Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Germany/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5


General Importance

Importance is something I personally do not feel overwhelming qualified to determine here. Basically, I indicated that all those articles which are included in the Wikipedia free CD release are among the top importance, as they are included in the CD. But, for a project with as wide a scope as this one, that's still very few articles. I like what WikiProject Biography did in creating a group of core biographies, but we aren't quite set up for that here. I would like the idea of permitting us to discuss what are the most importanct articles to us, and think maybe we could set it up so that we as it were vote for the most important articles. In the beginning, maybe we could choose the 100 articles of greatest importance to this project, then possibly somewhat focus on bringing those articles up to at least good article status. I would welcome any suggestions from the rest of you as to what you think should be counted in the top 100 articles for this project, and whether you would like to go ahead with something of this type or not. Thank you. Badbilltucker 21:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, let me think of some top priority articles. Many important articles are listed at Portal:Germany/Topics, but other top priority articles are:

States

All 16 state articles German Democratic Republic Germany (how far back in history?)

Cities

Berlin - Hamburg - Munich - Cologne - Frankfurt (only these 5, others are not top important)

Politicians

Otto von Bismarck - Adolf Hitler - Konrad Adenauer - Helmut Kohl - Angela Merkel - Horst Köhler - Frederick II of Prussia - Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor - William II, German Emperor Erich Honecker all post 45 Chancelors

Other people

Martin Luther - Johannes Gutenberg - Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Friedrich Schiller - Thomas Mann - Johann Sebastian Bach - Immanuel Kant - Friedrich Nietzsche - Karl Marx - Albert Einstein

Other Items

Oktoberfest German reunification Berlin Wall Rhine Donau Christmas Market

Please comment and expand this list and help select which of the articles at Portal:Germany/Topics really are top importance. Kusma (討論) 22:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

As you can see, I suffer from a horrible pro-biography bias, so someone else should help with this list. Kusma (討論) 22:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
see above - revert if the refactoring was off Agathoclea 23:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Added a few more, my understanding of top-priority are articles that are at the top of peoples minds when they think of Germany, not what Germans think of as important hence my inclusion of Christmas Market and Oktoberfest. Agathoclea 08:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Let's just go and assess some and then try to prune it back to ~100 items if we get too many. Kusma (討論) 08:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I am now just going trhough lists and assessing some things as "High" and some as "Top". Let's just do it the Wiki way by being bold and see if we get revert wars, then we'll know there is something worth discussing :-) Kusma (討論) 11:14, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Any sugestions where to draw the line between high and mid on cities? Agathoclea 18:36, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Random suggestion: Above 100K is high, below 100K is Mid unless the city is a very well-known tourist destination, which classifies it as High? Kusma (討論) 18:41, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
There is a list of towns with a population > 50k sorted by population at de:Größte Städte Deutschlands. If we took 100k as the limit, we would have 81 towns as Top or High. That sounds OK to me, on balance. The rest of the list, at least, I would assess as Mid, that would be another 107. Probably the bottom limit for Mid should be lower than 50k. Obviously, famous places would get upgraded. For instance, I think would make Bayreuth=High, and Oberammergau at least Mid, even if it is only a village. Other reasons for upgrading by default might be: university towns, historical associations (e.g. Worms, Augsburg, Wittenberg, Dachau). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Boson (talk • contribs) .
That sounds like an attackplan. I'll get those out of the way first before carrying on taging the list of cities. Agathoclea 09:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Got as far as No 30 - now off to work. A lot after No 20 hadn't been tagged at all Agathoclea 10:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Complete - I added two or three more as they were close and felt important. Also Weimar due to Goethe. Anyway I will be back to my list of cities - If no-one objects I will mark the remaining "cities" as Mid. Agathoclea 14:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Should we have some special attention to vandalism in these articles? I ask after noticing that user:Bb3b_no2 has been removing large amounts of content from Oktoberfest; earlier this week I reverted about a half a day later! Today, I got it a bit quicker, and gave him a warning. But we may want to at least keep a list of articles that we should all watch, to catch this quicker; hopefully before they get buried under other vandalism/vandal revert edits. -Steve Sanbeg 23:24, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

At this point, you've probably already done the best thing in this regard by letting us know about it. Generally, from my own experience of projects, that's probably the best way to go. Vandals basically get bored with screwing up a specific page after a while, and either stop or go on to other pages elsewhere. But I have marked that page on my own watchlist, where I can also check on the user's activity as well, and hope that the rest of you feel free to inform us of any other acts of vandalism you might encounter. Badbilltucker 23:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
That user got just got indef blocked. I have noticed that some projects have recommended watchlists; if this is happening in other articles as well, we may need to do that, too. This kind of vandalism can only be caught by people who check the diffs to see what's happened since the last known good edit; not by the normal vandal fighting tools. -Steve Sanbeg 16:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
One way to do this is to mark articles as "watch"ed articles, and check to see if any IP addresses modify them. Generally, the true vandals don't log on before they vandalize something. But you're right, we could add a section to the page regarding those which are most often vandalized. Unfortunately, this is the only one I know of so far. I know Adolf Hitler regularly got vandalized, and that is why that page is semiprotected, but that's the only other one I know of. If you know of any more, please feel free to add a section to the project page about, maybe, "articles to watch". Badbilltucker 20:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I haven't looked into it enough to see how well that would work. I was expecting that the anons are generally obvious enough that they'd get reverted in normal vandal fighting, while the ones that log in and remove sections without adding any bad words are harder to catch, and need someone more familiar with the article. Lately, I've been more agressive, and would compare the latest version with the last by myself or Agathoclea, so I can catch removed text and partially reverted vandalism (which is common with AntiVandalBot). So I know how to find it, and will generally catch it within a day or two. But the more watchlists these articles are on, the shorter that time would be. So I was wondering if there are several articles like this that are each watched by one or two people, or it's just a passing problem in this one. If it's just here, then with a couple of us being attentive, it should be workable. -Steve Sanbeg 20:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Germany has always attracted vandalism, so have a lot of Nazi-related articles. A lot is seasonal, Oktoberfest attracted a lot of pranks during the event, but also a lot of editing. I automatically put articles I edit on my watchlist, with taging articles for this project and then assessing them there will be a lot more articles watched. Agathoclea 21:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
But a little vandalism noticeboard would not do harm, it might be worth trying. Agathoclea 21:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Project newsletter

