Talk:Double Seven Day scuffle

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Featured articleDouble Seven Day scuffle is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 4, 2011.
Did You KnowOn this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 14, 2008Good article nomineeListed
March 29, 2008Featured article candidatePromoted
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 18, 2007.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the Double Seven Day scuffle was a fight in Saigon in 1963 between South Vietnamese secret police and journalists covering the Buddhist crisis?
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 7, 2010, July 7, 2011, July 7, 2013, July 7, 2014, July 7, 2018, July 7, 2020, July 7, 2022, and July 7, 2023.
Current status: Featured article

GAC[edit]

To the GAC reviewer, this is obviously not a huge event, since the fight was very short. It's not like we're describing a boxing match or anything....Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article Assessment[edit]

I will be completing the GAC review soon. Rudget. 16:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Successful good article nomination[edit]

I am glad to report that this article nomination for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of January 14, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Check
2. Factually accurate?: Check
3. Broad in coverage?: Check
4. Neutral point of view?: Check
5. Article stability? Check
6. Images?: Check

A very well written article, outstanding in some places. I can't see, or for that reason, forsee why this article can't become a featured article. I've reworked some of the grammar, but feel free to place back if you wish, after all where the comma's are put is only my opinion. So yes, a very good article and a definite GA pass. Well done Blnguyen! If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to Good article reassessment. Also note, that I won't be removing this or placing this on the relevant GA boards just yet as I'm backlogged by a few articles and would rather remove them all at once. Thank you. Rudget. 16:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments about prose[edit]

Congratulations on getting the article to FA status. I read the article when I saw it promoted, and I think the writing still needs some copyediting and tightening of prose. Here are my comments:

Lede
  • Is there a way to break up the lede into 2 paragraphs? The length is disconcerting, as is the non-sequential chronology (Punch thrown -> photographed -> published (future) -> negative attention (further future) in midst of Buddhist crisis (further past) -> quarrel ended (present!) -> storming of embassy upon release (future, but was this before or after publication of the photographs) etc.)
  • Three consecutive sentences in the lede use after/afterwards. This makes the writing somewhat stilted and also the time-frame is not clear, especially whether the release and storming of embassies happened hours or days after the previously described event.
    • I've re-structured the Lead, I hope I haven't introduced any errors.--GrahamColmTalk 16:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incident section (first paragraph)
  • The subject of the first sentence in the section is the "The scuffle", and so (I think) the "it" in the second sentence grammatically refers to the scuffle rather than the intended date. (I may be wrong on this, but somebody should perhaps take a look)
  • "Saigon's north" can be changed to "north Saigon".
  • "They had returned from Thailand to observe SEATO exercises, where ..." implies that the reason the persons had returned was so that they could watch the SEATO excerises in Vietnam. Is that the intended meaning, or were the persons in Thailand to watch the SEATO exercises ? Also the "where" clause should (I think) immediately follow the word Thailand, and should not be placed after SEATO exercises.
    • You are right, of course, the meaning is not clear and I don't know what the original editors meant. They will have to sort this one out.--GrahamColmTalk 16:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC
  • The first paragraph is written in almost a reverse chronological order, in the style "A did B because C had happened and C happened because D were protesting ...". Can't the same facts be stated in a more linear and causal way ? It may be worthwhile to reorganize the section so that the first paragraph covers the background (political environment in Vietnam), the second covers the celebrations and Diem's speech, and the third covers the actual scuffle.
done, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The paragraph should make clear when the Hue Vasek shootings and subsequent events occurred.
done, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incident section (second paragraph)
  • Again the time-line can be linearized.
done, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the Buddhists filed out of the pagoda ". One has to refer back to the first sentence of the previous paragraph to figure out which Pagoda is being referred to. A better idea would be to move the Chanatareansey Pagoda sentence to the second paragraph.
done, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "20 centimetres (7.9 in)": 7.9in is false precision since the 20cm figure is itself approximate. Is there a convention for such usage ?
Yes, but clearly it is the conversion of the approximate. In science even if you put 1.2 +/ 0.2 km you can convert this to miles without changing anyting. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The self-immolation of (by?) Thich Quang Duc should be mentioned in the background section/paragraph.
done. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Diem's address on Double Seven Day worsened the mood." Whose mood and when ? (1) The Buddhists on July 7th, or (2) the international community who read the newspaper reports and saw the photographs ?
The book doesn't exactly say who was been bothered by his speech, but I think we can be sure that it was teh Buddhists, since the pictures can't have been published on the same day. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reaction
  • "filed a report to" -> "filed a report with" or "communicated/sent/telegraphed a report to".
I don't know the formal reason but I think it has to do with the idiom of "filing". For example, the tax return is filed with the IRS (or, sent to the IRS). The "filed ... to " construction is used to mean "filed for the purpose of", for example, "I filed a lawsuit against the IRS to get my refund". A google search yields more examples, but maybe someone here can point out the grammatical rule. Abecedare (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the uniformed policemen" -> "uniformed policemen" (since they haven't been mentioned anytime before)
  • I think the first sentence should be moved to the end of the paragraph; something like, "In a report sent to Washington, Trueheart asserted ...".
  • The two sentences in the second paragraph have somewhat redundant information.
  • "Emanuel Freedman, the foreign editor of The New York Times reprimanded ..." The exact same information is both paraphrased and quoted in this sentence. Also, AFAIK, a comma is needed before full-sentence quotes.
Arrest and interrogation
  • "Later in the day after the altercation" needs a comma (I think)
    • "Later, in the day after the altercation" meaning the next day.
    • ""Later in the day, after the altercation" meaning the same night.
  • "The police interrogators said that they would ..." I think that, grammatically, the "they" in this sentence refers to the "The police" rather than the reporters.
  • "charged with the assault" -> "charged for the assault" or "charged with assault"
  • "Arnett was accompanied by a British embassy official who, reflecting Arnett's citizenship, provided consular assistance on behalf of the New Zealand government." I am guessing from this that Arnett was a NZ citizen and that the country did not have an embassy in Saigon/Vietnam. Why not state that explicitly, instead of making the reader puzzle it out.
  • Arnett is NZ. The book did not say why UK official was used and not NZ. There is not hint that NZ did not recognise RoV. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In the end, Diem agreed to have the charges against Browne and Arnett dropped after hours of heated argument with US Ambassador Frederick Nolting, who had returned from his vacation."
    • "In the end" -> eventually or simply leave out.
    • When did this happen ? Days/weeks/month later ?
      • The book does not specify a date, but it looks it happened a few days later. Perhaps a news source could provide an exact date. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 20:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • No indication given but I doubt the NYT would be printing the aftermath of one fight when Diem's people were attacking new people on a daily basis. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Should have mentioned in the previous section that the US ambassador Frederick Nolting was on vacation at the time of the incident and therefore William Trueheart was the acting ambassador.

