- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet talk 12:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
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Freiheitsfonds
- ... that since being founded in December 2021, the German initiative Freiheitsfonds has paid for the release of around 850 people imprisoned for fare evasion? Source: (1) 850 figure: BBC News: "Since then, Arne and his organisation Freiheitsfonds (The Freedom Fund) has enabled around 850 people to walk free at a cost of more than €800,000." (2) December 2021 founding: Frankfurter Rundschau: "Arne Semsrott hat den „Freiheitsfonds“ im Dezember 2021 ins Leben gerufen."
Created by BigDom (talk). Self-nominated at 17:49, 9 October 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Freiheitsfonds; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.
BigDom:
- general: article is new enough and long enough.
- policy:
- article is neutral. earwig shows nothing of concern, but most of the sources are in german, so that doesn't say much. spot checks of at least three different sources did not reveal any close paraphrasing.
- the article states that the concept of ersatzfreiheitsstrafe was encoded into law by the nazis in 1935, but the taz source seems to only state that the nazis criminalized in 1935 the act of taking transportation without a ticket (presumably when payment is normally required). does another source mention that the nazis encoded the concept of ersatzfreiheitsstrafe during the same year?
- i had trouble confirming in either the taz source or the nd-aktuell source that freiheitsfonds advocates repealing the law encoding the concept of ersatzfreiheitsstrafe (which appears to be § 43 stgb). to me, it seems that both sources only mention that semsrott is trying to amend or repeal § 265a stgb to make fare evasion merely a contravention (ordnungswidrigkeit). i am not a german lawyer, though, so i could easily be missing something. in any case, the fr source seems to explicitly say that freiheitsfonds wants to remove the concept of ersatzfreiheitsstrafe from the criminal code, so i believe this issue can easily be fixed by citing the fr source instead.
- the nd-aktuell source appears to attribute to semsrott the statement that 4,000 people donated more than 200,000 euros within a week. would it be better to follow the source's example and attribute the statement to semsrott rather than use wikivoice? also, my understanding of the source is that the donors had already given the money to the fund within that first week, rather than simply pledged it, but i am admittedly not fluent in german.
- the bbc source doesn't seem to mention that "custodial sentence[s are] proportional to the amount owed". does another source mention this?
- the berliner-zeitung source reported on 2021.12.03 that semsrott stated that 21 prisoners were freed in two days, while the nd-aktuell source dated 2021.12.06 appears to suggest that semsrott mentioned that 4,000 people donated the previous weekend, which would have been on 2021.12.04 and 2021.12.05. are you sure you have the correct order of events? i would have guessed that semsrott would have attempted to free some prisoners first, to make sure that it was possible to do so in such a manner, before starting a fund and asking for donations.
- article is neutral. earwig shows nothing of concern, but most of the sources are in german, so that doesn't say much. spot checks of at least three different sources did not reveal any close paraphrasing.
- qpq: provided. thank you.
- hook:
- hook is under 200 characters, interesting, cited, and neutral.
- i am not sure if this hook violates wp:synth, because i am not certain about the order of events, as noted above. if the first 21 prisoners were freed before freiheitsfonds was formed, and the 850 people counted includes the first 21, then it's possible that freiheitsfonds only freed 829 prisoners. i noticed that the wording used by the bbc doesn't have this issue as it attributes the 850 freed to both semsrott and freiheitsfonds: "Arne and his organisation ... has enabled around 850 people to walk free". can the hook be reworded similarly?
- points outside of the dyk criteria:
- i'm not sure if this is a mos:engvar issue, but i think "deterrent from" should be either "deterrent to" or "deterrent against", as noted here.
- @Dying: Thank you for the very thorough review. To clarify, I am also neither a fluent German speaker nor a lawyer and any errors or omissions were very likely from my misunderstanding or mistranslation, so I appreciate the amount of detail you have gone into here. I'll respond to your suggestions in the order they appear above:
- This seems to be my misunderstanding, conflating the EFS and fare evasion laws. I've had a go at rewording this section, let me know what you think.
- I'm assuming you mean in the lead section, as I've referenced this to FR later on? I've reworded the lead.
- Fair point, changed.
- Hmm, I must have read this somewhere for me to put it in, but I can't see it this morning. Have removed the claim for now.
- This is a good suggestion and I managed to find another article online that seems to clarify the timeline, so thank you for that. He originally raised money amongst friends for the first 21 people, then once the news went public, others started to donate.
- See above regarding the order of events. In the new source I added ([1]) the journalist interviewing Semsrott attributes these first days of action (02.12.21 at Plotzensee and 03.12.21 at Lichtenberg) to Freiheitsfonds ("die Initiative Freiheitsfonds hat letzte Woche 21 Menschen aus Berliner Gefängnissen freigekauft"), so I believe it's correct to include these initial 21 people in the overall count of 850. However, if you really want to play it on the safe side, I could change the hook just to say "over 800"?
- Changed to "deterrent against".
- Again, thank you for your thorough comments. I think they have really helped to improve the article. Let me know what you think about my changes and hopefully we can get this ready to go! Cheers, BigDom (talk) 06:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
- BigDom, all of your changes look good. the additional taz source is a nice find.
- yes, i had meant the mention in the lead of the removal of the concept of ersatzfreiheitsstrafe from the criminal code. it is my fault for not being more clear earlier. in any case, as the lead has been changed, this is no longer an issue.
- with the new taz source crediting the 21 releases at the start of december to freiheitsfonds, i think it is safe for me to approve a hook stating that freiheitsfonds has released around 850 prisoners. (it seems absurd to consider other cases where semsrott may have independently released prisoners outside of freiheitsfonds.)
- BigDom, all of your changes look good. the additional taz source is a nice find.
