Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Nguyen Ngoc Tho

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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 19:03, 9 April 2008.

[edit] Nguyen Ngoc Tho

An article about a person who served as the Prime Minister of South Vietnam for three months, under a military junta. It is quite short, since his previous career was as a figurehead, when he had little power. It was copyedited by Awadewit (talk · contribs) during the GA review, so it should be pretty solid as far as the English goes. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:55, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment Sources and link look good. No formatting errors that I could see. Ealdgyth - Talk 03:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Yes, this will be good when someone fresh to it sifts through the prose. I picked up these random examples at the top.
    • My pet hate, "in order to", is in the lead. Why not just "to"?
    • "Tho was not allowed to take part in policy decisions and was once slapped on Nhu's orders." Huh? Bend over?
    • Logic problem in the "since": "Tho oversaw South Vietnam's failed agrarian land redistribution and reform policy, and was accused of a lack of vigour in implementing the program since he was a large landowner." At least explicate it.
    • "Tho was also noted for his faithful support of ..."—Haven't told us anything he was "noted" for already, so why "also"?
    • "... the French backed State of Vietnam under the puppet Emperor Bao Dai. Under the ..." Hyphen missing; "under" × 2. TONY (talk) 06:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Well I did all of these except the "bend over" because I don't know what you mean. He was actually slapped in the face by Nhu's bodyguard. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, cleaned that up. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:22, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Important comment - the title may be Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ, wiyh a redirect to the current article. I am not agree (like Russian š --> sh etc.), but the article is very good. I support. -- MOJSKA 666 - Leave a message here 14:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC) 05:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - The article looks good to me. Limetolime talk to me • look what I did! 00:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - great article, no problems here. Khoikhoi 05:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - well-referenced, clearly-written, thorough treatment of an interesting figure. Biruitorul (talk) 18:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment The image captions aren't very clear in describing who it is in the pictures. Narayanese (talk) 08:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose—A few morsels have been fixed since my comment, but what about the rest? I provided only samples. There are obvious, messy glitches. **Take the second caption: "The brothers of Ngo Dinh Diem (pictured), had more power than Tho." There's only one person in the pic. Why the comma before "had"? Why is "pictured" in italics? Who are the brothers of Ngo Dinh Diem? Ahem ...
    • "Tho was charged with overseeing South Vietnam's land reform program, as the minister of agrarian reform, Nguyen Van Thoi, answered to him."—Is that "as" a "because"? If so, I'm unsure of the causality.
    • MOS breach: "... Tho paid tribute, saying "thanks to the Almighty for having given the country a leader whose genius was outweighed only by his virtue."[6] When a quote starts within a WP sentence, the final period comes after the closing quotes. Check throughout.
    • " Buddhists had claimed that it was the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (also known as Kuanyin) that had performed a miracle."—"that ... that is ungainly, and should the second one be "who"?
    • ... a "barbecue",[13], Tho refused to ...—messy punctuation.


Comment on reviews above—Supports that say "great article, no problems here", and "The article looks good to me" are doing no service to the reputation of this process. Please engage critically with the text, which is clearly not well written. Demonstrate you've actually read the text, please. TONY (talk) 13:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Judging the quality of writing is subjective. We're not all professional editors here, so don't be surprised if other people don't pick up the same grammatical mistakes that you may see. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 22:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not talking about Criterion 1a alone; reviewers are free to engage on the basis of any one or more of the criteria. I can't see that those reviewers have even read the article. It's just "votish"—a paper shoved in a ballot box—to write "great article", unless it really is great, or hard to find imperfections. That is plainly not the case here. We need more than that from our reviewers. TONY (talk) 02:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Update Did a round of copyedit. hopefully we have made some progress. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:28, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments

  • "Nhu once ordered his bodyguard to slap Tho in the face." - should this appear in the lead...?
  • Is there any info about him before 1930?
  • "Following the withdrawal of France from Indochina following the Battle of Dien Bien Phu " - "following" repetition. Perhaps "Following the post-Battle of Dien Bien Phu withdrawl of France from Indochina" (doesn't sound great either, but yeah, see what you get...)
  • "Despite his the importance of his title," - rmv "his"
  • "because he felt teh vice president" - typo :)
  • "calling Tho "unimpressive"" - change "Tho" to "him" for a bit more variety
  • "The committee concluded that the Vietcong" - wlink VC here as it's the first time you mention it
  • "for the Hue incident" - rmv "Hue"; it's clear you're talking about it
  • "The body of Diem" (image caption) needs the word "dead" somewhere there (or something similar that has the same meaning)
  • "it took years of training were required to become a Catholic priest" --> "it took years of training to become a Catholic priest" OR "years of training were required to become a Catholic priest"
  • "In privately" --> "In private" (start of the Prime minister section)
  • "was also called in question" - in --> into
  • Just realised this at the end of the article...no infobox? Is this common?

dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 06:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as the slap goes, it is quite an illustration that I think should be there. For pre-1930, Jones, the book which is the most detailed about the 1963-64 upheavals in VN (400 pages all on one year's events) only has that much about Tho, and 1963-64 was when he was acutally relevant. I've maxed out the info in those sources. This guy was pretty obscure and had little power, except for the three lawless months from Nov 63 to Jan 64. I've fixed all those typos and very obvious things that I should have noticed. Infoboxes aren't compulsory because there was no wikiproject convention to use them :) The only useful things that it would include are his DOB, date of office and religion, which are all in the lead already. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. OK, that's fine. I prefer infoboxes, but I won't hold you to it; I see your point. Good luck, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.