Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Germany/Archive 17

WP:FAOL
For info...

The current DYK item List of deaths at the Berlin Wall was one of several translations inspired by German Featured Articles that don't exist at all in the English language version. All the rest are identified here: Featured articles in other languages/German. violet/riga [talk] 13:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Prussian reforms
Could I have some help translating this featured page from its French and German versions? Thanks. Neddyseagoon - talk 10:49, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you still on this? I can help with German to English translation.  Regards,  Peter S Strempel  &#124;  Talk  11:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

France invasion ?
Hi!

I'm wondering why I see the Project Germany settling into French territories articles: at least Alsace, Lorraine, Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Vosges are now scoped.

How far is it trying to go ? Papatt (talk) 23:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)


 * these areas are integral to German history as borders have significantly moved back and forth. It is quite common for more than on WP to have an interrest on such articles and does not need to be contrued as as a modern invasion. Agathoclea (talk) 05:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I can understand the interest on territories more or less included in such current administrative subdivisions, designated as such and object on international treaties (like Alsace-Lorraine) but I find at least clumsy that the Project Germany, which I think should cover more or less only current Germany, scopes French departments or, why not, current countries that were, once or for a while, part of any former German Reich.
 * Should the Project France scope Algeria or Cameroon as former French colonies or Saarland as a former French department ? I don't think so (but maybe I'm ill-minded).
 * I think the Project Germany has (or maybe not) enough subprojekts to show its interrest on such territories and keep its basic scope in a reasonable range. HTH, Papatt (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It is not up to us here to decide what is and what is not in scope for WP:FRA. On the other hand WP:GER can decide what is in scope for itself. If there is a specific article you feel that has been mistagged, feel free to mention it here. Agathoclea (talk) 18:59, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Disclaimer: I sometimes do tag articles when the obvious geographic WP is missing or mistagged but not because I want to impose my view, just to support them by adding the article to their workflow for further classification Agathoclea (talk) 14:42, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I notice that has been tagging or assessing quite a few articles lately. It looks as if he/she is working from an alphabetical list, so it might be based on categories or mentions of Germany in the articles. So I would suggest talking to Ekki01, as a matter of courtesy, before just removing the project banner. I think it's up to each project to decide which articles are within the scope of the project. Apart from the history, one reason for including some French border areas in this project would be that a German language (Alemannisch) is spoken there. --Boson (talk) 23:36, 10 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It is totally up to individual WikiProjects to decide the exact demarcations of their scope. If WikiProject France decided that all regions that were once covered by a Napoleonic state (e.g. most of Belgium and the Netherlands and parts of Germany) are in scope, I would be surprised if anyone complained. In fact, it seems a bit weird that even Mont-Tonnerre, an article on a former French département with capital Mainz, is tagged only by WikiProject Germany. Most likely this only reflects the fact that someone has been going around systematically searching for articles to tag for WikiProject Germany, and this has not happened (yet) w.r.t. WikiProject France. Or WikiProject France is using a narrower scope than whoever is doing the tagging for WikiProject Germany. One extreme case is WikiProject Mathematics, which leaves most mathematics articles intentionally untagged, restricting the tagging to rated articles only. I think the current tagging is going to far in the other direction, but I would be surprised if this was for political reasons, and I don't think seeing it from that angle is at all helpful.
 * I remember only one real conflict on project scoping on Wikipedia, and that was when articles about living people were tagged by WikiProject LGBT studies, not because they are gay (some of them are not), but because they are considered important to the project for other reasons such as notable anti-gay activism. Hans Adler 23:37, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I have indeed been assessing a number of articles. I have been using the non-assessed articles list from WPGermany project page as a base. I only ever tag articles for WPGer when they are without a doubt (in my opinion at least) within the project's scope. The ones in question were already tagged when I came across them. I do agree with Agathoclea in that those area's were an integral to German history. Whether modern administrative divisions are within the scope of WPGermany is indeed a matter of discussion (see Haut-Rhin where Papatt has already removed the tag). However, historical regions like Alsace etc. are in my opinion definitely within the scope of WPGer (tags removed as well) and should therefore be included.--Ekki01 (talk) 08:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Since the articles Alsace, Lorraine, Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Vosges all go into some detail about German history, culture and/or language (Haut-Rhin somewhat less so), I would propose retaining them within the scope of the project. Anybody disagree? --Boson (talk) 11:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * No, agreed. Perhaps it's an idea to inform our collegues from WPFrance of this in order to avoid any future discussions and irritations.--Ekki01 (talk) 15:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * A prior and explanatory notice should actually be less clumsy. But please examine this other solution: add these articles in a (new) appropriate category (to be) scoped by the Project Germany. That's why Mont-Tonnerre isn't directly linked to Project France. More explicit and more efficient, isn't it ? Papatt (talk) 14:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not think a category would do the trick as content categories cannot map the project. Often it is easy to to work down the catergories to tag the project, but that is not foolproof either(remember tons of WP:Spain articles when there was a tiny error in the category tree and the bot tagging blindly plowed on). Often it is a case by case decision. Some Brasilian footballer played one game for Bayern Munich. Should he be included? In the grand scheme of things I would not - but several members might think he is relevant to Germany. WP Brasil will not be unduly worried maybe even happy to have a few more editors watching over the article and removing the occational "poop" dropped off by some bored highschooler. Maybe projects differ - some prefer efficiancy others worry about content. :-) Agathoclea (talk) 14:42, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. I just saw this edit - due to that any proposed changes to the category would never by posted to WikiProject France/Article alerts while they would show on WikiProject Germany/Article alerts. Maybe you should go and read up a little on why projects where started in the first place (hint not to get likeminded people together but as a vehicle to ensure subject coverage and a reasonable standard of main topics) and the workflows involved. The tagging is no just about "this is our article", it is about workflows. Some look at high importance articles which are only stubs to improve. Articles tagged get watched by bots and project members are alerted. The WP1.0 uses the classification of the individual WPs to assess which articles are to be released in the DVD releases. (So an article in the scope of more than one project might actually be deemed more important overall) Agathoclea (talk) 20:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Please then consider both markings, one will be the explanation of the other. Papatt (talk) 07:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your last comment at all, but I have a vague feeling that maybe you still don't understand the following: WikiProject templates are not a sign of ownership, but serve three main functions: (1) They indicate which WikiProjects care about an article. E.g., when an article is at AfD or has other serious problems, notifying the WikiProjects that have templates on the talk page is a good way to inform editors who may be interested. (2) They are used for classifying articles in terms of quality and completeness. This is done on a per-project level because articles that are in the scope of several projects may be of uneven quality (e.g. an article on a medical controversy may omit vital medical, political or historical information while being complete in other respects). (3) There is infrastructure in place for supporting the WikiProject in taking care of articles, which requires the templates on the talk pages. E.g. at WP:FRANCE, see the boxes "Article Status" and "Article Alerts".
 * The tagging for WikiProject France seems to be incomplete. E.g., Category:Former departments of France in Germany and 9 of its 13 member pages are not currently tagged by WikiProject France. (Many are also not tagged by WikiProject Germany.) Presumably that's just an omission. I would consider the case of Lippe (department) to be the normal one. It is tagged by both WikiProject France and WikiProject Germany. But maybe WikiProject France doesn't want to tag such minor articles because they feel they don't have the resources to handle them and want to focus on the more important articles first. That's why it is traditionally left to project members to do the tagging. In any case, articles such as Roer (department) do not currently appear on the WP:FRANCE page under "Article Status" and "Article Alerts" and are not counted in the statistics. Hans Adler 08:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Schraplau is not in Ohio
I will be gone for today. Can someone look at Schraplau - see also this message. User insits on exchanging the infobox and argueing that in Ohio a settlement of 500 people is a city therefore Schraplau must be as well. Also introducing the term "lost home rule". In the process destroying auto-categories and autoupdates of population. Agathoclea (talk) 07:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * The user in question is a vandal who I actually spoke to on the phone quite some time ago. You can safely apply WP:RBI in this case. Saying anything more would out the user, so I will send you the supporting information by email. Hans Adler 14:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Interresting stuff. That also makes the modus operandi quite transparent. Agathoclea (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's a fascinating case. It's very rare that we get such excellent insight into the motivations for persistent vandalism. Hans Adler 22:09, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Red Link Recovery needs a German speaker
Howdy. I'm in the process of migrating the tools used by the Red Link Recovery project to other languages. These tools extract lists of red links from the Wikipedia databases and suggest alternate targets for them - for example it might suggest that a link to Björn_Melhus be changed to Bjørn_Melhus. As the German-language Wikipedia currently has no equivalent project (that I know of), I'm looking to recruit one or two Wikipedians of a generally gnomish nature with reasonable German-language skills and experience editing on the German-language Wikipedia to: All assistance much appreciated, - TB (talk) 17:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Spend an hour or two fixing red links on the German-language Wikipedia using the tool to ensure it works
 * 2) Assist in translating instructions for using the tool into German.
 * 3) Potentially setting up an Wikiproject on the German-language Wikipedia and/or finding some 'native' users there to continue the work.

