Talk:Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party

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Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: May 17, 2008

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Contents 1 Election box metadata 2 Vanguard versus DUP 3 Needs a serious cleanup 4 Survey 5 GA review May 2008 6 GA Review summary

[edit] Election box metadata

This article contains some sub-pages that hold metadata about this subject. This metadata is used by the Election box templates to display the color of the party and its name in Election candidate and results tables.

These links provide easy access to this meta data:

• Template:Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party/meta/color Content:    
• Template:Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party/meta/shortname Content: Template:Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party/meta/shortname

[edit] Vanguard versus DUP

I have left the point about the UUUC nomination strategy in as it is relevant however I removed the section about West Belfast being the strongest Nationalist seat in NI as at that point in time it was debatable (in the previous years assembly elections constituencies in the West had a higher Nationalist %) Additionally the following section in bold has been removed:

The party also obtained more seats in 1975 in the elections to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention than the DUP (in part due to that latter underestimating their support and not always putting up enough candidates in some areas of electoral strength) "in part due to that latter underestimating their support and not always putting up enough candidates in some areas of electoral strength"

This is untrue. The DUP had 1 candidate more than Vanguard overall and contested every seat (there was no VUPP candidate in West Belfast.) VUPP were also better at attracting transfers from the UUP and other Unionist candidates. The only seat in which nominations may have made a difference was in North Antrim and there I don't believe it did. It's true that DUP had 3 candidates and 4.2 quotas but this is attributable to the party leader Ian Paisley standing there. Many VUPP supporters voted for him then cast their second preference for VUPP as the transfer patterns show. Furthermore this was somewhat counterbalanced by the situation in the neighbouring Londonderry constituency where, if VUPP had balanced better, they would have won an extra seat at the expense of the DUP.

Valenciano 11:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needs a serious cleanup

Interesting subject and the article is pretty well written, but it has NO references and needs to be wikified.

I'll try to wikify it, but someone needs to come up with some references before an overzealous admin comes along and blanks it.T L Miles 17:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks brilliant now, Valenciano ! Thanks. T L Miles 14:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. The survey will end on April 30.

• Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article?

• If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do?

• Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia?

At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA review May 2008

Although the article has some good solid stuff in it, I think that at present it is a fair way off from GA standard, and needs a lot of further work.

• Lead: The single-sentence introduction does not meet the requirements of WP:Lead for a precise overview of the article, and needs to be considerably expanded. Personally, I would begin this process by absorbing the Origins section into the lead, and working from there.

• Origins:
  • "bellicose pronouncements" is probably POV
  • Faulkner as "last Prime Minister..." needs a bit of explanation for the non-initiated who don’t fully appreciate the subsequent title changes to chief minister and first minister. Perhaps a footnote could be inserted?
  • Dates (or at least months and years) should be given for the suspension of Stormont, the Sunningdale Agreement, and the Vanguard breakaway

• Politics:
  • Too many references to "it" and "they". It’s not always clear who you mean.
  • Style of section is poor – too many single-sentence paragraphs.

• Extra-parliamentary activities:
  • Repetition of "large rally/rallies" in first two sentences
  • "no go" and "two day" require hyphens (I've fixed these)
  • more references to "it"

• Electoral performance:
  • In the para before the table you have DUP and Democratic Unionist Party, both linked. They are the same thing. Also, in this paragraph the punctuation has gone astray – see note below on copyedit.
  • The notes after the table are an awful muddle, and don’t add anything to the article. I advise dropping most of this. Only the last sentence makes a significant point, and in this sentence "came to grief" is non-encyclopedic, and Constitutional Convention needs linking and dating.

• 1975/6 split:
  • Poor section title. Split shouldn’t be capitalised. "1975–76 split" might be acceptable.
  • Ernest Baird was deputy leader of what?
  • Alphabet soup: From this point the article becomes a nightmare of initials – UUUC, UUUM, UUUP, etc. I know these forms are par for the course in Ulster politics, but it’s awfully difficult to understand the differences between these various groups. You have to try to clarify who they were.
  • "offering a more right-wing position" is not informative. "Right-wing" is a relative term (e.g. was Tony Blair right-wing?) and the sentence reads like opinion.

