Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Joseph McCarthy/archive2

Joseph McCarthy

This is a great article that was previously nominated to be a featured article over a year ago. Many people have worked very hard on this article (myself excluded) and it deserves recognition. --MZMcBride 02:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose & Comment: Well written article, but needs more citations where there are quoted statements such as under the Tydings Committee and Anti-Communism. Also, some quotes appear to be from the listed references such as Richard Rovere, but it's not clearly stated that the statements are from his book. Not that I doubt the accuracy of the statements as I've read and heard them myself on different occassions, but many readers may wonder where the statements are quoted from. If that can be fixed, I'll definitely support as it is otherwise a very complete and well written article. Tombseye 02:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose - right off the bat, lead extremely POV against McCarthy. Also fails to mention that McCarthy in the height of his popularity was very well approved in national polls for his anti-communist efforts. Needs to go significently further in shedding bias. Judgesurreal777 03:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose—not well written. Stubby little paragraphs. Poor prose.
  • "These accusations were largely directed towards people in the U.S. government, particularly employees of the State Department, but included many others as well." After "largely", "but" is not a contradiction of the previous text; therefore it's inappropriate.
  • It takes a while before we learn the country that you're talking about. Some readers won't have guessed until then. Why not "the US state of Wisconsin" (first sentence)?
  • Can you find a more specific (piped) link for "Congressional", since it's the inquiry system that is at issue here? Why does "Communist" start with an upper-case C?
  • If you're going to refer to the Second Red Scare in the lead, please tell us what the first one was. For this reason, the term is probably better introduced in the body of the article.
  • Why are "McCarthyism" and "witch hunts" in italic?
  • If you're quoting dictionary definitions, which is kind of tedious in a WP lead, provide references. Regardless of which dictionary the source is, remove the redundant "in order" from "... in order to suppress opposition" .

Please find someone who's relatively unfamiliar with the text to perform a thorough copy-edit on this article. Tony 11:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose per Judgesurreal. Even in the lead, the POV is obvious. (Just because somebody called him "freewheeling" in his accusations doesn't mean that it's a neutral fact.) Tony also has some good criticisms. Also: the sections "Actual Soviet Activities" and "Evidence" seem out of place. Could they be integrated into the more relevant biographical sections? Lastly, I've never been a big fan of "X in pop culture" sections, but if you think it's relevant, could you prosify it a bit? Cheers! The Disco King 12:49, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
• Object. POV, language, context, tone problems. Some places not referenced properly - and the last few sections are too short. Popular culture list should be converted to prose. — Wackymacs 07:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)