Prussian King Frederick the Great's erotic poem, ITN nomination

 * I've nominated the recently re-discovered and published Frederick the Great's erotic poem to be featured in the news on the Main Page: In_the_news/Candidates. Could anyone help in updating Frederick the Great and creating the article on the poem, La Jouissance? Grey Hood   Talk  13:31, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Herdecke
There is a lot more information on my beloved hometown in the German wiki so I will start to (not literally of course) translate all the stuff that's in it and try to add more information than what's already there.

CaptainWorf (talk) 19:45, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Sebastian Strasser
Notification of a deletion discussion, Articles for deletion/Sebastian Strasser - which might benefit from input from German-speakers.  Chzz  ► 01:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

List of tunnels in Germany
Hi. I imported this but it needs some cleanup of some German text and formatting, Can somebody help?♦ Dr. Blofeld  11:42, 24 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It's looking better and more of the links now work. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:31, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

District titles
I know this has been mentioned before, but we still have Kreise articles and their categories variously named "FOO (district)", "FOO district" and "FOO District" (mainly on Austrian articles). Since, in German, the "FOO" and "District" are variably used inseparably as a proper name (not least to distinguish them from the actual town e.g. "Kreis Celle" and "Celle"), my suggestion is we settle on "FOO District" for consistency and accuracy. Views? --Bermicourt (talk) 17:35, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm happy with the current situation ("Foo" and "Foo (district)" for the ambiguous cases) for Germany. Markussep Talk 08:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

People categorised by district
In the wake of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern I started adapting the Category:People by district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to the current situation. As I was doing this, it struck me as rather silly to put someone like Frederick VII, Margrave of Baden-Durlach (born in Ueckermünde in 1647) in the Category:People from Vorpommern-Greifswald, since Vorpommern-Greifswald was only formed in 2011. Before, he was in the Category:People from Uecker-Randow, which is equally silly since this district existed only between 1994 and 2011.

I looked around for how it's done for other countries, and saw for the UK (e.g. Category:People by county in England) "This category groups English people by current ceremonial county. People from areas affected by boundary changes are categorised by the county at the time they were alive.". On the other hand a category like Category:People from the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola (Italy, province was created in 1996) also contains people who lived in the area in the 16th and 19th century. What should we do here? Markussep Talk 09:11, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Minister-president vs prime minister consistency (what to call a Ministerpräsident in English)
on manny different english wiki article german Ministerpräsidenten are called differently. it doesn't make any sence (to me but mayby i'm dunb) to call some Ministerpräsidenten minister-president and some prime minister or premier or govornor or what ever or lord of the land;). i don't really care which one it is but can't wiki be consistent consistency?10:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)85.195.69.112 (talk) 10:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be a confusion with many people over this. Because of this, I tend to use the direct translation of Ministerpräsident. Kingjeff (talk) 16:06, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Minister-president, while a direct translation, is not really an English word. The most literal translation that is an established English word is prime minister. I guess many people think this can't be the proper translation because in the other direction, the title Prime Minister in a UK context is translated as Premierminister. But it is actually quite a normal phenomenon that one language has a choice of two words where another language has only one, so this doesn't prove there is something wrong with the translation.
 * I have confirmed with the European Union's dictionary at http://iate.europa.eu/ that prime minister is in fact the European Union's preferred translation for Ministerpräsident. So this translation is definitely correct. I believe it is also the most common in English books and media, so I propose standardising on it. Hans Adler 16:22, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * See also the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Germany/Archive 14. --Boson (talk) 18:13, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Even in German they seem to be inexact words used to describe hard-to-describe situations. The British made a word "prime minister" over the centuries which seems to fit the bill. Otherwise I would called them what they usually were: interior ministers or police-rulers. Because they seem to usually be (in the Austrian Empire/Austria-Hungary) interior ministers, ie. the guy with responsibility for wielding the police power and compelling obedience to the state and church. But the person before me created the List of Ministers-President of Austria article with the names all very neat and orderly and I saw more important things to do than go there. (Like find the few Minister-Presidents of Austria that weren't Interior Ministers of Austria/Minister-Presidents of Austria, which I find more intriguing than the oddities of translation and new word formation in International Engliſh.) Int21h (talk) 16:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This is not a new discussion. See Ministerpräsident where one of the polls gave the following scores for usage:


 * Prime Minister (523)
 * Minister-President (506)
 * Governor (162)
 * Premier (146)


 * So the most common English terms are "Prime Minister" and "Minister-President" with almost nothing to choose between them. Official websites of the states are also divided between these two terms. I would say either is acceptable. A minor argument in favour of the latter is that "Prime Minister" is normally thought of as a national head of state; "Minister-President" is only used for states of Germany. Both terms however have their staunch supporters on Wikipedia. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:40, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I suppose you are right. But the question to me is whether the correct German word is even Ministerpräsident. An interior minister which was president of a council (committee in American English) of legislators is not really the same thing. Int21h (talk) 07:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * "Minister-President" is only used for states of Germany" - en.wiki uses min-pres for Belgion regions and communities, too see Minister-President; but the question was not what should be used, but rather whether wiki should be consistent or if eberybody should just do what ever they want that_consistency_guy08:16, 5 November 2011 (UTC)46.5.184.243 (talk)


 * Just to clarify a few things, "Ministerpräsident" is the correct term for all executive heads of area states ("Flächenländer") in Germany - that is the leaders of each separate state government. Leaders of city states use varieties of "Mayor" (First Mayor, Governing Mayor, ...), though technically they fill in a similar function as a minister-president (when all 16 heads of states are mentioned in the news, they are usually just called "Ministerpräsidenten" or "Ministerpräsidenten der Länder" together). A "Ministerpräsident" in Germany today has nothing to do with a "minister of interior", he/she is the head of all ministers of one state. I would use "Minister-President" to avoid confusion with the Prime Minister in other countries. GermanJoe (talk) 10:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Following discussions elsewhere- I am keen to establish a norm that can be traced back to today's most authorative source. To me, that must always be the EU commission and the EU Manual of Style. The technique of polling 'what editors have used in the past' appears deeply flawed compared with establishing what the most reliable source actually is. If we can establish a definition of EU English- that is the national English of each of our states we will avoid hours of time wasting explanations to editors who edit in other dialects. Lets call that the political route. The only other way forward is the acadedic route and to decide on the most reliable pubished source- and we can see the dangers of that when we use a book that another editor hasn't heard of.--ClemRutter (talk) 10:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * A few points:
 * The above survey, showing a 0.2% preference for "prime minister", was based on Google Scholar, while a survey based on Google books since 1950 shows a 3.6% preference for minister president".
 * In addition, it is possible that the term sometimes refers to a different position in former independent states (e.g. Bavaria), which is why I selected books at least published after 1949.
 * While IATE gives "prime minister" (with minimum reliability), the Terminological Service of the German Foreign Office (which I would regard as authoritative for foreign language names of German institutions) gives "Minister President".
 * As far as I can tell, the English Style Guide of the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission is silent on the matter, as is the Interinstitutional Style Guide.
 * So it's six and a bit of one and amost half a dozen of the other.
 * Establishing consistency would probably mean checking a couple of hundred articles and 14 categories.
 * I believe the majority of articles currently use "minister president", but I haven't checked thoroughly.
 * The categories should probably be changed to something like "heads of state governments", anyway since the top category also include the states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg – which have mayors (or similar). One would also need to check categorization of people serving in former independent states of the same name (e.g. Bavaria).
 * For German institutions, as a general rule I would follow the translations given in the book German Institutions, by the Terminological Service of the German Foreign Office—except where that would be clearly against Wikipedia naming conventions.
 * English "reliable sources" may prefer "prime minister" for Lower Saxony" and "minister president" for Saxony-Anhalt, which presents a general problem when interpreting Naming conventions (use English). Any attempt to be consistent may meet opposition at specific articles. A similar problem of consistency vs English reliable sources arises with the use of diacritics: a German person who is mainly talked about in the sporting press may be usually written without diacritics, but a notable politician of the same name, who is talked about in the quality press, may usually be written with diacritics.
 * --Boson (talk) 12:27, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * "Minister President" is both accurate and unconfusable (to coin a new word). It's down side is that most people don't know what it is. "Prime Minister" is a well known term, but normally only for the head of a national government, so people are likely to get confused and start wondering whether e.g. Saxony has just declared UDI. Both are better than the other terms occasionally used. Why don't we just ensure for now that only these 2 terms are used and no others. That will at least reduce the confusion until the EU makes a ruling! --Bermicourt (talk) 17:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Germany is a federation, and the heads of governments of the German states aren't actually so different from heads of governments of sovereign states. (The states would have been sovereign before the federation, had they not been under Allied control, and their predecessors were sovereign before the Reich was founded.) Hans Adler 18:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I would agree Boson's statement: The German Federeal Foreign Office translates "Ministerpräsident" as "Minister President". I am of the opinion that this should be regarded as the official translation, which is designated by the German government. Easymichi (talk) 18:41, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

