Talk:Red-boxing

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

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• ... that red-boxing by American politicians to coordinate with Super PACs was called the “primary mechanism for corruption of federal campaigns in 2022” by the Campaign Legal Center? Source: “Adav Noti, the legal director of the watchdog group the Campaign Legal Center, said that red boxes were erasing the very barriers that were erected to make politicians feel less indebted to their biggest financial benefactors. Federal candidates can legally raise only $2,900 for a primary per donor; super PACs can receive donations of $1 million — or even more. “It’s a joke,” he said. “The coordination of super PACs and candidates is the primary mechanism for corruption of federal campaigns in 2022.”” The New York Times
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Terry Sanford

Created by Thriley (talk). Self-nominated at 20:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC).

• @Thriley: The DYK Check tool reads the "Instances of Use" section as a list/table format, and not eligible in the word count. Therefore, the DYK Check says you only have 974 characters (152 words). If you look at WP:DYKCRIT (1.New b) it says, "Prose character count excludes wiki markup, templates, lists, tables, and references." I suggest you remove the left-hand side asterisks, and just redo that into prose paragraphs. — Maile (talk) 20:39, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• Pinging Thriley to address this or the nomination will have to be rejected. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 06:06, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I’ll fix this shortly. Sorry for the delay. Thriley (talk) 03:28, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

• @Maile66: The article is now 1500 characters not including the list. Sorry for the delay. Thriley (talk) 07:06, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. The DYK check now confirms you have 1787 characters (282 words) "readable prose size". — Maile (talk) 10:04, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

• New enough and now long enough at the time of nomination. Hook is interesting, included in article, and accurate. No textual issues, though I wish there were more references in general. I did find one other article from a week ago on the practice with a candidate in Vermont, which I've added. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:46, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Order of examples

Have seen that @Eventhisacronym recently changed the order of the examples in the article chronological by election year and then alphabetical by state (was previously arranged purely alphabetical by surname). This seems a little bit confusing to me, especially without explanation. Perhaps chronological and then alphabetical by surname would be better? Or alternatively a bit of text at the start of the list explaining the order and perhaps combining bullet points about several candidates using it in the same election? For example, the 2018 Senate in Montana where both Rosendale and Tester used it seems like it could be easily made into one point. Didn't want to change anything without seeing if there was any other things I hadn't thought about though! Gazamp (talk) 16:27, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi Gazamp -- my thinking was first, that arranging chronologically did a more effective job conveying when the tactic was first used and how it was used over time. As you note, alphabetical by surname separates examples from the same race, so I went with alphabetical by state to group each race together. To me, this better highlights contrasts in use by candidates opposing each other, like Lamb and Fetterman.. To that end, your idea of combining each race into one point makes a ton of sense to me, and improve that use greatly.

If we're on the subject, tbh I think that having a list of all instances may be detrimental to giving readers an understanding of how widespread the use of this tactic is. Almost every competitive race uses a red box of some kind, but the page is limited to examples that we have a press citation for. (And even if they existed for all, the list would become unwieldy.) I would also be in favor of limiting the instances to the ones that are illustrative of how the red box is then used by super PACs or in some other way helps explain the tactic more (e.g. Allam, Schrader, PA Sen), but that may be a discussion for down the road. Eventhisacronym (talk) 20:08, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi! Definitely agree that chronological is much better than alphabetical and with the idea of grouping instances from the same election close together. But as you mention, I'm wondering whether the current list format is the best way of doing it any more (especially when instances are likely to keep piling up in the future). I'll maybe start combining some of the ones from the same races and then see how it feels then? It might be that it's best to divide up into sections somehow in the future. Thanks, Gazamp (talk) 23:12, 28 February 2026 (UTC)