Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/David Lewis (politician)/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 22:23, 19 June 2010 [1].

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David Lewis (politician)

David Lewis (politician) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/David Lewis (politician)/archive1
• Featured article candidates/David Lewis (politician)/archive2

Nominator(s): Abebenjoe (talk) 13:19, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because it has gone through an extensive rewrite, and peer review. It now seems fully ready to be included as a Featured Article... Abebenjoe (talk) 13:19, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment—no dab links or dead external links. Ucucha 14:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
• Images and references used look good to my eye. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 20:58, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support with the proviso that I may have worked enough on this to compromise my objectivity. Steve Smith (talk) 20:22, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Sources review: Mainly very minor formatting issues:-

• Refs 81 and 107: spaces required after commas (check for possible others)
• In this article the convention employed for page numbering is "p.10" rather than "p. 10", that is, no space before the number. Ref 12 (and possibly others) departs from the convention.
• Ref 55: publisher looks to be the Parliament of Canada Information Service, not "Elections Canada" (unless they are one aand the same).

Otherwise, all sources look OK, no further issues. Brianboulton (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Repaired spacing issues and changed the publisher from Elections Canada to Informations Service, Parliament of Canada.--Abebenjoe (talk) 23:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

There are still spacing problems - see 5, 34, 100. Please check throughout to ensure everything is caught. Brianboulton (talk) 08:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Repaired more spacing issues. However, any citation that uses Template:Cite news has a space after the period, and a period at the end of the footnote. It is applied consistently throughout the article whenever a newspaper is quoted as a source. Since the template is automatically formatting the citation, therefore I cannot change it. It even uses pp. when only a single page is quoted, which is not correct according to the MLA style of citations. Sources from books, are cited consistently without the space after the period, nor are there periods at the end the of the footnote. These are manually generated footnotes, with the bibliographic information in the next section with a complete citation using the Template:Cite Book. --Abebenjoe (talk) 12:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Nearing support and comments/review
  • I came to this article knowing nothing of the subject (and very little of Canada! I'm a UK resident). Having read through I found myself a little disappointed at the end. I felt I came away with far too little knowledge of his policies. One thing that comes through loud and clear is his wish to vanquish communist tendencies but I feel I know too little about what he really wanted to campaign for; I recall his wish to nationalise some industry and desire for a mixed economy. I also got that he wanted to broaden the appeal of the parties he represented. But I would like a bit more about the platforms he stood on in his elections. Now, it is probable that I could learn much about policy if I were to follow some of the wiki-links to the party articles and so on. But it would be good to get more from the article itself.

I could put more of the CCF and NDP platforms in the article, but for brevity's sake, I left that out. You did get most of what he stood for though: Democratic Socialism, in particularly parliamentary democracy before any other ideology; anti-Communism; mixed-economy; welfare-state, a-la Clement Attlee (they were both at the September 1944 Conference of Commonwealth Labour Parties in London). In the NDP, he fought for national medicare (The National Health as you would know it), and once that became law across the country, his policies were mostly either fine-tuning social welfare programmes or nationalization of key industries. See the link to the 1971 Leadership Convention, and you will, more or less, see his platform for last years of his political life. Even that article doesn't do a thorough job, but that's why there are so many books and articles on his and the CCF/NDP's policies in this period. I wish I could say more in the article, but I think it would make it far too long. That's my thought on it anyway.Abebenjoe (talk) 22:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

• • Proofread done - no major issues identified, I made some minor edits. There's one part I hope you will check: Section - Political Involvement, paragraph 6 says "Here were so many naive..." I just wonder whether that is possibly meant to be "There were so many naive...". The first way does work but I thought I'd ask you to make sure.

You are correct, I checked the book and it is indeed "There" not "Here". Thanks for catching that one.--Abebenjoe (talk) 22:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

• • Review v FAC criteria
  • 1(a) Prose style - V. GOOD - I found it an engaging read. As mentioned, I have no knowledge of this subject so all the names and parties were entirely unfamiliar. I am, however, interested in left wing politics. I found it a little tough at times but given my limitations I found I was engaged throughout, which is no mean feat given that the subject could have been very dry.
  • 1(b) Comprehensiveness - V. GOOD - my lack of familiarity with the subject means I'm ill-qualified to judge, however, I found no gaping holes in the chronology, eg he didn't seem to disappear from the article for a decade unexplained.
  • 1(c) Research - V.GOOD - again, my limitation is knowing nothing of the subject but to my untrained eye I see multiple sources used and all nicely listed.
  • 1(d) Neutral? - YES - I didn't get any sense that I was being asked to favour the politics of the CCF or NDP. I didn't feel that the article was a hagiography... in fact, if anything, perhaps it's a little dispassionate in that I come away with no feelings about the man whatever; perhaps a little criticism here and a slap on the back there might improve the article. I'm not suggesting editors voice their views of course! But if a little colour could be added via the views of his contemporaries that might not hurt.