I've just created what is actually a fairly pathetic looking :( first draft of a project newsletter at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Outreach/Newsletter, and started the Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Outreach page as well. I hope that all of you feel free to make any comments, additions, and suggestions to both. :) Badbilltucker 23:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Saxony

This is a mess, as Saxony currently redirects to History of Saxony. It should either point to the article about the current state (my preference) or be a disambiguation page, but the current state of affairs is silly. Kusma (討論) 08:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree both that the current redirect is unacceptable and that it should point to the article about the modern-day state. In fact, I think Free State of Saxony should be simply moved back to Saxony, as it was before User:Petri Krohn moved it last month. The discussion at Talk:Free State of Saxony#Move to Free State of Saxony also seems to be running against the move. —Angr 08:39, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
It may have been a bad idea to redirect Saxony to History of Saxony. The history article needs a total rewrite before it is usable. I have now redirected Saxony back to Saxony (disambiguation) as it was before 16 October 2006.
There are now almost 2000 incoming backlinks to Saxony. Hardly any of these are related the Free State of Saxony. The backlinks are mainly historic, most of them pre-19th century. They include links like Teutonic Knights, Battle of Tours, West Germanic languages, List of state leaders in 878, Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims. The last larger collection of links that were related to the federal state were the automaticly generated stubs in Category:Saxony geography stubs, all of which I have now disambiguated. If there is any large collection of backlinks to Saxony, which should link to Free State of Saxony, please tell me, I will be glad to fix these.
If You seriously consider moving Free State of Saxony back to Saxony, you should start with disambiguating these 2000 backlinks. I would find it unacceptable, that we would have 1500 links pointing to the Free State, that are in no way related to it. -- Petri Krohn 04:50, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
P.S. There are now over 300 backlinks to the Free State of Saxony. I believe this includes most of the links that should link to the federal state. -- Petri Krohn 05:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I suppose virtually all of the links to Free State of Saxony were made after you moved the article to that name. I know I've been changing links to Saxony to Free State of Saxony ever since I noticed the change. But this encyclopedia isn't static. Every time someone wants to add a new link to the modern state of Saxony, they're going to just write [[Saxony]] and nine times out of ten they won't double-check to make sure that link goes where they want it to. I should also point out it's against Wikipedia naming conventions to have an article called "X (disambiguation)" where there's no article called "X". Saxony should either be an article about the modern state (Kusma's and my preference, and I venture to guess most other people's if a poll were held) or a disambiguation page, but the simple name alone shouldn't be a redirect anywhere. —Angr 09:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
You are absolutely right, most, no, in fact all of the links to the Free State of Saxony were made after the move. Before that there was not even a redirect at Free State of Saxony. As to the backlinks, it may be that someone might write [[Saxony]] without checking the disambiguation page. The links however show, that they are (or their pre 1990 sources are) five times more likely to refer to something else than the federal state when writing Saxony. Besides, keep in mind, that Saxony is also the original homeland of the Anglo-Saxon people!
As to what should be in the article Saxony. I see only two possibilities.
  1. Move Saxony (disambiguation) to Saxony.
  2. Write a new article covering the 1700 years of Saxon history with the High German free state in only a minor role.
I am afraid, that if we choose option 2, someone will still want to turn it into a disambiguation page and remove all the contents. -- Petri Krohn 15:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Why not moving Germany to Federal Republic of Germany? Or Poland to Republic of Poland? Or Spain to Kingdom of Spain? Saxony is the name of the geographic entity. Please use that one instead of the name of a political entity. Using the name of the political entity is unexampled. Geo-Loge 10:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, not entirely. Official political names are used where there is more than one political entity sharing a geographical name. For example, China, Korea, Ireland, and Congo are articles about cultural and geographical areas, while the articles about the corresponding political entities are at People's Republic of China/Republic of China, North Korea/South Korea, Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland, Republic of the Congo/Democratic Republic of the Congo. But Saxony isn't a case like that. —Angr 11:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Two reasons:
  1. Saxony the political entity and Saxony the geographic entity are not related. The geographic entity is usually called Lower Saxony to diffrentiate it from the political entity.
  2. Spain, Poland, Russia and Germany are official political names of the nations, as defined by their constitutions. Unlike Spain, Poland and Germany, Saxony (the political entity) is not and independent and sovereign state. It only a federal state in the federal republic. Unlike independet states, it is not free to choose its name. -- Petri Krohn 16:23, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
ad 1) I'm not sure I've understood you correctly, but surely "Lower Saxony" is a political entity (a Land in western Germany (old BRD), as opposed to (the Free State of) Saxony, which is in eastern Germany (old DDR).
ad 2) Isn't it conventional to let sovereign nations specify the official names of political units within the state (unless there are diplomatic objections)? There is a list of official names at the German Foreign Office web site. Should we put a link to this site somewhere within the project? I'm not saying that the Wikipedia article should be called by that name, since that is not the name it is commonly known by -- except in official communications. --Boson 18:50, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Saxony and Lower Saxony are two geographic objects in a political-historical relation. This is the - please excuse me - waste that is produced by sometimes name similar entities by it's political and sometimes by it's geographic names: The effect is confusion and ignorance. So again the relation is that the Free State of Saxony covers the area of Saxony. Geo-Loge 19:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
By the way: The Free State of Saxony is a sovereign state as it proudly highlights in it's name. The Free State of Saxony has (as like every german Land) a constitution, a government, a parliament, a constitutional court and so on. That are all the elements of the entity "Free State" and defining it as a sovereign and independent state. The Free State defines by itself exactly by the constitution that it is a Land of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Free State of Saxony delegates sovereign rights to the Federal Republic of Germany, as like as the Federal Republic delegates sovereign rights to the European Union. Delegating some of your sovereign rights does not mean, that you are losing your sovereignty. To conclude: Saxony has to be treated as like every state object. Geo-Loge 01:07, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Of course, that's another can of worms, probably involving the Montivideo Convention and Section 81 of the German Criminal Code. --Boson 11:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
It's no can of worms: The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany declares in article 30 (Division of authority between the Federation and the Länder): Die Ausübung der staatlichen Befugnisse und die Erfüllung der staatlichen Aufgaben ist Sache der Länder, soweit dieses Grundgesetz keine andere Regelung trifft oder zuläßt. - Except as otherwise provided or permitted by this Basic Law, the exercise of state powers and the discharge of state functions is a matter for the Länder. Geo-Loge 14:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Since this seems to be of marginal relevance to the subject under discussion, I doubt that there is much point in continuing the discussion here, though it might be of interest in discussing the German constitution. For instance, if we apply a typical understanding of "sovereignty" in international law and take Article 30 to mean that Saxony (or Berlin) is a "sovereign and independent state" (while ignoring Article 31), we might not be very happy about the statement "Germany is a democratic parliamentary federal republic" (as opposed to a confederation of sovereign and independent states). The "can of worms" becomes apparent when you consider the ramifications if Berlin were to issue a unilateral declaration of independence and defend that independence with armed force -- or were to apply for membership of the U.N. --Boson 00:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
The relevance to the subject is, that the Free State of Saxony is a current state (defined by law) covering the territory of Saxony and has to be treated like that in choice of the lemma. Consider the ramification if Germany lefts the European Union... transforming abstract law to concrete action is often a can of worms. Geo-Loge 13:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
North Korea is a geographic entity as like East Germany, that has a political or historical background. Of course we are talking about political geography which is in relation to politics. The political object of the geographic entity North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (you have to know that this Republic covers the northern part of Korea). And you are right: There's no necessity and even if, the lemma would have to be Upper Saxony. But "Obersachsen" is completely unknown in German. Geo-Loge 13:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Angr gets my vote. There should be a "Saxony" article and it should be general in scope with a focus on the current political entity, just like every other article in Wikipedia place article, leading to related articles on history, language and other topics. That's what I expect as a native English speaker. We want facts, not formalism. Rename the Free State article "Saxony".
Tacitus 15:19, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree. The "Saxony" article should be about the modern state, but should point to the disambiguation page and should use the official name in the first paragraph. This is also the solution used by German Wikipedia. --Boson 19:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

