User talk:Icewhiz/KL Warschau conspiracy theory

Suggestions

Constructive Suggestions for improvement are more than welcome.Icewhiz (talk) 18:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

1. You're placing too much emphasis on the inflated death tolls, when there's a more basic problem with the mere claim of an active gas chamber. It's well known that there were only a handful of dedicated extermination camps with large scale murder facilities (it's less well known that smaller facilities of the sort also existed in several concentration camps - see The Columbia Guide, pp. 20-23); given the state of evidence in the area, claiming that similar large scale facilities existed anywhere else requires extraordinary proof.
2. Looking at the pre-K.e.coffman revision from May 5th,[1] the Death in KL Warschau section has just two sources, only one of which reputable, with the first half of the section having no sources at all. This is bad by any standard.
3. One does not need external sources to see the apocryphal nature of sentences like "there was also a mysterious T-shaped structure in the forest near Koło where the prisoners were occasionally transported by trucks and then never seen again." Most of the section reads like that.
4. What I find most alarming here isn't the fact the article was wrong, or that it was wrong for so long, but that it wasn't even tagged. We all come across "imperfect" articles that we can't or won't fix for whatever reason, but can easily tag; tagging is how we guarantee - or at least improve the chances - that a faulty article will pop up on someone's radar who is better equipped to deal with it than us. This article should've been tagged for {{multiple issues}}, but it wasn't tagged at all.

François Robere (talk) 10:21, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

It was actually created without sources at all - and along the way it acquired a few inline citations - trivial details, not RSes, or not really following the cited source. You are right that the article was approx. 80-90% false content - e.g. even the first paragraph of the Liquidation section was bullshit.Icewhiz (talk) 10:53, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@François Robere: - I've been thinking of this - and this could use a 2nd hand to push this through the Signpost. The lack of tags and sources (for 15 years, and with quite a bit of editing) is indeed alarming. Almost the entire page was a hoax - not just the giant gas chamber (the most implausible detail - technically it simply doesn't work) - e.g. Kolo and the "Kolo death wall" - are entirely made up (the building was built after the war). I discussed this with @Smallbones: at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Archive 6#15 year hoax in mainspace. And he said to post at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions. FR - I suggest you take the current page, copy it to a page in your user space and trim it a bit + refactor per your comments - and then submit. The photo captions currently are over verbose - I entered all info I could on each photo (quite a bit). You also probably have to remove at least one photo - I'd chuck the Auschwitz photo (as it mainly shows how real gas chambers were built - but it really requires more than one photo and caption to show the difference) - so best to give it up and just show pictures of the conspiracy theory. Icewhiz (talk) 07:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I usually work on longer bits offline, so I'll do that at least for the first few drafts. François Robere (talk) 11:10, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Right. I've left you the draft here (I see you went through the tags). I think we're about a draft away from publication. François Robere (talk) 11:39, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

@François Robere: - I removed the long sign caption - diff - that you tagged memory on. Pamięci (which is what I think is what was on there - need to retrace my steps - it involved a higher resolution closeup of the same poster from a different source) - is versatile - it is memory, but also remembrance (e.g. Institute of National Remembrance) - in any case - we don't need the whole caption. Icewhiz (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

indifference

Change the wording of the last section, we were not indifferent, some of us only just found out. The wording of the body is correct, its a specialist subject that many users would not have had any reason to question, that is not indifference.Slatersteven (talk) 09:54, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Current version is here. Is that better? François Robere (talk) 19:12, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

It still says we were indifferent, we were not..Slatersteven (talk) 09:08, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, now. François Robere (talk) 22:37, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Thats better.Slatersteven (talk) 09:15, 6 October 2019 (UTC)