Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Holocaust revising

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete.  Sandstein  07:12, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Holocaust revising[edit]

Holocaust revising (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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I simply do not believe that "Holocaust revising" is a real topic. The article is about an unaccepted neologism, not a genuine field of study. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you calling it a neologism when I've supported it from a 1996 book with a 1997 review? If you have a better name for it I'm all ears but this is clearly a legitimate topic to show how views of Holocaust details (death counts, camp numbers, accountability among the populace) have changed over the decades. Ranze (talk) 01:57, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, not really. Obviously historians debate all kinds of topics, and revise their understanding of them, but that does not make, for example, Battle of Waterloo revising a proper subject for an encyclopedia article. Do your sources specifically use the term "Holocaust revising"? It does not sound like the kind of term an academic historian would use. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Holocaust is a larger topic than the Battle of Waterloo though, surely, so we can't hold that up to similar standards. Point me to an article called "revising the Battle of Waterloo" and then your objection will hold water. FKC I have moved the page to revising the Holocaust to match the exact phrase used by Ruth Bettina Birn and Dr. Volker Riess due to three people objecting to my trying to shorten it. So now what is the basis of objection? This IS a term an academic historian would use. Birn was "Chief Historian, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section, Department of Justice, Canada" while Riess editoed Ernst Klee's 1991 book The Good Old Days': The Holocaust Through the Eyes of the Perpetrators and Bystanders Ranze (talk) 02:42, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Just because someone uses a phrase in an academic article, that does not make it appropriate to use it as the title of an encyclopedia article. One could create endless articles about other major events - "Revising World War I", "Revising World War II", etc - and they would not be appropriate either. If historians revise their understanding of something, there is no reason that cannot be covered within the main article about that topic. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:04, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@FreeKnowledgeCreator: the main reason I think we should split these off into their own articles is size. The Holocaust is over 290,000 bytes. World War I is under 250,000 and World War II is under 225,000. Articles about changing perceptions of historians over times about these wars would also be very interesting and I would like to see that too. The primary articles about these subjects should be on the present viewpoint, not out-dated viewpoints or how we got to the present viewpoints. Primary articles should be clear and current, historiographical articles could be confusing for laypeople and shouldn't be jammed into the main articles. Presently do you see historiographical concerns even mentioned in these articles? They're big enough as it is. I don't see you trying to introduce this information into those articles, clearly it needs a narrower-scope article to contain it. Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The article says it's legitimate but search engines don't say the term itself is legitimate. In fact it seems to be mostly used of denialists for some reason. The sources don't really establish the term either. Mr. Magoo (talk) 02:17, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Are you accusing Daniel Goldhagen or Ruth Birn or Volker Riess or Eric Lichtbau of being deniers? The sources clearly establish the term. Holocaust revising is simply a more efficient way of stating revising the Holocaust, a phrase used by Birn and Riess to describe Goldhagen's work. Goldhagen is an example of revising conceptions about accountability for the atrocity, and then the 1992 and 2013 articles from the New York Times are examples of revising the statistical estimates of deaths or camps. Your 'mostly used of denialists' claim is an unprovable assertion. It is POV-pushing. People who oppose the discussion of revising will naturally claim that all revising is denialism, that doesn't make them reliable sources on the matter. Ranze (talk) 02:35, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wikipedia does not have an article for every phrase that someone uses in an article. I am not seeing a legitimate need for an article called "Revising the Holocaust". FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:38, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • This is an article about a topic, not a phrase. The phrase is simply the best way I know how to describe the topic. Please don't misrepresent the intent of the article, it just appropriates the phrase to describe the field of study, not to wax on about the phrase. Ranze (talk) 02:44, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
          • The article may be meant to be about a topic, but I see no evidence the topic actually deserves its own article. How historians legitimately revise their understanding of the Holocaust can be covered in The Holocaust and other articles. The title "Revising the Holocaust" is completely unencyclopedic - no proper encyclopedia would use that as a title for an article. The impossibility of finding an appropriate title is simply more evidence of the lack of need for an article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:58, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
