Talk:Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

Added date for D-Day

Added date for D-Day. Mary Ash 03:18, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Personally, if someone really wanted the date, I'd have them click on Battle of Normandy. It really isn't crucial to the lede.

Nevertheless, D-Day, which is a military term of art for the starting day of an operation (cf. H-hour, M-minute), is clearly 5 June 1944, not 5-6, because the action started on the 5th. The campaign, of course, took much longer. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:46, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Ledes should have date, time, location and any other pertinent information. I've written a few ledes myself and a fast story or two. The fastest article written by me was eight inches in eight minutes. I kid you not. I used the dates given in the linked article. :-)Mary Ash 04:14, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

That may be true for newspaper ledes, and more specifically the ledes of news stories. That is not true for encyclopedia ledes, which are not written as inverted pyramids and, if some part of who-what-where-why-how-etc. is not relevant to the thrust of the article, it doesn't go in the CZ lede -- any more than it is required to go into a news feature lede.

The precise date would be relevant if this were the Battle of Normandy article. The critical fact is that he went ashore with the first wave, and that would have been equally important had they gone in on May 4 or July 7. His date of death is relevant, but again isn't necessary to establishing context.

I cannot overemphasize that CZ articles try to contextualize, rather than only give basic facts. That is what we see as the addition that an expert, an expert in CZ usage, gives. Experts are not only familiar with terminology, but see relationships that others may not. For example, there was generous contemporary coverage of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Our article, however, brings in the MACV-SOG OPPLAN 34A aspect that may have confused the North Vietnamese, and the declassified National Security Agency and other material indicating that the fog of war was very dense that night. The article brings in H.R. McMaster's documentation that Lyndon Johnson tied his announcement time simply to meet evening television and morning newspaper deadlines. At the time, did anyone notice that the live television announcements were going out as the Navy strikes were flying into the North Vietnamese air defenses? Again, the fog of war prevented the North Vietnamese, believed to have been alerted by the Soviets, from ordering a full air defense alert and causing much heavier American casualties. Some North Vietnamese have suggested they simply could not believe the American President could be so stupid.

I don't understand your point about speed; we are not working under deadlines.