German speaker help need on several castle articles
Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Poland. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 19:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Need some opinions regarding anti-Nazi bias of article on Jud Süß (1940 film)
I have been working on Jud Süß (1940 film) and have nominated for good article status. The reviewer has made some minor comments about images and also called into question what he calls "a slight bend towards excessive anti-Nazi feelings".

While we may not be able to do much, the article seems to have a slight bend towards excessive anti-Nazi feelings. While such feelings are justified in life, Wikipedia is strictly neutral. Hence, this is a problem.

I have been aware of this issue while I was working on the article but I figured I'd wait and see what other editors thought and use their feedback as a guide. I would appreciate other people taking a look at this article and providing input as to whether there is a problem to be fixed here and, if so, some ideas as to how to address the issues.

Any other suggestions for improving the article would also be welcomed. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:12, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

RFC ar Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)
There has been a brewing issue at WP:RM over WP:HOCKEY recommendations and how they should be applied over WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE. Basically the hockey recommendation is that Diacritics shall be applied to all player pages, where appropriate as for the languages of the nationalities of the players in question. This is in fact a mandate that does not allow consideration of any other policy on naming. I think we need to resolve the issue of which naming convention we use for ice hockey players. Is it the one for the names of everyone else based on existing policy and guidelines, or do we have a blanket exception for one project? Please go to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English) per Vegaswikian (talk) 00:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Mass page move request
A mass nomination to move articles about sportsmen has been filed at Talk:Dominik_Halmosi -- Ohconfucius  ¡digame! 03:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Bosphorus serial murders
I propose this article be improved to featured quality before a trial starts in both German and English edition of wikipedia. -- A Certain White Cat chi? 21:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Panzerschreck
WikiProject Germany,

Article: Panzerschreck.

Could someone assess the above article and "B class" so it is one less article for us to worry about. It would certainly be appreciated if someone could take the time to do it. Everything is set up for assessment. Adamdaley (talk) 11:31, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

31st Infantry Division (Germany)
WikiProject Germany,

Article: 31st Infantry Division (Germany)

Would someone be able to assess the Importance and "B class" criteria for the above article. It would be appreciated if someone take some time to assess it. "B class" criteria has been put there so it just needs to be assessed. A quick job for you. Adamdaley (talk) 01:24, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

A recipient of a medal from Germany (for his actions under gunfire in Norway in 2011)
Marcel Gleffe has an article on Wikipedia in German. (He is a private citizen who was directed by non-German police officers (in bulletproof vests) to rescue civillians who were having small arms fire directed at them.)

If someone wants to write a stub, then I will try to help to translate references that are in Norwegian.

I have yet to determine if the references indicate, if Gleffe had been loaned (or was wearing) a bulletproof vest, while the police officers were overwhelmed or experiencing symptoms of panic.

The medal that he was awarded from Germany — does that alone make him notable? Has he received any medal or orders from Norway's Government yet? --62.92.144.15 (talk) 14:16, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems notable enough to me, given the number of sources and the fact that he was awarded the Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse. You yourself can actually create an account and write this article, Wikipedia is always in need for new editors. If this does not take your fancy but you would like an article created, you may have to ask somebody to create it for you and then you can edit it. As a third alternative, use my sandbox, User:Calistemon/Sandbox‎, create it there and I will move it for you once you consider it ready. Sorry that I can't help you more but its 11 pm now where I'm and I'm going to bed. Calistemon (talk) 14:49, 18 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The discussion has to be moved to the deletion discussion of the article, at Talk:Marcel_Gleffe.--155.55.60.112 (talk) 09:54, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

RfD regarding a German newspaper
, the title of a German (regional or local) newspaper, currently redirects to Lüdenscheid, a city. At Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 November 21 it has been proposed that the redirect be retargetted to Lüdenscheider Nachrichten, the title of an apparently related newspaper. However the proposed target reads like a very bad machine translation from German and I'm not entirely certain I've understood the situation correctly. The input from members of this project in the RfD discussion would be most welcome. Thryduulf (talk) 18:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * A lot of trouble for a small newspaper with print run of 3000. Lüdenscheider Nachrichten is a reasonable redirect target. It's a bigger newspaper that appears with the same publisher (that doesn't have an article, not even a German one), and there are various cooperations between the publisher's papers. Hans Adler 20:31, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 12:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

mischlingskinder
I found a CNN article about "mischlingskinder" WhisperToMe (talk) 14:34, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * "'Brown babies' long search for family, identity." CNN. November 20, 2011.
 * It stated that many African American magazines like Jet and Ebony talked about the kids.


 * There is an extremely detailed German article about this fascinating topic here in a left-wing Swiss newspaper. (In case it becomes inaccessible -- I have downloaded it.) E.g., in 1952 the German Bundestag debated what to do with these children. A member for the Christian Democrats suggested that taking them to America would be beneficial because, supposedly, the German climate would not suit them. (I really hope that what the journalist wrote about that debate was a bit one-sided...) Hans Adler 15:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Turns out the German Wikipedia has an article, but under the name "de:Brown Babies" WhisperToMe (talk) 15:31, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Good find. It was created in September, by the way. Hans Adler 15:45, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I just started the stub on EN WhisperToMe (talk) 21:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Watchlisted. We have 5 days to make something reasonable out of it and nominate it at WP:DYK. Hans Adler 22:10, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool! I added some more information that might qualify for DYK. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Cascada
The article Cascada gets over 2000 pageviews a day, but has a Refimprove tag. Personlly I see a lot of references so we might be able to remove the tag and even upgrade the rating. A few more eyes would be of benefit. Agathoclea (talk) 21:20, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea who this is, but it would appear the article is well cited, with only one or two "citation needed" tags. Most articles need more citations, really, but most articles don't really need the "refimprove" tag. It just makes it look bad; it should be reserved for egregious cases. I will support any action to remove the "refimprove" tag in the article's current state. Int21h (talk) 08:25, 31 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I have added 1 reference. I think we probably need citations for evaluative statements like " are widely considered one of the leaders in popularising euro-dance music in America and in recent years worldwide, aiding in the transition to a more electro-pop oriented mainstream sound". The article could also do with some copy-editing. --Boson (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as I'm concerned, those statements are so subjective to the point of being POV. "Widely considered" and "popularising" shout "says who?", and "transition ... to a ... sound" sounds like a TV ad. Int21h (talk) 02:07, 1 August 2011 (UTC)


 * One more reference down!Jonathan is me (talk) 22:16, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Frankfurt and Berlin U-Bahn, Berlin S-Bahn
'''This is something that I REALLY need help with. PLEASE, help me on translating these articles'''
 * Berlin U-Bahn
 * Berlin S-Bahn This especially needs work on the history
 * Frankfurt U-Bahn THIS NEEDS LOTS OF WORK. THE ENGLISH ARTICLE IS TINY WHILE THE GERMAN ONE IS HUGE

Please list your name in alphabetical order here if you can help me
 * 1) Jonathan is me

I will be happy to answer and questions. Just post something on my talk page.

