Talk:Müller Matz

Died out / still played

"It died out in the 20th century and is no longer encountered today. By contrast, Bernd Baron von Maydell confirmed recently that Müller Matz is still played today in German Baltic families."

This is plainly contradictory and not a useful contrast to make. I'm inclined to side with Irving Finkel's belief that games never completely die out (it'll still be some family's traditional game somewhere), so will tone that first line down to a "decline" and flag it all as needing sourcing. --Lord Belbury (talk) 17:37, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

That's because they are opinion and fact. This article was translated by me from German Wikipedia. At first sight it all checks out despite the anomaly, but the presence of the word "sei" indicates reported speech i.e. a quotation, not an uncited claim. Re-reading the whole thing and tracking down the Russian source reveals that the author believed the game had died out. However, this is shown to be otherwise by the second author cited; unfortunately without a specific reference. I will restore and tweak the text and fix the first citation. I will also will try and track down the source of the second. If not I'll hide it for now. Bermicourt (talk) 18:23, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

That's done. I've had to hide the baronial assertion as I can't immediately find it, although it seems entirely plausible. Bermicourt (talk) 18:46, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Does seem very plausible. "Confirmed" is quite a weighty phrasing, though, and the paragraph still reads like that lazy Wikipedia cliche of "X is true. However, X is actually false." where one editor disagrees and merely adds a contradicting sentence. I've toned it down to a "suggestion", and dropped out the "recently" and "today" as redundant (the previous sentence already said "today", and if Maydell talks of the game being "still played today", that implies he said it recently). --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:26, 20 April 2020 (UTC)