          • Covering it in 'The Holocaust' is not appropriate, that should only be about our current view of it, not how views changed over time. What other articles? Am I missing a historiography of the Holocaust main article here? Category:Holocaust_historiography certainly exists, but which other article should I have included this information in? Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
            • That is nonsense. The article The Holocaust, or any other article on an historical topic, can of course cover the evolving understanding of that topic among historians. You cannot dictate otherwise. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:21, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
              • @FreeKnowledgeCreator: not attempting to dictate just observing that the article is quite big, I thought we split big articles into smaller ones once they got too big. Ranze (talk) 23:06, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm reporting what I saw: [1], [2], [3] and [4]. Maybe "mostly" should have been "often" instead because there are legitimate uses and then there are uses you can't tell whether it's legitimate or not. Mr. Magoo (talk) 02:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • "Often" I'll agree with. It's similar to how 'white separatism' might often be used as more conservative language by white supremacists. Couching extremist rhetoric in conservative topics doesn't mean that the conservative topic shouldn't exist though. Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I do not believe the sources used establish that 'Holocaust revising' is an actual term, or in fact use that term. PeterTheFourth (talk) 02:33, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Fine I'll move it to the bulky revising the Holocaust version since that definitely IS used to describe it. The topic exists, if you know something better to call it then please do. Ranze (talk) 02:35, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Regards, KC Velaga ✉ 03:09, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Regards, KC Velaga ✉ 03:09, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete superfluous,can be easily merged into main articles--Petebutt (talk) 05:55, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Petebutt: what articles do you propose merging this content into? If that is done I would prefer if these names were redirected there to retain their page history. The main Holocaust article is too big and I don't see historiography existing there long since the focus should be on telling people what the Holocaust is currently thought to be. The focus of Holocaust revising > revising the Holocaust is meant to be how views of it have changed over the decades.Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There is no change in attitude towards any of the Nazis vile acts. I can only surmise that this article is trying to prise open a door for the non-believers to proliferate their misguided ideology.--Petebutt (talk) 11:56, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per the above arguments ----Snowded TALK 05:56, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would like to point out that this was posted 2 minutes after special:diff/735200918. I'm left to wonder if this is reprisal for removing a category not supported by the article's content. Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ranze, please read WP:AGF. There is really no point in questioning Snowded's motives. Also, as a general observation, there is little point in your making individualized responses to everyone who has supported "delete" in this discussion - it's not for no reason that you have had few replies to those responses. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:28, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • An editor makes a series of controversial edits on a a subject like this (as you did) and most experienced editors will check what they are doing on other pages - I found this, read the proposal and commented accordingly. Not sure how that can be called a reprisal, all I asked you to do on the other two articles was to get talk page consensus before making such changes. ----Snowded TALK 05:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:02, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:02, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete A thin little think piece. Seems like an attempt to create a POV fork so one can have a separate little forum for "discussing revisions which do not deny the Holocaust happened, only the changing views over time over historical minutiae." If there's a legitimate point to make about the scope of the Holocaust, then you'll need to make it in the main article. It may not survive there, but that's the kind of editorial Darwinism we practice. You don't get to create your own little pond. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- this is an unnecessary content fork. There are exactly two sentences providing examples of "Holocaust revising". This can easily be included in the main article. K.e.coffman (talk) 17:29, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @K.e.coffman: stubs always start out small. Historians are always improving the study of the details of events. The idea here is to allow more historiography facts to be compiled. How many facts would someone need to find to satisfy you? You and others keep claiming that we COULD include it in the main article, but the fact of the matter is that you haven't included it, the article is already too big and creating a historiography section there would either get deleted or nominated for template:split section so creating a distinct article from the get-go saves work. But hey, I'll humor you and go do that now and we can witness what happens. Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I had assumed that Holocaust revising was some kind of Holocaust denial-lite, but it's merely a neologism describing the process of history. There's nothing here that justifies a standalone article. Alansohn (talk) 19:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The evolving views among legitimate historians on the nature of the Holocaust can be handled perfectly well in the main article on the topic and its subsidiary articles, per the way we treat pretty much every other aspect of history (eg, we don't have a British Empire revising article). Nick-D (talk) 06:07, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Nick-D: do tell WHERE in the main article (or in which subsidiary article?) we cover the evolving views? Seriously, link them. Even if we did: look how big that article is. Why do we need such big articles? Big topics like that the main should be an overview and then issues like historiography should be split to reduce page load time. Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Reeks of WP:SYN, figures and exact details can vary source to source but "holocaust revising" doesn't seem to be a real phenomenon, at least not a notable one. The "evolving views" Nick mentions above would be better handled in the main article.LM2000 (talk) 10:51, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @LM2000: it is obviously a real phenomenon because Ruth Bettina Birn (the Chief Historian, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section, Department of Justice, Canada) used the phrase 'revising the Holocaust' as an article title. How is the chief historian of a country's DoJ War Crimes division not notable? Ranze (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment If anything, it should be called Holocaust revisionism. Here's one of many Google hits on the subject. Yoninah (talk) 18:21, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, that's Holocaust denial - the "Institute for Historical Review" is notorious for this. The intention of this article was to cover the historiography on the topic by honest historians. Nick-D (talk) 23:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yeah I strove to choose a unique title since "revisionism" gets so polluted with negationism/denialism association. Unfortunately knowing what else to call it is hard. I'm thinking historiography of the Holocaust if we amassed enough content. There's so little to begin with though that I would be okay with temporarily redirecting it to a section on the main Holocaust article until it grew large enough to template:split section in which case the redirects could be "with possibilities". Ranze (talk) 23:04, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as a fork of Holocaust denial. Yoninah (talk) 23:25, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Yoninah: I can't help but wonder if you actually read the article in question. Nothing I put there involves denying the Holocaust, it has to do with legitimate historical discoveries which amended out image of it over time. Ranze (talk) 23:04, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge Potential Merge to The Holocaust as a new section, "Historiographic revisions". The article cites two items where there has been a change in view, but quoted in New York Times. That is a very derivative source. If the revisions have merit, the citation should be of the academic article quoted by NYT. I do not believe this is worth a stand alone article, and if kept is likely to become a forum for deniers (which is quite different). Peterkingiron (talk) 19:01, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Peterkingiron: as you suggested special:diff/735613764 I guess we could redirect these names there. I just figure if it grows it'd need to be split so I'd do that ahead of time but I guess I'll leave it to consensus to decide on a name if the need arises later. Ranze (talk) 23:17, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • The substantive content of the article is two snippets from New York Times, which is a reputable newspaper, but not one that undertakes that kind of primary research. The article is not a fork of Holocaust denial. However if the article is to survive at all (even by merger) someone needs to find the sources on which the NYT articles are based. History is an evolving subject, as new historians identify new sources or reinterpret existing ones. Historiography is in a sense the history of historical interpretation. Revisionism is legitimate; denial of well-sourced facts is not. Peterkingiron (talk) 09:54, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        special:diff/735735393 as predicted. I'm all for finding the primary sources the NYT articles are based on, I only posted NYT to show the notability of those revelations in the media. Listing off:
        • "Poland Agrees to Change Auschwitz Tablets". NYTimes.com. 17 June 1992. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. It was previously thought that four million died at the camps. More recent research has revealed the figure to be closer to 1.5 million.
          • "Kalman Sultanik, a New Yorker who is vice chairman of the international council set up by the Polish Government for Auschwitz's preservation."
            "Jerzy Wroblewski, the curator of Auschwitz, said the text on the new tablet, to be placed at the main monument at Birkenau, which housed the crematoria, will read:"
          Lichtblau, Eric (1 March 2013). "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking". Archived from the original on 2 March 2013. When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.
          • lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.
            “The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.
            The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.
