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Talk:Leni Riefenstahl/GA1

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Latest comment: 9 years ago by Maile66 in topic GA Review

GA Review

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Latest comment: 9 years ago18 comments3 people in discussion
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Reviewer: Maile66 (talk · contribs) 18:52, 29 June 2015 (UTC)Reply


GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:  
    As indicated in the section below this checklist, copyvio/close paraphrasing has been found in checking online sourcing.
    Unable to check for copyvio/close paraphrasing for offline sourcing.
    B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:  
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. Has an appropriate reference section:  
    B. Cites reliable sources, where necessary:  
    Duplication Detector run on all online sourcing, and no issues of concern were found. (but, apparently, does not catch everything - see detailed chapter-by-chapter section at the bottom of this review)
    C. No original research: 
    Unknown.
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:  
    B. Focused (see summary style):  
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:  
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:  
    Edits in 2015 appear to be of a constructive nature.
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:  
    9 Images on Commons, appropriately licensed.
    2 DVD poster (cover art) images. Non-Free labeled per WP:NFCI
    Image of Riefenstahl and her brother not on Commons, but labeled as Public Domain. I posted a clarification query about this image on Commons, and the reply is Here (Section:Need copyright advice on en.Wikipedia file). Can we get any information about the photographer, or otherwise information on the family rights?
    • Jonas Vinther, I am putting this review on hold until the copyright issue on the image is settled. Putting a Public Domain notice on it does not automatically make it Public Domain. The publication date of the image, and who owns the rights to it, need to be settled. — Maile (talk) 12:14, 30 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • I saw your question on Commons, but asking a question does not resolve the issue. And you do need to keep dialogue going here on this template, for documentation purposes of this review. — Maile (talk) 12:20, 30 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • You could do that. It's a very fine image, by the way. But if you were ever to take this article up through FAC, they would be even more adamant about the licensing. If you remove it, we'll get on with this review. — Maile (talk) 13:30, 30 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
    B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:  
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:  

Once you get that taken care of, I can finish up this review. — Maile (talk) 13:39, 1 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

  • Maile, I have responded to your two points, hope my answers are acceptable. I also wish to inform you that I will be going on vacation early tomorrow and wont be back until the 12 July... no worries, however; I've asked my Wikipedia family to look after my reviews while I'm away so I'm sure if there is any more issues with the article, those will be dealt with by one of my friends. Thanks again for taking on this review. Best, Jonas Vinther • (Click here to collect your price!) 22:34, 3 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

