Talk:Political party/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Goldsztajn (talk · contribs) 22:07, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll take this; please give me at least a week for initial comments. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 22:07, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for jumping in here unexpectedly...first off, let me say this article is already very informative and educational. I thought I'd just leave a few suggestions for increasing breadth of coverage, which may or may not be necessary to achieve "good article" status:

• There's a lot more to say about the history of political parties. For example, in the history of political parties in the United States, you can see six or seven distinct ideological alignments. I suppose the history of political parties includes the history of political parties in every country that has them, but an overview could be written that summarizes trends across all countries, and highlights interesting examples and unique situations. It would be interesting, for example, to see charts illustrating how the distribution of systems has changed over time (single-party vs. two-party vs. multi-party, etc.) and how the ideological mix has changed over time (e.g. the rise and fall of governing socialist parties). To cover this topic properly almost certainly requires a separate subarticle, though that would make it easier to write a more inclusive summary here.
• There are a bunch of negative effects of party politics which should be summarized in the article, along with some related articles that could be linked from Template:Party politics. These include: Gerrymandering, partisanship, Political polarization, Sectarianism, Negative partisanship, Bipartisanship, Nonpartisanism.
• A common argument against having a large number of political parties is that it can allow leaders to gain power with only minority support from voters. One famous worrisome example is Adolf Hitler's rise to power; see the July 1932 German federal election and November 1932 German federal election.

   Done - Astrophobe (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• The nature of political parties has changed a lot as suffrage has changed. For example, the United States went through a transition in the 1800s from only wealthy white men participating to inclusion of men of all incomes and by the 1900s adding women and people of all races.

   Done - Astrophobe (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• Something should probably be said about the occasional alignment of political parties with race, ethnicity or tribe. For example, Kenyan elections are strongly influenced by ethnicity[1] and race is also an issue in American political party affiliation. Might be worth linking to identity politics.

   Done - Astrophobe (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• The article should probably mention vote splitting or the spoiler effect with regard to two-party systems.

   Done - Astrophobe (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• The article should probably mention the influence of proportional representation and ranked voting on the number of political parties.

   Done - Astrophobe (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for reading, and for your work on this article. -- Beland (talk) 18:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the very helpful feedback, I really appreciate it! I've marked the comments that I've addressed -- all were addressed in this series of diffs. I have not addressed your first two points, for one simple reason. I agree with both points, but I also agree with you that there is "a lot" to say on not just the first topic, but the second topic. The reason that I haven't tried to expand along either of those lines is that the page as it stands is getting quite big. Its ~100,000 bytes are mostly because there are lots of embedded images, but still at almost 7k words of readable prose (according to DYk check), I hesitate to try to thoroughly treat such frankly enormous topics in this page. I can easily imagine writing an additional 2k words on each of those topics (which are both independently coherent and highly notable, in my opinion). So personally I think our best option is to write History of political parties and Critiques of party politics, which I'm more than happy to get started later this month, and then we can treat those topics at Political party in WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. But of course if those topics need expansion here for the article to merit GA then of course I'll give it a go. - Astrophobe (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Awesome, that's very helpful for our readers! -- Beland (talk) 06:27, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• Things are going to get busy for me as we approach the semester (so I'll have less time for volunteer work by the end of August), so I hope you don't mind if I inquire, Goldsztajn, about how much longer you think it might be before you can review the page. Do you think it might be better to return it to the queue, or just build off of Beland's excellent comments so that we aren't starting from scratch? I'd really like to bring this page to GA after all the work I did overhauling it, but I nominated it in January and I definitely didn't anticipate that I was committing myself to be available to respond to reviews as late as September. I know that's how the cookie crumbles, but I think if it takes more than a few weeks, I should just withdraw the nomination to avoid wasting the time of someone who might put effort into crafting comments that I can't respond to after that. Does sometime in the next few weeks sound doable? Thanks! - Astrophobe (talk) 05:31, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  This is now the fourth oldest GAN on Wikipedia, and quickly approaching the #1 spot. I know that we're all volunteers, but Goldsztajn, I am concerned that we're approaching 2 months since you acknowledged this talk page. Flagging the article as being under review and then not reviewing it — and also not responding to reasonable requests for clarity on your timing — is a great way to dissuade others from reviewing the page, while also totally freezing the page's progress towards GA. Would you be willing to recognize the comments that were already made by Beland as the core of a GA review and tell me what else to address? I'm going out of town next week, and then the semester begins, so I cannot honestly commit to fulfilling the expectation to "respond to the reviewer's suggestions to improve the article to GA quality in a timely manner". - Astrophobe (talk) 20:29, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  I should emphasize that I'm very concerned about protecting your time too. The nightmare scenario that drives me to ping you is the worry that you might put a lot of effort into detailed comments, say, 2 weeks before the semester starts while I'm out of town, or a few months from now during midterm season, and then the nomination just lapses — making my wait since February pointless, and wasting the effort you put into comments. - Astrophobe (talk) 20:34, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Hi Astrophobe, apologies for my delay and thanks for your patience. One of the reasons I suspect this languished without a reviewer taking it up is that it is a very complicated topic (as I can see you recognise from your responses above). This makes it difficult to respond with speed, nevertheless, if I can't begin the review fully within the next week, I will put it back in the queue. FWIW, I don't think this is yet at GA status. Kind regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  The review having not been touched in two and a half weeks, far past "the next week", I have put in back in the queue to follow through on Goldsztajn's pledge to do so. Courtesy ping to Astrophobe. Given the recent upsurge in GAN reviews from WikiCup participants, I have hopes that this nomination will be taken up shortly: Mickey Guyton, which is a day older than this one, found a new reviewer in a few days. Best of luck. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:43, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks very much BlueMoonset! I'm still (just barely) holding out hope that I can commit whatever edits a reviewer finds necessary before things really heat up in my life. - Astrophobe (talk) 04:14, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

  Astrophobe, BlueMoonset sincere apologies for not being able to complete this; it's best left to another. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 20:26, 11 September 2021 (UTC)