Talk:Female guards in Nazi concentration camps

This has a lot of information, but it should be broken down into paragraphs. Someone with good literary skills should consider rewriting it.

Contents

1 Sources, sources, sources 2 Rewritten parts 3 Reorganised -- please comment 4 Operation Rewriter

Sources, sources, sources

I am getting increasingly uneasy about this article (and several related ones). It's badly written, and we are all good enough editors to quickly change that, but before we do that we need to be able to confirm the (monstrous) accusations in these articles. Don't get me wrong: it may be all true, and the individual women that are named on this page may all indeed have been female prison guards. But we need sources for that kind of information. Thore 12:25, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Edit to add: I mean, look at the second paragraph. The women generally were ..., opera singers, ...? What kind of statement is that? Thore 12:27, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Now that you mention it, the article is originally by a user with a very peculiar (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=198.150.117.254) fixation in articles. It may be innocent, and there might not be a problem, but it seems like it'd be a good idea to attempt to find some external sources for the article. I'm going to, time permitting, check out some historical documents in some local libraries next week to see if I can confirm some of this stuff. If any of the other contributors here could do the same, that'd be great. --Improv 16:20, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rewritten parts

• I have rewritten the intro paragraph to the article because as it was, it had poor grammar/style. Anon IPs, how can I work with you to come to a version you'll be satisfied with too? --Improv 15:10, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Some of the passages that seem to me to need rewriting are alleged to be quotations. For example: "The women were seperated and brought before the inmates. The woman was then told to hit her [a prisoner]. Of the fifty women, only three asked the reason why they had to hit the inmate; only three asked the reason why, and only one refused, which caused her to be put in jail herself." The anon's latest edit added the repetition of "only three asked the reason why". Did the original repeat the phrase for emphasis, or is this a mistake? Did the original include the misspelling of "separated"? Did the original switch from the plural, in the first sentence, to the singular, in the second, and if so, who is the singular "woman" being referred to? JamesMLane 22:01, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Actually, the entire article needs a heavy-handed rewrite. The current form isn't even close to encyclopaedic, or NPOV. Since the article itself has potential, I am quite tempted to give it a try, but I would prefer to involve the main (anonymous) contributors in that effort. Improv has tried to edit some sections, but the anonymous contributors keep reverting it. Maybe I am mistaken, but there seems to be little inclination from the main contributors to change the form towards a NPOV. The current form seems to be closer to an opinionated essay. While that form may be suitable to the subject at hand, it cannot work for Wikipedia (a link from this article to such an essay would be just fine, of course). --- Would it help to put an NPOV tag on the article's front page in order to call the attention of the main contributors to this talk page, so that this would be more of an collaborative effort? The SOURCES tag that Improv put up quickly improved the article a lot, and I have hopes that an NPOV tag would do the same. Or would that be seen as too antagonistic, and hence have the opposite effect of what I intend? Thore 09:41, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree that the multiple issues I raised about a single quotation are just a drop in the bucket, in terms of the intensive rewriting needed throughout the article. Slapping on an NPOV tag is "antagonistic" only when, as is too often the case, there's no explanation on the talk page. You should elaborate on your concerns here before adding the tag. Anyone who gets upset at a good-faith dispute of that type isn't cut out for Wikipedia anyway. JamesMLane 06:28, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I'm not concerned that a reasonable person could see your writing as antagonistic; your question shows that you can write good and balanced prose. I will keep an eye on this article and fight any unreasonable edits of your contributions.
  Sebastian 04:49, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

Reorganised -- please comment

As you can see, I have moved quite a few of the paragraphs around, so that some structure in the article may become apparent. I am still not sure what the original contributors want to say with each and every passage, so I haven't refactored individual paragraphs (much). In any case, the current structure is far from perfect, especially it lacks a section containing the first three subsections. Suggestions are welcome.

I also started to edit the huge mess that are the references. Thanks to the original authors, these were provided very quickly once the Unreferenced tag came up, and the article improved a lot. But I simply cannot use the references (in the current Notes section) to find the works in question. What is the reference called (1) and (2)? In any case, the article needs to follow the style given in Wikipedia:Cite sources. I made a brave attempt to follow this guidelines, but abandoned it because I simply don't understand what (1) and (2) actually are pointing to. I am sure the anonymous contributors can clean this up very quickly, and then removed the Unreferenced tag again. Thore 13:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your effort - this is certainly an improvement. Re the unverified references: Maybe it would help to write your concern before the list, so normal readers can see it, too. In that case, it might be best to change the pure number to an intrapage link.
Sebastian 17:00, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)

Operation Rewriter

Ok, this article is in a horrible state. I cleaned up what I could see at a glance, but there's shitloads, if you'll excuse my French, that requires looking after. Seriously, this Brown character is not just apparently, but obviously so biased quoting him as a source would be like quoting GW Bush on terrorism as a NPOV. I removed the countless references to his more or less shady book - a Google on his full name gets less hits than my name, for crying out loud - from the article text. I removed a ton of unverifiable citations. I removed quite a bit of outright tragic English grammar and spelling. I removed certain quotes that were presented as facts, but come on "The vicious and evil -person-...". I removed irrelevant information. I removed some completely unnessecary info, like curent residence etc. I removed quite a lot, really, and I'd very much like someone else to help me, because this is not a small article, but DAMN, it needs a cleanup! And this Brown book which is quoted everywhere in the text, I have absolutely no faith in it being a factual book researched in any way. Someone that's not Dan Brown should look into it. --TVPR 01:14, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)