Talk:Le Paradis massacre

Major Rehaul

I have done some extensive editing of this message, I welcome anyone's comments, criticisms, improvements, feedback etc. It would really be helpful. ~Mattyness

You could nominate it for a peer review? This would give you opinions from other members of the MILHIST project. All the best, --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:54, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Note to Self

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Le_Paradis_Massacre

Mattyness (talk) 18:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

Its not bad, but there's some pretty major work to be done before this makes the grade. I'll list below the major and minor points for you to address and you have seven days in which to deal with them (if theres a concerted effort but it'll take more than seven days then I'll be happy to extend that).

Issues

• Images. I've seen your note above regarding the copyright of certain images. Since clear copyright information cannot be obtained, then write a fair use criteria for the photos (for an example see Image:Capper.jpg). They all clearly qualify under the fair use guidelines, and should they later be determined to be out of copyright the information can be updated. The article definately needs more images, and they must be clearly annotated. I suggest the picture of the barn go in the infobox, which looks a little bare without it. Done Mattyness (talk) 21:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Sources. There is a good range of sources, but I have four concerns.

• At least two books are referenced without page numbers. Page numbers are a must for these kinds of references. Where web references have page numbers then these should be given also. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:14, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Not all sources have publication information. Between the link and the date you must insert a publisher or at least the name of the web page. Others can be reorganised to fit this, such as: Le Paradis Cemetery, Lestrum, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Retrieved on 2007-12-12. Done Mattyness (talk) 15:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• How reliable are some of these? Books aside, [1] and this may not be reliable, please give rationales for their reliability here if you can. I am not suggesting remove them at this stage, but if something else can be used as a source in their stead, then that would be a good idea. Done The second reference, I added in others to back it up, but if this is still not acceptable, I can just remove it. The first website by George Duncan from careful reading by myself and factual cross-shecking seems factually correct, and well-referenced. It is also used as more of a supplementing source to the other source, however I can remove it if it is deemed neccessary. Mattyness (talk) 11:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Several sources are used more than once without changing page number. I suggest that you investigate Wikipedia:Footnotes#Naming a ref tag so it can be used more than once. I didn't understand how to do this, and messed up the references trying to do it, but if it is deemed essential then I guess I can have another go. Mattyness (talk) 11:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Any more direct quotes? Any from Pooley or O'Callaghan would be very useful. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Prose issues

Some serious deficiencies in the prose here. I'll point out a few bits below, but the entire piece should be thoroughly copyedited again.

• The Lead

• "an atrocity against" should be "an atrocity committed against" and might be better written "an atrocity committed by" and go from that angle. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Commas are needed in the lead, there are too many run-on clauses. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• "However it was largely forgotten" - doesn't seem totally accurate from what is written below. It was hidden and then disbelieved, but ignored isn't quite the right phrasing to my mind. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• "their deaths" makes this page sound a little like a memorial, use "the massacre" here and watch out for similar phrasing throughout the text. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• If possible, expand the lead a little with some context - what stage of the Battle of France etc.  Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Background

• A good section, but more needed on the Battle of France here: expand the information on this so there is an even clearer picture of why the troops were in the places they were. Done Mattyness (talk) 17:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• More on the deaths of the Moroccan troops; the source is clearly implying a massacre, it might even be appropriate to copy its figures into the text. Done Mattyness (talk) 15:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Fighting and surrender

• Make The massacre a subsection of this and call the whole thing into Massacre at Le Paradis or similar. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Try to expand on the action involved and also on the massacre itself. Done Mattyness (talk) 17:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• The section has poor grammar and spelling errors, this must be addressed. Done Mattyness (talk) 17:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• The section on Possible reasoning comes across as slightly unencyclopedic. I suggest merging the parts about the ethos of the Totenkopf into Background and scrapping the rest as it is clearly inferred above. If it must go in, merge it neatly into the massacre section. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Aftermath

• This section is OK, but like the rest of the article needs a copyedit and expansion if possible. Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• What were the consequences of Pooley not being believed? Who didn't believe him in particular? Done Hmm, none of the sources actually name anyone, but I have done it to the best of my ability. Mattyness (talk) 22:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Trial of

• This is the best section in the article, but some statements need modifying or referencing.

Other references need attaching to their quotes (1 space after the final punctuation). Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Again, a thorough copyedit is required. Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• Legacy

• The first sentance MUST be directly sourced. Done Well actually removed as I couldn't source it. Mattyness (talk) 17:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• The whole section should be merged with aftermath. Done Mattyness (talk) 14:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Right, thats it for now. What I will do, is when you believe you have addressed the above or seven days have passed I will return here and either pass, fail or provide another review for the article. If you want more than seven days then drop me a line. Its not a bad piece but it needs substantial work done on its prose before it comes close. Good luck--Jackyd101 (talk) 16:27, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Re-Review

I have given the article a thorough peer-review but there were several issues I did not feel comfortable changing without raising them here. Firstly I would like to commend all involved on a much improved article which I do not feel is far off now from achieving GA.