            Dr. Megargee, the lead researcher, said the project was changing the understanding among Holocaust scholars of how the camps and ghettos evolved.
            Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
So for the first I'm going to try looking for primary sources from Sultanik and Wroblewski while for the second I'll try to find primaries for Berghoff, Megargee and Dean. Dean in particular links into the Hitler's Willing Executioners thesis of common German civilian awareness of the Holocaust, for example, so these 2013 findings may put a(nother?) dent in the whole 'the common German people didn't know what was going on' interpretation. Ranze (talk) 19:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Joel Mc: mentions the section was out of place so I'm hoping to get feedback on where in the main article it should go. If not here then hopefully it will come up on the talk page. Ranze (talk) 19:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: the data from the research referenced in The New York Times' is already in the main article:
  • A research project conducted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimated that 15 to 20 million people died or were imprisoned.[1]
  • A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories was used to concentrate victims for slave labor, mass murder, and other human rights abuses.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Eric Lichtblau (1 March 2013). "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 March 2013.
Above are two of the three citations from the NYT coverage. So no separate article is required. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:58, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am not suggesting that NYT is unreliable, but this is a subject of detailed academic research. NYT is not an academic publication: WP should be citing NYT's source, which probably is a book or article, rather than NYT. A distinction needs to be made between conscript labour camps, which were dire, but not primarily concerned with killing the inmates; and the Holocaust proper, intended to provide a "final solution" by extermination. Peterkingiron (talk) 12:48, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, WP:SYN at best; further, revision of numbers and estimates change over time in historical research without hanging a term on it. As said above, "[h]istory is an evolving subject". Kierzek (talk) 23:54, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    @Kierzek: could you explain what part of this is synthesis to you? I find a lot of people throw around that term without backing it up with explanation. Ranze (talk) 06:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Because the "article" uses material combined to imply that these are examples of a "term" which has no use and meaning by historians who in the natural progression of time, through research, have made revisions to certain estimates; the conclusion that the authors/historians are doing this work under the mantle of the "term" used is WP:OR. Kierzek (talk) 12:10, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Pointless. An article on Historiography of the Holocaust might include this stuff as a very tiny thing, and we do have plenty of historiography articles. The entries in the article, however, aren't even about "revising the Holocaust"; one is the correction of a piece of Polish propaganda that was never considered accurate by Holocaust historians; the other is the discovery of new information -- in other words, just doing History. But go for that Historiography article; it's an interesting field with a lot written about it, and I think there might be enough for a Wikipedia article. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇 04:39, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I object to the use of the phrase "a piece of Polish propaganda" (right above). The source article speaks of the Polish "Communist" propaganda from the times of the Soviet domination of Poland and suppression of democracy. Please note the difference. Thanks, Poeticbent talk 14:41, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jpgordon: if you think historiography of the Holocaust could include this then why are you voting delete instead of RENAME ? Also, correction of propoganda seems like significant to observe. Even if something was not a worldwide mainstream viewpoint, if it had national influence and then was corrected that's a significant amendment to the historiography. 'New information', no, because there was prior information, a low estimate of camps, which they over-rode. Ranze (talk) 06:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, per FreeKnowledgeCreator. CrashUnderride 02:51, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I would like to notify any observing administrators who might want to tally this vote that Crash Underride is not a neutral party here, they have been involved in recent WWE disputes with me and likely found this page by the notifier on my talk page. Ranze (talk) 06:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Enough of this behavior. I have no vendetta against you. I read the article, it's crap and I agree with the nominator. I don't give two turds who created the article. Now please stop your crying just because I don't agree with you. CrashUnderride 20:18, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment this discussion ought to be closed per WP:SNOW. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:47, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • per the "This essay is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline" Snowball clause? How about we go through official guidelines and policies? Ranze (talk) 06:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Guidelines and policies are interpreted in terms of common sense. The point of the essay is that it's common sense not to pointlessly prolong a discussion when the outcome is clear - which it probably has been for some time now in this case. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:29, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOR. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 20:14, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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