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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Operation Passage to Freedom

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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 User:SandyGeorgia 15:26, 26 May 2008 [1].

Operation Passage to Freedom edit

Article about the mass migration from North to South Vietnam in 1954 after the partition. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Sources and links look good. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have some reservations about some of the phrasing in the "Media and Public Relations" section: particularly "The Americans revelled in what was a mass migration of unprecedented success" - is that a direct quote? If not, should it be stated in WP's voice? - and also "the accounts were invariably sensationalistic, demonising..." - the "invariably" is strong, and should be attributed. Otherwise, OK. --Relata refero (disp.) 14:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just chopped off the first sentence. It seems pointless anyway. I chopped the invariably as well. Not really necessary. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tentative Support, brilliantly written and almost there. Just some minor fixes/suggestions:
    • I'm not going to ask you for journal sources this time. :) But, have you looked to see if anyone has copies of those old Catholic magazines? It would be neat to be able to cite the original sources.
    • "Under the terms of the agreement, Vietnam was temporarily divided at the 17th parallel pending elections in 1956 to elect a national government that would govern a reunified country." I tried thinking of a way to reword this but I'm coming up blank. Can you say something other than "elections to elect" a "government that would govern"?
    • "Dong had wanted to press home the Viet Minh's military advantage of the Viet Minh ..." I'm unclear what this is saying.
    • "... and were neither able to deal with nor anticipated so many refugees." This one is stumping me too, but I don't care for it. --Laser brain (talk) 18:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have fixed the last three points. For the first point, the book cited the names of the articles and their date of publication, so I have added these. The pieces were either uncredited or the book didn't bother to write down who wrote them, but I suspect the former, since he credited all the other things that he cited. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Maralia (talk) 01:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments I fixed a few typos, blips in formatting, etc. Some remaining issues:

  • "For the US, the migration was a public relations coup, depicting the flight under American auspices of Vietnamese from the perceived oppression of communism to the "free world" in the south." - some confusing word choices here: 'depicts', 'the flight under American auspices of Vietnamese'
  • "We can neither concur with in the brutal enslavement of millions of compatriots" - is this direct quote properly transcribed ('concur with in the')?
  • "The vessels were provided by communist nations such as Poland, as well as empty French ships heading back north to fetch more southbound anti-communists." - this could use rephrasing
  • "One story was that the communists had done a deal with Vietnam's traditional enemies China" - how about 'had a deal' instead of 'had done a deal'? 'Vietnam's traditional enemies China' reads oddly; why not singular?
  • "In 1963, simmering discontent over Diem's religious bias exploded into mass discontent during the Buddhist crisis." - discontent...discontent
  • "The indigenous population in the central highlands complained bitterly about the intrusion of ethnic Vietnamese onto their land, and resulted in a greater audience for communist propaganda in the frontier regions." - it's not quite clear what hinges the two halves of this sentence together.
  • "According to a report by the Commissariat of Refugees (commonly known by its French initials of COMIGAL), the South Vietnamese government agency charged with overseeing the exodus, French aircraft made 4,280 trips, carrying a total of 213,635 refugees." - too many phrases here
  • The mentions of COMIGAL could still use a bit of smoothing out: COMIGAL is 'introduced' in two separate sections (Evacuation and Social integration).

Thanks for another good read. Maralia (talk) 06:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've tweaked all of these. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support My concerns have been addressed. More info on the air evacuation effort - as suggested by DHN's perceptive question below - would be great, if sources can be found. Maralia (talk) 04:36, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: The article should discuss what happens to these northern refugees after 1975. Did they stay in the south, return home in the north, or leave the country altogether? DHN (talk) 02:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of them moved to the US etc of course, but none of the books bother discussing it so we don't have a RS. They don't discuss them separately to native southerners anyway, so we don't know. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:22, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Air evacuation - air evacuation is only mentioned in one sentence - number of people and number of trips. Could something else be said about it? Which airports were used? Seems like a major undertaking with more than 4000 trips within 300 days (average of 14 trips a day), about 3 times the number of flights as the Berlin Airlift. What are the monetary costs of the evacuation? Of integrating the refugees? DHN (talk) 02:49, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "to describe the mass exodus of Vietnamese who fled the communist" - this is awkward for mine..."exodus...who fled" is the issue; I think removing "who fled" and then rewording somewhat will help. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:22, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Removed redundancy. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:17, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support; generally a great read. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 02:30, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Firstly, isn't the first sentence missing a "from"? Exodus of X from Y to Z, right? Secondly, the sentence says that this is a term used by US Navy. Does that mean others use different term(s) to describe the event? If so what are those? Shouldn't they be mentioned in the beginning? Arman (Talk) 10:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • "300-day grace period,"—not idiomatic. "300-day period of grace".
  • Ellipsis dots: three of them, not two, and why not use three plain periods, spaced either side: ""We cannot recognise the seizure by Soviet China . . of over half of our national territory"."
  • "Article 14(d) of the accords read:"—"stated" would be more normal.
  • Maybe it's true, but my POV antennae are bristling at the caption "Anti-communist Vietnamese refugees move from a French landing ship to the USS Montague during Operation Passage to Freedom in August 1954." Now, who says that all of those people were anti-communists? Every one of them? Or were some there for economic, cultural or other personal reasons. It's all too easy to paint history in simplistic terms. This article needs to be very careful to avoid generalisations and assumptions that might later be seen as plain wrong or unbalanced.
  • "The US also ran a propaganda campaign through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to enhance the size of the southward ..."—Also is not good at the opening of a new section, because it refers back so intensively to previous text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony1 (talk • contribs) 10:54, May 23, 2008
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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