Talk:Agent Orange/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 13:24, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments

There seems to be very little wrong with this carefully written and well cited article. I note that the article has recently been through a rigorous copyright check, which found and removed longstanding violations; it easily passes such a check today.

• I have marked 5 places where citations seem to be needed, or uncited text needs to be removed.

• The lead image has no date, nor does it mention the Vietnam War (1961-71). It should do one or the other, and wikilink as necessary.

• Chemical composition: please spell out the chemical names in the image captions, and wikilink them. You may give the abbreviations after these if desired, in parentheses.

• Development: "during WWII": please spell out and wikilink.

• Early Use: please use sentence case (Early use). Please also give dates of the Malayan Emergency.

• Early use image: please remove mention of later Vietnam War from image caption.

• Use in the Vietnam War: "Spraying was usually done " is inelegant. Suggest "Agent Orange was usually sprayed".

• "including Arthur Galston": Please gloss him (e.g. "the botanist and bioethicist Arthur Galston)" at first mention.

• "A weapon, by definition, is any device used to injure, defeat, or destroy living beings, structures, or systems, and Agent Orange did not qualify under that definition." This isn't true as it stands, as Agent Orange evidently destroys living plants, so we must not make the statement in Wikipedia's voice. Please attribute it appropriately, e.g. "The U.S. delegation argued that ...".

• " if they (the VC) " - if this is an editorial gloss, then please format it with square brackets as [the Vietcong]; if not, then please gloss it with "(sic)" as it's a non-standard format.

• "Rural-to-urban migration rates dramatically increased ........ Saigon slums." Does Luong 2003 specifically attribute this flow to Agent Orange, or simply to the war? We need an actual quotation here, either in the text or in the citation, to cover this. If it's simply to the war, the paragraph is WP:OR.

You've altered the paragraph without addressing the issue here. If Luong 2003 specifically attributes the population flow to Agent Orange, please supply a quotation (can be |quote=..... inside the citation); if not, the paragraph must be removed. [done]

Removing that paragraph fixes the question of whether it was OR, but the sociopolitical effects are now not adequately covered (i.e. the article is more unbalanced, and it was already very heavy on the health effects, just as it is very heavy on Vietnam despite efforts at balance with "Use outside Vietnam"). What we need to do is find some reliable sources on the sociopolitical effects, including rural depopulation and migration to the big cities; Luong is certainly reliable but we ought to know what it actually says. The article Effects of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people should be linked somewhere (probably a {{main| }} link; it may offer useful sources on the sociopolitical effects.

I've had a look for sources, and can't find anything usable. There certainly was rural depopulation, but that was attributed in the sources I found to fighting, including artillery and bombing. I've therefore removed the section. If anyone finds reliable sources in future, they are welcome to reinsert a section on this topic. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:42, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

References

• References 2, 3, 39, 40, 57, 85, 88, 90, 93, 94, 97, 99, 110, 116, 121, 128, 129, 130, 131, 139, 146, 147, 156, 157 are inadequately formatted or not formatted at all. Many others are incompletely formatted so all references in the article (not just these specifically listed) now require checking. I've formatted the first few for you to show what is wanted.

• Every ref requires a title, publisher, date/accessdate, and author (in Surname, I.J. (last name, comma, space, initial, dot, initial, dot; or Surname, Forename and middle initial) if available. Please use the {{cite web |title= ...}} or similar template (cite journal, etc) throughout the article for consistent formatting.

• I note the detailed References and Bibliography (which ought really to be linked using the Harvard mechanism), but do not see why there is also a lengthy "Further reading" list with Books, "Journal articles/papers", News, Video, Photojournalism - if these are needed, please link them; otherwise, please remove them from the article.

Removed the Journal articles/papers, only 2 minor items not adding substantially to article.

• The same basically applies to the Government/NGO reports: these ought to be linked in the existing text, or briefly mentioned and linked if they aren't there already, but it's not a pass/fail issue.

• External links: what are these for? Things like "Poisoned Lives" seem POV if not off-topic altogether. Please justify or remove each item.

Sociopolitical impact

https://books.google.com/books?id=PeFK5dkYZsEC&pg=PT95&lpg=PT95&dq=agent+orange,+crops,+people+abandoned+countryside&source=bl&ots=F-WA-MM2FS&sig=PPABL_fQsYcWTDgKVJ7R9mCR2lU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLrIShq_7SAhWFTCYKHVifD0kQ6AEITDAH#v=onepage&q=agent%20orange%2C%20crops%2C%20people%20abandoned%20countryside&f=false

Hi Chiswick Chap, I think this link could help. Uptoniga (talk) 13:48, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Uptoniga Yes it could, along with the RAND quote and citation, and Luong 2003, so you are authorised to restore the old material and to extend it. Please be careful to say that bombing and artillery, bulldozing, and Agent Orange spraying, including deliberate spraying of rice paddies, all contributed to forcing the depopulation of rural Vietnam, and the resulting surge of people into the cities. It is essentially impossible to separate the effects of these, given that they were essentially all simultaneous, widespread, and of long duration, and Turse wisely discusses them together.

Here is the Turse citation, formatted:

<ref>{{cite book|last=Turse|first=Nick|title=Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PeFK5dkYZsEC&pg=PT95|date=2013-01-15|publisher=Henry Holt and Company|isbn=978-0-8050-9547-0|pages=95–99}}</ref>

Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:00, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Lead

• The lead section currently spends 2 of its 3 paragraphs on law, and says nothing about many of the sections of the article (e.g. Use outside Vietnam, legal and diplomatic proceedings) and almost nothing about Health effects, Ecological and Sociopolitical impact. Please move the 2 law paragraphs into the body of the article (a new section, International law, perhaps), and create 2 or 3 new paragraphs in the lead to summarize the contents of the article.

Summary

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Reasonably so.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	This is a long-established article on a controversial subject. A substantial effort has been made to provide reliable sources and to cover the main points fairly and evenly. The article is now well cited and appropriate in tone and coverage, which is quite an achievement. Well done all who helped.