Talk:History of Russia/Archive/2

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[edit] {{fact}} tags

We are adding fact tags to all relevant sections. From there spotlight is going to give it a shot to reference this. —— Eagle101Need help? 22:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

Put any citations that need formatting here.

[edit] POV

Where is the POV? Remember having multiple viewpoints is fine, just we have to represent them all in the article. First off once the whole thing is mostly cited, we can lop off anything that is not cited, and we can't find sources for. Then we can figure out if there any excessive problems with points of view. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I've seen some of the pov in the statements as I was going along - especially in some of the latter sections.--danielfolsom 21:04, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Then lets go ahead and make an attempt to fix it. :) —— Eagle101Need help? 21:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Various comments

I looked the article over, concentrating on my speciality - history of Poland. Some comments:

  • 'Peter the Great' section: "the reconquest of Kiev" - consider linking Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686 somehow
  • same section: I would add a note to the Silent Sejm, which marked he beginning of Russian Empire increasing influence and control over the Commonwealth
  • 'Ruling the Empire' section: I'd merge the references to Catherine growing control over the Commonwealth and partitions of Poland into one paragraph
  • same sections: "she incorporated the Ukrainian and Belarusian territories..." - and Lithuanian too; one may also discuss whether any of the territories incorporated in the Russian partition could be Polish or not - I'd suggest dropping the enumeration of 'whose territories' were incorporated altogether
  • general comment: I see quite a few places individual wars could be linked - thanks to the WP:MILHIST we have articles on almost every war by know :)
  • 'Imperial Russia since the Decembrist Revolt' - linking November Uprising and January Uprising should be easy
  • Would-be revolutionaries were sent off to Siberia - Sybiraks...
  • 'Ideological schisms and reaction' section: see Talk:Slavophile for some possible POV spilling of here
  • 'World War II' section: "following which Germany and Poland occupied Czech territories" - and Hungary, if we want to mention all participants
  • Soviet invasion of Poland (1939), a FA since a few days, has some good citations for that period, including on Soviet diplomacy before the invasion and various issues mentioned in the paragraph here. There should also be a pic for the section, there are quite a few to chose from. Maps, too :)
  • there is an entire para on Soviet losses during WWII. A notable subject, certainly, and nobody can deny Soviet Union suffered greatly in that war - but to be neutral, shouldn't we mention losses inflicted by the Soviet Union on other nations (Poland, Baltic states, Romania, Germany...) during that period? Their human losses also go up to millions. Yes, this is a sensitive matter, but also an issue to address.
  • 'Cold War section. Yalta agreement should link to Yalta conference, not Yalta. Sure, sofixit, and I may, but this indicates (per my comment about individual wars) that there seem to be quite a few unlinked terms, or pipes that should be made more detailed.
  • the section seems to be missing any comment on how Soviets terrorized people in countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia or the Balkans, supporting local communist parties with the Red Army fist and helping to eliminate (kill) all opponents. Lack of the ilink to Stalinization is a major omission.
  • the latter sections should note that the fall of communism meant not only the break-up of the USSR, but also end of the Eastern Bloc, with Eastern European nations (Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.) regaining full independence
  • the history virtually stops with the 21st century. Some expansion is needed.
  • Comments by -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  22:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hard sources to find

[edit] Ivan IV, the Terrible

The development of the tsar's autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign (1547–1584) of Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible"). He strengthened the position of the monarch to an unprecedented degree, as he ruthlessly subordinated the nobles to his will, exiling or executing many on the slightest provocation.[1] Nevertheless, Ivan was a farsighted statesman who promulgated a new code of laws, and reformed the morals of the clergy, and established the diplomatic and trade relations with the Low Countries and England.[citation needed]

—— Eagle101Need help? 03:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] 283 citation tags in an article

I have little interest in what happens on WP:FAC and WP:FARC these days, since I know that most users I hold in high esteem chose to abandon these pages after they became subjected to serious trolling and incivility. But I do care when the FARC activity impacts mainspace negatively. Today I stumbled upon the FARCed page History of Russia, which - although it contains 137 inline citations - was intentionally made unreadable by further addition of 283 {citation needed} tags. I have almost infinite resources of good faith, but they are not sufficient to persuade me that 283 identical tags could have been added to an article in good faith.

