Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Raoul Wallenberg/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 18:32, 22 February 2007.

[edit] Raoul Wallenberg

I would like to see him with a featured article, please read and let me know if you think it has what it takes. The article has been reviewed and approved by the The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 01:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Oppose Not as well written as it should be. The lead section needs to be precise, and the current one rambles on a bit. The footnotes are good. In the See also section there is two links to Carl Lutz and there shouldn't be information in the see also section in the first place, it should be included in the article. --K.Z ^{Talk • Vandal • Contrib} 07:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you quote me the section of the guide that says there should be no "see also" section. Even the guide to creating a featured article has a "see also" section. Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. Converting a navigation device to prose would rob it of its utility. Looking at a random FA biography: William III of England has a see also section. Or are you saying that "see also" shouldn't have any descriptive information next to the links? Could you please clarify? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 14:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

There shouldn't be a description in the see also section. It should be covered within the article. It seems to be fixed now. Most of my objections have been fixed, but the lead section isn't up to FA standards. More citations are needed in the Early Life.--K.Z ^{Talk • Vandal • Contrib} 04:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

All are removed or integrated.

• Oppose No licensing tag for Image:Wallenberg-residence.JPG, no detailed fair use rationale for Image:Raoul-wallenberg-1997.jpg. ShadowHalo 06:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 14:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The first image looks good, but I don't understand why the second is being used. There doesn't appear to be any text in the article that discusses the stamp. ShadowHalo 15:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. It may have been removed when the section was trimmed to satisfy GA review. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 16:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Awesome. The text does contradict the caption, though. One says 1996, the other 1997. The honors and memorials should also be expanded and probably converted from a list to prose. For example, it mentions that there is a Raoul Wallenberg Award but doesn't mention anything about the history of the award or what it recognizes. ShadowHalo 17:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll harmonize the dates. USPS uses the year it is approved, and most people use the year it was issued.

The honors and memorials section was trimmed to satisfy GA review. As you can see there is no fixed rule, so I want to avoid ping-pong changes to satisfy individual tastes. Is there any from the list saved on the discussion page that you think should be reinserted? Also, the Raoul Wallenberg Award has its own entry. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 18:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

What I would recommend is prosifying the text and expanding it to the degree that there is some context so that it doesn't look like a laundry list. Essentially, it should tell what the award/memorial is, and any detail about it should be at the separate article. Sorry if I was unclear. ShadowHalo 18:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I understand: it should contain concise information. Take a peek now.

More details added to memorials but bulleted format kept

• Oppose Weak Oppose. Sorry, but I can find issues with almost every sentence. Wikilinking the name? For pronunciation? Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation) says to use IPA. Second sentence doesn't need second comma. "appears he was executed in Moscow" seems very debatable for such a strong statement, just reading the article itself; the only written source says heart attack, the alternate is hearsay. Early life mentions where he worked, but not what he did - what was his job? "His paternal grandfather was also a Swedish diplomat." "his" is ambiguous - RW or ROW? "was also" meaning like whom, Wallenberg himself? The article implies that he wassn't really a diplomat, that was just a cover, which makes the "also" inappropriate. Did the Gf's being a diplomat have any influence on RW's being a diplomat? Heck, was he really a diplomat? The header says "was a Swedish diplomat", but later the article says that was just a cover to save Jews. What was the Grandfather's name and position? It seems to have been more than trivial if he arranged a job in a South African firm. "recuited" is misspelled. How did he become a Swedish diplomat by an American agency? How did he become friends with a fascist? But the most important thing, the whole section about that which makes him notable is a single paragraph - how did he save "tens of thousands"? Only a few sentences on that, surely it deserves more. The next section says "may have" "may have" "may have" all over. Then the section on his death takes five times the space in the article than that on his work saving lives. He's not notable for how he died, lots of people were killed by the Soviets, he's notable for saving ten thousand people; the article needs to give more space to that, if not mostly be about that. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 21:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

1) Pronunciation deleted. 2) Grandfather diplomat reduced to a note. 3) I am assuming if you are issued a diplomatic passport you are a entitled to be called a diplomat. The same title is used by Americans working in embassies that have "official cover".

Better, thanks, but I still want more details on the actual saving lives, and how an American project could give him so much power in a Swedish embassy. Also you introduced grammatical errors (Holocaust section, second sentence), and a hanging /ref tag. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 16:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