I hope the editors involved won't mind my raising these issues after the FAC is closed; and I hope these issues are not ignored because the FAC is closed :-) I'll be happy to discuss and help in any way I can. Abecedare (talk) 02:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great, great work revising the article, GrahamColm, NishKid, and Blnguyen! I'll give it another read through soon and let you know if I have any more questions or suggestions. Such, off-beat wiki articles are the most fun to read and review. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 06:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Punched or kicked ?[edit]

According to C.R. Wyatt's "Media and the Vitnam war", in "The War That Never Ends: New Perspectives on the Vietnam War", p. 276:

Four policeman knocked Arnett to the ground and kicked him viciously until Halberstam, yelling, " Get back, ..."

Wyatt also claims that Halerstam and Sheehan were on Nhu's assassination list. He cites Neil Sheehan's "A bright shining lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" for the statement; Sheehan should be a reliable, or at least noteworthy source, for the episode and may be worth looking up; the book won the Pullitzer prize for non-fiction in 1989! Abecedare (talk) 08:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sheehan's book does have some additional details about the incident on page 352 (looked up on amazon), that seem worth adding to the article. He says:

We were waiting for a scheduled demonstration to begin at one of the small pagodas in the city on the morning of July 7th when half a dozen plainclothesmen from the Surete jumped the AP's Peter Arnett. The place was perfect for an ambush, because we were crowded, with the plainclothesmen and the uniformed Saigon police, into a narrow dirt alley that led from the street to the pagoda. The Surete men threw Arnett to the ground so that they could kick him in the kidneys with the pointed-toe shoe they wore in the Saigon-French fashion of the day. Halberstam charged witha bellow before they had an opportunity to hurt Arnett seriously."

Abecedare (talk) 09:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In his own book, "Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World's War Zones" (pages 102-103), Peter Arnett says:

I was set upon in an alley by two plainclothes policemen who punched my face and shoved me to the ground. They would have done more if Halberstam had not come to my defense, swinging at the attackers, scattering them.

Fog of war ? Abecedare (talk) 09:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Both kicked and punched. I didn't explicitly include Sheehan and Arnett directly since they were involved parties. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The other thing is that Diem and Nhu aren't around to have their say, which is a problem if you are going to quote one party. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:08, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to remove date-autoformatting[edit]

Dear fellow contributors

MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether or not dates are autoformatted. MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.

