Wikipedia:Peer review/New Zealand general election, 2008/archive1

New Zealand general election, 2008

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it looks to be a good candidate for a Good Article, and some feedback on what (if anything) needs to be done might push people along.

Thanks, IdiotSavant (talk) 00:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: To get ready for GAN, the article would have to be re-organized significantly. For one thing, the lede should be a summary of the whole article and should not include material that is undeveloped in the main text. It would be helpful to readers who live outside New Zealand if the first main text section included background material about New Zealand election procedures in general and about this election in particular. Some of that material appears in the existing lede and some, the 2005 material for example, seems to be tacked on in the form of bulleted lists near the bottom of the article. To make this into a good article, I think you have to re-write with a foreign audience in mind; that audience may know nothing about the geography, history, or politics of New Zealand. Here are a few more specific suggestions related mainly to prose and Manual of Style issues.

• The tools at the top of this review page find problems with dead links and a disambiguation link.
• The images need meaningful alt text, meant to describe the images to readers who can't see them. WP:ALT has details.
• "The loss of seven seats by 'other parties' shown here compared... ". - Generally, double quotation marks are preferred to single; i.e., "other parties".
• "Key announces shape of new National-led government, National Business Review... " - The title should be in quotation marks and National Business Review in italics.
• "The 19 general electorates which Labour retained all have a predominantly urban character, excluding Waimakariri, a predominantly urban area but with a significant rural population, resulting in a Labour MP narrowly elected but National winning the party vote commandingly." - Awkward sentence. Suggestion: "The 19 general electorates which Labour retained all have a predominantly urban character, excluding Waimakariri, a predominantly urban area with a significant rural population. In Waimakariri, a Labour MP won narrowly, but National won the party vote by a large margin."
• "excluding Waimakariri" - Wikilink Waimakariri?
• "Palmerston North remains the only provincial city with a Labour MP. The two seats of Hamilton... " - Wikilink Palmerston North and Hamilton, New Zealand?
• I'd suggest turning the list in the "Dates" section into straight prose per WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists. Also, it's usually not necessary to include the day of the week in dates.
• Ditto for the lists in the "Retiring MPs" section.
• Ditto for the lists in the "MPs who lost their seats" section.
• "(list MP at number 14)" - What is the meaning of "at number 14"?
• "The Electoral Finance Act 2007 passed by the Labour government had a "chilling effect" on political activity in 2008, according to the Electoral Commission." - It would be helpful to add a brief explanation of this act in addition to linking to another article.
• "the latter crossing the two-dollar-per-litre mark in late May" - For clarity, the currency needs to be specified, and the amount needs to be converted to imperial units (dollars per gallon) as well as appearing in metric.
• "unveiling a plan worth $150 billion whereby all retail deposits would be unconditionally covered" - Does "covered" mean "insured against loss"?
• "Also signed up to the plan was the National Party, with deputy leader and finance spokesperson Bill English saying that there was 'still time to change the...scheme if banks find it hard to borrow overseas'." - "With" doesn't make a good conjunction. Suggestion: Also signed up to the plan was the National Party. Its deputy leader and finance spokesperson, Bill English, said that there was "still time to change the...scheme if banks find it hard to borrow overseas".
• It might be helpful to explain how deposit insurance (if that is what is meant by "unconditionally covered") might make it harder for New Zealand banks to borrow overseas.
• "This implied higher costs for KiwiSaver, Working For Families... ". - Wikilink KiwiSaver and Working for Families?
• "Over the next fiscal year, Dr Cullen... " - Who is Dr. Cullen?
• "the New Zealand First party was cleared of wrongdoing by the Electoral Commission, which was investigating donations that the party failed to declare." - Shouldn't this be "allegedly failed to declare"?
• Most of the "Boundary changes" section lacks sources. A good rule of thumb is to include a source for every paragraph as well as every set of statistics, direct quote, or claim that might be challenged. The "Opinion polling" section is completely unsourced.
• "The situation after 2005" - I'm not sure why this section or the subsequent 2005 sections have been included. They don't seem directly related to the 2008 election. Would readers outside of New Zealand find this information useful? Could all of this be summarized in a sentence or two and included in a "Background" section near the top of the article?

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 03:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC)