Wikipedia:Featured article review/Anne Frank/archive1

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

The article was kept 11:26, 8 December 2007.

[edit] Anne Frank

[edit] Review commentary

Notified WP:Biography, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Germany, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Netherlands, Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish history

I believe this article needs to be seriously reviewed if it's to remain a featured article. The reason I believe it no longer meets this criteria (and in fact, never met the current criteria) is because of the lack of inline citations. I believe the article is adequately sourced, but not referenced from a fact to fact basis, rather the article as a whole, but that's not fitting with being completely referenced. This reason alone brings the validity of the article into question, as I (nor almost any other reader) would read every resource available to confirm the validity of the article's claims. --lincalinca 03:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I originally nominated this article, but I have to agree with you on this. Is there a way to refer back to the version of the article when it was promoted? (rather than wade back through 2+ years of edits). Do we keep a link to the version as promoted? I can't remember exactly, but I feel that there were more inline cites at one point - probably not enough but still better than now. The entire references section has been greatly changed since I nominated this - the "further reading" etc section was added later, and in the process (I think) a lot of the original referencing/citing was lost. I'm disappointed - I put a huge amount of time into this article back then, but I don't have the time to invest now. I agree with you though. Rossrs 07:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

• Would the nominator please notify relevant Wikiprojects and editors as per the FAR instructions? You may find recent editors who will help to bring the article up to standard. Please announce the notifications just below the subsection title. Thanks. --RelHistBuff 13:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Judging from article history (see the talk page header) the promoted article looked like this—this older version is not passable now, however. It's not just article deterioration but rising standards that bring things to FAR. Marskell 15:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

If somebody is willing to drop this into my sandbox with all the cite needed tags for what they feel is needed, I will gladly spend an hour or so a day working on it. This article is too important to lose its Featured status. By the way, the reference formatting needs a lot of work, too. Jeffpw 18:11, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I just notified Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish history of this as it is obviously in their purview as well. Tvoz |talk 16:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are references (1c) and their formatting (2c). Marskell (talk) 13:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree - I have started to search out better references (I have already found several) and include them in "cite" format - also started converting good refs into cite format. For example - I'm working on replacing this weak source with original citations - I already have converted two out of the three refs to this web page. Tvoz |talk 20:10, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

That weak tertiary source now is gone, and replaced with the original citations. If there are other specific concerns about sourcing, please post them so that they can be addressed. I hate to see this article lose its FA status. Tvoz |talk 20:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I do hope this can be saved. Tony (talk) 05:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I concur that the article could be saved, but there's work involved in promoting it to become a Featured article according to the current criteria. My greatest gripe about it as it stands, in the citations of references overall. There are no citations used in the Lead, in the Early life section, the infobox uses only one, which is - rightly - in defence of the statement that she is dutch (as this is a point of some contention). There're no supporting citations of the "before going into hiding" section (which also needs a thorough copyedit, re-write of much of its prose, and probably retitling to an encyclopedic title like "prior to isolation" or something to that effect). The "Life in the Achterhuis" section only contains one citation in its entirety. "Arrest and concentration camps" contains three, but two fo these support one fact. There is a rather bold statement that "After the war, it was estimated that of the 110,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, only 5,000 survived." which I don't believe (a) that many were deported to the Netherlands or (b) that few survived, and to add to the possibility of inaccuracy here, it's been fact tagged since April this year, so after 7 months, it's not been either removed or confirmed. These sorts of issuescontinue through to the end of the article. I'm certain that with the resources used at the end of the article, many of the facts can be confirmed. I'm certain some are either incorrect or need clarification or improvement. One other thing is that statements like "See People associated with Anne Frank for the fates of the other occupants of the Achterhuis, their helpers, and other people connected to Anne Frank." should not be used, as we shouldn't be using "see this" in prose. This statement could be mentioned within a sentence such as "Other people associated with Anne Frank had varied futures, as some were killed prior to Frank, some later and some lived into old age" or something to that effect. That sentence is way too ambiguous and certainly not encyclopedic enough. --lincalinca 10:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, except "prior to isolation" is not an improvement on "before going into hiding" - they were in hiding, they were not isolated, they were not completely "cut off" from the world or from people - but I'll see if I can think of something. I don't see anything substantially wrong with the way the section is worded, so in terms of copyediting - could you be more specific? and I will make whatever additions I can to the citations of references. One point though - the lead and infobox should each be a summary of points covered within the article. Per Wikipedia:Lead section, I would hope that redundancy of citations could be avoided - ie if it's eventually cited within the article, is it necessary to repeat the citation in the lead or infobox? If there are specific points you feel must be cited in either of those sections, even if they are cited within the article, could you please indicate them. thanks. Also, have cited the Dutch death figures. The Netherlands suffered a huge percentage loss of their Jewish population, but it was unacceptable to be stating figures without citing them. Rossrs (talk) 11:24, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Question: If Wikipedia should not be used as a link farm, should it also not be used as a catalogue for every work written on a subject? In point: "Further reading" - is this extensive (exhaustive?) list needed? Would anyone object if only works directly referenced were listed? Rossrs (talk) 14:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, as the reference list was starting to get messy, I've reworked it in line with Johannes Kepler as suggested at Wikipedia:Footnotes#Style recommendations. Rossrs (talk) 07:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Answer: Wikipedia should not be a link farm, however the main issue with this article is that it provides plenty of references, but not enough citations to them. The further reading items should be assessed for unique pieces of information and those selected should be converted into footnote citations only and not be listed in the way they are now. --lincalinca 10:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, and that's being addressed, so once it's fully cited (which can and should be done without having to refer to Amazon's complete Anne Frank catalogue) the list can go. Good. Rossrs (talk) 12:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

