1950 United States Senate election in California is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The current photo of Douglas looks a little out-of-place on a Senate race page. (Not surprising, as the photo-info page indicates it's a modeling headshot from when she was 20.) Would it be possible to track down a portrait photo of Douglas in which she looks more like a politician, and less like a silent film starlet/femme fatale? -- 128.104.112.106 ( talk) 00:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I took a look at the first section of this version, considering an ongoing strong oppose. I have the following questions:
California Senator Sheridan Downey was first elected in 1938.
An attorney, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of California in 1934 as Upton Sinclair's running mate, and had a reputation as a liberal. citation needed As a senator, however, his positions gradually began to favor corporate interests. [1]
Both Helen Douglas and Richard Nixon entered politics in the mid-1940s. Douglas, a former actress and opera singer, and the wife of actor Melvyn Douglas, represented the 14th congressional district beginning in 1945, and compiled a liberal record in the United States House of Representatives. citation needed
Between 1945 to 1950,
California experienced a huge influx of migrants, increasing its population by 55%. [2] Party registration in 1950 was 58.4% Democratic and 37.1% Republican. [3] However, other than Downey, most major California officeholders were Republican, citation needed
including Governor Earl Warren (who was seeking a third term in 1950)
and Senator William Knowland.
Much of the 1950 California senatorial campaign focused on comparisons between the candidates and New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio.
Marcantonio, the sole congressman from the American Labor Party at the time, represented East Harlem. He denied being a communist and rarely discussed the Soviet Union or communism, but opposed restrictions on communists and the Communist Party, stating that such restrictions violated the Bill of Rights. He regularly voted against contempt citations requested by the House Un-American Activities Committee, on which Nixon served. [4]
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
In the next section, I had to re-read the paragraph several times to determine who "their" referred to (I think it's Downey, not Nixon, but still unsure):
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Another sample: Douglas leased the craft from a helicopter company in Palo Altoowned by Republican supporters, which hoped her influence would lead to a defense contract for it.
It might help to run the article through a spell checker; I do that by clicking on the "printable version" and edit copy-pasting it into Word. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
The lead should summarize the article, and items from the lead should be cited in the article. I haven't yet read the entire article, but a search on "red-baiting" in the text did not turn this up:
... so unless my search on "red-baiting" missed it, that needs to be cited and included in the article body. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Again, without having read the full article yet, a search turns up no other mention of "century" in the article. Who describes it thusly, and is that cited and mentioned in the article?
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 11:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
That's as much as I've looked at so far, but it's enough to convince me that we're not quite there yet. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 11:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Since this was purely background and basically noncontentious material, I was light on the footnoting. I will add some tonight or in the morning, I don't have my refs with me. We do need to know that Warren was running for reelection because of the fact that the Warren/Roosevelt race was to a considerable extent intertwined with the Nixon/Douglas race, but I've avoided giving details except where I felt they were relevant: For example, I don't discuss the primary results there (Warren nearly outpolled Roosevelt in the Democratic race, which would have given him the effective victory through cross filing.
I am really surprised that after all these years Vito Marcantonio is still being red-baited in this article. Can we please stick to the facts and not to perceptions? Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 11:47, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
There appears to be some confusion by User:GeorgeLouis. The lede did not state that Marcantonio was a communist, it said that many believed him to be a communist. That is undoubtedly true. I don't understand what the problem is with that, as it is crucial to understanding the "commie by association" argument tried whenever any of the candidates compared another with Marcantonio.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 11:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I removed "widely." POV. Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 21:19, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Unusual, to say the least. (Mostly the campaign envelope.) I think the Eleanor Roosevelt pic is reaching for it. But, really, the whole package of pix is OK by me. I don't know what others might say. Otherwise: I am afraid the leed is too long, and there is a passel of editing and tightening-up that can be done. I am actually a professional editor (newspapers) but not necessarily a word-butcher. I will copy the article to one of my sandboxes and have a go at it. You can comment on the draft over there. I will let you know when. I'm sure you want this piece to be a winner. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 03:21, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I copied the article to my sandbox, and I ordered all the source books through the local library here, so I will be able to check the references along with everything else. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 22:42, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I remember Fortnight. I once tried to sell an article there. Very liberal magazine (be forewarned). The LAPL has copies: PERIODICAL LIBRARY HAS: 3-4,14:7-20:7 (1947:07-1948:06 1953:04-1957:08/09) 1955-1956 are incomplete. Do you have a LAPL library card? If so, you can access the L.A. Times on line, too, although I really think we have enough facts in the article already. I will get at it soon, without waiting for the library books (which I will use mostly to see that the references in the article match up with the sources). Oh, yes, for a Douglas photo, try http://www.socallib.org/ Yours, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 02:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC) Also see http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4&ff=0&institution=Southern+California+Library+for+Social+Studies+and+Research&query=helen+gahagan+douglas&x=12&y=9. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 02:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I am working on the article in a sandbox and will be able to post a link for everybody to look at before not too long. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 01:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems that somebody, somewhere, sometime decided that this and similar articles would be set up as they are. Where was the decision made? Is there a group of editors somewhere to whom we can turn for consensus-building? Two examples: (1) The infobox is just too wide; can't it be narrowed? (2) The charts giving the results take up a lot of space; can't they be put on a separate page and referenced from the article? Hoping for some comment on this, I am your friend, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 01:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In looking over this article, I found it chock full of good, well-sourced information but a bit difficult to comprehend. It told an interesting story in a general, chronological sense. I felt that pure chronology was not the best way to report this story in an encyclopedia, although in my doing a thorough edit, the chronological distinctions between (1) the primary election, (2) the general election and (3) the aftermath remain intact.
