Template:Did you know nominations/North Carolina Structured Sentencing Act

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Orlady (talk) 17:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

North Carolina Structured Sentencing Act

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Created/expanded by LDWCU (talk). Self nom at 15:07, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

  • Length, citations, neutrality, and content all check out. Your hook is fine, but the picture is not related to the hook, and thus cannot be included, I have removed it. Good work overall thoughKayz911 (talk) 16:09, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
I pulled this one out of the queue so that the article can undergo a bit of copy-editing before it is featured on the main page. I feel that the article has "too many" instances of grammatical errors, informal conversational locutions that do not communicate meaning, and other problems. We can't demand perfection, but we should be able to do better than this, starting with the hook, which I would reword to say:
Some instances of problematic wording in the article include, but are not limited to:
  • "The idea to change the way criminals were sentenced was looked at in order to..." (try parsing this sentence to identify subject, verb, etc., and see if you can tell what it means)
  • "How a person and their crime is evaluated under structured sentencing" (note that this is a section heading in the article)
  • "The different factors are the main area that a judge can adjust a sentence"
  • "It was because of these innovations and the success of the new program that led other states to follow suit."
  • "goes against the structured sentencing guidelines" (what, exactly, is meant by "goes against" -- is there a better verb to use here?)
  • "This allows good behavior to be awarded" (should that be "rewarded"?) --Orlady (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I second the removal because the writing is not entirely decipherable, but further, I'd like to know why the Campus Ambassador for this course passed the DYK? COI. I'd help with the copyediting needed here, but it is quite extensive and needs many hours. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I can't speak for Sandy's second point but, having said that, is copyediting for reasons other than paraphrasing or copyvio really a criteria for passing? I found the article legible and understood the points it was trying to get across. DYK is supposed to be for new and inexperienced users. Surely? We have such an enormous backlog due to nit-picking which appears to have nothing to do with the established 'rules'. Why are we making it harder for things to be approved? (I've been away for a while so if I've missed some shift in priorities please excuse my ignorance) PanydThe muffin is not subtle 21:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
We had numerous discussions in the past about not putting articles on the mainpage with very basic poor grammar and copyediting issues-- this article is right up there. Besides the basic grammatical issues, it's just not encyclopedic. Pulling it was reasonable, particularly when we add the factor that the DYK was passed by an involved participant. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I've passed (or acquiesced to someone else's passing of) a lot of DYKs for articles that were awkwardly written by people who were clearly not native speakers of English, and I wouldn't refuse a DYK over a sprinkling of errors in spelling, formatting, and minor grammar. I often try to repair all of these kinds of problems in articles I review. This article is, however, apparently by a native speaker of English, and the writing errors are severe and pervasive. I looked at the article because I choked on the hook wording "...in North Carolina they did away with..." My initial intent was to fix the hook wording, but then I discovered that this was typical of the fundamentally incoherent writing in the article. --Orlady (talk) 03:03, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
That's my curiosity sated. Thanking you. PanydThe muffin is not subtle 11:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)