Wikipedia:Featured article review/Rudolf Vrba/archive1

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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 by Casliber via FACBot (talk) 4:09, 2 September 2018 (UTC) [1].

Rudolf Vrba[edit]

Notified: SlimVirgin, Jewish history, Judaism, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, European history, Biography

This article was promoted in 2006, when the standards were not applied as rigorously as they are now, and has never been under review. I am nominating this article for FAR because I believe that it does not meet several of the FA criteria:

  • 1b (comprehensive): missing Vrba’s role in warning Fredy Hirsch about the impending liquidation of much of the Theresienstadt family camp on 8 March 1944, and the subsequent warning included in the Vrba-Wetzler report about the probable fate of the rest of the family camp, which sparked diplomatic protests from the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. Also missing Vrba’s role in the historiography of the 1942 deportations from Slovakia (not well covered on Wikipedia, but see Bratislava Working Group—he accused the Slovak Jewish leaders of not warning Jews)
  • 1c (well-researched): much of the article is sourced to primary sources, even where secondary sources for the information exist. Large sections of the article are sourced to Vrba's memoirs, his CV, and an autobiographical account by George Klein.
  • 1d (neutral): the article gives a misleading impression of the deportations from Hungary in 1944 and the potential for Hungarian Jews to avoid deportation, by highlighting an unrepresentative anecdote (Klein) in excessive detail. Sometimes inaccurate statements are not contrasted with the actual figures; according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and most historians, about 75% of deported Hungarian Jews were gassed on arrival at Auschwitz, not 90% as stated in the article.
  • 2c (citations): a few citations are not in the appropriate format or are missing page numbers. Page ranges for some citations are too long for optimal verifiablility. Some page ranges on this article are as wide as 10 pages or more, while I have seen comments on recent FACs that suggest that page ranges should be kept to two pages for FAs.
  • 4 (length): some irrelevant details are included; most of these sourced to Vrba or other primary sources.

For more detail, see the list I made on the talk page. I first raised these issues on the talk page about two weeks ago, but so far have only attracted the attention of the main contributor of the article, SlimVirgin, who has disagreed with some of the fixes that I tried to implement. I hope that nominating it here will draw in uninvolved editors who can help address these issues. Catrìona (talk) 00:44, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@WP:FAR coordinators: Recommend that this be moved to FARC because it has been two weeks and no improvements have been made. Thanks! Catrìona (talk) 13:57, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We need more eyes on this - I am pinging those who commented at the FAC - @Jayjg, Briangotts, SandyGeorgia, MPerel, Jfdwolff, Outriggr, Tony1, Ambuj.Saxena, and Humus sapiens: - to see if we can get some more opinions on weighting, and issues raised above. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:32, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's a pity, but I don't think this can escape being demoted, if no one's willing to fix it. (Is there a wikiproject that could be pinged?) Just random samples: "at this stage it is only an introduction to a system that will be more fully explained in Section 4." ... no ref. "George Klein fled rather than board a train after reading the Vrba–Wetzler report." ... ambiguous caption. Tony (talk) 00:24, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Tony1: Thanks for looking at the article. I already pinged the relevant wikiprojects as listed above. Catrìona (talk) 00:27, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Beyond my previous quick scan through, I've now had time to read the article properly. I think it's excellent. If there's fixing to do, it's minor; did it really need to be brought to this forum? Tony (talk) 09:01, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As I said in my comments, it's frankly not comprehensive. I guess some of the other points I made are arguable, but it's clear that the article is missing important information. Did you read through the detailed comments that I left on the talk page? Catrìona (talk) 15:53, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I agree with Tony. There are a couple of unreferenced paragraphs, but in my completely unexpert view overall it is well up to FA standard. Dudley Miles (talk) 14:54, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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