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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Midway

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Battle of Midway

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This is a self-nomination by Jon Parshall. I have worked a great deal on the article to improve accuracy, citation, and usage of contemporary sources representing the current best scholarship on the battle. -- User:Jparshall 14:14, 30 May 2006 03:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMPORTANT: This request was incorrectly filed on May 30. I happened across it a few moments ago and noticed this, so I have taken the liberty of correctly filing the request and have placed it here just now. My time stamp has the correctly filed date on it, and should be used as the proper refernce for the FAC request. TomStar81 03:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • And I should mention that I'm most grateful for the assistance in correctly filing the request. -jon parshall-
  • Weak Oppose for now. The article needs some fine tuning before it recieves an FA star. For starters, some of the claims in the article do not cite sources, leaving them open as POV statements. Also, the spelling and grammar ought to be looked at more closely; while I admit that I have no real room to brag on this issue, I did notice that some words had erronous spellings. Lastly, I feel that the overwhelming use of the book Shattered Sword to cite material is questionable, given the amount of info that ough to be avaliable on the battle. TomStar81 03:29, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi Tom: I would be happy to add additional citation where needed if you'll provide me with specific claims that need buttressing. Regarding the usage of "Shattered Sword", I'm obviously in a somewhat delicate position, having literally "written the book on the battle" and then having turned to a rewrite of the Wikipedia article as well. Your comment that additional citation material from other sources ought to be possible "given the amount of info that ought to be available on the battle" would hold true under many circumstances. In this case, though, "Shattered Sword" is, legitimately, the first book to have made extensive usage of the Japanese primary sources on the battle. As a result, some of the assertions in the article I have written will not be found in the other standard works on the battle -- "Miracle at Midway", "Incredible Victory", etc. -- because those prior books didn't use the same sources. So, the upside is that you're getting an article that benefits from the "state of the art" in the topic matter, but the downside is that citation in many cases will rely heavily on "Shattered Sword." Would it help to cite using the primary sources that *we* used? I have noticed that much of the citation in Wikipedia articles tends to be secondary sources (i.e. the well-known books on whatever topic.) However, I can very easily move to the primary sources if need be (i.e. "Akagi action report, CAP kodochosos", etc.), if you think that would be helpful to the reader. I myself wonder if such primaries would be useful to a non-specialist, but I'm cool either way. -jon parshall-
      • I won't presume to speak for Tomstar81, but IMO, you should add in the primary sources; it would make it more clear that the article draws from a variety of perspectives. Just be careful that you only use the primary sources to relay facts, not draw conclusions from them (save those for the book). However, I would like to see more sources used in ==Impact on War==, from what I can see, it relies very heavily on your book. I would rephrase it as: "The importance of the battle is the subject of some debate. Some believe it was a major turning point....[cite][cite]. Others believe that while important, it wasn't absolutely critical...[cite][cite]. The Japanese themselves saw it as foo [cite]." Would the Schlesinger source (currently in external links) be able to add a perspective? Incidently, I think it's wonderful that you have decided to contribute here. The more experts opinions on Wikipedia, the better. - The Catfish 21:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • My point is essentially what The Catfish has adressed; my concern over the use of using one primary source is that I fear that it may lend an impression that someone drew exclusively from one source to write the article. In this case specifically my concern is that the "no original research" policy could be used against you since, in your own words, you have "...literally 'written the book on the battle'...". The solution to this problem would be to add other points of reference for the inline citations, which is what I am asking for. TomStar81 23:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Those are all good points. Give me a day or two and let me see if I can't address some of those concerns by elaborating on the citation and, in the case of some of the more controversial areas, perhaps using primaries from the Japanese sources. I will take a close look at the 'Impact on the War' section. Bear in mind that that is a very complex subject--it gets an entire chapter in my book--and is not easy to unravel, or describe in simple terms. (But hey, that's what makes it fun!) -jon parshall-
