Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pham Ngoc Thao

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 18:13, 25 August 2007.

Pham Ngoc Thao[edit]

Communist spy who was a colonel in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and deliberately mismanaged things. It is not particularly long, around 13k main text, but information on Thao is rather scarce. (this is all that is in User:Blnguyen/Viet_library). This is because in Vietnam, there never has been freedom of the press and the level of transparency that there is in a western country and it seems that historians were much more interested in the president Ngo Dinh Diem and his interaction with the US and so forth. The article has passed GA recently. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:52, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Above 19k on main text now with a bit more squeezed out and background for the lay person. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~Object~~ Pretty good start, but some prose issue could probably be addressed. For one, it looks like there needs to be some paragraph reorganization. Many sections have all info crammed into a single paragraph; in many cases this could and should be split into multiple paragraphs, often with little rewriting. For example, consider the section titled Early Vietminh years. There is more than one "idea" here... We have:

Sentence 1&2 = birth and family history
Sentence 3&4 = Youth and teenage years
Sentence 5-end = During revolts against French Rule

In general, a paragraph should contain a single idea or set of closely interrelated ideas. Paragraphs are not broken up on length alone, but on ideas they express. Besides this issue, there are places where the prose needs some clean-up for clarity and style. One example sentance is "He then quit the communists in an overt sense by first taking a job as a schoolteacher in Saigon and later working in a bank." This sentance is hard to parse, and is just one example where having someone go over the article with a copyeditors comb could help. Consider the League as a place to find copyeditors... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:14, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Above 19k on main text now with a bit more squeezed out and background for the lay person. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update - The article has been kindly copyedited by Awadewit (talk · contribs). Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:06, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Very well written article, on an interesting topic. -- Y not? 04:11, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Interesting, well written historical article.--Sandahl 01:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Compelling prose, well referenced, comprehensive. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 13:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Struck through prior vote. All objections have been fixed. This is a great article! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:53, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support I believe that this article meets all of the FA requirements. It is well-researched (I understand not much is available on this person) and well-written. Since I know so very little about the events described, I cannot say with any certainty that it is comprehensive, although it appears to be. The page conforms to all of the MOS rules that I know and all of its images are in the public domain. I appreciate the efforts made by the editor to contextualize the material for the lay reader. I learned a lot by reading this article and I hope you continue to edit articles on the Vietnam War as they are in dire need of help. Awadewit | talk 18:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support, good work, though there are 3 or 4 red links crying out for a stub in the article as it stands . . . ;) · jersyko talk 03:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support, excellent work, though I expect more citations. @pple 03:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.