User talk:Whinnen

Regarding your draft article on Cam Ne
Hi, Peter, I am a Wikipedia editor and I recently read your Articles-for-Creation submission "Draft:Cam Ne". It looks like this article has been sitting there for quite awhile, and although I do not know for certain why no one has reviewed it (and I myself am not a reviewer), I have some thoughts that might help you.

My first thought is this: if the article's title is to be "Cam Ne", then the article itself cannot be solely about the news event that took place there. It would need to begin with something like, "Cam Ne is a village located in Viet Nam..." and from there it would need to say something about that village drawn from reliable independent published sources.

I realize, of course, that the village may only be notable for this one incident. Ultimately, that doesn't matter: Wikipedia considers pretty much any geographic location to be inherently notable, and that includes every village that currently or previously existed whose mere existence can be demonstrated on a map. I am pretty sure Cam Ne meets this requirement (?), and if it does, that means the article is already notable enough to be published. Except that the article is about the incident, not about the village, and has a few other problems.

The other main problem I see here is the way you have chosen to insert your citations. Whenever you make an assertion, especially those involving a specific date, place, and persons involved, you need to provide a cite that supports that statement. You currently have whole paragraphs that are full of statements of fact but that have no supporting references! Until this is fixed, no reviewer will be eager to publish the piece because that reviewer will feel obligated to do this for you, and that is a lot of hassle. Reviewers are unpaid volunteers, and it is much easier for them to simply pass on reviewing complicated articles with citation problems.

Having said that, I think the article has some good content and it looks to me like the subject qualifies as notable. But if you want a reviewer to agree with you and move the article out of draft space, you will increase your chances a lot of you are able to make sure that each statement of fact or assertion you make corresponds to a citation that supports it (and without putting 5 or 10 citations in each paragraph multiple times! One cite for each statement of fact that needs supporting, and preferably at the end of the paragraph for that statement, with multiple cites at the end if the paragraph makes multiple assertions, and cites in the middle of the paragraph when it is necessary to distinguish which cite goes with which statement). I cannot guarantee for you that this will solve the long delay, but I think it will certainly increase the likelihood of getting the article reviewed. The subject looks notable-- just make it easy for a reviewer to accept it, and it might be good to go! If you have any questions after reading this, leave them on this page below my text, and I will be notified. Ok? Good luck! I got A million reasons (talk) 04:41, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Dear a million reasons,

Thank you for your comments. I guess I need to change the article title. The article is about the 1965 incident involving the US Marines, not about the village. As far as I can tell, there are no reliable independent sources that describe the village, then (1965) or now. I take your point about more citations. This is a bit ironic, as I once wrote a long article (that was published) about the incident. I stripped out most of the citations for the Wikipedia article. I've written a lot of published encyclopedia articles, and they don't have citations.

Can you suggest a title? The incident is definitely important. In 1999, the New York University Department of Journalism solicited nominations for the Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century. The incident at Cam Ne was one of four entries about the Vietnam War. All I can think of is "Incident at Cam Ne."

In BOOKS! Your topic could not be more notable! (Jeezuz!) Yes, I absolutely have a better article title for the piece: "Cam Ne incident". That conforms to other incidents similar to this one in terms of how it should sound. Obviously there are thousands and thousands of references you could use to support any part of this article, but I have a suggestion for you, though it may seem counter intuitive at first: reduce the number of references and make the article slightly shorter. Hear me out: when a person submits an article and it has lots and lots and LOTS of references, the reviewer becomes obliged to examine each of them to make sure they say what they are supposed to say. That is tedious and annoying. When a reviewer comes to a new article and reads it, he/ she is looking to see if it has enough content to be a Wikipedia article, is the subject notable, and what evidence is there of this notability? If the evidence of notability is as straightforward as your article subject's is, all you need is like half a dozen really good citations (which should be a cinch— actually, that is what you have right now, except they are not placed next to the facts they support) placed throughout the article supporting a number of claims and reported facts (and format them each with the Cite book template and similar templates— if confused, ask, as I can help with these!), and then see what happens. A reviewer will see it and say, "Hey, this one is an easy pass! Not too much work for me to take care of this!  Nice citations, right places, not too many, Hey, we're done!" And the piece gets put into Wikipedia, where you are then ALSO welcome to add to it as you like: more text, more references, more exposition, etc. More than this, you article will be a candidate for a "Did you know?" entry. It would take very little to get this article mentioned on the Wikipedia Main Page (i.e., THE Front Page!) in the "Did you know?" section! Your topic is highly news worthy, and has more "Did you know?" material than half of whatever is there right now. Seriously. This article is going to be getting some press, and if the article reviewer doesn't do it (nominate it for DYK), then I personally will. Okay, my enthusiasm, runneth over. Consider what I wrote above, and let's see what happens to the piece. I guarantee you it is headed for publication on Wikipedia soon. This is a shoo-in. A million reasons (talk) 04:10, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for all your helpful comments. I changed the article title as you suggested. I added citations after the facts, as you suggested. I see the article is no longer under review. I very much appreciate your help.


 * I see that you got tired of the waiting. I don't blame you, though I feel a bit less inclined now to propose it at DYK (though YOU are certainly welcome to do so, if that interests you).  Personally, I think the current backlog at AfC is not only atrocious, but is downright unacceptable.  But I also don't see that improving anytime soon, which means people like you are just going to end up doing what you did: move their articles into the mainspace once they get those 10 edits and four days under their belts.  Not how this system was supposed to work, of course.  Anyhow, cheers!  A million reasons (talk) 03:56, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I didn't get tired of waiting. If I moved the article into mainspace myself, I did it unintentionally when I was learning how to change the title. I thought Wikipedia did it. I am not familar with DYK so won't propose it for my article. Also, I don't know what AfC is. But I do appreciate your help as I navigate the Wikipedia learning curve. 68.52.17.190 (talk) 12:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

A belated welcome!


Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Peter Brush. I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:
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Again, welcome! Eagleash (talk) 16:35, 17 March 2018 (UTC)