Talk:Mauthausen concentration camp

"If there is a God, he will have to beg for my forgiveness"

It appears so. Rhys Lowe saw the carving on cell block 20 of the prisoners' barracks at Mauthausen, and another, "Bob Lucky" saw it in a film presented im the camp; [In the museum the attendant put on a movie in English just for us, and we sat by ourselves in an auditorium watching the history of Mauthausen. Another couple joined us part way through, but that was it. The line from the movie that both Len and I remembered most was a bit of grafiti scribbled on the wall by one of the doomed prisioners. "If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness." http://www.boblucky.com/Biking/Danube/day3.htm]. More evidence and references would be needed I'm afraid. -PAR1138 (talk) 10:06, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Was this really scratched onto a cell wall by a Jewish prisoner? I have heard that it was. If it was, should it be mentioned in the article? 138.38.11.13 (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

As striking as it may seem, I'm afraid wall scribblings are too un-encyclopaedic. Or am I wrong? //Halibutt 14:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

This quote is confirmed by a documentary video available on the http://en.mauthausen-memorial.at/ website. The relevant section is at 19mins 20secs. http://en.mauthausen-memorial.at/db/admin/de/showvideodetail256.php?cvideo=39&cbereich=1&cthema=347 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.182.134.122 (talk) 14:39, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Minor issue in the lead

According to the lead, the camps "history ran from the time of the Anschluss in 1938 to the last week of the Second World War". According to the article about the Second World War, the war ended in September 1945. I assume the camp wasn't used to September. It could may have been added a clumsy "War in Europe", but suggest to change it to "the last week before the German capitulation", or use the more specific month and year. Grrahnbahr (talk) 08:19, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Major problems with citations

For being a featured article, I consider this article for having serious lacks and problems when it comes to inline citations. A lot of the citations used, are in polish, which is completely ok with the referencing policies, but it makes it harder to clean up for a non-polish-speaking editor. I could start tagging, or even suggest a demotion of the article, but I don't want to do it if the problem could be fixed other ways. The language is may not brilliant according to todays expectations for new FA, but I think it is good enough for survival if other problems are fixed, and the article seems balanced and all that stuff (I doesn't dare to set it up against the good article Auschwitz, as the latter got far easier access to reliable sources).

To be more accurate: Examples of lacks is lack of publishing house or year published, use of "op.cit" (see WP:IBID, sources that are really more footnotes than sources, sources which is unclear what it is ("'Człowiek człowiekowi... Niszczenie polskiej inteligencji w latach 1939-1945 KL Mauthausen/Gusen' Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa, Warszawa 2009" - what is this?? Does it have pages?), sources in foreign languages without the right tag for language. There are also problems related to lack or wrong use of cite templates.

Suggestion for early clean-up is to make a list of books used for citations (not mixed with further reading). Such a list could replace "op.cit"-referencing, and makes a better overview of the sources (see WP:CITESHORT.

This post is ment for suggesting constructive improvements, though I've seen it in the light of the fact that it is featured. Grrahnbahr (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm currently on vacation, or more precisely my honeymoon. I'll be happy to address your issues some time next week. 89.68.150.236 (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to log in, sorry about that. //Halibutt 00:11, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

No problem. Enjoy your vacation. See you in a week or so. Grrahnbahr (talk) 09:57, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I'm back :) First of all, thanks for converting footnotes from one system to another. As you know this article is pretty old now. Back in the days there weren't that many options when it comes to text formatting.

Luckily I have most of the books on my shelve and I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you might have. As to the specific issues you raise:

1. Refs in Polish - indeed, most works I used when writing this article are in Polish. As usually, there was a choice of either writing a mere stub with what little info is there in English-language publications, or use the monographs in other languages. I chose the latter option. I believe there is nothing wrong with that. Some topics (probably most of them) are not yet covered in English language works, and this is especially true to the history of Central Europe. Auschwitz is probably an exception here as it is a symbol, popular around the world and one can find works on its' history in most languages I guess. Mauthausen-Gusen is another matter completely. It seems there's not a single monograph of the camp in English. Anyway, I added trans_title parametres to all refs just in case, I also corrected some title translations that were already there. All refs are also properly marked with the language tag.
2. "The language is may not brilliant according to todays expectations for new FA" - I'm afraid you'd have to be more specific than that. Like you, I'm not a native speaker. The article has been repeatedly edited by native speakers who improved my prose considerably, but there still might be some glitches I guess. You'd have to point me in the right direction though.
3. "set it up against the good article Auschwitz" - well, actually it's more complicated than that. There's plenty of works on Auschwitz out there. However, as the topic is so popular, it's actually harder to find a good monograph of the camp among hundreds of poorly-referenced and poorly-written popular history books. This is but a sidenote though.
4. "Examples of lacks is lack of publishing house or year published" - I can't see any refs missing a publishing house or a year of publication. I corrected one year of publication recently ("Poprzez Dachau do Mauthausen-Gusen" by Adam Myczkowski had no year on the front page so I initially used the year used in the printing press note; I corrected it to the year used by the National Library index). I doubt that's the problem you mean though. Could you please be more specific?
5. "use of "op.cit" (see WP:IBID)" - the page says that op. cit. is "less problematic" than the "discouraged" ibid. Do you really consider the current reference system problematic? I mean most articles I write nowadays use a much clearer distinction onto footnotes, citations and bibliography (cf. Battle_of_Warsaw_(1831)#References). This system was unavailable back in 2006, when I wrote most of what you see here. Anyway, I started to separate then citations from bibliography, but completing the task might take some more time.
6. "sources that are really more footnotes than sources" - converted all of them to proper footnotes
7. "sources in foreign languages without the right tag for language" - again, all of them have tags I believe. Or do you mean something else?

Regards, //Halibutt 10:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

@Grrahnbahr: are you still there? //Halibutt 23:44, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm still here, but haven't worked on the Norwegian article for a couple of weeks. Grrahnbahr (talk) 22:48, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Lack of Facts

The article lacks scientific and historical value, it's religious. The quoted Polish sources are from the 1960s, when communist propaganda in the former Eastern Block was on its peak. And yes, Poland has an anti-German hate industry. That's how it is and what makes up Polish identity. This inflated hate served for the ideological take over of ethnically cleansed territories that were conquered by Poland. And the count the former non Polish habitants as "there" victims, so to get an inflated number for Polish sufferings. Many people start realizing how much propaganda is involved with buzz words like concentration camps, and how little serious history is actually available (the article doesn't even quote one). But people begin getting critical with Western propaganda, asking questions, having doubts about "official" history etc., and make up their minds from other sources than Wikipedia. That's good... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.212.88.115 (talk) 14:16, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

@125.212.88.115: and your point is... what exactly? Go ahead, I read all of the books I used when writing this article, I even have most of them on my bookshelf, feel free to ask specific questions about them or raise concerns about this or that source. But criticising them just because they were written in Polish... well, that's hardly serious, is it. BTW, there's plenty of reliable scientific publications in the bibliography section, and the article makes extensive use of those. Did you actually read it? //Halibutt 20:27, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

FAR needed

This FA, promoted in 2006, has fallen quite far relative to standards. There are link farms in See also and External links, there are sources listed in Bibliography that are not used as Citations, there is an inconsistent citations style, there are numerous MOS issues (eg WP:ENDASH on number ranges, WP:MSH, inconsistency between use of en- and emdashes, and more), there is hidden text, an unnecessary photo gallery, lists that should be prosified, and a lot of uncited text. Unless someone is able to bring this article to standard, it should probably go to WP:FAR for a review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:26, 17 March 2015 (UTC)