Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Governors of Arkansas/archive2

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

The list was not promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 23:31, 3 November 2016 (UTC) [1].

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List of Governors of Arkansas

List of Governors of Arkansas (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured list candidates/List of Governors of Arkansas/archive1
• Featured list candidates/List of Governors of Arkansas/archive2
• Featured list candidates/List of Governors of Arkansas/archive3

• Featured list removal candidates/List of Governors of Arkansas/archive1

Nominator(s): Golbez (talk) 19:12, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Alrighty then. I took a long break from the governor lists, and some changes have been made to the format, some good, some ... I disagree with. This is my attempt to reconcile some of them. Major changes from previous lists:

• No more "parties" bar. IMO, it's not that useful - the ebb and flow of party dynamics are much better expressed in prose rather than numbers, which nearly always require some gymnastics to figure out, due to repeat governors, acting governors, etc.
• No more "other offices." I mean, I'll put it back if people really want it, but I found it to be a bit too subjective and not terribly useful.
• I *want* to take away the "living former governors" box but I think there's a consensus for it to stay; however, if y'all agree with me, then into the chute it goes.
• Much better use of the 'term' column, to include the election year (and a link, if available).
• More context for lieutenant governors; this isn't a list of them, but the dates of vacancies, etc. are useful.
• And as mentioned in the previous FLC, I discovered a new governor. That's pretty neat.

Let's do this. --Golbez (talk) 19:12, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• comment- I might have time to do a full review later but for now you will at least need a small legend indicating what the blue and red colours mean next to the names. This may not be clear for non-Americans. Mattximus (talk) 21:46, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I put back a row at the top with the colors, but this has nothing to do with Americans vs non-Americans, as the same kind of style is used everywhere on Wikipedia. --Golbez (talk) 23:00, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
    • I meant most Non-Americans would not know that the colour blue represents the Democratic party, and red Republican. Mattximus (talk) 02:29, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Dudley

• "the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Arkansas Legislature" Can the legislature override a veto with a two thirds vote?
  • Probably, but we have to have a line here between the governor and not-governor. The legislature can also impeach the governor, but that is also beyond the scope here. Maybe there shouldn't be any real explanation of powers, since that's beyond the scope of the article. (I'm not saying this sarcastically; I'm all for removing stuff outside the scope of an article. Like the list of living governors.)
• Why no party designations for governors of the territory? If the post was then non-political, I think you should say so.
  • Appointed posts are nearly by definition non-partisan, IMO, since you aren't nominated or endorsed by a party for it. That's different from non-political.
• There are no references for the items in the table. These are needed.
  • This I'm going to need more clarification on. The table is a synthesis of data points from multiple major references, which are contained in the 'general' references. (though that does need to be pruned, there's way too many there. It should just be the NGA and encyclopedia links. Fixing.) For specifics, when necessary, there are specific citations in the footnotes. I don't understand the need to have a citation for every single row when they're all going to the same site, and I can say "hey here's the site[s] used" in the general references.

• All data must be fully referenced, but you can have a single citation for a column listing the source or sources used in that column. For example, see List of incorporated places in Maryland. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:03, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Five citations in a row that go to the same place. I think this is not the best method of citation. I'll consider this, though. --Golbez (talk) 13:32, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

