Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Dien Bien Phu/archive1

Battle of Dien Bien Phu

A little something I've been working on on-and-off for about a year now. One of the best resources on the web on the battle. Raul654 19:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support, just for using Hell in a Very Small Place as a ref ^_^. — Deckill e r 20:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Minor object; this is a good article, but hasn't had sufficient copyediting, and is sprinkled with errors in spelling ("painfull evident"), grammar ("Castries seclusion in his bunker"), and word choice ("four months later when the conflicted war"). I'll be happy to support once somebody goes over it with a fine-toothed comb. Incidentally, might it be possible for you to switch the article over to cite.php? The extensive parenthetical notes are somewhat offputting, particularly in the "Prisoners" section. Kirill Lokshin 20:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- The problem with cite.php is that I can think of no way to use it without generating a seperate reference for each page (at which point, the referneces section would become obscene) If someone knows of an alternative, I'd be happy to consider it. Raul654 20:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Meh, fair enough; personally, I don't consider obscenely long sections of footnotes to be a problem, but to each his own, I suppose. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Minor object per Kirill; I've started a light copyedit, and I see numerous typos and other issues :) Very informative and all, but the prose needs work. — Deckill e r 20:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I've run it through a spellchecker (I wrote most of the article on a single shot last night, so typos are not unexpected). The typos should all be gone now. Raul654 20:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, I think cite.php would be a good idea, but Raul is the primary author, and I believe that it's author's choice as to what referencing style to use. — Deckill e r 21:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Excellent piece of information on little-known subject. PHG 22:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object Its good, but there are very easily fixable problems. You really need to use cite.php, listing page numbers is no problem in other articles so it shouldn't be a problem here. The references need to be properly formatted. You should not link single days and not italicize quotes. There are also a few too many 1 or 2 sentence paragraphs and they should be merged. Medvedenko 22:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Against my better judgement, I've switched ot the cite.php. About the dates, however, you are dead wrong - If a date includes both a month and a day, then the date should normally be linked to allow readers' date preferences to work, displaying the reader's chosen format. The day and the month should be linked together, and the year should be linked separately if present. - Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) Raul654 23:23, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment it also says There is consensus among editors that bare month and day names should not be linked unless there is a specific reason that the link will help the reader to understand the article.... (see whole para), so I can see why people get confused on this and there is disagreement.Rlevse 12:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - It says that only in reference to something like just "April" or just "Tuesday" (the examples used there). As long as they look at the examples, I don't think anyone should be confused by "bare month and day". The preceding subsection, which talks about dates containing a month and a day, says that they should always be linked, except in the case of quotes, section headers and on disambiguation pages where only the disambiguated articles should be linked. Ryu Kaze 13:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - If you don't particularly care about traditional numbering, you could use named ref tags; there are a lot of repeated page numbers that would collapse that way. Other than that, maybe three columns would be better than two here? Kirill Lokshin 00:40, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - No, the references section is fine. Raul654 03:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment — I've not read the whole thing yet, but Medvenko is quite right about the matter of italics. Italics should only appear in quotes when they would appear normally. I'll give some better feedback soon. Ryu Kaze 00:27, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I've removed the italics. Raul654 02:59, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks. Ryu Kaze 03:54, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - About this fac... Why is the first support by deckiller crossed out? Why does the nom states raul worked on it for a year and later he states he wrote most of it last night...? - Tutmosis 00:57, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I wrote the background sections over a year ago. The section on combat is new as of last night. Raul654 01:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - I imagine Deckiller put up that first "support" as a joke. It appears to be a joke. I find it funny anyway. Ryu Kaze 01:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object — For much the same reasons as Kirill, but also because of a lack of fair-use rationle for most of the images, or very brief arguments. As for the wording of the article, it seems to lack both encyclopedic tone and distance from the subject matter. As an example, look at the Defense of Laos section. The wording has a tendency to more describe than to detail, if that makes sense.

For instance, the opening sentence of this section (currently: "One issue plagued Navarre - did his mission as High Commissioner of Vietnam require him to defend the colony of Laos as well?") sounds a little flowery and involved editorially. Something like "Navarre was concerned with whether the obligations of his mission required him to also defend the colony of Laos" would be more appropriate. There's also a tendency for the wording to use adjectives where it shouldn't (ex: "...defending it would require taking on the grave risk..." or "...meeting produced a great misunderstanding..."), and some things are just worded awkardly (ex: "...operating his army at great distance from its home..." or "...the most disputed fact of the controversy surrounding the battle...").

This continues throughout the article. It needs to be extensively copyedited by some outside editors. Ryu Kaze 01:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ryu, this is a historical article, so it's going to be worded differently. I do agree that historical writing tends to be a bit...awkward, but the issue doesn't lie in the tone of the article, but wording and redundancies. — Deckill e r 01:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, that section does read like an essay. — Deckill e r 01:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, that's exactly the word that sprung to mind, but I was trying to avoid using it. Coming from me, it might not carry the meaning it should have. Some might say everything sounds like an essay to those in my fraternity. Ryu Kaze 02:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object. The use of long quotes in the midst of the text, with no suitable introduction, is jarring to me. --Danaman5 02:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object While this article is well on the way to FA status, it isn't there yet. Aside from the wording issues as noted above, some of the articles assertions appear to be questionable. For instance, it starts with the statement that the battle was "the final battle in the First Indochina War" yet at the end of the para the battle only "effectively ended the war" which implies that some further fighting took place (which it did). In the second para it is stated that the French "occasionally air-droppp[ed] reinforcements", when this was actually a constant practice during the battle. --Nick Dowling 10:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object Mostly because I want to see more variety in the citations. Right now there is an overwhelming reliance on the Davidson book. I also think the subsections under Combat operations could be rearranged so there are less of them (for example, you can divide them chronologically...March x to March xx then March xx to April y etc; that's just a suggestion...but I do really think you should axe off some of those subsections).UberCryxic 02:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- No, absolutely not. The whole point of hte article is to say what happened at the battle, which is what the subsections do (and for the record - except for Isabelle, are in exact chronological order) Raul654 03:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well okay fair enough. I don't want to press this as I don't consider it that important. I would still like, however, some greater variety in the citations. You have several works listed under references, but for all intents and purposes only one has been used.UberCryxic 17:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I'd greatly appreciate cite.php, per Kirill.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 02:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Citations go always after the punctuation without any gap between the punctuation and the citation. An article which wants to be FA should have these issues already fixed.--Yannismarou 16:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]