Talk:Luxembourg head of government resigns after eighteen years

Questions

Hi, Pi zero. I always watch your modifications to learn from them, but I don't always understand them. Can you explain me why saying why a politician resigning is a negative thing is not neutral? I can only think of a crook no longer in a high position is good for a country? Calusarul (talk) 10:07, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

The neutrality edit was this one. Actually, "negative take on <X>'s politics" isn't an idiom I know in English; but it looks like a value judgement, so we simply omit it. --Pi zero (talk) 12:30, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Er. Maybe a bit more of a clarification. Saying anything is good or bad is a value judgement. We might report that someone else said such a thing, but we don't say it in our own voice. --Pi zero (talk) 12:35, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Leaving aside my personal contribution to the English language :P, I understand that rule, but I also find it a bit funny. It's like, if an asteroid is to destroy the Earth in 24 hours, we can't say it will have a negative impact, but we can quote Mr Obama saying: "We're in deep shit, people". Funny thing. Calusarul (talk) 13:39, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Presumably we would report more precisely than "destroy the Earth", and would attribute that claim. And we might say something objective in the article involving the words "negative impact", attributing it if it's a claim. However, we should avoid purple prose. There is, for example, no reason for us to describe the event as a "tragedy"; why would we say that? It's drawing a conclusion. In fact, it's drawing a subjective conclusion. If there were ever a subjective conclusion so certain that it didn't need to be attributed (and one could argue that no subjective conclusion is ever that certain), then there would be no reason for us to spend extra words saying it. --Pi zero (talk) 14:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Ambiguity

What does "longest-serving European head of government" mean? I'm guessing it probably means something more-or-less like "longest-running elected head-of-government currently in office", but the article needs to be clear about it. I expect I can sort it out during review, but if anyone else reviews this, don't forget to fix this. --Pi zero (talk) 15:23, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's what it means, no other prime minister in Europe was in that kind of public position longer than him. Calusarul (talk) 16:33, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Review of revision 1952268 [Passed]

Revision 1952268 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 19:53, 13 July 2013 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: Additional explanation was badly needed about what "resign" actually means in this context. Readers do not necessarily know about coalition governments. As reviewer, I had to remain sufficiently independent of the article to review it, so I had to choose between not-ready'ing the article to ask the reporter to add explanations, or seeing what could be done with small, non-intrusive tweaks. Keeping in mind that time is passing, and given that demonstrating what's needed can teach more than describing what's needed, I decided to continue the review. The detail about longest-running was suspicious to me; one source said EU, one source said Europe, and it just felt like the one that said "Europe" might have been sloppy. Did a sanity check on en.wp (not reliable and they make a big deal of not being reliable, but sanity sometimes good for sanity checks), and their list claimed that Montenegro's PM has been in office longer — Montenegro being in Europe but not yet in the EU. So clearly going with "Europe" would be a bad bet. See the edits during review, of course. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 1952268 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 19:53, 13 July 2013 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: Additional explanation was badly needed about what "resign" actually means in this context. Readers do not necessarily know about coalition governments. As reviewer, I had to remain sufficiently independent of the article to review it, so I had to choose between not-ready'ing the article to ask the reporter to add explanations, or seeing what could be done with small, non-intrusive tweaks. Keeping in mind that time is passing, and given that demonstrating what's needed can teach more than describing what's needed, I decided to continue the review. The detail about longest-running was suspicious to me; one source said EU, one source said Europe, and it just felt like the one that said "Europe" might have been sloppy. Did a sanity check on en.wp (not reliable and they make a big deal of not being reliable, but sanity sometimes good for sanity checks), and their list claimed that Montenegro's PM has been in office longer — Montenegro being in Europe but not yet in the EU. So clearly going with "Europe" would be a bad bet. See the edits during review, of course. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Yes, the sources weren't really satisfying. As for intrusive / non-intrusive tweaks, we'd rather have a good piece of news not published than a poor piece of news published. So, you can fix "my" news even if we don't find another reviewer afterwards, I don't mind. In addition, maybe people don't know what resigning from a coalition government means, one should also that "assuming personal responsibility" reads "resigning in case something goes wrong". Calusarul (talk) 20:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)