Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Expropriation of the Princes in the Weimar Republic

:{{la|Expropriation of the Princes in the Weimar Republic}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Expropriation of the Princes in the Weimar Republic}})

Incomprehensible machine translation of a de.wikipedia article. Trying to "correct" this mess without a working knowledge of German is impossible, it needs a complete re-translation. Furthermore, it is a copyvio from the German article without even referencing the source while creating the article, which should and could be healed by a version import from de.wikipedia. By the way, I think the topic itself is important enough to warrant a good en.wikipedia article, and why not a translation of the very good de.wikipedia article. But a translation into English, please. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 08:33, 14 April 2011 (UTC) AndreasPraefcke (talk) 08:33, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. If its notable enough to be here, the better procedure is to list it on WP:Pages needing translation into English, then nominate it for deletion if no-one has worked on it after a while. You might also reach out to German speaking editors listed at WP:Translators available. Jonathanwallace (talk) 11:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

:Thanks for the recommendation, but this article is so embarrassing that it shouldn't be kept a single hour, let alone weeks, just because the article name is listed somewhere else. It should be a red link, definitely not a blue one. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 12:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - Assuming that this passes copyright violation muster (can we get a competent administrator to make a quick ruling on that?), this is a very serious article about a big and fairly important aspect of the history of the Weimar Republic. I'm gonna flag it for rescue, hopefully there will be a specialist on German history popping along. This is not an incoherent mess but obviously needs a great deal of work. Carrite (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
• Keep . The copyright violation is trivial to fix, and I fixed it. The original article was rated "excellent" in the deWP. It's a major topic and I'm finding good English references to add to the german ones. I've also started rewriting slowly, while condensing it slightly to eliminate the excessively wordy style characteristic of some of the more elaborate deWP articles, and some of the receptions, and simplifying some of the parliamentary detail. I admit my knowledge of german is not as great as i would like it to be, and I admit I have usually translated only shorter and less elaborately-written articles, but I think I am capable to making at least a minimally decent article out of it , given time to do the work. Expecting it to be done in a single hour is unrealistic. Even better, if someone who knows German thinks my own knowledge is hopelessly insufficient, and would like to prove that-- --let them translate it. And at worst, it can certainly be stubbified. There is only one acceptable solution in poorly written (or translated articles): sofixit. DGG ( talk ) 14:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think this is hopeless. Here's a user who obviously just dumps (lots of) machine translations he doesn't even understand into en.wikipedia – i. e. copyright-violating requests for articles, not articles, and you all want to keep them and do a lot of work in "improving" something that is not work keeping at all. I think the topic is important enough to get an article, but it has to be done all over again from the very beginning. Of course it _can_ be done, but to do that right now and using the text of Coin945 is actually equal to paying a blackmailer. If you want to do that, go ahead. Please notify me once you're finished, and I'll try and see if the resulting English text gets the ideas of the German text right (in Coin945's version, the few sentences that are grammatically understandable get everything wrong anyway). I'll remove the interwiki link on de, though, because even linking to this dump is embarrassing. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 15:35, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 15:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep and rewrite. Thanks to DGG for doing so - I have to do my taxes, don't have much time for a couple of days. People sticking bad translations or even foreign-language articles on en.wikipedia is a perennial problem; that's why we have WP:Pages needing translation into English and used to have {{Template:rough translation}}, although I think it's now preferred for the rough translations (like this one) to also go to the pages needing translation project. However, misguided though it is for people to do this, it doesn't affect the notability of the topic, and this is a notable topic, so the article should be kept. And moved to a better title. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:26, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep per the comments above. Topic is quite important. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep I'm not sure AFD is really the right venue for this since it seems to be purely a cleanup issue. If the article is in such rough shape that it is damaging the project we could always just stub it until someone can post a re-write. Qrsdogg (talk) 18:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep I agree AFD was not the proper place for this. The problem has been fixed, the article fine. Dream Focus 10:49, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• strong keep and a note to the nominator: WP:AFD is not "articles for cleanup" it is articles for deletion. Its actually not even the place for a copyvio (that's a CSD, more properly, to avoid drawing more attention to the violation). to me AfD means "no article about this topic can exist, because it is inherently non-notable, cannot be sourced (not IS NOT sourced but CANNOT be sourced due to the nonexistence of reliable sources). There is oftentimes a temptation to delete a poor article on the basis of quality, I'm not blaming the nominator. But at the same time AfD is for core underlying structural issues with core wikipedia policies and their logical extensions, not for cosmetic or presentation issues. HominidMachinae (talk) 19:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

: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.