Talk:Kamikaze

This article used to be a very good article. It was promoted on 8 September 2007 and demoted on 1 May 2012. This means the community feels this article was written very well, but is not now. You may see the vote that promoted the article here. You may see the vote that demoted the article here.

Ungrammatical English in this V.G. Article!

"Kamikaze.... it is normally used to call the suicide pilots of the Empire of Japan, and their attacks on the ships of the Allied Powers in the final years of World War II. It is sometimes used by extension, to call any kind of suicide attack."

The English expression "to call" is not used like that.

It should say:

• ...it usually refers to the suicide pilots.
• ...it is the name often given to the suicide pilots.
• ...it is often used to mean the suicide pilots.
• ...it usually means the suicide pilots.
• ... it is used when people speak aboutthe suicide pilots.

It is not "normally used to call" them. If it is normally used to call them, than that means that their mothers put their heads out the door and yell "Hey, Kamikaze! Come and get your dinner!" ....Because this is how the expression is used in English. Amandajm (talk) 09:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

(Thinks: maybe this is some recent US usage that I don't know about.... maybe it's teenage talk I haven't caught up on.... maybe it is a regional dialect....)

Demotion

Comments:

• 7 disambiguation links

 Fixed.

• Smithsonian Networks external link is dead

 Fixed. Removed, given what you've said below about the number of external links.

• Delink dates

 Fixed.

• What makes "Everything2.com" a reliable reference? J-aircraft.com? Warbirdforum.com?

 Fixed. Replaced all three. The last one was actually an exerpt from a book cited in The Guardian, so I've replaced it with the online version of the article.

• Cleanup the source tag in the lead

Removed the statement, since I can't find anything to back it up and it wasn't in the version of the article when it was promoted.

• All book references need page numbers for a VGA, or they could be replaced

 Fixed. Had to replace them.

• The first paragraph under "Effects" could have a after every sentence; references needed

• I think 10 external links violates en:Wikipedia:External links, Important points to remember, point 3

 Fixed? Cut down to 8...?

• The lead fails en:WP:LEAD, because it doesn't talk about what Kamikazes are, just about etymology.

• The first three paragraphs of the "History" section are completely unreferenced.

• Hundreds of extra kamikaze planes were ready to defend Japan from the final invasion. What "final invasion"???

Removed "the final" from the sentence.

• After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy and Air force were defeated in several important battles, like Midway and the Philippine Sea. What made them "important"?

• They lost many ships (including nearly all the Japanese aircraft carriers), hundreds of fighter aircraft, and many of their best pilots. Estimation of ships? "Many" is too broad

• Overall, the article needs a copyedit to remove terms like the two above.

Someone leave me a message on my talk page or leave me an e-mail if you've addressed these concerns. Albacore (talk · changes) 15:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed some points. Will look at the rest tomorrow. Osiris (talk) 05:16, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Fails on some big issues

This article is a very clear fail, and in some respects below the average work of many of our regulars today. As usual, I'll almost ignore the various minor points. I think quality of prose is the key ingredient of a very good article, and using the literature to check that all major points are treated in the article. The use of introductions and overviews is critical to non-specialist readers.

The introduction is a complete disaster. It's not simple, but much worse, it's English only in the sense that most of the words are English. The whole of this introduction addresses the word, not the concept. That's a big mistake, and a comment pointing this out was left on the talk page several years ago (and ignored). Even so, it's bad English: long, wandering sentences are hard to read. What is the author trying to say? That should always be clear to a reader; otherwise what is the point of it all?

The second paragraph introduces four more Japanese terms, which we don't need to know about, certainly in an introduction. The main strategic points relating to the war are not summarised in the introduction, which has no references at all. The introduction is possibly the worst piece of writing I have ever seen on a so-called VGA.

I don't like the constant use of Japanese characters in this article. There's no way most of our readers can cope with non-roman scripts, and (if used at all) they should be relegated to footnotes. I notice that throughout the word 'name' has been used in place of the accurate word 'term'. That's a false simplification, and reads strangely.

The rest of the article has detail, mostly from the Japanese point of view. There's relatively little about what the American commanders were thinking about. I know there's quite a lot of literature which goes into the broader issues. Why did the Japanese continued the war so far beyond the point where it could be won, for example. Was it felt that Kamikaze could actually stop the American advance? Well, the article does not have much of an 'overview'. The article has some perspective on the industrial potential of the two sides (which is welcome), but nothing that helps us understand this (to us) strange strategy. I look to a VGA to be comprehensive not just in facts and figures, but to include all relevant angles, at least in summary form. Whatever professional historians think is important should have a place. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Maintenance of GA and VGA lists

As part of maintenance efforts for the list of VGAs and GAs, the article's promotion and demotion details were updated and the following noted for general information:

• At the time of this article's demotion, there was no process for the demotion of VGAs to GAs. As such, this article was demoted directly from a VGA to a regular article. Chenzw  Talk  06:25, 15 June 2020 (UTC)