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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Nguyen Van Nhung as a military bodyguard/archive1

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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 not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 02:24, 3 July 2008 [1].

Nguyen Van Nhung as a military bodyguard

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I'm nominating this article for featured article because... it's an exhaustive, 3rd party RS account of the subject. And there have been shorter FAs. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The system appears to be default implicit oppose unless otherwise. It was there for 9 days instead of the usual four. I guess people were perhaps too polite to can the article. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I take it his date of birth isn't known? (just checking)
No. Nothing is recorded before the coup. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "had repeated stabbed and shot the Ngo brothers" - repeated --> repeatedly?
Fixed. blind monkey. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Nhung was an army officer who served as the bodyguard of General Duong Van Minh, who was among the plotters" - doesn't read great... could you reword?
Fixed. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "a group of ARVN generals" - I don't think it's been made clear what ARVN is.
Fixed. blind monkey. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The em dash in ref 15 stands out compared to the other refs.
Fixed. blind monkey. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

giggy (:O) 07:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments sources look good, the links all checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:07, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments The article is pretty well-written, comprehensive enough (although, I do believe you should include some details of Nhung's early life, if any info exists). I have a few questions:
    • What's JGS?
    • I dislike the organization of the first two paragraphs of "Diem and Nhu assassination". You tell readers that the Ngo brothers had escaped from the Gia Long Presidential Palace, but didn't explain why Minh left for the palace until the next paragraph. I think it would be best to first note Diem and Nhu's communication with the plotters and then say, "In the meantime, Minh left JGS..." The second paragraph would start, "When Minh found the Ngo brothers were nowhere to be seen in the palace, he dispatched..."
    • How did Minh know where Diem and Nhu's safehouse was? To clarify, was the church (in Cholon?) the safehouse? Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 15:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. The prose looks reasonably well-written. I only had one question: "The other generals had little sympathy for Tung, because the special forces commander had disguised his men in regular army uniforms and framed them for the Xa Loi Pagoda raids in August" - framed the special forces men or framed the men of the other generals? I'm a bit confused on which is the pronoun antecedent. I am also concerned that the article has very little personal information about Nhung. If this were Role of Nguyen Van Nhung in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup I would agree that it is comprehensive, but as it is the reader is not given a good idea of who he was. I won't oppose on this basis because you've said the sources aren't available, but I don't think I can support either. Karanacs (talk) 19:14, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. With the article rename, I think this article now satisfies the comprehensiveness concerns that I had. Karanacs (talk) 13:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral. I just read through the opposes again, and I can see where those reviewers are coming from. While I do think that the article is comprehensive under this title, given the dispute over whether the title is appropriate, I don't know that my support is appropriate. Karanacs (talk) 16:08, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but I have to say Oppose. This simply doesn't look like an article on its own (cf. Karanacs above). There is no information on Nguyen's life of its own (e.g. When and where was he born? In which army units, if any, was he trained as a hitman?). I really don't see much in this article that wouldn't be (or isn't already) better covered in the various articles it already links to prominently (Le Quang Tung, Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, 1964 South Vietnamese coup). Most likely a summary of this can be put in (say) 1963 South Vietnamese coup and the other articles can link back to the section instead of to this. In short, this is not an article about a person. Circeus (talk) 20:23, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes but this person was involved in two different coups and it isn't possible for us to create a redirect from Nguyen Van Nhung to two pages. If there was only one event involved, then obviously a redirect would be used, or it would have just been left as a stub. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I fail to see why links from the 1864 article can't send straight to a 1963 section. That's at best a poor excuse to have such an incomplete article. Circeus (talk) 05:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I too wonder about the issue how we deal with an article which is apparently by necessity a very restricted summary of a person's life. But I also wonder if this article wouldn't benefit from some expansion in terms of political/historical/social context. I would like a bit more information about the various governments, presidents, reasons for the coups etc. Slp1 (talk) 00:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While I understand little is know about this person, esp his early life, that should not be an excuse for let's go ahead and make it FA anyway. However, I think this is GA material. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:51, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I don't like the renaming. It leaves the reader wondering whether there is another article about him lurking somewhere, and offends the norms of titles in traditional encyclopedias and basically every sort of biographical compendium. It also imposes a straitjacket on the article so that if other information is later unearthed about his early life, it will be hard to incorporate. I don't see a need to rename the article merely for the sake of having a "complete" picture of whatever the title dictates the article should be about (and for the sake of appeasing FAC reviewers with such completeness). Mangostar (talk) 16:45, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If more general information is found, we can always move it back. As to the probability of this, I would say that it would be approximately zero. No proper inquiry was ever held by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or the government, to investigate the killings during the coup. Because all the people who were in the government after 1963 were usually opponents of Diem or were directly involved in the coup, they would obviously not want to. As for whether the ARVN is likely to have kept information on him, he is notable mainly for a few extrajudicial activities for the army, so the army obviously won't record it. He is an army major, which isn't a high rank, and because he was a bodyguard, he can't have been in the field fighting the Vietcong, so he can't really distinguish himself in any other way apart from the hitjobs. Communist historians are pretty unlikely to care about this stuff, they have a habit of simply referring to South Vietnamese military officers as bandits/traitors/imperialist lackeys etc and they wouldn't care about internal South Vietnamese army squabbling. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - After considerable thought, I am opposing this article on two grounds.
