbent Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen was then tasked to form a new government." Hope this helps.-- CallMe Nathan  &bull;  Talk2Me   22:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * too short? he said its too long. so i shortened and clarified some things. What should it add? The calling of relection, main issues, and results? (also the main parties). will remove/reword those sentences though.Lihaas (talk) 23:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
 * merged or cut sentences but not usre what else to add. perhaps update government formation?Lihaas (talk) 01:05, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Also done now, althoguh peerreview automated tool says its too long. but human oversight is better (no?).Lihaas (talk) 04:45, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Additional comment: Per your request I've looked at the article again. You have taken some steps to remove the clutter of boxes and images in the article, but at the same time you have created some fresh problems. For example, in its present form the infobox is almost completely useless. The purpose of the box is to encapsualte the election as a whole, but in its present form it only shows three parties, who together won 125 out of 200 seats, with no indication of what happened to the other 75 seats. It makes no mention of the dozen or so other parties who fought the election. Why do you need the infobox photographs? Why do you need "leader since..." information? Since all the details of votes and percentages are contained in the body of the article, all you need in the infobox is the date of the election and a listing of the parties that won seats, with their numbers of seats and a plus/minus figure gains and losses. That way you'll save a lot of duplication of facts and figures.

I still think a basic fault in the article is too much detailed information. For example, all that opinion poll data could be summarised in a paragraph of prose. Far too much reaction information. The "government formation" details probably belong in a different article, and should have no more than a brief summary here. An encyclopedia article should be in summary form; it isn't supposed to contain every detail on its topic. This article contains over 9,000 words, not counting the information contained in tables. Half that length could probably do adequate justice to the topic. Brianboulton (talk) 21:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Both govt formation and polls split off with summation here. Per infobox someone said to cut down the clutter so i put the main parties. NO qualms with adding all. Its per WP projects elections that we add these in. though remving "leader since" is plausible.Lihaas (talk) 22:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)