This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Poland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Poland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PolandWikipedia:WikiProject PolandTemplate:WikiProject PolandPoland articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the
legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Discrimination, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Discrimination on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DiscriminationWikipedia:WikiProject DiscriminationTemplate:WikiProject DiscriminationDiscrimination articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Jewish history, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Jewish history on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Jewish historyWikipedia:WikiProject Jewish historyTemplate:WikiProject Jewish historyJewish history-related articles
The following is a closed discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: MOVED all three articles as proposed.
WP:CONSISTENCY was the battleground, but every argument against the move failed to source its argument that the unaccented title would be inconsistent, and multiple times asserted things that are at worst simply untrue or at best unbacked by any sourcing listed here ("the diacritics are in fact commonly used in English-language sources anyway", "evidence suggests that the un-accented Sobibor is not a German or English form but just a lazy form", etc. What evidence and sources they were referring to will be left as a mystery for the ages). Blind assertions of "sources" are unfortunately not something we can rely on, leaving this a clear consensus to move. (
non-admin closure)
RedSlash01:04, 9 April 2019 (UTC)reply
Thank you for bringing the overlooked entry to my attention and I am adding it to the nomination. Taking into account that K.e.coffman's nomination was already being discussed, it seemed appropriate to resolve all Sobibor-related matters at the same time. Each nomination is mentioned at the venue of the other and I certainly agree with your proposal that the two separate venues would be best combined. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)00:11, 22 March 2019 (UTC)reply
At least. I wonder if it is also best to combine all the extermination camps (except Auschwitz) to discuss "Germanizing" the titles. Or swapping out "extermination" for "death". But I do not have a strong opinion on any of that.
Srnec (
talk)
03:24, 22 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Strong oppose all English uses Polish spelling for Polish people and place names not German. Just because atrocities were committed on Polish soil does not call for Aryanization of Polish place names in English Wikipedia. Nor indeed the Germanization of any other area of Europe affected by Nazi atrocities.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
21:47, 22 March 2019 (UTC)reply
A strong misunderstanding of the nomination. These are the key words, as indicated above: "Thus "
Auschwitz" for the camp and "
Oświęcim" for the town, "
Kulmhof" for the camp and "
Chełmno" for the village, "
Belzec" for the camp and "
Bełżec" for the village, etc." There is no Germanization or outdated "Aryanization" of Polish place names being proposed. The Polish place names remain in Polish — only the names of the German death camps should be in German. The "strong oppose all " does not even make an exception for
Auschwitz which, by the "all " standard, would need to be referenced by its Polish name, "
Oświęcim". This nomination also aids in illuminating and clarifying the
"Polish death camp" controversy which centered upon misleading terminology that did not make it clear that the camps were German, not Polish. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)01:35, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
"oppose all" refers to all, if we must use highlighter in this RM, which are simply accent-stripping of name now called Sobibór in German-language WP:RS anyway.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
08:35, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Procedural comment. As I have just noted
[1] at
Talk:Sobibór extermination camp#Requested_move_14_March_2019, the question here is whether to Germanize the spelling of entities in Nazi-occuppied Poland which are known for their association with Germany — or, as in this case, created by Germany.
It seems to me that point needs a wider consensus, rather than being decided on a solely ad hoc basis. A wider consensus may involve some hard rules or some general principles with scope for exceptions. But either way, it seems to me to be something which needs a group nomination of all related pages, or preferably at an RFC. The opening by @
Roman Spinner of this discussion in parallel with the other one creates a split discussion on the same point of principle, which is very unhelpful to consensus formation.