Look for more posts from me on articles that need to be improved. Sorry I have to ask for your help, it's just I'm very busy.Jonathan is me (talk) 22:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Tannenberg Memorial
Some work has been done on the Tannenberg_Memorial page to raise it above stub class. Would someone be kind enough to review it please? SonofSetanta (talk) 11:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. My thanks to Boson. SonofSetanta (talk) 16:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Weingut I
Hi, I just wondered if anyone would like to look over this article for me. I'm about to take it to DYK and it's the first time I've written anything about something like this. Specifically- the German WP article on which it's partly based has geographic coordinates, but they evidently use a different template as copying and pasting it did not work. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,  Litho  derm  19:59, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've found one Koordinate in de and pasted into http://tools.freeside.sk/geolocator/geolocator.html and it gave a range of valid en paste ups- is that what you wanted. --ClemRutter (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you! I also wanted to know if anyone had input on the article, in general. Cheers,  Litho  derm  22:42, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

New state portals
I have added two new state portals recently: Portal:Berlin and Portal:Thuringia. There's still a bit of refinement to do, but they are basically up and running. Please feel free to enhance them and add relevant new articles. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:07, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is on the way now too... --Bermicourt (talk) 20:22, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

ADB listings
User:Magnus Manske has extracted a list of biographies in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, and I've just posted them (see Category:Missing encyclopedic articles (Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie)). This all comes from the German Wikisource. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:07, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Looks like we are pretty complete. Of course there are still quite a few missing, but those I have checked are all very obscure. In two cases ADB actually just has a pointer to an article on the husband or father. Hans Adler 22:41, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * As Charles Matthews has reminded me on my talk page, it was a bad idea to start looking at the beginning. Further down our coverage becomes much less complete. Hans Adler 11:21, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

More questions on translating from the German Wikipedia
The German Wikipedia article on Eugen Klöpfer says he went to Lateinschule in Lauffen am Neckar and then to Karlsgymnasium in Heilbronn. Although the German Wikipedia has articles on these schoold, we have no article in the English Wikipedia on either Hölderlin-Gymnasium Lauffen am Neckar or Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Heilbronn although we do have images of these schools. Any thoughts on whether we should have articles on these schools? It should be easy to translate the articles. My concern is whether the schools are "notable" enough for inclusion in the English Wikipedia.

Also, Google Translate yields "Charles High School" as the translation for "Karlsgymnasium". I scratched my head on that one before going back to the German original and figuring out what had happened. It seems to me that the English Wikipedia article should use "Karlsgymnasium" instead of massacring it with a translation like "Charles High School".

But what about "Lateinschule"? Google Translate yields "Latin School" which seems like it could be preferable to "Lateinschule". Or should I use "Lateinschule (Latin School)" thus providing both the original German and the English translation?

And how should I translate "Realschule"?

Thanx.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 22:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Translation is an art, not a science, so there is no perfect answer. We need to recognise that most readers of English Wikipedia will not understand German and we need to ensure what we write is understandable, however we also want to be accurate, especially with proper names.
 * You can translate Realschule as "middle school" and Gymnasium as "grammar school" (Am: "high school"). A Lateinschule is also a historical term for a "grammar school" (I have checked all these translations in Langenscheidt's largest dictionary, the Muret-Sanders). So Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Heilbronn could be rendered as the "Theodor Heuss Grammar School in Heilbronn". If it has its own article, just link it. If not, it may be best to add the German name in brackets, so when the article is subsequently created, an editor will be certain which school you mean. Leaving it in German will be particularly confusing as the Gymnasium has a different meaning in English! Where you have compound names like Karlsgymnasium, there is a choice: you can either split it - "Karl Grammar School" - leaving the proper name alone, but it looks odd and some editors will not like it! Alternatively, leave it intact and add a descriptor for clarity - "the Karlsgymnasium grammar school" - it's a tautology I know, but helps the reader. In the former case I would definitely add the German name in brackets for clarity.
 * You will find some editors prefer to leave all proper names in German, but the danger there, as stated, is confusing our readers when we are meant to be enlightening them. There is a translation convention here, but it doesn't yet cover schools. I may enhance it in future by the covering translation of typical school types. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I would disagree. The Gymnasium and Realschule are quite different from high schools and middle schools, and translating them directly is misleading, if not downright inaccurate. As a matter of fact, there is no need to translate them, as we have English language articles for both Realschule and Gymnasium. If the reader is uncertain as to the nature of the school, they can follow the link. For compound names you can just do things like this: Karlsgymnasium or Karlsgymnasium, preserving the compound word while linking to the relevant page.


 * As for the notability of the two schools, I wouldn't be concerned. We aren't the (notoriously exclusionistic) German Wikipedia, after all. If the German language articles have enough citations to prove their notability, I would consider them encyclopedic. Here they are for reference: Hölderlin-Gymnasium Lauffen am Neckar and Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Heilbronn. They each have about half a dozen citations each, so I don't see a problem there. Good luck on your project. Cheers,  Litho  derm  08:07, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree with Lithoderm. I think that context, capitalization, and proper wikilinks will help any reader avoid confusing, e.g., a Gymnasium with a gymnasium. Sindinero (talk) 08:45, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The German Wikipedia isn't that deletionist. It does not try to deduce notability axiomatically from something like WP:GNG, but instead comes up with specific notability rules for various topics. These are modeled after what you would traditionally expect to see in an encyclopedia, updated for the internet age. For example, they cover some open source software that is obviously notable in the normal sense of the word but has been deleted here due to a lack of secondary sources. Hans Adler 09:14, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * As Bermicourt says, some editors prefer to leave proper names in German as they are. I am one of them. Atrocities like "Karls Grammar School" are one reason. (The s in Karls is merely phonetic. In English it looks as if the school were named after more than one Karl.) Once we are dealing with names of this type by unobtrusively explaining the untranslated name, we should really treat most other names the same way for consistency. Grammar school is a reasonable fit as a translation for Gymnasium, but the closest American English equivalent, high school, isn't. Whatever Langenscheidt says. Using that in a translation would be lying. And frankly, I have seen untranslated German and French names of schools so often in English texts that I think the more common words for foreign school types are close to the status of loanwords anyway. Gymnasium in the German sense definitely has that status. Hans Adler 09:14, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes - you do have to watch the -s- or -n- used in compound words to link the two halves. But we need to be careful not to be dogmatic - there's often more than one way to approach this and different editors and sources do it differently. As I suggested at the outset - translation is more art that science and you will find there is often little consistency in whether these names are translated or not. Compound nouns raise the most objections because we don't like seeing the original word split up (myself included), but sometimes it makes better sense to do so. However if you do translate a proper name, it's sensible to include the original German in brackets. Then there's no confusion and everyone should be happy - the meaning is clear and the original is clear. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:23, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with Hans Adler. I would add that Karlsgymnasium should be explained somewhere fairly early after its first mention in the article on the school, so that the English reader is aware that the school is named after Charles I of Württemberg and that Karl is the German equivalent of Charles (with respect to kings). I would also tend to interpret Wikipedia rules on linking liberally when linking to Gymnasium (Germany) and try to ensure that the context makes it clear that we are are talking about a school, not a gymnasium.--Boson (talk) 12:30, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Good point, Boson. As a general rule, if we don't provide an explanation of terms like Gymnasium, we certainly need to link them, so the non-German speaker can find out what the heck we're talking about! What we mustn't do is leave foreign terms and proper names unlinked or unexplained unless they're in an English dictionary, i.e. are commonly known (e.g. Third Reich, Kaiser, Bayern Munich, Nuremberg - and notice a tendency for half-translations!). --Bermicourt (talk) 19:17, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Gottbegnadeten-Liste
My queries arise from trying to translate this text from the German Wikipedia article on Eugen Klöpfer:

In der Endphase des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurde er im August 1944 von Adolf Hitler in die Gottbegnadeten-Liste der wichtigsten Künstler aufgenommen, was ihn von einem Kriegseinsatz, auch an der „Heimatfront“ befreite.

I translated the above as:

In August 1944, Klöpfer was added by Adolf Hitler to the Gottbegnadeten-Liste, a list of important German artists, making him a Kriegseinsatz (a military asset), and thus exempt from the exigencies of the Heimatfront (the Home Front).

First of all, is the translation of "Kriegseinsatz" as "military asset" adequate? I also thought of writing "war asset".

