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 Ian Rose 10:01, 27 December 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey[edit]

Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): --ColonelHenry (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a political office in the state of New Jersey that was created in 2005 and filled for the first time in the modern era in 2009. It discusses the quirks of the state's early history that caused New Jersey to be one of the few American states without a lieutenant governor, the circumstances that forced New Jersey to create the post, and the qualifications and powers of the office in its current form.

After a very comprehensive GA assessment that was more intense than most FACs, I think this article is ready for FA consideration.--ColonelHenry (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image check by Nikkimaria[edit]

Images are fine, captions are good. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:02, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Hurricanehink[edit]

Support, looks good! As a New Jerseyan and a political lover, I had to stumble here from my FAC and comment :)

  • Reply: These sentences were originally one longer, combined sentence and were copyedited into three sentences for greater clarity. I am averse to merging these sentences because of that. I think the three sentences together are sufficient to establish the subordinate role of the lieutenant governor to the governor and adding a clause is not necessary. Further, one of the comments in the GA review was that the lede was too large, so adding more explanatory material to the lede isn't a course I would take lightly--especially when the rest of the article establishes those points at length sufficiently.--ColonelHenry (talk) 07:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I just think that those two sentences started with "The lieutenant governor" and end with "governor for a four-year term" and "governor's four-year term". Seems like those two could be combined easily without losing anything. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply: I think merging the sentences will reduce clarity (as it apparently did in earlier versions where these three sentences were united) and create a nasty confusing run-on (something you point to as needing clarification in another example below). So we're just going to have to agree to disagree.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "What's wrong with "The lieutenant governor is elected concurrently on a ticket with the governor for a four-year term."? It removes an entire sentence and is still quite clear. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 16:18, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply/Done: Because a few months ago someone else thought that something similar to that wasn't clear enough, and I'm loathe to get into a tug-of-war over it if it's just a matter of "I would have written this differently" because everyone would write something differently. But I'll defer. --ColonelHenry (talk) 16:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply: How is the sentence "not clear"? If you could tell me something more than "not exactly sure" I'd consider addressing it, but just saying "it could be clearer" doesn't really tell me much. Further, that's about as clear a synopsis as can be managed. If I go into an explanation of the dispute, it would take up too much space to explain and end up worthy of its own article (not a bad idea). So is this a question of what I think is a rather clear sentence not getting the point across (which you could tell me how it doesn't) or just a matter of you thinking you'd write it differently (which is unactionable, IMHO)? We often forget that an article is a summary (WP:SUMMARY) where we're advised to avoid excessive detail (WP:DETAIL). If anyone wants more detail on the dispute, they can read the source that supports the statement which spends a few dozen pages setting up the action. --ColonelHenry (talk) 06:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's just a bit of a run-on. Could you add a comma? The sentence structure is messy IMO. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply/Done: Unlike most run-ons, this one is rather straightforward and no longer than average sentence in an average academic history text--so I unless there's something specific in its messiness, and since there's no use using commas if one isn't needed, I don't know what else you're getting at. I revised it to: "Ingoldesby furthered angered the colony's Quaker leaders after he retaliated against them for their opposition to raising troops from New Jersey to support a planned invasion of French colonies in Canada." I am hopeful that this suffices.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply: No, it is not backed up by fn.24--the following sentence is, where the footnote appears. The sentence you complain of is the first sentence (thesis) of the section. The rest of the section adequately backs up its thesis with sourced information. Not every sentence need to be tagged with a source...especially if it's just an introductory sentence and the rest of the section it prefaces adequately is sourced (as this one is with about two dozen footnotes).--ColonelHenry (talk) 07:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply: Again, we're advised not to go into too much detail especially on tangents--especially when that detail is discussed at other articles there's no need to regurgitate it. I will link it to the relevant section at the McGreevey article, but since it's unnecessary detail I'll avoid regurgitating the scandal details here. To your main point: McGreevey was accused of sexual improprieties and harassment by Golan Cipel, and the media criticized that the governor appointed a love interest into a "homeland security" post that he wasn't qualified for except for having been the governor's love interest, other damaging sexual allegations came to light, it wasn't just his admission of being a "gay American". Simply put, he resigned amid a sex scandal. I'd prefer not to dance around the obvious with euphemisms or sugarcoating--and I'd use the phrase "sex scandal" whether the participants were gay or straight and the circumstances warranted it. Here, this incident had all the hallmarks of a scandal and it was compared by the media with other scandals (especially after Spitzer resigned). Newspaper coverage described it as a scandal, and even McGreevey discusses the nature of the events (and others) as a "scandal" in his memoir (his former wife in her memoir uses the word "scandal" more frequently, but she might have had reason to be bitter.) Nevertheless, the details are found elsewhere and at length discussion of them wouldn't be germane here.--ColonelHenry (talk) 06:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suppose it's fine adding the link. Better than before. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply: good point, I'll consider a way to incorporate that weighing whether it's appropriate vis-à-vis that being covered at the Codey and DiFrancesco articles, or at List of Governors of New Jersey, etc., and reviewing some sources. Standby--might take a day or so.--ColonelHenry (talk) 07:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All in all, it's a really good article on a fairly new subject. Hope it keeps up to date when there is a change in 2017 (or 2016 - it'd be funny to see the very first lieutenant governor actually become governor due to another resignation). --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 06:35, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • It would be interesting to see what constitutional crisis emerges if Christie does move on in 2016. The state's constitution doesn't provide a Lt. Gov. who assumes the acting governorship to appoint or fill a vacant Lt. Governorship, which places a Republican governor at a disadvantage with a Democratic legislature--so that raises an interesting question of succession and political wrangling. The article is on my watchlist and I'll be sure to update it if I'm around in 2016/2017. If I don't, someone else will--I'm sure of that.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:38, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Cwmhiraeth[edit]