I edited the article as follows. It is now shorter and, I feel, easier to read.
GeorgeLouis ( talk) 23:15, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Could someone please add the year that Boddy purchased the LADN to the Background section? Thanks. Risker ( talk) 02:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does this phrasing suggest a POV problem?
Nixon's attacks were far more effective
Ed8r ( talk) 15:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Someone should fix this: "Both Helen Douglas and Richard Nixon entered electoral politics in the mid-1940s. Douglas, a New Deal Democrat, was a former actress and opera singer, and the wife of actor" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbhf1 ( talk • contribs) 16:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
"Observer, Frank (obviously a pseudonym)" says ref 58. Yes, it may well be a pseudonym but isn't that claim original research? Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 20:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Except for the last one, the tables in this article fall short of our current standards of accessibility as outlined in WP:DTAB. The last one, incidentally, violates MOS:BOLD and MOS:ITALIC. I do understand that the lack of compliance in the first three is caused by the use of ancient templates that were designed before editors understood the need to cater for assistive technology.
The first three tables mark up a header which ought to be a caption. A modern screen reader like JAWS can call up a list of all of the table captions in a webpage and use that to navigate directly to the table that the user desires. That can't happen unless captions are marked as captions.
They fail to mark up the scope of the column headers, 'Candidate', 'Votes', and 'Percentage'. This is a good practice which encourages editors to recognise and mark appropriate headers, as well as ensuring that a wide variety of assistive technology uses the correct header for each data cell.
They also fail to markup and scope any row headers, which are obviously the candidate's name in this case. Having both row and column headers marked up and scoped will ensure that as large a number of screen readers as possible are able to navigate these tables in different ways, such as reading down the percentages column. The intention is that the visitor navigating down the 'Percentage' column would hear: "Helen Gahagan Douglas", "Percentage", "46.98%" then when moving down to the next cell: "Manchester Boddy", "Percentage", "24.23%"; and so on.
Unfortunately not all screen readers implement the algorithm in the same way, which is why we ask editors to mark up using both '!' (table header) and 'scope=' to ensure that as many as possible are catered for.
Here's how the first table should be marked up according to WPDTAB and MOSBOLD if you want it to resemble the original:
Candidate | Votes | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Helen Gahagan Douglas | 734,842 | 46.98 |
Manchester Boddy | 379,077 | 24.23 |
Richard Nixon | 318,840 | 20.38 |
Earl D. Desmond | 96,752 | 6.19 |
Ulysses Grant Bixby Meyer | 34,707 | 2.22 |
Total votes | 1,564,218 | 100.00 |
I'm not sure whether the maintainers of {{ election box}}, etc. would be amenable to updating their templates to take into account the Manual of Style's guidance on data tables and bold face, I can only say that there is obvious room for improvement in the article as it stands. -- RexxS ( talk) 16:06, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
I have translated this article to Chinese Wikipedia here and promoted to FA status, and I want to thank User:Wehwalt for his effort to write this amazing article. -- Jarodalien ( talk) 08:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I changed the "Bibliography" section to a subsection. This is a relatively minor adjustment, but as a section this title is usually placed first in the appendixes related to biographies or named "Works or publications", "Discography", or "Filmography", per MOS:BIB. Using a separate source related "Bibliography" section is out of place, confusing, and not consistent with a majority of other articles. We commonly practice placing relate subjects in a subsection so it seems appropriate to follow this with source links (generally listed), and links providing inline text-source integrity, that combined form the citations. Otr500 ( talk) 19:40, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha>
tags or {{efn}}
templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}
template or {{notelist}}
template (see the
help page).
