# Talk:Renia Spiegel

Hi Oliszydlowski -- thank you for helping work on this article.  I wanted to ask you about your removal of the adjective "Jewish" from the first sentence.  I see that you wrote in the edit summary that it's not a nationality.  Whether it is or is not a nationality, how do you recommend that Spiegel's Jewish background be presented in the lead?  I was following the example of the featured article on Anne Frank, which refers to her as a "Dutch-Jewish diarist" in the first sentence.  Similarly, the article on Rutka Laskier refers to her as a "Jewish diarist from Poland" in the first sentence.  Would it be better if this article followed one of those formats?  Thank you, and let me know. -- Cloud atlas (talk) 03:32, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Then the article Rutka Laskier needs to be modified. Per Wikipedia standards, religion or descent is not presented in the lead but citizenship or nationality. Please read the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section. Thank you for appreciating my changes. Oliszydlowski (talk) 03:35, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi Oliszydlowski -- thank you for pointing me to that policy.  I just read it and see that the specific page you linked to doesn't mention anything about religion or descent, but I followed a link to this section specifically about style in biographies, which says, "Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless it is relevant to the subject's notability."  According to the sources, it looks like the fact that Renia Spiegel was Jewish is very relevant to her notability, since she is notable for her diary about her experience as a Jew in the Holocaust.  For instance, in the most extensive source about the diary, Smithsonian Magazine, the first sentence of the article reads, "On January 31, 1939, a 15-year-old Jewish girl sat down with a school notebook in a cramped apartment in a provincial town in Poland and began writing about her life."  Given the policy, I think we should add it back into the lead.  What do you think? -- Cloud atlas (talk) 04:09, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi Oliszydlowski -- since I haven't heard back from you, I'm going to add back Spiegel's religion into the lead, and do the same for Rutka Laskier, based on the policy I cited above.  If you want to continue discussing this, I think we'll need to get the opinions of some other editors.  Thank you. -- Cloud atlas (talk) 05:03, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Sorry I was absent. Yes, you can get the opinion of other users. I have no idea where the discussion is concerning this topic. Regardless, if you look at articles of American Jews you don't see the term "Jewish-American" or "Jewish from America". Oliszydlowski (talk) 07:24, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Renia Spiegel/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Gog the Mild (talk · contribs) 22:16, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

If you look at this comparison, you will see that some of the language - obviously disregarding the quotations - is a little close. Eg "wrote about ordinary topics such as school, friendships, and romance, as well as about her fear", or "not read by others until 2012" are quite distinct phrases. Would it be possible to paraphrase the non-quote bits currently in red a little further from the source?
More to follow. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:16, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
I have done a little copy editing, which you will want to check.

"near the old Romanian border" Might it be better to say 'then', rather than "old"?
"the diary contains drawings and poems authored by Spiegel" "authored by Spiegel" seems a bit unnecessary; I suggest deleting it.
It is not necessary to include citations in the lead, as this is a summary of information given in more detail in the main article where it is cited.

What an excellent article. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the quick review, Gog the Mild!  I'm glad the article is generally strong.  I'll work on your suggestions in the next week. -- Cloud atlas (talk) 18:18, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
I hadn't realised that it was new; it just looked like an interesting article to review. Discovering how good a quality it was was a bonus. Feel free to take your time. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:29, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi Gog the Mild -- I went through and addressed your feedback.  Here's what I changed:
I removed any mention of "then" or "old" about the Romanian border.  I did this because I looked at several other GA history articles (such as World War II) to see how they talk about defunct borders, and they don't qualify them.  I think the idea is that the reader knows from context that we're referring to the "then" border.  Does this sound okay to you?
I removed "authored by Spiegel", but wrote "original poems", so that it's clear that Spiegel wrote the poems, as opposed to copying others' poems into her diary.
I removed the citations in the lead.
Regarding the output from the copyvio tool, I am pretty sure that the website with the overlap pulled that text from the Wikipedia article.  I didn't use that site as a source for the article, and it was published after I wrote the text.  Should I still rephrase, or leave it alone?
Please let me know what you think, and if there is anything else I should change.  Thanks again for working with me! -- Cloud atlas (talk) 02:47, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
That all looks good. Regarding the "close paraphrasing", apologies, you are correct; someone has lifted wording from your article and copyrighted it. I should have investigated further. A very nice piece of work, well done. Promoting. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:15, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Lynkwoods -- thank you so much for adding the link to Schwarzer's oral history!  That is an incredible find -- how did you locate it and figure out that Renia Spiegel is mentioned?  Her name isn't even in the transcript.  Amazing!
I cleaned up the label on the link to make it a bit shorter.  I also removed the Google Maps link you included.  I don't think it's appropriate to link to Google Maps -- but maybe something we could do is include the address so that users can Google it themselves.  How did you get that address? -- Cloud atlas (talk) 04:46, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Renia Spiegel portrait.jpg
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:23, 11 June 2020 (UTC)