Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cold War/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 02:05, 9 July 2008 [1].

Cold War[edit]

Self-nominator: I'm nominating this article for featured article because i've been working on it quite a lot and hope it meets all FA criteria currently. The article successfully undergone an A-class review in January. However, after the A-class review i've made some major improvements especially in the referencing and supporting materials sectors. The promotion of this important article would be a benefit for Wikipedia and the Military history WikiProject, as it is rated nr. 10 on WP:MHSP. -- Eurocopter (talk) 18:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Restart, old nom. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:43, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose 1a, not happy with the prose. It's mostly technically correct but clunky and full of narrative problems. Random examples below, just from one heading—I think this could benefit from a thorough copy-edit by someone who is completely unfamiliar with the subject matter.
    • "During the war, the Soviets strongly suspected that the Anglo-Americans ..." What is meant by "Anglo-Americans"? Our article has a pretty bizarre definition that doesn't seem to fit with what you're writing here.
    • "Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West and vice versa left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers." You haven't discussed the West's perception of the Soviet Union except for a brief overview of "suspicion and distrust" in the last heading, so this statements seems a bit abrupt in the narrative flow.
    • Beginning sentences with constructions like "There is disagreement ..." and "There was severe disagreement ..." is ungrammatical and glosses over the intended subjects of the disagreement.
      • Not ungrammatical, but passive voice. In any case, I fixed this one example. It's now in the active voice. Hires an editor (talk) 05:27, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • "There was severe disagreement between the Allies about how Europe should look following the war." Vague.. what is its "look"? Borders? Fashion statements?
    • Insufficient definition and contrast given to "situational" and "geo-political". History textbook gobbledygook is not accessible to a general audience.
    • "Moscow was committed to ensuring that the new order in Europe would guarantee its long-term security ..." Vague, could refer to USSR's or Europe's long-term security.
    • "For the maintenance of world peace, the Allies set up the United Nations, but the enforcement capacity of its Security Council was effectively paralyzed by the superpowers' use of the veto; inaction was the rule, and it was essentially converted into a forum for exchanging polemical rhetoric, with the Soviets regarding the UN almost exclusively as a propaganda tribune." Too long, too many concepts. Also, the "with <noun> -ing" construction is ungrammatical.
    • "At the Potsdam Conference, starting in late July ..." Why force the reader to backtrack to discover the last year mentioned? --Laser brain (talk) 03:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment You may want to use Cameltrader's Adviser.js script to find some MoS issues in the article. I've fixed some of the most obvious ones, but the others require more familiarity with the article and MoS than I have. Harryboyles 04:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose A number of images with no FU rationales and one with uncertain copyright status, Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria#3, (I also object to the page blanking) Fasach Nua (talk) 06:26, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please advise as to the images that don't meet the appropriate criteria. Hires an editor (talk) 12:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like this one was deleted Hires an editor (talk) 00:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Changed this item to a different picture with no encumberances Hires an editor (talk) 00:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For help writing fair use rationales, please see Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. Awadewit (talk) 16:29, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This article continues to improve, but I think it has some major shortcomings in terms of balanced coverage. It is focused almost entirely on the international diplomatic and military dimensions of the Cold War, to the exclusion of the huge amount of historical research that has been done on the social and cultural dimensions (in the U.S., the USSR, Europe and elsewhere, much of it comparative transnational research) and scientific and technical dimensions. Cold War culture, the subject of enormous historical research, is relegated to a See also link (Culture during the Cold War). To give just one example among many possible, McCarthyism appears nowhere except in the Cold War navbox at the bottom.
    • The space race appears only in the intro and an image caption. It should at least get discussed briefly in the main text, if it merits mention in the intro. Considering the strategic importance and the connections it represents between academic science and engineering and Cold War strategic concerns, it probably deserves a full paragraph or two. (Walter McDougall's ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age is a good source on this, although there is plenty of more recent and more specialized literature on this as well.)