Most statements that were marked as unsourced are fairly trivial, such as, "Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812". It seems to me that every sentence was systematically tagged in a bot-like fashion or semi-automatically, although there is no requirement to source every sentence, even in a featured article. I find this approach to editing highly objectionable. With almost 300 identical tags, we are heading nowhere: not only they are annoying, but they make reading the article virtually impossible.

At best, the current tagging spree results in addition of perfectly random citations generated by Google Book search, which serve no useful purpose. An elaborately sourced article is not always a good or even reliable article. Every fringe claim may be sourced - and it would pass unnoticed in this mess of tags. I would welcome a new essay along the lines of Wikipedia:Tag trolling to discribe this particular form of disruption. --Ghirla-трёп- 17:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

wrong dif. This provides a better picture of what happened.Geni 18:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
No, the diff is correct. I removed the "no inline citations" tag, since the article has 137 of them, and was rudely reverted, with addition of a fringe claim. The tag does *not* reflect the content of the page. If Danny is still working on the referencing, he is welcome to continue the work in his user space. Adding so many tags to mainspace is disruptive. If he plans to work in mainspace, he is expected to lock the article with {inuse} tag, to make it clear that the overtagged version of the page is temporary. --Ghirla-трёп- 18:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I basically agree with you (though this probably isn't an admin issue). I removed the tags but got reverted with a reasoning I don't quite follow.[1] Haukur 18:23, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
What I did was simply revert your removal of *all* the tags. I don't mind if someone goes through and prunes the un neded tags out. Please note that the person that added all those tags, is also the same person that found 80 citations. As of about 1 week ago that page had only 4 inline citations, now it is over 100. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
And yet the article is much harder to read than it was a week ago. Doesn't that strike you as a weird sort of improvement? Haukur 18:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The tags are meant to tell people when sentences that need citations don't have one - you've mentioned one tag that might not be there, but one in 272 (by my count it's 272) isn't reason to remove all 272 --danielfolsom 18:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
If you see something that has been tagged wrongly (such as the napolean example above) go ahead and remove the tag, but please don't call what has happened trolling, this was a good faith effort to improve that article. Again I'm sure that some of the tags are not needed, but there are some places were some inline cites would be useful. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
They've all been tagged wrongly, because they were tagged systematically. The fact that you might happen to get lucky sometimes does not justify the process undertaken. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
We have a general {unreferenced} tag. There is no added benefit in adding {citation needed} to every sentence in the article. --Ghirla-трёп- 18:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Other then the fact that [citation needed] tags tell you exactly where and what needs cited. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Except that in this case they don't. The point of those tags is for isolated statements that particularly need citation, not for use after every sentence or (as was done here) in multiple places in many sentences. In many cases, an entire paragraph or section comes from one or two sources, so there is no reason to expect every sentence "needs" a citation. This isn't trolling, I agree, but it is inappropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Since I suppose Wikipedia was originally intended for reading rather than for referencing, ca. 300 citation tags distract the readers and make going through the page next to impossible. --Ghirla-трёп- 18:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I think the one editor who, for whatever reason, is working very hard to provide sources for every sentence might be better off accumulting those references in a sandbox or in a subpage of user space. The hundreds of tags distract the general reader and call into question the validity of a high quality article.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 18:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I see that you have reverted again Ghirla, I will not revert you again, as I hold myself to one reversion in content disputes. However, some of those citation needed tags should stay. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:36, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I also stick to 1RR, so I did not revert "again". I don't agree that the statement that "Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812" desperately needs a citation. If you think about some specific assertions that need to be cited, you should remove excessive tags and leave those which you think are helpful. Restoring all 283 of them does not impress me. --Ghirla-трёп- 18:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I have reverted - seeing as i have yet to revert that specific edit, but CBM no one's saying every sentence needs one - however many (easily most) of the sentences do, so clearing everything out because of a few issues is insane - and Ghirl... clearing it all out during an active discussion is asking for an edit war. Fine- if you are just willing to clear everything out rather than go through yourself fine, Eagle and I can go through and remove the ones that shouldn't be there, but there's no point in removing all 272 of them - especially since many of those do need tags.--danielfolsom 18:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Many sentences have multiple fact tags. The name of the template may be misleading you into thinking that every fact needs a separate tag, which is not true. Put one tag per sentence, at most; if the citation provided doesn't cover something, you can add another tag later. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
