Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Khe Sanh

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article still meets A-Class criteria -

Biblioworm (talk) via MilHistBot (talk
) 03:30, 22 November 2017 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Battle of Khe Sanh

Nominator(s): AustralianRupert (talk)

Battle of Khe Sanh (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominating this for an A-class re-appraisal as unfortunately I don't believe it meets our current A-class criteria. It has been ten years since it was promoted and my specific concerns relate mainly to referencing as there are numerous "citation needed" tags throughout the article, and other areas that aren't tagged which need referencing. I can see that a lot of hard work has gone into writing this article, so my hope is that this reappraisal will actually stimulate a desire to find the references; however, my attempts so far to do so through posting on the article's talk page have not achieved this. Unfortunately, the article's original author, User:RM Gillespie has not edited Wikipedia for six years. My preference is that the article is retained as an A-class article, but only if it can be brought up to current standards. I am willing to help where I can, but it is not a topic I have much knowledge of, nor do I have much in the way of referencing material, so I would be grateful for any help I can get. A few years back we were able to rescue Operation Rolling Thunder with a team effort, so my hope is that we can do the same for this. Thank you. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: I have taken a quick pass over the article, and in addition to the referencing concerns raised above, list the following (some of which I have started working on myself): AustralianRupert (talk) 10:49, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • I'm not worried about the lede length by default, rules are made to be broken. That said, I'm not sure this couldn't do with some snippage anyway. Do we really need a list of the units involved? That's detail that should be in the body.
  • There is no discussion of NVA tactics Dien Bien Phu. This, IMHO, is a serious oversight. The NVA operation was attempting to repeat their artillery-and-trench success, and it failed. This really needs to be part of this article.
    • Agreed, the article hints at this but never really explains this. Where do you think would be best to cover this and how much would you like to see added? AustralianRupert (talk) 07:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Anotherclown: G'day, AC, unfortunately I'm a bit tied up at the moment (in and out of hospital for the next few days visiting my wife and little one). Just wondering if you have anything amongst your Vietnam War books that might be useful to add some more background to explain the Vietnamese tactics mentioned above, and maybe deal with the remaining "cn" tags? Anything you could add would be fantastic. Also, if you get a chance, I think a few of the images still need their description pages checked or updated. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 23:31, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • Added something about the arty and trench tactics with this edit: [7]. Do you think more is necessary? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:09, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A lot of the cite-needs appear to be purely mechanical end-of-para crap. The statements in question all seem trivially easy to cite and we should do that instead of delisting.
    • I appreciate your involvement here, Maury, but I'm not sure I agree that these are purely "mechanical end-of-para crap" type issues. Some of these uncited sentences could initially have been original research/academic opinion given that the professional credentials of the article's original author. I am by no means saying this is definitively the case, and believe that ultimately we will most likely be able to cite most things through secondary sources. If you are willing to help with that, then thank you. If not, then I can understand your reluctance. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 07:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • "after running roughshod over the Marines concerning the defense of the base at Khe Sanh" - this statement confuses me. Who did what to whom? And is this occurring before, during or after? Was the base surrounded in January? This is all very confusing.
    • I believe that there was a disagreement between Westmoreland and several Marine officers (including Walt and English) about the strategy of defending Khe Sahn in the firstplace. See p 131 of here: [8] AustralianRupert (talk) 07:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • G'day Maury, I think I've fixed this concern now. I think it was a chronological error, or a case of hindsight being incorrectly applied. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 23:30, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- the question for me is not whether this is still A-class, but how much work to get it back there? I strongly prefer to keep things on the list if possible, rather than having to go through the process again. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:10, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • I agree with the nominator that the referencing no longer meets the standards of A class and have added some citations where I could find them; however, unfortunately there were quite a few I could not resolve.
    • The "In media" section was mostly unreferenced / insignificant trivia so I've removed it per
      WP:MILPOP
      .
    • I tried to check the licence for "File:The Fight for Khe Sanh.jpg", but I couldn't find it anywhere in the stated source (which I have .pdfs of). Perhaps this has accidently been misattributed?
      • Thanks, I will see if I can find it in some other source. I am a bit suspect of "File:The final evacuation of Khe Sanh base complex, July 1st 1968.png" also, as the original uploader was responsible for quite a bit of the copyvio text I've had to remove from the article. "File:1st Cav at LZ Stud.jpg" might also be problematic. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:28, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have removed the images above and replaced where I could with images that had workable source links and where I could verify licenses. I have nominated "File:The final evacuation of Khe Sanh base complex, July 1st 1968.png" for deletion on Commons as the source link provided unfortunately appears to be copyrighted (and the image itself not viewable there). I think that "File:1st Cav at LZ Stud.jpg" might well be the work of the uploader based on who they say they are on their talk page but there isn't sufficient evidence of this (i.e. no OTRS ticket proving identity). Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • My changes are here [9]. I'll try to pitch in a bit more over the next week if / when I have some time but I'd say I've about reached the limit of my sources and expertise given I don't have much background here. We may need an SME to salvage this one. Anotherclown (talk) 11:31, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thanks for your work on this, I have found a couple more refs tonight and will keep looking. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:28, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think I've gotten all the citation needed tags now. I have added a little bit about the Vietnamese commanders who were not initially mentioned in the article outside of the infobox, and have tried to work in the bit about the siege tactics employed being similar to Dien Bien Phu. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Another relatively minor issue I can see is the number of inconsistencies in presentation of reference styles (although this could be fairly easily addressed as part of this review). Anotherclown (talk) 12:14, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think it would improve readability to potentially split the notes and citations. (This seems to come up pretty regularly at FAC, so it is probably a good idea to implement it here also). Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:28, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Dank