            • Thanks for the quick response. I just have a couple points of clarification. Ideally, if a claim is directly supported both by the primary and secondary source, I would prefer the primary source to be cited. Citations of Shattered Sword would be for claims that draw conclusions from those sources. I think this would help diversify the notes quite a bit. Also, no worries about WP:NOR: "If an expert editor has published the results of his or her research elsewhere, in a reputable publication, the editor can cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy." - The Catfish 02:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
              • We'll let others decide whether Shattered Sword is a reputable work.  ;-) Although I will (humbly) note that the book's only been out for six months, and yet the U.S. Naval War College has already bought a thousand copies and added it to their Strategy & Policy curriculum. (Stoked!) In any case, I added a number of citations last night (5 June), in some cases fleshing out secondaries, in others adding "derived from..." primary citations for the Japanese source works. I would note that I don't think we want to go too far down the primary source path--most encylopedia readers aren't going to go and read the individual unit reports, for instance. I think our overall goal should be to point readers to additional reputable secondary sources, so that they can do further reading if they want. Frankly, I don't want to be responsible for citing, say, "Prange page blah-de-blah" and then have to figure out from what primary source he got his information from (although I could do it)(and certainly have in the past)(but it's way tedious). Rather, I think primaries, particularly in the Japanese source works, should be used to buttress potentially controversial points, particularly those that cut against the grain of the current conventional wisdom (the correcting of which was the reason Tony and I wrote the book in the first place.) In any case, I think we're on the right track. More soon. -jon parshall-
                • I have now substantially fleshed out the citation for the article, in many cases pointing to Japanese sources. I feel that at this point it should be diversified sufficiently to deflect any perception of the citations being too 'Shattered Sword-centric'.
  • Support Now that other sorces have been provided for the inline citations (in addition to Shattered Sword) I feel better about the sourcing for the information presented. My ohter complaints have been adressed accordingly. TomStar81 16:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Oppose - Very nice article but problems I can see that miss the FA standard are
*Overwhelming use of one reference source as perTomStar81. This is a very widely written about conflict and there needs to be visability on a more balanced view.
  • See above comments regarding sources. -jon parshall-
*Unreferenced POV comment in the opening paragraph arguably the most important naval conflict since Nelson's victory at Trafalgar
  • I have re-written the lead paragraph to try and make it more concise, better supported, and perhaps less controversial. -jon parshall-
  • some grammer issues (I too am awful at this) - the first sentence does not read well.Peripitus (Talk) 03:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed. -jon parshall-
  • Support - after the changes the opening paragraph reads much better. I've also spent some time reading a some other references and I can see the point of using the newer book - all of the older ones I have read are very pro-US. - Peripitus (Talk) 12:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support — the article is a good read. — Ravikiran 06:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Great article, especially after changes. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 21:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, very nice article. One question, though: is it really necessary to have that monstrous link-farm template at the bottom? Most of the stuff there has a tenuous link to Midway, at best. Kirill Lokshin 03:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • dunno what the story is with that--it seems to be a standard WWII template that's stuffed at the bottom of such articles. Granted it adds some additional length, but I don't think it's a bad thing, and it helps set context around the events as a whole. I don't think I'd want to remove it. -jon parshall-
  • Support Fine article, and I like the template at the bottom. Rlevse 18:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm putting these comments here to avoid mixing them with the discussion above:
    • ==Discovery== and ==Movies== are both extremely short; they should be either expanded or merged to make the prose flow better. The paragraphs within these sections suffer the same problems and require the same remedy.
    • References and Further Reading/External links should be separate sections to differentiate between works referenced and those that merely provide additional information.