German scientists

I am searching for images/pictures/sketches of german scientists for their biographies.

This list is incomplete and I will update soon. IA (talk) 17:44, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The first of them has an image which should be importable from the German wikipedia. I will try to search the various other foreign language commons and articles as well. Badbilltucker 23:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, included the image. IA (talk) 16:07, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
When you find images on other Wikipedias that are available under free licenses, please upload them to Commons. A great tool to help with migrating the images is Commons Helper. Kusma (討論) 07:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Style

Given that one reason for the low quality of many of the Germany articles is the atrocious English (or Denglish) and the wildly varying terms to describe the same things, I've began a page to compile "best practices" from all the varying places in Wikipedia: Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions and would like to invite comment there. Could one of you clever people please give it a shortcut, e.g. WP:GERS (for German style)? Tacitus 22:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


MeckPom

Thanks for work on the page with additions and shortcut. One problem: there has been a proposal on the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern page for two months to correct the proposed English form of the name because it's linguistically incorrect. I don't know how the -ERN got added to the name West Pomerania in Wikipedia, but I can assure you that a majority of English media either use the form Vorpommern or West Pomerania with no -ERN. It should say "West". "Western" is a self-replicating mistake. See the page for details.
Personally I think attempts to anglicize Vorpommern don't fly: we looked at this 16 years ago and there was simply no naming tradition for "West Pomerania" in English. We had Pomeranian dogs and wars over Pomerania, but Pomerania's subdivisions were a blank in English. Considering that Wikipedia is purer than pure about things that completely flummox the average English-speaker, like "Groß-Gerau" with an ess-zet, I think we should favour authenticity here. Consistency demands that "West Pomerania" go in the dustbin of history along with "Brunswick", "Coblence", "Mayence" and other English place-terms that never gained traction. The EU says Vorpommern. Our aim should be to explain Germany in clear, limpid English, rather than trying to popularize new nouns for it.
Tacitus 19:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I always heard "Hither Pomerania" as the English translation of Vorpommern until I found Wikipedia. I rather like "Hither Pomerania". It suggest that eastern Pomerania could be "Thither Pomerania" (just as Vorpommern suggests a Hinterpommern). —Angr 20:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
A google search of both terms returns the following numbers of hits: Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, 207,000; Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 328,000; Mecklenburg-Hither Pomerania, 643.--CarabinieriTTaallkk 22:23, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Because google is the only way to do things. "Hither Pomerania" and "Further Pomerania" are the common terms for the estates of the Holy Roman Empire, as far as I'm aware, although even those aren't used very often. I have no idea what the current term is, but I don't see why we need an official anglicization. I completely fail to understand how "West Pomerania" could be a closer translation of "Vorpommern" than "Western Pomerania". "Vor" has no connection with West at all, so either way it's a loose translation, and I entirely fail to understand why "West" is supposed to be correct and "Western" incorrect. john k 00:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Mecklenburg-Western-Pomerania Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is the official translation given by the German Foreign Office, at http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/de/Infoservice/Terminologie/Bundeslaender/Englisch.pdf. This is also given in the EU English Syle Guide at http://ec.europa.eu/translation/writing/style_guides/english/style_guide_en.pdf. That doesn't mean that needs to be the article title, of course, but I would tend to use it in this case, when talking about the modern Land. --Boson 07:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC) Typo corrected in-place.--Boson 18:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Googling their sites reveals that BBC News and CNN use Western Pomerania while the NY Times uses both West and Western, more commonly "West". I'd say we go with the EU and the BBC. Kusma (討論) 13:54, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I heard the BBC's inimitable Ray Kershaw do an "Our Own Correspondent" broadcast a few days ago (transcript here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6103880.stm ) in which he lyrically described "Mecklenburg Vorpommern" (quote) and what he had seen there. That would seem to represent BBC good practice. They use "Pomerania" to refer to the region, but "Vorpommern" as part of the state name. Tacitus 20:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
That seems fairly reasonable, I guess. I'm also confused as to how English placenames used for centuries, particularly "Brunswick," which is still used as the primary English name for the state, if not for the city any longer, can be described as "never having gained traction? Names like Coblence, Mayence, and Ratisbon are obsolete now, but they were once the way English-speakers referred to those cities. Names like Brunswick and Aix-la-Chapelle are still in use in historical contexts. We don't have Treaty of Aachen, do we, or Duchy of Braunschweig? john k 13:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