• "though as the state fell to Union forces there was a loyalist government put in place with an insignificant Confederate government in exile." This is unclear but I assume you mean that it fell earlier than other states. A date would be helpful, and did the Union government then appoint a new governor? (I see you explain in the notes, but I think clarification here would be helpful.)
  • I think I mean... when the Civil War began, there was no Union government in exile, but as it ended, there was a Confederate government in exile. I tried rewording it, please check.
• "the next in line for the governorship was the speaker" is the speaker?
  • Nope, because that only applied to the period before the office of Lt Governor was created.
• Why do you not use the photo of Winthrop Rockefeller at [[File:Paige, Huckabee, Rockefeller, and Hutchinson with large check, August 2002 - cropped to Rockefeller.jpg]] Is there something wrong with its licence?
  • No, because that's of lieutenant governor Rockefeller (died 2006), not his father, governor Rockefeller (died 1973).
• "The most recent death of a former governor was that of Dale Bumpers (served 1971–1975, born 1925), who died on January 1, 2016. The most recently serving governor to die was Frank D. White, who served from 1981 to 1983 and died on May 21, 2003." It took me a while to understand this. It should be more clearly expressed, although I doubt whether it is needed.
  • I agree. Any objection to deleting that whole section? I've never understood the strange obsession some on Wikipedia have with having easy access to a list of the former people in an office still alive; it's kind of relevant for Presidents (what with secret service protection, long-standing tradition of trivia, etc), but Governors? Nah. Middle-click the last few until you start running out of live ones. Done.
• "The Speaker of the House declared that the measure had lost because it did not receive a majority of the highest vote total from that election." I do not understand this.
  • It's hard to understand. It seems that at the time, Arkansas had a weird rule - or thought they did - that a referendum that people voted on had to receive at least as many votes as to win the highest-vote-getting question on the ballot. In the case of amendment 6, it received 45567 votes in favor, winning by a mere 361 votes. However, another election chosen on that same ballot (it doesn't say which; maybe some congressman or something) received 135517 votes in total, so they said that, for a referendum to pass, it had to receive at least enough votes to win that contest, i.e. 67758 votes. In 1925 they realized a 1910 act had amended that so it only needed a majority of the votes cast for that particular question. I think another way of looking at it is: There were 135517 votes cast in total, if people didn't vote for either 'pro' or 'con' the referendum, then it was assumed they voted 'con' instead of assuming no vote at all. I've expanded on the footnote to attempt to explain this rather arcane incident.
• What is meant by "General" references. If the source is used in the article, it should be cited for the specific statement it references. If they are sources which are cited in the "specific" references, the arrangement is unusual and confusing. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:47, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
  • See above for my explanation of "general" vs "specific" references. --Golbez (talk) 05:27, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

• The usual arrangement is citations and then sources. If you want to call them specific and general references that is fine - people use different names for them - but the specific references should come above the general ones and the constitutions. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:03, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

• Why? The general and constitution are designed to be seen by readers and directly gone to, whereas the specific ones are designed to be accessed via the footnote. Things that are less immediately useful to the reader should go lower. --Golbez (talk) 13:32, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Glad to see you back at this! As general comments to your changes, I kind of liked the Other offices section, but I've felt living former governors is simply trivia; perhaps just have one sentence elsewhere summarizing the number and the one oldest (or who served the longest ago). I like the election year in the terms. When the Lt gov is elected separately, I'd just as well leave it out completely - the positions are entirely unrelated beyond succession, and there's a separate (though usually inferior) article for that list. Reywas92^Talk 07:48, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! Some responses:

• My problem with the 'other offices' section is that it was becoming subjective. I never included mayorships, yet for some, being mayor of a major city would be a pretty notable job. For some, being CEO of a major corporation would be a notable job. Sarah Palin is obviously most notable for being a VP nominee, but on my criteria that wouldn't have listed. And for judgeships, I had to just decide on a level to stop at. To me, it felt like "trivia about the people" rather than "trivia about the position." The only info should be who held the office, when they held the office, and why who held the office changed. What they did when not governor is not at all relevant. Now, for some states, this could simply be removed to a paragraph about how many of their governors have served as President - basically, New York - but otherwise it just seemed like a soulless list of data.
• Yeah, I originally just had term number - and I shouldn't say "I" because I borrowed that from Spartan7W's excellent idea implemented on the California list, much better than my previous "fractions" idea. IIRC, I had included the election year as a link under the number; someone else then came along and moved it out to parenthetical election year, which was a great idea. Finally, I was working on Georgia, and ... honestly no one seems to know how many governors Georgia has had, in part because during the Revolution they had 6 month terms. Yeah. So I gave up on trying to number the terms and just gave the year they were elected. I haven't done that here yet because it wasn't necessary, but I probably should - the year they were elected is much more useful/relevant than the number of term they served.
• The Lt Gov and Gov not being elected on the same ticket is only one sentence, and is useful to explain why several Lt Govs are of different parties than the governor. (Which has to be noted due to accessibility concerns)
• "Usually inferior" what do you think one of my next projects is :) --Golbez (talk) 13:50, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

This is a bit frustrating, but this nomination has been open over 2 months without any support and hasn't had a comment for over 6 weeks, so I'm going to have to close it. --PresN 01:45, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been not promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.

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