PS I should add that if either RM discussion is closed as a rename, I would oppose the speedy renaming of categories to match changes which arise from such a flawed discussion process. I have no substantive preference on which spelling to use, but a split discussion such as this is not a solid consensus. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:30, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
BrownHairedGirl, I appreciate your suggestion of listing this matter at
WP:RfC, which I will proceed to do. I will also list it at
WP:WikiProject Germany and
WP:WikiProject Poland to attract wider participation. If you or anyone else would care to suggest additional WikiProjects or other venues where these discussions may be listed, such suggestions would be also appreciated. I regret that the parallel nomination had the effect of forum shopping and you are correct in assuming that engaging in forum shopping was not my intention. The original nomination at
Talk:Sobibór extermination camp#Requested move 14 March 2019 started with the additional element of the proposed move "extermination camp" → "death camp" and I was uncertain whether waiting for its outcome would affect other Sobibor related articles. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)03:24, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
@
Roman Spinner: this is an RM discussion, not an RFC, so the only way to list it at
WP:RFC is to open a new discussion. That would leave us with 3 parallel discussions, unless the RMs are closed without action.
BrownHairedGirl, since I already listed this discussion at RfC (even if that simultaneous discussion is only conducted here, below the RM discussion) and cannot withdraw another user's nomination, all three venues having attracted comments, all that I do now is to await further comments and eventual resolution. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)12:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
@
Roman Spinner: you have now created an utter mess, with the same issue being debated in no less than three different places ... and two of those are you creating forks of the discussion.
If you had deliberately set out to screw up consensus formation, this would be a highly commendable effort. I hope that you had some other goal, in which case, fewer prizes. But this is going to need some intervention. I will take it to
WP:AN. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:04, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
BrownHairedGirl, I'm afraid I will have to accept fewer prizes — I did not deliberately set out to screw up consensus formation and had, indeed, some other goal — to broaden the discussion from one death camp,
Sobibor, to all the other camps. Never having participated at RfC before, I posted there on the basis of what appeared to be your suggestion, without realizing that you intended RfC to be the sole venue, replacing the two RMs at
Talk:Sobibor extermination camp and
Talk:Sobibor trial. Upon arriving at this point, any intervention is welcome and I will appreciate whatever measure may be decided at ANI. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)13:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose. This is not GermanificationPedia (and Germanizing something like this in particular would be remarkably inappropriate). WP does not censor out diacritics we know belong there, even if older, and some modern but lower-end, sources have a tendency to do so (for expediency or outright jingoism). Proposals also appears to fail
WP:COMMONNAME since the diacritics are in fact commonly used in English-language sources anyway. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:44, 24 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Weak support all - Whether we use German (the trial here was in Germany), Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, or anything else - is not the issue here (and there is no particular reason to favor Polish for this borderland). What is the issue - is
WP:COMMONNAME in English. In this case, the common name is, per my purview of English language sources in google books and scholar, without the "ó".
Icewhiz (
talk)
16:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Support all: this is not about "Germanising" the names, but about using
WP:COMMONNAME in the English language. Please see Google nGram:
[2] where the version of "Sobibor extermination camp" with the diacritic does not even register. --
K.e.coffman (
talk)
01:02, 28 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose all. Not in line with other articles of the same kind. Also, should be a single multi-move with the main article on the camp or possibly all the death camps and sub-articles (save Auschwitz). And evidence suggests that the un-accented Sobibor is not a German or English form but just a lazy form. Every author's got the right to be lazy, I suppose, but that's not how we normally do diacritics here. If it were, you would never see
Jaromír Jágr. —
Srnec (
talk)
01:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)reply
No one is proposing to remove diacritics from the names of Polish people or Polish places, such as
Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship [Polish language does not use accents — all the marks in the Polish alphabet are diacritical marks]. In fact, a number of discussions in Wikipedia's first decade concerned opposition to moving the name of Poland's ancient capital, once known in the English-speaking world as
Cracow, to its native name [with the diacritic],
Kraków.
Likewise, World War II German death camps should be indicated in their native German form.
Here is the entry for Sobibor death camp in German Wikipedia, with no diacritics in the main header. By contrast,
here is German Wikipedia's entry for the Polish village of Sobibór, with the Polish diacritic included in the main header, despite the fact that Polish diacritics are not part of the German alphabet. Thus "Sobibor" [without the diacritic] is not a "lazy form" at all, but the actual name of the death camp, clearly differentiated from the name of the Polish village.