1950 United States Senate election in California is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 2, 2010, and on September 5, 2019. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The current photo of Douglas looks a little out-of-place on a Senate race page. (Not surprising, as the photo-info page indicates it's a modeling headshot from when she was 20.) Would it be possible to track down a portrait photo of Douglas in which she looks more like a politician, and less like a silent film starlet/femme fatale? -- 128.104.112.106 ( talk) 00:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I took a look at the first section of this version, considering an ongoing strong oppose. I have the following questions:
California Senator Sheridan Downey was first elected in 1938.
An attorney, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of California in 1934 as Upton Sinclair's running mate, and had a reputation as a liberal. citation needed As a senator, however, his positions gradually began to favor corporate interests. [1]
Both Helen Douglas and Richard Nixon entered politics in the mid-1940s. Douglas, a former actress and opera singer, and the wife of actor Melvyn Douglas, represented the 14th congressional district beginning in 1945, and compiled a liberal record in the United States House of Representatives. citation needed
Between 1945 to 1950,
California experienced a huge influx of migrants, increasing its population by 55%. [2] Party registration in 1950 was 58.4% Democratic and 37.1% Republican. [3] However, other than Downey, most major California officeholders were Republican, citation needed
including Governor Earl Warren (who was seeking a third term in 1950)
and Senator William Knowland.
Much of the 1950 California senatorial campaign focused on comparisons between the candidates and New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio.
Marcantonio, the sole congressman from the American Labor Party at the time, represented East Harlem. He denied being a communist and rarely discussed the Soviet Union or communism, but opposed restrictions on communists and the Communist Party, stating that such restrictions violated the Bill of Rights. He regularly voted against contempt citations requested by the House Un-American Activities Committee, on which Nixon served. [4]
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
In the next section, I had to re-read the paragraph several times to determine who "their" referred to (I think it's Downey, not Nixon, but still unsure):
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Another sample: Douglas leased the craft from a helicopter company in Palo Altoowned by Republican supporters, which hoped her influence would lead to a defense contract for it.
It might help to run the article through a spell checker; I do that by clicking on the "printable version" and edit copy-pasting it into Word. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
The lead should summarize the article, and items from the lead should be cited in the article. I haven't yet read the entire article, but a search on "red-baiting" in the text did not turn this up:
... so unless my search on "red-baiting" missed it, that needs to be cited and included in the article body. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Again, without having read the full article yet, a search turns up no other mention of "century" in the article. Who describes it thusly, and is that cited and mentioned in the article?
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 11:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
That's as much as I've looked at so far, but it's enough to convince me that we're not quite there yet. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 11:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Since this was purely background and basically noncontentious material, I was light on the footnoting. I will add some tonight or in the morning, I don't have my refs with me. We do need to know that Warren was running for reelection because of the fact that the Warren/Roosevelt race was to a considerable extent intertwined with the Nixon/Douglas race, but I've avoided giving details except where I felt they were relevant: For example, I don't discuss the primary results there (Warren nearly outpolled Roosevelt in the Democratic race, which would have given him the effective victory through cross filing.
I am really surprised that after all these years Vito Marcantonio is still being red-baited in this article. Can we please stick to the facts and not to perceptions? Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 11:47, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
There appears to be some confusion by User:GeorgeLouis. The lede did not state that Marcantonio was a communist, it said that many believed him to be a communist. That is undoubtedly true. I don't understand what the problem is with that, as it is crucial to understanding the "commie by association" argument tried whenever any of the candidates compared another with Marcantonio.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 11:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I removed "widely." POV. Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 21:19, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Unusual, to say the least. (Mostly the campaign envelope.) I think the Eleanor Roosevelt pic is reaching for it. But, really, the whole package of pix is OK by me. I don't know what others might say. Otherwise: I am afraid the leed is too long, and there is a passel of editing and tightening-up that can be done. I am actually a professional editor (newspapers) but not necessarily a word-butcher. I will copy the article to one of my sandboxes and have a go at it. You can comment on the draft over there. I will let you know when. I'm sure you want this piece to be a winner. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 03:21, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I copied the article to my sandbox, and I ordered all the source books through the local library here, so I will be able to check the references along with everything else. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 22:42, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I remember Fortnight. I once tried to sell an article there. Very liberal magazine (be forewarned). The LAPL has copies: PERIODICAL LIBRARY HAS: 3-4,14:7-20:7 (1947:07-1948:06 1953:04-1957:08/09) 1955-1956 are incomplete. Do you have a LAPL library card? If so, you can access the L.A. Times on line, too, although I really think we have enough facts in the article already. I will get at it soon, without waiting for the library books (which I will use mostly to see that the references in the article match up with the sources). Oh, yes, for a Douglas photo, try http://www.socallib.org/ Yours, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 02:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC) Also see http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4&ff=0&institution=Southern+California+Library+for+Social+Studies+and+Research&query=helen+gahagan+douglas&x=12&y=9. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 02:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I am working on the article in a sandbox and will be able to post a link for everybody to look at before not too long. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 01:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems that somebody, somewhere, sometime decided that this and similar articles would be set up as they are. Where was the decision made? Is there a group of editors somewhere to whom we can turn for consensus-building? Two examples: (1) The infobox is just too wide; can't it be narrowed? (2) The charts giving the results take up a lot of space; can't they be put on a separate page and referenced from the article? Hoping for some comment on this, I am your friend, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 01:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In looking over this article, I found it chock full of good, well-sourced information but a bit difficult to comprehend. It told an interesting story in a general, chronological sense. I felt that pure chronology was not the best way to report this story in an encyclopedia, although in my doing a thorough edit, the chronological distinctions between (1) the primary election, (2) the general election and (3) the aftermath remain intact.
