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![]() | Average Joe was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||
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Current status: Delisted good article |
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Overall, I believe the article is extremely well written, and well sourced. It was a pleasure to review. I declare this GA nomination as passed. Keep up the excellent work! Kyra~(talk) 19:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand why this page is listed as controversial- from the history of the page it seems that the controversial template was included as a result of a copy/paste error. I'm revoving the template for this rason. Bestchai 01:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC) bestchai
I think this image could be added: . Image:Average Joe copy.jpg S♦s♦e♦b♦a♦l♦l♦o♦s (Talk to Me) 22:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Wiktionary gives Joe Average and Wikipedia Average Joe. Are they both interchangeable? 16@r (talk) 16:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Culture and Society" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have made several minor corrections throughout the article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2007. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. This article would benefit with updating of the statistics in the article. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 06:41, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
I see no mention of this term in the article, yet John McCain and I'm sure many others referred to the term several times in the campaign. Here are two news articles I pulled up right now that mention the term: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-devin/mccain-campaign-mentions_b_133179.html and http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-beer_presidentsfeb12,0,3215027.story
I'm sure that merge requests have been discussed hundreds of times, but I would like to ask why Average Joe, Joe Schmoe and John Q. Public are not merged into a single article.
Indeed, the header of this article refers directly to Joe Schmoe as an equivalent term. If these terms are all different, might it make sense to list a comparison between the terms, why you say "Average Joe" instead of "Joe Schmoe"? If they are the same, I could imagine seeing all of the terms as sub-headings under a single one of these articles. 136.152.170.253 (talk) 01:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that this article has two different topics: the phrase 'Average Joe' (and the stereotypes that go with it), and the analysis of what an actual 'average American' would be. These should perhaps be two different articles, as the content in this article about the phrase 'Average Joe' seems oddly placed when the rest of the article is about demographic statistics. On the other hand, perhaps that part of the article is the problematic part: in extracting from various statistics a profile of an 'average American', aren't we doing original research (specifically, original synthesis)? Does anyone else share these concerns? Robofish (talk) 01:27, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
There are many articles on Wikipedia about variations of "Average Joe", icluding
I think they should be merged into this article. HeinzzzderMannn (talk) 23:28, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
REF THIS BLP
08:21, 30 March 2013 (UTC)This article did not indicate the etymology behind why the name "Joe" was chosen to be connected with the adjective "Average." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.201.143.119 (talk) 14:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
This has lots of stuff about average people/families, but not much about How Average Joe came to be, or what he signifies. What's going on??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.29.165 (talk) 00:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Who the hell is Вася Тапочкин (Vasya Tapochkin)? Never heard this one… Stansult (talk) 01:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Never heard of Fred Nurk or Joe Farnarkle.--Jeffro77 (talk) 16:45, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
The first figure is households, the second is being applied to people. Stevage 10:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC) Also, the whole statement is wrong. Of course, it doesn't make sense to say that the average American is childless. Average usually implies median or mean. 0 is neither. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greensto (talk • contribs) 16:21, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
I realize this article was probably written by U.S. people and for U.S. people, and so it should probably fit the U.S. way of comprehending the concept of the average citizen, but in my opinion there are a few quirks that should be fixed (and why is this a good article? I see crude excel graphs, fuzzy, inconclusive discussions and too much information with little actual relevance).
First of all, the income section seems slightly misleading. The first paragraph is fine, but why would you in the second paragraph present numbers that exclude "those employed part-time, students, working teenagers, retirees and the unemployed"? By removing all of these people you really aren't talking about the average citizen. This section reads like an attempt to make U.S. Americans look more affluent than they are (and if it isn't then I think a clarification is needed), which is quite symptomatic of how the U.S. likes to portray itself internationally. Similarly, why are not "very young and old persons" considered to be relevant to the concept of the average U.S. citizen? Certainly, Average Joe will during his lifetime experience being very young and very old.
The education section seems similarly apologetic (the economical and educational achievements of the U.S. are really quite decent and there's no reason for being defensive, or whatever this is). This section also starts out fine, but why is there a need to discuss the increasing educational achievement? Does it really need to be said that Average Joe is more educated today than a century ago and that this trend continues today? That information is pretty much a given for any country's average citizen, and it isn't a piece of information that is useful for constructing the present Average Joe. It is useful for predicting the future Joe and should be presented as such if one really thinks this information belongs here. Also, why exactly is this paragraph included?:
"The income of an individual with some college education was also similar to the overall mean personal income. The mean personal income for someone with some college education was $31,054, compared to $32,140 for the overall population, age 25 or older with earnings. The mean income for a high school graduate, on the other hand, was considerably below the national mean personal income estimated at $26,505.[22]"
I think these two sections should be rewritten in a sober way and made more concise. P.S. if my syntax or wording seems weird it's because I'm Norwegian.
Finally, WP:NOTSTATSBOOK
If no-one has anything to say about this I will come back eventually and do some deletions, so please have your say and tell me what I'm missing.
2A00:C440:20:151:9096:BE43:4191:DCA8 (talk) 18:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
"G Raymond" should be removed. He is a real person (George Raymond at VISA in Montréal) and the shortened version of his name is only used generically on the example card for Chargex/Visa. Nowhere else is his a placeholder name. K7L (talk) 14:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Sorry agree this should be merged with Joe Bloggs , 3 jul 2013 (UTC)
I came here looking for an example of a GA in the area of society and culture, and find myself perplexed. The article begins with a term and assumes that there is a commonsense definition which is clear and meaningful, but then proceeds to present demographic data without any references from the academic disciplines that study society and culture. There is nothing to indicate that such a construct (an average American man/woman) is theoretically meaningful.FriendlyFred (talk) 20:29, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
This data is 11 years old! It is no longer accurate.98.210.246.205 (talk) 01:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
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I think it qualifies as "a long way off" from both of those criteria, so I'm quick failing it.
This article should be a definition of the term "Average Joe". As it stands now, the article is cluttered and bloated with demographic information which is mostly irrelevant to the meaning of "Average Joe". (See John Q. Public, Average Joe's direct synonym)
Average Joe is the "man on the street", the "man on the Clapham Omnibus", etc. He is not a mathematical average. The whole point of saying "Average Joe" instead of "the average American" is to elicit the general idea of "averageness", without the mathematical rigor. There are no real, live human beings who perfectly fit the average, the term "Average Joe" and its variants are meant to reflect that fact. — QuintessentialAnomaly [talk] 12/24/2020