Wikipedia:Featured article review/Attack on Pearl Harbor/archive1

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 05:11, 9 May 2007.

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Attack on Pearl Harbor

Review commentary

Messages left at Shipwrecks, Hawaii, MilHist and United States. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This article was featured in 2004 before the current process was in place and it falls short of the current criteria in a number of significant ways:

1. Point of view. The article is written from the point-of-view of the USA. The background section is a potted history of Japan, and the USA is scarcely covered at all. The 'strategy', 'plans', 'organization' of the Imperial Japanese navy get sections but only the 'preparedness' of the USA. This contextualises it in US-centric account of Japanese growth and aggression. It's perfectly possible to give a neutral account of Pearl Harbor in its historical context while still making it clear that this particular battle was an unprovoked surprise attack.

The POV continues into the sections on the battle itself, with plenty of detail about the heroics of American servicemen, and even a list of the winners of the Medal of Honor, and little material about heroic behaviour of anyone on the Japanese side or honours granted.

1. Focus. The article strays too far from its subject. The Meiji Restoration and the 9/11 attacks have little direct relevance to the article. The article could be much shorter and better for it.
2. Style. The prose often falls far short of brilliance; there are stub-sections and list-sections.
3. Accuracy and Citation. Many paragraphs of the sections on the impact of the attack strike me as dubious. There are a number of 'citation needed' templates; there is plenty of contestable material which lacks citation.

Regards, The Land 19:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This article has gotten some work done on it recently. After a sensible discusion by both sides, some POV comments were removed from the beginning of the article. I disagree with the viewpoint that it lacks in Japanese comments and an explanation of their reasons for the attack. To add more would mean to go off topic completely. The 9/11 and Hiroshima/Nagasaki comments can be removed. However, the idea that it is US centric is tough to dispute, since most of the contributors are going to be US citizens. How many British featured articles don't have a strong British POV, for example? Overall, the article is strong, and should remain a featured article, in my opinion. CodeCarpenter 21:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are plenty of American and British people who, like myself, are students/scholars of Japanese history. Keeping a neutral POV can be very difficult, as most published sources are written from one perspective or the other, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that the article has to have a US tilt simply because most of the editors would be American. In any case, a few points:

• The opening paragraph could use a sentence or so describing Japan's intentions or goals in the attack. I count four phrases in this section directly referring to the significance of the attack to the US, but none for Japan. Maybe something along the lines of "the attack was intended to eliminate or delay the ability of the US fleet to move against Japan in the Pacific" (I'm no expert on the subject, and if you think something more accurate or more appropriate could be said instead, feel free. it's only an example.)
• I agree about cutting down on elements about the Meiji Ishin and other such things. (a) This is an article about a single given attack, not about the entire background of Japan's rise to militarism or the causes of WWII. (b) by explaining all of this, and not devoting equivalent background to US events, it implies an assumption that the reader knows US history and that Japanese history is esoteric and not widely known. Therein lies the Americanocentrist bias. One would, of course, have to be really careful in cutting this down in order to not overly simplify the factors leading up to the attack (e.g. making it seem to be entirely about oil), but still I feel that a lot can be taken out.
• Considering the length and detail of the lead-up (prelude, background, preparations) section, I wonder if perhaps this should be moved to come after the section on the attack itself. I certainly understand the logic behind a more chronological approach (as it stands now, prelude -> event -> aftermath), but as it stands now, a reader has to scroll down several pages (or skim or read through quite a bit of prelude/background material) before coming to the central core topic of the article. Could this work better by presenting the Attack section right after a far briefer causes/background section, following it up with the lengthier discussion of both prelude and aftermath?
• The inclusion of a section on "Japanese views of the attack" implies that the Japanese view is different from what is presented above as the "standard" version, i.e. that the standard version is the American/Western version. It is all valuable and interesting information, but I wonder if it can't be incorporated elsewhere into the article. The "Monumental Status" and "Cultural Significance" sections are currently written entirely from the American point of view, so perhaps the "Japanese views today" portion can be incorporated there; the rest can probably be fit in nicely somewhere earlier in the "main" section of the article, either in background, the attack, or the aftermath. ... Or the Japanese views section can be left intact, and an American views section can be more explicitly created, incorporating the Monumental Status and Cultural Significance portions. This might even be better, since someone looking specifically for this type of information, related to public opinion, cultural significance, etc, will be able to find it more easily than if it's all dispersed throughout the article.
• PS I like the omission of any lengthy discussion of the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate.

I apologize for the extent to which my comments focus on a US bias - these are meant to be purely friendly constructive criticism. I have seen articles which are far far worse in POV issues, and this one is certainly not a problem of nationalism, racism, or revisionist history, simply a matter of approach - there are American historians and then there are Japanese historians - we use different sources and come at it from a different set of background knowledge... In any case, all of these are merely suggestions. The article is wonderfully long, detailed, well-written, and interesting, and I think with just a little more tweaking it can be amazing. This certainly deserves to be a Featured Article. Thanks for your hard work, and for considering my thoughts. LordAmeth 17:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

This article's lead misses WP:Lead by a wide mark, straying into analytical detail but failing to answer the most obvious questions an encyclopedia reader would have, "Why did Japan attack?" and "Why did it result in a U.S. declaration of war" JGHowes ^talk - 23:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria conerns are POV (1d), focus (4), writing style (1a), factual accuracy (1c). Marskell 03:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Remove - we're getting plenty of constructive comments on how to fix the article's issues, but no attempt to address them as yet. (It's on my to do list, somewhere, but probably a year or more away!) The Land 12:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Remove I actually stumbled across this article a few weeks ago while researching another historical article and was surprised that it was an FA.Balloonman 21:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.