Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Holocaust/archive2

Holocaust
If the necessary improvements are made, could the objects become supports?

support good article, well written Ahadland 22:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: If this article is a good one, nominate it here. Only if the article is relatively excellent can it be an FA. Also: the lead is a bit long. This may or may not be good; I can't tell, for I have no time to look over it. -- Grace notes T  &#167; 23:09, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: I have read this article before, and I think it is very good (and it is already a GA). However, it does need more citations than it now has. One example: The mass killing was at its worst in Central and Eastern Europe, which had more than 7 million Jews in 1939; about 5 million Jews were killed there, including 3 million in occupied Poland and over 1 million in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands also died in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Without sources to support this paragraph (which I believe completely), I can see Holocaust deniers getting into an edit war to lower the figures or delete the paragraph. I noticed that several parqagraphs had no citations at all, and that there were citation tags in the text. I will read the article in more depth tomorrow (almost 1 am now) and see if I can offer any more suggestions. I'm also happy to help with copy editing and referencing, if the editors of this article would like. I certainly *want* to support this FAC. Jeffpw 23:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, the Holocaust was an important historical event which seems to have faded into little more than 1 or two history lessons in school. I think featuring it will help highlight the historical lessons that can be learned.Ahadland 00:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Object: Not ready for FA. I wouldn't even approve it as GA because it has a merge tag, inconsistent ref formatting, external jumps, and citation needed tags. I didn't get to reading it. It is also 110K long. Suggest consider splitting some off into sub articles. Lead is too long, it should summarize the article without going into lots of details. Rlevse 01:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Very reluctant Object: As per Rlevse. Because this article is so very long, it would be difficult to address all of the problems that need correcting while it is being discussed as a FAC. It is my understanding that at least one citation is needed per paragraph, and citations are mandatory for any assertion of fact that might be challenged. There are multiple paragraphs that are unsourced, and some of the prose needs copy editing badly (that paragraph about the baby springs immediately to mind. The subject is so powerful already that (IMO) a dispassionate tone is necessary so as not to appear overwrought.

I have no objections as to the length. This subject is so large in scale that a complete overview must by necessity be equally large. I repeat what I said yesterday. If you or other editors want my help, I am glad to give you a hand. Jeffpw 07:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I have posted your suggestions on the articles talk page, and have requested that the contributor's to the article will help to improve it so as to allow the article FA status. I'm going to request that a checklist be compiled, i.e. a list of tasks, which can be crossed after their completion. We will then ask you to re-assess the article and give us your thoughts then. Thank you, Ahadland 12:35, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Object - Size itself isn't exactly the issue, it's merely a symptom of the problem that the article needs to be written to more closely conform to Summary Style. Note that the text alone of this article is 89kb.  I'm not saying remove information from wikipedia, I'm just asking that the article be reorganized so that more of the text is located within sub-articles linked to from the main article, which should then summarize the information split off.  The "Perpetrators and collaborators" section wuld be a prime candidate for a sub article, as would "Historical and philosophical interpretations".  If these two sections alone were split off and summarized, I think it would do a lot for the article.  Of course, as above, there are also referencing issues to be considered before this can be featured. As a further issue, the "Holocaust denial" section probably shouldn't be listed under the "Why did people participate in, authorize, or tacitly accept the killing?" section. Fieari 04:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Object: While this article is well written, it is just too long. This article needs to be split into sub-articles in order for the information to be more organized. No one wants to read through 89kb of text to hear about the Halocaust. The WP:SIZE article specifically states that pages over 50kb should "Probably be divided". There are numerous reasons for this, they can all be found in the WP:SS page. Other than the very long size, I would say it is a great article.-Hairchrm 05:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * In fairness, the holocaust is a very long subject, with a broad history, which dates back to the roots of anti semitism, through to nineteen forty five, so given that, id say the article is reasonably sized —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.36.182.217 (talk • contribs)
 * But no one is arguing that we should cut down on our content related to the holocaust. The point people are trying to make here is that the main article should be fairly concise and should rely on sub-articles for extended discussions of various aspects. Pascal.Tesson 15:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Object on length considerations. The article is very nice in many many respects but the length issue also outlines the main problem: organization. Let me humbly suggest a few things that would help
 * spin off the list of collaborationist countries to another article. That's just too long an exposition and the article loses focus at that point. It would be much better to have an extended paragraph explaining that many countries collaborated to various degrees and with various degrees of awareness. Interested readers can be redirected to the specific article. This would cut 10-15 kb I think.
 * The functionalism vs intentionalism section could also be cut down in the same way, with a more concise discussion. However, this probably requires an update of Functionalism versus intentionalism which is not as good as the section in the main article.
 * I feel that the Jehovah's witness section gives undue weight to their persecution. Now before people start accusing me of being a heartless bastard, let me say that I in no way wish to minimize their plight, but they really were not that significant a group of victims. And the subsection seems to be out of place as it speaks of their persecution while the section is about resistance. My advice: remove the paragraph entirely, create (if it does not exist yet) a specific article for JW's persecution by the Nazis and link to it in the section Victims. (oh, nevermind, it is already!)
 * When subarticles exist, the content in the main article should be minimal so that the flow is not interrupted. For instance, the discussion of Mengele's experiments is too long and there is a lot of redundancy with that subsection and the first paragraph of the Cruelty section. In fact that whole section needs reorganizing as the first three paragraphs are redundant with what follows.
 * I'm surprised to see little or no mention of resistance besides that of the Jewish resistance. Did it really not exist? (It might, I'm just asking)
 * While I understand that Schindler's List and Life is Beautiful were very popular and had a lot of impact, wouldn't it be more appropriate to cite documentaries like Shoah (film)? To a certain extent it's weird to consider Lanzmann's work or for that matter the work of Primo Levi or even Maus as in the same category as fiction movies with the Holocaust as a background. Perhaps there should be two distinct subsections (or paragraphs) for fiction work inspired by and litterature and art that attempts to document the Holocaust.
 * I'm really not a big fan of section titles phrased as questions. It feels vaguely children's-book.
 * And finally, at the risk of sounding picky, I'd like to point out that the second half of the article could use a couple of pictures. I know we don't want such an article to look like a page of Wired magazine but still... Maybe a picture of Primo Levi or Antelme? Of (shudder...) Ernst Zündel or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Pascal.Tesson 15:48, 16 November 2006 (UTC)