As for the nominated titles not being "in line with other articles of the same kind", that is being addressed in this nomination and upcoming nominations. No reason to oppose this nomination simply because we have not, as yet, attended to the proper name forms for the other death camps. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)06:08, 3 April 2019 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this
talk page or in a
move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Request for comment on using German names for World War II German concentration camps
The consensus is for names to follow English source usage instead of preferring the German or any other form.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Strong oppose of any default Germanification An effort should be made to assess the impact on 100s, potentially 1000s, of articles affected by German activity during WWII to see whether German spelling (or presumed German simplification, if simply removing accents) of Slavonic and other place names would have across the encyclopedia. We are all aware of Auschwitz as a mega-exception, where the German form of a local place name has acquired awful currency in English, but this an exception. Most places the Germans went, and even most places the Nazis committed atrocities and/or sought to Germanify the local place names, have remained using the real local name used before and after the Wehrmacht and SS came and went. There is an added issue in the example chosen that the absence of the Polish accent in some English (and German) sources is not in fact an attempt to Germanify the name but a font limitation in pre-Unicode books. Modern German sources for example Bernd A. Weil
Verfolgt - deportiert - überlebt: Unvergessene Nachbarn, Volume 2 ....... "Gasmeister von Sobibór", "Sonderkommando Sobibór" actually do not employ "the German name", since there is no German name, there is only a local geographical name which historically some German and English fonts did not fully capture in older sources.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
08:31, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Strong support for English source usage of using
WP:COMMONNAME and following the sources. This is not Germanification versus Slavonicisation; it is a matter of following English language practice. While we respect native language names where appropriate, we are not in the business of turning Wikipedia into a foreign language tutorial for the English-speaking world. And we shouldn't be second-guessing how the sources 'might' have spelt names; only how they have actually spelt them; otherwise we're simply pushing a
WP:POV.
Bermicourt (
talk)
08:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Incidentally these English sources show the impossible nature of "Germanizing" (sic) the camp name and "leaving as en.wp" the geo name. Look at either Reynolds or Fulbrook above and we'll see the text moving from reference to the camp and the village and back again in the same paragraph. It's impossible (or just bizarre) to go through the page leaving half Sobibór mentions accented and half Sobibór mentions accent-stripped according to whether the reference is 1942 or 1960 or 2019. Which is why in English books don't do this, and neither does the en.wp article corpus.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
09:17, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Once again, there is no diacritic-stripping [Polish language has no accents — only diacritics]. Most of the places where Nazi Germany constructed death camps were outside small settlements which have no historical distinction other than for the infamy of the nearby World War II camps. Since Wikipedia lists or will list every place in the world, those places are indeed listed.
However, there is very little reason to mention the villages of
Chełmno nad Nerem (population 350),
Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship or
Bełżec, Lublin Voivodeship except for any Holocaust museums or memorials located there [no need for Lublin Voivodeship — the names
Sobibór and
Bełżec, with
hatnotes, are sufficient to identify the villages — the names of the death camps do not use diacritics].
In the same manner as
Auschwitz/
Oświęcim, the death camp located in the place of present-day village of
Chełmno nad Nerem had a German name,
Kulmhof. As for
Sobibor and
Belzec [without diacritics], virtually all mentions of those names are in relation to the German death camps, thus there is nothing "impossible" or "bizarre" about separate orthography differentiating the camps from the settlements. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)11:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
This is a
WP:COMMONNAME matter (i.e., generally use what English-language sources use). In the two ongoing RMs, this is actually a typical, tedious "Wikipedia shouldn't use diacritics" dispute. It's a losing argument because English language-sources routinely do include the diacritics; WP does not censor diacritics we know belong in a name even when some English-language sources drop them, out of expedience or jingoism; and Germanizing the names of these things in particular is spectacularly inappropriate. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:56, 24 March 2019 (UTC)reply
@
SMcCandlish:. You are 100% right that it is a
WP:COMMONNAME issue, but then misapply it in saying that, because diacritics are routinely what English sources use (and that's debatable), ergo we should always use diacritics. That's not a argument that WP:COMMONNAME would recognise. WP:COMMONNAME is meant be applied to each individual case, not used to generate blanket rules. That does sometimes lead to inconsistencies, but that is just a reflection of the sources. So the first step is to concentrate on the facts and assess what the majority English-language sources say in these cases. And BTW you need to be careful about accusing editors of "expedience or jingoism; and Germanizing" - that's bordering on personal attack - you have no idea what their motives are. As I've made clear, the aim is to reflect English, not German or Slavonic, sources.
