Wikipedia:Featured article review/History of New Jersey/archive1

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

The article was removed by Marskell 23:19, 4 September 2009 [1].

History of New Jersey[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

Featured article candidates/History of New Jersey

Featured article review/History of New Jersey/archive1

Notified: all listed WikiProjects. Author has no edits for a year.

As with many old FAs, this has a lot of unsourced content and fails (1c). Aside from the wide swathes of paragraphs that are unaccounted for, there is also a problem with the quality of many sources. "OurStory" is not in my opinion reliable, and there are other amateur or hobby sites used when the events described seem notable enough to find references in more scholarly texts.

More importantly however, this article is not written with the big picture in mind to show the historical evolution of NJ but is more a collection of important/big news events, some with little or no impact on the historical development of the state and thus fails the comprehnsiveness/balance criteria

Great Depression era is one example.
- 25% about the depression, and the other three quarters are about the War of the Worlds hoax, which only had an impact for a few days and didn't last because the misconception was rolled back.
- Another 25% about Lindbergh's son being kidnapped. No wide impact on the state. There are hundreds maybe thousands of murders, including no doubt some serial killers and massacres.
- Hindenburg blowing up. Again, tragic, but no lasting impact on the state. There have been many other crashes as well they can't all be included List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_airliners_in_the_United_States#New_Jersey
- In contrast, there is only about half of this one state politics combined, and most of this is an unsourced BLP violating part about a possibly homosexual governor being corrupt, but again, none are about government policies affecting the state, except that there was a crisis due to there being no deputy' position.
Ditto for last 35 years. Only 9/11, Ellis Park transfer and the governor resigning are mentioned, without any way of the bigger picture of things like maybe? industrial decline, changing demographics, those sorts of things.
Ditto for things like a US/USSR presidential summit being held in NJ and nukes being stored there. The location is not relevant and the results affect every place in both countries equally, nor would they have had a large impact on the economy of the state.

YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 01:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Images need alt text as per WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 03:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
File:HollandTunnelNYNJboarder.JPG needs a caption. DrKiernan (talk) 09:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could this article use tightening? Of course.
However, it would be nice if the criticism of content were not mere guesswork.
- The Lindbergh case had state (and national) coverage for a long time; that's why the Governor gave his personal attention to it. NJ's handling of the case was one of the concerns about the structure of government which led to the Constitution of 1947.
- We are discussing New Jersey, not Michigan; industrial decline was localized, and largely in the 1960s - not in the last thirty five years. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I don't know if this is recentism or not, but the indictments of several dozen New Jersey politicians and other figures by the FBI in the past month seems worthy of inclusion in this article. I'm unsure of the treatment required, however. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria concern are citations, comprehensiveness, alt text. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. FAQ? YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 00:38, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delist YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 00:38, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delist per above concerns. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep unless some concern less conjectural and vacuous is presented. I really should compile a list of inane FARs and FACs. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:16, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delist. The concerns expressed are real. I find the "big picture" comment and the lack of sourcing to be most troubling. No attempt has been made to improve the article during the review period (other than adding some "dead links" templates, a troubling sign). Eubulides (talk) 04:17, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delist. Per the concerns of commentators above. The section "Twentieth century" is a good example of the article's fundamental problems. It seems to be apparently random selections from the not very good "main" article New Jersey in the 20th century. —mattisse (Talk) 14:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delist, per FA criteria concerns. Cirt (talk) 06:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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