    • The historiography section is too short to convey anything useful... it doesn't even give the reader an idea of the differences between the orthodox, revisionist, and post-revisionist camps.
I added a single sentence summary for each of these items. Hires an editor (talk) 00:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The legacy section is very underdeveloped, especially considering that, unlike the chronological sections, there is no more detailed subarticle for Legacies of the Cold War or the like. This article is the main place for explaining the Cold War's broader place in history, and it barely scratches the surface in that regard.
    • --ragesoss (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - Here are some comments, mostly citation-related, for you.
    • Who is behind references 3 (legacymemorybank.org) and 4 (U-S-History.com), meaning are they reliable? This should be using very high-quality sources.
Swope is a member of the legacy memory bank, so I think its official site is the best source regarding him. U-S-History seems quite a professional history site and should be appropiate/reliable in my opinion. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I see a bunch of Gaddis 1990 notes, but no 1990 book by hin in the references. In fact one of the books by him was published in 1997, but I don't see it used anywhere. What is going on here?
Done --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Current ref 150 doesn't say which Gaddis book is used.
Done --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ref 95 is from Encyclopædia Britannica. Can a better source be found for this than a fellow encyclopedia?
Done --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Formatting error in ref 110.
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ref 137 is missing publisher and access date.
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ref 152 is again from Britannica. Surely a news article can be found on the Geneva Summit.
Done - replaced by a BBC News article. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dates are linked a few different ways in the notes.
Please be more clear which certain notes need fixes. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most are linked as yyyy-mm-dd, but some spell it out as month-day-year and a few are day-month-year. Pick one style and stick with it. Giants2008 (talk) 15:25, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • A couple prose notes before I go: The sports boycotts seem very out of place in the lead. The text jumps from all the serious battles between these two powers to these boycotts. The sentence after is about defense spending and the nuclear arms race. Do you see how strange this is?
    • The Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles isn't even mentioned in the body of the article. Giants2008 (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments:
    • Could we have more diverse sources (CWIHP is ok, if offline books are hard to get)? As of now many parts of the article relies exclusively on Gaddis. It is a good source, but it is not enough. And avoid using Britannica and other tertiary sources, please.
    • Throughout this period, the rivalry between the two superpowers unfolded in multiple arenas, such as military coalitions, ideology, propaganda, espionage, weaponry, industrial advances, and technological developments, which included the space race. That's correct, but the topics of ideology, propaganda, espionage and weaponry should be elaborated further in the article. As of now, there is nothing on espionage, weaponry, and so on.
    • In sports, rising tensions between the US and the USSR led to boycotts of major events. -- this certainly doesn't belong to the lead.
    • The third paragraph of the lead is not entirely accurate as to what has caused what and is at least controversial, IMHO (The Soviet Union's reaction was perestroika and glasnost; These reforms eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union – only a single POV among many others, personally I disagree on both counts). In fact, many different points of view exist on that matter, so the paragraph has to be NPOVed. Use diverse sholarly sources with different POVs, there are plenty of them for this period.
    • The Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation is particularly relevant to the origin of the Cold War in Asia and has to be mentioned.
    • although dissent began to appear after 1956. – we should clarify that we mean the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
    • Further critiques of consensus politics came from anti-Vietnam War activists, the CND and the nuclear freeze movement. -- this doesn't belong to the section "Containment" through the Korean War and has to be moved further down. The protests of 1968 sould also be mentioned alongside the movements.
    • In March, as Joseph Stalin died, Nikita Khrushchev soon became the dominant leader of the USSR – I am not a native speaker of English, but it sounds ungrammatical and misleading to me. Khrushchev became leader much later.
    • The wikilink to the Sino-Soviet split should be moved from an image caption to the text.
    • The history of strategic bombers, ballistic missile submarines, ballistic missile technology, A- and H-bombs and military doctrines, non-proliferation and test ban treaties, as well as the structure of the American and Soviet military are important and should be summarized in the article. As of now, there is e.g. only one instance of the word bomber and no mention of B-52 or the invention of the H-bomb at all!
