Talk:Chonma-ho

An entry from Chonma-ho appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 22 October, 2006.

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Military history Start‑class

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Start

This article has been rated as Start-class on the project's quality scale.

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Reassessment from Start to B Grade Article

I was reading through the quality scale and I think that this article is a B grade article. Well, I believe it's more than that, but in comparison to other articles, a B grade article. It's complete when you take into consideration the lack of knowledge on the tank in the civilian world, and the lack of sources on the net, or on paper. It describes what is known about the tank, and it describes, albeit briefly, possibly deployments. It has an infobox, which Start class implies that it does not; it has various photographs belonging to the U.S. Government; AFAIK there is no point of view in the article, just lack of knowledge (because, there is no sources to offer more). The only thing that it doesn't have is a lot of information, which seems to mean that it's not a Good Article, or an A class article, even if it's understood that there simply is no more information to add without a real expert on the subject (someone who has access to the intelligence agency, for example). I hope you all agree with me. JonCatalan 17:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify Please

"it's most recent public appearance was the 60th Anniversary Parade held in Pyongyang, North Korea, on 25 April 1992"

60th anniversary of _what?_ A minor point I'm sure but now I'm trying to figure out what happened in Korean history in 1932.

Bigstape 13:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done, thanks for catching that. JonCatalan 16:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Photographs

Is it just me, or do the licences on the photographs appear to be unlikely? They all say that the photos are works of the US government. However, given the nature of US-North Korean relations, it seems incredibly unlikey to me that US government officials were not only invited to look at the tanks close up, but were also allowed to photograph them in their official capacity of agents of the US government. The fuzzy black-and-white picture could have been taken by a spy (although the US very rarely declassifies information that would aknowledge that it is involved in intelligence-gathering operations) but the other photographs weren't taken clandestinely. I'd believe that these are works of the Korean government, but it's a little hard to believe that they are works of the US government. --Descendall 17:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whoever took them, whether they are North Korean, South Korean, or from the United States, I believe these photographs belong to the U.S. Goverment/Army. They have been used in the article in ARMOR Magazine, which belongs to the U.S. Armored Corp/U.S. Army, and they are not cited. This would probably mean that they belong to the U.S. Army. The image that's used as the main picture was done by the North Koreans as a propaganda piece, but it's used widely by the U.S. Government and owned by it AFAIK, therefore I really see no issues. This is underscored that these are the few pictures which exist on the Ch'onma-ho that can be seen by the public. JonCatalan 17:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most stuff that was published by the US Army is released into the public domain. I don't think it's necessary to investigate further, but I wouldn't be surprised that, since the country isn't a member of the WTO, North Korean publications such as the propaganda image aren't protected by international copyright law. I'm sure protected US intelligence information has much better photos. —Michael Z. 2006-10-22 20:46 Z

While I seriously doubt that the North Korean government is going to be suing wikipedia any time soon, the issue is that images have to have the correct licence on them. Each country has different laws. The pictures as is state that they are " works of the United States Federal Government." If that's incorrect, the photos shouldn't say it. I'm no expert on this stuff, but I know that there's a Public Domain - Soviet Union tag. If this is in the public domain because it was taken by the North Korean government, then I guess it should say something to that effect. --Descendall 21:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expanding the Article

Do you think that expanding the article by drawing parallels between the Ch'onma-ho and new Ukrainian and Russian upgrades of the T-62 will be off topic? To specify, I mean stating possible upgrades for the Ch'onma-ho, even if currently known variants, by describing the upgrades in the T-62 done recently by the Morozov plant in Kharkov. What do you thinkJonCatalan 17:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be relevant, but we should be careful not to draw our own conclusions from any comparisons. As with everything, properly cited experts' opinions are always best. —Michael Z. 2006-10-22 20:48 Z

Point taken. The main reason would be because there is little information available to anybody on the Ch'onma-ho, and given their recent trade agreements with the Russians, including the T-72s sold and the probability of the single T-90 sold it's possible that the Russians have also been feeding them information, or even full on upgrade kits, of their T-62s. Even if they haven't it would still give an outlook on the possibilities of what can or could have been upgraded on the Ch'onma-ho. JonCatalan 21:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]