I edited the article as follows. It is now shorter and, I feel, easier to read.
GeorgeLouis ( talk) 23:15, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Could someone please add the year that Boddy purchased the LADN to the Background section? Thanks. Risker ( talk) 02:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does this phrasing suggest a POV problem?
Nixon's attacks were far more effective
Ed8r ( talk) 15:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Someone should fix this: "Both Helen Douglas and Richard Nixon entered electoral politics in the mid-1940s. Douglas, a New Deal Democrat, was a former actress and opera singer, and the wife of actor" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbhf1 ( talk • contribs) 16:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
"Observer, Frank (obviously a pseudonym)" says ref 58. Yes, it may well be a pseudonym but isn't that claim original research? Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 20:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Except for the last one, the tables in this article fall short of our current standards of accessibility as outlined in WP:DTAB. The last one, incidentally, violates MOS:BOLD and MOS:ITALIC. I do understand that the lack of compliance in the first three is caused by the use of ancient templates that were designed before editors understood the need to cater for assistive technology.
The first three tables mark up a header which ought to be a caption. A modern screen reader like JAWS can call up a list of all of the table captions in a webpage and use that to navigate directly to the table that the user desires. That can't happen unless captions are marked as captions.
They fail to mark up the scope of the column headers, 'Candidate', 'Votes', and 'Percentage'. This is a good practice which encourages editors to recognise and mark appropriate headers, as well as ensuring that a wide variety of assistive technology uses the correct header for each data cell.
They also fail to markup and scope any row headers, which are obviously the candidate's name in this case. Having both row and column headers marked up and scoped will ensure that as large a number of screen readers as possible are able to navigate these tables in different ways, such as reading down the percentages column. The intention is that the visitor navigating down the 'Percentage' column would hear: "Helen Gahagan Douglas", "Percentage", "46.98%" then when moving down to the next cell: "Manchester Boddy", "Percentage", "24.23%"; and so on.
Unfortunately not all screen readers implement the algorithm in the same way, which is why we ask editors to mark up using both '!' (table header) and 'scope=' to ensure that as many as possible are catered for.
Here's how the first table should be marked up according to WPDTAB and MOSBOLD if you want it to resemble the original:
Candidate | Votes | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Helen Gahagan Douglas | 734,842 | 46.98 |
Manchester Boddy | 379,077 | 24.23 |
Richard Nixon | 318,840 | 20.38 |
Earl D. Desmond | 96,752 | 6.19 |
Ulysses Grant Bixby Meyer | 34,707 | 2.22 |
Total votes | 1,564,218 | 100.00 |
I'm not sure whether the maintainers of {{ election box}}, etc. would be amenable to updating their templates to take into account the Manual of Style's guidance on data tables and bold face, I can only say that there is obvious room for improvement in the article as it stands. -- RexxS ( talk) 16:06, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
I have translated this article to Chinese Wikipedia here and promoted to FA status, and I want to thank User:Wehwalt for his effort to write this amazing article. -- Jarodalien ( talk) 08:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I changed the "Bibliography" section to a subsection. This is a relatively minor adjustment, but as a section this title is usually placed first in the appendixes related to biographies or named "Works or publications", "Discography", or "Filmography", per MOS:BIB. Using a separate source related "Bibliography" section is out of place, confusing, and not consistent with a majority of other articles. We commonly practice placing relate subjects in a subsection so it seems appropriate to follow this with source links (generally listed), and links providing inline text-source integrity, that combined form the citations. Otr500 ( talk) 19:40, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha>
tags or {{efn}}
templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}
template or {{notelist}}
template (see the
help page).