Bermicourt (
talk)
16:26, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Criticizing
news style guides and their publishers for both an over-focus on expediency, and a hostility to anything but the plainest possible English (i.e. dumbing down to the lowest-common-denominator readership) is not any form of personal attack. Nor is noting that imposing German names on these things is culturally and historically insensitive. Anyway, the plain fact is that WP doesn't remove diacritics from names that are reliably sourceable to contain them, even if some RS do so. We are not bound by the expediency practices of particular publishers. Otherwise WP would use nearly zero diacritics. In actual fact, we retain diacritics in almost all cases, except those where an overwhelming majority of current RS in English drop them, or (typically for BLPs) the subjects themselves provably eschew the diacritic (e.g. it's
Stana Katic, not Stana Katič; and various Hispanic American sports and TV/film personalities use Gonzales not Gonzáles – that's a
WP:ABOUTSELF matter). We have around 18 years of precedent on this stuff. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 20:52, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
The source language for death camps is often not Polish - in fact - in most cases it is not Polish. Most of the victims did not speak Polish. Most of the perps did not speak Polish. And Sobibor (and other Holocaust locations) was located in an ethnically mixed area (Polish, Jewish, Ukranian, Belarusian). During and after the war this became a homogenized region - but when events took place there was no compelling reason to favor Polish over other languages. This is different from a modern day Spanish or Polish speaking person.
Icewhiz (
talk)
05:04, 26 March 2019 (UTC)reply
It was not the proper name of the place in the 1940s (or earlier). There is no particular reason to follow the modern Polish spelling (other than COMMONNAME) which was irrelevant in the 1940s. Place names in Poland changed after the war - e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk, Stettin/Szczecin, however in historical articles we generally use the name in use at the time.
Icewhiz (
talk)
05:57, 2 April 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose, we should follow the English common name. There is not reason to favor German, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian or any other language here - except English. For Holocaust topics, particularly camps, we have ample English language sources available. We should follow the COMMONNAME as reflected in the sources (and this may shift - e.g. 30-40 years ago - I'd say most sources stuck to the Anglicized Yiddish form. Lately there is more Polish. It also varies per locale - e.g. it is unlikely Auschwitz will change (e.g. see Kiev/Kyiv vs. other names in Ukraine for an analog)). This is an article by article decision (though obviously if Sobibór camp changes - child/list articles should change - as it is the same).
Icewhiz (
talk)
16:37, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Support for English source usage, which would be "Sobibor", "Treblinka", "Belzec", and "Chelmno". This is not about "Germanising" the names (or "Polonising" them for that matter) but about following the
WP:COMMONNAME usage in the English language. See for example this Google nGram:
[3], where "Chełmno extermination camp" does not register. "Kulmhof extermination camp" is not found either. There's also the point of the
"Polish death camp" controversy; there's no point in using the Polish names of the (unrelated) localities. It could only perpetuate the stereotypes. --
K.e.coffman (
talk)
01:15, 28 March 2019 (UTC)reply
COMMONNAME is not a style policy;
never has been, never will be. It is not used for determining diacritics matters. What we do is determine whether RS demonstrate that the placename (in this case – might be something else in another case) properly has a diacritic in it, and that various RS in English use the diacritic. If they do, then we do as well. Otherwise we'd strip diacritics from the name of every single celebrity with one in their name, since the number of low-end entertainment journalisms sources (especially online ones) that are too jingoistic and lazy to bother with diacritics, combined with old books from before diacritics were easy, will always outnumber more precise writers and publishers. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:12, 2 April 2019 (UTC)reply
English source usage per above - as the English wikipedia, we should follow English sources, or official translations, to the extent possible. --
DannyS712 (
talk)
04:38, 14 April 2019 (UTC)reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research.