    • I think more details concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis are in order.
    • Is Khrushchev's retirement relevant to the story? I don't think so.
    • There are some problems with continuity, at least in the Confrontation through détente section. The Prague Spring should be mentioned immediately before the Brezhnev Doctrine rather than in the end of the following paragraph.
    • As I have already said, there is major disagreement over the causes of perestroika, of the dissolution of the Soviet Union etc, so let's not pretend there is a scholarly consensus.
    • The historiography section should be expanded.
      • Objection. It's too big for the article, so it was split off to its own article. Besides, it says absolutely nothing about non-American historical views. Hires an editor (talk) 00:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some information on espionage during the Cold War should be added.
    • Major changes in the structure of the US military after the end of the Cold War (most notably, the reorganization of USAF commands) should be described.Colchicum (talk) 22:48, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose; I have absolutely no idea how I supported last time (I guess I've gotten pickier?) since the prose could do with a lot of work. I stress that the following are most certainly not all the problems in the article, and are only a representative sample taken solely from the lead.

  • Both American and British spelling present in article. It's predominantly American spelling right now, so you may wish to change to that. This is only minor, but still something to think about.
  • "...such as military coalitions, ideology, propaganda, espionage, weaponry, industrial advances, and technological developments, the latter of which included the space race." Without the inserted three words, the sentence really doesn't make sense and is confusing. Or, if you really don't want the extra words (I'm always harping on about conciseness, so I suppose presenting the other option first is a bit hypocritical of me), you could change all the commas except the last to semi-colons.
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In sports, rising tensions between the US and the USSR..." - yet you haven't told us what the US and the USSR are yet. Granted, "US" is common knowledge, but not all of our younger readers will realise what the USSR is. When first mentioning the two countries, you could write "United States (US) and Soviet Union (USSR)".
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The Cold War generated for both superpowers costly defence spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and many proxy wars." - why not "The Cold War generated costly defence spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and many proxy wars for both superpowers."? It flows better.
Would be historically incorrect, as the Cold War didn't generate costly defence spending for satellite countries with guaranteed security. --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "While there was never an open war between the US and the Soviet Union..." - a layman to the topic would be confused here. Why is it called the cold war if it wasn't an "open" war? What is an "open" war, anyways?
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Over the following decades, the Cold War spread outside Europe to every region of the world, as the US sought the "containment" and "rollback" of communism and forged numerous alliances to this end, particularly in Western Europe and the Middle East, while the Soviet Union supported Communist movements around the world, particularly in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia." - would be better as two sentences. Even if you don't split it, it should be reworded; it's exceedingly awkward in the correct wording."
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and especially the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came closest to the brink of a new world war." - seems awkward there at the end. I'd suggestion ", which was the closest the world came to a new world war." "Brink" is redundant to "closest".
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "There were also periods when tension was reduced as both sides sought détente." - "as" -> "and"
Historically incorrect again. The tension was reduced, because both sides sought detente - that's exactly what that sentence says. --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the US increased pressure on the Soviet Union through diplomatic, military, and economic means." -> "the US increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union." - conciseness, as usual.
Fixed --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The Soviet Union's reaction, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev, was perestroika and glasnost, internal reforms meant to allow for the Soviets to keep up with the United States." - second comma should be a semi-colon, should it not?

