Talk:Blackwater Worldwide

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 Blackwater Worldwide was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: May 18, 2008
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    Contents

    [edit] Worst Wikipedia Article?

    This article is arguably the worst in Wiki history. The first paragraph alone is not only poorly written but also almost entirely (and heavily) POV. The inclusion of so many anti-Blackwater talking points just in the first 500 words is appalling for an alleged "encyclopedia," even by Wikipedia's usually shoddy standards. When people laugh at Wikipedia ... this article illustrates precisely why.

    If any of you actually care about journalistic integrity and want Wikipedia to look something like a real encyclopedia, go grab one - a real encyclopedia - and check how they treat the subject. Then erase this whole article and start over. Begin the entire first section with NPOV, objective description. Since you won't be able to help yourself from including your bias, add those in later sections on controversy and criticism.

    As it reads now, this is a one-sided embarrassment. I don't care how deep you are in your own brand of Kool-Aid, you should be able to recognize just how bad this article truly is. Imagine an article on President Clinton that begins with the alleged murder of Vince Foster and several alleged rapes, before going on to point out that he was the 42nd President. That's precisely how biased this article is.

    74.185.105.135 (talk) 11:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)



    [edit] Recently reverted edit

    Is there a reason this edit was reverted? It appears to be sourced. - Tmaull (talk) 15:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

    I made a mistake, I read it wrong the first time. I restored it Jons63 (talk) 15:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
    Cool. - Tmaull (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

    BLACKWATER USA IS AN "INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST" ORGANIZATION, AS DEFINED IN 18 USC 2331, ET SEQ.

    [edit] Cultural reference

    The villain in the recent Knight Rider TV movie was "Blackriver security", a firm with contracts in Iraq... AnonMoos (talk) 06:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Survey

    WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. The survey will end on April 30.

    • Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article?


    • If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do?


    • Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia?


    At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Good article review

    I've started reviewing this, but I'm afraid I'll have to finish tomorrow night. Sorry! I have some thoughts already though, figured I'd give them so you can get working on them. Most are very minor and won't stop it passing; however, the citation issues do need to be dealt with before it can pass. I've included even very minor issues that you may want to have dealt with before going to FAC.

    • "...it claims is the world's largest" - minor point: maybe a different word than 'claims', which kind of suggests that it's a dubious claim. I would have changed this myself, but couldn't think of a word. 'Says'? 'Holds'?
    • Too many uses of the word 'opposition' in the sentence starting with "Opposition focused on a potential for wildfire increases..." and the one before it: repetitive.
    • "...application to set up a facility in San Diego County.[citation needed]" must fix all cn tags before this can be passed.
    • "Many referred to the change as having eliminated the previous "cross hair" theme..." 'Many' is weasel wording. Who specifically said it?
    • Democracy Now! rocks my world, but I would hesitate to call it a reliable source. Can you find another source for the info?
    • For the sentence beginning "It is estimated by the Pentagon and company representatives that there are 20,000 to 30,000...", you should deal with the commented-out concern; it's important to faithfully represent sources.
    • "Between 2005 and September 2007, Blackwater security staff was involved in 195 shooting incidents; in 163 of those cases, Blackwater personnel fired first. 25 members of staff have been fired for violations of Blackwater's drug and alcohol policy and 28 more for weapons-related incidents." These 2 sentences are non-sequiturs; the first part of the paragraph is about international hirees.
    • "...murdering him while drunk"--I think this means the killer was drunk, is that right? This could possibly be clarified a bit.
    • "The crash site was secured by a personal security detail, callsign "Jester" from 1/26 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division." could this be translated or explained for those of us who don't speak military?

    This is just a start, I'll have more in a bit. delldot on a public computer talk 10:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

    More:

    • "Three Iraqi insurgent groups claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, however, this has not been confirmed by the United States.[citation needed]"--All {{cn}} tags need to be dealt with.
    • I have added a couple fact tags. At a minimum, all quotations and statistics need citations (WP:GACR).
    • You should do away with terms like 'recently' per WP:DATED.
    • References should be expanded to include author, date, publisher, title, and access date (e.g. this one).
    • Choose either U.S. or US for the whole article.
    • "Blackwater helicopters were dispatched to evacuate the Polish ambassador following an insurgent assassination attempt on October 3 2007" Does this have to do with the rest of the paragraph? I'm not clear on how, but that could be my own denseness.