  • Not wild about this one.
  • "The main US forces defending Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) were two regiments of US Marines, although there were also elements from the United States Army and the United States Air Force.": "although" is wrong for the sentence as it stands. "with" would work.
  • "also ... also". No.
  • "These were also supported by a small number of South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) troops. These ...": A repeated pronoun is used to refer to different groups.
  • "the KSCB": It was just "KSCB", without "the", in the previous paragraph.
  • "autumn and winter": "autumn" is fine in Milhist articles if it's clearly referring to autumn maneuvers, or to something with a connection to autumn. Otherwise,
    WP:SEASON
    applies.
  • "A build-up of US forces took place and actions around Khe Sanh commenced when the Marine base became isolated.": "isolated" seems ambiguous to me; I need more detail to get a clear image.
  • "desperate actions": emotional language. A description of what desperate things they did would be better.
  • "under constant North Vietnamese ground, artillery, mortar, and rocket attacks": Aren't the other attacks all ground attacks? (I may not be up on the lingo.)
  • "used the latest technological advances in order to locate": I'm not on board with a blanket rejection of "in order to", but the meaning is off here, as well as later in the same sentence.
  • "the logistical effort to support the base once it was isolated, demanded the implementation": Between subject and verb is pretty much the worst place for a (non-paired) comma.
  • That's just the first two paragraphs, and one of the complaints at the failed FAC (a long time ago) was the excessive length of the article. I'll take another look in a week, but I'm not feeling enthusiastic. - Dank (push to talk) 02:02, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Cheers, Dan, I appreciate you taking a look. I've had a go at rectifying these points. Regarding the length, this is indeed an issue and in fact, the article is about 2,900 words longer than when it failed FAC. I'm not really sure how to tackle this short of wholesale cuts, which I don't feel qualified to do, but will keep working on tightening the wording where I can. Thanks for your time. Any further guidance would be greatly appreciated. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:51, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • It will be a few more days before I can look at this again. - Dank (push to talk) 01:29, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Just noting that I don't think I'll be coming back to this one. I can't give it a quick thumbs-up, there are still plenty of basic wording errors, even in the lead (the true intention Tet, until July 11 until). It would take a lot of work, and this is a bad time for me. Also, I'm not really sure how a reevaluation of A-class status is supposed to work. - Dank (push to talk) 17:09, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

cmnt

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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