Talk:Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Germany)

Off to a fine start. There are some grammar and NPOV (neutral point of view) issues. Below is an edit with minor changes to fix grammar and areas not showing NPOV in italics. (We may all agree that life was hard in Communist East Germany and better in the West, but it's an opinion and not NPOV). The opening paragraph, ideally, represents a summary of the topic (the whole article) and not an explanation of what came before - that can go into an early sub-section on "background" or "history." You might summarize by stating that a commission was formed, that it ran between certain dates, and that it concluded certain things. The bolded section is the beginnings of an opening paragraph. Dwebsterbu (talk) 21:09, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

After World War 2 Germany was divided in two parts. One part, the West, was democratic and the other part, the East, was communist. Both regimes were very different. People from the East often looked at the West Germany as the ideal part of Germany. After the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961, no one from the East could travel to the West. The East was under the Socialist Unity Party (SED) ''and it was not easy. For the West it was different. The West was free and could do anything it wanted as long as the Allied agreed. Throughout the forty years of separation, the East got tired to be repressed and started to revolt against their leader. The East asked'' THERE WERE DEMANDS for freedom of expression and freedom of travel and freedom of assembly.[1] In 1989, Erich Honecker, the leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had no choice but to let his people go the West. After that, the reunification took place and East and West were one again. '''In 1992, two years after the reunification, the government of Germany decided to establish a commission that would look at the history and the consequences of the SED. It released its report in 1994 and asked for another commission because the first commission could not look at everything. The second commission took place from 1995 to 1998 and had the same objective as the first commission.'''

comments on final draft
I've just noticed there are two separate sandboxes, each with an article. They seem to be the same. I edited the other one with suggested changes for grammar and neutral point of view (NPOV) and added links. Shannon's edits look like good ones, and I'd advise going through and considering accepting comments from both her and Tegan. Specifically, there is some repetition (for instance the "truly unifying" quotation appears twice) and a lot of quotes - consider paraphrasing. Hohenschönhausen - is that the museum? Could be linked and even used as an image to go with the article. There are still some NPOV issues - although the commissions called the SED a dictatorship, try to use less negative terms for NPOV and avoid un-sourced statements such as East Germans wanted to be in the West which was more free. (We may think that, and it may be accurate, but it is opinion.) Overall, however, there is some very good material here and the article appears to make a good contribution to Wikipedia's coverage in this area.

You should go ahead and move your article to the Wikipedia mainspace. Tips on doing this appear in the “Moving Out of Your Sandbox” handout, at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Classroom_handout_-_moving_out_of_your_sandbox.pdf

You may also wish to consult, before the final deadline at the end of next week, the handout on “Polishing Your Article” at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polishing_your_articles.pdf Dwebsterbu (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2016 (UTC)