Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ton That Dinh/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 21:22, 22 November 2009.

Ton That Dinh

 * Nominator(s):  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket ) 00:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

A general of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Mainly known for being an "adopted son" on president Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem promoted officers on loyalty not competence, and Dinh later turned against him. Diem was deposed and killed.  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket ) 00:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Support 1c & 2c checked. double checked (06:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)) Fifelfoo (talk) 03:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC) Decline 1c. Location of publisher use inconsistent in bibliography style., eg. Rowman & Littlefield, a publisher without place identification lacks place identification; E.P. Dutton has it. Penguin Books a publisher notorious for having different publication locations.  You probably want to keep New York: OUP.  Suggest: Location data provided for non-obvious locations (non-University presses), or where University presses are notorious for having multiple publication locations (Oxford etc).  This would impact on your citation-in-notes style.  Otherwise citation style is mostly consistent (see below on Tucker).
 * Completeness, obviously there are limited journal articles dealing with Ton That Dinh, Why was George McT. Kahin "Political Polarization in South Vietnam: U.S. Policy in the Post-Diem Period" Pacific Affairs, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Winter, 1979-1980), pp. 647-673 not used? 03:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments: Tucker (fn4) not in bibliography, and full cite follows first citation. Either move bib data to fn4 from fn7 or add Tucker (2000) Encyclopedia for bib and short cite both.  Tucker's cited 3 times.  Consider adding to bibliography.
 * Consider style wrt Halberstam; Singal (2008) in short cite format. Its only co-authored, not an "and others" situation, consider changing citation to Halberstam; Singal, p. n. in short cite format. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:17, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done refs. Hadn't known about Kahin. Will have a look. I don't think I need to put Singal in the shorthand. All he did was prune the book, removing whole chapters, whole passages. He didn't tweak in the middle to change the meaning or anything. He didn't even bother to check some rather obvious typos etc by DH  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') 02:02, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Incorporated Kahin  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') 06:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Its beautiful! Fifelfoo (talk) 03:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Oppose on criterion 3 - File:Diem dead.jpg - We need more specific information on the source for this image. What does "National Archives" refer to? Also, what does the book say that leads us to believe this is a work of the Federal Government? Awadewit (talk) 00:09, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Changed it. It was made by a unnamed govt official  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket ) 01:47, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Striking oppose. Since the image is from the US National Archives, you can probably find a link to the image record online. It will have detailed information about the image and perhaps a digitized copy, which would be of higher quality. I suggest looking for it. Awadewit (talk) 01:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments
 * "as forces personnel were redeployed" Forces? Personnel? Both?
 * No reference for Hung, but two cites. Ling.Nut (talk) 08:58, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Born into a nominally Buddhist family, Dinh converted to Catholicism in the hope of advancing his career." When? Seems to have been prior to 1954, according to "Cold war mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the origins of America's war in Vietnam" p. 160. Another sources places the conversion in the 1960s, but that would seem to be erroneous.... That whole paragraph... could be reorganized a bit IMHO.
 * that book didn't say when, it isn't clear.  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 04:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If you can't find the year of the conversion, then that's OK, but the sequence of events should still be clarified. The way the paragraph reads now, it seems as though he converted after 1958. I don't think that's the case. His conversion should be mentioned at roughly the spot where it happened in the context of the article... probably in the first paragraph of the "Early years" section. Do you agree? Ling.Nut (talk) 08:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * In "that all the generals except Cao were in the plot" and "and would prevent Cao from storming the capital" I'm a little unclear who Cao is.
