Talk:Operation Wandering Soul

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Archimedes157 in topic Incredibly poor quality citations on this page.

The novel edit

I've just created a page for Operation Wandering Soul (novel). The question is whether this page should be moved, say to Operation Wandering Soul (Vietnam War). Although the author Richard Powers is highly distinguished, and the novel itself was a finalist for the National Book Award, it seems to be a poorly known sleeper, so I think it best if Operation Wandering Soul by itself becomes a dab to these two articles.

To me, the question is what to use to disambiguate this article. I suggest (Vietnam War) above, but others seem reasonable also.

If anyone feels strongly this page should stay as is, I will not do anything. Otherwise, in a week or two, I will rename this page, if no one else does first. Choor monster (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Cleaned up edit

I removed some unsourced and dubious claims in the article, including a claim that the recordings were mixed with the sounds of a tiger, causing 150 Vietnamese to abandon their position. I saw a reference to this claim on https://www.psywarrior.com/wanderingsoul.html which appears to be where it comes from, claiming:

"Sometimes the Wandering Soul tape was used in conjunction with other sounds to multiply the fear in the heart of the enemy. A former member of the 6th PSYOP Battalion told me, "You know what we did on 'Nui Ba Den Mountain' in 1970? The 6th PSYOP got an Air Force pilot to fly to Bangkok, to get an actual recording of a tiger from their zoo. We had a Chieu Hoi (a rallier to the national government from enemy ranks) come down the mountain and tell of a tiger that was attacking the Viet Cong for the past few weeks. So, we mixed the tiger roar onto a tape of 69-T, 'the wandering soul', and a 2-man team got up on the mountain, played the tape and 150 Viet Cong came off that mountain."

But this appears to be simply hearsay from an anonymous source, and the website itself doesn't appear to be neutral or reliable. I'm leaving the website in the bibliography, but claims like this should be treated with heavy skepticism, as there are multiple reasons to make it up or exaggerate: to get clicks, to make the PSYOP people seem more competent, and to make the Vietnamese fighters look bad. Presenting it as fact is inconsistent with Wikipedia's standards. 2601:241:8E01:5680:DD4C:395:BB79:71AA (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

Incredibly poor quality citations on this page. edit

One of the citations (number 5) cites this article as the source for its claims. Others are effectively urban myths about this project. How did these seem reasonable to anyone to add to this page? Seriously needs looking at. I've added a little from more sensible, truthful external sources. Archimedes157 (talk) 16:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)Reply