Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Darrell S. Cole/1

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[edit] Darrell S. Cole

Article (edit|history) • Article talk (edit|history) • Watch • Watch article reassessment page
Result: Fail endorsed. Kumioko, thank you for your work so far on the article, and I encourage you to try to address the issues here and renominate some time in the future. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe this article was failed way to fast. It should have been put on hold 1st to give me a chance to make any necessary corrections. Additionally, the rationale for failing the article was in my opinion not approriate or accurate. See my comments on the articles talk page.--Kumioko (talk) 17:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

  • I agree that review was not very helpful. There are a few minor issues: in particular the lead needs to be expanded slightly. However, the main issue is not minor: you need an additional reliable secondary source, preferably an authoritative history book, to describe the events of the battle. The U.S. Marine Corps book is not sufficiently independent of the subject to be used as the sole source for this information. That will require some research and some rewriting of the text, which is why I believe the reviewer was correct to fail the article, so that you can work on it and renominate later. Hence I endorse the fail. Good luck improving the article. Geometry guy 12:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
PS. The references section of Battle of Iwo Jima has some sources that you could consult. Geometry guy 12:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Endorse fail. The review should have elaborated on problems. The article would beneift from additional, non-military sourcing. There are also issues with criteria 1a, 1b and 3a. The lead needs developing. The article is choppy in places due to short paragraphs. And the article isn't quite as developed as it should be. That said, you're off to a great start. With some additional work the article will pass GA. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 13:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
The article is improving but still faces some criteria 1a and 1b issues. Here's some examples:
  • The lead needs to be enhanced.
  • Some paragraphs are too short, such as the first one in the body of the article; it's a single 11-word sentence.
  • Some words are capitalized when they shouldn't be: "and was eventually promoted to the rank of Sergeant in 1942."
  • I question whether the "Medal of Honor citation" should be nothing more than a verbatim quote - and an unabridged one, I suspect.
I think that you are well on the way to getting this to GA status, but it's going to need additional copy editing. I think it's best to work on it and then re-submit it for consideration at GAN. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 01:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I broadly agree. In particular, for the medal of honor citation, the preamble adds nothing to the article. The rest could be kept, but might be better placed in some sort of quote box to emphasise that it is a direct quotation. Geometry guy 08:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I think I made all the necessary changes. Please let me know if you see anything else that needs to be adjusted.--Kumioko (talk) 16:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I made a few fixes myself. I am still unhappy that most of the article is attributed to the US Marine Corps, but I am willing to reconsider my endorsement of the fail if convincing arguments are made that this is the best we can hope for. Geometry guy 18:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Endorse fail I disagree with the original reviewer, Redmarkviolinist on 3(b). He regarded the article as focussed; I find the battle subsections largely an enumeration of the strategic and tactical significance of these engagements, with only brief references to Mr. Cole's participation in them. Consider the entry on the Battle of Siapan: we are given the date on which it was fought, the units involved, the American and Japanese commanders, casualty counts on both sides, then a briefer second paragraph concerning Mr. Cole's role in the engagement. This enumeration of battles can be replaced with smaller, terser paragraphs focussed specifially on Mr. Cole's Pacific theater resume. The remarks on the various battles' tactical and strategic significance, statistical abstracts, and the like are better left to the articles on those battles and not in Mr. Cole's biography, where they are off-topic, redundant, and bloating this biography with information not particularly about Mr. Cole.
The article sections "Early years" and "Military service" seem to be pretty much word-for-word extracts from Who's Who in Marine Corps History, with just a bit of copyediting. While this is government work, and outside the domain of copyright, I do think that Wikipedia is better served by sourced summary articles rather than reproduced passages from underlying sources.
Overall, I agree with the various project assessments: this is a reasonably good Start class article, but it could use the infusion of another obituary or two, if those could be found. It could also stand an overall re-write, so it is less like a composite from some of its sources. Gosgood (talk) 14:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Although I agree that copying from the source is not the preferred method I also believe that rewriting the article just for the sake of rewriting it is a waste of time. Time was spent writing the original article and that information is in the public domain and is fairly well written. I see no point in taking the time to rewrite it just to put a different flavor on the same meat. I can edit out some of the battle specific info and I can add in a couple of extra references I found (these references only show the Medal of Honor citation and info about the ship thats named after him) but in the end I think that the sources, although they are from a single source, are accurate. Aside from going to the Marine Corps research center and treading on the no original research criteria I believe these sources are as good as we are going to get.--Kumioko (talk) 15:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. It is still an issue for me that so much of this article is a taken from Who's Who in Marine Corps History. Imagine this were an article on a Serbian hero in the Kosovo war and much of it was taken from a source published by an institution within the Serbian government of the time. That would be unacceptable. It is similarly unacceptable to rely so much upon the US military as a source here. I appreciate it is harder to find other sources for older subjects like this, but I'm afraid that just means it is harder to bring articles like this to GA status: "as good as we are going to get" is not a GA criterion. I continue to endorse the fail: despite improvements made, there are fundamental concerns. The article has now received a proper review here and closing this GAR is the best option now. Geometry guy 19:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)