Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Khe Sanh/Archive 1

Battle of Khe Sanh

Just finished up thie article. RM Gillespie 12:34, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Minor objection This article is well sourced for the US side, but the writing style is sometimes too narrative and thus unencyclopedic. Missing is information from the Northern Vietnamese perspective (POV issue). Some pictures of Vietnamese soldiers (not dead ones) could also be helpful to balance this article and get a less US-centric view. Wandalstouring 20:45, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Question: The article is really POV for the U.S./South Vietnamese side. Is it that there are no English sources available that give the North Vietnamese side of the battle? Looking on Amazon, I see a several books about the North Vietnamese' involvement in the conflict, some of which appear to have been written by North Vietnamese leaders like Vo Nguyen Giap. Do these books not cover the Khe Sanh battle? Or are they of limited use as historical records? Cla68 00:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I' not sure how to answer the criticism about a narrative writing style. When I whip open the old "Brittanica" and look up the "Battle of Gettysburg" I find a chronological narrative of the battle. Is the length of the article a problem? There are no pictures of dead Vietnamese soldiers in this article. As to Vietnamese sources, any description of Khe Sanh (and the Tet Offensive for that matter) get only cursory coverage (here I speak of Victory in Vietnam). The works of General Giap generally tend to fall into two catagories - the first deals with the First Indochina War (and Dien Bien Phu in particular) and the second is concerned with the theory and practice of People's War (People's Army, People's War, We Will Win and Great Victory, Great Task for example). Reading Giap for a description of particular military operations is as frustrating as reading von Clauswitz's On War or Moltke's On the Art of War for the same reason. RM Gillespie 21:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I enjoyed reading Clausewitz. If there are no specific sources of the North Vietnamese available, quote some useful parts of Giap's writings (they can be very general, but show how the North Vietnamese worked and thought). Some weeks ago we had a similar problem with Arabian sources/POV on Operation Wrath of God (was on the main page a few days ago. We solved it by searching someone familiar with the Arabic point of view who helped us to find some critical sources (inner PLO conflicts, wrong targets, etc.). Try our Vietnamese speaking wikimembers, perhaps they can help. There are also lots of Vietnam veterans alive who often tell their stories and lead tourists around the old battle places (US Vietnam veterans are often among the tourists) so one way or another you can get more info. Wandalstouring 03:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We don't have many native speakers of Vietnamese and English so I asked all of them for help. some of them take an interest in the field of history, so we are likely to solve this problem a.s.a.p. Wandalstouring 04:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. If the U.S. POV is all that's available, then I guess there's nothing we can do about it. Hopefully, someday some memoirs from other North Vietnamese officers will be published or North Vietnamese military records will be released to the public. Otherwise, I think the article presents good information on the battle. I also think the writing is too dramatic in some places, but not enough to dissuade me from a support vote. I'm not sure how to describe the style that we try to use in our Wikipedia articles. They shouldn't be as dry as a grocery shopping list or the telephone book, but should only provide any "color" to the event in very measured, careful wording, if I understand right. Cla68 23:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The writing style is far too dramatic for my taste - such a style might be at home in an old Britannica, but is really not encyclopedic by any current standard. I don't know how to address the NPOV issue, as we can only use the sources available to us - if there are no good sources, there are no good sources. However, I think the NPOV problems created by the lack of good North Vietnames sources (if that is indeed the case) are exacerbated by an overly dramatic style - a change of tone would be a step in the right direction. Carom 00:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]