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)reply
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Poland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Poland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PolandWikipedia:WikiProject PolandTemplate:WikiProject PolandPoland articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the
legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Discrimination, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Discrimination on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DiscriminationWikipedia:WikiProject DiscriminationTemplate:WikiProject DiscriminationDiscrimination articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Jewish history, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Jewish history on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Jewish historyWikipedia:WikiProject Jewish historyTemplate:WikiProject Jewish historyJewish history-related articles
The following is a closed discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: MOVED all three articles as proposed.
WP:CONSISTENCY was the battleground, but every argument against the move failed to source its argument that the unaccented title would be inconsistent, and multiple times asserted things that are at worst simply untrue or at best unbacked by any sourcing listed here ("the diacritics are in fact commonly used in English-language sources anyway", "evidence suggests that the un-accented Sobibor is not a German or English form but just a lazy form", etc. What evidence and sources they were referring to will be left as a mystery for the ages). Blind assertions of "sources" are unfortunately not something we can rely on, leaving this a clear consensus to move. (
non-admin closure)
RedSlash01:04, 9 April 2019 (UTC)reply
Thank you for bringing the overlooked entry to my attention and I am adding it to the nomination. Taking into account that K.e.coffman's nomination was already being discussed, it seemed appropriate to resolve all Sobibor-related matters at the same time. Each nomination is mentioned at the venue of the other and I certainly agree with your proposal that the two separate venues would be best combined. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)00:11, 22 March 2019 (UTC)reply
At least. I wonder if it is also best to combine all the extermination camps (except Auschwitz) to discuss "Germanizing" the titles. Or swapping out "extermination" for "death". But I do not have a strong opinion on any of that.
Srnec (
talk)
03:24, 22 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Strong oppose all English uses Polish spelling for Polish people and place names not German. Just because atrocities were committed on Polish soil does not call for Aryanization of Polish place names in English Wikipedia. Nor indeed the Germanization of any other area of Europe affected by Nazi atrocities.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
21:47, 22 March 2019 (UTC)reply
A strong misunderstanding of the nomination. These are the key words, as indicated above: "Thus "
Auschwitz" for the camp and "
Oświęcim" for the town, "
Kulmhof" for the camp and "
Chełmno" for the village, "
Belzec" for the camp and "
Bełżec" for the village, etc." There is no Germanization or outdated "Aryanization" of Polish place names being proposed. The Polish place names remain in Polish — only the names of the German death camps should be in German. The "strong oppose all " does not even make an exception for
Auschwitz which, by the "all " standard, would need to be referenced by its Polish name, "
Oświęcim". This nomination also aids in illuminating and clarifying the
"Polish death camp" controversy which centered upon misleading terminology that did not make it clear that the camps were German, not Polish. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)01:35, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
"oppose all" refers to all, if we must use highlighter in this RM, which are simply accent-stripping of name now called Sobibór in German-language WP:RS anyway.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
08:35, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Procedural comment. As I have just noted
[1] at
Talk:Sobibór extermination camp#Requested_move_14_March_2019, the question here is whether to Germanize the spelling of entities in Nazi-occuppied Poland which are known for their association with Germany — or, as in this case, created by Germany.
It seems to me that point needs a wider consensus, rather than being decided on a solely ad hoc basis. A wider consensus may involve some hard rules or some general principles with scope for exceptions. But either way, it seems to me to be something which needs a group nomination of all related pages, or preferably at an RFC. The opening by @
Roman Spinner of this discussion in parallel with the other one creates a split discussion on the same point of principle, which is very unhelpful to consensus formation.
PS I should add that if either RM discussion is closed as a rename, I would oppose the speedy renaming of categories to match changes which arise from such a flawed discussion process. I have no substantive preference on which spelling to use, but a split discussion such as this is not a solid consensus. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:30, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
BrownHairedGirl, I appreciate your suggestion of listing this matter at
WP:RfC, which I will proceed to do. I will also list it at
WP:WikiProject Germany and
WP:WikiProject Poland to attract wider participation. If you or anyone else would care to suggest additional WikiProjects or other venues where these discussions may be listed, such suggestions would be also appreciated. I regret that the parallel nomination had the effect of forum shopping and you are correct in assuming that engaging in forum shopping was not my intention. The original nomination at
Talk:Sobibór extermination camp#Requested move 14 March 2019 started with the additional element of the proposed move "extermination camp" → "death camp" and I was uncertain whether waiting for its outcome would affect other Sobibor related articles. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)03:24, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
@
Roman Spinner: this is an RM discussion, not an RFC, so the only way to list it at
WP:RFC is to open a new discussion. That would leave us with 3 parallel discussions, unless the RMs are closed without action.