    More to follow. Once again, the only really serious problems are the citation issues. delldot on a public computer talk 10:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

    [edit] Good article review (part II)

    [edit] Important stuff

    • Is the youtube video in the references of copyrighted material? We can't link to copyright violations per WP:EL.
    • There are some flow issues. Sometimes there are non-sequiturs within a given paragraph (I do understand the need to avoid short paragraphs though). If you have more than one topic in a paragraph, give it a topic sentence that covers each point, so the reader's prepared. For example, in the paragraph beginning "In late May 2007, Blackwater contractors opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days...", you could introduce it by saying "there have been several controversies in the news..." (but don't actually say that, because that's extremely crappy, and it's important to be careful with NPOV) My point is to have a topic sentence that will cover everything you're going to talk about in the paragraph. If it can't, you might have too many different things in that paragraph. For example, the last two sentences in that paragraph I mentioned don't seem to fit.
    • "Overall, Blackwater had a "visible, and financially lucrative, presence..." reads like an NPOV problem. This is a source with an opinion, we shouldn't be stating it as fact. You could, however, identify who said it and put it at the end of that paragraph to back up the point that the involvement in Katrina was controversial. I think the whole article should be given an NPOV check by an uninvolved party, it's such a difficult issue. The whole article is sprinkled with these highly contentious facts. Not that they should be kept out, but some do seem a little out of context.

    [edit] Stuff that's not that important, but I figured I'd mention it

    • Might want to explain what "renumerative contract" means.
    • "Since June 2004, Blackwater has been paid more than $320 million out of a $1 billion..." should be changed to "Between June 2004 and [whenever this statistic is from]..." per WP:DATED.
    • You should go through and check all the bot generated titles, filling in all the missing citation info.
    • "...following the controversy related to Blackwater's conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan." Which one? Specify.
    • For the dead links ("URL not found"), did you try going through web.archive.org to find them?
    • Maybe you could split the "Iraq war involvement" section into smaller "general" and "events" subsections or something (the "general" wouldn't need its own subheader). A lot of that section is kind of a timeline of different scandals they were involved in.
    • It seems odd to split the September 16, 2007 events between the Iraq war and legal sections, but I can't think of how you'd combine them.
    • The sentence beginning "A Committee on Oversight and Government Reform staff report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages..." doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of that paragraph or the one before. Maybe it should be moved to the criticism section.
    • The sentence "The legal status of Blackwater and other security firms in Iraq is a subject of contention" belongs higher up in the legal status section--it's introductory.
    • "The Iraqi government said that it expects to refer criminal charges..." Who said that?
    • It seems like the "legal status" and "litigation" sections should be kept together; they cover some of the same topics, and the non-Iraq services section breaks the flow there. Also, it further strains the reader's memory: "...Scott Helvenston... Remember Scott Helvenston?" :P I don't know where it should be moved, though. Maybe before the Iraq section?
    • Find something to link to for "high-altitude euphoria", or explain what it is.
    • This sentence needs more clarification: "The article discussed the removal of the word "armored" from already-signed contracts, and other allegations of wrongdoing." Why was that wrongdoing?

    Hitting save now, more to follow. delldot on a public computer talk 01:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

    More:

    • The sentence beginning "Blackwater, which he had hired for protection before his arrest, allegedly helped him escape" needs a citation and it needs to be clarified who alleges that.
    • Raw URLs should be expanded to complete references. This is the case for the external links section too, though it's not as important.
    • The external links section should be pared down to just the few links that offer useful info that's out of the scope of the article. Many are news stories, maybe some can be used as references (e.g. you can replace the less reliable sources like Democracy Now!).

    I'm putting this on hold for now. The main problems I see are the citations needed, which have been tagged, the flow issues needing some reorganization, and a few NPOV things. The other stuff I mentioned would be nice to get fixed but aren't deal breakers.

    I feel like I've been exceedingly harsh here; you've really done a great job with a very difficult topic, getting all the info in and keeping it NPOV for the most part. Definitely keep up the good work, there's nothing here to stop this from becoming a GA and beyond once these main issues are fixed. I'm glad to help however I can, definitely keep me posted and let me know if I can offer any clarification or other aid. delldot on a public computer talk 02:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

    The article's been on hold for over a week, the review's received no response, and the GA nominator has not edited in a week. So I'm going to fail the article. By all means, though, feel free to bring it back to GAN when the important points from this review have been fixed! Leave me a message on my talk page if you have anything to discuss. delldot on a public computer talk 11:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)