There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:

Disadvantages of date-autoformatting


  • (1) In-house only
  • (a) It works only for the WP "elite".
  • (b) To our readers out there, it displays all-too-common inconsistencies in raw formatting in bright-blue underlined text, yet conceals them from WPians who are logged in and have chosen preferences.
  • (c) It causes visitors to query why dates are bright-blue and underlined.
  • (2) Avoids what are merely trivial differences
  • (a) It is trivial whether the order is day–month or month–day. It is more trivial than color/colour and realise/realize, yet our consistency-within-article policy on spelling (WP:ENGVAR) has worked very well. English-speakers readily recognise both date formats; all dates after our signatures are international, and no one objects.
  • (3) Colour-clutter: the bright-blue underlining of all dates
  • (a) It dilutes the impact of high-value links.
  • (b) It makes the text slightly harder to read.
  • (c) It doesn't improve the appearance of the page.
  • (4) Typos and misunderstood coding
  • (a) There's a disappointing error-rate in keying in the auto-function; not bracketing the year, and enclosing the whole date in one set of brackets, are examples.
  • (b) Once autoformatting is removed, mixtures of US and international formats are revealed in display mode, where they are much easier for WPians to pick up than in edit mode; so is the use of the wrong format in country-related articles.
  • (c) Many WPians don't understand date-autoformatting—in particular, how if differs from ordinary linking; often it's applied simply because it's part of the furniture.
  • (5) Edit-mode clutter
  • (a) It's more work to enter an autoformatted date, and it doesn't make the edit-mode text any easier to read for subsequent editors.
  • (6) Limited application
  • (a) It's incompatible with date ranges ("January 3–9, 1998", or "3–9 January 1998", and "February–April 2006") and slashed dates ("the night of May 21/22", or "... 21/22 May").
  • (b) By policy, we avoid date autoformatting in such places as quotations; the removal of autoformatting avoids this inconsistency.

Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. I'm seeking feedback about this proposal to remove it from the main text (using a script) in about a week's time on a trial basis. The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just the huge number of visitors; it would be plain, unobtrusive text in the prevailing format for the article, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links. BTW, anyone has the right to object, and my aim is not to argue against people on the issue. Tony (talk) 12:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Main page appearance[edit]

Hello! This is a note to let the main editors of this article know that it will be appearing as the main page featured article on August 4, 2011. You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 4, 2011. If you think it is necessary to change the main date, you can request it with the featured article directors Raul654 (talk · contribs) or his delegate Dabomb87 (talk · contribs), or at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests. If the previous blurb needs tweaking, you might change it—following the instructions of the suggested formatting. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :D Thanks! Tbhotch.™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 20:31, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Double Seven Day scuffle was a physical altercation on July 7, 1963, in Saigon, South Vietnam. The secret police of Ngô Đình Nhu—the brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm—attacked a group of American journalists who were covering Buddhist protests. Peter Arnett of the Associated Press was punched on the nose, but the quarrel quickly ended after David Halberstam of The New York Times, being much taller than Nhu's men, counterattacked and caused the secret police to retreat. Arnett and his colleague, Malcolm Browne, were later accosted by police and taken away for questioning on suspicion of attacking police officers. After their release, the journalists went to the US embassy in Saigon to complain about their treatment and asked for US government protection. Their appeals were dismissed, as was a direct appeal to the White House. Vietnamese Buddhists reacted to the incident by contending that Diệm’s men were planning to assassinate monks, while Madame Ngô Đình Nhu repeated earlier claims that the US government had been trying to overthrow her brother-in-law. Photographs of Arnett's bloodied face, published in newspapers worldwide, drew further negative attention to the behaviour of the Diệm régime amidst the backdrop of the Buddhist crisis. (more...)

Context and significance[edit]

I think the article would benefit from more discussion of the event's context and significance (or lack thereof). I don't get much of a sense of how this incident fit into the larger picture. John M Baker (talk) 14:37, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

probably not factual[edit]

A group of secret policeman would not run away from someone because he is tall. More likely, they would beat him to death.

Confusion with a statement in the article.[edit]

The article says, "David Halberstam of The New York Times, being much taller than Nhu’s men, counterattacked and caused the secret police to retreat."

Please specify what "counterattack" means at this point in the article. Though the "counterattack" is spelled out in more detail later, I think adding some clarity at the opening would aid in the reader's initial conception of the situation.

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