Talk:Jacinda Ardern

GA Nomination Issue: Quotations

These articles should not rely on direct quotes unless needed because they introduce complexity. For example, "At first, Little had talked to Ardern on 26 July and said he thought she should take over as Labour leader, although Ardern said no and told him to "stick it out"." Idiomatic expressions like "stick it out" are complex. The direct quote reduce comprehensibility. The goal of this wiki is simplicity--not colorful or varied language. --Gotanda (talk) 06:38, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Others to be re-written in simple, direct language without metaphor or complex vocabulary:

• would be "relentless positivity". Complex
• found that the Labour Party had a $11.7 billion "hole" in its tax policy.
• Ardern said that her government would be "focused, empathetic and strong". Empathetic is complex. Paraphrase the quote or link.
• Many did not believe this as one journalist found that Ardern's claim was "hard to swallow". -- Hard to believe
• She said that Trump showed "interest" in New Zealand's gun buyback policy. Why quote a single word? "Show interest" is complex. -- Simple: was interested in.
• She said the new rules will mean New Zealand has the "widest ranging and toughest border restrictions of any country in the world". Widest ranging is complex. The quote is not needed. Simple paraphrase is better.
• The Washington Post said her interviews, press conferences and social media is a "masterclass in crisis communication" Masterclass.
• the two leaders agreed to work together to address what Ardern said was "quite a [hard] legal [problem]". If you have to recast 2 or 5 words in the quote, it is not needed and is not really a quote any longer.

There may be more. --Gotanda (talk) 06:47, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• @Gotanda: I've rephrased all of the examples you've raised and more.--TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 10:08, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

• But starting to look at these changes, I no longer have confidence in the reporting of the sources. The first change ("stick it out" to "remain leader") is accurate. The second change is not. You have changed a 11.7 bn dollar error in the budget to an 11.7 bn tax policy. That is incorrect. If the gap was 11.7 bn, then the taxes were much larger. Simplifying news reports and paraphrasing accurately is very hard and takes a lot of time which is one reason why VGAs are hard. I don't have time to check the details of each of these, but finding a major error on the second change makes me wonder if the rest are correct. --Gotanda (talk) 23:11, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
• This change incorrectly removed the quotation marks but left most of the quote. It is now plagiarized. --Gotanda (talk) 23:15, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
• @Gotanda: I've fixed the complications that came from paraphrasing though the only major issue I found was the tax-budget problems you told me. The rest of my work were similar to the first example you pointed about stick it out to remain. The budget-tax one was a my bad I must've gotten them confused. But the rest should not be as bad as you feared. --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 03:06, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

The issue is at this point, they all need to be checked. This was the same issue with AOC where the revisions changed the meaning--sometimes very greatly. It all comes from incorporating so many quotes in the first place. It isn't encyclopedic. Quotes in journalism add personality and character. Neither of those are needed in encyclopedic articles. I don't have confidence in the revisions based on edit history. --Gotanda (talk) 03:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)