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Talk:Mayaguez incident/GA1

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Reviewer: Hchc2009 (talk) 06:47, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll read through and start the review later. Hchc2009 (talk) 06:47, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right, I think the remaining issues from below that we still need to resolve are:
  • The gallery of images question.
  • The potential for a map showing the location of these events.
  • Webpages still need date accessed, etc. to be added
Hchc2009 (talk) 10:04, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's all gone quiet. I'm going to have to fail the article at this review, but its quite close now and I'd be happy to rereview at a later date. Hchc2009 (talk) 06:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct;

  • " Khmer Rouge leader, Sa Mean, ordered Captain Miller to get the ship under way" - you've explained who Sa Mean is again, but not Captain Miller. If you said "get his ship under way", you'd achieve that without making the sentence any longer.
  • " ordered the commander of the Seventh Air Force, Lieutenant General John J. Burns at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base" - needed a second paired comma after either Burns or Base.
  • "08:16" - you've started to use the 24 hour clock here - you'll need to be consistent in what time format you use throughout the article.
  • "Nine USAF HH-53 Jolly Greens " they're linked, but worth explaining that these are helicopters.
  • "There were differences between the two types which would become relevant during the battle: the HH-53 is air-refuelable, has 450-gallon foam-filled tip tanks, a tail Minigun with armor plating, and two waist Miniguns" - you switch about in tense here: e.g. "were differences" "is air-refuelable" - you should probably stick with one tense to avoid confusion.
  • "and the fact that the containers on the Mayaguez could not bear the weight of the helicopters and that rappelling men down would expose them to gunfire." - several "and"s here. Worth explaining/noting/linking what "rappelling" is.
  • "Early on the morning of May 14, the Mayaguez crew was loaded onto one of the fishing boats and they left Koh Tang following two of the Swift boats on a heading for Kampong Som." - If you were to say "the Cambodians loaded the Mayaguez crew onto...", it would bring the Cambodians back into this section as active players, avoiding the sense of this all being about the US (see later).
  • "The fighters then came at the fishing boat " - "came at" sounded a bit informal to me. "attacked the fishing boat"?
    • They weren't attacking the fishing boat, rather they were shotting in front of it to try to make it turn back

Mztourist (talk) 09:53, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • "it may have been relayed " - tense, this should be "might have been"
  • "The Khmer Rouge commander, apparently fearing" - was this the local Kampong commander?
  • "Concerned that the use of B-52s might be overkill" - again, overkill felt informal.
  • "Unknown to the Americans then converging on Koh Tang, none of the Mayaguez crew was on the island and it was heavily defended by over 100 Khmer Rouge." - a very short paragraph. Couldn't this be combined with the next para?
  • "The Khmer Rouge defenses on Koh Tang were not intended to counter the Americans, rather they were there to counter the Vietnamese. " - again, you could phrase this as "The Khmer Rouge had built the defenses on Koh Tang to counter the Vietnamese, rather than the Americans.", building them in as active participants again.
  • "LZs" - you never expand this acronym. Incidentally, for non-military audiences, I'd recommend you avoid the LZ term where possible, as it will distract some readers who won't be familiar. e.g. "the CH-53s approaching the East Beach LZ " could just finish "East Beach", and still carry the same meaning.
    • Added x-ref but have also deleted LZ's generally
  • "At 06:30, the CH-53s approaching the East Beach LZ encountered intense automatic weapons and RPG fire from entrenched Khmer Rouge." - another example where you could phrase it as the Khmer Rouge doing something, rather than the US. ("The Khmer Rouge put down intense automatic..."
  • "President Ford went on national television" - "US national television", or "national television in the US".
  • " further reinforcement of Koh Tang was unnecessary and at 11:55 it ordered" - I'm not a US mil person, so I may be wrong, but aren't the Joint Chiefs of Staff plural? (i.e. "they ordered"?)
  • "By 14:00 firing on the West Beach had reduced substantially..." A very long paragraph - I'd advise breaking it into two.
  • "FAC" - elsewhere, you call the aircraft by their code names, which I found easier to read. I suspect that talking about Nail 68 in this section, rather than FAC, would be easier for the non-mil audiences to follow.
  • " a jungle penetrator" - ? Worth linking/noting/explaining
  • "Extraction of Marine elements" section generally - I couldn't work out what the Khmer Rouge forces were doing throughout this section. Is there any way of making it clearer?
    • they had fallen back from the beaches but as night fell and once they had replensihed their ammunition supplies they began attacking the Marine positions again. Not sure how it can be made any clearer Mztourist (talk) 09:52, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Such is the case of Lcpl Ashton Loney" - the "such is" clause felt a little archaic to me. How about "left where they fell, including Lcpl Ashton Loney..."?
  • " (with leaflets dropped and the Wilson broadcasting the crew's intentions) " - you could lose the brackets if you liked here.
  • "3 hours" - I think this should be "three hours" under the MOS.
  • "In 1985, an eyewitness report" - Worth saying who the eye witness was (e.g. Khmer Rouge mil? A local? etc.) Or do you mean Em Som? (if so, I'd use his name to start with). In this section, is there doubt over Em Som's account? The way its written, it almost implies that he might not be being truthful. The reason I ask is that it seems hard to believe that he'd lie about this, but it's not presented in the same way as the regular narrative earlier on (which again, is often based on eyewitness reports).
    • No it wasn't from Em Son
  • "obligatory Purple Hearts" - do you mean obligatory (one is obliged to have one, and can't refuse) or that they're awarded automatically?
  • "Aftermath" section. The first bit of this is written in a list style, but could easily become a regular paragraph (e.g. starting "A number of US personnel were awarded medals following the events, including...", or something like that.
  • "Estimates of Khmer Rouge casualties" - whose estimates?
  • The long list of US personnel killed in the operation. I must admit, I'm not certain this belongs here. Most articles on ops don't list all of those killed, unless there is something particularly notable about the names. Having served in military campaigns myself, and with full respect to their families, it isn't clear to me that the list of individual US deaths or their places of birth are notable in this context. Some of the individuals, such as those whose bodies were recovered later, are mentioned in the next paragraph, some are mentioned previously, but it seems odd to then present this list in this way. If we were to add the 25+ Khmer Rouge on as well, it would become very long indeed. Do the secondary sources on the operation usually present the information this way?