Nousernamesleft (talk) 01:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon me, but that seems just fine. --Eurocopter (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's not. It's grammatically incorrect, and I've changed it. Nousernamesleft (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Objection - If we put a semicolon in place of the second comma, we get "The Soviet Union's reaction, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev; was perestroika and glasnost, internal reforms meant to allow for the Soviets to keep up with the United States." Now, if we delete everything before the semicolon, we get "was perestroika and glasnost, internal reforms meant to allow for the Soviets to keep up with the United States." This is not a complete sentence anymore. Or, if we cut off everything after the semicolon, we get "The Soviet Union's reaction, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev" Also not a complete sentence. The semicolon is also not breaking off a series of complex items in a list that also contains commas within each item. So, exactly why is this grammatically incorrect not to have the semicolon? Hires an editor (talk) 19:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, meant third comma, which should have been obvious from my edit to the article. Nousernamesleft (talk) 20:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so this logic applies to the third semicolon, too. If we put a semicolon in place of the third comma, we get "The Soviet Union's reaction, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev, was perestroika and glasnost; internal reforms meant to allow for the Soviets to keep up with the United States." If we take the part before the semicolon, we have a complete sentence: "The Soviet Union's reaction, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev, was perestroika and glasnost." But the part after the semicolon is a fragment: "Internal reforms meant to allow for the Soviets to keep up with the United States." There's no verb. That's why the semicolon is incorrect. Either the sentence can stay this way, or be broken into two, or the semicolon can stay and we put a verb in there after the semicolon...In any case, I'm getting way off topic in spending too much time defending one sentence. "We now return you to your nomination already in progress." :-)
Rejoinder - still opposing, I explicitly stated that just cleaning up these problems wouldn't make the whole article right. I can still spot many of the same problems in the main body of the text; get a "word nerd" (as Tony calls them) to polish the prose. Nousernamesleft (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Objection - without telling us exactly what is wrong and how should it be changed, we cannot improve anything. So, only the statement that there are "many of the same problems" within this article would not help us at all and is even useless. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When there are problems with the prose, a reviewer is not obligated to give a sentence-by-sentence critique of the article. For example, this reviewer has stated that there are problems with verbosity in the article. You need to check the article for that problem and have others who have not spent hours staring at the article check the article for that problem. Look at the examples reviewers have provided and ask yourself: what is the larger issue that I need to address based on this particular problem? The writing in this article is sufficiently sophisticated that it is clear to me that you are more than capable of doing this. Awadewit (talk) 18:21, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am capable of shaping this article according to a proper historical point of view, not according to each reviewer personal likes and dislikes. If I worked hard on the historical quality and verifiability of this article, it doesn't mean I have/want to waste my time to apply each personal opinions and interpretations of guidelines (which are, very often in this review, contradicting each other). So in my opinion the rest of the prose is just fine, and unless you adress any mistakes, we shall not change anything. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Like Awadewit said, I am not going to go through the entire article and point out every mistake or awkward phrasing to you. You can ignore my comment on the prose, but don't expect an entirely actionable oppose to be discounted. Nousernamesleft (talk) 20:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Within a FAC, Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to address the objection, the director may ignore it. Your oppose sounds something like "the prose is not good, so i'm opposing this FAC". In such a comment, there is nothing actionable and no improvements can be made to the article. --Eurocopter (talk) 20:38, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The oppose does not sound like this. Specific examples of problems have been given, from which it is easy to extrapolate the problems with the article's prose. I have listed examples that indicate some of the same problems, by the way, so more than one person feels that these problems exist. This objection is indeed actionable. Awadewit (talk) 20:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But you provided certain examples for issues which can be easily adressed. What can be considered specific rationale that can be adressed in his comment now? --Eurocopter (talk) 21:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That "specific" part is up to interpretation. For example, "Oppose - this article sucks" obviously isn't specific. But since I'm examining one specific aspect - flow of the prose - and have provided examples of what I expect, it can be considered specific. I'm not going to list out hundreds of errors in the prose - you have the capability to do that yourself, as you very well know. I have no more to say on this. You can either address my concerns, or leave it. Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would take care of your concerns with pleasure if I'd know which are they, but I refuse to go over this article again and again just to search for sentences which certain users might dislike. Changing such minor things 1000 times during a review according to different opinions and interpretations of guidelines besides reviewers, is an unconstructive waste of time for this article. As from now on, I will stop wasting my time with such comments, and start to deal with the real issues this article is facing with. --Eurocopter (talk) 22:21, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I know I said that that was my last word on this, but I think I understand your problem with this now - you think these prose fixes are just my opinion. They're not. The ones that aren't clear-cut grammatical errors have been pounded out by FAC prose reviewers far more talented than I am, and generally are the standard that have been used in reviewing FAC in the past. This really, really is my last word on this. Nousernamesleft (talk) 23:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose This article tackles an enormous topic and does it reasonably well, but I'm not sure that it should be featured yet. I have some concerns about balance, comprehensiveness, prose, and images:

  • The article tends to present events from a Western perspective. Before I read the article, I made a list of what I expected to find. I knew that I was largely ignorant of the Soviet political maneuvering and social conditions during the Cold War and that material was a blank on my list. Unfortunately, I am still largely ignorant on that matter. What was going on in the USSR during the Cold War? What did the Cold War look like to the Soviets? This perspective is not presented nearly as often as the Western/US perspective. I found this to be particularly problematic early in the article and less so in the later sections. For example, the Truman years focus a lot on the Western perspective.
