Talk:Battle of Mathias Point

Thoughts on Assessment

In working on the April 2018 backlog project, I had occasion to revisit this article. It was one of my earlier contributions to Wikipedia but I think it is a reasonably good effort. I have not commented on or asked for reassessment of any of my articles to date, although some were marked start class by the banned user Wild Wolf. He clearly did not examine the articles he rated, one of the findings contributing to the ban. This is not one of his assessments but I frankly can't understand why it is found deficient in referencing or in coverage. I realize I will almost certainly need to ask for reassessment if any is to be made and may do so in the future. This is not the time to do that while interested users/editors are working on project goals, so I thought I would add my thoughts here in order to preserve them.

There are at least two inline citations in every paragraph after the introduction, twenty in all, except for there only being one in the brief concluding paragraph. There are 12 cited references but the medal of honor citation is not repeated in the reference section.

This was a small engagement. I think there is sufficient coverage of the background and aftermath. With respect to the battle itself, I doubt that there is any more to say about it. It was significant because it was an early attempt to break the Confederate blockade of the Chesapeake Bay, and the Potomac River in particular. This was a serious problem for the Union at the outset of the war. Even small engagements received considerable coverage at the time and their significance to the early days of the war should not be underestimated. The first Union Navy officer killed in the war was killed in this engagement. The Confederates were able to maintain this problem and embarrassment for the Union for almost a year because of engagements like this. They vacated these positions when McClellan finally began to move into Virginia in March 1862 when the Confederates also withdrew from the Manassas area.

If anyone can find any significant fact that has been omitted or has any citation to a reliable, verifiable source that can add to the referencing, I would certainly encourage them to add it. There are more books on the naval war of the American Civil War but many of them deal with the Union blockade or ship on ship battles. Maybe another citation or two could be found but I doubt that it would do more than duplicate the citations in the article and not add any significant fact.

There are my thoughts, which I think are reasonable and well supported enough and set out in a matter of fact manner. I will certainly ask for reassessment of some of the ridiculous assessments made by Wild Wolf. There are so many of these overall, I cannot fault the project members from finding and revisiting them so I am rather sure that any reassessment of these articles will need to be after a request for one is made. Maybe I will ask for reassessment some day after the backlog drive is over. Certainly I cannot reassess my own article which remains mostly intact from the time I wrote it, even though I am now more experienced.