We will soon, no doubt. One of the hardest rules to defend at Wikipedia is "use the most common English form," because it goes against the culture of competitive pedantry that dominates the whole project, in which everyone wants to prove they are more knowledgeable than the next pedant. Hence the pressure to say Braunschweig instead of Brunswick and to use the wretched "ß" when no-one outside the Wikipedia uberpedants club knows what it means. This must be resisted, or the whole encyclopaedia will become unreadable. Gradually, of course, old English forms are giving way to more "authentic" ones, like Livorno for Leghorn etc, but we should not try to force the pace. Most English-speakers still say Brunswick, Cologne and Munich, and so should we. I would suggest that no-one knows what either Vorpommern or Hither Pomerania means, and that West Pomerania is a reasonable English usage even though it is not an accurate translation. Adam 14:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Adam 14:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all the valued comments, which could be summarized as follows. There are so far at least four terms under discussion, and more are conceivable, to describe this post-1990 geographic entity in English:
  • Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
  • Mecklenburg West Pomerania
  • Mecklenburg Western Pomerania
  • Mecklenburg Hither Pomerania
While we can assume that most of the English-speaking world has never heard of this place (for neutrality, let’s just call it MeckPom) the discussion has shown that this is a fluid situation: all four terms are in active use in English. This should be stated in the Wikipedia article dealing with MeckPom. All the terms, when entered in the Wikipedia “Search”, reach the page via redirects.
The question at issue is: what headword should be placed over the Wikipedia article?
  • First of all, there is the frequency data, cited by Carabinieri. In drafting an encyclopedia entry, we should give this some weight, but must ultimately be guided by arguments. It may indeed be that much of the writing so far in English about MeckPom is by authors using English as a second language, who come to Wikipedia looking for authority. We follow them, they follow us, and we have only achieved circularity.
  • Secondly there are the media and styleguides which Boson has researched. There may be a certain risk of circularity with these, because journalists, who work in haste, often use Wikipedia as an authority and its flavour of the day self-replicates. The styleguides are likely to be influential, though one suspects neither will ultimately succeed in changing English practice: the EU one prescribes Hannover with a double N and the anonymous Berlin one (we don’t know how qualified in Engish its author is) was the first place I had ever seen “North-Rhine/Westphalia” with a solidus.
  • Thirdly there is the tradition issue which John K raises, exemplified by the case of “Brunswick”. Hopefully our German colleagues will allow us to keep writing “Brunswick” in historical contexts. But MeckPom has only existed for 16 years.
  • Fourthly there is the translation issue. Angr offers a deft translation, “hither”, which catches the flavour of “vor”. The Latin prefix “cis-“ might do likewise. West transmits the effect rather than the etymology of “vor”, which is also a legitimate translation strategy, as Adam points out. But while it is praiseworthy to tell readers where the German word comes from, one wonders why in the 1990s and 2000s we are forking into separate English and German labels. We don’t do it any more for contemporary personal names (other than Papst Benedikt) but just make an honest attempt to say the foreign name. Vorpommern is not D-grade easy to say, but it’s not A-grade hard either.
  • Fifthly there is the West/Western issue. It is argued on the Talk page that WestERN is not what a careful, native English speaker would choose if they were translating this for the first time ever. They would always choose West. Since the naming is unstable, it’s not too late to correct this in 2006. For second-language speakers, this distinction may be unimportant.
  • Sixthly there is the authenticity issue: Wikipedia has established a fragile truce round the globe, with most placename headwords taking the vernacular form. This can be annoying to English speakers, but readers come to Wikipedia expecting it to be intellectually challenging. It's for an educated, not an isolationist audience. Vernacular does not need to be prescriptive: it is possible to present all the alternatives in the article text and neutrally explain their merits.
A couple of months ago, I argued for “West Pomerania”, but after looking at a lot of Wikipedia Germany articles and considering how consistency of quality and nomenclature could be achieved in the project, I now believe the headword should be “Mecklenburg-Vorpommern”. If we could settle that, we could get down to the real work, of turning a very second-rate description of MeckPom into an authoritative article (including an account of the devils that drove its founders to invent such a convoluted name in the first place).
Tacitus 23:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Just a small addition:
The "official" (FO) version is actually "Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania" which has an oddly placed hyphen (though I think I understand the reasoning behind that decision). I presume the choice of "Western" rather than "West" is that Vorpommern itself is not recognized as an independent entity. I see that Mecklenburg-Vorpommern also uses the German untranslated on the English pages of its Web site. All things considered, that might very well be the best choice (providing that redirects for all likely variants are provided), though I would prefer to use the official name in lists etc. (alongside the Free State of Saxony). Perhaps one should even devote a sub-section, or at least a footnote, to the translation issue.
--Boson 07:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that masterly summation. It would be perfectly acceptable to give "Vorpommern" as a proper noun and not try to translate it. We don't translate Westfalen as "Western Phalia." (Was there ever an Ostfalen?) Adam 08:15, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and their English names are Westphalia and Eastphalia. —Angr 08:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there an English name for East Westphalia? Kusma (討論) 08:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

And presumably also West Eastphalia. And East Eastphalia. And North-East South-Westphalia. Adam 08:26, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

A Holy Roman Empire wikiproject?

