Talk:Eastern theater of the American Civil War

Delete paragraph?

The second paragraph of the "Theater of operations" section ("The Eastern Theater included the campaigns that are generally most famous in the history of the war . . .") sounds more opinion than fact and appears to have been copied from this website here. Should this paragraph be deleted? Wild Wolf (talk) 19:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I wrote (not copied) the paragraph originally, but of course this was before the days of Wikipedia citing every paragraph. I think it is useful information and will provide a citation or two. However, I am currently traveling until October 10 and it will be difficult to do so before then. It has survived without a citation for four or five years now, so I hope it can wait a few more weeks. Hal Jespersen (talk) 01:50, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Copyright violations, plagiarism, failed source spotchecks; please note in future reviews

Concerns were voiced in a review about this article's use of sources, relating to:

• Copying portions of text directly from sources and incorporating it into the article
• Failure to quote portions of text used from sources
• Sources not supporting their claims when spotchecked

Please note these concerns when nominating the article for future reviews, and address how the article has been improved so that these source related issues are addressed. As a result of the MILHIST standards for sourcing WP:MILMOS#SOURCES I have downgraded this article for failing to meet B criteria. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:26, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I wrote the vast majority of this article and am unaware of any material that was copied inappropriately. And where is the text of the review in which concerns were "voiced"? Please point out specific instances of perceived violations or remove this paragraph from the Talk page. Thanks. Hal Jespersen (talk) 22:51, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

10 November 16:54 by Dana Boomer on the peer review page. I suggest you read the peer review more closely, Dana did post it in bold. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:11, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Concerning the "sources not supporting their claims", Dana Boomer used two examples (references 40 and 41) on the peer review page but I fail to see how the pages cited do not support these paragraphs.Wild Wolf (talk) 15:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I am a bit perplexed by this because until you provided the link directly above, I had no idea this was being peer reviewed. I cannot see from the talk page where this link exists. Anyway, I wrote this article almost 6 years ago (Feb 06) and I can assure you I did not copy it from a website. Can you review the creation history of said website and determine when any supposedly similar text was written? Or are you talking about a book reference?

I cannot address the issue of the in-line citations because for the most part I did not add them. (In the early days of Wikipedia, in-line citations were relatively rare and I deemed it acceptable to list the five or six books I used in the References section to provide adequate verifiability. I am aware that the standards have changed since then, but I have had other priorities.) Wild Wolf has been going through the original article, which has been essentially untouched for six years, and tuning it up with that information and some additional detail.

I notice from the peer review that there was also some dissatisfaction with the image galleries, saying in effect "why do we need pictures of the commanders?" Anyone familiar with Civil War history books or magazine articles will know that the authors almost always include the photographs of the commanders. The alternative would be to present the photographs scattered around the article, which might have the advantage of showing the commander closer to the action first relevant to him, but makes the layout of the article much more difficult because of all of the map image files that are included as well. Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:31, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Its normally a good idea for the user requesting the peer review to note the link to it on the talk page. Google cache versus the first para of "Theatre of Operations." Last version of 2006 shows the copyvio existed as of 2006 when you were editing. However, the book itself doesn't contain this text as far as I can tell, and dates to 2006. It seems like the citation may be a plagiarism of wikipedia falsely detected—especially if you wrote the original prose as no website contains that text prior to 2007ish. I'd help if you told Dana this on the peer review page. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:46, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

That page was archived right? I'll ask Dana to respond here.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 02:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

According to the Worldcat entry, the book was published in 2002. If the website is an excerpt from the book, this means that it was written prior to this article. If not, and it's just summary text on the webpage that copies WP, then I apologize for falsely accusing you of copyvio. As far as text not matching the sources, I checked the sources that I listed through Google books and did not find the information on those pages. It is possible that they had a different edition, but I can say for sure that the version I checked did not have that information on those pages. Dana boomer (talk) 12:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I have to assume good faith on the part of Hlj and Dana boomer. How about we resource request that book, or page, and ask someone to verify it? The other issues, that works cited don't support claims means that the editor citing this article needs to do more work before this goes to MILHIST A, or gets a MILHIST B (and if it is currently at MILHIST B it should be moved to C over sourcing). Fifelfoo (talk) 21:31, 5 December 2011 (UTC) (Oops: I already did that. This is an important article, and some of the text is quite good. Sourcing will help it climb the ladder of MILHIST's quality) Fifelfoo (talk) 21:37, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

It is unclear from that cached version whether the text is supposedly extracted from the book that they show. They do not claim it directly, but merely show a picture of the book cover. In any event, I have never seen or read that book (I don't think that the Osprey series is a very reliable reference for military history), nor did I see the website prior to it being pointed out recently. The references that I used for the article are listed in the References section in any of the versions prior to 2010, when additional entries started showing up. The text is exclusively my own. Of course, I realize that the text ought to be changed because it represents the uncited opinions of one Wikipedia editor--an artifact of a different editing style from way back--but that is a different issue than an accusation of copying from somewhere else. I don't normally get involved in these peer reviews, but since this one made its way onto the talk page, I wanted to set the record straight. Hal Jespersen (talk) 18:23, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If your text was the result of the encyclopaedic consideration of a wide variety of sources, and claims that are challenged can be supported, that's good synthesis. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:29, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Reorder Information

I think the section on the Peninsula Campaign should be moved up above the section regarding the 1862 Valley Campaign. McClellan's campaign was the impetus for the initiation of the Valley Campaign. Information about the Peninsular Campaign would then provide adequate context for enhanced understanding of the Valley Campaign. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicks4500 (talk • contribs) 03:58, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

West Virginia

Two concerns about West Virginia. First, the article defines the western border of the Eastern Theater as the Appalachian Mountains—yet has a discussion about West Virginia, which has a substantial portion to the west of the Appalachians. Second, (if West Virginia is to be left in) someone removed this while discussing West Virginia: The region had closer ties to Pennsylvania and Ohio than to eastern Virginia and thus were opposed to secession; a pro-Union government was soon organized and appealed to Lincoln for military protection. Both viewpoints are too extreme (the green vs nothing). It is true that the northern panhandle region sandwiched between Ohio and Pennsylvania was very pro Union. It is also true that as you went further south the soon–to–be state had many loyal to the Confederacy. How about this: Many people in the western portion of Virginia preferred to remain loyal to the United States, and they declared their own statehood on October 24, 1861—officially becoming the state of West Virginia on June 20, 1863.<cite1> In the southern half of western Virginia, many of the people from the mountains were pro-Union, while the majority in the large valleys were pro-Confederate.<cite2> Bushwhackers and Partisan rangers practiced guerrilla warfare tactics to gain control of the region. Cite1=West Virginia and the Civil War : Mountaineers are Always Free, by Mark A. Snell, Chapter 4, location 796 of e-book; Preface, location 66 of e-book. Cite2= The White Sulphur Springs; the Traditions, History, and Social Life of the Greenbriar White Sulphur Springs, by William Alexander MacCorkle, page 271. (MacCorkle was governor of West Virginia.) TwoScars (talk) 15:55, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that seems like a worthwhile improvement. Mojoworker (talk) 02:41, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

References

Chronology

I don't think it makes any sense at all to talk about Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and then talk about Antietam, and then Gettysburg. Just talk about the campaigns in order. john k (talk) 05:24, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Leaders

Shouldn't Sheridan be on the list of Union leaders? (I'd say he's more significant than McDowell, if we would have to remove a Union general to make it work graphically, or than Hill) john k (talk) 22:04, 2 October 2024 (UTC)