Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Featured article review/Marian Rejewski/archive1

< Wikipedia:Featured article review
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Casliber via FACBot (talk) 8:15, 28 August 2015 (UTC) [1].

Marian Rejewski edit

Notified: WP BIO, WP Cryptography, WP Poland, Nihil novi
WP:URFA nom

A 2006 promotion lacking in citations and needing review; FAC nominator gone since 2011. Talk page notifed Dec 20; no progress. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Review section edit

Comment: It would be a shame to lose this, because at a casual glance it doesn't look like it's missing a lot of citations. @Nihil novi: I noted that you have been editing the article and that you asked about citations on the article talk page. Generally, for an article to be FA-quality, all text needs to be cited. There are some uncited statements and paragraphs in this article. How much work do you think it would be, and do you have the requisite knowledge to add citations as needed? --Laser brain (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I think that most if not all the unsourced text has been added since the article achieved FA status. Much of it appears to be drawn from Polish-language publications of recent years and to be of negligible importance, e.g., that Rejewski's father was a tobacco merchant. One solution would be to just delete such unsourced trivia. Perhaps someone else would like to try his hand? Nihil novi (talk) 08:49, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Nihil novi: I'm willing to give it a try. If there are any disagreements about removing the information, I'll start a discussion. --Laser brain (talk) 12:57, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:25, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC, only to keep process on track, and because although some work has been done, there is still quite a bit of uncited text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC. Apart from the uncited text, I would also argue that the prose is formatted too much like a list. Many of the paragraphs are very short -- one or two sentences only. DrKiernan (talk) 13:31, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section edit

Concerns raised above include missing citations (please tag these) and choppy prose/short paragraphs. Maralia (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I just took a look through the end sections and noted the following:

References: I see two bare urls, other incomplete citations, and an extremely long piecemeal quotation that needs better handling. Ref formatting needs some work: I see two different page number styles (234–235 vs 205–6) and punctuation inconsistency (some end with full stops).
Bibliography: There are at least eight listed works (Budiansky, Christensen, Gannon, Hinsley, Kahn 1991, Kubiatowski, Miller, Wrixon) that are not actually cited. "Lawrence, 2005" is cited once, but two 2005 Lawrence works are listed; the cite may be intended to refer to both, but it's unclear. There is a lengthy exposition on the Jakóbczyk book for no apparent reason.
External links: This needs cleanup. The St. Andrews biography doesn't really offer anything additional, and all three of the linked photographs are dead links.

It is also rather difficult to associate the citations with the Bibliography because the citations are in "lastname, year" format but the Bibliography is "firstname lastname title location publisher year". Maralia (talk) 15:54, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working on it, albeit slowly. Reference formatting and the Bib will probably be the last things I hit. --Laser brain (talk) 16:13, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you to Glrx and Laser brain for cleaning up the references, bibliography, and external links—the article is looking much better. I still see a few wonky cites ( {{harvnb|Lawrence|2005}} and {{harvnb|Kozaczuk|Straszak|2004|p=74}}) that need work, and a couple of quotes (Piskor, Woytak) and other exposition (sequence of rotors; French radio intelligence) that would be better off in the Notes section rather than citations. Maralia (talk) 16:00, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are several footnotes that need to be resolved and/or cleaned up; the wonky cites are there for that reason. I haven't seen an actual copy of A Conversation with M R recently (the university library's copy is missing), but I think its author is Woytak rather M. R. & Woytak; however, some outside-of-WP citations use both as authors; I'm tempted to just make it Woytak1984b; that applies to a half-dozen citations.
There are still five references that have not been templated because I'm not sure how I should reference a comment/commenter to a journal article: it's a subcontribution by a different author that is part of the same journal article/digital object.
I revamped the hard-numbered Notes to use an automated mechanism, so moving a footnote to a note is just changing <ref></ref> to a {{refn}} with group=Note.
Glrx (talk) 17:18, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Which "A Conversation with Marian Rejewski" are you referring to? The same extracts from Richard Woytak's conversation with Rejewski, plus citations from letters by Rejewski to Woytak, together under that joint title, appear first in Cryptologia, vol. 6, no. 1 (January 1982), pp. 50–60, then (as Appendix B) in Władysław Kozaczuk, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, Maryland, University Publications of America, 1984, pp. 229–39. The two versions are identical and, except for 8 brief questions posed by Woytak, consist entirely of Rejewski's words. Nihil novi (talk) 04:57, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nice progress, but lots to be done still. There are red harv ref errors all over the place, and in this version, the first two citations ... are not citations or reliable sources. I didn't check further. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:14, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've provided references to Rejewski's awards cited in the infobox. Regretably, the U.K. Ministry of Defence page "cannot be found" any longer; maybe someone can locate an active reference for Rejewski's War Medal 1939–1945. Nihil novi (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