What makes you believe that many of these facts require citation? Christopher Parham (talk) 18:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
We agree on that then :) "Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812" does not need a citation. However there are some parts of this article that are still in need of some inline citations. I would estimate propery done there might be a total 5-10 requests for a citation. As there is one editor working hard on this, I might, if you agree, go through and add in citations needed tags only where they are needed. (should be net total of 5-10 tags) —— Eagle101Need help? 18:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I tried editing this page yesterday and I gave up. I added a few inline cites before I realised the futility of what was being demanded. There are a few problems with this article but the tagging is excessive. Let's save the citations for the following: statistics; statements of opinion; quotations; facts or interpretations which are likely to be challenged as controversial and need bolstering with reliable sources. Frankly, Russian victory in the Great Northern War or the establishment of Saint Petersburg as the new capital in the early 18th century don't come into those categories. As it stands, the page is a total mess which is getting harder and harder to load, let alone edit. Some of the inline citations already in place for obvious facts need removing. --Folantin 18:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreeed, so lets step back for a second, make sure everyone is ok with this proposed way forward. Remove all tags, but allow for people who are interested to re-add tags that are actually needed. Its probably better this way as removing 150 tags is harder then adding 10 or so. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Also a small note, can we move this to the talk page? (of the article?) —— Eagle101Need help? 18:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
That's a good idea. --Folantin 18:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Ok, well as this is the admin noticeboard, and this is already here, I'm going to request that the article be unprotected, so that one of the following actions may take place on it. 1) Remove all tags, and re-add specific tags if there really needs to be a cite. OR 2) Allow people to go and remove specific cites, to prune down the number of citations. It seems if all parties agree to that, and it does seem the crux of the matter. —— Eagle101Need help? 18:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah I was about to say ... it's been agreed that a lot of the {{fact}} tags should be removed (trivial {{fact}} tags should be removed, the full sections without a lot of facts should be changed to {{Citations missing|section}} and the rest of the {{fact}}s should be left) - so why was it protected?--danielfolsom 18:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I protected it because of the rapid reverting between the two versions [2]. I put the expiry at six hours because I didn't think it would take long to settle, but the discussion here seems to have settled down even faster. I'll unprotect it once I get this discussion moved over to the talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[Unindent] Mind if I make a constructive suggestion? I know that citations place the onus on the editor who posted the info to “make good” with a source, but on an article so well-developed as this, with the text originator all but impossible to identify in many cases, how about reversing the practice for the time being? Remove the citation needed tags and then have the working editors add tags where they believe they are needed – with their intention to find a satisfactory source or remove it themselves? If someone else believes the tag is unnecessary, they can remove it, with a clear justification in the edit comment, and the “placer” is off the hook (unless they really want to). Askari Mark (Talk) 19:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It's simply a bit easier if you remove tags rather than add.--danielfolsom 19:13, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I understand, but sometimes it’s best to clear the deck and then resume work, especially when everyone is fussing over who sweeps and who mops. Askari Mark (Talk) 19:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
The need is simply to remove extra tags. (these were added by user danny mostly, who added more then 80 citations himself). There are some sections that can use the tags, but some that don't need them. I think that has been agreed upon. —— Eagle101Need help? 19:19, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't really see how it's easier, and it creates the undesirable situation that if 50 people find a statement doubtful, and 1 does not, the tag is removed and the no citation is requested for the statement. The best policy is that if someone has reason to doubt the accuracy of a statement, they should add a tag; that way, editors can contact that individual to get an idea of what about the statement drew his concern. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:21, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

User Danny did doubt- but I just removed quite a few fact tags, but also re-added the old ones so I can go through each section - this will reduce the time - please give me maybe 10 minutes to do the whole article before reverting, as so far I'm the only one that's done anything I can assume no one else is going to.--danielfolsom 19:25, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok - I forgot it was taking a while to load b/c of the temps - give me 15-20 minutes - however as you can see I've removed a good number--danielfolsom 19:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)