Talk:Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

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Former good articleJulius and Ethel Rosenberg was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 22, 2006Good article nomineeListed
July 18, 2009Good article reassessmentDelisted
On this day...Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on June 19, 2004, June 19, 2005, June 19, 2006, June 19, 2007, June 19, 2008, June 19, 2009, June 19, 2010, June 19, 2013, June 19, 2018, June 19, 2021, and June 19, 2023.
Current status: Delisted good article

Age at death / limitations of sidebar[edit]

The right-hand information block suggested that, having died the same day, they died at the same age in spite of having different birth years. Reviewing the code, it appears this was an auto-calculated field which does not allow the flexibility of reporting two death ages at a unique time for non-unique birthdates. To clarify for other readers, I changed the code from 

| date_of_death  = June 19, 1953(1953-06-19) (aged 35) (both)

to 

| date_of_death  = June 19, 1953(1953-06-19) (aged 35) (Julius), and aged 37 (Ethel)

which I believe removes the ambiguity. There is still some minor formatting inconsistency as the sidebar places the initial age in parenthesis, but this was the best I could do with the automated process. At least now they are not reported dead at the same age.


Change "Later developments" section to use chronological order[edit]

I think it will benefit our readers if we untangle this section. New sources of information emerged at specific dates, which we can use:

  • 1995 publication of Venona decryptions (material that was available to the FBI but not made public during the trial)
  • 2001 David Greenglass later statements
  • 2008 release of grand jury testimony
  • 2008 Morton Sobell later statements
  • 2009 Vassiliev notebooks published online

The Rosenberg children and their campaign for the exoneration of Ethel Rosenberg belong in a different section. I am going to try to sort this out. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:52, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1995 Venona descriptions:

"...For example, a 1944 cable (which gives the name of Ruth Greenglass in clear text) says that Ruth's brother David is being recruited as a spy by his sister (that is, Ethel Rosenberg) and her husband..." But Mr. David Greenglass wasn’t the brother of Mrs. Ruth Greenglass. He was her spouse! This phrase must be written so:

For example, a 1944 cable (which gives the name of Ruth Greenglass in clear text) says that Ruth's spouse David is being recruited as a spy by his sister (that is, Ethel Rosenberg) and her husband. --Анатолий Глезер (talk) 07:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification about Ethel[edit]

The previous version of this article claimed at the start that both Julius and Ethel spied for the Soviets and provided info to them. But all of the article’s sources that I looked at said that Ethel was involved in recruiting but not in providing info to the Soviets. So that opening paragraph seemed to me to be factually incorrect (according to the article’s sources), so I changed it. My change may not have been the best way to address this issue, I don’t know; but if someone ends up reverting my change, then please make other changes to make the article match what it says in the sources. (Or else provide a source for the specific claim that Ethel passed info to the Soviets.) — Elysdir (talk) 00:33, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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