Talk:Richard Neal

William C. Sullivan link

I'm pretty sure that's to a different person, unless he went from getting thrown out by J. Edgar Hoover to mayor of Spfld. in a couple of years' span. Someone please confirm and change the link. Cheers, PhilipR 07:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I did my best. --Tbowen86 02:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Richard Neal/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk) 17:17, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

Disambiguations: No dabs.

Linkrot: No dead links. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:38, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Checking against GA criteria

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   Neal has long been speculated as an eventual frontrunner...' is not good prose.

   One of Neal's longstanding legislative priorities is to simplify the tax code. Who says - attribution in the text required.

   He successfully pushed in 1998 to exempt a child tax credit from being affected by the AMT, and in 2001 Congress made it permanent at his urging. Clarify what the it is.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   The PDFs referenced in 1-15 and 38 are large documents so need page numbers.

   The books when referenced in footnotes need page numbers for the particular cites.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   Broad and focussed.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   Does everyone love him - are there no critics?

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   File:Ma02 109.gif should have a caption such as "Second U.S. Congressional district of Massachusetts in the 109th Congress"

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   OK, on hold for seven days for the above issues to be addressed. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:54, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

   OK, thanks for fixing those issues. If you want to take this to WP:FAC, page numbers are essential as they allow the cites to be quickly found. I am happy to list this as a good article. Jezhotwells (talk) 09:20, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

   Thanks. There's not much in the way of published praise or criticism, so I tried to follow the lead of FAs like John McCain and Barack Obama and focus on events rather than opinions. But I made a few changes. The book references are only two pages long so I don't think individual page numbers are necessary. —Designate (talk) 15:52, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Page organization

Usually in the politicians' pages, the U.S. House is organized from elections to tenure to committee assignments. The personal life and electoral history is typically toward the bottom of the page.--Jerzeykydd (talk) 18:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, my version had that same order, aside from "Committee assignments". The stuff you listed here, for the most part, isn't what you changed.

Your heading structure is pedantic and doesn't reflect the content of the page. You put his successfully adopted banking reform amendment at the bottom under "Influence and power", instead of at the top under "Economy", do you not see that as a bizarre structure? Mid-tier congressmen almost never get anything adopted, so any significant legislation that he passed should be at the top of the "House career" section, not at the bottom. His long-standing work on the AMT is now the sixth paragraph of his House career. And what's on top? His inconsequential reputation as an Irish-American; his generic "moderate Democrat" votes on the Iraq War and abortion. This is not ordered like a biography; it's written like an "On The Issues" voters' guide. I don't like it. Those "stance" issues should go last because they're not Wikipedia's priority. His accomplishments and his career focus should be the focus of the article. That's the economy and the budget.

I can appreciate that readers want a convenient table to list his (current) committee seats; that's why I included one. That does not explain why the sections that actually talk at length about his committee work should be isolated from the rest of his tenure. His committee seats are not trivia; they are the entire basis of a legislator's career. They need to be written into the article, as any reasonable biography would do.

The other changes are less important, but honestly, I don't know why you have more of a say in deciding them than I do. "Mayor of Springfield" really doesn't need its own heading, being one paragraph, for example. It's totally fine to put it under "Early political career". "Early life, education, and early political careeer" is an ungodly heading. Have you ever read an encyclopedia? They just don't have headings like that. "KISS" applies here.

Sorting "Domestic policy" and "Foreign policy" under "Tenure" is unnatural; the master heading implies that it's about his tenure. It's just superfluous.

This GA should not be wrenched into the format of the terrible legislator stubs. If anything, it should be the other way around. I put a reasonable amount of time when I wrote the article into figuring this stuff out, so I should get some say. I'm certainly not claiming ownership of anything, and I'm not offended by people editing it, but just as a reader I can't endorse anything you did do this article. —Designate (talk) 02:38, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

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