I am afraid of hagiography, that's why my writing is so bland. I do know of many very colourful stories about him, but they are either hearsay, or not otherwise quite encyclopedic. I did meet him once, when I was six, but again, I don't think that story would be appropriate for Wikipedia;-) Abebenjoe (talk) 22:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

• • 1(e) Stable? - YES - No sign of instability for years.
  • 2(a) Lead - EXCELLENT - Seems to hit all the major points in a concise manner.
  • 2(b) Structure - EXCELLENT - Follows a chronological approach which seems the obvious and best suited way. I perhaps miss a section, as mentioned, on his Politics and policies but as mentioned I guess these are covered to a large degree in sibling articles.
  • 2(c) Citation consistency - NOT CHECKED by me, at least, I think someone else has, though.
  • 3 Images - NOT CHECKED - I do not know enough about image policies.
  • 4 Length - V.GOOD - with proviso of wishing there were additional content as outlined previously. Otherwise, I didn't feel the article got bogged down at any particular point, it strikes me as well-balanced. If it had been much longer my attention may have begun to wander, so it strikes me as about right.
  • bodnotbod (talk) 20:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
• I think it is too much of a fan piece. As well, we're dealing with a fairly obscure politician here. I found the writing stilted, the piece overly-long, and the subject rather uninteresting.Spoonkymonkey (talk) 16:04, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

• Could you provide examples of stilted writing or superfluous detail? The subject being uninteresting is not a valid oppose reason under the featured article criteria. Steve Smith (talk) 01:40, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support. I disagree with the above. He's an important figure in Canadian politics, and this article covers him well. Excellently referenced and well written. - SimonP (talk) 03:08, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
• Support - well written and interesting. Seems to cover all of the important aspects of his life and the politics are in sufficient detail. I've fixed a few trifling ref formatting errors. Just a few comments:

Jewish people were the majority ethnicity in the shtetl - why "ethnicity" ?- they were the simple majority

Unlike many of the other shtetls in the Pale - perhaps just "many other shtetls"

The statement "They Lost" in reference to his first debate is unsupported - should it be covered by the preceding reference ?

Does the article really need the starting salary as CCF National Secretary ? - the article does not otherwise dwell on the monetary side of things. I cannot see the relevance of the figure

There are some repeated references eg [106] after a few successive sentences - surely just put it at the end of the referenced text ? I've fixed one and had this disputed but it seems that <sentence>[106]<another sentence>[106]<more text>[106]<and more>[107] adds clutter that <three sentences>[106]<and more>[107] does not.

- Peripitus (Talk) 04:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I mentioned ethnicity, as there were several in the Pale of Settlement. I put the starting salary there, to show that Lewis wasn't doing it for the money. He could have easily made more money in private law practice, which he did, once he stepped down as the Secretary. Hope that helps explain why these items appear in the article. - Abebenjoe (talk) 17:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

My point on the ethnicity is that the word is redundant. 3500 out of 4500 is a majority and needs no qualification. as for the $1,200, was it high, low, median, what was it compared to what he earned before or after ? The number tells me nothing as there is nothing to compare against. It means nothing more that stating he had a salary or, and this is silly, what his shoesize is. The number has me searching for relevance and finding none - Peripitus (Talk) 23:59, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I made a few minor edits to the page, and hopefully they will make it clear that $1200 was not much money even in the late 1930s. As well, I took your advice, and removed ethnicity and restructured the sentence.--Abebenjoe (talk) 17:35, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Media I don't like File:Orange_Maple_Leaf.svg, I feel artificially created logos are unencyclopedic, and i dont like it that teh maple leaf is amber, and the parties maple leaf is green, however but I will not oppose on that basis Fasach Nua (talk) 23:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

The logo is part of a template that deals with CCF/NDP articles. I have no control over it.Abebenjoe (talk) 15:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Support (by Finetooth) this interesting article, which I peer-reviewed in April. All of my concerns have been dealt with except a new one.

In the "Trying to create an organization section", this sentence does not scan: "It did not matter that Underhill was one of Lewis' mentors, when Woodsworth House was stricken with financial difficulties in the late 1940s, Lewis was quick to blame and then discharged Underhill and the rest of the Woodsworth executive of their responsibilities." Should the first comma be a semicolon? Should "discharged" be "discharge"? Also, and more importantly, it would be helpful to non-Canadian readers if "Woodsworth House" were briefly explained. I do not understand how Lewis had the authority to discharge the executives, what exactly Underhill said or did to provoke Lewis, how financial difficulties were related to criticism of the party, or why Lewis' actions cost the CCF among academics and the intelligentsia. Could you make this paragraph more clear for readers with little background in Canadian politics? Finetooth (talk) 05:14, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Will address this in the next day or so with a footnote that provides more information on Woodsworth House, which was a CCF financed and owned building and think tank. I'll check the paragraph's grammar again as well, and correct it if need be.Abebenjoe (talk) 15:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Made updates that hopefully addressed what Woodsworth House was. I created a footnote explaining the back history of the event. Changed the paragraph's sentence structure to make it more readable.Abebenjoe (talk) 17:01, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. That is very helpful. All is now clear. Finetooth (talk) 17:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support, but a query. The lead concludes with "...he and Stephen became one of the first father-and-son-teams to simultaneously head Canadian political parties." I cannot find this claim in the body text, and it seems such a peculiar circumstance that I am surprised it does not say they were the only father-and-son team etc. Related to that query, the closest text I found (under the heading Leader of the NDP) - "During the early to mid 1970s, the father-and-son-team led the two largest sections of the NDP" - lacks a reference. I'd like to see these things addressed, but the article overall is excellent. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I was being super cautious with the claim "the first father-and-son-team", because, although I have done a reasonably thorough check that would suggest overwhelmingly that this is true, ultimately, I can't gurantee that statement one-hundred precent, hence why I used "one of the first." I can change it, and then have someone challenge it later, if they can prove otherwise. I'll add citations from Smith and either the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star that will back that up further.Abebenjoe (talk) 15:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Added citations, but left the opening the same, since, I can't guarantee they were the first father-son-team to lead both a federal and provincial party simultaneously, though it very likely is the case.Abebenjoe (talk) 17:01, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.