Wikipedia:Peer review/List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States/archive1

List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States edit

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I've went ahead and made some major changes to the list so that we can hopefully get it back up to Featured List status, as it was delisted last year. What I've done:

Wrote a three paragraph-long lead, with citations, describing the Court and (more relevant to the list) its membership. Also added a photo of the current justices.
Revamped the table:
- Added row colors to denote Chief Justices and currently-serving justices (per WP:MOSCOLOR, I also denoted these with a dagger † and "Currently serving" in the "Reason for termination" column, respectively).
- Replaced full dates with years (many, if not most, of the other lists of court judges using the "U.S. judgeship" template do this. It makes the table look a lot cleaner. The justice's names are linked to their articles, full birth dates, term dates, etc. can be found there.) Note that sorting by the exact dates is preserved because the hidden text (using display:none) that prefixes all of them is still there.
- Cleaned up some of the capitalization and formatting to make it uniform.
- Replaced all of the various "(none)" and "(N/A)" entries with "—". Again, this just makes everything uniform and it looks cleaner.

I'd like to get some suggestions regarding:

Citations: Should individual rows be cited? Almost all the information in the list can be found in single pages elsewhere, so it would seem that simply repeating the same cite over and over would be a bit redundant. Also, some are more footnotes than links to sources.
The timelines: I think they're redundant but maybe someone else can see a reason to keep them?
Several of the justices were appointed by two presidents (first as an associate justice, then as Chief Justice). Any suggestions for sorting here or should it just be left how it is now, i.e., by the first president's name?
Anything else that you can think of!

Thanks for your feedback! Rorschach 09:26, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brianboulton comments: I think mostly this is OK, but here are a few things for you to consider. They are suggestions for improving the list; you don't have to adopt them all:-

Get rid of the timelines. They were highlighted as redundant when the list lost its FL status, and I can't find any real argument for keeping them.
There is a lot of information in this table, and we need to be sure that we are not overdoing it. I'm looking for ways it might be simplified; for example, there are four "dates" columns in the table. Obviously the Born/died and Active service columns are essential, but I wonder if the other two are? For the majority of Chief Justices, their terms as chief were the whole of their active service periods. Why not just add the word "Chief" in their active service column? For the few associate justices who became Chief it would be possible to have two date ranges in their active service column, marked to indicate service as associate and chief. The column giving years of retirement seems a bit of a waste of space; it's mostly dashes, and I don't think the information given is either important or relevant. We can see when justices retired, we can see when they died. I would strip this column out.
Acting Chief Judges: it would help to add the word "acting" rather than requiring consultation of a footnote. One or two other notes, like that relating to Rutledge, need to be made clearer for the general reader.
Is it necessary to have two means of identifying past Chiefs (daggers and blue strips)?
Tiresome point: dates (and dashes) look much tidier if they are centred.

Otherwise, I think you have come a long way towards satisfying the specific criticisms which led to the delisting. You have a good image; boldface violations have been deleted; the article is properly cited; it has a proper lead. Give me a buzz on my talkpage when you've thought about these points and maybe implemented some of them. Brianboulton (talk) 00:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the two templates and do not know how to make the columns optional. I can ask Niagara, who is pretty good with templates. I also note that the symbol and color is one of those things that WP:ACCESS requires. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:19, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- I went and put code in to make the "Term as Chief Justice" and "Retirement/Senior term" colums optional. Addition of |senior term=N and |chief term=N (or any other value) to {{Start U.S. judgeship}}, as well as removing those parameters from {{U.S. judgeship row}}, will suppress those columns. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 17:35, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks so much! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:49, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

jrkenti comments: Mine seems to be the dissenting opinion, but I feel the timelines are not at all redundant. They are a graphical representation of the list which enables readers to get a 'whole-picture' view of the progression of the court without reading the 200-some dates in the list - a picture is worth a thousand words. 'Conciseness' is good, but 'limited scope' is not, and I feel that seems to be what this page is being reduced to.

Also, I feel the 'Reason for Termination' column needs attention: 'Death' and 'Resignation' (and 'Rejection') were the only options for justices before the occasion when 'Retirement' was made available (1937 or 1910?) to Supreme Court Justices. As a result 'Retirement' has a special meaning when taking about why a justice left office. Justices before this date who ended their service to spend more time with their family (or whatnot) did not 'Retire,' independent of how they might have phrased it on the occasion, they 'Resigned.' Since that date, some justices have 'Resigned' to spend more time with their family, and other 'Retired' to continue judicial work on a limited basis with a salary. This column needs to be verified for accuracy, and I don't seem to be able to find out even when 'Retirement' became an option.Jrkenti (talk) 00:18, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion about 'acting chief' has been made before (here). In sum, it should not be mentioned on this page.
What are others' thoughts about adding columns to this list, things that cannot be gleaned from reading any other pages, things that can be interesting ways to sort the list. I am thinking specifically about age at appointment and age at termination.Jrkenti (talk) 19:09, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]