Talk:My Lai massacre

My Lai massacre is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination was archived. For older candidates, please check the archive.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 29, 2005	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
March 31, 2014	Peer review	Reviewed

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on March 16, 2004, November 20, 2004, March 16, 2005, March 16, 2006, March 16, 2007, March 16, 2008, March 16, 2009, March 16, 2012, and March 16, 2015.

Current status: Former featured article candidate

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): WG3416.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

PFC Herbert L. Carter Motivation Claim

The article currently claims that Carter’s gunfire was accidental and his desire to leave the site was concocted later. The only citation for this claim is currently defunct, if someone could find one that corroborated that the gunfire was accidental I think it would significantly improve the article. Deku link (talk) 06:04, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gratuitous inclusion of a subjective and seemingly biased characterization of the subject matter

From the introduction:

“This war crime, which was later called ‘the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War…’" By whom?

The reference is to a book entitled War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, by Bernd Greiner and published by Yale University Press. Did the author of this book make this assessment or was he quoting one or more others who did?

Regardless who made this assessment, it seems totally subjective. What exactly rendered this massacre the “most shocking”? Was it because it was perpetrated by American forces, with the implication being that ignoring similar atrocities by the other side that dwarfed My Lai in body count--such as this one presented publicly by no less an esteemed source than Wikipedia-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF --as not so shocking as what else can one expect from a bunch of Godless communist savages? This implication seems more than a bit chauvinistic, not to mention racist, to me and I believe the quote and reference should be removed as being totally subjective and unworthy for inclusion in such an unbiased and objective publication as this one!

Thank you.HistoryBuff14 (talk) 22:06, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The quote appears to be taken from the first sentence of a description of the book on the inside front flap of the jacket cover. It is unclear to me who wrote this. I think this weakens the case that the quote is supported by a reliable source since it is coming from something like a book review rather than the text of the book itself. At the very least I think this discrepancy should be reflected in the citation. Fiwec81618 (talk) 06:16, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are the photographs in the gallery wholly necessary?

Some of the photographs seem more suited to a site like Documenting Reality. I don't necessarily mind the gallery, but for a kid accidently stumbling upon this article to see brains like that is a little bit iffy in my opinion. Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 10:03, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED and sadly a comprehensive encyclopedia will include images of atrocity such as these. The risk of exposing people to extreme content is less than the risk posed by presenting sanitized history to readers. CosmologicalDefect (talk) 03:25, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Mỹ Lai" v. My Lai

I expect few if any English language sources or readers use the diacritic in Mỹ Lai. Moving to My Lai, to conform with English language usage. CAVincent (talk) 07:50, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I may not have done the move correctly. If a waatcher can fix the error, please do. CAVincent (talk) 07:56, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and corrected the page back to article namespace. In the future, if you need attention towards a malformed page move, consider visiting WP:RMTR. Aidan9382 _(talk) 09:41, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, for the fix and the tip for help! CAVincent (talk) 03:25, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification needed

The cited source offers no insight into exactly the meaning of the phrase "who has been the subject of pointed blame" with regard to Widmer. Nothing is mentioned on that point in the cited source, so is this someone's personal view somehow incorporated in this article?