At FARC for three weeks now, and no one has finished restoring the article. There are numerous sources in the References that are no longer used: how do we know the article is comprehensive, and represents a thorough survey of the literature? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:05, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delist. Sorry, but despite the extensive bibliography there are still uncited parts. I'm also concerned that one third of his life is summed up in two sentences, indicating a lack of comprehensiveness. There's been alot of work around formatting, but the fundamental issues remain unaddressed. DrKiernan (talk) 17:39, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. There are layers upon layers of issues here. Cleaning up the references was a step in the right direction, but it served only to reveal other problems. I don't have the subject matter knowledge to think about addressing the comprehensiveness and source problems. --Laser brain (talk) 12:26, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Temporarily striking my declaration until I can review the latest progress. Seems like there are enough interested parties for a potential save. --Laser brain (talk) 18:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. Thanks so much for the effort, Laser brain-- at least the article was left in better shape! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:15, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Abstain. A lot of work has been done, and only three paragraphs are unreferenced. I am still somewhat concerned on whether end-of-para citations are always covering all the info in a given para. I found the dead link in the IA, will fix it now. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:23, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
fact claims can be resolved with
  • Rejewski, Marian (July 1981), "How Polish Mathematicians Deciphered the Enigma" (PDF), Annals of the History of Computing, 3 (3), IEEE: 213–234, doi:10.1109/MAHC.1981.10033
Glrx (talk) 05:12, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I see they've been fixed. I am changing my vote to Keep; references seem to be satisfactory now. Also, I've checked his bio entry in Polish online encyclopedias ([2], [3]), first one has a similar focus on his later life, and while the second one is more balanced, we do mention all of the facts from it as well. I don't have his PSB bio (if it exists), but I think the entry is reasonably comprehensive; most sources about his life focus on his Enigma-solving period, not what happened before or after. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Still not there. Notes are still all over the map, with a mix of inline citation, cite ref citation, and no citation. I'm not convinced all of the External links belong, and they are poorly described (Bauer??). Are the unused sources listed in Further reading useful, if so, why are they not used, if not, why are we retaining them? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:30, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "Further reading": It seems to me that that why-retain-it argument could be made in respect to any article's "Further reading" section. And yet these sections do exist—for the same reasons as here. Nihil novi (talk) 04:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My question was, are they useful (in terms of comprehensiveness), and if not, why are they there (that is, what are they adding)? Also, they are now used with the template citation, which is causing a big red ref error, since they aren't sources.

And, we still have a mixed citation style. The Notes are using inline citations, while everything else uses cite ref. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Re the "External links": Jan Bury's (is that your "Bauer"?) "The Enigma Code Breach" provides photos of French, Polish and Spanish personnel, drawn from various publications, which regrettably appear nowhere on Wikipedia. Tony Sale's "The Breaking of Enigma by the Polish Mathematicians" shows a diagram of the Polish cryptological bomb that was needlessly purged from Wikipedia a few years ago by an over-zealous copyright cop. "How Mathematicians Helped Win WWII", by the National Security Agency", includes a photo of "Adolf Hitler receiving the salute of German troops in Warsaw following their conquest of Poland", which actually shows him riding in his 6-wheel Mercedes before the Polish General Staff Building where the German Enigma had first been broken nearly 7 years earlier (!!); this poignant photo (taken from Kozaczuk, Enigma, 1984), too, was purged—from the Wikipedia "Biuro Szyfrów" (Polish Cipher Bureau) article. "Enigma documents" provides reproductions of many source documents, including ones by Marian Rejewski. "Marian Rejewski and the First Break into Enigma", published this year (2015) by the American Mathematical Society, gives another view of Rejewski's mathematics, for those willing to challenge themselves. Nihil novi (talk) 06:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Bauer was already fixed in External links, and my other question was about "Further reading", not "External links" (you answered a different question-- please re-read the discussion above). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:41, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I quote you from the discussion above: "I'm not convinced all of the External links belong..." What am I misunderstanding? Nihil novi (talk) 06:47, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
After that :) I asked: "Are the unused sources listed in Further reading useful, if so, why are they not used, if not, why are we retaining them?" Please see your post from 04:50 4 March and my response to that from 14:56 4 March. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As indicated in Laserbrain's Delist above, there are layers of problems with both prose and comprehensiveness everyone one looks in this article, and there are other concerns intimated by Piotr. The three Delists stand, and it doesn't appear that, after almost a month at FAR, this will be salvageable. The prose is rough, and one is left with questions in numerous places (indicated in two examples below with unaddressed inline comments). These are samples only:

  • Convoluted prose sample. On 21 November 1946, Rejewski, having been on 15 November discharged from the Polish Army in Britain, returned to Poland to be reunited with his wife, Irena Maria Rejewska (née Lewandowska, whom Rejewski had married on 20 June 1934) and their son Andrzej (Andrew, born 1936) and daughter Janina (Jeanne, born 1939, who would later follow in her father's footsteps to become a mathematician).
  • That is followed by an overlong quote, and ...
  • Prose and comprehensive issue combined ... in 1950 they demanded that he be fired from his employment !--why? please expand-- as an inline comment ... fired from his employment?
  • Repetitive and unclear prose. What little was published attracted little attention.
  • Would follow after 1974? Still, this was closer to the truth than many British and American accounts that would follow after 1974.
  • Another unaddressed inline comment: On 9 January 1942, Różycki, the youngest of the three mathematicians, died in the sinking of a French passenger ship as he was returning from a stint in Algeria to Cadix in southern France.< --why did the ship sink? how did it affect Rejewski? >

There are short choppy paragraphs throughout. The three Delists stand; the article has been improved, but it is not close to FA quality and it seems unlikely to make it there without a significant rewrite. I remain at Delist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

About Różycki's death (from Kozaczuk, Enigma, 1984, p. 128):
"For security and personal safety, the Poles seldom participated in courier missions or the like. An exception was departures [from Cadix] for two- to three-month stints at the Château Couba [on the outskirts of Algiers]. One such expedition across the Mediterranean ended tragically. In circumstances that remain unclear to this day, the French ship Lamoricière, on which four Poles were returning from Algiers, suffered catastrophe on 9 January 1942, near the Balearic Islands. It is not clear whether, amid a raging storm, the ship struck a reef or one of the thousands of mines that the belligerents were laying. Killed in the Lamoricière catastrophe were Capt. Jan Graliński, Jerzy Różycki, and Piotr Smoleński.[...] Also lost was a French officer accompanying the Poles, Capt. François Lane."
How did Rejewski feel about the loss of Różycki? Nearly 38 years later, on 25 November 1979, he wrote Richard Woytak in a letter quoted in Cryptologia, vol. 6, no. 1 (January 1982), p. 59, and in Kozaczuk, Enigma, 1984, pp. 238–39:
"As a person, he was a very good friend, cheerful, sociable. He died on 9.I.1942 [9 January 1942] when, while returning from Algiers to France, the ship on which he was sailing, the Lamoricière, sank after hitting submerged reefs or perhaps [a] mine. He had married shortly before the war in Poland, and when he left Poland [in September 1939] he left behind his wife and a child of several months. His son is presently living in England...."
Nihil novi (talk) 09:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the comments on the "Marian Rejewski" "Back in Poland" section. I've re-edited it. Does anything there remain unclear?
Are there any other specific passages in the article that still require editing or sourcing?
Nihil novi (talk) 20:52, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the information about Różycki (above) in a note, I've done further editing, and I have added some information. Others have also contributed. Any further suggestions to improve the article would be appreciated. Nihil novi (talk) 05:32, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My Delist stands; unfortunately, I don't think this article can be salvaged in the lifespan of a Featured article review, and an independent copyedit by an editor fluent in the topic would be needed to make the text comprehensible.

