Talk:Operation Eastern Exit/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Calvin999 (talk · contribs) 11:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Info box

• NUS → U.S.
• NCould probably remove all the blank parameters not in use.

Lead

• Yin Mogadishu, Somalia in January 1991. → in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital city, in January 1991.
• YLink Somalia
• YIn late December 1990, violence quickly enveloped Mogadishu as armed militants began clashing with government soldiers in Mogadishu. → Repetition of Mogadishu
• Nthe US Ambassador → the U.S. Ambassador
• YWho is the Ambassador?
• Ywhich was approved on 2 January. → which was approved the following day.
• YLink Mogadishu International Airport

Background

• Nthere was increasing rebellion → there was an increasing rebellion or there were increasing rebellions ?
• YIn the late 1980s, there was increasing rebellion against the rule of Somali President Siad Barre, a military dictator with a record of human rights abuses. → Needs citing. (Apply citations at the end of each sentence throughout).
• YLink Somali
• YLink militias
• YThere's a space in-between the full stop and citation number 2.
• Yappointed the → appointed as the
• YLink Somalia
• In early 1990, the embassy moved to a new, 80-acre (32 ha) compound, 6 miles (9.7 km) from the previous embassy and James K. Bishop was appointed the United States' ambassador to Somalia. Ambassador Bishop was no stranger to crisis management at US embassies. In 1967, he was at the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon when the Six-Day War erupted. About 3,600 Americans were evacuated in 33 hours; Bishop was one of 26 diplomats and soldiers that remained in the city. As deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa from 1981–87, Bishop chaired several task forces for crises and gained experience in the State Department's operations center as evacuations were carried out during several coups d'etat. → All this sentences need citing with sources.
• YAmbassador Bishop was no stranger to crisis management at US embassies. → Sounds a bit informal and conversational.
• NUS → U.S. (Apply this throughout)
• YLink Lebanon
• Ypost in Mogadishu → Link Mogadishu

Plans, mobilization, and escalating violence

• YAs mentioned above, → Never use this expressions
• Yhad ineffective, if any, command-and-control → had an ineffective command-and-control
• Ya combine command → Do you mean combined?
• Yto the task force. The request was denied. → to the task force; the request was denied.

Evacuation

• Yposition on water tower → position on the water tower.
• YGerman chargé → What is a chargé? Can this be linked or explained in brackets?
• YIn the Main evacuation sub-section, there is repetition in the first paragraph at the beginning of each sentence with "the main evacuation", and then there is repetition of "he demanded" in the second paragraph.
• YAmbassador Bishop remained engaged in conversation with the Major until Ambassador Bishop reached → Ambassador Bishop remained engaged in conversation with the Major until he reached
• YJust make the Aftermath at the embassy sub-section a single paragraph; there's no point have a one line paragraph.
• YUnable to pay them because local banks had been closed for a while, → Reads a bit conversational. Needs to be more concise.

References

• There's only 8 references. Aren't there any online newspaper articles that you can use for information, too? A lot of the article seems heavily dependent on citation 2.

Template

• Is there no navigational template that can be placed at the bottom of the article? Or is this article subject a bit of an anomaly?

Outcome

On hold for 7 days. Ping me or talkback me if you needed me; I have more than 2,300 articles on my watch so I don't always see responses.  — ₳aron 11:16, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I've begun addressing the issues. I placed tick marks at the beginning of the items to note whether they have been completed or not (I know as a GA reviewer that having responses in the initial review is not welcome, but I hope you don't mind a simple check/cross). Here are issues addressed and some comments:

• Unfortunately, the analysis by the Center for Naval Analyses (ref 2) is the only significant source of information for much of the military operation. The CNA analysis is a very reliable source for this material, especially in context. The author had access to documents and people involved in the operation (of particular importance is access to numerous military leaders in the operation) and spent considerable time interviewing those involved within weeks of the operation. The analysis was intended to be an independent review of what went right/wrong during the operation, so I believe it should be considered a very reliable source, especially in context. A classified version was also made, which I presume would be more detailed. While some newspaper articles may be found, I doubt many will have much detail about the operation beyond a general overview. Of course, if this happened today, there would be plenty of articles on the web providing details of the mission, but at the time it happened, it was overshadowed by the Gulf War. I will try to find as many quality refs as I can for the content.
• There's no clear guidance on how often to include citations. For most of the article, there are 1-3 references that support an entire paragraph. Since many paragraphs are about 3 sentences, I placed the citations at the end of the paragraph to avoid citation overkill. That said, I do see some places where a ref is inserted in the middle, while the ref(s) at the end support the whole paragraph. There are a few such paragraphs that need some clarification with the links. Otherwise, I don't see the problem with leaving citations at the end of paragraphs. Every sentence in the article (except the lead) now has a citation, but to avoid clutter, many of these are hidden like: <!-- <ref name="CNA: Operation Eastern Exit" />{{Rp|33}} -->

Regarding the cleanup/less important issues:

• Both US and U.S. are acceptable, as long as the article is consistent (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Miscellanea & MOS:NOTUSA).
• I don't mind leaving the infobox parameters in case they can be filled later.
• In the lead and background, I've wikilinked the suggested terms and others I believe are useful. In the Background, "Somali" was part of "Somali President", so it was being used as an adjective for Somalia; I wikilinked "Somali President" to List of Presidents of Somalia (the list article is the only article for the position). Another editor came along and made an edit ("mos fixes" as the summary) that removed the Somalia wikilink in the summary and infobox, but I've reinserted it.
• The word rebellion in "there was increasing rebellion against the rule of Somali President Siad Barre" is a gerund and doesn't need an article (eg. a, an, the). These aren't well covered on Wikipedia, but I've wikilinked "increasing rebellion" to the location which has the best coverage of these events Somali Civil War#Fall of Barre regime (1986–1991).
• Chargé is a commonly-used short form of the term "chargé d'affaires", which is linked in the lead and "Return to Oman" sections. I've expanded the term to chargé d'affaires. It's described in the lead as the head of a diplomatic mission (eg. embassy, consulate): "12 heads of missions(eight ambassadors and four chargés d'affaires)."
• "Unable to pay them because local banks had been closed for a while" I don't know how long the embassy had been unable to pay the FSNs, the source says "Banks had been closed for sometime; so that we had not been able to pay our employees." I changed the problem phrase so that it is a sentence instead of a leading clause and now reads: "Local banks had been closed for some time and the embassy was unable to pay the FSNs." I also
• The article isn't part of any war or campaign. There's no navbox for the Somali Civil War and too specific for Template:Somalia topics or Template:History of Somalia. I've browsed several US military operations around this time, but they contain Template:Gulf War. I don't have any ideas for what navbox could be added to this article.

@Calvin999: I think I've fixed or addressed all of the concerns, with the number of references and citation frequency needing your feedback (Note, an editor has twice removed several wikilinks, including two of your suggestions. I've mentioned the ongoing review at the user's talkpage). AHeneen (talk) 17:31, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Guys, please don't wikilink terms right next to each other - per WP:SEAOFBLUE and other linking guidelines we should include the more precise link (ie. "Mogadishu, Somalia" is the correct approach). Nikkimaria (talk) 00:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The key phrase in the WP:SEAOFBLUE guideline is "When possible". It is certainly acceptable to have adjacent wikilinks when linking to a city & country or in a long list. "Mogadishu, Somalia" is ok. AHeneen (talk) 22:31, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

No, in that case it is appropriate to link Mogadishu and leave Somalia unlinked. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:43, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for giving me such detailed responses. Passing.  — ₳aron

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.