My main question is about the Heimatfront and what it means to be exempted from it. I looked at the German Wikipedia article on Heimatfront but couldn't really find anything to answer my question. I assume that being on the Gottbegnadeten-Liste granted an artist all sorts of privileges such as not being subject to conscription, better rations, exemption from curfews, etc. But these are just assumptions, I haven't been able to document this from a reliable source. (well, except for one source who says that Werner Egk used his inclusion on the list to be exempted from the Volkssturm here).

Should we have an article on the English Wikipedia covering the German Heimatfront that covers the same material as the German Wikipedia article Heimatfront. (NB: there is an article on the English Wikipedia titled Home Front but this is not focused on the German version of the term)

If there is an appropriate task group either in WP:GERMANY or WP:MILHIST that I should consult, please let me know.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know where Google Translate got "military asset" from. Kriegseinsatz = war deployment. Home front meant that those who didn't serve in the military were obliged to contribute to the war effort in other ways. Many artists were forced to work in factories.
 * He was one of the 1,041 artists who were exempt from war deployment including on the home front, in the sense that they only had to cooperate in certain propaganda or troop entertainment efforts. Google got this sentence totally wrong. Hans Adler 18:42, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Nope, the blame for that particular incorrect translation is mine not Google Translate.


 * Google Translate yielded:
 * In the final phase of the Second World War he was in August 1944 by Adolf Hitler in the God-gifted list included the most important artists, making him a war effort, even at the " home front liberated ".


 * I didn't understand what was being said and interpolated my own thoughts. Good thing I checked.  Thanks for correcting me and educating me as to why deployment made sense in this context.


 * Actually, as I re-read the German sentence, isn't "was ihn von einem Kriegseinsatz, auch an der „Heimatfront“ befreite." actually saying "which exempted him from "war deployment (e.g. conscription)" and "from the (deployment on the) Homefront" (e.g. as part of the Volkssturm?


 * My command of German is really quite weak and it takes me several tries to understand something and many times I fail altogether. Sorry.
 * Here's my current attempt at translating the sentence in question:


 * In August 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, Klöpfer was added by Adolf Hitler to the Gottbegnadeten-Liste, a list of important German artists, exempting him from conscription and deployment to the front as well as from the HeimatFront (the Home front).

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 18:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I would say something like "which exempted him from military service, including service on the home front" --Bermicourt (talk) 19:09, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks. works for me. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Two new articles on schools (Gymnasium)
I have created two new articles: Hölderlin-Gymnasium Lauffen am Neckar and Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium Heilbronn. These are just stubs as my meager knowledge of German isn't up to the task of translating the entire articles from the German Wikipedia. If anyone can help with those translations, it would be much appreciated.--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

New articles related to German cinema of the 1930s
Over the last month, I have created a number of new articles based on (admittedly wretched) translations of the German Wikipedia articles. I would like to enlist the help of those with a better command of German than mine to improve these articles related to German cinema of the 1930s.
 * Terra Film
 * Malte Jaeger
 * Peter Paul Brauer
 * Eugen Klöpfer
 * Otto Lehman (movie producer)
 * Albert Florath
 * Hilde von Stolz
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation

Any help in improving the translation or expanding the article would be much appreciated.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 23:05, 4 December 2011 (UTC) Just created Emil Heß as a stub. Any help in translating more of the German Wikipedia article Emil Heß would be much appreciated. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 04:12, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You should really compare the Google 'translations' to the original before saving, or before putting something in article space. The first article I looked at, Malte Jaeger, started by giving his name as "Frederick Richard Jaeger", which is totally wrong according to the German Wikipedia, which gives it as "Malte Richard Friedrich Jaeger". Google Translate has a corpus of bilingual texts from which it tries to guess what the translations of certain common words are. If it sees many pairs "Friedrich der Große"/"Frederick the Great", it will be misled into translating "Friedrich" by "Frederick" even in other contexts. In this case it was even worse as the names were also permuted and the most important one was lost altogether. If you don't notice this yourself, you are working too fast. Hans Adler 12:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Re "working too fast" - yes, you're right. Thanks for fixing that.  It was almost as embarassing as allowing the translations of "Karl => Charles" and "Karoline => Caroline" in the article on Eugen Klöpfer.  Thanks for catching that one also.


 * I confess to having allowed a lot of Google Translate atrocities to remain in Wikipedia articles on the assumption that someone would come along and fix it eventually. I am starting to reconsider that approach. I plan to review my recent work and plan to userfy some of my work if the text is too atrocious.  I encourage you to be bold and move any truly horrible articles into my userspace.


 * --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You may be interested in Google Translator Toolkit. It gives you an automatic Google translation and then presents you sentence by sentence for manual fixing. Hans Adler 12:44, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * OK.. thanx. I'll give it a try. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Style question
After reading the advice given to me above, I have come to the conclusion that it is a disservice to the reader to attempt translations of Realschule, Lateinschule and Gymnasium and I believe it is better to just use those words in English Wikipedia articles although I put "(Latin school)" after Lateinschule and, of course, I wikilink all three words to their English Wikipedia articles. Here's my style question:

How should the words Realschule, Lateinschule and Gymnasium be presented in the English Wikipedia? Should they be italicized, put in quotes or just left in normal typeface? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think italics is best, normal typeface is acceptable, but quotation marks would be a bit unprofessional. Personally I would preserve the German capitalisation, especially when using italics. Hans Adler 18:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Great. That's what I thought, too.  I especially couldn't imagine using lowercase for words like "gymnasium" as that would suggest the English meaning rather than the German meaning. Thanx again for your prompt and helpful response. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 04:03, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The German meaning has made it into dictionaries, so in that case you have a choice between "Gymnasium" and "gymnasium", although I agree that the former will be easier for most readers as the German meaning is still very obscure in English. Hans Adler 10:58, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The Wiki convention on italicising foreign words is as follows (see MOS:Ety):
 * "Wikipedia prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have everyday use in non-specialised English. Use the native spellings if they use the Latin alphabet (with or without diacritics)—otherwise Anglicise their spelling. For example: "Gustav I of Sweden liked to breakfast on crisp bread (knäckebröd) open sandwiches with toppings such as messmör (butter made from goat's milk), ham (skinka), vegetables (grönsaker) like tomatoes (tomat) or cucumber (gurka)." In accordance with the guide to writing better Wikipedia articles, use foreign words sparingly." --Bermicourt (talk) 14:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. Lateinschule does not mean "Latin School" - that is a literal translation. It was actually the historic equivalent of a grammar school, where of course Latin would be taught. Also the only word of the three that has made it into the latest Oxford Dictionary of English (the biggest single-volume English dictionary) is Gymnasium, so Realschule and Lateinschule at least ought to be translated; even Gymnasium will risk confusion with a sports hall. Tread carefully and bear the reader in mind. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Emil Heß
I'm planning to create an article on Emil Heß but I notice that the German Wikipedia article on Rudolf Heß spells the last name "Heß" but the English Wikipedia article has it at Rudolf Hess. I'm inclined to put my article at Emil Hess on the grounds that English speakers understand umlauts better than they understand what "ß" means. However, I wanted to check and see what other editors thought first. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 03:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * See above under . Both versions are acceptable. Since Emil Heß appears completely unrelated to Rudolf Heß, there is no need between the two articles. Sooner or later we will have to make a global decision one way or another. Personally I think both options are fine. It's more consistent to preserve the ß, but on the other hand the letter is being sort of phased out in German (the big orthography reform has replaced it by ss after short vowels, its most common position, and thereby reduced its frequency dramatically) and doesn't even exist in standard Swiss German orthography. Hans Adler 10:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think part of the difference is also the amount of exposure the subject has received in English-language literature. Much has been written about Rudolf Hess in English, so many reliable sources will give his name with the double s. I was going to advise you to use Template:Foreign character— as is used, for example, in Joseph Weiß; but it seems some overzealous group wants to delete it...  Litho  derm  18:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Potentially malicious acts at Wilhelm Busch (pastor)
I'd like to ask for 3rd party opinion, in the article on Wilhelm Busch (pastor) there been performed deletions that I personally regard for strange. The claim is that edits are removed because "material not relevant to articles subject. (TW)" but I regard the text for absolutely OK as it correctly states from sourced information that pastor Busch influenced Ulrich Parzany, who continued after Billy Graham in ProChrist evangelic international campaigns. Moreover, the book by Busch has been removed from article sections dedicated to Bibliography (* ) under the same flag which sounds absolutely irrational to me. Please advise. Thanx --Stephfo (talk) 17:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to agree. The material seems entirely relevant - i.e. it's about the article's subject. Also I don't buy the tag about long quotations. It's difficult to see how they could be "shortened" without losing the essence and, as long as they're correctly quoted, fine. But check out the editor - he's says he's anti-religion, so no surprise his edits about a pastor are not particularly helpful! But how do we achieve balance without an edit war? --Bermicourt (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The book definitely belongs in the article. I can't judge whether the Parzany mention is OK. That depends on their relative importance. Often it is not fair to a subject that someone else felt influenced by the subject. Hans Adler 18:07, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Description of events between 1945 and 1991 question.
Which of these is correct for wikipedia (in display, I'm ignoring links for now)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs) 16:15, 11 December 2011‎
 * The 1971 world tiger riding championship occured in Heidelberg, Germany.
 * The 1971 world tiger riding championship occured in Heidelberg, West Germany.