Your dedication to the topic is commendable, and your work has improved the article, but everywhere one's eyes falls, there are glaring prose and MOS issues. On the trivials, there are WP:PUNC, WP:ENDASH, and WP:EMDASH issues. There are wikilinking issues everywhere.

More significant is the need for a thorough rewrite and copyedit. The section "Enigma machine" is a convoluted and at times ungrammatical description of the machine even for those who understand what it is. Here is a sample sentence, found by simply scanning to the end of the article and reading the first sentence in a random paragraph:

  • Rejewski took satisfaction from his accomplishments in breaking the German Enigma cipher for nearly seven years (beginning in December 1932) prior to the outbreak of World War II and then into the war, in personal and teleprinter collaboration with Bletchley Park, at least until the 1940 fall of France.

    Here's another:

  • As it became clear that war was imminent and that Polish resources were insufficient to keep pace with the evolution of Enigma encryption (e.g., due to the prohibitive expense of an additional 54 bombs and due to the Poles' difficulty in producing in time the required 60 series of 26 "Zygalski sheets" each), the Polish General Staff and government decided to let their Western allies in on the secret.

    Another issue:

  • ... that one mathematics professor describes as "the theorem that won World War II."

    The reader should be told who that prof is ... and why does his/her opinion matter, anyway?

    These are only samples, not intended to be a comprehensive list. I do not believe this article can be salvaged without an independent copyedit by someone who is also a knowledgeable in the content area.

    SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The identity of the mathematics professor, Cipher A. Deavours (one of the editors of the quarterly Cryptologia, on this occasion writing in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing), was already in the attached note; but I've put the information into the text itself, for those disinclined to read notes. Nihil novi (talk) 21:23, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've added information about the Poles' Enigma-breaking techniques, especially to the section on "Rejewski's bomba and Zygalski's sheets", which should make the procedures and financial challenges clearer. Thanks for pointing out areas that can benefit from more attention. Nihil novi (talk) 04:23, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You have been very helpful in inspiring efforts to make the text clearer and more communicative.
If you could now point out a few instances of "ungrammatical" writing, I (or others) could try to improve the grammar—or demonstrate why the text in question is not ungrammatical.
Thanks again.
Nihil novi (talk) 08:14, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could the @WP:FAR coordinators: please give some indication of what they are waiting for or expecting from this FAR, which has multiple Delist declarations more than a month old? As a random sample, can someone explain what "Naval code" refers to here, and examine the prose ... why is "by later report" there? An independent copyedit by a topic expert is still needed. Delist stands. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"In late October or early November 1932, while work on the Naval code was still underway, Rejewski was set to work, alone and in secret, on the output of the new standard German cipher machine, the Enigma I, which was coming into widespread use. While the Cipher Bureau had, by later report, succeeded in solving an earlier, plugboard-less Enigma, it had had no success with the Enigma I."
The "Naval code" was, of course, the German naval code referred to in the previous paragraph. In case this was unclear to any other reader, I have added the word "German" to the term "naval code".
The phrase "by later report" referred to A.P. Mahon's secret report, written a dozen years later in 1945 and cited in note 4, on The History of Hut Eight: 1939–1945. The expression "by later report" is obviously not indispensable, so I have deleted it.
Thank you. Are there any other passages which strike you as unclear or perhaps inelegant?
Nihil novi (talk) 06:14, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Can you locate a copyeditor knowledgeable in the content area to go through the entire article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that there is anything substantial that is incorrect in the text.
I suggest that you continue raising your concerns, which can then be clarified as above.
Another possible approach: Put a notice on cryptology-related pages, inviting reviews.
Nihil novi (talk) 05:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article's prose is quite dense, fairly technical, relies heavily on extremely long footnotes, and definitely tends toward the verbose, so I understand why Sandy asked for a full copyedit. She's certainly not the only person who has pointed out prose issues during this FAR, so I think it's rather uncharitable to frame them as her concerns. There is a breaking point somewhere between "these 5 things need to be fixed" and "there are so many things that need to be fixed that a copyedit is needed", and on earlier read-throughs of the article I have to say I too felt the latter was necessary. However, given the many prose issues already pointed out and addressed, I've just re-read the article (for the umpteenth time) and I now feel that it is nearly there. Here are the issues I see at this point:

  • Tortured prose - This sentence is incomprehensibly long: "Rejewski used a mathematical theorem—that two permutations are conjugate if and only if they have the same cycle structure—that mathematics professor Cipher A. Deavours, co-editor of the quarterly Cryptologia—in a commentary to Rejewski's posthumously published 1981 paper, "How the Polish Mathematicians Deciphered the Enigma", in the Annals of the history of Computing—describes as "the theorem that won World War II."" I understand that the Deavours/Cryptologia details were added in response to a request above, but the sentence still needs some refining; we only need enough info about Deavours to understand why his comment is notable.
  • Italics and scare quotes - Usage needs to follow WP:MOS. Foreign language terms (bomba) should be in italics throughout. Code names (Ultra, Cadix, PC Bruno, Bolek, Pierre Ranaud) can be given in plain text, or italics, or scare quotes—but pick only one. Proper names, even foreign names, should be given in plain text, not in italics as has been done with Andrzej and Janina.
  • Endashes - "French-Polish-Spanish radio-intelligence unit" and "Polish-French-Spanish Cadix center"should use endashes between the nationalities per WP:ENDASH.
  • Emdashes - There are both unspaced emdashes and spaced emdashes; per WP:EMDASH one convention should be used consistently throughout.
  • Copyediting - Need to fix typos such as "cryptologiic" and [[Marian Rejewski#Recognistion)|posthumously]] (this is also a bit of an easter egg); repeated words such as "should have told him told him better"; repetition such as "Cipher Bureau (Biuro Szyfrów)" and "Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau)" inside the same section as well as the Grand Cross mentioned in the Back in Poland section and again in Recognition; confusing lack of chronological order such as in Back in Poland where we have 1946 1934 1946 1947–1958 1967 1969 1939 1944 1942 etc, and also "a few years before his death" and "a year and a half before his death" and "posthumously" before his death itself is even mentioned.
  • Citations - A couple of citations are missing accessdates; another is missing both author and publisher information.
  • Quotation - I have a couple of issues with the Woytak quotation in the Notes section. First, I honestly cannot parse it through the italics, single and double quotes, ellipses, brackets, etc. Second, the quote is something like 350 words long, which (per WP:COPYQUOTE) puts it within the realm of a possible copyright infringement. Summarizing it in our own words would avoid that issue and hopefully make it easier to understand.

I really appreciate when editors pitch in to save an article at FAR. It's clear that this article is vastly improved, but there is a bit more to be done. Maralia (talk) 06:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Maralia, for pitching in ; perhaps you have the energy to continue, but my feeling was that the article was desperately in need of new eyes to fix the numerous issues. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:27, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, Maralia, thanks for your insightful fresh look at the text.
I've revised several of the bigger items cited.
Perhaps someone could address punctuation errors and typos that I may not spot.
Are there any other passages that would benefit from further attention?
Thanks for the very constructive critique!
Nihil novi (talk) 10:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the chronology of the Rejewski family vicissitudes, recounted in the "Back in Poland" section, is a little chaotic, but partly that reflects the chaos of wartime events in their lives.
I'm not sure how to re-chronologize the respective events without disrupting the flow of narrative in the article's other sections. Nihil novi (talk) 11:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll give this another pass after Laser has been through. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:12, 24 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, I spent about 2 hours last night reading through this again and making edits. I ended up discarding everything I did before saving. I've never been quite so uncomfortable editing an article, and I can't put my finger on why. It may be because I don't really understand the narrative, and the subject matter is so far outside my wheelhouse as to be comical. --Laser brain (talk) 13:56, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. I can think of several editors who could help, but they are all departed. We need to find someone who can help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:04, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: Can you maybe look through it? We need a once-over from someone who is in at least a similar domain so we have less of a chance of inadvertently making incorrect changes. --Laser brain (talk) 14:14, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did a read through this evening, more for the general sense of the article than copyediting, but I'm not really sure what you're looking for. It made sense both as a narrative and in its more technical details to me, and seemed generally well written, but I got the feeling that big chunks of the article were really a story of the Polish war cryptography effort in general, and not particularly about Rejewski. For instance, he is not even mentioned from the second half of the "Rejewski's bomba" section until "In France and Britain", two section headings down. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:01, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
David, thank you for your thoughtful reading of the article.
A slight correction: Rejewski does appear in the intervening "Allies informed" section, if not by name: At the Warsaw Polish–British–French intelligence meeting on 25 July 1939, 5 weeks before the outbreak of World War II, "The Polish hosts included Stefan Mayer, Gwido Langer, Maksymilian Ciężki, and the three cryptologists [ Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski, and Jerzy Różycki]."
Nihil novi (talk) 07:20, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As a math undergrad, engineering grad, the math doesn't trouble me; it's the prose. I was hoping Laser could address the prose, but he was troubled by the math. In going to have a look at where things stand, I find this as the second sentence in the article:
  • The cryptologic successes of Rejewski and his colleagues Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, over six and a half years later, jump-started British reading of Enigma in the Second World War; the intelligence so gained, code-named Ultra, contributed, perhaps decisively, to the defeat of Germany.
This sort of overly convoluted prose is everywhere. What is wrong with, for example:
  • More than six years later, the cryptologic successes of Rejewski and colleagues Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski jump-started British reading of Enigma in the Second World War. The intelligence gained was code-named Ultra and contributed, perhaps decisively, to the defeat of Germany.
or something like that. I can see why it was hard for Laser to work on the prose, not only because it is technical, but because it is now so convoluted, and that is why I keep saying we need a copyeditor who is familiar with the content area. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:27, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've revised the lead, incorporating your suggestions and making some additional changes. I think it does read better now. Nihil novi (talk) 19:35, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Copyedit edit

Well, heck. This has been dragging on too long, and no one has appeared to help copyedit. I am not the most elegant copyeditor; in fact I don't think I'm even a good copyeditor, but someone has to try. I am busy today, but later this evening or tomorrow I will put the article in use and do what I can. Once I'm finished, I won't be offended it the whole shebang is reverted, since I'm not that good at ceing, and I hope others will carefully check my edits for unintended changes in meaning. Just please don't start editing until I've removed the inuse, 'cuz I hate edit conflicts ! Later, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tough going-- it is often difficult to tell what is intended by the content that is there, and there is often extraneous detail. I am stopping here for feedack on how I'm doing, so I don't get too far in and found out I made a mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:48, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what this sentence means:

  • In late October or early November 1932, while work on the German naval code was still underway, ...

