Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Ho Chi Minh trail

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article no longer meets A-Class criteria - Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 19:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Ho Chi Minh trail[edit]

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Nominator(s): Buidhe (talk)

Ho Chi Minh trail (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I doubt this article is close to the A-class status, especially lacking on A1 and A2. Beyond the citation needed issues flagged in the article, an excessive number of the cited sources are close to the US government. This would be excusable if there were no other sources to cite, but a quick Google Scholar search shows that's not the case. Important issues such as Agent Orange spraying to clear the trail and subsequent long-term effects are not covered at all. (t · c) buidhe 13:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delist For mostly reasons outlined in nomination. I'll also note that the lede is probably not an accurate summary of the topic, and is devoted to what the US military thought of the trail. For something that has been the subject of numerous books, I'd also expect to see more material. Not only is there a problem of overreliance on US military sources, but there is also some suboptimal use of contemporary sources as well (refs 12, 15, 20). We should probably not be using books/documents written before the war was over, since the Vietnam War has become the subject of a very active historiography and we should be relying on more modern scholarship. Under "Sources" there's document listed as "unpublished". We are not supposed to use sources of things that have not been WP:PUBLISHED. -Indy beetle (talk) 17:58, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Actually, while there are several sources that need to be replaced or deleted due to age and questionable reliability, a lot of the sourcing is of good quality and relatively recent. It uses the Vietnamese official history as well as US sources. The sources that need action are fn 4, 9, 12, 15, 18, 19, 20 & 24. The rest seem fine to me. I agree that the herbicide spraying is an essential inclusion. I note the largest contributors @RM Gillespie, Seligne, and VMorris: haven't been active recently, in one case for many years. I'm not aware of anyone that is working closely on Vietnam War articles within Milhist, so there may be no-one who has interest to salvage it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Mztourist: ? -Indy beetle (talk) 01:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Indy beetle thanks for the ping, I'll take a look at it in the next few days, but its such a huge topic I'm not sure I have the time and energy to give it a thorough redo. regards Mztourist (talk) 06:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've done as much as I have time/enthusiasm for. I would note that VMorris' contribution has been almost exclusively to add detail from the two books she has written. regards Mztourist (talk) 03:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks Mztourist! A lot of the referencing issues have now been fixed, although there are still 2 [citation needed] and a cleanup banner at the top of the page (for copyediting). I still think the article does not meet A2 based on not having any info on herbicide spraying or long-term environmental impact. (t · c) buidhe 03:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • To my knowledge herbicide spraying was limited to the South Vietnamese border areas and was not conducted extensively over the Trail and so barely rates a mention. Mztourist (talk) 05:45, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, but I'm seeing sources that cover the aftermath and legacy, for example [1][2][3][4][5] but the article just stops in 1975. (t · c) buidhe 05:59, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Only the 4th article seems to be about defoliation, all the rest seems to just be about bombing. Mztourist (talk) 08:29, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I found a good journal article about defoliation and have added it in. Mztourist (talk) 04:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am not expert in military matters, but one would expect such a topic to have at least some coverage in Vietnamese sources? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:26, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pribbenow is a translation of the official North Vietnamese history. Mztourist (talk) 04:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 10:11, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist based on Mztourist's evaluation. Concur with them also about the lack of Ranch Hand-style operations against the Trail proper (the Stellman article goes into this in some detail on p. 685). Intothatdarkness 16:06, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist as per above comments. Additionally, I note that the article seems very uneven; much of the last section has nothing to do with the trail and there is no commentary on the postwar status of the trail. Zawed (talk) 05:12, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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