Wikipedia:Peer review/Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal/archive1

Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for January 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This was recently listed as a good article, which was nice, but unfortunately the review was a little short on specific feedback. I know this isn't of FA-quality, but I can't seem to put my finger on what it is that needs to improve - I think it maybe needs to be reorganized, but I'm not sure how. I'd appreciate any comments on actionable problems, preferably with suggestions. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 00:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

comments by doncram I don't have detailed comments, but I hope my sharing some gut reactions might be helpful to you. My main reactions are that I think it is too long, and it needs a pithier explanation of what the scandal was about, hopefully quoting from some other accounts. It seems like it is a lengthy account based on one main source, reporting in almost the same length what happens page-by-page in the main source. As such, i think it currently is so detailed that it pushes towards a boundary of what is an encyclopedic article. Basically, i think an encyclopedia article should be a summary, referring the reader to the longer source. I expect the source itself is kind of long and boring; this article needs to be punchier and shorter, in my view. I do hope that some other sources exist which could provide different perspective and some interesting quotes.

Also, it is not clear throughout all of the first paragraph what is the government that was toppled. Reading it, I could not tell whether it was the Canadian national government or the Alberta government. It mentions the Alberta legislature and the railway is in Alberta of course, but it still easily could be the case that a national government was toppled over a scandal in one place. The U.S. Teapot Dome scandal, which i don't particularly know about, must have been in regards to an incident that happened at one place in one U.S. state. It was not until the end of the first sentence in the 2nd paragraph, where it is mentioned that the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta began looking for a replacement, that I could conclude the writer must be talking about a scandal primarily affecting the Alberta government. It seems that the writer assumes the reader already knows about the scandal, and to me that is irritating in the same way that reading a newspaper sports story about Alabama beating Florida by one points in an exciting game, etc., will surely irritate me, anyhow if it is not stated whether the game is basketball or if it is football or if it is hockey or what. It just becomes a bigger and bigger burden for the reader to take in new smaller details, without getting the big picture yet.

How important was this scandal in the nation? Simply, what else was going on in the nation, at the time? Some discussion of what other headlines were at the time would serve to put it in perspective in some way. Was the party in power in Alberta the same party as was in power in Ottawa? How did this affect the national party? After reading almost the whole article and then going back to the intro, I am still not clear on the importance. Mainly, I absorbed just that the one leader lost support, and had to be replaced by another in the same party. That does not seem very important, except in a biography of the one leader. I am hoping other sources could provide some larger perspective.

There is one element in the story that does interest me, about how one minister supported an amended contract for reason of supporting the credibility of Alberta standing behind its contracts. That reminds me of some famous U.S. supreme court case, a very important precedent in U.S. law, about the requirement that a state government (I think Georgia) needed to carry through with some contract it had entered into, despite the contract being a very poor/unfair one for the state in some fashion. This was very important in U.S. economic history for upholding/building the credibility of contracts. I don't know the name of that case, but perhaps the wikipedia article about it could be found, and you would see some similarities and perhaps see a different way to describe this scandal.

How does it compare to other scandals in Canada or the world? Is there a list-article about scandals in Canada that the intro could link to, or could some other scandals be mentioned to provide perspective in this way.

Otherwise, it reads perfectly well and no spelling/grammar/low level issues leap out at me. Hope this helps! doncram (talk) 23:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: This scandal should be added to the List of Canadian political scandals. You could browse other scandals on the world-wide List of political scandals to try to identify some other models for organization of this article. I would need a good model to be writing an article like this, personally. doncram (talk) 23:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Addendum 2: This scandal is not mentioned in the History section of the Alberta, Canada article, which may be appropriate. However, it is also not mentioned in the more detailed History of Alberta article, where it should be mentioned. Working it in there would help bring readers to this article, too. Perhaps comparing it to one sex scandal that is mentioned in the History of Alberta article would be helpful in this article. Also perhaps a stub article about the sex scandal needs to be developed, to be linked from this article. So, is this the 2nd most important scandal in Alberta's history, if u add this to the History of Alberta article? There are other Alberta scandals mentiond in the List of Canadian political scandals. Any more important than this one should be added to the History of Alberta article, if this one is added, in my view. doncram (talk) 01:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)