(b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

  • The lead section is very short for an article of this length.
  • I couldn't find the lead bit about the Vietnam Wall in the main text, or the "It was the only known engagement between U.S. ground forces and the Khmer Rouge."

2. Factually accurate and verifiable:

(a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;

(b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines;

(c) it contains no original research.

Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic;

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.

  • You've grappled with a real challenge here, which is that all of your sources are US sources. Like other articles with similar challenges (I reviewed one on the UK in Palestine recently), this biases the account to some degree, simply because all the facts are recorded from one side. That said, within that constraint you've produced an article which is fair and unbiased - nicely done.
  • Two thoughts. Firstly, it might be worth adding a footnote early on, explaining that the account is based solely on US sources due to the lack of Cambodian accounts. Perhaps obvious, but makes it clear.
  • Secondly, whereever possible, I'd advise that you try to write the Khmer Rouge in as the active noun in the sentence. I'm IDed some above, but for example, if the sources clearly say that a helicopter was shot at by the Khmer Rouge (understandably phrased, as in this context it will usually be the pilot describing what happened), seize the opportunity to style the sentence as "The Khmer Rouge fired at the helicopter", rather than the reverse. It remains accurate, but stylistically prevents the US forces always being the active part of the sentence. It's just a thought, but it can prevent an article based on a single side's sources feeling too lopsided towards one side in the way that its written.

Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

Illustrated, if possible, by images:

(a) images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content;

(b) images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

  • Images are relevant.
  • Any chance of a map showing where the island is?
  • "These 23 airmen perished when their helicopter crashed due to mechanical error." - the caption should probably explain that these are US airmen (obvious when you've read the article, I know, but not if you're skimming it!)
  • I'd query whether the galleries are in line with Wikipedia:Image use policy, which advises that galleries should only be used if "if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject." It's not obvious to me why most of these images can't be placed in the regular text in line with the policy. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. Hchc2009 (talk) 08:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to add a comment for the GA review. The article appears to be based almost entirely on Wetterhahn, with essentially trivial usage of the other sources. This is highly problematic, as over-reliance on one source tends to lead to issues with plagiarism and close paraphrasing. There are a number of high quality works on the Mayaguez Incident - for instance, I would expect to find A Very Short War used in the article (it appears to be widely available in libraries. The Mayaguez Incident: Testing America's Resolve in the Post-vietnam Era was published this year and should be consulted as well, as it represents some of the most recent scholarship on the incident (it's not as common but does have wide dispersion and you can probably get ahold of it through inter-library loan). I would be opposed to passing the article for GA solely on this problem. Parsecboy (talk) 15:06, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Useful info, thanks. Mztourist, what are your thoughts? Hchc2009 (talk) 16:32, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The article isn't based almost entirely on Wetterhahn's book, it also relies heavily on the official USMC account written by Dunham. Wetterhahn's book was written some years after Guilmartin's A Very Short War which was first published in 1995. While the details of the battle from the U.S. perspective are almost exactly the same in Dunham, Guilmartin and Wetterhahn, Wetterhahn's book includes details from interviews with Khmer Rouge participants in the battle thus giving their perspective and also provides details of the fate of the 3 missing Marines and subsequent efforts to locate their remains and those of the Knife 31 crew, none of which is covered in detail in Guilmartin's book. I wasn't aware of The Mayaguez Incident: Testing America's Resolve in the Post-Vietnam Era, I will try to get hold of it and see if it sheds any new light on anything, but to be honest I don't see that it will make much difference to the essential details of the article. If Parsecboy can identify any issues of plagiarism and/or close paraphrasing from Wetterhahn, then of course those sections can and ahould be rewritten. Mztourist (talk) 10:15, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
About three quarters of the footnotes are to Wetterhahn (there are only a handful to Dunham, and many of those are used to double-cite material). If Dunham, Guilmartin, and Wetterhahn are more or less the same on the US perspective, then it should not be a problem to make the referencing more diverse. Parsecboy (talk) 13:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, are there any points that you feel are wrong or absent though? Hchc2009 (talk) 11:35, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think so. Parsecboy (talk) 13:37, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've asked the question on the GA discussion pages, and there's no formal rule about this; drawing on a range of sources is encouraged, but isn't a formal standard at GA. With that in mind, I'd agree with Parsecboy about it being an area for potential development, but that shouldn't stop this article passing at GA. Hchc2009 (talk) 10:04, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Completely inaccurate summary

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The USMC in the rescue operation lost 3 choppers, 4 heavily damaged out of 8, suffer 18 KIA (3 after the battle), 41 WIA against 85-100 Khmer Rogue troops, yet still unable to rescue the Mayaguez crews. Only by orders of higher-up in Khmer Rogue government that they be released. So how did that summary become "Completely inaccurate"? Zeraful —Preceding undated comment added 02:12, 9 May 2012 (UTC).[reply]

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