Work on deciphering the German naval code? by whom? etc ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:11, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mind if I interpolate some comments? That will keep my comments next to your comments and questions.
The first job given to the 3 mathematician-cryptologists after they were hired as civilian employees of the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau was to unmask a German naval code.
The word "code" has in recent years been bandied about so loosely that, in the public arena, it has become little more than a buzzword. One needs to have a clear grasp of the difference between a cipher and a code. A cipher scrambles the original letters of the plaintext, substituting other letters for the original ones; depending on the cipher system, the same original letter may be represented at various points by many another letter. A code, by contrast, replaces the original word by an artificially made-up word; Kozaczuk, Enigma, 1984, p. 11, gives an example: "Even half a century later, Marian Rejewski remembered that [in the German naval code] YOPY meant 'when,' YWIN—'where,' BAUG—'and,' and KEZL—'cancel the final letter.'"
Codes come in codebooks. Since such books would be inconvenient to lug around a battlefield, they are generally reserved for use in embassies and on naval vessels, which provide a steady platform. Hence the German naval code.
One does not "decipher" a code; one decodes it, if one is the encoded message's intended recipient. If one is an interloper, one decrypts it (the same holds for enciphered messages: the legitimate recipient deciphers them; an interloper decrypts them).
As Rejewski says (Kozaczuk, Enigma, 1984, p. 232), "[A] characteristic feature of a code is that it is never really completely solved. You just... keep manipulating the material... and make guesses... you have to figure out what this [code] group could mean.... But when the greater part [of the German naval code] had been solved... it was somewhere around the end of October, maybe the beginning of November [1932]—my boss [Maksymilian] Ciężki [asked me to work separately, two hours a day, on the German Enigma cipher, without telling Róžycki or Zygalski]."
Nihil novi (talk) 04:56, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, all of that helps explain, at least, why this article is so confusing to the average person. So, there is way too much text in explanatory footnotes, and we didn't have a link to cipher in the text, so I added one. At any rate, many iterations ago, I deleted the clause "while work on the German naval code was still underway" because it was only going to confuse average readers like me, and didn't really add anything to the story. Is that OK? Still working through these. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is this supposed to be solvable ?

  • He would later comment in 1980 that it was still not known whether such a set of six equations was soluble without further data.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:11, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The two words are used interchangeably. My Webster's dictionary defines "soluble": "1. that can be dissolved... 2. capable of being solved or explained"; and "solvable": "1. that can be solved, as a problem. 2. that can be dissolved."
Nihil novi (talk) 05:03, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But why should we use a word less familiar to our readers, when we already have a densely technical article? Do you care if I switch it to "solvable"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:47, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Either word is all right, so long as we're not altering a direct quotation. Nihil novi (talk) 06:31, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We need to know who says, in what source, that he pioneered this ...

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:13, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

David Kahn writes, in his book Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939–1943, 1991, p. 64: "At this point, Rejewski's analysis branched into a path that differed fundamentally from all methods hitherto used in cryptanalytic attacks. In the past, cryptanalysts had depended upon statistics. Which letter was the most frequent? Which of several possible plaintexts was the most likely? Even the only known previous solution of a rotor machine, the dazzling 1924 success of American William F. Friedman in reconstructing the wiring of Edward Hebern's five-rotor machine, used a probabilistic and lower-algebraic approach. But Rejewski, for the first time in the history of cryptanalysis, utilized a higher-algebraic attack. He applied one of the first theorems taught in the theory of groups. [...] Group theory thus told Rejewski that his cycles depended only on the rotor setting and not on the plugboard encipherment. It told him, in other words, that the plugboard, in which the Germans placed great trust as enhancing the machine's security, could be ignored in at least part of the cryptanalysis." Kahn describes as well the earlier and later phases of Rejewski's work on Enigma, relying on Rejewski's writings on the subject.
Nihil novi (talk) 05:34, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that's good stuff. So, I attributed the opinion to Kahn, and added a placeholder citation,[4] but I don't know how to deal with this referencing sytem, so could you please fix that citation ... I find that there is too much use of footnotes, but I think that entire quote could be effective here, as a means of keeping the higher-level math out of the text, but making it available for those who appreciate it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:57, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The article Cryptanalysis of the Enigma says this:

  • The Enigma machines were a family of portable cipher machines with rotor scramblers.[1] Good operating procedures, properly enforced, would have made the cipher unbreakable.[2][3] However, most of the German armed and secret services and civilian agencies that used Enigma employed poor procedures and it was these poor operating procedures that allowed the Enigma machines to be reverse engineered and the ciphers to be read.

Why can't we just say something this simply? That Rejewski reverse engineered the thing? That article also says:

  • This was considered by western Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower to have been "decisive" to the Allied victory.[4]

Why aren't we making more use of Winterbotham? Or better stated, why aren't we making any use of Winterbotham? We refer to it in passing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:20, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Winterbotham was not a mathematician or cryptologist and therefore has nothing to say on those subjects. He was only in charge of the security and distribution of Bletchley Park's intelligence product. And he was not a military historian, and has been shown to be inaccurate on some historical points, as—notoriously—when he wrote in The Ultra Secret (1974) that Ultra had warned Churchill of the Germans' impending bombing of Coventry but that he did nothing to avert it for fear of compromising the Ultra secret (the British reading of German Enigma-enciphered messages). Winterbotham broke the British silence about Ultra, but he left the detailed working-out of its history to later scholars.
Nihil novi (talk) 05:49, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cryptanalysis of the Enigma also says:

  • In December 1932, the Bureau provided Rejewski with some German manuals and monthly keys. The material enabled Rejewski to achieve "one of the most important breakthroughs in cryptologic history"[5] by using the theory of permutations and groups to work out the Enigma scrambler wiring.[6][7]

but we don't say anything as simple as that. I am troubled that I am finding an article currently assessed as start class more instructive than this article, and that this article is trying to retell that story, and not doing it as well. We can work on this article for another three months, but we do not have a featured article here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:41, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for the explanation on Winterbotham. I think if we add the Kahn information about the math breakthroughs, we will have then covered all of this material anyway ... resolved. @WP:FAR coordinators: , I will remove the hat habs on archival, so the template limits don't break the archives. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This sentence leaves us hanging; what happened?