  • The space race receives far too little coverage for the kinds of ripple effects it had on the Cold War.
  • Much scholarship has been done on the social and cultural aspects of the Cold War - films, literature, etc. I would expect one paragraph at least on this material.
  • The efforts by Eastern Bloc countries to free themselves from the Soviet Union (such as those in Poland) receive little coverage.
  • The summary of the "historiography" does not explain what "orthodox", "revisionism", or "post-revisionism" theories of the Cold War are. Simply saying that historians disagree is not enough - you need to explain, briefly, what the different theories are.
  • The article needs to be copyedited by someone unfamiliar with it. Let me give some examples from the end of the article:
  • By the time the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985, the Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent, combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. - The "comparatively youthful" part only makes sense if one has read the previous section - comparisons at the beginning of a section are usually unhelpful and confusing. The sentence is a bit of run-on, too.
Well, I suppose it's assumed the reader has gone through the rest of the article, no? Biruitorul Talk 18:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • To restructure the Soviet economy, Gorbachev announced an agenda of reform, called perestroika. - The article never explains what perestroika is - a brief, one-sentence explanation is necessary for such an important concept.
  • Many US Soviet experts and administration officials doubted that Gorbachev was serious about winding down the arms race, but the new Soviet leader eventually proved more concerned about reversing the Soviet Union's deteriorating economic condition than fighting the arms race with the West. - Which administration? This is a new section - we should be clear that we are still in the Regan administration. Unnecessary repetition of "arms race".
  • Talks went well, except for when the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed SDI, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated and Reagan refused. - wordy
  • The East–West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating with the final summit in Moscow in 1988. - "intense new heights" is awkward diction
  • the security advantage of a buffer zone was so reduced that by 1990 Gorbachev consented to German reunification - "was so reduced" is awkward
  • In December 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at a summit meeting in Malta - important part of sentence is buried
  • In December 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared the Cold War over at a summit meeting in Malta; a year later, the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against longtime Soviet ally Iraq. - one-sentence paragraph
  • By 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and, deprived of Soviet military support, the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power - "the Soviet alliances were" (less wordy)
  • In the USSR itself, Gorbachev had tried to reform the party to quash internal resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the Soviet Union together - not really explained
  • There is a list of images in one of the previous comments that do not have fair use rationales. This needs to be rectified.

I look forward to seeing this article improved and brought back to FAC. I have every confidence that it can pass with some more work. Awadewit (talk) 18:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I will be on vacation from now until 20 July, during which I will have intermittent internet access. I will revisit this nom as often as I can. Awadewit (talk) 00:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I see this has been brought up already, but I just want to reinforce it; Gaddis is relied on too heavily, and in particular on his 2005 book. Of course Gaddis is an essential source for this subject, but a wider range of references is needed. Mark83 (talk) 10:54, 8 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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