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Talk:Adolf Eichmann#RFC: Lead image
Interested editors are invited to participate! --K.e.coffman (talk) 14:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:German occupation of Czechoslovakia#Requested move 28 February 2022
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:German occupation of Czechoslovakia#Requested move 28 February 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 03:54, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
User:Ich is making uncited, mass changes to Germany related articles which appear to be driven by a WP:POV rather than WP:RS and may need to be checked for factual accuracy. These changes include:
- Changing "Third Reich" to "Nazi Germany".
- Changing "killing" to "murdering" even in cases that were lawful ("murder" by definition is unlawful)
- Changing "sent to their deaths", "put to death", "died" or "killed" to "murdered" - again this is a change of meaning which may or may not be accurate. Also, is it wrong to use a mix of terms and phrases? What did the source say?
Of course we should not try to defend the indefensible or water down the atrocities that were committed, but as a responsible encyclopaedia we need to follow the sources and use words in an accurate, not emotive, way. So I am inviting User:Ich to refrain from further edits and revert his changes until a consensus can be reached on how to proceed. Bermicourt (talk) 12:41, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- My pov: Third Reich is Nazi counting, which should be kept only in quotes or quotation marks. We shouldn't honour them by using their terms even if many sources from the time will do so. Similarly for euphemisms for their victims' deaths. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Co-signing. -- asilvering (talk) 01:59, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
- My pov: Third Reich is Nazi counting, which should be kept only in quotes or quotation marks. We shouldn't honour them by using their terms even if many sources from the time will do so. Similarly for euphemisms for their victims' deaths. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Hi Bermicourt, thanks for writing. I am happy to hold off on changes until we formulate a relevant styleguide policy. I firmly believe that the murders that occurred during the Holocaust should be referred to as murders.
- I've written an essay on my user page on this subject. The German government has repeatedly acknowledged that the Holocaust was mass-murder, even the aspects of it that were legal under the laws of Nazi Germany, which the German Federal Constitutional Court has deemed to be an Unrechtsstaat or "Verbrecherstaat" - a "criminal state" whose laws are not valid because the state itself has been seized to pursue criminal ends. I live in Germany and speak German, and the use of the word "murder" to describe killings in the Holocaust is widespread and uncontroversial, both in popular and governmental usage, such as the federal government's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Both the occupying allied powers and the subsequent governments of East, West, and reunited Germany have prosecuted and secured convictions for the murders that took place in the Holocaust. I've written plenty of responses to these points scattered across a number of talk pages but am happy to dive further into the matter.
- On the first point, "Third Reich" is used as a synonym for "Nazi Germany" and it has (also elaborated on my user page) both historical baggage from the term's roots in Nazi propaganda, and it is less clear to the unfamiliar reader.-Ich (talk) 13:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Yes "Third Reich" is a term of Nazi origin that they used to describe their territory, alongside their official names, whereas "Nazi Germany" is the term used in English language sources for "Germany under Hitler". My point is that, in making blanket changes, it's important to check that a) we're not altering the term used by the source and b) we're not relabelling something incorrectly. For example, if the source said "Hitler's so-called Third Reich..." and we changed it to "Hitler's so-called Nazi Germany..." we're misquoting the source. If the source said "The NSDAP promoted their grandiose notion of an emergent Germany by calling it the Third Reich because..." and we paraphrase it to "the Nazis called their new nation Nazi Germany...", we're misrepresenting the source and the facts. If the Nazis issued a "Third Reich Order of Merit" medal, it would be inaccurate to rename it the "Nazi Germany Order of Merit". I'm always worried when mass changes are driven by a POV, even a valid one, that time is not always taken to check the context and the sources to ensure that each change is appropriate and balanced, and doesn't result in a factual error, misquote or misrepresentation.