Greetings. I'm not a member of this project, but over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries#A Holy Roman Empire sub-project? I've proposed the creation of a wikiprojcet specifically to deal with the Holy Roman Empire - particularly with coverage of the individual states and estates, but more broadly conceived. I thought I'd mention it here in case anyone is interested. john k 21:14, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Such a project has now been established. The Holy Roman Empire taskforce is a subproject of WikiProject Former countries. Since the project has just started up today, the project page is pretty empty but discussion is well under way. It would be great if we could get some collaboration between this new project and the Germany WikiProject. All we need now is members. Come one come all! - 52 Pickup 09:02, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Berlin

You are very welcome to comment on this city-articleat Wikipedia:Peer review/Berlin/archive1. Is it already mature enough to promote it towards FA-candidate-procedure? Lear 21 13:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Article needing attention

Hohenheim needs moving to University of ... (or similar); a new stub for the suburb of Stuttguard needs creating and a disambig for the other 2 Hohenheim's that are referenced. Will get around to do it myself if no-one else is faster just leaving this as a reminder. Agathoclea 18:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

thanks for spotting the copyvio Agathoclea 19:56, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
No problem. The wording of the paragraph stuck out like a sore thumb. It was just a matter of Googling a sentence or two. —Angr 20:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Article requests

When you come across an important topic that should be included but isn't, please don't hesitate to list it here. Kusma (討論) 22:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

SED Logo: public domain?

The commons version of de:Bild:SED-Logo.png has been deleted. I am not certain whether I should re-upload it here or on commons, but it apparently is PD. In any case, it is certainly fair use here. Any suggestions? Kusma (討論) 13:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a link to the deletion disussion? Agathoclea 13:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
From the deletion log which points to commons:Template:Logo-Germany, I guess the explanation is "Commons does not accept trademarked items", which is true for most other images uploaded with this template, but not necessarily for this one. Kusma (討論) 13:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I hope what I wrote at Image:SED-Logo.png will be sufficient for the image to be usable here. Kusma (討論) 12:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Peace of Westphalia Article

Hello!

I have just posted a major edit of the Peace of Westphalia article. Wikiproject Germany rates this as a High-Importance Article.

I am aiming to put this article forward for good article status at some point, if it under-goes a period of stability as set out in the good article criteria. I would appreciate it if anyone interested in this topic would head over there, check out my explanations in the talk pages, and reccommend/make changes you think are necessary.

Thanks!

Chrisfow 18:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

President of the Bundestag new article

I just managed to create a High- (or potentially Top-)priority Germany article that did not exist yet. Please help me by copyediting my translation, finding more sources and suggesting an interesting fact from the article so it can be featured at Did you know on the Main Page. Thank you, Kusma (討論) 22:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Names of universities

Names of Universities are often translated freely esspecially if there is any official translation used by the universities itself. Is a "Technische Universität" a technical university in English language or an university of technology? The difference just bases on self-image. I would say, that it is POV to imply a translation in the lemmas. Examples of university without of official translation are the Dresden University of Technology (where I moved the lemma to the german term), Leibniz University of Hannover (which is the Leibnitz Universität Hannover), the Berlin University of Technology (which is the Technische Universität Berlin or TU Berlin not declaring whether TU is a german or english acronym) or the University of Karlsruhe (which is the Universität Karlsruhe (Technische Hochschule)). The only examples of correct (according to official definition) translations that I found are RWTH Aachen, the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (FH) (The correct english term is West Saxon University of Applied Sciences of Zwickau) and the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg.

I think the German names are almost easier to understand than names of French universities like the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. This example is in my opinion a role model in many wikipedias. So how to handle the lemmas? Geo-Loge 11:06, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I rarely see full names used in English, I would prefer University of Mainz to Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Other named universities are at the simple name, like University of Bonn instead of Rhenish Fredrick-William University at Bonn. Independent of whether we use German or English, we'll have to decide whether to use the official full name or the common short form. Kusma (討論) 12:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Both universities call them self "Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz" and "University of Bonn" in English language. This lemmas are correct. There are other examples: While the University of Würzburg uses this short name in English, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen does not translate its name. Geo-Loge 13:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I think the correct lemma should be University of Göttingen by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Seriously, the full names are used nowhere except on the official forms and websites of the universities, even in German, with some exceptions for disambiguation. Have you ever heard anyone say "Ich habe an der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn studiert" or "Ich promoviere an der Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg"? I would prefer the short form also on the German Wikipedia. Kusma (討論) 14:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Well the question is: Is an encyclopedia a collection of colloquial lemmas or a collection of correct lemmas, that also show how they are used in colloquial? If often hear people say, "Ich habe an der Uni Köln studiert.": So let's take "Uni Köln"! The german Wikipedia is much more correct in this cases:
Other Examples:
Common names does not mean colloquial names. Common names are the correct names of organisations as they define them. Geo-Loge 14:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Our article about the Federal Republic of Germany is at Germany and the one about the Free State of Bavaria at Bavaria. The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is at Hamburg, and the United States of America at United States. Do you think all these articles should be renamed? Kusma (討論) 14:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I join(ed) the discussion about the Free States in Germany. But this is something else: There is a geographic entity and a political entity. Dont tell me, that the "Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg" is a organisational entity and the University of Würzburg is a... am... what ever entity. If you can divide this two terms (possibly in dependencies), then you could use both. For example: declare "University of Würzburg" as a colloquial enitity. The Free State of Saxony is a valid lemma that could cover all the staten organs like government, parliament and so on. Geo-Loge 14:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Besides, we should not be assuming that readers of the English Wikipedia know what the word "Universität" means. It's central to knowing what the article will be about. In a trivial sense, all translation is POV, but it's Wikipedia's function to provide pertinent information in English as English is spoken. The headwords must be especially clear since they are listed on category pages: in English, short and only disambiguated where necessary. Tacitus 14:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
If a reader finds a Technische Universität in the Category:Universities and colleges in Germany, then it's not a question of knowledge but a question of contextual logic. Of course understanding "École polytechnique" is not that easy. Geo-Loge 14:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Importance assessments