• Prose. I have made extensive edits to the article to improve the prose. Problems I found included some very wayward tenses which I standardised to present tense as normal and some unusual punctuation which I have pruned. There is also an unfortunate proliferation of redundant clauses which I have attempted to cull but may not have got them all. I also have some comments aboout the recent edis by Awotter. Whilst your/his involvement has benefitted the article, I have a few problems with some of the work done. The lead was looking OK until it was broken up into shorter paragraphs. Short paragraphs are untidy and uneccessary and I have merged many of the shorter ones together to make the article more tidy. There is no need to put explinations of complicated terms in parentheses - this is what Wikilinks are for. Parentheses look unencyclopedic when used this way and I would strongly discourage their use.

• The lead. Awotter has moved two paragraphs (now the final two paragraphs) into the lead. These are not needed here and provide much too great a level of detail for the introduction. They need to be moved down the page to where they originally were or at least somewhere more appropriate. It migh even be worth merging parts of them into the parapgraphs above and scrapping the rest as most of what they say is repeated below. Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) Well I basically reverted the edits to the lead, with just a few minor changes. Please review.

"It migh even be worth merging parts of them into the parapgraphs above and scrapping the rest as most of what they say is repeated below." That's why they are called summaries. I recapped the main sections of the article and simplified the lead. All of the issues I raised about the lead are still valid and were worth addressing instead of simply reverting all that was done. Your opinion isn't the only criteria for what should or should not be in the article.Awotter (talk) 10:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• Moroccan soldiers. I mentioned in my previous review that I felt the actual statistics from the article used to source the section on the killings of Moroccan soldiers would make this part flow better without resorting to weasel words. I'm repeating this suggestion because I think its important to explain the section properly. Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• Why were the Germans ordered to retreat from La Bassee? Done Mattyness (talk) 00:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• Were the British using dum dum bullets or was this a lie? Mattyness (talk) 00:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC) Well, you can't really say it either way. Pooley and O'Callaghan say they didn't, Knochlein says they did, and I lack any sources from other German soldiers. I will do some research, but I cannot promise that I can answer this question.

Comment - I removed the following from the "Aftermath" subsection: "...possibly because Knöchlein stated that the British had been using dumdum bullets, thus violating the Hague Convention of 1899." It's speculative, possibly misleading, and is more appropriately noted in the following subsection, "Trial of Knöchlein." (where i note that it already was mentioned...) Cheers! Azx2 17:38, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

• Sourcing, I'm still not sure about the way this article is sourced. I have left Fact tags where I think a specific citation is needed, the citation should then be moved from the end of the paragraph to where it is required. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackyd101 (talk • contribs) 13:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)  Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) I have cited the whole article thoroughly with some new books.

Whoops I pressed save instead of show preview, sorry. To continue:

• Images. The best image for the head of the infobox is the one of the barn wall against which the soldiers were shot. The picture of the house must have a better fair-use explination given for it if it isn't to be repeatedly deleted. Please look into whether this is possible. The other images are excellent. Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• The notes below by Shimgray are interesting and I would like to see his findings incorporated into the article as well. Done Mattyness (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Thats it for now, if there are any further suggestions I'll drop them here, good work to all involved and I hope to be able to pass this soon.--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Right, I feel happy enough to pass this for GA now, but I think the article still has problems which shoul be addressed, certainly before it attempts to gain any other status awards and probably if it wants to remain at GA as standards continue to increase.

• The main problem here is the prose, which is still very patchy. This is especially true of the sections on background, the regiments and the battle of La Paradis. This all needs tightening up as there are still redundant phrases, patchy detail and some weasel words. More information should be taken from the sources to expand the events and context here.
• There are a few minor problems as well, for example duplicate sources are not yet bonded as per Wikipedia:Footnotes#Naming a ref tag so it can be used more than once.
• Is this appropriate to incorporate into the article? Major Ryder at Commonwealth War Graves Commission? Just a suggestion.

The above problems should be dealt with as soon as possible, but as of now, I am happy to pass this as a GA.--Jackyd101 (talk) 11:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Another suggestion, I also recommend taking this back to peer review once the first review is finished ands asking specifically for help with copyediting. Good luck.--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:44, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Royal Scots involvement

The 2nd Norfolks were adjacent to 1st Royal Scots, which we mention in passing; there]s a cited note on Royal Scots mentioning that:

The adjacent unit, the 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment, had almost one hundred men taken prisoner and later shot by their captors in the "Le Paradis massacre".[93] Recent research has suggested that around twenty Royal Scots may have suffered a similar fate.[94]

The source is a newspaper article here, quoting Sebag-Montefiore, who seems reliable enough; there's also a quoted reference to a Royal Scots NCO who reports a [second] group of his men being reprieved from execution at the last minute. Shimgray | talk | 16:29, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Lead paragraph

The article at this moment [2] is very well done. I do have some concerns with the lead paragraph and will change the minor issues. The date, and place need to be emphasized (and simplified) in the first sentence. It has too many links that can be added later and the information should move from the general to the specific (ie British soldiers/BEF—German soldiers/Waffen SS to specific unit) and the language is too complex (hors de combat, Obersturmbannführer, etc.). This paragraph "The incident was the worst mass murder of Allied troops during the Battle of France, and one of the worst in the whole of the Western Front. The massacre was hidden, and then disbelieved until after the war, when the massacre was investigated by the War Crimes Unit." should probably be be in the lead paragraph worded slightly differently.Awotter (talk) 01:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

German photographs

The article states that the Germans took photos of the massacre victim's bodies before they were buried. Are any of those photos available and copyright-free so that they can be used in the article? Cla68 (talk) 04:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I have looked but to no avail. Mattyness (talk) 00:07, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

NPOV?

