Talk:Vietnam War

Vietnam War

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Archive 1, Archive 2

This badly needs copyediting. --Larry Sanger 10:02, 15 September 2007 (CDT)

Article

Vietnam War, also known as the II Indochina War or United State War (in Vietnam), was a conflict which lasted from 1956 to 1975. It saw South Vietnam and a multinational task force led by the United States of America with support coming from Republic of Korea, Australia, Philiphinas, New Zeland, Thailand, Taiwan and Spain and fighting and defeated by National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, also known as Viet Cong, and North Vietnam.

Definition and title

first note needs to be read in the context that a substantial amount of comments are now in an archive.

If it hasn't already been pointed out in the above extremely long page, I'd like to point out that the opening sentence is unacceptable. Obviously, letting one of the parties to the war define it violates neutrality. Peter Jackson 11:37, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Peter, I agree. Please look back a few months when this was a single massive article, by an author that was insistent — and explicit on presenting things from a U.S., not even South Vietnamese, perspective. The major effort toward neutrality, for both practical and personality reasons, first consisted of breaking up the main article into manageable subarticles, and working on neutrality there.

This individual is no longer involved, and it is quite appropriate to look for a more neutral introduction, as well as still pulling out some of the later and less neutral text into subarticles. If my citing of Moore and Galloway in the Vietnamese museum doesn't exemplify there are multiple views, I don't know what can. Sooner or later, it will be necessary to come to consensus on a better set of names, certainly for the major phases, and possibly the articles as a whole. I can take Vietnamese military history back to the Trung sisters in the first century CE, but I'd prefer someone else work on the even earlier history in my sandbox. Such a person should read Vietnamese.

So, we agree there is a problem. I am perfectly open to a signficantly revised opening, and a controlled renaming of articles -- the comma-rich convention was idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, I would ask for close cooperation in renaming, so as not to break links. I probably know them better than anyone at this point, and I still make mistakes and lose text.

May I ask that you look at Battle of Ia Drang as something that I wrote, trying very hard to represent at least three standpoints: North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and American. I'm still working on obtaining some interview text, as, for example, not just the emotions but also the tactics of the PAVN at LZ X-ray.

I desperately want proposals, and there is so much to fix on the detailed level that I hope you have some time to make suggestions at the topmost level. If you get beyond the first sections, I think you'll see the subarticle structure and other text that provide the basis for more neutral writing. If you are interested, please help.

Please focus not on the old definition in this page, but on the more recent work in the main page. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)