Wikipedia:Peer review/74th Oregon Legislative Assembly/archive1

74th Oregon Legislative Assembly

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for July 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I believe it's a relatively innovative kind of article, and I'd like some suggestions and different perspectives on how to make the most of it. I wrote most of the article, though there have been some solid contributions by other editors like Aboutmovies and Athelwulf. The basic idea is to draw together information that is fairly disparate (newspaper articles, technical info about districts and party composition, etc.), and create a resource for anyone seeking to learn about this period of the Oregon legislature's history.

My hope is that this article can become a model for similar articles on other Oregon legislative sessions, and perhaps other states' legislatures as well. In the long run, it would be great to have articles like this for all sessions, or at least all recent sessions; then, it would be possible to look at them in the aggregate, perhaps along with related articles about elections and direct democracy (see List of Oregon ballot measures), and use them to improve the quality of overview articles like History of Oregon.

Please feel free to offer comments on related articles like those listed above, Oregon's statewide elections, 2006, Oregon legislative elections, 2008, and the navboxes at the bottom of the article.

Thanks very much, I think this peer review might be asking a great deal -- but any and all feedback will be most appreciated! Pete (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments/Suggestions from Blargh29
  • Find a source for the fact tag in the lead. Also, try to keep the parens use to a minimum.
  • I'm confused: the lead says the Governor didn't veto any bills, but he vetoed one in August. Is there a more clear way to say that?

     Done, I think. -Pete (talk)

  • Great to use a picture taken during the session. Suggestion: If there's a better one of the state house, use that in the infobox and use the picture of the construction in a paragraph about the construction project.
  • In the separate session sections, I would separate the list of bills from what newspapers said about the session. Try to summarize the commentary from the papers. Maybe something like "Several large newspapers derided the legisature's efforts to achieve X, with Newspaper 1 saying "Y" and Newspaper 2 saying "Z."

    Good point. I'll try to get that separated out more clearly. -Pete (talk)

  • Be careful about noting failed bills. A million bills die every year. Is there something noteworthy about some of them? Were they pushed by the majority, but failed anyways? Did the leadership block their passage? Was it part of the governor's platform that failed?

    Only had one in there -- the fact that Oregon's medical marijuana law was not scaled back. This was covered in detail in reliable sources, which I thought warranted inclusion. Not sure exactly who pushed it without going back to the sources. I will try to flesh this out a little and give it some context. -Pete (talk)

  • Maybe make a stub article for redlinks.

    Yeah, some day :) They're coming, I promise. -Pete (talk)

  • Maybe try to make a color coded map to show which party had control over which district. If you can get an svg graphic of the districts, you can easily change the party colors. Maybe someone from commons can do that for you? It might be easy if you can get a .pdf of the districts, then the data can be extracted into the graphic. Try asking the guy who did this: File:PA State House districts by party.svg.

    It's an excellent idea. The Senate maps were among the first things I did on WIkipedia, and I wish I'd done them a little differently. But, there are some thorny copyright questions...I think we'd be OK, but need to do a little research. -Pete (talk)

  • It looks like some legislators changed their party and some new members were installed. That is interesting and should be included. At least, the elections prior and after should be summarized. How was the session impacted by new members, or did some members go to defeat for something they did during the session?

    Good point. Some of that info exists in the articles linked, but you may be right -- may be best to summarize it here, too. -Pete (talk)

  • For the election articles, consider using one of the pre-made election templates. Here's a good example article: Pennsylvania House of Representatives elections, 2002.

    Some of that looks very good -- thanks for the link! -Pete (talk) 21:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

• • • Overall a pretty good start. Good luck--Blargh29 (talk) 16:39, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the top notch feedback! I'll see what I can do with this. -Pete (talk) 19:52, 18 July 2009 (UTC)