• Some general points
  • The whole article needs copyediting, with particular attention to punctuation, which is extremely wayward at times.
  • Some dates are unlinked, and possibly other link opportunities. I have fixed a few, but there are more.
    • (I've fixed all the rest that I could see)
  • MoS issues: I spotted a few MoS violations (dashes, nbsps etc), perhaps not critical for GAN purposes, but worth putting right. I’ll do this for you if you like, while you concentrate on the more substantial points.
    • (I've fixed these now).
  • Referencing: I find it odd that, for 41 in-text citations, you have 40 different reference sources, almost all from the internet. Perhaps the article would have benefited from more reliance on a smaller number of authoritative histories? I’d be interested to know why you felt the need to cast the net so wide.
  • Images: Have you investigated the possibility of finding relevant images for the article? Have you tried Google images results for Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party? Maybe the BBC would let you use the Craig photo – or have you tried? An image or two would certainly improve the overall presentation, but I do understand the difficulty.

I am putting the article on hold to give editors the chance to address these issues. My own feeling is that it’ll probably take rather more than seven days to get the article up to GA, but it’s worth a try. Brianboulton (talk) 16:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the above review. Due to limited time it will take a lot longer than seven days for me to address those. Just a couple of quick follow up comments/replies

**The notes after the table are an awful muddle, and don’t add anything to the article. I advise dropping most of this. Only the last sentence makes a significant point, and in this sentence "came to grief" is non-encyclopedic, and Constitutional Convention needs linking and dating.

I was trying to make a point there that the 1973 council elections give a misleading account of their real support back then due to many of their candidates running under different labels. I still think it's a relevant point but could maybe be phrased better.

• • (Trying to be helpful) - it seems to me that the range in the table shown as 8 - 10 should actually be 8 - 11. I also think that the notes below the table could be reduced to two short ones, as follows:-
    • The number of Vanguard councillors elected in 1973 is a matter of dispute, due to the huge potential for confusion among the various candidate designations.[26][27][28]
    • In interpreting the 1977 results it should be borne in mind that at least 13 councillors elected in 1973 under various other "loyalist" labels chose to contest the 1977 election either for Vanguard or for its splinter party, the United Ulster Unionist Party.[29][30] Brianboulton (talk) 22:40, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

**Some dates are unlinked, and possibly other link opportunities. I have fixed a few, but there are more.

When I read the MOS, it seemed to say that dates should only be linked when they are relevant to or help the reader better understand the article. I genuinely don't see how linking to 1973 helps in this context. 1973 in Northern Ireland yes but the year itself no. Maybe though I misinterpreted the guidelines?

• See [[Wikpedia:Tutorial (Wikipedia links) Brianboulton (talk) 21:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

**Referencing: I find it odd that, for 41 in-text citations, you have 40 different reference sources, almost all from the internet. Perhaps the article would have benefited from more reliance on a smaller number of authoritative histories? I’d be interested to know why you felt the need to cast the net so wide.

Because a previous criticism was that the article lacked cites, I fixed that, maybe to the extent of going to the opposite extreme. I don't see that it makes a difference provided that they're reliable sources and in fact to the best of my knowledge, there haven't been authoritative histories published, merely brief biogs on some of the main NI sites, so not really an option.

• No authoritative histories on Northern Ireland that cover the period in question? I find that incredible. Brianboulton (talk) 22:40, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

No authoritative histories which mention VUPP in any great depth and some of those which mention the party are already in. However I should also point out here that as I'm based in Latvia, books in English, nevermind books covering the intricacies of NI in the early 70s are a rare commodity, thus I'm restricted to the web and my own notes for sources. I still don't see the problem with the sources with many of them coming from sources such as CAIN, BBC, Hansard which meet WP:VERIFY. Valenciano (talk) 05:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• • I'm not actually doubting the reliability of your sources. My curiosity related to your choosing a wide range of internet sources rather than standard texts. You've explained the problem - the availability to you of specialist books since you're based in Latvia means you have to rely on the internet. I understand. Brianboulton (talk) 15:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Most of the other points are well made and I'll have a go at them ASAP. Valenciano (talk) 17:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review summary

The article fails at this point, the main editor having acknowledged that it will take a considerable time to address all the points raised in the general review above. I am sure that if it is renominated after these matters have been attended to, it will get a positive reception.

In relation to the GA criteria:-

• Well-written: Fail. Inadequate lead, problems with style and punctuation, needs a very thorough copyedit.
• Accurate and verifiable: Pass
• Breadth of coverage: Pass
• Neutral: Pass
• Stable: Pass

I look forward to seeing the article back at GAN in the near future. Brianboulton (talk) 13:50, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

• Images: Provisional fail, until there has been some discussion of the problems of availability.