• Is this on track? Are people still working on it? I had the impression it was being worked on, but I just took a look, and was surprised. It seems that many different editors are adding citations maybe (?) and there is no consistent biblio style, with many formatting problems. Named refs aren't being used properly, dates aren't formatted, there's no consistent style, dashes are all over the place. There are other MOS issues throughout. I started cleanup, but there is more than I can do on my own, and I'm wondering what the status is. If the plan is to save this, some sustained work is going to be needed still. I also did a bit of reduction of WP:OVERLINKing, but there's more. I see there was discussion of removing the biblio farm; is that going to be done? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Most of the additions since this was nominated for review, until your recent edits, have been done by myself and User:Tvoz. I don't really understand formatting for cites etc, despite reading the relevant pages, and have done my best. Now that I see how you've fixed some of them, that gives me a guide on what to do. A lot of them are old cites that have been in their current state since they were first added. It would be great if other editors could also look at the article and make some edits, especially since there have been some who have made suggestions here, or have offered to help, but have not made edits to the article. As for the biblio farm, if there is no objection to removing it, could we just do it now? (Actually, I'll be bold. There has been no objection and it can easily be restored if necessary). None of the titles in the list have been used to extract information as far as I can see, and although there is still a lot of citing to be done, it can be done from elsewhere, I'm sure. Rossrs 01:04, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

If you all are still working on it, I will try to pitch in on the citation formatting, but you've got to pick one system and use it consistently. Do you all prefer to use cite templates or to do them manually? Yes, good time to lose the biblio farm; it's probably grown over time as book advertising. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Cite templates have grown on me - I find they make it easier to have a consistent look to the refs, and once you're used to them easier to remember to include the necessary fields. So if it were up to me I'd use them. Tvoz |talk 07:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

This is where my ignorance comes into play, so let me apologise in advance ;-) If we use cite templates, does that mean that for each reference to a particular book, we would need to have an individual complete citation to show the page number? Example : Bette Davis. If so, this is what I would like to use, and if all the many references that I've recently added need to be changed, that's fine. I'll be happy to change them. In the meantime, I'll keep adding sources because I guess finding the source is the primary aim, and when this is clarified for me, I'll start to go back and fix. And now for my next question - have I just agreed with Tvoz or disagreed? Rossrs 10:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Pros and cons :-) Cite templates chunk up the size, and it's fine to use them for websources while using a shortened notation for book page numbers. Bette Davis is *awful*; that is exactly what I wouldn't do. The method currently in use at Anne Frank is preferable. Except for the first couple of refs at the top, it's fine. I was referring to problems in the citations templates, which I've now corrected. Please don't do Bette Davis :-) List the book sources in the ref section, and add just the page notation in the footnotes section, as is now done for most of the citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

LOL. Noted. Rossrs 08:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Formatting looks good so far (thankfully, since Gettysburg Address will make me tear my hair out). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It's mostly looking good, but you still need to reference lots of things throughout the lead, particularly. I can see that the article's citations are tremendously improving, so good work there, but the lead needs to have citations too. Much of its information is going to be easy to cite, so I'll leave it to those who have the books/hard references. --lincalinca 07:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree there is still a lot needing to be referenced throughout the article, but not the lead. Can you please clarify what you think needs to be cited in the lead? You're making the same point I've already specifically asked you to clarify. So again, as I mentioned above, Wikipedia:Lead section#Citations in the lead section discourages redundant cites. ie the lead is a summary of the article. Nothing should be in the lead that is not in the article (and I've removed points that existed only in the lead), and the article should be fully cited (working on it). Therefore anything cited in the lead comes under the heading of "redundant" in my opinion because it potentially duplicates cites that should exist in the body of the article. What are the "lots of things" that need to be cited in the lead? If you can give examples, then I may understand what you are looking for, but I don't see anything that is controversial or open to question that can't be sourced in the article itself. Thanks Rossrs 09:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, there was one phrase that looked a bit too much like an uncited quote or opinion, so I've removed it. Rossrs 12:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Do remember on citation templates: what matters is what the reader sees, which should include the standard punctuation, italicization, and so on. Some editors find this easier to do by hand, and this does leave more flexibility in dealing with unusual sources; some prefer templates; but as long as the article displays right, don't sweat it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Seems well-written and to satisfy the other criteria. Tony (talk) 09:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - as I was one of the original nominators/editors getting this to FA status and as I've done a lot of the recent referencing etc, I'm obviously biased, but I sincerely feel it should be kept. I didn't feel this way when it was first nominated for review and I could see the article's deficiencies as well as anyone, but I think it's been improved to the current FA standard. Rossrs (talk) 10:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's keepable now. Good work all. Marskell (talk) 11:23, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are still some very minor glitches to be worked out; can we keep it open until they're fixed, only so the oldid listed in the articlehistory will be to a shiny clean version? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please fix all of the footnotes such as

• Frank, Anne, p. 242

There are *two* Frank, Anne's listed in the sources, so we don't know to which book these page numbers are attached. You can solve this by adding the year in parens after the author, so we know which source applies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Now I also see Frank, Anne and Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, p. 102, so I assume the others are to Frank and Massotty, if that's correct, would be better to clarify. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, minor tweaks, missing publishers, footnote placement per WP:FN, good to go now,[1] but please clarify the double Anne Frank biblio entries mentioned so the archived oldid will be squeaky clean. Nice work !! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. Really wasn't sure how to cite the "Critical Edition" of the diary because the section cited was not Anne Frank's writing but was commentary by the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, but yes, your assumption was correct. Have changed the others to "Frank and Massotty". Thank you for your input during this review. It was a major learning experience for me, and without all of your comments and edits, along with nice explicit summaries, I would never have known what to do. Rossrs (talk) 16:11, 8 December 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.