Talk:Ika Hügel-Marshall

Birth Date
- I was pondering an infobox person, but before I do - are there any sources that give an actual date of birth? Reading what Google Books has of her autobiography, she mentions "March 1947" and that the orphanage incident in March 1952 was just after she turned 5, but that's all I can do. I get the impression she doesn't want to publicise it. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  21:06, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I couldn't find even that much; if you have March sourced then go ahead and use it. It's OK to have an infobox without a birthdate. Actually even a year is more than we sometimes have. I have been known to calculate, from the date of a source that mentioned the person's age, and list the birthdate as "c. 1947". --MelanieN (talk) 21:27, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * P.S. One thing though: if you use an approximate birthdate, don't use the template that calculates her age. Just list the birthdate in plain text. --MelanieN (talk) 21:31, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The infobox parameters do play better with a specific date, yeah. I'll have a quick scout around elsewhere and go with March 1947 if I can't find anything else. She was definitely 46 when she met her father in 1993, not 45, the JSTOR source explicitly says so. DOBs are more awkward than casual readers think - I can't pin down Tony Stratton-Smith despite having a facsimile of his funeral service. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  21:38, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

and, Good morning. Haven't forgotten about about Ika. Been busy with loads of other stuff. Thanks for your patience; will get to the review soon. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:29, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Self published??
Hello, Anne! Thanks for your interest in the article Ika Hügel-Marshall, but I don't understand why you tagged it with a "self published" tag. Her autobiography was not self-published. It was published by respected academic publishers. The first edition was published in German by Orlanda Frauenverlag. The English translation was published in 2001 by Continuum International Publishing Group, and an annotated version was published in 2008 by Peter Lang (publisher). And although the autobiography was used as a source for many biographical details, multiple other authors also provided significant coverage about her. The article is a Good Article, and the highly experienced GA reviewer didn't raise any concern about the sources used. --MelanieN (talk) 03:46, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your quick response! --MelanieN (talk) 04:04, 3 November 2015 (UTC)


 * MelanieN, You are right - I picked the wrong tag, so I will remove it.  I should have used the "primary sources" tag.  Large sections of the article are sourced back to the words of the subject herself.  If there are other adequate sources for this information, those primary citations should be removed and replaced with citations from the other sources. I'm not sure how this got to be a "good article" when most of the sources are available or partly available online and yet were not linked.  Either the many editors you mention didn't check them at all, or they all have copies of these books on their shelves.  I have added the links.  It's likely that some of the facts in the article are mentioned in at least one of these books, and maybe a primary sources tag would spur someone to make some improvements.  I'd work on it myself, but I'm only halfway through this month's batch of db-g13 eligible drafts.