I've been doing some more importance assessments and find myself making lots of arbitrary cutoffs. For example, I just decided that cities with more than 300k inhabitants and state capitals are High-importance. Possibly the cutoff should be lower, though (German 100k "Großstadt"?), and especially cities of worldwide fame or touristic importance should be classified quite high.

The "medium vs. low" differentiation also isn't easy. I'm pretty certain that individual U-Bahn stations are Low importance as well as most buildings of only regional significance. I'm currently rating Cathedrals and Universities as "Medium" unless there is something special about them that makes them "High" (like Cologne Cathedral).

I'll try to rate some mathematicians, politicians, physicists, and poets, but would appreciate help with painters, biologists, actors, and lots of other people. Please rate some of these articles, it won't be a problem if the rating is off by 1 or not really consistent, we can try to figure that out later. Right now there are so many unassessed articles that we need more people who have a feeling of what exists and how to classify it. Kusma (討論) 16:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Right now am assessing the articles for the Wikipedia CD Release. By the end of today or tomorrow, that should be done and I will be able to return to the rather daunting task of adding the banners to some articles and assessing others. However, I hope my saying this doesn't cause anyone else to not do so. I have indicated above which categories have already been tagged; all the others not mentioned haven't been yet. Assessing and adding the banner to those articles would be more than appreciated. Badbilltucker 17:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Who/what to include

Is there any sort of policy, consensus, or whatever on who and what to include in the project? I happened to notice that Talk:Albert Einstein has a project template but Talk:Henry Kissinger doesn't. --Boson 20:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a really new project and a lot of articles haven't been tagged yet. Probably even most of them. The basic policy is any article which falls under the Category:Germany or any of its subcategories falls under the scope of this project, but that's a lot of articles and many of them have yet to be tagged. I'm planning to getting back to tagging them as soon as I tag all the Version 1.0 CD selections with a banner appropriate to them, if I can find one. So, with any luck, starting in a few days you'll see a lot more articles tagged with the banner. And, because of your question, you will notice that Kissinger is now tagged. Feel free to tag any others you see that you think qualify that haven't been tagged yet. Badbilltucker 21:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I was thinking of tagging Kissinger, but thought I'd better check, because there are probably quite a lot of people who were born in Germany but thought of as American. Others might have a more tenuous connection. --Boson 23:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Bruce Willis, for example. —Angr 06:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Some organization

Guten tag! (From a Chinese Wikipedian that loves Germany)

I moved the Participants section into the subpage listed on the sidebar. I changed the format of the member page a little bit also so that it looks more organized.

For the talk page, I setted up the archive pages, tables and the auto bot. I will continue to assist on the Germany project. Cheers =) AQu01rius (User • Talk) 06:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! I had wanted to do that, but now I don't have to find out how :-) Kusma (討論) 20:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Photos

Maybe we can start uploading photos of Germany and Germany related topics to help with German related articles. Kingjeff 20:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure we should! There is an announcement section for images at Portal:Germany/New article announcements. I think we should also have a request page for pictures (including photos, maps, and other diagrams) somewhere. All bios of long-dead people should have pictures, for example, we just need somebody to scan them from an old PD book. Kusma (討論) 20:44, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Got the request section started. And even populated it a little. Kingjeff 21:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

More on importance assessments

As the scope of the project is so huge, perhaps the sorting in Low/Mid/High importance does need to be more organized than I had previously thought. As a start, I have completely rewritten the importance scale (which was imported from the Trains Wikiproject and didn't really fit our needs) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Assessment. It still does not cover everything, of course, and any improvement would be welcome. I think we might have to rerate some Low-importance articles, though - probably most real universities are at least Mid, with some potentially High. "Low" should be reserved for topics of mostly local importance or those that just help cover a larger area comprehensively without being of large independent interest to a general audience. Don't be shy to rate topics as of high or medium importance, I think we should have on the order of 200-500 High-importance and thousands of Mid-importance articles when we have finished rating. Kusma (討論) 20:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Please also check and improve my examples. Kusma (討論) 23:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Or do you want a more complicated rating system? AQu01rius (User • Talk) 04:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't quite know what kind of more complicated system you are thinking of. The rating would be a lot easier for subprojects like "German municipalities", "German literature", ""German scientists" or similar. It is in my opinion basically impossible to compare the importance of some building, some emperor and some city. So making the rating system finer will only help if we say in which context something is "important". I think this would be easiest done by having subprojects that define their own importance scale. For our use, I think we mostly need to specify what "Top" and "High" are at the moment, as these articles are those that we should improve first. Kusma (討論) 07:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

To do template

I have put some stuff in our {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/to do}} template. If you want to keep up with Germany-related requests, you can add it to your user page. Please help keep it updated and comment on how many requests it should contain. Kusma (討論) 21:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I'd like to use the Todo on the portal, but haven't been able to make it look nice. Any ideas? Kusma (討論) 22:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
I merged the contents, see how it looks. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 00:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I have changed over to a self-hacked version of the template, wastes less space now. Kusma (討論) 07:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Unreferenced articles

