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Me
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Facts! Facts! Facts!
editI started at Wikipedia in late 2021 as a German to English translator, concentrating on German history from 1848 to 1933 with a particular emphasis on the Weimar Republic. Now I spend a good share of my time correcting factual errors. The number I find is more than a little depressing. I started noticing the extent of the problem when I made it part of my translation process to look at the articles that link to the ones I've translated in order to make sure that there are no factual contradictions. And they're everywhere. Most of them are relatively minor (although even those add up), a few are to say the least highly imaginative, and virtually all cite no source. I've also gone through some relatively important Weimar era articles to add sources and found error after error doing that.
I know that there are people who say you can't trust Wikipedia, and I'm starting to wonder how I could answer them. Maybe something like, at the 30,000 foot level it's not at all bad, but when you get down in the weeds, beware? Wikipedia needs a small army of fact checkers. Dot the t's and cross the i's after you're sure the facts are right.
Contributions
editOther contributions:
1. Weimar Republic: Rewrote the "History" section of the article to make it more coherent, accurate and have more sources.
2. Weimar cabinets: added the 3 articles that were missing (translated from German), expanded the remaining 17 where necessary and standardized the formats of all 20.
3. Soviet Republic of Saxony: Rewrote what had been a highly inaccurate article and renamed it to Saxony in the German Revolution (1918–1919).
4. Dawes Plan: Rewrote the article because it was based on a single 75-year-old and rather biased source.
5. Occupation of the Rhineland: Added new material to an article that had been focused almost entirely on the occupying military units.
6. Timeline of the Weimar Republic: Rewrote from scratch
7. Burgfriedenspolitik: Rewrote from scratch
8. Reichswehr: Added citations covering the whole page
9. Black Reichswehr: Rewrote from scratch
10. German workers' and soldiers' councils 1918–1919: new article
11. German Revolution (1918–1919): Added sources throughout; corrected a number of factual errors; rewrote the lead section; got no thanks (as usual)
12. Kiel Mutiny: Largely rewrote, adding new material; synched it with Naval order of 24 October 1918
13. Occupation of the Ruhr: Expanded material and provided sources; corrected 20 articles with factual errors that link to it
14. Ministry of the Reichswehr: Expanded and added sources
15. Weimar paramilitary groups: Largely rewrote
16. States of the Weimar Republic: Rewrote and expanded
17. Ruhr uprising & Ruhr Red Army: Expanded; added sources
18. Locarno Treaties: Rewrote and expanded; corrected 25 articles with factual errors that link to it
19. Daily Telegraph Affair: Rewrote and expanded; corrected 8 articles with factual errors that link to it