 * "falsely accused of promoting a neutralist plot". How sure are we that the accusations are false? Ling.Nut (talk) 23:31, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * At the end of the section, it says that Khanh later admitted it was trumped up. Doing the rest  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 04:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As for the charges, "falsely accused" (as the article says) and "trumped up" (your words above) both suggest that Khan knew the charges were false at the time when he made them. However, the article merely says he later produced documents which proved the charges were false. That sentence is more noncommittal... Did he know they were false when he made them, or not? If not, or even if it is unclear, the the phrase "false charges" in the lede should be changed to "charges that were later shown to be false." Ling.Nut (talk) 08:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed strucutre and made explicit  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket ) (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 08:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Support Comment - Engaging prose with few significant issues, but could a couple of the larger sections be split up into a few sub-sections? – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 05:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Will be done in 10 minutes  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 05:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment The article reports highly critical observations about its subject who is a living person. Given the high standard expected in BLPs, and WP:LEADCITE, I am concerned about there being no cites in the lead for the following:
 * "A favourite of the ruling Ngo family, Dinh received rapid promotions ahead of officers who were regarded as being more capable."
 * "He converted to Roman Catholicism to curry favour with Diem, and headed the military wing of the Can Lao Party, a secret Catholic organisation that maintained the Ngos' grip on power."
 * "he was regarded as a dangerous, egotistical and impetuous figure with a weakness for alcohol and partying"
 * Reiterated in lead for convenience  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 03:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think that's prudent. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The bibliography supporting this article appears to contain no works at all by Vietnamese authors. Almost every single item was published in the United States. In these circumstances, I would welcome nominator's (and others) comments in relation to FA criteria 1c and 1d "it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature on the topic" and "it presents views fairly and without bias". hamiltonstone (talk) 02:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well none are published in VN, but Nguyen Tien Hung was from SV and became a professor in the US after the fall of Saigon. As for Jackie Bong Wright, she is a Viet who married a westerner. As for publishing in Vietnam, wrt communist historians, their official history of the VN War is only one volume, short and simply refers to the war as VN vs US and habitually just refers to SV as US "lackeys" and "puppets" without going into any detail, just attack style. So there is no info at all, let alone informative info. As for South Vietnamese contemporary books that may present RoV people in a more sympathetic or normal way, they would all have been locked away in an archive far from public access after 1975, and aren't in the Western World except for a few government reports and PR that would have been exported to the US before 1975, but I checked a US uni library, and these seem to be restricted to collections of speeches by Presidents Diem and Thieu and other trumpeting of high-level stuff. I doubt Dinh and his colleague's secretary would have had time to write much in three months in power. As for memoirs by these officers/politicians after fleeing in 1975, they are printed in ramshackle Vietnamese American printing houses, and none are close to RS, and are more like printed webforums. The diaspora Vietnamese printing industry is very homemade and more of a billboard; in the newspaper where I live they usually print random things about some local cleric or community politician being a communist employee or a monk with multiple wives without any source. Sometimes they even photoshop pictures of their opponents with some woman and the glueing is all messed up. Another favourite is to write a story about communists and add a photo of one of them with a scar or a cross on their forehead. Straight copying from the BBC is the norm and goodness knows why they haven't all gone broke for being sued yet. Another officer also wrote his memoirs printed in a diaspora press and contradicted himself about his age three times and claimed to be a battalion commander at the age of 18, and gave out the names and addresses of some minors who were allegedly raped by a political opponent (BLP with a wiki bio so I won't name the accusee) in his book. So Dinh and his colleague's autobios aren't RS at all.  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket '') (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 03:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. While I do not feel confident enough in this field to explicitly vote 'support', I found that response thorough. For the record, the depth of research appears excellent, the prose likewise and the referencing sound. If other editors find Yellowmonkey's response to my concern to be adequate, then I would certainly be happy to see the article promoted. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't have problems with the article per se; I wanna go find out what the best sources are. But again I whine: it's Midterms, I'm spending tons of time grading papers, and my family is busily engaged in other family stuff. I hope I can contribute something soonish. Ling.Nut (talk) 13:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Support by karanacs. I found the article well-written and very informative.  I am confident in YM's description of the available sources, and the article does not appear to portray any particular POV.  I also checked the images. All appear to be appropriately public domain (and note that 2 of the 4 were used in a previous FAC and were screened then). Karanacs (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.