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the lead we say he first broke his silence in 1967. But in the Back in Poland section, we don't make that clear at all. We say he retired in 67, had done some writing earlier, got curious, and then we jump forward to 73 and 74. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:56, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No mystery here at all. Rejewski wrote his first paper on Enigma in Uzès, France, in 1942 (certainly not for publication). Over the years, he could hardly help wondering what Alastair Denniston, Alfred Dillwyn Knox, and Alan Turing—all of whom he had known—had done with his Enigma work. Rejewski disclosed his secret work, in Warsaw, in 1967, selling his Memoirs of My Work in the Cipher Bureau of Section II of the [Polish] General Staff, 1932–1945 to the Military Historical Institute. Władysław Kozaczuk, associated with the Institute, published the secret in a 1967 book, several years before French General Gustave Bertrand published his Enigma in 1973 and Winterbotham published The Ultra Secret in 1974.
Nihil novi (talk) 06:24, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent, but that was not in the article. I made an attempt at clarification here, and in the lead, but you may need to correct it, and it needs citation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:28, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Still, incomplete citations ... publisher? Author?

  • Untold Story of Enigma Code-Breaker, 5 July 2005, archived from the original on 18 November 2005, retrieved 9 January 2006

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:10, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Reuvers, Paul; Simons, Marc (2010), Enigma Cipher Machine, retrieved 22 July 2010
  2. ^ Welchman 1997, p. 3
  3. ^ Calvocoressi 2001, p. 66
  4. ^ Winterbotham 2000, pp. 16–17
  5. ^ Kahn 1991, p. 974
  6. ^ Wilcox 2001, p. 5
  7. ^ Hodges 1983, p. 170
  8. ^ Polak 2005, p. 78

Nihil, if you are satisfied with my work so far, I will keep going once you've resolved everything above. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is a need to either understand or remove a lot of extraneous information. As an example here:

  • The course was conducted off-campus at a military facility[10] and, as Rejewski would discover in France in 1939 during World War II, "was entirely and literally based" on French General Marcel Givièrge's 1925 book, Cours de cryptographie (Crytography Course).

Why do we care that the course was conducted off-campus? And why do we care that he later discovered what it was based on? There is no further mention of this in the article (that I've found so far), so the reader has no idea why this information is given. There is stuff like this everywhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Again:

  • In September 1939, after the Invasion of Poland, Rejewski and his fellow Cipher Bureau workers were evacuated from Poland, crossing the border into Romania on 17 September. Rejewski, Zygalski and Różycki avoided internment in a refugee camp and made their way to Bucharest, where they contacted the British embassy.