- Re "murder", I agree that it is right to use "murder" to mean murder and I agree that the Holocaust undeniably involved mass murder. However, we should guard against 4 things: first, excessive use of one word when other words and phrases, indeed the whole context, make it clear that murder was committed. We do not need to say "the murderous Nazis carried out their murderous intent by murdering people in a murderously murderous series of murders". I'm exaggerating, but you see the point. We can even convey the sense without using the word e.g. "the ruthless Nazis carried out their evil intent by executing innocent people in a brutal series of killings." Second, we should not create our own description, but one based on the words of the sources. Third, we should avoid using only those sources that line up with our view, but reflect a balanced view of all reliable sources. Fourth, we should not use the word "murder" to refer to a legal killing even if we disagree with the law. That's changing the English language and causing confusion. However, we could point out in an article that some reliable sources refer to legal killings as murder, where that's the case. Whenever I see mass changes, I'm always concerned that these checks aren't being done and that our encyclopaedia will end up being inaccurate and misrepresentative of the sources. Maybe we can pick an article and work on it jointly to achieve an agreed solution. Bermicourt (talk) 10:56, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Bermicourt I'm very alarmed by this reasoning, which appears to be implying that Ich is not competent to make these changes, without providing any evidence that this is the case. Have you found any that have been done incorrectly? If you have, fine, let us have this conversation about how to proceed. If you have not, why the concern? At present, this looks like a thought experiment. But it's a thought experiment aimed at another editor, who so far does not appear to have done any wrong. -- asilvering (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Asilvering. Ich and I have already discussed changes to specific articles, so this isn't coming out of the blue. So please don't suggest I'm engaged in some kind of 'thought experiment'. Just go and look at the changes yourself - if they're fine, that's great. But in a couple of cases, I had some of the above concerns myself which is why I raised them, both for information and consensus. That's the Wiki process. Bermicourt (talk) 19:23, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Bermicourt What consensus are you looking for, here? I don't think anyone would defend "the Nazis called their new nation Nazi Germany" or "they carried out their murderous intent by murdering people murderously." If Ich has made an incorrect edit like the former, of course it should be fixed, and no new consensus would be required for this; if Ich has made an edit that results in a faintly ridiculous statement like the latter, it can be edited, and if Ich finds those edits unacceptable, appropriate wording can be discussed on the talk page of the article in question. -- asilvering (talk) 02:11, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Asilvering. Ich and I have already discussed changes to specific articles, so this isn't coming out of the blue. So please don't suggest I'm engaged in some kind of 'thought experiment'. Just go and look at the changes yourself - if they're fine, that's great. But in a couple of cases, I had some of the above concerns myself which is why I raised them, both for information and consensus. That's the Wiki process. Bermicourt (talk) 19:23, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Bermicourt I fully understand a reflexive unease about mass-changes. Aside from the aid of cite tools, I don't think I've ever made a single "automated" edit – each one has been done by hand, reading and understanding the context of my changes. I've taken care to leave direct quotes and book titles untouched. I've also changed links that pointed to redirect pages anyway, e.g. "Flag of the Third Reich" > "Flag of Nazi Germany". I do recognize the quixotic and sisyphean nature of my undertaking.-Ich (talk) 22:51, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Bermicourt I'm very alarmed by this reasoning, which appears to be implying that Ich is not competent to make these changes, without providing any evidence that this is the case. Have you found any that have been done incorrectly? If you have, fine, let us have this conversation about how to proceed. If you have not, why the concern? At present, this looks like a thought experiment. But it's a thought experiment aimed at another editor, who so far does not appear to have done any wrong. -- asilvering (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- Re "murder", I agree that it is right to use "murder" to mean murder and I agree that the Holocaust undeniably involved mass murder. However, we should guard against 4 things: first, excessive use of one word when other words and phrases, indeed the whole context, make it clear that murder was committed. We do not need to say "the murderous Nazis carried out their murderous intent by murdering people in a murderously murderous series of murders". I'm exaggerating, but you see the point. We can even convey the sense without using the word e.g. "the ruthless Nazis carried out their evil intent by executing innocent people in a brutal series of killings." Second, we should not create our own description, but one based on the words of the sources. Third, we should avoid using only those sources that line up with our view, but reflect a balanced view of all reliable sources. Fourth, we should not use the word "murder" to refer to a legal killing even if we disagree with the law. That's changing the English language and causing confusion. However, we could point out in an article that some reliable sources refer to legal killings as murder, where that's the case. Whenever I see mass changes, I'm always concerned that these checks aren't being done and that our encyclopaedia will end up being inaccurate and misrepresentative of the sources. Maybe we can pick an article and work on it jointly to achieve an agreed solution. Bermicourt (talk) 10:56, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Adding article to list to be translated
Hi! I'm new to serious Wikipedia contribution and having some difficulty figuring out how to add an article to the list of articles to be translated. I'm hoping to add Liste der Extrempunkte Deutschlands to Geography articles needing translation from German Wikipedia. How can I accomplish this? Trogyssy (talk) 16:04, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Trogyssy That category has a bit of a misleading name - have a look at WP:PNT for some of the various tags that add an article to those categories. As far as I know there's no way to tag an article on another wiki for translation. You can also start a stub and tag it with Template:Expand_German. There is a really tremendous backlog on that category though (over 7k articles, nearly 5k of which are geography specifically), so I don't really recommend creating a stub solely in the hopes someone else will translate it. -- asilvering (talk) 18:48, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:I Can See Your Voice (German season 2)#Requested move 9 March 2022