This passage strikes me as being rather queer: "One of the participating German units, the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf, had been strongly indoctrinated with the Nazi Party ideology by its commander Theodor Eicke. Eicke's men had a fanatical loyalty to him and to Germany, along with an imbued hatred of Jews, Britain and the United States of America."

Can anyone comment on the integrity of the source used? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tchernobog (talk • contribs) 22:20, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Le Paradis massacre or Le Paradis Massacre

Hiya to all. A question on the titling, as this article came up in a discussion about use of capitals in article naming on Talk:Denial of the Armenian Genocide#Requested move; specifically and NARROWLY PLEASE, about the capitalization of titles of events like these. Is Le Paradis massacre a proper noun, and if so, shouldn't it be Le Paradis Massacre? Here's my sense of it, copied from over there at the RfM, [where the proposal (not mine, I had questions that led to you) was to move the page from Denial of the Armenian Genocide to Armenian Genocide denial]: This was my first question, because I thought, "Well, this would conform better to the Manual of Style (which does not cover this specific point...YET):

• "However, should it not be Armenian genocide denial, unless there is some legitimate reason why in this case genocide should be capitalized? Further, why should not (for examples) the articles Armenian Genocide, Assyrian Genocide, Srebrenica Genocide, Rwandan Genocide follow the same naming conventions as do Greek genocide, Dersim genocide, and Burundi genocide? I have the same question concerning titles containing the word massacre: Why Parsley Massacre but Rohingya massacre? Perhaps if such topics are considered events and as such are considered proper nouns...but I'd like to see all such titles conform across the board, to a coherently stated convention, whichever convention is supported by either clear policy or robust consensus. I haven't looked hard for it at all, but maybe someone else has: Is there any established WP policy, guideline, or village pump decision on precisely this?"

The response was:

• "I'll explain my vision. In the titles it is a name of an event ("Greek Genocide"), a term and not word-combination (adjective + noun) to mark the belonging of the event. The same way the terms for Cuban Missile Crisis or Caribbean Crisis and not Caribbean crisis with Caribbean as an adjective and crisis as a noun. Or the Berlin Blockade, for another example."

to which I queried further:

• "Is your vision... supported by a WP policy, and if so, please point me to that policy. I studied WP:Article titles and WP:Naming conventions#Capitalization to no avail. Where is this 'an event, or series of events, is a proper noun whose terms shall be capitalized' policy, if there is one? Declaring that something is an Event (not to opine in any way that this E/event isn't one) and thus is a proper noun that should be capitalized, could be controversial to some, and might encompass different scopes for different folks, so please explain also, if you can, why (as examples--there are a vast number of 'E/events' that might have this issue) the E/events currently titled (and capitalized like this-->) Greek genocide, Dersim genocide, Burundi genocide, and Rohingya massacre should not be capitalized as you propose for the move to Armenian Genocide denial, if there is a good reason to handle each differently. Staying arbitrarily within the narrow category of death and dying-themed events only, why Moors murders and Soham murders, but Parker-Hulme Murder? (the current examples suggest, somewhat irregularly, that single death is an Event, but multiple death is an event, unless it's a whole lot of death, in which case it's an Event??) What is the WP policy, if there is one, that sets these sorts of boundaries (or not) for E/events of all flavors?"

and got this answer:

• "I do think that massacres or genocides you noted above should be capitallised. Those are events. A murder is an event, a pogrom is an event, a mass murder (massacre) is an event, a genocide is an event, but an article "Mass murders" is not an event, an article "The genocides of Europe" is not AN event or Sexual disorder is a collective word-combination and a collective article but Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder is a name of one disorder. the same way Greek, Assyrian or Armenian Genocides are separate events and not some variety of genocides or something. I don't even thing this was ever discussed. Just all the WP:RSs write it with a capital letter so no doubts."

Please share your thoughts on the idea of changing the name of this page to Le Paradis Massacre, a proper noun. I'm going to try to edit the Manual of Style to address this question, and before I do, I'd like to find out what community consensus is on the matter.

Sorry so long-winded. =) Duff (talk) 05:13, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

citation?

there is no need to cite w/in the quote already referenced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.179.56 (talk) 13:19, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Parlimentaire

What about the German parlimentaire that was shot by the regiment? --41.132.28.243 (talk) 17:32, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Source

Re this. Please provide the quote from the sources from page 77 which supports this text.

Also, don't mark non-minor edits as minor.Volunteer Marek (talk) 13:39, 21 February 2017 (UTC)