"Were evacuated" implies someone helped (as opposed to "escaped"); reader is left clueless why we use "were evacuated". What's the back story? And how did they avoid internment, when so many others didn't? There seems to be a missing story here, otherwise, why are we mentioning this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:34, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On 5 September 1939 the Cipher Bureau began preparations to evacuate key personnel and equipment. Soon a special evacuation train, the Echelon F, transported them eastward, then south. By the time the Cipher Bureau was ordered to cross the border into allied Romania on 17 September, they were down to a single truck. It was confiscated at the border by a Romanian officer, who separated the military from the civilian personnel. Taking advantage of the confusion, the three mathematicians ignored the Romanian's instructions. They anticipated that in an internment camp they might be identified by the Romanian security police, in which the German Abwehr and S.D. had informers. The mathematicians went to the nearest railroad station, exchanged money, bought tickets, and boarded the first train headed south. After a dozen or so hours, they reached Bucharest, at the other end of Romania. There they went to the British embassy. (The story continues in the article's text.) Kozaczuk, Enigma, 1984, pp. 70–72. Nihil novi (talk) 09:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nihil, with this series of edits, you altered the article citation style and introduced citation formatting errors and red harv ref errors (endash, and the other book citations use short form with links). I cannot address those: I do not use this citation system (and detest it because it is so hard to work with). There are still multiple issues in the citations, with some books using short form, others not.[5] I'll try to resume copyediting this weekend. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - So, this has been open for six months. What are we doing here? I can't and won't keep up with the changes. Nihil novi has been editing this article prolifically. His edits are all in good faith, but not all of them are improvements and without edit summaries on his part or subject matter knowledge on my part, I can't expend the energy to parse all the work. --Laser brain (talk) 13:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Lingzhi edit
    • I'm confused by Kozaczuk 1984 and Woytak 1984b apparently being the precisely same chapter in the same source? The interview was printed twice or perhaps thrice, it seems (?), but those two seem to be two different pointers to the same beast. In my experience, you cite the author of the chapter, which in this case seems to be Woytak (?). No wait, Woytak is dated 1999 and runs from pp. 123–143, while Kozaczuk is 1984 from pp. 229–240. So cites to Woytak 1984... are... errors? maybe? • Lingzhi♦(talk) 17:12, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • after the bit about "boost to morale" I made a very trusting/bold cite to (harvnb|Kozaczuk|1984|p=114) instead of a "citation needed" tag. You may want to verify. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 17:46, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm confused by the confusing practice of using harvtxt in one section and harvnb in another, which has left me confused. Are we OK with this, or should someone (forex, me) change it? • Lingzhi♦(talk) 18:19, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • No one's done an image check? Forex, do we care that the URL given as the source of File:Pol-Fra-radioint Cadix 40-42.jpg is broken (404 error)? • Lingzhi♦(talk) 18:51, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Lingzhi: (I haven't reviewed your changes yet.)
1. Confusion.
Kozaczuk 1984 and Woytak 1984b are in the same book, but they are not the same material. Kozaczuk wrote a book in Polish; the ordinary chapters of the book are Kozaczuk. Kasparek translated and edited it. The book includes several appendices; they may or may not have been in the original Polish edition. Those appendices have different authors. Woytak is responsible for appendix B (Woytak 1984b, Rejewski 1984c, Rejewski 1984d, Rejewski 1984e cites all going to the same isbn).
Woytak interviewed Rejewski and there are several editions of that interview. There's a 1999 book in Polish with your pages 123-143, Woytak's 1982 Cryptologia version, and the version in Kozaczuk 1984. That's explained in the unformated bibliography entry for "Marian Rejewski".
Yes, your edit summary "ah, this is the confusing dup ref at the FARC" is precisely the point where I became confused. Identical page numbers. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 00:38, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
2. If you don't have the source, then guessing a page number seems inappropriate.
Thank you for correcting me. It would seem that the appropriate tack is to leave {{citation needed}} buried deep in the heart of your FARC. I will do so in the future.• Lingzhi♦(talk) 00:38, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
3. Read the section about harvard citations. {{harvnb}} is used for footnote citations. {{harvtxt}} is used in text.
Thank you for correcting me. Let me speak clearly. Your footnotes are text, in precisely the same way as the main body text is text. They are simply located in different places. Whatever method you use in the footnotes section should be precisely the same as the method that you used in the main body text. In your main body text, the approach most frequently taken is <ref>{{harvnb|Author|year|page}}</ref>, which results in numbered square brackets like this: [23]. Please use the same approach in your footnotes. Moreover, your periods are consistently in the wrong place in your footnotes that are formatted incorrectly.• Lingzhi♦(talk) 00:38, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One does not footnote the footnotes. Harvard refs are used in the footers. There are harv style variations: "sentence. (harv)" is common. Glrx (talk) 02:17, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for reverting me repeatedly. Your periods are still very much in the wrong place, with zero doubts attached to that statement (see Wikipedia:Parenthetical referencing#Inline citation in the body of the article). But again, in my clear opinion, that style in the notes needs to be changed anyhow.. The point here is that you are mixing styles (see examples of the documentation for the footnote template you are employing, at Template:Refn#Footnotes with citations; also see Wikipedia:Citing sources#To be avoided). And finally, some of your footnotes are of no importance whatsoever to the article.. At least one is flatly redundant. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 02:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
4. I get a jpeg image.
Or just fix the link?• Lingzhi♦(talk) 00:38, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Glrx (talk) 19:23, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm OK with some of your reversions of my edits, but the Derby horse anecdote that you feel is a "nice touch" is in my opinion simply another bit of clutter in an already over-cluttered and over-footnoted article. I personally suggest you reconsider deleting it. For the meeting at Pyry, there's no need at all to list every single participant. If you must name some, name only those who are mentioned repeatedly later in the text. It bears repeating that this article is quite cluttered. I will ce more later and try to remove more footnotes. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 00:38, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What you call "clutter" is a reflection of the complexity of the Enigma story. The "Derby horse anecdote" illustrates close, if intermittent, contacts among Polish and British principals, as well as the early British appreciation, later passed over or minimized in many English-language writings, of the seminal Polish contributions to Enigma-breaking. More importantly, Knox's letter mentions his petits batons, which (see Welchman 1986, p. 97) "Deavours [in] an article on the method of batons in Cryptologia of October 1980, believes [...] Dilly [Alfred Dillwyn Knox] had actually used [...] to break the commercial Enigma during the Spanish Civil War [...]." Nihil novi (talk) 20:41, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The principal participants in the July 1939 Warsaw meeting, held largely at Pyry, deserve mention. They all recur in publications about Enigma decryption; there are not that many of them (11 are mentioned by name); and all but Britain's Humphrey Sandwith have their own individual Wikipedia articles. Nihil novi (talk) 22:03, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is not supposed to be an article about Enigma decryption. It is supposed to be an article about Marian Rejewski. So the names are only worth mentioning if they have specific relevance to Rejewski, beyond the mutual connection to Enigma. The same goes for a lot of other mateiral on the article. I agree with Lingzhi that it is too cluttered with what seems to be extraneous detail. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:23, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How do you speak of the Polish mathematicians' (and their bosses') participation in the meeting, without mentioning whom (British and French intelligence representatives) it was they were enlightening about Enigma decryption? It is only in the interest of keeping the article streamlined that I do not introduce details of the mathematicians' lectures to their foreign allies. Nihil novi (talk) 23:23, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The 1939 meeting was extraordinary on a number of levels. It was trilateral: the Poles did not meet with the French and then with the British. (The French had met separately with the Poles and the British and given both Asche documents.) The Poles weren't sharing with the British, and the Poles hadn't told the French about their successes. Bertrand had been going to Warsaw and giving the Poles material for years. Now the Poles had to tell him they'd held back some pretty important stuff. Awkward. Despite Rejewski's triumphs, he was a worker bee; he was a civilian employee of the GS; he was kept in the dark about most things (and he was to keep R and Z in the dark early on). Now, suddenly, he's thrust into this toplevel meeting where everyone is supposed to be open. Bertrand, Knox, Denniston, R, R, and Z are certainly important for the meeting. If Bertrand weren't there, we would not know about RRZ and they may not have been able to escape Romania. As Poland fell, Betrand was deparately trying to locate RRZ. Bertrand pays R a huge compliment with an Asche story about French mathematicians not being good enough. Knox had been working on Enigma for years. Most major powers had broken plugboardless Enigmas when they knew the rotor wiring; Knox surrendering the batons acks R and new technology. I don't know enough about the other participants to pass on their mention, but Langer and Ciężki do not seem out of place. Mayer is at least Denniston's equal and may outrank him. (For a long time, people thought MI6 head Stewart Menzies was at the meeting.) Glrx (talk) 23:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You have here given a wonderful synopsis of the extraordinary nodal point that was, indeed, the July 1939 Warsaw conference. It is such a wonderful summary that I would urge you to introduce it into the article.