 * By the way, one reference is a Google group, not a publication. Shouldn't that be an external link? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 05:43, 3 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Please assume good faith. The article was checked pretty thoroughly by and, who both have an extremely good track record in content creation, and put up on the main page via DYK for additional scrutiny before it went anywhere near a GA review, which was necessary because it makes some pretty strong claims of racism. The autobiography is not a primary source because the original was written in German, what we cited was an officially authorised translation in English, and it was published by Continuum International Publishing Group. Continuum, like all traditional publishing houses, will not print anything until it has been through their strict editorial control (to check they won't get sued, for one thing). Therefore, far from being a "self-published" or "primary" source, it is (in my view) the best possible source for the topic. It's not much different from The Diary of Anne Frank - the prose is written from a first person point of view, but it has been edited and published to ensure factual accuracy and interest - and I don't see anyone shouting "bad source" for that. There is absolutely nothing wrong at all with using offline sources; indeed, many of our featured articles prefer them, such as Samlesbury witches, an FA cited largely to offline books. PS: I removed the Google Groups source as I don't think it's necessary. Ritchie333 (talk)  (cont)  11:30, 3 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I'm somewhere in the middle here. I wouldn't accord an autobiography the same status as an academically published book, for instance, but one would expect some measure of editorial control. Peter Lang is sort of a mixed bag as a publisher--I've not known them to publish anything bad, but they do publish a lot. I think they're acceptable in terms of editorial control until proven otherwise on a case-by-case basis. I think it's also important to note that statements like "Despite her recollections of a pleasant early childhood, Hügel-Marshall was singled out for her skin colour" are sourced to a secondary source (published by Duke UP)--and that such sources are of course themselves dependent on what the subject has said. Note also modifiers like "According to her, black soldiers treated native German children well, distributing food and clothing" (my emphasis). So while, ideally, we'd have more secondary sourcing, I don't really see this as a problem in this article. I mean, we're not talking about BLP violations or political or other accusations or something like that. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 15:23, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) As for online availability vs. dead tree book, we actually had both for the autobiography. After the article was already pretty fully developed, I got a copy of the book from my local library, and I used it to refine some of the information and add some details. But large passages of the autobiography were available online and had been used and linked prior to that. The version before I added anything from the hard cover book was this. You say that sources "were not linked"; actually the format used for the sources does not permit linking to the actual passage cited for a specific citation. That applies to the autobiography material, as well as the Kaplan, Jeremiah, Janson, and other sources. We found the information, we used it, we cited it - but the "Sources" format does not permit linking to the specific location for each individual citation. However, the page number is noted at each citation, which is generally accepted as acceptable documentation for both online and offline references. --MelanieN (talk) 15:27, 3 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I assure you that I am assuming good faith; I had faith that other editors would see me point about overuse of a closely connected source, and would look through the many other sources available online and replace some citations or at least add some citations to independent third party sources. This isn't just to show that the information is true, but also to pick out what is encyclopedic. Incidents which the subject herself may feel are important and so write about in an autobiography are not necessarily the ones to which those writing from an independent perspective would assign importance. Hügel-Marshall is Wiki-notable not because of the discrimination she endured in childhood, but because of her adult activities - writing a book, founding an organization, etc.  About the Anne Frank article as a comparison - I looked at that article and it doesn't have big sections sourced only to her book.   About offline sources: you are right that offline sources are acceptable - I had no complaint about the existing citations to third party offline sources - my comment was that some of the sources were more easily accessible when linked online, were likely more independent than the autobiography, and that the article would be better if these were cited where possible instead of her book.


 * About the translation - any decent translator will keep the translated text as close as possible to the original meaning. If I were to become a famous inventor, and if I were to write in my published autobiography "In 1992 I ate pizza twice each week.", and then a translator wrote "En 1992, je mangeais une pizza deux fois par semaine.", I would still the source for the information, not the translator, and the statement would still have little encyclopedic value.


 * Drmies, the example you gave "according to her", etc.: These events happened before she was born; is she a recognized expert on the occupation of Germany? The first phrase could better be sourced to something like this, but I'm not sure why it's there at all - it seems unrelated to the rest of the sentence.


 * MelanieN: As I said, I have no doubt that all of the citations are properly done, since as you say they have been added by experienced editors, including yourself. Not being able to link to the exact page doesn't prevent linking to the whole document, which is all that's needed if one is looking for additional information to create new citations.  Although I did add an incorrect tag at the beginning and have apologized for that, I remain of the opinion that there are too many citations to a closely connected source, per:
 * WP:V: "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy,"
 * WP:BLP: "Articles should document in a non-partisan manner what reliable secondary sources have published about the subjects, and in some circumstances what the subjects have published about themselves,
 * WP:NOR: "Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources."  “Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them,"
 * WP:IRS:"While specific facts may be taken from primary sources, secondary sources that present the same material are preferred. Large blocks of material based purely on primary sources should be avoided."
 * However,I am aware that without a consensus I can't do anything about it.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 20:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm late to join the conversation and I really don't have anything substantive to add after the comments made by . --Rosiestep (talk) 01:40, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Activism section
The quote from Der Spiegel with the typo ("statistically invisible and yet uncomfortably conspicious. [sic]") is misleading because it is presented as though it is the words of Hügel-Marshall or of ADEFRA. It is a very eloquent sentiment, despite the typo, but it is actually just a quote from a news article about this person, so should be rephrased or deleted. My attempt to delete was reverted. Jazzcowboy (talk) 12:03, 25 October 2016 (UTC)