BrownHairedGirl, since I already listed this discussion at RfC (even if that simultaneous discussion is only conducted here, below the RM discussion) and cannot withdraw another user's nomination, all three venues having attracted comments, all that I do now is to await further comments and eventual resolution. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)12:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
@
Roman Spinner: you have now created an utter mess, with the same issue being debated in no less than three different places ... and two of those are you creating forks of the discussion.
If you had deliberately set out to screw up consensus formation, this would be a highly commendable effort. I hope that you had some other goal, in which case, fewer prizes. But this is going to need some intervention. I will take it to
WP:AN. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:04, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
BrownHairedGirl, I'm afraid I will have to accept fewer prizes — I did not deliberately set out to screw up consensus formation and had, indeed, some other goal — to broaden the discussion from one death camp,
Sobibor, to all the other camps. Never having participated at RfC before, I posted there on the basis of what appeared to be your suggestion, without realizing that you intended RfC to be the sole venue, replacing the two RMs at
Talk:Sobibor extermination camp and
Talk:Sobibor trial. Upon arriving at this point, any intervention is welcome and I will appreciate whatever measure may be decided at ANI. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)13:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose. This is not GermanificationPedia (and Germanizing something like this in particular would be remarkably inappropriate). WP does not censor out diacritics we know belong there, even if older, and some modern but lower-end, sources have a tendency to do so (for expediency or outright jingoism). Proposals also appears to fail
WP:COMMONNAME since the diacritics are in fact commonly used in English-language sources anyway. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:44, 24 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Weak support all - Whether we use German (the trial here was in Germany), Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, or anything else - is not the issue here (and there is no particular reason to favor Polish for this borderland). What is the issue - is
WP:COMMONNAME in English. In this case, the common name is, per my purview of English language sources in google books and scholar, without the "ó".
Icewhiz (
talk)
16:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Support all: this is not about "Germanising" the names, but about using
WP:COMMONNAME in the English language. Please see Google nGram:
[2] where the version of "Sobibor extermination camp" with the diacritic does not even register. --
K.e.coffman (
talk)
01:02, 28 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose all. Not in line with other articles of the same kind. Also, should be a single multi-move with the main article on the camp or possibly all the death camps and sub-articles (save Auschwitz). And evidence suggests that the un-accented Sobibor is not a German or English form but just a lazy form. Every author's got the right to be lazy, I suppose, but that's not how we normally do diacritics here. If it were, you would never see
Jaromír Jágr. —
Srnec (
talk)
01:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)reply
No one is proposing to remove diacritics from the names of Polish people or Polish places, such as
Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship [Polish language does not use accents — all the marks in the Polish alphabet are diacritical marks]. In fact, a number of discussions in Wikipedia's first decade concerned opposition to moving the name of Poland's ancient capital, once known in the English-speaking world as
Cracow, to its native name [with the diacritic],
Kraków.
Likewise, World War II German death camps should be indicated in their native German form.
Here is the entry for Sobibor death camp in German Wikipedia, with no diacritics in the main header. By contrast,
here is German Wikipedia's entry for the Polish village of Sobibór, with the Polish diacritic included in the main header, despite the fact that Polish diacritics are not part of the German alphabet. Thus "Sobibor" [without the diacritic] is not a "lazy form" at all, but the actual name of the death camp, clearly differentiated from the name of the Polish village.
