Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government/United States/Archive 2

Categorisation by party
I've left a comment here that might be pertinent to people here working on the categorisation of U.S. politicians (if that's anyone). Alai 00:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about title of Political views of Mitt Romney article and policy on article naming

 * It appears that most of the United States presidential candidate biographies or presidential campaign pages on Wikipedia have an associated "Political views of ____" article.
 * I find that name unsatisfactory, and detail the arguments for the name's weakness over at...
 * An active discussion about potentially revising the name of Political views of Mitt Romney to Political positions of Mitt Romney, or, depending on how the conversation develops, some other name. In case you're interested,  go to  Talk:Political views of Mitt Romney.
 * One alternate idea floated so far is "Issue positions of ______"


 * A brief history; the article started as a section called Political positions in the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2008 article, following a discussion at Talk:Mitt_Romney  It became a stand-alone article in mid-March.


 * It seems that some modest policy guidance/creation might (or might not) be worthwhile on the naming of these pages.

For now, if you wish to, weigh in at Talk:Political views of Mitt Romney. If there's an appropriate location for a general, multi-individual-biography policy-discussion of naming this sort of article, let me know, and also put it here.
 * -- Yellowdesk 05:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

19th century U.S. executive branch biographies
I've taken a look at a few of these biographies and have noticed a tendency to insert 20th/21st century interpretations into them. Problems include "trivia" sections detailing music or movie references, insertion of unrelated events (it took months to banish references to Dick Cheney's hunting accident from the Alexander Hamilton biography), and the use of non-academic sources to push modern agendas (by gosh James Buchanan really was our first gay president). My general approach has been to explain that editors will have a tough time getting such articles up to FA status. However, their reply has been to explain generically that "other FA" articles include Salon.com as a reliable source (apparently). They don't seem to grasp that peer-reviewed research is more appropriate for this type of article. As per W.S., "the truth will out", so I'm not particularly stressed about any particular instance. However, I thought this group might want to address detailing FA specifics for this type of article. With this in hand, it might be easier to banish what I call "pop-creep" from these articles. Of course, if these sorts of guidelines exist (guidelines specific to biographies of extraordinarily notable and well researched individuals), I'd be much obliged if someone would point them out to me. Rklawton 01:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)