Wikipedia:Peer review/Eastern Theater of the American Civil War/archive1

Eastern Theater of the American Civil War edit

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I'm trying to get this article up to GA class but not really sure of what exactly needs to be done, like extra references per paragraph. Wild Wolf (talk) 17:38, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Generally looks ok to me in terms of referencing. I think the following places need more citations:
- in the Theater of operations section, I believe the second paragraph needs a citation (at least at the end);
- in the Northern Virginia and Maryland section, this sentence probably needs a citation: "Following his success against..." (at the end of the sentence). AustralianRupert (talk) 09:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Dana Boomer

Initial thoughts: Overall, the article looks quite good, especially for a topic of this size. However, there are a few fairly major issues that need to be taken care of before it goes to GA. Here are some of the issues:

The lead needs to be expanded. For an article of this size, WP:LEAD recommends three to four paragraphs.
The first sentence of the lead should not be self referential. So, instead of "This article presents..." it should be "The Eastern Theater of the American Civil War was..."
While the picture of Lincoln is a good historical image, it would be nice to have a map illustrating the section of the US that this article is discussing somewhere near the top of the article.
Image galleries are generally to be avoided, and that is especially true when you have a section that is nothing but a gallery, as in the Principal commanders of the Eastern Theater section. Basically, what does this gallery show your readers? To me, it is a bunch of pictures of middle aged, bearded white dudes in uniforms. Per WP:Galleries#Placement, " Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made." There is no contrast or comparison being made between these images, and so they are simply repetitive. Seeing what Pope, Burnside, Lee, et.al. looked like adds little to nothing to the reader's knowledge of the subject. They would be better served by a textual description of the similarities and differences between these commanders. How many went to West Point? How many were from the North vs. the South? Were any of the opposing commanders friends before the war? Did any of them die during the war?

Whoa: major plagiarism issue - The first paragraph of the Theater of operations section is copied wholesale from the reference.

I don't have access to the other references used in the article, so I cannot check those. However, having the first ref I check be copied and pasted is a bad sign. I am not going to peer review further until further copyvio checks have been completed and the copyright violations present in the article have been rectified. Dana boomer (talk) 16:54, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I added a couple of paragraphs to the introduction, trying to summerize the article, and added citations to the recommended paragraphs. For the gallery of the principal commanders, I was wondering turning it into a table would work, with a few sentences summerizing the role of that general in the theater. (Or would simply deleting the section be preferable?). As for the plagiarised paragraph, for me it sounds more like an opinion on the theater's importance. Should it be deleted entirely or kept and rewriten? Wild Wolf (talk) 05:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My main concern is that if the first source that I check shows a major copyright violation, how much of the rest of the article is copied as well? I don't have access to many of the sources, but I am very concerned that additional issues would be found if I looked through more of the print sources. Do you have access to all of the sources? Can you assure me that this is not the case? Copyright violations are not taken lightly on Wikipedia, and if this is a pattern then it needs to be investigated. Dana boomer (talk) 14:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I looked over the other sources and it doesn't look like there are any other copyright violations. Wild Wolf (talk) 17:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK for now on that. As for the copyvio paragraph, I think that it presents some important ideas (the popular importance of the eastern theater versus the strategic importance of the western theater), but that it definitely has to be seriously re-written (both in structure and verbiage) to comply with WP's copyright policies. As for the gallery of commanders, I don't think a table is necessary, because, as I said above, I don't see what the reader gains from seeing pictures of all of the commanders, and a table takes up a lot of space without saying much. I think that a couple paragraphs of prose, comparing and contrasting the generals that were prominent in this theater, would be perfect. Illustrate it with a couple of pictures of opposing generals (Grant and Lee?) and you've got a nice section, tastefully illustrated, that will give the reader a lot more information than a bunch of pictures of old white guys. Dana boomer (talk) 16:00, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dana, it doesn't appear to be a copyvio to me. Rather someone circulared a website into the citation. The wikipedia text comes from 2006, all other online versions of text come from 2007, and I can't locate the text in the book cited in the paragraph. It looks to me that someone copied Wikipedia onto their unattributed website? See article talk for more details. Fifelfoo (talk) 10:31, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further concerns with sourcing: I decided to see if I could find any of the sources on Google books, and I was able to. From that, I found more concerns:

Reference 40 (Sears, p. 70-72) - the paragraph that this is supposed to be sourcing cannot be found on those pages of the book.
Same with Reference 41 (Sears, p. 18, 73-74) - nothing about this. It says the North was dispirited, but not in a panic, and discusses nothing of Lincoln's reaction.

These were the first two' I checked! All of the sources need to be gone through and carefully checked for copyvio and actually covering what they're supposed to be covering. Dana boomer (talk) 16:18, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I checked both references. With reference 40, Sears discusses Lee's decision to invade the north over other options (page 70 to top of page 71), his desire to gather supplies from the country (bottom of page 71 to top of page 72), and his hope that invading Maryland would force Lincoln to negotiate for peace (page 72). With reference 41, Sears talks about Lincoln restoring McClellan to command (page 18) and about Lee's plans to capture the rail lines running through Harrisburg, followed by an advance on Philadelphia (pages 73 and 74). I found a passage on the Northern reaction to Lee's invasion on pages 81 to 83.Wild Wolf (talk) 04:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]