As for the nominated titles not being "in line with other articles of the same kind", that is being addressed in this nomination and upcoming nominations. No reason to oppose this nomination simply because we have not, as yet, attended to the proper name forms for the other death camps. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)06:08, 3 April 2019 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this
talk page or in a
move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Request for comment on using German names for World War II German concentration camps
The consensus is for names to follow English source usage instead of preferring the German or any other form.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Strong oppose of any default Germanification An effort should be made to assess the impact on 100s, potentially 1000s, of articles affected by German activity during WWII to see whether German spelling (or presumed German simplification, if simply removing accents) of Slavonic and other place names would have across the encyclopedia. We are all aware of Auschwitz as a mega-exception, where the German form of a local place name has acquired awful currency in English, but this an exception. Most places the Germans went, and even most places the Nazis committed atrocities and/or sought to Germanify the local place names, have remained using the real local name used before and after the Wehrmacht and SS came and went. There is an added issue in the example chosen that the absence of the Polish accent in some English (and German) sources is not in fact an attempt to Germanify the name but a font limitation in pre-Unicode books. Modern German sources for example Bernd A. Weil
Verfolgt - deportiert - überlebt: Unvergessene Nachbarn, Volume 2 ....... "Gasmeister von Sobibór", "Sonderkommando Sobibór" actually do not employ "the German name", since there is no German name, there is only a local geographical name which historically some German and English fonts did not fully capture in older sources.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
08:31, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Strong support for English source usage of using
WP:COMMONNAME and following the sources. This is not Germanification versus Slavonicisation; it is a matter of following English language practice. While we respect native language names where appropriate, we are not in the business of turning Wikipedia into a foreign language tutorial for the English-speaking world. And we shouldn't be second-guessing how the sources 'might' have spelt names; only how they have actually spelt them; otherwise we're simply pushing a
WP:POV.
Bermicourt (
talk)
08:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Incidentally these English sources show the impossible nature of "Germanizing" (sic) the camp name and "leaving as en.wp" the geo name. Look at either Reynolds or Fulbrook above and we'll see the text moving from reference to the camp and the village and back again in the same paragraph. It's impossible (or just bizarre) to go through the page leaving half Sobibór mentions accented and half Sobibór mentions accent-stripped according to whether the reference is 1942 or 1960 or 2019. Which is why in English books don't do this, and neither does the en.wp article corpus.
In ictu oculi (
talk)
09:17, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Once again, there is no diacritic-stripping [Polish language has no accents — only diacritics]. Most of the places where Nazi Germany constructed death camps were outside small settlements which have no historical distinction other than for the infamy of the nearby World War II camps. Since Wikipedia lists or will list every place in the world, those places are indeed listed.
However, there is very little reason to mention the villages of
Chełmno nad Nerem (population 350),
Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship or
Bełżec, Lublin Voivodeship except for any Holocaust museums or memorials located there [no need for Lublin Voivodeship — the names
Sobibór and
Bełżec, with
hatnotes, are sufficient to identify the villages — the names of the death camps do not use diacritics].
In the same manner as
Auschwitz/
Oświęcim, the death camp located in the place of present-day village of
Chełmno nad Nerem had a German name,
Kulmhof. As for
Sobibor and
Belzec [without diacritics], virtually all mentions of those names are in relation to the German death camps, thus there is nothing "impossible" or "bizarre" about separate orthography differentiating the camps from the settlements. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs)11:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)reply
This is a
WP:COMMONNAME matter (i.e., generally use what English-language sources use). In the two ongoing RMs, this is actually a typical, tedious "Wikipedia shouldn't use diacritics" dispute. It's a losing argument because English language-sources routinely do include the diacritics; WP does not censor diacritics we know belong in a name even when some English-language sources drop them, out of expedience or jingoism; and Germanizing the names of these things in particular is spectacularly inappropriate. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:56, 24 March 2019 (UTC)reply
@
SMcCandlish:. You are 100% right that it is a
WP:COMMONNAME issue, but then misapply it in saying that, because diacritics are routinely what English sources use (and that's debatable), ergo we should always use diacritics. That's not a argument that WP:COMMONNAME would recognise. WP:COMMONNAME is meant be applied to each individual case, not used to generate blanket rules. That does sometimes lead to inconsistencies, but that is just a reflection of the sources. So the first step is to concentrate on the facts and assess what the majority English-language sources say in these cases. And BTW you need to be careful about accusing editors of "expedience or jingoism; and Germanizing" - that's bordering on personal attack - you have no idea what their motives are. As I've made clear, the aim is to reflect English, not German or Slavonic, sources.