 * The latter. East and West Germany were definitely different countries at the time. However, the relevant period doesn't quite start in 1945. For the earliest years you would have to say something like "X-occupied zone of Germany", with X being the appropriate Allied country. Hans Adler 17:59, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. The article in question that I was considering changing was 28th World Science Fiction Convention, I'll change it now. I should have used 1950 as my dividing line. And Bizone and Trizone make it even more fun...Naraht (talk) 14:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * West Germany, or Federal Republic of Germany, is the correct way. But where is the 1971 world tiger riding championship article? I was really looking forward to it! Calistemon (talk) 14:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably somewhere in Category:World of Warcraft.

Translation of Bezirk and Kreis
I noticed that both Bezirk and Kreis are translated as District here on Wikipedia. That seems confusing to me. It also makes little sense when, in Bavaria for example, the Bezirk Schwaben (District Swabia) is administratively set above the Landkreis Augsburg (District Augsburg). While this is very clear in German in the English translation it makes not much sense. How would you distinguish? Calistemon (talk) 11:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Generally we translate the Regierungsbezirke like Schwaben as "(administrative) regions", see for instance Tübingen (region). I did see some instances where "district" is used, e.g. the Regierungsbezirk article itself. Bezirk may also refer to a subdivision of a city, e.g. Hamburg-Mitte and Spandau. I see these are both translated as "borough". "district" is generally used for the Kreise. See also WikiProject Germany/Conventions. Markussep Talk 12:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Handy page you pointed me to! Calistemon (talk) 12:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Krampus!
(cross-posted at Wikiproject Austria) Hello German friends. I'm trying to prepare an article for Did You Know's Christmas article set. Krampus was a stub, so I'm starting a little (hopefully 5X) expansion. Posting here to ask for more eyes on the new material: I wasn't aware of Krampus until two weeks ago, so I'm working from scratch on this topic. Any fact-checking/revisions would be appreciated. I'm also working with only English sources, which are a bit thin. In the spirit of season, I humbly request some help with some good German references, or pointers in the right direction, and ideas for expansion (or expansion by your wonderful selves). I still need to add at least 3 or 400 words to get it up to the DYK requirements. Krampus will throw you in his washtub if you don't oblige ;) (Note: this editor not responsible for the "in popular culture" section (grimaces))  The Interior  (Talk) 05:25, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Krampus at de.wikipedia The Interior  (Talk) 05:27, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

A dilemma
I've got a little dilemma with a Germany-related article: I've created Kama tank school today. Shortly after moving it into mainspace I came accross the Panzertruppenschule Kama article. Its the same subject just with a German article name, back from 2005. My initial instinct was to propose a merge but the content of the article was completly unreferenced and actually had a maintenance template requesting that references should be added, dated 2009. Also, the sources I provided for the new article do not confirm the facts that differ between the odl and new one. So I made it a redirect, for now. What to do? Request a history merge? I'm not sure! Calistemon (talk) 11:44, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Need help with umlauts in article titles
I confess my knowledge of the German language is quite rudimentary so maybe there is a simple explanation to dispel my confusion. I've been bringing over articles from the German Wikipedia by running the text through Google Translate (yes, I know, it yields really yucky translations from German) and then doing my best to clean it up.

However, I'm a bit confused about the use of umlauts, especially in article titles and people's names. For example, I brought over an article on Eugen Klöpfer from the German Wikipedia and kept the umlaut over the "o" in the English Wikipedia. However, the article in the German Wikipedia on Malte Jaeger has no umlaut over the "a" even though I have seen this name spelled as "Malte Jäger" in sources. I know the two spellings are basically equivalent so what I really want to know is which is preferred for the English Wikipedia? Should I create the article in the English Wikipedia as Malte Jaeger or Malte Jäger?

For that matter, I'm struggling with the spelling of Suess in "Jud Süß" which is spelled "Süß", "Süss" and "Suess" in different sources. German sources tend to prefer "Süß" and English sources generally use "Süss". Most English sources refer to the German film as "Jud Süß" and the British film as "Jew Süss" so I refer to the title role of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer as Süß rather than Süss in the article on Jud Süß (1940 film).

And, as long as we're on the topic, I refer to him as Süß and not Oppenheimer. Any thoughts on whether that's appropriate?

Finally, Werner Krauss seems to be uniformly referred to as "Krauss" and never as Krauß. In fact, I've never seen Krauss spelled with a "ß". It's been 35 years since I studied German in college. Is there something about when to use "ss" and "ß" that I've forgotten? Thanks for any help you can give me. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 18:58, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * As general background information, there are four levels of support for the four special German letters: Full support (ÄÖÜäöüß all available), umlauts only (ÄÖÜäöü available but not ß – example: Britannica appears to use this style), small umlauts only (äöü available but not ÄÖÜß – example: Swiss typewriters), none at all (e.g. ASCII). While there is only one way of replacing an umlaut, there are two options for ß: normally ss is used, but when it's important that the original spelling can be recovered, sz is used. (Because sz is much rarer than ss in German and is usually distinguishable from ß.)
 * In former times, spelling was less standardised and some people deliberately spelled their names with ae rather than ä, etc., e.g. to turn the extremely common name Müller into the slightly less common name Mueller. Many such as Goethe spelled their name sometimes one way and sometimes the other. Nowadays there is a standard spelling for everybody.
 * de:Malte Jaeger: As the first sentence of the German article explains, the name is sometimes misspelled as "Jäger" in cast lists. Presumably this is because either at some point during film production someone assumed that "Jaeger" was a misspelling due to lack of umlaut support and tried to undo it, or more likely because someone knew the actor personally and just wasn't aware of the non-standard spelling of his name. Please create the article under Malte Jaeger, with an redirect from Malte Jäger.
 * The three spellings of "Süß" reflect the three levels of support for German letters. Two of them are correct on the English Wikipedia: "Süß" and "Süss". Unfortunately, we do not yet have a consensus on whether we systematically replace ß by ss in article titles in the same way that Britannica does. For names this can result in a loss of information and in an additional need for disambiguation. This is not a good time to try getting a consensus on this because there is currently a vigorous push to get rid of all diacritics in titles, including the perfectly familiar accents in French names – even though some English families have carried names with French accents for many generations. Trying to solve the ß problem now would only increase the disruption. I suggest that you look at other, related articles. Do what they do, and if none of them has the problem, just do whatever you prefer.
 * As you can see at the disambiguation page de:Werner Krauss, both spellings of "Krauß/Krauss" are in common use, and for each person separately one needs to know which spelling they are using. You can think of the spelling "Krauss" as somewhat analogous to the American English spelling of the name Australian Labor Party.
 * Another example that you didn't mention is Armin Mueller-Stahl. Apparently his father was born with the family name "Müller" and had it changed to "Mueller-Stahl" to make it more easily recognisable. (Extremely common names such as Müller or Krauß are one of the few reasons that the German authorities accept as valid for changing your name.) Hans Adler 19:53, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hans, thank you so much for that lucid explanation. It cleared a lot of things up for me. I do not intend to get into any disputes regarding the ß problem.  I was just trying to get some confirmation that I was doing something acceptable in using "Süß" instead of "Süss" in English Wikipedia articles.  In this, I was following the convention used by the majority of English sources that I have seen. Your post suggests that I'm at least on reasonably defensible ground in doing so.  Thanx again. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 21:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * null edit to keep this section from being auto-archived for a few more days... I'm referencing this discussion in a FAC discussion page. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 18:29, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Staatsschauspieler
Any thoughts whether the article State actor (Germany) should be at that title or at Staatsschauspieler? I note that there is also an article at State actor which is completely unrelated to this topic. I created State actor (Germany) but I'm starting to think the article should really be titled Staatsschauspieler.