Is there some point in adding a Category:Unreferenced Germany articles and a parameter in the project template that adds to this category? Kusma (討論) 07:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that would be a great idea, since lack of references is one of Wikipedia's largest probelms.--Carabinieri 16:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea, but have one question, specifically, how to populate it. If we could include the parameter in the banner, that'd work, but otherwise it might be a bit of a problem. Badbilltucker 16:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
It should be in the banner, yes. Say, if "unref=yes" is defined, the article gets included in the category. And then important articles from the category can be included on the Todo template :-) Kusma (討論) 22:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
TWP uses a similar setup. Agathoclea 23:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
If they have good esperiences with it, can we just copy their version? Kusma (討論) 09:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I have implemented an "unref=yes" switch in the template. By the way, it would be great if somebody has time to write usage notes and documentation for the project template. Perhaps we could also add some more switches like the Trains people, for example to improve our image request page. Kusma (討論) 17:15, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

New kinds of featured content

Just wanted everyone to know that there are two new kind of featured content: Featured series and Featured sounds. Series refers to a series of articles, presumably carrying some sort of series sidebar, sounds is fairly obvious. Nomination procedures can be found at the Wikipedia:Featured topics and Wikipedia:Featured sounds pages. Just thought you all might like to know. Badbilltucker 16:58, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

It's been here for years, and nothing is worked out. I doubt its possiblity. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 17:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

World War I

World War I is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 19:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Kitsch

Kitsch is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 22:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Munich

I've proposed WikiProject Munich. If anyone is interested, you can join here Kingjeff 01:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Article Drives

How about we have an article improvement drive and article refrencing drive? Kingjeff 18:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

We tend to be mindreaders here :-) and currently work on Mödlareuth. Seriously, I think most here keep an eye on the new article announcent and give those a once-over. Once the majority of taging is over we can look at somthing organised. But I have posted here "Article in Need of attention" messages and it was quickly dealt with. Agathoclea 18:13, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
And Mödlareuth made it onto DYK earlier today Agathoclea 18:21, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Translations

Does anyone think that a translation is needed? I started a translation page for WikiProject Munich. Feel free to use this as an example. Kingjeff 23:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

A l ot of translation requests are at WP:GTIE. I am collecting article requests for translations of nonexistent articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Article requests; would it make sense to note the existence of large amounts of translation-worthy text for existing articles in the /Comments subpage so it shows up at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Germany articles by quality/1 and the other subpages of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Germany articles by quality? Kusma (討論) 09:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I take that back, the Comments section should be strictly related to quality. Kusma (討論) 10:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it looks like a couple people have been able to help in this area. Thanks to Boson for doing a real translation. He brought Dachau from a stub into a credible article. Maybe someone can check it out for grammer etc. Anyone willing to help out translating can go here. Kingjeff 00:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Template:German

I was thinking about using Template:German and saw that somebody has just nominated it for deletion. An alternative suggestion was to make it a talk page template. Any views? --Boson 09:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a keeper so far. Agathoclea 10:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

City lists

Would it be a good idea to import some lists from German Wikipedia? I was thinking of de:Größte Städte Deutschlands, de:Liste der Großstädte in Deutschland, and Liste der größten Agglomerationen in Deutschland If so, I would tend to rate them as High importance (as a navigation aid). --Boson 09:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see a Großstädte list. I'm not so certain about the agglomerations list; perhaps it is sufficient to put that into the Geography or Demography of Germany subarticles (and the content already partially exists in Germany). I think we should try for more than plain lists, though - ideally I'd like to see a featured list like Municipalities of Lithuania. Kusma (討論) 10:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
If you have a good name for the Großstädte list, don't forget to request it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Article requests so I'm not the only one requesting articles there :-) Kusma (討論) 10:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I now see there are several existing lists that I had missed because they weren't under [[Category:Lists by country]]. There is even a list of municipalities sorted by population size. I'm still trying to work out the relationships between all the categories, but I'll add [[Category:Germany-related lists]] to [[Category:Lists of cities in Germany]], which also contains List of municipalities in Germany and tag the existing lists. I think the lists may be a bit out of date and some tidying might be necessary.--Boson 13:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

de:Großstadt does not even have an en-wiki equivalent. Agathoclea 14:25, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
That would be because the English language doesn't have a term corresponding uniquely to the German word "Großstadt". I can't imagine there would ever be demand for an article Big city here that would be separate from City, and anyway, "big city" doesn't have the formal definition (any city with more than 100,000 residents) that Großstadt has. —Angr 14:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I have put up a request for a List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants to be created at the requests page. Kusma (討論) 09:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Unreferenced articles cat needs populating

Please help populate Category:Unreferenced Germany articles by using the "unref=yes" switch of the project template. Of course, help in depopulating the category by referencing these articles and removing the switch is even more appreciated :-) Kusma (討論) 10:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Image and Map requests

Images and maps can now be requested using the {{WikiProject Germany}} template (see there for instructions). Once the categories are reasonably populated, I'll add some of the requests to our open task template. Kusma (討論) 22:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Mario, Duke of Bavaria

Someone added Mario, Duke of Bavaria. Is it a joke? Can anybody check? Kmorozov 06:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

This looks like a copy of Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria with a few changes (e.g. Mario the Good One instead of Arnulf the Bad) in an attempt at humour. The dates (birth and death) are the wrong way round but similar to Arnulf's. --Boson 16:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the content really does look like a spoof. But do we know if there really is a Bavarian Duke by this name? If there is, then we could create a real article instead of deleting it. Kingjeff 16:39, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I can't find any evidence of a Duke of Bavaria with the first name Mario. Since Maria is also used as a male name in some places, I also checked for Maria and found some dukes with Maria as a middle name: "Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria, Ferdinand(o) Maria, Luitpold Emanuel Ludwig Maria. I vote for deletion. If a Mario does turn up, the article could be added again, but the existing content is plainly wrong or irrelevant and unsourced and would need deleting anyway. --Boson 22:01, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The thing is a hoax. There has never been a Duke of Bavaria named Mario - certainly not in the 10th century. I deleted it. john k 15:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Subprojects / task forces