Bermicourt (
talk)
16:26, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Criticizing
news style guides and their publishers for both an over-focus on expediency, and a hostility to anything but the plainest possible English (i.e. dumbing down to the lowest-common-denominator readership) is not any form of personal attack. Nor is noting that imposing German names on these things is culturally and historically insensitive. Anyway, the plain fact is that WP doesn't remove diacritics from names that are reliably sourceable to contain them, even if some RS do so. We are not bound by the expediency practices of particular publishers. Otherwise WP would use nearly zero diacritics. In actual fact, we retain diacritics in almost all cases, except those where an overwhelming majority of current RS in English drop them, or (typically for BLPs) the subjects themselves provably eschew the diacritic (e.g. it's
Stana Katic, not Stana Katič; and various Hispanic American sports and TV/film personalities use Gonzales not Gonzáles – that's a
WP:ABOUTSELF matter). We have around 18 years of precedent on this stuff. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 20:52, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
The source language for death camps is often not Polish - in fact - in most cases it is not Polish. Most of the victims did not speak Polish. Most of the perps did not speak Polish. And Sobibor (and other Holocaust locations) was located in an ethnically mixed area (Polish, Jewish, Ukranian, Belarusian). During and after the war this became a homogenized region - but when events took place there was no compelling reason to favor Polish over other languages. This is different from a modern day Spanish or Polish speaking person.
Icewhiz (
talk)
05:04, 26 March 2019 (UTC)reply
It was not the proper name of the place in the 1940s (or earlier). There is no particular reason to follow the modern Polish spelling (other than COMMONNAME) which was irrelevant in the 1940s. Place names in Poland changed after the war - e.g. Danzig/Gdańsk, Stettin/Szczecin, however in historical articles we generally use the name in use at the time.
Icewhiz (
talk)
05:57, 2 April 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose, we should follow the English common name. There is not reason to favor German, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian or any other language here - except English. For Holocaust topics, particularly camps, we have ample English language sources available. We should follow the COMMONNAME as reflected in the sources (and this may shift - e.g. 30-40 years ago - I'd say most sources stuck to the Anglicized Yiddish form. Lately there is more Polish. It also varies per locale - e.g. it is unlikely Auschwitz will change (e.g. see Kiev/Kyiv vs. other names in Ukraine for an analog)). This is an article by article decision (though obviously if Sobibór camp changes - child/list articles should change - as it is the same).
Icewhiz (
talk)
16:37, 25 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Support for English source usage, which would be "Sobibor", "Treblinka", "Belzec", and "Chelmno". This is not about "Germanising" the names (or "Polonising" them for that matter) but about following the
WP:COMMONNAME usage in the English language. See for example this Google nGram:
[3], where "Chełmno extermination camp" does not register. "Kulmhof extermination camp" is not found either. There's also the point of the
"Polish death camp" controversy; there's no point in using the Polish names of the (unrelated) localities. It could only perpetuate the stereotypes. --
K.e.coffman (
talk)
01:15, 28 March 2019 (UTC)reply
COMMONNAME is not a style policy;
never has been, never will be. It is not used for determining diacritics matters. What we do is determine whether RS demonstrate that the placename (in this case – might be something else in another case) properly has a diacritic in it, and that various RS in English use the diacritic. If they do, then we do as well. Otherwise we'd strip diacritics from the name of every single celebrity with one in their name, since the number of low-end entertainment journalisms sources (especially online ones) that are too jingoistic and lazy to bother with diacritics, combined with old books from before diacritics were easy, will always outnumber more precise writers and publishers. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:12, 2 April 2019 (UTC)reply
English source usage per above - as the English wikipedia, we should follow English sources, or official translations, to the extent possible. --
DannyS712 (
talk)
04:38, 14 April 2019 (UTC)reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research.
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)reply