    • First, I do not believe the current title satisfies WP:NAME and so should not be used for a FA-class article. I know that there is considerable discussion on this above and that this name was chosen as a compromise, but I do not believe it is acceptable. It violates two rules: "Use common names of persons and things" (which would be Nguyen Van Nhung) and "Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles". It also appears to violate the conventions in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people), especially the sections "Qualifiers not between brackets" and "Descriptive name". As such, I would encourage that we move the article back to the non-descriptive name.
    • Second, the article fails 1b. I know that the name was changed in part to get around 1b requirements, and I admit that it is possible that such information as would be required to pass 1b does not exist in secondary sources. I am uncertain what the official policy about this is. Is there a history of granting an exception on 1b to articles that involve persons or things where additional information is unavailable? (Sandy, do you have an answer for this?) If so, I will withdraw this complaint.
  • I know that my reasoning is partially circular: I'm insisting on a less restricted name which increases the scope and causes the article to fail 1b on the increased scope. And also that increasing the scope would require the article name to be changed. But, after significant thought, this is the conclusion that I come to. I'm sorry. JRP (talk) 05:29, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can understand your concerns about the title and the scope of this article. I see it as similar to the way that Isaac Newton is organized. There are subarticles on Isaac Newton's early life and achievements and Isaac Newton's later life. If a great deal of biographical information could be found on Nguyen Van Nhung, then within that model it would make sense to have an article titled Nguyen Van Nhung as a military bodyguard. The problem is that we do not have the biographical information to write a biography of Nhung that this article could be summarized in. I don't see that as something to stop an FAC, but that's me. Karanacs (talk) 12:44, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That example doesn't hold water, unfortunately. Issac Newton is organized in that way because it is coming from excess. It's the best way to express a large amount of information. This article, on the other hand, is organized in this way because of a shortage of information. That's not the same thing. You have created a leaf when the branch doesn't exist. JRP (talk) 12:35, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, for article focus reasons, as others have stated above, plus, more specifically:
    • The article title, "Nguyen Van Nhung as a military bodyguard", strongly implies we have other articles about Nhung.
    • The article belies its title directly because it isn't really about Nhung as a bodyguard, it's about Nhung as an assassin. It says as much in the lead: "The bodyguard of General Duong Van Minh, Nhung was a professional military hitman". If it was about Nhung as a bodyguard, presumably it should talk about how he became a bodyguard, what he did as as a bodyguard, etc. It doesn't.
    • Nhung is a supporting character in his own article! He is mentioned only in passing in almost every paragraph; I don't think there is a single paragraph that is even half about him, they're all mostly about the various presidents and plotters he served.
    • It's really, really short. 3 sections, one two paragraphs long, one only one paragraph long. I've seen one-paragraph sections used as a reason to deny GA status, much less FA.
  • There are also less important points that could be more easily fixed, or I could even live with:
    • "He was taken away by Nhung, all the while shouting" - Nhung was shouting?
    • At nightfall, Nhung took Tung and Major Le Quang Trieu—his brother and deputy - Nhung's brother?
    • the brothers were shot into their graves - I imagine them being loaded into a cannon here...
    • "Ngo Dinh Nhu (pictured) shaking hands with United States President Lyndon B. Johnson." - What does (pictured) mean here? It's the caption to an image, surely (pictured) is implied ... and if it isn't, why doesn't Johnson get one as well?
    • "As they left, Minh gestured to Nhung with two fingers, taken to be an order" - is there any dispute that this was an order? If so, please say explicitly that there is such a dispute, and who took it as an order; in fact who is testifying to this event, presumably this is a rather important point?
    • Minh then ordered Nhung to execute the Diem loyalist. Tung had failed to convince the president to surrender and still commanded the loyalty of his men. The other generals had little sympathy for Tung, because the special forces commander had - "Tung" is the same person as "the Diem loyalist" and "the special forces commander"? If there isn't some kind of rule against referring to the same person three different ways in as many consecutive sentences, there should be. --GRuban (talk) 18:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have nothing but respect for Karanacs, but I feel that her concern about comprehensiveness was unactionable and the rename actually detrimental, and that in attempting to address her concern you've violated the guidance of WP:NAME. The guidance specifically is this: "The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists." Here we have renamed an article from its common sense name (someone looking for the most comprehensive available information on this subject would literally never search for this title and would always search for simply Nguyen Van Nhung. Appropriate Wikilinks would also be simply to the name.) to a name that pedantically fulfills the criteria. We need to be able to allow for common sense exceptions, especially for the sake of readers. The rules exist only to ensure quality for our readers. When we start to insist on rules for their own sakes, even when they confuse the readers, then it's the classic example that the rule is being interpreted incorrectly. --JayHenry (talk) 03:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • On a slightly random note, I view "Nguyen Van Nhung as a military hitman" to be a better title than this, since that is basically what the article is talking about. --I'm an Editorofthewiki[citation needed] 02:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Or how about The role of Nguyen Van Nhung in the assassinations of Colonel Le Quang Tung, President Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu? --JayHenry (talk) 04:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Along with the JayHenry and Jrp, I feel that this article violates WP:NAME. They have outlined the problems well. While I know that the "comprehensiveness" criteria is supposed to indicate that an article comprehensively covers the published material on a subject, which presumably this article does, I still think we need to take a hard look at whether this article is necessary. As GRuban states, "Nhung is a supporting character in his own article! He is mentioned only in passing in almost every paragraph" - I definitely had this feeling when reading it as well. I did not feel that I learned much about the article's subject while reading the article. If the article does not really describe its ostensible subject - even using all available sources - I do not think we should feature it. I would suggest merging this article with the relevant coup articles. Awadewit (talk) 15:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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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