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:I Can See Your Voice (German season 2)#Requested move 9 March 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 20:13, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Two Deaf / Nazi Germany articles and two drafts
At WT:AFC we have been alerted to two articles and two drafts which seem to be four different ways of presenting similar / overlapping / complementary material:
- Sterilization of deaf people in Nazi Germany
- Deaf Organizations during the Holocaust
- Draft:Influencers and Cultural Players of the Deaf During Nazi Controlled Germany
- Draft:Deaf Sterilization and Nazi Coverups
These four contain material that should not be lost. However, they require a careful hand to work out how and what to achieve. I have left comments on the two drafts, but I think members of this Wikiproject are best suited to take this forward. FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 14:44, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht#Requested move 18 March 2022
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht#Requested move 18 March 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 04:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red translation contest: April to June 2022
At the beginning of April, WikiProject Women in Red is launching a three-month translation contest focused on increasing our coverage of women's biographies. As the German version of Wikipedia is one of the most popular sources for translation, members of WikiProject Germany may be interested in participating.--Ipigott (talk) 10:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Largest Fair on the Rhine
For an event that boasts 4 million visitors a year, this article has gotten little attention from editors. I could stub the article but wanted to drop it here first to see if the subject matter experts can do any cleanup.Slywriter (talk) 13:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Schutzstaffel → SS
An editor has opened a move discussion as to whether the article Schutzstaffel should be moved to SS. Your feedback would be welcome at Talk:Schutzstaffel#Requested move 28 March 2022. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:41, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
Better name for "Category:Nazi personnel who resisted the Holocaust"?
See Category talk:Nazi personnel who resisted the Holocaust#Correct title?. I suggest that a more appropriate title would be something like, "German officials who resisted the Holocaust", to better reflect the stated scope of the category, which is: "This category is for individuals with official positions or official membership in the Nazi Party, the German government, or the German military, who showed resistance to the Holocaust by the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945." The current title suggests that all fo those who were in government or who were drafted into the military, etc. were Nazis, when many weren't. HopsonRoad (talk) 21:26, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
- I hear and respect your point; however, during the era of Nazi Germany, service to the state was equivalent to allegiance and membership in the Nazis. So the phrase "Nazi personnel" simply refers to being a member of the official personnel of Nazi Germany.
- As you know, all other parties were prohibited and brutally suppressed by the Nazi regime. Membership in the government or the military did not make one an ardent Nazi; however, it did make one part of the official personnel of the Nazi regime, regardless of one's individual opinions, or political beliefs. since the adjective "Nazi" applies to Germany itself as a whole, i.e. "Nazi Germany," it is useful and valid to refer to any official employees as "Nazi personnel."
- that is precisely why the category name uses the phrase "Nazi personnel; " it deliberately suggests a formal relationship, instead of using less-suitable phrasing, such as e.g. "Nazi adherents," "Nazi ideologues," "Nazi organizers," "Nazi leaders," etc etc. I do appreciate your good-faith comments on this. --Sm8900 (talk) 22:11, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
- Service to the state was not equivalent to "membership in the Nazis", which is party membership. How about "Nazi German officials"? That would make it clearer that they are officials of Nazi Germany, not personnel who were Nazis as in the current name. —Kusma (talk) 22:35, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you both for responding constructively here. There are distinctions to be made. The name of the government at the time was the Deutsches Reich or "German Empire". The name of its combined armed forces was the Wehrmacht. So, while we recognize that all this was under the control of one party—the Nazi Party—it's wrong to imply that individuals living or working under the regime were "Nazis". Additionally, some of the people in the category were industrialists or local officials—not part of the national government.
- "Nazi Germany" is our linguistic construct. The German Wikipedia article uses nationalsozialistischer Staat, which means "national socialist state". It's an affront to the actions and legacy of many of those who opposed the Holocaust to associate the name "Nazi" with them, so "Nazi German officials" is an unfortunate turn of phrase. I am looking for a description for the category that dissociates Nazism from individuals who resisted its policies. "German officials who opposed the Nazi Holocaust" or "Officials of the Third Reich who opposed the Holocaust" would achieve this. Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 03:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Note: I've moved this discussion to Category talk:Nazi personnel who resisted the Holocaust#Correct title?. Please continue the discussion there. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 14:32, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
User script to detect unreliable sources
I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like
- John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (
John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.
)
and turns it into something like
- John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.
It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.
The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.
Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.
This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
FAR for Finnish Civil War
I have nominated Finnish Civil War for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t · c) buidhe 06:21, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
Easter traditions of Germany
We've recently created Category:Easter traditions in Germany but it's being considered for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_April_24#Category:Easter_traditions_by_country. I think it has scope for expansion. Comments appreciated (at the CfD thread, they won't be noticed here). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:33, 30 May 2022 (UTC)