Talk:Operation Eastern Exit

Copyright problem removed

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Resources

I've worked on the Embassy of the United States, Mogadishu article and found several quality sources concerning Operation Eastern Exit. I'm including them here because I don't plan to work on this article soon, but would like to leave these for other editors who may wish to improve this article:

• Eastern Exit: The Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) From Mogadishu, Somalia in January 1991 Analysis of Operation Eastern Exit from the Center for Naval Analyses. A treasure-trove of details about the operation and critique of the operation
• Evacuating Somalia Narrative article based on an interview with James K. Bishop (the US Ambassador to Somalia when it was evacuated)
• Escape from Mogadishu account of the last days of Embassy Mogadishu and the evacuation written by Ambassador Bishop
• Operation Eastern Exit: Night Mission To Mogadishu from the Marine Corps Association and Foundation. Not much that isn't covered in the above sources, but does have lots of quotes from interviews of a few people involved in the operation
• CHOPPERS ARRIVED IN NICK OF TIME TO RESCUE 281 AT U.S. EMBASSY Originally published in the Washington Post. Lengthy article about the operation, but not a lot of details not covered by the first three sources in this list.

AHeneen (talk) 21:48, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Image

I've removed the image at right because it is likely to be interpreted incorrectly. At top it states "From Masirah Island", with arrows pointing down to Mogadishu. The arrows suggest that the helicopters travelled from the Gulf of Aden across the interior of Somalia to Mogadishu. However, Masirah Island is where the vessels departed on 2 January. A very reliable source is the CNA analysis, which has a map on page 5 (page 18 of the PDF file), showing the location of the vessels when the CH-53E Super Stallions were launched, which was only 466 nautical miles (863 km; 536 mi) from Mogadishu (this image shows the helicopters traveling about 700-1000 nmi!). On the image (open full size), the location of the vessels when the CH-53E Super Stallions were launched is about where a horizontal line going east from the label "Mudug" intersects the path of the vessels (as depicted in the image). Because of how grossly misleading this image is, I am removing it from the article. I may have time to create a map later. AHeneen (talk) 09:09, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

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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This review is transcluded from Talk:Operation Eastern Exit/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

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.