Talk:George B. McClellan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
	This article is supported by the Politics and government work group.

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.

The following users are active in maintaining and improving this article. If you have questions regarding verification and sources, they may be able to help: Hlj (Hal Jespersen) (talk • watchlist • email)

[edit] Revisionism

We seem to be faced with a number of revisionists editing the articles of poorly regarded ACW generals. I am currently on vacation and cannot provide adequate responses for the recent edits for GBM, but will do so early next week. Hal Jespersen 02:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind, but I've given you a little help in that department. The article as it is wreaks of a pro-McClellan bias, and I tried to make it a bit more balanced. Feel free to edit it as you wish, however. --ExtraordinaryMan 23:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I have done some considerable rewriting to set this story straight, adding a number of footnotes. I think it behooves us in Wikipedia to present majority opinions of historians with greater weight than the minority opinions. By sprinkling generally accepted assertions with "allegedly" and by presenting minority arguments either alone or before the majority ones, you greatly dilute the value of the article and descend inot WP:NOR. For example, if there were a growing movement that said Germany won World War II, we might report that fact, but not early in the introduction of the article or say that the Allies "allegedly" won it. I have left a brief paragraph toward the end of the introduction and more material in the "controversial legacy" section that covers this pro-McClellan movement, balanced in a way that I believe is NPOV and appropriate. Now that there are a number of footnotes in the article, I would expect that any modifications would maintain this level of documentation and instances of "many believe" and so forth be replaced with real citations. Hal Jespersen 00:35, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Updating

I'm in the process of slowly updating this article and adding a lot of citations. Since I'll be doing it on an erratic schedule, I won't ask others to refrain from correcting or adding in the meantime. Hal Jespersen 23:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I am now finished. A rather lengthy article, but this is a controversial figure and many of the details are quite interesting (to me, at least). If you decide to modify the article, please note the style in which citations are used liberally and avoid adding unsourced material. Thanks. Hal Jespersen 19:16, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reads like OR

There is some unsubstantiated revisionism going on here, or an attempt to discuss his legacy, but it ends up seeming like a high school history essay. Someone with more familiarity in the subect should deal with this.Desertsky85451 22:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Please provide some specific guidance on what you want to see changed. Otherwise, I intend to remove your warning tag after a few days. This section is here because there is a small community of McClellan proponents who believe that much of the negative impression that McClellan has amassed is due to a conspiracy by radical Republicans. This is a minority view, but in the spirit of NPOV, the pros and cons are discussed here. There is no original research here that I am aware of; citations are provided. Opinions from others are welcome. Hal Jespersen 23:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I see some sections which need work and I see citations missing, but unless Desertsky85451 wants to make specific comments instead of pejorative generalities, I'm not sure the user's criticism merits more than this cursory response. If user sees problems with articles, he or she is encouraged to edit boldly. BusterD 10:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

If you think there are citations missing, feel free to annotate the specifics with {{fact}}. This article has more citations than any other I've done. However, I am also looking for guidance on why this seems "essay-like" and why that is a bad thing. Hal Jespersen 14:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

In the section I tagged, sentences like this: "Others think that McClellan....", this: "generally ended up with negative opinions of the man." Or this: "In a similar vein, some feel...." just seem very un-encyclopedic. Perhaps I tagged it overzealously, but I feel like this does need some rewriting. I honestly no sword to grind with either McClellan or Meade or whoever, but these sentences are very vague and generalizing. The rest of the article looks great, honestly. Desertsky85451 16:20, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I have updated it. See if that satisfies; further editing by you is appropriate as well. I am gratified to report that the most offending paragraph was one that I did not write. :-) Hal Jespersen 16:55, 16 August 2006 (UTC)