The original article is at Staatsschauspieler in the German Wikipedia.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 07:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I would file it under Staatsschauspieler or possibly actor of state. A state actor is an entity that acts in a totally different sense and happens to be a state, so this doesn't seem to be a good translation. Hans Adler 18:11, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree which is why I raised the question in the first place. I just wanted to get some support from more knowledgeable editors.  I have moved the article to Staatsschauspieler.  Thanx as always for your invaluable assistance. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 18:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Jud Süß (1940 film) is a Featured Article Candidate
Please review the article and leave your comments here. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 20:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Lüth-Urteil
I want to write an article on the Lüth-Urteil. My problem is that the way the U.S. names court cases is different from the way Germany names court cases (and I suspect the U.K. may have yet a third way of naming cases). In Germany, this case is known as the "Lüth verdict" or the "Lüth decision". I don't know if that is it's formal name but that is, anyway, the title of the German Wikipedia article. In the U.S., such a case would likely be known as "Harlan v. Lüth". So, my question is: What should we use as the title for the English Wikipedia article on this important German court case establishing the supremacy of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 18:19, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * German court decisions are not named. There are several ways a decision can be referred to, including court plus Aktenzeichen (reference number) or court plus year plus consecutive number. However, in practice any decision that someone would want to cite has been published in a relevant journal. In the present case the normal reference would be "BVerfGE 7, 198", which means "Decisions of the Constitutional Court, Volume 7, page 198". Frequently cited cases often also get a common name, which typically mentions only one party or another important feature of the case. In this case the common name appears to be "Lüth-Urteil", i.e. "Lüth decision" or more literally "Lüth verdict". You can see many other examples of common names in de:Kategorie:Entscheidung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts. E.g. de:Lissabon-Entscheidung ("Lisbon decision"), which simultaneously decided many petitions related to the Treaty of Lisbon, is named after the city.
 * Our practice to name English and American cases after their formal names seems to be in tension with WP:COMMONNAME. As a similar practice for German cases makes no sense, we should use the common names for them, translated to English. Hans Adler 10:54, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * American court decisions are named that way because that is the way English courts named their cases for centuries. It is evocative of the adversarial nature of the English legal system. I think "decision" is probably best, given I have seen it used alot for foreign jurisdiction court cases. Int21h (talk) 17:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Mass move of German categories
There is a mass "speedy" move of German categories - mainly districts, people and regions - at WP:CFD which project members may have a view on. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * All the proposed moves are per C2D criterion, which is "matching category name to the title of the category's main article". Unless it is believed that the article names are wrong, then I don't see why the opposition. (Also, it's WP:CFDS.) - The Bushranger One ping only 09:11, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The article names are not wrong—they are in perfect order—quite exceptional in their immaculate consistency, in fact. It is the category names that are out-of-whack and need to be renamed to conform to the article names. What exactly is the problem with this proceeding per the usual speedy crition? As The Bushranger notes, this is a routine "clean up" criterion that is generally uncontroversial. Is there any reason we want the category names to be different from the article names when they deal with exactly the same topic? I wouldn't think so ... Good Ol’factory (talk) 10:41, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It is good to line up category and article names, once article names have been standardised. However, that is not the case here; currently there are several different styles of German/Austrian district name (both are Kreis in German):
 * No mention of "district" either in English or German: Nordsachsen, Category:People from Ahrweiler, Weimarer Land, Ottakring
 * "District" in German, Kreis left untranslated as part of name: Heidekreis, Vogtlandkreis, Saale-Orla-Kreis, Category:People from Westerwaldkreis
 * "District" in German, Kreis left untranslated in front of name (mainly Prussian): Kreis Bromberg, Kreis Ostrowo.
 * "district" in brackets: Leipzig (district), Nordhausen (district), Sonneberg (district)
 * "district" in lower case (mainly categories): Category:Lichtenfels district, Category:Augsburg district
 * "District" in title case (mainly Austria): Steyr-Land District, Bludenz District, Kitzbühel District
 * "District of" before the name (mainly people categories): Category:People from the District of Birkenfeld
 * So the article and category naming is not consistent at all and we need to sort that out before mass-moving categories, or we will only have to mass move them again when a convention is agreed. Whatever we agree, there will be a major change to either German or Austrian Kreis articles. :::I propose that we do no more category moves until we have agreed a consistent article naming convention for the Kreise and then do the necessary moves. In passing I would say that the Austrian districts are both very consistent and we could do worse that adopt their convention i.e. "FOO" where no disambiguation is needed and "FOO District" where it is. That's also a good translation of "Kreis FOO", simply changing to English word order and it parallels what we do elsewhere. But the key is to get the convention sorted out for articles first, then categories. Finally when we do get around to deleting categories, please can we inform the creators as per the normal Wiki process. Thanks. --Bermicourt (talk) 15:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * As to "we will only have to mass move them again when a convention is agreed", that is OK. It is no different than a mass move (revert) because you don't like the mass move. You can propose all you want want, but the "we" you refer is only the few editors here; if it is actually a policy of mass reverts you propose, then ... well, it defeats your argument that mass moves should be avoided. I see the transient state of the category names in sync with the transient state of the article names as a better alternative to the transient state of the category names not in sync with the transient state of the article names. Int21h (talk) 17:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * What ever the rights and wrongs I oppose this mass move of German district categories until there has been a proper discussion here as user Bermicourt has said. This has all the vibes of bureaucratic foul play.--ClemRutter (talk) 20:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Well then I think it is a question of philosophy then. It kinda reminds me of those people that must do things in or with a certain order, no matter how inefficient or pointless. (*cough* German Wikipedia...) "Inefficient or pointless" in this context would be checking all the possible WikiProject, category and article talk pages for some ongoing discussion about a tangent issue (article name change proposals tangent to C2D) before you do something that is clearly within policy specs and non-destructive. If certain people want to go down this path and ultimately go crazy, whatever, but to expect others to do it ... that's just mean. (I refuse to do this, for instance; "refuse" being the operative word.)
 * And why is foul play suspected? Int21h (talk) 20:55, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The speedy should go ahead (as it involves no work other than that already done by the proposer, and no cogent reason to delay has been advanced) and further speedies should follow any renaming of articles. Occuli (talk) 21:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The category structure was in a very rough state when I started looking at it—for starters, many of the "people from FOO" categories were not subcategories of the corresponding "FOO" categories, which is about as obvious an oversight as it gets. I think the changes can be made, since no major article moves are pending. Then if the articles move, the categories can be renamed to correspond. This is routine, and it's silly to say anything has to be done in a certain order, especially when no one has previously expressed any initiative to change anything. No change is ever final, especially not ones that go through speedy rename. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I fully support Good Ol’factory here. I think the format that he's gone with is a-okay and aside from that, is fully within the WP:CFDS criteria. Jared Preston (talk) 23:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have to correct the statement that Austrian districts are Kreise; they're not, they are Bezirke, see f.ex. de:Bezirk Bludenz. --Matthiasb (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and just another detail: in most federale states of Germany they have Landkreise; it is called only Kreis a) in Northrhine-Westphalia and in Schleswig-Holstein oder b) if it is part of the name, eg. Rhein-Neckar-Kreis oder Heidekreis. --Matthiasb (talk) 00:19, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes; and you know—the names for the articles reflect that. As I said, they are in immaculate condition naming-wise. It's the categories that are a mess. My nominations were meant to clean this up and bring the categories and the articles into conformity with one another, which is the standard usage of C2D. Is there any substantive reason to oppose these from going forward? Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:04, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

