Talk:Hillary Clinton

GAR debate

Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton/3

Sentence structure...

Last paragraph on the intro goes... "She has put into place institutional changes seeking to maximize departmental effectiveness and promote the empowerment of women worldwide. She has set records for most-traveled secretary for time in office. She has been at the forefront of the U.S. response to the 2011 Middle East protests, including advocating for the military intervention in Libya." Bad sentence structure here.

Just one variation we can use instead: "Her tenure as Secretary has set forth institutional changes seeking to maximize departmental effectiveness and promote the empowerment of women worldwide. Additionally, she has already set records for most-traveled secretary for time in office. Clinton has also been at the forefront in American response to the Middle East protests, particularly in advocating for military intervention in Libya."

Relatively minor mistake, but important in terms of a well-written article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.85.212.212 (talk) 04:11, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree the structure was too repetitive, but I think your wording introduced unnecessary 'Additionally' and 'also' constructs. I've made a more minimal change. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Size

This article is creeping into the uncomfortable size at 71173 characters of readable prose. I GARed this in 2009 when it was 63KB and at 71KB it is getting to be a real problem. I see this as a situation where there is an army of people who refuse to let this get delisted and insist that this is the exception to the rule. We are getting to a point where if we moved even 1/6th of the content to related articles, it is still borderline. Is anyone inclined to do the pruning. Without the feeling that the 60KB limit is relevant this article will grow incessantly while she is in office. Something needs to be done.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 20:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

The "Secretary of State" section is not growing incessantly. The large bulk of material about her tenure goes into the Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State subarticle (itself over 8,000 words now). This section holds pretty much the bare minimum (roughly, one paragraph per year in office with an additional one on overall initiatives and another evolving wrap-up one). And this section can be re-evaluated over time; I've just now removed two and a half items from it, which in retrospect did not constitute anything major and which will still be covered in the subarticle.

With the edits, this article is now down to 69 kB readable prose size, which per User:Dr_pda/Featured_article_statistics means there are about 40 featured articles the same size or greater. (And who knows how many such GA articles there are.) Several are similar in nature to this one – BLPs of people whose life and career have gone through a number of completely different phases, meaning that a comprehensive, GA/FA level of treatment will take more space than usual. And as for the 60 kB limit that you quote, there are an even hundred featured articles at that length or greater. So there are many exceptions to this guideline (and that's all it is, a guideline, not a rule), not just this one. And I think these exceptions make sense; at the end of the day, what's best for a particular subject is what should hold, not some arbitrary limit. If the involved editors feel that a coherent, comprehensive treatment of Nikita Khrushchev requires 94 kB of readable prose, then that's fine with me.

So in answer to your position of "Something needs to be done," I would say that, actually, nothing needs to be done. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:45, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The Secretary of State section is now 6834. It was 2340 when I GARed this in both May and June. The article is up to 70706 from 64939 or 64333 at the end of the two GARs so 4494 of the 5767 or 6373 character growth was from the Secretary of State section. I am just showing the numbers. I just wish this could be like Barack.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:41, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

You do mean May 2009, 4 months into her tenure? Obviously that is where growth would be, not in sections about earlier career phases. Obama's presidency section has grown too - what else would you expect? Tvoz/talk 04:28, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think that Wasted Time R is quite right - in fact, she has been in this office for over 2-1/2 years already, and there is no reason to assert that the article will now grow incessantly. WTR has been conscientiously monitoring this article and keeping the weight of new material in balance, but as he says, she has had a multi-faceted life and career, and for this to be a comprehensive encyclopedia article that does justice to the subject we need to allow it to be longer than usual. This is not a case of a person whose career spans several iterations of the same type of office, like State Senator to congressman to senator - she has had radically different career and personal phases, and we need to present them all here in the main article without worrying about arbitrarily set size guidelines. I concur that the only thing that "needs to be done" is exactly what WTR has been doing quite ably. Tvoz/talk 03:45, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Popularity

I think its worth noting that according to a latest poll taken by Bloomberg, that she is the most popular politician in the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.162.0.45 (talk) 17:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The article already said "... her favorable-unfavorable ratings during 2010 were easily the highest of any active, nationally prominent American political figure" (see the "Cultural and political image" section), but I've made it "2010 and 2011" and added a cite to the Bloomberg poll. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:58, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

State of the Union, Jerry Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer, Jerry. State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton. HarperCollins, 2000. ISBN 0-06-019392-1. i would like to add some material from this book. does anyone here consider this book unreliable or poorly sourced? should there be no objection, i will start adding material in 254 hours. Darkstar1st (talk) 09:22, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The book is indeed unreliable. Oppenheimer was a former reporter for the National Enquirer whose specialty is the digging-up-dirt biography. The main accusation in it, the one from Paul Fray, was vehemently denied by the Clintons, has never been further substantiated, and has largely been forgotten since the book came out in 2000. Does that mean that everything in the book is made up? Not necessarily, and maybe he did uncover Bill's other woman from 1974. But in general this kind of book is designed to titillate and sell copies, and that's not the kind of book that WP:RS really approves of. Moreover, for anything controversial, this article generally uses two different sources, to try to stay on the safe side, rather than relying upon anything that only one source says. And the WP:BLP policy definitely means that we come down on the safe side when dealing with living biographical subjects. So to answer your question, yes there is an objection. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:57, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

If She's of French Canadian Descent, She may also be Part Native American

A very high percentage of French Canadians have some Native heritage. I have noticed that she has very high cheekbones.

65.102.241.122 (talk) 06:20, 2 December 2011 (UTC)