Section by section checking of issues

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  • Jonas Vinther, I just found a copy and paste copyvio, or close paraphrasing, in the Detention and arrests section. Everywhere "The Scotsman" reference is used, it is almost entirely copy and paste. I have tagged it appropriately, and I'll be checking everything else more thoroughly while you're on vacation. — Maile (talk) 14:26, 4 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Section 1 - Early Life
  • "Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born on 22 August 1902 into a prosperous Protestant family." - source Johnson does not mention her family at all.
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing from the University of Washington source:
  • UW -"At the age of 4, Leni began to write poetry and paint"
  • Article - "At the age of four, she began to paint and write poetry"
  • UW - "Leni felt that from a very early age she was an athletic child, due to the behest of her father. At age twelve, she recalled joining a local gymnastics and swim club"
  • Article - "She was also athletic, and at the age of twelve joined a gymnastic and swim club."
  • "In 1918, when she was 16, Riefenstahl attended a presentation of Snow White which interested her deeply; it led her to want to be a dancer" - nothing in the Davis source mentions this.
  • Section 2 - Dancing career
  • WP:WEASEL "Riefenstahl gained a reputation on Berlin's dance circuit." A reputation for what? Source (Davis) does not support this sentence.
  • Section 3 - Acting career
  • "According to her, Riefenstahl received invitations to travel to Hollywood to create films, but she refused them in favour of remaining in Germany with a boyfriend." Awkwardly worded - "her" being Riefenstahl? Hard to tell, because the source is the television documentary of her. The sentence right before it is referring to her character in the movie.
  • Section 4 - Directing career
  • Propaganda films
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing - Source - "over a million Germans had participated in the hugely successful Nuremberg Rally."
  • Article - "More than one million Germans participated in the rally."
  • World War II
  • "According to Ernst Hanfstaengl, a close friend and confidant of Hitler throughout the later 1920s and early 1930s, Riefenstahl tried to begin a relationship with Hitler early on, but he turned her down." - not supported by the source.
  • "On Hitler's direct order, the German government paid her seven million Reichsmarks in compensation." (for the movie Tiefland) - The film and compensation are not mentioned in the linked source.
  • "Fifty stills from the filming in Krün near Mittenwald were later found and from these, surviving prisoners were able to identify 29 camp inmates who worked for Riefenstahl and were then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the first weeks of March 1943 following Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's December 1942 decree." - source does not mention Riefenstahl's filming.
  • Thwarted film projects
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing - Source - "Jean Cocteau much admired Tiefland, comparing its imagery to Breughel, and insisted it be shown at the 1954 Cannes film festival"
  • Article - "In 1954, Jean Cocteau, who greatly admired the film, insisted on Tiefland being shown at the Cannes Film Festival, which he was running that year."
  • "In 1960, Riefenstahl unsuccessfully attempted to prevent filmmaker Erwin Leiser from juxtaposing scenes from Triumph des Willens with footage from concentration camps in his film Mein Kampf." - source says she sued the producers, but does not mention the outcome of the lawsuit.
  • "She visited Kenya for the first time in 1956 and later Sudan, where she photographed Nuba tribes with whom she sporadically lived, learning about their culture so she could photograph them more easily." The Buruma source at the end of this sentence needs to be removed. It has nothing to do with her visit to Africa.
  • "Rodger, who had taken the first photographs of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, refused to help Riefenstahl approach Africans during her time on the continent." - not supported by the source; not mentioned in the source.
  • "In the end, only test shots were made." - not supported by the source, which says the filming was called off, but nothing about test shots.
  • Section 5 - Post War Life
  • Detention and trials
Jonas Vinther, we have some items to take care of. The section "Detention and trials" is vague in spots.
  • The entire first paragraph of that section is unclear when the events happened. Please add dates. When was Schulberg ordered to arrest her? When did Schulberg make the comments he's quoted as saying?
  • "However, when Riefenstahl later claimed she had been forced to follow Goebbels' orders under threat of being sent to a concentration camp, Schulberg asked her why she should have been afraid if she did not know concentration camps existed." - not supported by source.
  • Much in the Detention and trials section was a copy and paste, or close paraphrasing, from "The Scotsman" reference.
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing - Source - "Riefenstahl said she was fascinated by the National Socialists but politically naïve and ignorant about any war crimes. From 1945 through 1948 she was held in American and French-run detention camps and prisons along with house arrest but although tried four times by various postwar authorities, she was never convicted through denazification trials, either for her alleged role as a propagandist or for the use of concentration camp inmates in some of her other films. However, she was found to be a “fellow traveller” who was sympathetic to the Nazis."
  • Article - "Riefenstahl continued to maintain she was fascinated by the National Socialists, but politically naive and ignorant about any war crimes. From 1945 through 1948 she was held in sundry American and French-run detention camps and prisons. She was also under house arrest for a period of time. Although Riefenstahl was tried four times by various postwar authorities, she was never convicted through denazification trials either for her alleged role as a propagandist or for the use of concentration camp inmates in her films. She was found to be a fellow traveler only who merely sympathized with the Nazis."
  • Second paragraph - What dates was she under house arrest? "Riefenstahl was tried four times by various postwar authorities," needs dates on the four trials and who the postwar authorities were.
  • The source does not say she was under house arrest for three years (1945-1948). See the above source on the copyvio. The source is vague, and the article is repeating it. WP:VAGUE. It was impossible for her to be incarcerated in three locations at the same time. Not under house arrest at the same times she was in prisons and detention camps.— Maile (talk) 15:14, 5 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing - Source -"Riefenstahl later said that her biggest regret was meeting Hitler: “It was the biggest catastrophe of my life. Until the day I die people will keep saying, ‘Leni is a Nazi’, and I’ll keep saying, ‘But what did she do?’” Although she won more than 50 libel cases against people accusing her of collaborating with the Nazis, there are many unanswered questions about her relation to National Socialism."
  • Article - "Riefenstahl later said that her biggest regret in life was meeting Hitler, declaring, "It was the biggest catastrophe of my life. Until the day I die people will keep saying, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?'". Despite winning almost 50 libel cases against people accusing her of various things, unanswered questions about her relation to National Socialism in particular and fascism more generally remain."
  • Bestseller books and final film
  • "Both became international bestsellers." - not supported by the source.
  • "While heralded by many as outstanding colour photographs, they were harshly criticized by Susan Sontag, who claimed in a review that they were further evidence of Riefenstahl's "fascist aesthetics". The Art Director's Club of Germany awarded Riefenstahl a gold medal for the best photographic achievement of 1975. " - Source Holocaust Teacher Resource Center has nothing to do with these two sentences and should be removed in both places.
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing - Source - "Leni had begun to sell her pictures to various German magazines"
  • Article - "She also sold some the pictures to German magazines."
  • "She befriended Andy Warhol and was a guest of honour at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada" - not supported by the source.
  • "In her later years, Riefenstahl became known for her longevity and physical stamina, although she often suffered considerable pain from old injuries. At age 72, she began pursuing underwater photography after having subtracted 20 years off her age to gain a certification for scuba diving." - (both sentences) Find A Grave is not considerable a reliable source.WP:UGC
  • "At age 100, she was still photographing marine life and gained the distinction of being the world's oldest scuba diver." - not supported by the source.
  • Death
  • "Riefenstahl celebrated her 101st birthday on 22 August 2003 at a hotel in Feldafing on Lake Starnberg Bavaria, near her home. The guest list of more than 200 people, included prominent German socialites and celebrities. However, the day after her birthday celebration, she became ill." - nothing but her death date and age in the paragraph is supported by the sources.
  • "Riefenstahl had been struggling with cancer for some time and her health rapidly deteriorated throughout the last weeks of her life." - not supported by the source.
  • "Leni Riefenstahl died in her sleep at around 10:00 pm on 8 September 2003 at her home in Pöcking, Germany." - not supported by the source.
  • "She was buried in Munich Cemetery" - Find A Grave is not a reliable source. WP:UGC
  • Section 6 - Views of critics
  • "Finally, Riefenstahl was a woman, a beautiful woman. When she was seen with Hitler, their photos made the world's front pages. And the image stuck" - not in the source
  • Section 7 - Film biographies
  • "Motivated by her old age, Riefenstahl, who for some time had been working on her memoirs, decided to commission this documentary to tell her life story about the struggles she had gone through in her personal life, her film-making career and what people thought of her" - not supported by the source, which says she "cooperated", does not say "commissioned", and does not say what her motivation was in cooperating.
  • Copyvios/close paraphrasing - Source (which appears to be a reader comment) -"riefenstahl insisted that her films were never meant to advance the political program of National Socialism, that she looked at the world with the pure, disinterested eye of an artist and cared only about the noble task of giving vivid cinematic form to contemporary events"
  • Article - "she insisted that her films were never meant to advance the political program of National Socialism, that she looked at the world with the pure, disinterested eye of an artist and cared only about the noble task of giving vivid cinematic form to contemporary events."
  • "She was also the subject of Müller's 2000 documentary film Leni Riefenstahl: Her Dream of Africa, about her return to Sudan to visit the Nuba people." - the source only says "Leni Riefenstahl has been injured in a helicopter crash in Sudan while making a film about her life. "
  • "Riefenstahl also wanted Sharon Stone to play her rather than Foster, which ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the project." - remove the "Nugent" citation at the end of the sentence. It points to a Time magazine page about Bill Clinton.
  • "Director Paul Verhoeven corresponded with Riefenstahl about a separate film biography which was never realized." - not supported by the source.
  • Section 8 - In popular culture
  • "Riefenstahl's filming merits are discussed between characters in the 2008 Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino explained the significant presence of Third Reich film-making in his film, "Riefenstahl and Goebbels despised each other; he was in charge of every single person in the German film industry with the sole exception of her"." - not supported by the source.
  • Section 9 - Works
  • This section has no sourcing at all.
  • Section 12 - Sources
  • Printed
  • Remove → Downing, Taylor (2012). Olympia. Macmillan. ISBN 978-1844575824. is listed, but nothing points to it. The inline citations for Downing point to the 2012 online sourcing for Downing on History Today website.
  • Online
  • Mis-spelled author name → Ian Buruma (Fascinating Facism) is mis-spelled as Baruma.
  • Formatting → "Fascinating Fascism". The New York Review of Books. 6 February 1976. Retrieved 2 June 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link) - needs to be formatted with Sontag's name so not as to confuse with Buruma above
  • Mis-label → Holocaust Teacher Resource Center is mislabeled as Holocaust Teacher Research Center

