Wikipedia:Peer review/American Civil War/archive3

American Civil War

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I've listed this article for peer review because I wanted to see if any area of this needs attention before I nominate it for FA Status/ I feel and I think most editors of it feel that it's a pretty solid article.

Thanks, Serialjoepsycho (talk) 13:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your interest - I see that you have not yet edited this article (though you have commented on the talk page). I am glad that there are plans to work on this important article and get it to FA quality, but do not think it is anywhere near ready for WP:FAC yet. This is not a full review, but here are some suggestions for improvement based on a quick scan of the article.

The lead is five paragraphs long but WP:LEAD says the lead should be no more than four paragraphs long.
Biggest problem I see is that there are many places in the article which lack references and need them. For example there are no references at all in the sections on The Confederacy and Reconstruction.
There are also lots of places where a paragraph will have some references, followed by one or more sentences with no references - for example in the Anaconda plan section, see Their battle ended in a draw. The Confederacy lost the Virginia when the ship was scuttled to prevent capture, and the Union built many copies of Monitor. Lacking the technology to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Britain. The Union victory at the Second Battle of Fort Fisher in January 1865 closed the last useful Southern port and virtually ended blockade running. These all need refs too.
My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref. See WP:CITE and WP:V
Many of the the references used have incomplete information. For example, internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. Two examples:
- Current ref 194 is: "U.S. Civil War Prison Camps Claimed Thousands". National Geographic News. July 1, 2003. but should include the author (Yancey Hall) and the access date
- Current ref 185 is: "Black Regiments". Retrieved 2007-10-16. and should include its publisher (Spartacus Educational).
Many of the sources used do not seem to necessarily meet WP:RS - what makes Spartacus Educational a reliable source? Looking at the External link checker, there are some Blogspot blogs listed, but blogs are generally not considered reliable sources. Since so many books and journal articles have been written about the Civil War, I think that they should be used as sources wherever possible (the Spartacus Educational page even provides book links).
The prose is choppy in places - there are a fair number of short (one or two sentence) paragraphs which break up the narrative flow and should be combined with others or perhaps expanded. A professional level of English is a FA criterion
Looking at one section - Results - again shows odd organization, which is a prose issue too. The section has three paragraphs. The first discusses emancipation of the slaves, Reconstruction, and total war casulaties. One problem is that the preceding section was on Reconstruction, so it seems a bit odd to define it here (and why isn't the Reconstruction section a subsection of Results or Aftermath)? The second paragraph is about how contentious the war remains today (causes, name, etc still disputed), then goes into more on casualties and the development of trench warfare in WWI. Organizationally it makes little sense to have casualties discussed in two different paragraphs, why not combine the disussions and have one paragraph on casulaties? The third paragraph is about the use of personal armor by soldiers in the war. It is completely unreferenced and seems not to belong in this paragraph at all (how is it a result of the war?). It seems like this belongs earlier in the article, if it should be included at all. Such a hodge podge is not clear, well-organized professional writing, but instead reads like something written by many different people over a long time with little coordination. This article needs someone to go through it and organize it properly.
Another FA criterion is comprehensiveness. Again looking at one section as an example: "Memory and historiography" mentions only two things - the 1963 parade in Gettysburg and the 150th anniversary of the start of the war in 2011. How is this a comprehenisve look at these topics? Every county east of the Mississippi I have ever been in has at least one Civil War memorial. What about the Grand Army of the Republic or similar organizations? What about all the US Presidents who were Civil War veterans (for decades it was essentially a requirement to run for the office). There were several reunions at Gettysburg when veterans were still alive (1913 had a 50th anniversary). This is also a WP:WEIGHT issue.
Images also need to be clearly sourced and clearly free - for example File:American Civil War Chaplain.JPG does not list a source - is it from a book or website or what? This owuld be an issue at FAC.
Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see

Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gonfaloniere comments: Though I only gave the article a cursory glance, I wanted to weigh in on a few things:

The sections on Free Soil and The Slave Power should probably be merged. Aside from the individual sections being short, the topics are intimately related (particularly given there's a separate section about slavery per se).
File:Andersonvillesurvivor.jpg is unnecessary and certainly has nothing to do with emancipation of slaves.
The Charleston photo in the Confederacy surrenders section creates unappealing whitespace.
As mentioned above, the memory and historiography section needs a rewrite and substantial expansion. There should probably be an American Civil War historiography article to complement or replace the American Civil War bibliography one; the cultural effects (Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic isn't a scholarly work but is fairly popular, an easy read, and indicative of what I mean) could fill another article or ten. I can't fault you for these articles not existing yet and understand there's always the question of weight, but the main article is supposed to be a grand synthesis of the various facets of a topic. Not mentioning the words Lost Cause seems like a crime.

I applaud your courage in trying to make a coherent article about this difficult subject in any case. If you don't get it featured in the near future, just remember, you have four years of sesquicentennial anniversaries to commemorate it! Gonfaloniere (talk) 02:50, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]