Talk:2018 State of the Union Address

Cleanup required?

If I compare the tpoic of this year's SOTU with the topics on earlier editions, there seems to be a lot of only indirectly related content in the topic, like protests and boycotts. The previous items did not include a "Background" section, and if any protests where held they did not warrant mentioning in the 2014, 2015 or 2016 address. Including them now would take away the bias from the topic at hand (the State of the Union itself). My proposal would thus be to remove this as irrelevant and focus more on the contents, like in other topics on SOTU. 213.46.43.3 (talk) 13:17, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to great work done by myself and others, the article now seems to follow the same format as other SOTU articles. Bnc319 (talk) 23:46, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Invitees mentioned in speech

• Ashlee Leppert
• David Dahlberg
• Steve Scalise
• Steve Staub and Sandy Keplinger of Staub Manufacturing with their employee Corey Adams
• Preston Sharp
• Evelyn Rodriguez, Freddy Cuevas, Elizabeth Alvarado, and Robert Mickens. Their two teenage daughters -- Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, neither of them came home due to MS-13
• Celestino Martinez
• Hope Holets, baby rescued by police officer Ryan Holets and his wife Rebecca Holets
• Justin Peck and Kenton Stacy
• Parents of Otto Warmbier Arrest and death of Otto Warmbier
• Ji Seong-ho

Ok, but it's very possible that not all of the red-linked names are notable, i.e. deserve a Wikipedia article just yet. --Animalparty! (talk) 05:09, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I get that, but being invited does make them notable as symbolic of the points (which were not obvious to me) being made in the speech. At the very least these should be greenlink redirects to the proper platform issues which should have some bullet paragraph linking the issue back to the speech. Jane (talk) 10:31, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Comparison to Obama viewership

The following sentence from the article needs changed: "Across twelve broadcast and cable television networks, 45.8 million viewers watched the speech, less than the comparable 2010 address given by President Barack Obama."

This is what the source says:

Tuesday's ratings were also slightly lower than the comparable State of the Union speech delivered by President Obama in 2010. (Obama drew 48 million that night.) But it's hard to say whether that's a consequence of Trump's relative unpopularity, or the increasingly fragmented state of television.

The key here is that second sentence, which adds the caveat that although the speeches themselves are comparable (i.e. first SOTU speech of presidency), these specific metrics are not necessarily comparable due to the changing nature of television and streaming. Including this comparison in the article is useless because its apples-to-orange with the way that how people tune in to the speech has changed (the article mentions 9 media outlets as well as the White House had 10 different live streams of the speech on Youtube alone). I am removing this comparison to Obama until a comparison surfaces that accurately reflects total viewership and not just one aspect of viewership which is declining across the board to begin with. Abierma3 (talk) 07:39, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree with your removal. Bnc319 has added a better wording, including a note about streaming, without comparison to 2010, which I also agree with. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:13, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

IP removal of line

The line in question is:

The 2018 address also received the lowest net positive rating since at least 1998, when CNN first asked the question.

I've reinstated it for now, due to the lack of an edit summary. However, I think it needs qualifying more that it was a CNN poll - they're not exactly neutral when it comes to Trump. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 16:34, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

References

I tried a fix. I think this section needs expanded with more polls for balance though. Abierma3 (talk) 21:08, 3 February 2018 (UTC)