Talk:Externsteine

message: In the article we read that there has been a church of St.Peter at the Externsteine. This is a misunderstanding of the cited article of Coppens. He writes that there has been founded a church of St.Peter by Sturmi at Obermarsberg, which presumably was the real location of the Irminsul, or at least one of the locations where an Irminsul stood.
I will delete the nonsense.-- (talk) 23:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Church of St.Peter at the Externsteine-rocks? 

message: We read in the article, that there is evidence of an early monastery at the location. Whoever wrote this, he gave a false citation. In the article, cited under Nr.2, You can find no word concerning a monastery of 815. 
The author, who found the early medieval writings, which speak of the foundation of a monastery by monks of the moastery of Corbie in northwestern France, is Walther Matthes. I will therefore install his work as original source. Rolf Speckner-- (talk) 00:37, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evidence of an early monastery at the externsteine? 

message: So the lede section of the article concludes with this paragraph:
"The Externsteine gained prominence when Völkisch and nationalistic scholars took an interest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This interest peaked under the Nazi regime, when the Externsteine became a focus of Nazi propaganda. Today, they remain a popular tourist destination and also continue to attract Neo-Pagans and Neo-Nazis."
Now I'm not saying that any of this isn't true, or that it's not notable, but does it really need to be in the LEDE section?....This really seems to me that it's giving it undue weight.  Especially since the last word of that section is literally "Neo-Nazis!"  I mean if someone just read the intro section of the article, they'd get the impression that it's mostly a big Nazi hangout...
The reality is that most of the visitors to Externsteine are just regular people, families, photographers, hikers, and other people who go there to check out a rather unique rock formation.  People who could be considered "Neo-Pagans" are prob under 5% of total visitors, at most maybe ~10% if one uses a much more broad definition that includes hippies who are into crystals or whatever.  Neo-Nazis are well under 1% of visitors.
So again, this article really seems to be giving the Neo-Nazis undue weight, by far!
My suggestion would be to completely omit Neo-Nazis from the intro section.   The lede/intro section could be much shorter, like in the German article, where it's just one paragraph:
"Die Externsteine sind eine markante Sandstein-Felsformation im Teutoburger Wald und als solche eine herausragende Natursehenswürdigkeit Deutschlands, die unter Natur- und Kulturdenkmalschutz steht. Die Felsen sind vom Wiembecketeich und von einer parkartigen Anlage umgeben. Die Externsteine liegen im Gebiet der Stadt Horn-Bad Meinberg im Kreis Lippe in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Ihnen werden besondere kulturgeschichtliche Bedeutungen zugeschrieben."
The discussions about Nazism/Neo-Nazism are then relegated to a couple sections of the article: "Zeit des Nationalsozialismus" (Time of national socialism), a subsection of the history section, and "Kultstätte esoterischer und politischer Gruppen" (Shrine/Gathering site of esoteric and political groups), which discusses the contemporary use of the site by various neo-Pagan and Neo-Nazi groups.
So I think the German article strikes a much better balance.
To be clear, I'm not wanting to exclude any relevant and noteworthy information.  I just think that including the Neo-Nazi stuff in the intro section (and especially concluding the intro section with that!) gives the Neo-Nazis undue weight, and gives readers a misleading impression about their overall significance at the Externsteine today. -2003:CA:8703:C876:D96E:826D:551A:29B7 (talk) 13:02, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Neo-Nazis" - undue weight...