Wikipedia:Featured article review/Defense of Sihang Warehouse/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Joelr31 01:48, 18 May 2009 [1].

Defense of Sihang Warehouse[edit]

FAR commentary[edit]

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  • Fails on citation criteria. Many unsourced paragraphs
  • Fails NPOV criteria. Citations 2,3,4,5,9 are all memoirs of Chinese officers who commanded units in the battle, and are not reliable or third party or neutral at all. These account for the bulk of the article.

YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 07:03, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Is that wrong to use memoirs? What kind of books should be used? The Wurdalak (talk) 03:44, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, when you have statements like "The Japanese commander Matsui Iwane also agreed and promised to let the defenders retreat, but later reneged on the deal." which are only backed up by the recollections of Chinese commanders who have obvious vested interests in making the enemy commander look bad...I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for more neutral sources. For important historic events like these, there are plenty of neutral sources written historians, who would rely not on just memoirs of combatants (of both sides) but on other evidence.
  • I also wonder about passages like "To Chiang, the battle was already won as most of the Chinese forces in Shanghai had successfully been redeployed to defend more favourable positions, and the defense of the warehouse now had the attention of the western world, so he gave the go-ahead for the regiment to retreat on 31 October." This sounds like it was written to excuse Chiang's order to retreat, making it seem less like a cowardly action. I think it'd be good for this kind of commentary to be sourced, again, to neutral sources.
  • There is an obvious POV slant to the whole article which is not so evident on a first glance, but on a second one, seems fairly clear. The whole article is written in the tone of "heroic Chinese defenders against nasty Japanese". For example, "A private, traumatized by the battle, jumped off the building while strapped with grenades and took out some twenty Japanese soldiers in exchange for his own life." This seems a fairly unimportant detail, and I spy no mention of similar heroic actions by Japanese soldiers. Presumably there were some, unless one takes the view that only the Chinese defenders were capable of such battlefield heroics.
  • Ultimately, all these issues are merely a reflection of the fact that most of the article is actually not sourced. Many seemingly factual passages have no sources, e.g. "The Japanese 3rd Division (one of the most elite IJA divisions at the time) had suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Chinese 88th Division, whom they called the "Hated Enemy of Zhabei". However, their organization, officer corps and command structure were mostly intact, and Japanese forces enjoyed air and naval superiority, as well as access to armoured vehicles, likely Type 94 Te-Ke tankettes, and also Type 89 grenade dischargers. Japanese infantry used the Arisaka Type 38 Rifle." and "Official communications referred to the defenders as the 524th Regiment to mislead the Japanese as to their actual strength, even though only the 1st Battalion took part in this battle, and other elements of the regiment continued to be active well into 1939. Eventually the 1st Battalion came to be equated with the 524th Regiment, even within official documents of the period." These are important passages. Where did they come from? --C S (talk) 05:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria concern is citations, image copyrights and NPOV. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 00:57, 22 April 2009 (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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