Wikipedia:Peer review/Battle of Ong Thanh/archive1

Battle of Ong Thanh

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to nominate this article for A Class in the future. Any feedbacks for improvement would be highly appreciated.

Thanks, Canpark (talk) 08:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Comments from Jappalang

I have grave concerns over possible close paraphrasing. Some contents from the sources also appear to be misinterpreted and there might slight bias issues.

Lede

• "In light of heavy punishments meted out by American and other allied forces, North Vietnamese General Tran Van Tra ..."

  "Punishments" is a biased term, giving the sentence the meaning that the North Vietnamese should be killed by the Americans.

• "... elements of the 1st Infantry Division were air-assaulted into positions around Long Nguyen ..."

  This does not make sense. "Air assault" is not a verb; it is a noun. Furthermore, if one is to associate it with "assault", the sentence would then read that the 1st Infantry Division was "[assaulted]" by some body else.

Background

• Article: "To make matters worse, the United States had escalated its bombing campaign of targets in North Vietnam, and North Vietnamese leaders feared that Hanoi and much of the country's farmland could be inundated if the Red River dikes came under attack. In political terms, the U.S.-backed government in Saigon was far more stable than anticipated, so the North Vietnamese government was afraid that the Viet Cong may split in order to accommodate a resolution with the Saigon government."
• Source: "Meanwhile the situation was growing steadily worse for the Communists. The U.S. was escalating its bombing campaign and widening the number of targets. North Vietnamese planners feared that the Red River dikes would be bomed, inundating hundreds of square miles of farmland as well as Hanoi. The regime in Saigon was turning out to be more stable than anticipated, ... . Others feared that the VC might split off and find separate accomodation with Saigon."

• "Despite the unfavorable developments in South Vietnam, North Vietnamese General Tran Van Tra believed North Vietnam and the Viet Cong could still win the war if they pursued a strategy of attrition."

  This portrays a very different context than what is presented in the source. Here Tran is portrayed as very confident that they would win the war through attrition. In the source, Tran thinks that if there was a chance of victory, it is through attrition: "There was no clear way out of the quandry. North Vietnamese General Tran Van Tra, field commander for operations in the South, stated that all the Communists could do was pursue a war of attrition, ...", "Tran Van Tra believed the best the Communists could do was pubish the United States until the Americans got tired and left."

• Article: "In other words, the Communist would have to fight on for as long as possible, until the United States recognized that the war was unwinnable and would withdraw its combat forces from Vietnam. To achieve that objective at the tactical level, Tra asserted that North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces would have to destroy American military units, and cause as many casualties as possible until they got tired and left."
• Source: "Tran Van Tra wrote: So strategically we did not hope to defeat the U.S. Army completely. Our intentions were to fight a long time and cause heavy casualties to the United States, so the United States would see that the war was unwinnable and would leave .... Tran Van Tra believed the best the Communists could do was pubish the United States until the Americans got tired and left."

[I have skipped the rest of the paragraphs.]

Prelude

• Article: "Triet then marched his starving soldiers southward toward the Ong Thanh Stream to link up with Rear Service Group 83, but again there was no food to be found, so he decided to wait there for the next shipment."
• Source: "But when they reached Rear Service Group 83 headquarters, there was no rice there either, and they decided to wait there for the next shipment."

[I have skipped the rest of the contents.]

In popular culture

• I am not a fan of "In popular culture" sections, but I think this does not even fit with such a heading. This is more like "In literature" and even then, I am wondering what is the context for the subject other than people wrote books (of unknown notability) about it.

Images

• File:Clark Welch Oct. 16.jpg: Dave Berry might be a combat medic, but he said, "Although most were, not all of these photos were taken by me personally. Some were taken by friends or came from archives or other sources." This photograph requires a confirmation (using a OTRS) from Berry that he took the photograph (or that it was taken by a fellow US soldier).
• File:Vo Minh Triet.jpg: The use of this non-free image in this article violates WP:NFCC #8. This article is not about Vo, neither is there critical commentary that requires an illustration of Vo's appearance to understand its meaning.
• File:Terry Allen Jr..jpg: "Provided by Jim Shelton" does not mean it was taken by Jim Shelton. For all we know, this could be taken by a Vietnamese soldier or a journalist, who gave a copy of the photograph to Shelton.
• File:Ong Thanh Oct. 17 1967.jpg: The United States Army Center of Military History has published research performed by non-federal employees.

I think the article has an appropriate structure, but the article has to be rewritten because of the close paraphrases, which would be of grave concerns in an A-class assessment. Jappalang (talk) 15:46, 4 September 2011 (UTC)