Humphrey Sandwith, who was misidentified to Rejewski by Henri Braquenié as "Sandwich", was thought by Stefan Mayer, chief of the Polish General Staff's Intelligence Department, to have been Stewart Menzies. Rejewski told Richard Woytak in 1978: "Mayer claims it was most certainly Menzies.... Mayer met him [again, after the war]. It's hard [to imagine Mayer] making this up. But, then again, Bertrand claims that it wasn't [Menzies], that he knew this Sandwich well, [that] he was a radio expert, or something like that." (Kozaczuk 1984, appendix B, p. 236.) Nihil novi (talk) 05:21, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Gwido Langer was the chief of the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau (Biuro Szyfrów). Maksymilian Ciężki was the head of the Cipher Bureau's German section (B.S.-4). Nihil novi (talk) 05:47, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "John Lawrence published a paper " but refs cite two papers. Do both assert this? If yes, change to "two papers". If no, delete the paper that doesn't or tell what that paper does say. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 01:27, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I changed it to in 2005, L argued .... Glrx (talk) 23:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please add page numbers to cites of Welchman 1986, Miller 2001, Erskine 2006. Why is Hinsley 1993b placed prior to Hinsley 1993?• Lingzhi♦(talk) 01:27, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've now supplied the page numbers for Welchman 1986. Nihil novi (talk) 20:19, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've now supplied complete sources (Kahn 1991, and Kozaczuk 1984, including their respective pages cited) in lieu of the previous incomplete Erskine 2006 source (which was missing the pages cited). Nihil novi (talk) 21:42, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've now replaced the inaccurate Miller 2001 source (which had no page numbers) with a Marian Rejewski source, Appendix C in Kozaczuk 1984. Nihil novi (talk) 23:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please see "speculation?" and "citation needed" tags.• Lingzhi♦(talk) 01:30, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Which article sections contain these tags? Nihil novi (talk) 03:54, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not there yet - I'm not concerned about citation formatting as long as it's consistent and meets WP:V. However, I'm still finding simple citation formatting errors and typos, some of them introduced since this FAR started. I concur with Lingzhi that page numbers are needed. I cannot fix this myself because I either don't have the books or I can't find the material cited. I downloaded Miller today (fn 44) and could not find the relevant material. Someone with access to the sources and subject matter knowledge needs to fix these. If not, the article needs to be delisted because it doesn't meet WP:V. --Laser brain (talk) 12:17, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delist. I haven't seen reviwers' concerns addressed. This FAR/FARC has been active for much, much longer than should have been necessary. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 19:21, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please delete note 3 "The course began on 15". I deleted it once, but an editor reinserted it. It is massively irrelevant.
The Polish General Staff's letter to Professor Krygowski, referenced in note 3, is important in that it nails down the exact date when the cryptology course opened: on 15 January 1929. That date, and the cryptology course that began then, mark a decisive turning point in Rejewski's life and in the Enigma story. I have added a brief comment to note 3, explaining the letter's importance. Nihil novi (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've now placed the course's opening date in the text and deleted note 3. Nihil novi (talk) 07:36, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please delete note 7 "Cipher A. Deavours writes" it is flatly redundant; a repetition of body text.
Done. Nihil novi (talk) 07:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • As for the 1939 meeting, no doubt it was important, but its important to this article (i.e., to the trajectory of Rejewski's life, not to the war effort, or any other detail that should be covered in a different article) is not spelled out clearly.
  • Even though I have been arguing against your over-reliance on footnotes, please do put that long, detailed, explicit list of participants in the 1939 meeting in a footnote. That is a legitimate footnote. In the body text of the article, give a few sentences that explain why the meeting ws important in Rejewski's life. • Lingzhi♦(talk) 23:20, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How are the July 1939 meeting and its participants not germane to Rejewski's subsequent career? In France, he will work with Bertrand and Braquenié, supervised by Langer and Ciężki. During the Phony War, Langer will visit England and decline to turn his three mathematician-cryptologists over to Bletchley Park. Mayer will become one of the historians of the prewar and wartime Polish Enigma-breaking operations. Knox, who had reportedly had some prewar successes with non-German Enigma ciphers, gallantly acknowledges Rejewski's achievements which had eluded the British. All this transpires as one reads on. How could anything possibly be more relevant than this nodal point in the German-Enigma-breaking saga? Nihil novi (talk) 05:58, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps this review would go more smoothly if, when you see review comments like this, you interpret them less as "disagreement of opinion on what should be included in article, needs more discussion here to change reviewer's mind" and more "article failed to convey why this material was important, needs revision to make this more clear". —David Eppstein (talk) 06:04, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I've added a short paragraph alerting readers to the subsequent relevance of the conference for Rejewski's life and for the course of World War II. Nihil novi (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article is not improved by the addition of the unsourced editorial[6] mentioned directly above and attempts to tag or remove it[7] are reverted.[8] The fact that a simple prose correction requested in April was still not done[9], does not give me confidence that other reviewers' comments above have been addressed. DrKiernan (talk) 15:47, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"The unsourced editorial [10]" was added in response to Lingzhi's 25 July 2015 request: "In the body text of the article, give a few sentences that explain why the meeting was important in Rejewski's life." I agree with you: I don't see why such an explanation is needed, if the reader just keeps on reading: everything is made clear in due course. Delete it with my blessing, but perhaps first check with Lingzhi. Nihil novi (talk) 07:21, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course I meant sourced text. Everything must be sourced. That is generally understood. • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:20, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll remove it. DrKiernan (talk) 16:18, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have always believed this article is only a couple hours of hard work away from passing. It certainly is much better condition than when the FAR/FARC began. I did make some edits, but many of my edits were reverted, so I am loathe to try to lend active editing aide... Since LB said the format citations are OK, I relinquish that point. I am also not firmly opposed based on the length of some of the notes, though I disagree with them. I think there are still issues that need to be resolved, however, as for example the image review below.• Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:26, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Image review
I have removed all four files. DrKiernan (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Footnotes 2 and 8 are unsourced. Like other commentators above, I don't understand why the citation style in the footnotes is different from the article body. Indeed footnote 10 matches the style in the article body. When several editors question the formatting and only one defends it, it seems that the consensus is to employ a uniform style. DrKiernan (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the unsourced footnotes and amended the footnote citation style. DrKiernan (talk) 14:19, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Let's face it: this isn't going to be delisted after all this, is it? DrKiernan (talk) 14:19, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I can live with the changes that have been made to address my concerns over the course of this review. --Laser brain (talk) 14:28, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unwatching.• Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:05, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Closing note: This removal candidate has been kept, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. DrKiernan (talk) 08:15, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Marian_Rejewski/archive1&oldid=1088820974"