More added, take a peek

Better, better, I'll weaken my opposition. However, it could still be even better, and an FAC should be the best we can make it. Here are some better (more thorough, more comprehensive) articles on the main part just on the Web: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/wallenberg.html; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX100.html; http://www.raoulwallenberg.se/historymain.htm I think our featured article should be at least a strong candidate for the best on-Web source of comparable length on the subject; while this isn't bad, I don't think it can honestly be considered to be the best yet. You don't mention Horthy, who seems important to the sources above. You don't mention how he negotiated with Eichman - threatened him, in clear risk of his own life - that's pretty important. You don't mention Wallenberg family which seems to have an article here. You write that he put up buildings, but not how he used them, and how many were saved that way. You don't mention the yellow star. You imply that he worked with a few friends, and don't mention his group that grew into hundreds (350 according to one source above). You don't mention tremendous details from the letter at http://raoulwallenberg.org/who/who.html such as having to hide in a different house every night, that's pretty important. There are touching interviews at http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005211 you could cite. Sorry, I appreciate your efforts, but FACs should be the best. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Even better. Objection withdrawn, a little more and I'll support. It's getting there. (However I don't know how long Raul's patience will last.) Some specifics:

• "Miklós Horthy stopped the transporting of Jews to concentration camps on July 9, 1944. Wallenberg then started sleeping in a different house" - implies the second was a direct result of the first, surely that's not right. At leasst strike the "then", even better if you can add a sentence explaining the real cause.
• Same sentence introduces the Arrow Cross Party rather abruptly - they do have their own article, but maybe a couple of explanatory words? Similarly Eichmann.
• "The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people." - PBS article (linked above) says 13,000
• "In college, he learned to speak English, German and French." - JewishVirtualLibrary article says top grades in Russian, and that his language skills were important.
• You mention Horthy, good, but the PBS article mentions him trying to make peace, then being replaced by Szalasi of the Arrow Cross in the last days, and that this marked an escalation of anti-Jewish violence. Probably important, quite possibly the reason Wallenberg started sleeping in different houses - look it up, and say.
• PBS (and our article) say Per Anger was in this business before Wallenberg. Wallenberg introduced "flashy symbols" (per jewishvirtuallibrary). Should be mentioned.
• "Two days before the Russians liberated Budapest" - also give the date.
• "remaining Jews in Budapest" - 115,000 by the PBS article, 97,000 by the JVL. Pick one of those or one of your sources, but some order of magnitude should be given.
• "correspondences, indicated" - remove comma
• If March 23, 1944, the Nazis installed a puppet govt, implying removing Horthy, how could Horthy stop the deportations on July 9, 1944?
• Looking through the edit history, you seem to have stuck in the "dinner party with Eichman" bit from PBS somewhere, but it's not visible in the text. Could you be missing a </ref> somewhere? --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree with Kzrulzuall that many items in the "see also" section could be integrated with the text. Wikipedia:See_also#See_also says that the section "should ideally not repeat links already present in the article." I think many things in the list could be put in the article. For example it could contain a sentence with people rescued by Wallenberg. Furthermore, the prose is OK (at least for GA) but it is not of FA quality, per AnonEMouse above. It is hard to write "brilliant" prose. All in all, I think it just needs more work to be a featured article. / Fred-Chess 22:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

all integrated or deleted --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 01:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose As above, but additionally, the end is overly list heavy where I don't think it needs to be. Convert to prose. Fieari 01:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

are you asking for the bullets to be removed or more information added to the bulleted list to make it more prosy?

Both, in a way. Removing the bullets but leaving the text as is would make for very awkward prose. I want the bullets gone, and the text made smooth, "compelling, even brilliant prose". Fieari 15:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Compromise offered below

I think the bullets are effective, how about as a compromise, we keep the bullets but add more text, and have fuller, richer sentences. Franklin D. Roosevelt uses a memorial section where each item is its own paragraph, and below it is a trivia section with bullets. I think the bullets make the second section easier to read. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm really not comfortable with the information being presented in list format. The FA Criteria specifically states that the article should consist of prose, with lists are not. There's a reason that there's a difference between Featured Articles and Featured Lists, after all. Some information lends itself well to list format, but I don't think this information needs it to be effective, and as such, I'm going to insist on prose. Fieari 04:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

They are written as full sentences in prose and not in truncated sentences. They are not written as poetry or as a rebus. I am confused, I think you dislike the bullets. Can you rewrite one of the bullet points as "prose" as opposed to the way I have written it to show me the difference? Or are you asking to have all the paragraphs mushed into one big paragraph? Please explain in more detail and give a clear example. Also it would be helpful if you cited the number and letter from Wikipedia:Featured article criteria so I know which one you are talking about that is being violated. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Since I don't see a specific law, I will use case studies. Here are biographical FAs that use bulleted information:

• Carl Sagan bulleted awards section
• Franklin D. Roosevelt both bulleted and unbulleted short paragraph list
• Kylie Minogue bulleted album list
• Theodore Roosevelt bulleted trivia list
• Anthony Michael Hall contains tables
• Jim Thorpe unbulleted legacy section

Are these also in violation of the "prose rule"?

I've checked the Legacy sections of a few featured articles (Anne Frank, Mahatma Ghandi). Basically, they are lists, just disguised as paragraphs instead of using bullets. The same could be done for Wallenberg. I objected to combining them all into a single paragraph, but if multiple paragraphs will resolve the problem, then let's do it. I'll have a go at it, as I want to reorganize it a bit anyway. Clarityfiend 07:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.