Talk:1984 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

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United States: Massachusetts Low‑importance

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POV language[edit]

Re: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_presidential_election_in_Massachusetts,_1984&diff=next&oldid=596408854

Please WP:AGF.

We need to avoid journalistic practices when editing. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. We are not trying to "grab" the reader's attention from another channel. We are not "selling time." The idea is to avoid POV language. Please see Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Impartial_tone.

"Narrowly" is an unnecessary adjective, inserted to lead the reader to make the "correct" judgement, by our subjective standards. Since the editor has already presented objective facts, no "leading" should be necessary. Ideally, "leading" the reader should never be necessary.

The current entry reads: "Massachusetts had been a Democratic-leaning state since 1928, and a Democratic stronghold since 1960. In 1972, Massachusetts was the only state in the nation to vote for Democrat George McGovern over Republican Richard Nixon in the latter's 49-state landslide. However in...." Putting material in context repetitively for every Presidential election is redundant and should demonstrate that this belongs in a higher level article, at best, or not really relevant to this election. Each election stands on its own. These entries should really be fairly small, including only that information unique to both to the 1984 election and Massachusetts. The above fails WP:TOPIC because it includes information about 1928, 1960, and 1972, all irrelevant to the 1984 election. It does not cover 1984 campaigning or fundraising in the state, which might actually be germane to the 1984 election.

The phrase "had managed to win" slights the actual winner by using WP:BIASed wording, implying that the editor preferred the opposite result. The political bias of the editor should not be blatantly transparent in the material. "only" and "razor-thin" commit the article to the same obvious bias. Most editors have a view on politics. We try to pretend to be objective when presenting the material.

"thus in a 1984 head-to-head match-up" sounds journalistic and is not really informative.

"convincing" and the results of the nationwide race are not WP:TOPIC to this article which is supposed to be isolated to the topic of this article which is Massachusetts. The parent article can sum up the final results. It need not be done at length in all 50 articles. Student7 (talk) 22:18, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You tried this silliness out at Talk:United States presidential election in Vermont, 1964, where you tried to argue that any language that is informative or descriptive is "journalistic", and you stated your belief that articles should be deliberately poorly-written, boring, and designed to put people to sleep. Thus you have continued trying to carry out this philosophy with more destructive edits upon other articles. The result in Massachusetts in 1984 was 'narrow', it was 2.79%. Most election articles will not just tell you who won the election, but also by what scale (narrowly, decisively, in a landslide, etc.). Nothing POV about it. Massachusetts had indeed been the only state to vote for 49-state landslide loser Democrat George McGovern in 1972, and Reagan's margin in MA in 1980 had indeed been 'razor-thin' (0.15%) with a lot of help from John Anderson, which is why Massachusetts was still potentially a swing state in 1984 even though Reagan was clearly going to be winning a landslide nationally. And the final result did end up being narrow. That's all vital background information about the role the state played in the 1984 election. Including historical context behind the subject matter is part of what an encyclopedia article is supposed to do. Historical context is a vital PART of the TOPIC. Again, this is not just a database of election result numbers. Also your argument that all these articles should be "small" is again ridiculous. Articles should provide as much information as is necessary to allow the reader to understand the topic, there is no size police to dictate that certain types of articles have to be big and others small. But once again, all of your 'arguments' and excuses for literally trying to dumb down encyclopedia articles were already debunked ten times over at Vermont 1964. Inqvisitor (talk) 22:41, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]