Second opinion needed

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The nominator is on vacation until July 12, and nothing will be done until he returns.The nominator is not a primary editor of this article. However, I am leaning towards failing this nomination after the nominator has returned and has had a chance to reply here. This article is in unbelievably bad shape.

What I have done so far is above. It looks like what it is - a lot of different editor contributions over the years, with no consistency on verifiable content. A lot of it looks like "any reference will do" method of sticking citations next to text it does not support. I find places where I know it was sourced in something else I read further up, but the section I'm actually reading at that time does not match the sourcing next to it.

In my opinion, this article needs to be taken apart sentence by sentence and reworked with reliable information and sources. This review can only check online sourcing, but the numerous issues that have arisen as a result put a question mark over the offline sourcing. I would strongly advise that after a thorough copy edit of this article, it would benefit by taking it through Peer Review before re-nominating at GAN. I don't believe it is ready for GA. — Maile (talk) 22:14, 4 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

With the problems you're finding in prose and copyright issues, on top of me skimming the refs and finding more than a few unreliable ones (there's find a grave and wordpress sources being used), I would just fail this now rather than bother waiting a week. Articles are allowed to be failed if the issues are too serious. Wizardman 16:12, 5 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Very well. I wanted to be fair to the nominator. For anyone who has access to the right sourcing, particularly German sources, and is willing to put in the work, this article would be worth improving all the way up the various reviews. But in the meantime, sadly, this Fails. — Maile (talk) 18:12, 5 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
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