As the subject matter is so large, we should have subprojects. I suggest that these should be strongly tied to the main project and use just a switch in the project template. As an experiment, I have started a Mainz task force. Using the example of the Trains WikiProject template, it is even possible to define importance ratings within such a subproject, I haven't done so yet but probably will as my concept of this task force matures a bit. A similar structure could be created for other cities or topical areas like Berlin or German literature if there is interest. Doing this within the Germany project and not as a separate project like the Munich one should help avoid duplicated efforts and too many templates on talk pages. Kusma (討論) 15:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

German history might be another possible (rather large) subproject, if anyone wanted to take it on. --Boson 16:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Excellent idea. Kusma (討論) 19:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course I couldn't stop myself and have created all of the specific importance categories for Mainz. If they work out well in the template, we'll know how to do it for other subprojects. Kusma (討論) 19:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  • WikiProject Munich can be the Munich task force. Kingjeff 21:26, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Right, I already count you as such, and would certainly not want anybody to start a competing Munich group. I think it is mostly irrelevant whether it is called a "project" or a "task force" but would still prefer it if we could merge the Munich template into ours, following the Mainz example, since unreferenced Munich-articles are unreferenced Germany articles, and FA-class Munich articles are FA-class Germany articles etc. The only thing that is different is the importance scale, and that can be solved with an extra Munich importance parameter just like in the Mainz case. Kusma (討論) 21:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I guess we can do that. If I can keep the Munich categories.Kingjeff 21:37, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll implement a switch in the project template and you can see whether you like it. Kusma (討論) 22:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne should be able to hold their own Projects. Kingjeff 21:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, and I would welcome it if interested users start projects about these. We should also merge the old Frankfurt project into this. Kusma (討論) 22:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
See here Agathoclea 10:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
All done :-) Kusma (討論) 15:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The task forces should be listed along the sidebar Kingjeff 22:39, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

It looks good for the Munich project. Kingjeff 22:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Now all we need is to get automated assessment summaries and logs like for the main Germany project. How do we do that? Kusma (討論) 08:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Featured Article Vote on Indian Standard Time

Hi in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Indian Standard Time, I've accidentally noted similarity in names of different users participating in the vote & so I guessed that they might be from the same nationality -India. And 6/7 at the time were Indians.

I think that this is an "internal" systemic bias, since Indian articles are written mostly and only by Indian users & they're mostly likely to be the only voters on featured article nominations on India-related articles & in result, making Indian articles attaining featured article status inevitable.

(I want to note that Indians are a special exception from other nationalities in Wikipedia because most of them can speak and write fluent English & thus can participate more in English Wikipedia while other foreigners can't & thus limit their participation in fields related to their nationality/culture & making participation of other third parties more likely.)

I think that there is need for third party, especially across different nationalities. And I would like members of this project to come participate in the vote & read what I've written & what they've replied with & see the article & voice your opinions. Thanks a lot! (Wikimachine 17:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC))

If you watchlist this page, you should be able to find out about all Germany-related AFD activity with very little effort. If you like it, please help keep this up to date (I currently parse through AFD every day to check if there is anything worth adding, but I'm not sure I catch everything). Kusma (討論) 21:22, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Names of Hochschulen

I see the naming of Fachhochschulen is not yet consistent. Since they don't award doctorates they should, presumably, not be named "University of . . .". I would tend to use the German word Fachhochschule in the article title.

This also applies to the Fachhochschule München, which is named "Munich University of Applied Sciences."

On a related point, what about "Munich University" (as I would normally call it, as opposed to Munich University of Technology). Their Web site does use the English name "Ludig Maximillians University" but, if I am not mistaken, this is a mistranslation. Surely the "s" on Maximillian is a "Fugen-S", which does not exist in English. The only other (unlikely) possibilty would be a possessive, which would require an apostrophe in English. Perhaps, also, some more redirects (e.g."TU . . ." and disambiguation pages/references would be useful (for most Hochschulen). --Boson 22:01, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Further split of {{Germany-bio-stub}}

Has been proposed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2006/November to organise the 4 page large stub STTW (talk) 13:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

You never know what you're going to get with those little dictators. Kingjeff 18:45, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Such as, an overdue mention at WP:PAIN. Alai 01:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Welcoming new members

I have just welcomed all members using {{subst:WelcomeGER}}, which produces

Welcome to WikiProject Germany

Welcome, WikiProject Germany, to the WikiProject Germany! Please direct any questions about the project to its talk page. If you create new articles on Germany-related topics, please list them at our announcement page and tag their talk page with our project template {{WikiProject Germany}}. A few features that you might find helpful:

  • The project's Navigation box points to most of the pages in the project that might be of use to you.
  • Most of the important discussions related to the project take place on the project's main talk page; you may find it useful to watchlist it.
  • We've developed a number of guidelines for names, titles, and other things to standardize our articles and make interlinking easier that you may find useful.

Here are some tasks you can do. Please remove completed tasks from the list.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me or any of the more experienced members of the project, and we'll be very happy to help you. Again, welcome, and thank you for joining this project!

Please welcome any new members (those who have added their name to the Members subpage) using {{subst:welcomeGER}} ~~~~. Kusma (討論) 16:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Frankfurter Judengasse

Can we justify removing the stub tag and nominate this article for T:DYK? Kusma (討論) 21:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Germany/archive1

TSO1D has started cleaning up and condensing the main Germany article and is asking for feedback. Please comment how the article can be condensed and improved further and which sections need what kind of references etc. Kusma (討論) 19:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

rhineland campaign survivors

My father was wounded badly Feb 23, 1945. He was in Pioneer 729 ss rifle.His name was Charles Jalufka.I was trying to find out more about his life.He passed away in 1995..Thank You chabui

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