      • Done. 6/6/2006 -jon parshall-
        • Still not quite right. To clarify, there should be two sections: ==References== should contain all the sources that were used as references and the notes refering to them; and ==Further Reading==, containing books and external links not used as sources, but usefull for finding out more. - The Catfish 00:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Blech. Do other Featured Articles do it this way? What's the value-add to this approach? As I look at it, the list of books we have is a good cross-section of the standard works on the topic. Yes, I could list some of the Japanese sources; that's fine. But I think the distinction between 'References' and 'Further Reading' is artificial, unless this is standard practice for Featured Articles on Wikipedia. Lemme know. 6/6/2006 -jon parshall-
            • Randomly picking three recently promoted FA's (Football (soccer), Operation Auca, and Pashtun people), all three separate References and Further Reading/External Links. Separation helps to clarify exactly which sources the information came from. - The Catfish 02:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
              • I did some reading on Wikipedia's style practices, and in Wikipedia:Citing_sources it does indeed state the following: "Maintaining a separate 'References' section in addition to 'Notes': It is helpful when footnotes are used that a References section also be maintained, in which the sources that were used are listed in alphabetical order. With articles that have lots of footnotes, it can become hard to see after a while exactly which sources have been used, particularly when the footnotes also contain explanatory text. A References section, which contains only citations, helps readers to see at a glance the quality of the references used." Fair enough. I will take care of that, hopefully tonight.
  • Another thing I just noticed. The general practice I've seen when citing multiple sources for one claim is to split up the note for each source (so Note 1 would become four separate notes, one each for Dull, Willmott, Prange, Parshall & Tully) (Incidently, a book written by a person named Dull doesn't sound like a very fun read!) 00:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Pushing back. We did not do it this way in Shattered Sword (i.e., we had multiple sources within a single citation), and all the scholarly types were just peach with that. Furthermore, you have to take into account the medium. In my opinion, disaggregating the footnotes 1) unnecessarily lengthens the scrolling length of the article (which is already darned big) and 2) would also make the article a nightmare for further editing, as you'd have <ref </ref tags *everywhere*. It's already getting difficult to navigate. I don't think the value add is there. -jon parshall- P.S. Dull was apparently a riveting lecturer, from what I've heard. Terrible name, though, I admit.
      • I believe it is standard practice as each of these recently promoted FA's use multiple notes for single facts. The advantage, I think, is that it makes the article seem even more reliable, which is important on a project such as this. - The Catfish 02:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC) PS: Thanks for being patient with my seemingly never-ending requests.[reply]
        • No problem. This one is really bugging me, though, (for reasons I've stated above). Consequently, I have spent some timing reading about Wikipedia's stylistic conventions and footnoting principles, under both Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style, and Wikipedia:Citing_sources. In general, the usage of Harvard inline partial citations, embedded links, footnotes, and MLA are all acceptable. However, neither of these pages says anything about this particular issue (i.e. forming multiple citations around a single statement.) The 'Citing Sources' page does, though, state the following: "Editors should not switch from one citation system to another without checking on the talk page that there are no objections. For example, editors should not switch from footnotes to Harvard referencing, or vice versa. If no agreement can be reached, the system used by the first major contributor to use one should be deferred to.[emphasis added]]" I humbly submit that 1) I can see no reason to prefer the usage of individual citations versus consolidated citations, 2) simply adding individual citation "thud factor" for the purposes of "seeming even more reliable" doesn't really cut much logical mustard with me, 3) the fact that these other Featured Articles articles used individual citations isn't really in conformance with any Wikipedia stylistic conventions (because there are no Wikipedia stylistic conventions on this particular point that I can see), and therefore 4) these other articles shouldn't really sway the discussion one way or t'other, (i.e. the way they did it is just fine, for them, but their usage shouldn't be taken as gospel) 5) I am the first major contributor to the citation of this article, 6) my citation style is explictly in conformance with the Chicago Manual of Style (as evidenced by my usage of citation in Shattered Sword), and therefore, 7) my stylistic choice regarding usage of multiple citations should be left the heck alone. And I mean that very nicely.  ;-) [Grant me, at least, that I've done my homework, and that I've been cheerfully responsive on the other objections raised so far. This one, though, I'm digging my heels in, I guess...] Anyway, comments back, Mssr. Catfish?
  • Support Excellent article. I'll just mention that I also prefer the primary source to the secondary source. Maybe list the primary source and then have a "(see also Shattered Sword pp.##)" at the end somehow? Best of both worlds then.--SeizureDog 20:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • On another note, the "Categories:" list is awfully small. Surely it can go into more than 2 categories.--SeizureDog 21:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • indeed it can, and I added several. 6/6/2006 -jon parshall-
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