My knowledge of US politics is approximately nil. Here are a few comments on the text of the article: Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:54, 7 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Done - revised to "The person elected to this position is" --ColonelHenry (talk) 03:15, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done - split into two sentences. In the new arrangement, "are" was kept.--ColonelHenry (talk) 03:15, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cwmhiraeth -- Many thanks for your comments, I think I've adequately addressed your concerns. Do you see any additional issues to be fixed? --ColonelHenry (talk) 06:00, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Taylor Trescott[edit]

This looks really good and I think it meets the FA criteria. I Support its promotion. Just a few concerns. (I'm not in the know about American politics, so feel free to laugh at these...)

  • Done - rendered consistently as "running mate" for all 9 mentions.--ColonelHenry (talk) 20:05, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's really it. Congratulations on a high quality article. Taylor Trescott - my talk + my edits 16:24, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Quadell[edit]

It's surprising to me that there are no portraits of Richard Ingoldesby. I suspect that one exists, but we have yet to find it. Similarly, the photo of Kim Guadagno is not very good, but none of the other options is any better. That should be a challenge to New Jersey Wikipedians: get a decent photo of this person! But none of this is necessary for this FAC.

  • Reply - I was surprised as well that there was no Ingoldesby portrait when I was preparing List of colonial governors of New Jersey--even asked a friend at the National Portrait Gallery if they knew of one. We could not find one. We had previously used Guadagno's official state portrait on the article. NJ's official website states that state government images could be used freely and without obligation--and commons used to have a PD-NJ tag, but since there was no explicit permission on the NJ website to alter (even though it was considered implied), that tag was deleted and so with all the images/files it supported. I emailed the Christie-Guadagno campaign in October/November organization for one, they never replied. If a better image does come up for Guadagno or one is uncovered for Ingoldesby, as long as I'm alive, I'll find a way to get it up.--ColonelHenry (talk) 20:57, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it not. – Quadell (talk) 16:12, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great, but that turned it into quite a long sentence, which I took the liberty of splitting. – Quadell (talk) 16:12, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done - revised the passage (per this and the above suggestion). --ColonelHenry (talk) 21:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that's what you meant! Okay, that footnote is quite useful. – Quadell (talk) 16:12, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent rewording. (I added a comma.) – Quadell (talk) 16:12, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done - went with the first option. Since the East and West Jersey proprietary colonies were before its incarnation as "PofNJ"--ColonelHenry (talk) 20:15, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done - I went with "modern" in leaving open the odd-chance that the post gets scrapped in a few years.--ColonelHenry (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply/Addressed - In the GA review I tried to get it consistent, but concede there were probably a few strays. I erred on keeping the column labels capitalized for the table. I couldn't find anything MOS wise regarding it in a quick check, but they are titles as a proper noun in this context, and aesthetically I didn't care for the alternative version in lowercase, I kept them capitalized. I rephrased the "Incumbent governor" sentence. "Acting Governor" done., and addressed the others above. I think that should make the usage generally consistent. shout if you see any additional strays.--ColonelHenry (talk) 20:34, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great, it looks fine to me now. – Quadell (talk) 21:23, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: Would it not be a jarring tautology to say "only state-wide...elected office in the state"?--ColonelHenry (talk) 20:40, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes... I can only think of suboptimal wordings. Adding "in the state" would create an awkward duplication of "state", and adding "in New Jersey" would create a different awkward duplication. But leaving it as is could give the false impression that it was the only such office in the country, especially since the very next sentence compares New Jersey to other states. Perhaps a major rewording of the whole paragraph could fix the problem, but I can't think of a way. You may be forced to pick the best of the available not-so-great options. – Quadell (talk) 21:23, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think, I may have solved it by rephrasing it as Prior to modern creation of the lieutenant governor position, the only state-wide, non-federal, elected office was the Governor of New Jersey. The next sentence starts with "New Jersey" but because it avoids the tautology I can accept that under the "best available" option. Let me know if you think that's o.k. --ColonelHenry (talk) 22:19, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, great choice, I think that works. – Quadell (talk) 04:11, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I will continue this review over the next few days. – Quadell (talk) 20:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a fascinating article. I have not done a thorough source check, but the sources look great at a quick perusal. The quotes are relevant and helpful. In my spotchecks, I always found the article's statements fully supported by the sources without plagiarism. Once my nitpicks are dealt with, I expect to support. – Quadell (talk) 19:26, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think I've addressed your suggestions and comments. Please let me know if there are any additional concerns. Thank you for your meticulous attention in reviewing this article and for your (anticipated) support. --ColonelHenry (talk) 20:52, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This article passes all our FA criteria, and should be featured. – Quadell (talk) 21:23, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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