Wikipedia:Peer review/COINTELPRO/archive1

COINTELPRO edit

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's well made and significant.

Thanks, CartoonDiablo (talk) 17:47, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The quotes and bulleted lists are a bit too long. Can the be merged into the prose? Also, I don't think it's a good idea to have so many 'see also's - can the links be put into the appropriate places in the prose above? The further reading list is also a bit too long. Maybe they can be used as references instead. By the way, can you review Manufacturing in Hong Kong too? Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 03:52, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is a good start on a very difficult subject to write about fairly. The topic is interesting, but the existing article seems to be pushing a particular point of view, and it has problems related to the guidelines in the Manual of Style. Here are my suggestions:

Lead

"The FBI used covert operations from its inception" - It would be good to add the year of inception here.

"seeking independence for Puerto Rico." - This and any other direct quotations in the article need to be sourced. The ref number should appear directly after the end punctuation of the quote or the sentence punctuation that follows it.

History

""COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups..." - It would be helpful to add who, exactly, was frustrated.

A good rule of thumb for sourcing is to give a source for every claim that has been questioned or is apt to be questioned, for every direct quote, for every set of statistics, and for every paragraph. In an article about a topic such as this one that is political and controversial, I'd be especially careful to provide sources and to be as precise as possible. Two quotes and one paragraph in this section are sourced, but the rest is not. Partial lack of sourcing is a problem throughout the article.

Range of targets

"MIT professor of linguistics" - I would spell out the abbreviation on first use like this: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Generally, it would be better to paraphrase than to quote such long passages (three paragraphs here) from documents such as the Church Committee report. Ditto for the long quotes in the Illegal surveillance section. Paraphrase and source.

WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists suggests turning lists into straight prose when feasible. I would re-write the list in this section as prose.

Methods

I would turn the numbered list into straight prose. Each paragraph should be sourced. Spectacular claims should be sourced. Any claim of assassination is sure to be challenged, and I would probably not use that word unless directly quoting highly reliable sources. The South End Press book is one reliable source, but the two dot-coms (Paul Wolf and It's About Time) don't seem to qualify; personal web sites and blogs generally don't. To the extent that the sourcing is doubtful, the claims can be doubted and seen as emphasizing a particular point of view rather than presenting a neutral and verifiable account of events. The article is on much more solid ground with the claim about David Halberstam in the last section. Please review WP:NPOV.

References

Quite a few of the citations are malformed or incomplete. I find the "cite" family of templates helpful in organizing my citations. Even if you choose not to use citation templates in the article, they include handy lists of the data that can be, and in some cases should be, included. See WP:CITET for the lists. If you decide to use templates, don't mix the "cite" family with the "citation" family; choose one or the other.

Other

The link checker in the toolbox at the top of this review page finds three dead urls in the citations.

I agree that the See also section includes unnecessary items. For example, I would not include any items that are already included in the main text.

If the books and articles in the Further reading section are important, I would try to include references to them in the main text rather than simply listing them in a bibliography. This would require reading them all and deciding what to mention and what to omit; this would be a seriously time-consuming and difficult undertaking.

The External links section is a kind of WP:LINKFARM. The guidelines say, "There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia."

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. I don't generally check corrections after my reviews because it's too time-consuming. Please ping me on my talk page if my comments are unclear or if questions arise. Finetooth (talk) 18:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comment

I also noted that the infobox is aboutthe FBI. It should be about the operation(s) that made up COINTELPRO instead. Since COINTELPRO ended in the 1970s, it is very misleading to list the current director of the FBI in the Infobox, for example. There is no requirement for an infobox in an article, so if there is not one for intel ops, that is OK. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]