It appears to me that making the category names consistent with the article names only has advantages. Given the terminological differences between the various German states, it's not as easy as one would expect to decide what the best article names are. But once the category names are all consistent with the current article names, we only need to discuss the article names and can let the category names follow them in the obvious way. Hans Adler 10:23, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course it makes sense for category names to conform to article names. But only if the articles conform to an agreed naming pattern, which they patently they don't. I assume Good Ol' is acting in good faith (although he seems to have forgotten to inform category creators), but I would ask that we get a consensus first on a district article naming convention (which also addresses whether we need to harmonise with Austrian naming - called Bezirke but translated as "district"). If we get a consensus, fine, let's move ahead. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:08, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * As noted above by User talk:Matthiasb, the Germany districts are currently named consistently. They are disambiguated with "(district)" if disambiguation is needed, and "Kreis" is is included in the name in the two circumstances outlined above. The Austrian ones differ, but as those are districts of a different country, there's not a pressing need to standardize the German with the Austrian, though it could be done. But the German ones are consistently named. If the name format ever changes, the corresponding category names can and should be renamed to match the article names. As noted above, there really is no downside to category names matching the articles that deal with the identical subject. Finally, there is no duty to notify a category creator when a category is nominated for speedy renaming, nor should there be given the nature of the changes. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:56, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

ß again
User:Vanruvan decided to move a large amount of articles with ß to ss without any discussion and without fixing any associated templates. I know this is very tiresome and has been chewed through many times over. I reverted his move on 2. Fußball-Bundesliga as it is on my watch list and left him a message but there is many more. Calistemon (talk) 19:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Why would someone move Fußball-Bundesliga to Fussball-Bundesliga, which is misspelled in a German sense?! Would there be a reason for doing that?--Zarbi1 (talk) 21:17, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * ßecause they don't like ß? :p -- A Certain White Cat chi? 21:04, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There is currently a push by some sports editors to rename articles to get them in line with their interpretation of policy, according to which titles that are foreign words or names should be spelled essentially randomly, depending on whether there are English sources or not, and if there are, on whether most of them systematically drop diacritics and replace umlauts and ß, or not. But ß is really a special case in that (1) the letter presents unusual problems to most English speakers when compared to standard Latin letters with diacritics, (2) the letter is not used at all in standard Swiss German orthography (which replaces it by ss), and (3) many if not most of the most high-quality English sources, including reference works, also make this replacement. In this light I would not be opposed to a general rule that we replace ß by ss. But we really need to handle this consistently. Otherwise we will end up with some biographical articles using ß and some replacing it by ss, a very bad thing. Hans Adler 22:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The letter is a pain, to be honest, but like you said, there needs to be consistency. What was done was one user moving articles without any consent or asking anyody elses opinion. On top of this, none of the templates were ammended, the typical lazy aditude of somebody that just wants to make a point. Overall, I would be happy to get rid of ß! Calistemon (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think this is one of a small number of special cases, because this is a German proper name. The whole point of using this term is that it is a German proper name,not an English proper name. There is no meaningful way that English sources can be relevant, within the meaning of WP:EN. If WP:EN is applicable, the article should be renamed to something containg the words "football" and "league". This is similar to a book title like Die Endlösung or a culturally bound concept like "the Endlösung". If there is good reason to use the foreign term, we should use the foreign spelling (unless non-Latin scripts require transliteration). I think this is different from personal names, where it can be argued that in some cases a person's name is an English proper name, even though the person is (or was) German.
 * As I understand the guidelines, consistency between articles is not an explicit consideration. I, personally, think it should be, but that would require a change to the guidelines, and I don't really want to go there (because it is like mud-wrestling with pigs). --Boson (talk) 21:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you arguing that "Fußball-Bundesliga" is a proper name? I am not sure that I can agree with that. It's at most a borderline case, being a totally unoriginal description that also serves as a name. One difference between English and German is that you can't recognise the 'name-ness' of a string of words by capitalisation. Hans Adler 23:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It seemed to me quite obvious that it was being used as a proper noun. It still seems obvious to me that the article title is being used as proper name, just like Premier League or Football League One, but I see that reasonable people could argue otherwise. I suppose it could be regarded as loan word; in that case, it should probably be lowercased (like autobahn and kindergarten). I suppose it could also be taken as a descriptive term; in that case it should be in English. Even if the German noun is retained, the ordinal "2." (with the period) needs to be changed, since this is a purely German convention. It also needs Italic title adding. Although I think it is being used here as a proper name, it might be better to use an English title (either as a common noun phrase or as a translated—and disambiguated—proper name), e.g. "Second national German association football league" or "Second Federal League (German association football)". In any case, there should be some consistency within Category:Association football leagues in Germany (which there is not at present) and possibly within Category:Association football leagues by country. The latter would suggest using German but not including the word for football at all (except, possibly, in English and parentheses for disambiguation). This should not be a problem, since this is an unofficial name (not like DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga Gmbh). On balance, I tend toward Zweite Bundesliga, adding "(German association footbalI)" if disambiguation is necessary to distinguish it from Austrian and American football. This would, incidentally, avoid the ß problem.  I don't think there is a perfect solution. --Boson (talk) 22:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Within the Wikiproject football there is a strong tendency to stick with the original name of a league rather then translating it, especially when the name has now common English replacement. However, the name should make sense to all readers, not just German ones. The current name has two issues: 2. means little in the English speaking world. The ß can all to easily be mistaken for a b and is therefore ambigious and should be replaced with ss for that reason. 2nd Fussball-Bundesliga would be much easier to understand. Both Fussball and Bundesliga are internationally pretty well understood, at least by football (soccer) fans. Calistemon (talk) 23:54, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Please, this cannot be about proper names or mere 'consistency'. You might be laughing your asses off, but as a German native speaker, it is my opinion that correct standard writing with eszett ß should NEVER be replaced with a double-s, unless an article is clearly referring to Switzerland. All other German-speaking countries do use the ß, so omitting/replacing it would simply give Wikipedia misspelled content. It would be a different thing if old content is updated to reformed German orthography (where some ß 's do become double-s). But no Fussball, Strasse, weiss, heiss, Scheiss, Masse (when Maße is meant) and all that, please. I would find it much more sensible to add an IPA phonetic transcription to the first occurrence of a word in an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TurnspitDawg (talk • contribs) 14:28, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That approach may make sense on the German-language wikipedia; not so much on the English-language one. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It is about proper names in the wider sense (including German institutions and other cultural phenomena with no exact English equivalent) because for common nouns the English Wikipedia normally uses English words - and therefore English rules of orthography apply. English Wikipedia should not normally use the words heiß, weiß, or Maße with any spelling - except as part of a proper name or the like. When using foreign proper names (because there is no established English name), the appropriate foreign sources are applicable (Swiss for Swiss topics, German for German topics).
 * It is about consistency to the extent that - independently of the rule on using English - arguments can be made for ignoring the relevant sources and consistently either using or changing certain Latin characters (such as ß) in foreign words (even in proper names), in the same way that Wikipedia has its own house rules on other typographical matters, such as use of italics.--Boson (talk) 11:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * In many cases, there are English-language sources that commonly use a form of the name, so generally it's not a huge issue and we don't have to delve into non-English-language sources. It's difficult to find English-language sources for really only the most obscure topics. But otherwise I do agree with what you have written. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:42, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, but it is the language community, not Wikipedia, which establishes English words. In my view, a few English sources using a foreign word is not sufficient to establish an English word. Munich, Paris, National Assembly, and kindergarten have been established as English names or words; Müller & Meyer AG has not, even if is mentioned in the share prices section of the Financial Times. I would say, most cases are somewhere in between and there is no bright line. --Boson (talk) 10:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Engelbert Humperdinck RM

 * (Discuss) – Engelbert Humperdinck →  Kauffner (talk) 15:09, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Marktkirche Halle
The Marktkirche, Halle, known under many names (pictured on the Main page on Christmas Day) has been proposed as a Good Article. General help is welcome, especially with references. Specific question: which Gulden was used at Wallenstein's time? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:57, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Lutherhaus
I would like some feedback on the article Lutherhaus and Augusteum. It is my first article, so I would really appreciate any advice. Thanks!DopplerRadioShow (talk) 05:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Templates Foreign character and Foreignchars
I see that the templates Foreign character and Foreignchars are being removed from articles (orphaned) following a discussion here.

As far as I am aware, the nominator did not notify this project, though it is, no doubt, one of those most affected. Was anyone here involved in the discussion and part of the apparent consensus to delete the templates? Something similar happened in 2008, and the templates were restored after the affected projects became aware of the discussion.

See Deletion review/Log/2008 June 2 and Templates for deletion/Log/2008 June 3 --Boson (talk) 21:47, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I've seen the discussion, but chose not to get involved, as the result was obvious right from the start, as the user who started the discussion misrepresented the use of this template and noone was willing or able to actually take a look at what it is used for. We'll just have to accept it's gone, I'm afraid. Madcynic (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2012 (UTC)