User:Cullen328/sandbox/Sousa Mendes


 * No Wikipedia article is ever done, and even the best can be further improved. I have expressed my opinion several times that the article needs to cover his pre-war loss of consular assignments, his political views, his personal financial and marital problems, and any other controversial claims, in a balanced neutral way. It is a biography of his whole life. This should be done in a way similar to how such issues are addressed at Oskar Schindler. The problem that I am having is that  claims that these matters are discussed in reliable sources and you are telling me that the coverage is trivial. Is it true that Avraham Milgram, who is associated with Yad Vashem, is one of the best recent academic sources, and that many of his observations are no longer in the article? Who am I to trust? I made it clear from the beginning that I don't have deep knowledge of Portuguese politics and don't have access to the offline sources. I have to trust editors I am cooperating with to characterize the sources accurately and neutrally. And in all honesty, I fear that neither of you is neutral.

asked me, on my talk page, to take a look at this article. I believe that this is an important article, but I want to state that I have no expertise in Portuguese history and haven't read the source material. So my comments are based on questions and issues that jump out at me when reading this article as an experienced Wikipedia editor. These are my opinions, and I acknowledge in advance that I might be wrong about some of the points I make.

A disputed number of people rescued should not be listed in the infobox. Simply omit the number.

The lead section of the article should summarize the entire life of Aristides de Sousa Mendes. The current lead section devotes far too much attention to the dispute about the number of people rescued. That should be covered in the body of the article, and only briefly summarized in the lead. The lead says he "ignored and defied" the governments regulations. It should be one or the other. I think "defied" is more accurate.

The number rescued is described as "countless" although 30,000 is the high number, and that is a countable number. Perhaps something like "can't be accurately determined" would be better.

There is a problem with usage of evaluative, judgmental language in Wikipedia's voice that violates the neutral point of view. Examples include "frantically", "frenzy", "great fiasco", "fatal flaw of this biased list", "necessarily wary", "with great scandal", "provoking great scandals", and so on. Any such evaluations must be cited to a reliable source, and should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice.

The section called "Portugal and the refugee crisis - Circular 14" starts with a lengthy lecture in Wikipedia's voice about "stereotypes" regarding reader's possible assumptions about the nature of dictatorships. It is not our role as editors to guess what reader's stereotypes might possibly be, and lecture them to abandon such imagined stereotypes. All of this language should be removed entirely.

This is a biography of a person, Aristides de Sousa Mendes. It is not an article about Portugal's response to the refugee crisis of 1940. Of course, the person's life needs to be placed in context. But the information about Varian Fry's rescue efforts simply doesn't belong in this article. And any content not related to the life of Aristides de Sousa Mendes should be trimmed to an absolute minimum. Always keep in mind that this is a biography.

The statement about possible legal penalties commenting what they might be "if it were today" is not appropriate. We discuss things as they were at the time discussed in an article, not as they are in the present day.

There is a mention of "S. Francisco". Shouldn't this be "San Francisco"?

Every single quotation must be cited to a reliable source, immediately following the quotation. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Do not use exclamation points for emphasis. Quotes are the only exception.

Do not render "NAZI" in capital letters.

It is clear that much of the text has been written by editors who are not completely fluent in English. After substantive changes have been made, the article should be copy edited by a fluent English speaker. I am willing to assist with this if asked.

I hope that the comments I have made will be helpful to the editors involved.