Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Democratic Party (United States)/archive1

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Democratic Party (United States)[edit]

I've been working on this article a lot, and I feel it is ready for nomination. It has been through a peer review, which you can view here. --Revolución (talk) 00:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Minor note... I don't see any mention to the current house minority leader or the senate minority leader. --AllyUnion (talk) 04:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object—needs lots of work to bring it up to standard; good topic for a FAC, so get someone else to help. Let's have a look at just the lead, as an example of what needs to be done throughout.
'The party is currently the minority party in the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and among state governors.' Since the governors don't vote as a block, it's misleading to list them with two chambers in connection with 'minority party'.
19:21 is hardly 'trailing'.
What are 'divided legislatures'?
'much of the rest of the world'—remove the three redundant words.
'over the course of' implies throughout the 20th century; shouldn't this be narrowed down?
'In a way, one could say the parties'—bit clumsy and informal.
'anymore'—let the dictionary know of this new word.
'the political center' at the end of the lead—some readers will be confused as to whether this is a move to the left or the right. Tony 04:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't know what "divided legislatures" is supposed to mean either. --Revolución (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, somebody explained what divided legislatures were. --Revolución (talk) 02:57, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object: The image Image:ClintonRecent.jpg has got to go -- there are about a bajillion public-domain photos of the guy out there, so there's no reason to use anything less free. --Carnildo 05:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object I do have a bit of a problem with the "Factions of the Democratic Party" section because it still is more of a list than actual prose. And I still think the history is too long that it should be split into a new page called History of the United States Democratic Party. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 18:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well it would be hard to turn it into prose, but I'll try and see what I can do. --Revolución (talk) 19:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object, for now: On a quick skim, I counted four different foundation dates: 1792 in the intro, 1793 in the infobox, 1794 in the History: Origins section, and 1828 in the infobox and the history section. Of these, only the latter is explained. This does not bode well for the article's credibility. J.K. 00:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I researched a bit and the official DNC site says "Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Party in 1792 as a congressional caucus to fight for the Bill of Rights and against the elitist Federalist Party." So I'm going with 1792. [1] --Revolución (talk) 02:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The article is good overall but Factions needs to be redone into prose, and there are a lot of two sentence paragraphs under Issue positions. I'm not sure how you would go about combining them, but it breaks up the flow right now. Falphin 01:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Quite a number of grammatical problems, like "others were made active by the candidacy of Howard Dean" and "More than any other faction, conservative Democrats have lost office or retired in the Congress." The introductions to several sections (such as the one preceding Factions) should be at least a paragraph long. Use &mdash (—), not "-". It would be appropriate to define "liberals" and "conservatives" better, as the rest of the world often has differing interpretations of these words. A lot of other America-centric phrases like "states' rights" ought to be explained briefly. Some sub-sections like Budget are a bit short. Oh, and why are there two sections titled Factions? Rename one of them, please. The Organization section is also a bit short; I'd expected at least three or four paragraphs. No section titles should be wiki-linked. The Notes section should stand on its own, and not be a mere sub-section. The History section is quite heavy on the 20th century's side, and a bit long; I'd recommend breaking it off into a separate article. Johnleemk | Talk 14:40, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the following comment was made six months after this FAC had failed. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 18:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

just leave this here. It is perfectly valid criticism thewolfstar 09:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am suggesting why this article did not get Featured Article status, and I am disputing the neutrality of this article because:

  • It makes subtle suggestions through the use of language.
  • It's implications contradict fact. (Thomas Jefferson's writings will show clearly that his ideas and what he fought for in this country are not represented well in either of the two major political parties of this country, though they both make claims, in one way or another, that their philosophies are concurrent with Jefferson's.)
  • It contradicts itself. While it first states that "The party traces its beginnings to Thomas Jefferson in the early 1790s" which can be interpreted as neutral, in the same sentence, it then blatantly claims as fact that the Democratic Party "is one of the oldest, if not the oldest,

political parties in the world." Whether the Democratic Party can trace its roots to Thomas Jefferson's party is disputable and noted in the article itself: "The Democratic Party traces its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792, although some scholars date the party's beginnings to the late 1820s, when Democratic-Republicans Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren built a new party along with ex-Federalists." Furthermore, this is the first statement made under the heading: Beginnings, Jacksonian Democracy, and Manifest Destiny: 1792-1854, an historical section of the article. Indeed, it is the first attempt to trace the roots of the Democratic Party, of any kind, actually done in the article, at all.

Thewolfstar 01:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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