Talk:Shag Harbour UFO incident

This article was nominated for deletion on 4 March 2014 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

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Shag Harbour UFO incident was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 22, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed

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Good Article comments

Greetings and salutations! I have looked over the article, and I am afraid to say that I do not think it is GA standard yet. Here is a criterion-by-criterion commentary (numbered as per WP:WIAGA):

The prose is fine, and I can't find any problems with the grammar and vocabulary. However, the lede is not nearly long enough - a single simple sentence to describe the whole incident? I would expect at least a paragraphy of summary. And, please do link all the dates, to make sure that they will display in people's preferred format!
Referencing is my major sticking point here. There is a single source for the -whole- article. No page numbers, no anything. In the article, a History Channel documentary is mentioned, and according to the article, there was a good amount of press coverage at the time. I don't mind relying on a small number of authoritative sources, but please do cite page numbers to make it easier to verify. Especially in parts like the first paragraph of "Alleged military search", where there is a lot of quoting and paraphrasing witnesses, it would be very nice to have a footnote per witness quotation, even if it is only 'Ibid, pp 98'. Also see about the 'allegations' in the subsequent point.
Seems somewhat broad, covering the incident, responses, and reporting. Did the incident have a big lasting impact? Perhaps that could be mentioned more explicitly. Also, there is a lot of 'alleging'. This makes it sound like the government tried to cover it up. If they didn't, stand by your sources and remove all the 'allegations' flying about. More elaboration on the government's official stance would be nice. See comment above about the lede, too.
Article doesn't strike me as being anything but NPOV once there is sourcing for the 'allegations'.
Article is also stable. No complaints here.
The current selection of images is fine.

Good luck! Abednigo 21:10, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Side note: the newspaper article image needs a fair use rationale, or the article will be quick-failed if re-nominated. --Nehrams2020 22:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Citations & References

See Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref(erences/)> tags Nhl4hamilton (talk) 07:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Video

I've removed a link to a video on Youtube that merely shows some kind of tourist trap set up at the location of the sighting. It seems to have been intended as an advertisement for a "museum" at the site. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Well documented"->"purported" in the lead

I've made the following edit to the lead.

Before: The Shag Harbour Incident was the well-documented crash-landing of an unknown large object into Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia in October 1967.

After: The Shag Harbour Incident was the purported crash-landing of an unknown large object into Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia in October 1967.

There is no documentation of recovered remains corresponding to the apparent eyewitness reports of a crash and subsequent sinking in the sea hard by the coast of Nova Scotia. The reports record an object sinking a mere 200-300 metres from the coast, but nothing was ever found. A coastguard vessel that arrived within one hour of the reported sinking found no debris. A Navy search turned up nothing. The eye-witness reports remain unexplained and uncorroborated. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think probably there's some prose in between that is better suited. If you read the military report, they clearly state that something crashed, yet they could not find any evidence of it aside from some "yellow foam". The government of Canada was under the clear opinion that a crash of an unidentified object occurred, and they still list the incident as unsolved today. The whole reason this incident is notable is because the question is "what crashed" not "did anything crash at all" which is the usual case in these situations. We may never know what it was, but I haven't seen a single source disputing that something unidentified crashed therefore the statement "purported" is irrelevant. Also, the terminology of "crash landing" is incorrect in aviation, and would imply that it was a piloted vehicle that intentionally made an emergency descent into terrain. I've changed the summary to the following:

The Shag Harbour Incident was the documented impact of an unknown large object into Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia in October 1967.

All of the above is well sourced throughout the article, and none of which is in dispute. Icemotoboy (talk) 05:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speculation

I've started to prune raw speculation from the article. I've started by removing the following two paragraphs which appear to be attempts to promote a conspiracy theory:

On October 13, there was a brief mention and photo of the unexpected arrival of a large barge at Shelburne, supposedly for repair, carrying an "atomic furnace." This would perhaps provide some weak corroboration of the previously mentioned witness story of a barge being brought in for retrieval at Shelburne, with a cover story being given for its presence there.

The story about the barge also appeared on October 12 in the Shelburne Coast Guard, a weekly newspaper. The headline read, "U.S. Barge at Shelburne with Atomic Furnaces." The story claimed that a barge carrying "two huge atomic furnaces" from Philadelphia to Rochester, N.Y., had to put into Shelburne for repairs on October 6 after springing a leak and taking on water.

Well supported evidence of conspiracy would be appropriate for an encyclopedia. Promotion of some speculation written in somebody's book isn't appropriate. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Condon Report

The Condon Report is pretty vague about specific case details, but I think this is probably the file that relates to the Shag Harbour incident. Can anyone confirm this? It has discrepancies with the current article text. Daß Wölf 02:05, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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