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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 removed by Dana boomer 15:57, 28 February 2012 [1].

Polish–Soviet War

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Review section

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Notified: WT:RUSSIA, WT:POLAND, WT:MILHIST, User talk:Piotrus (asked for futher commentary after he posted here on 9/4), User talk:Novickas

I raised some issues on the talk page on the 10th. So far, only minimal work has been done.

  • Image bunching issues before Prelude; the previous image juts down too far, making the Prelude section very narrow.
  • Two one-sentence paragraphs in "Diplomatic front, part 1".
  • "Red Army" needs a copy edit. Several sentences begin with "by".
  • Other sections need copy editing; "Kiev Offensive", "String of Soviet Victories", "Battle of Warsaw" and "Aftermath" have multiple one-sentence paragraphs.
  • "Battle of Warsaw" also has several sentences beginning with "the".
  • A few [citation needed]s here and there.
  • Red links all over the place, particularly in the refs. These should be checked to see if any have article potential.
  • There are ibid.s in the references, which is a no-no.
  • Some instability issues, as another user started an edit war.
  • Way too much "further reading". It takes up more than one screen just for the English books, and another for the Russian ones.

Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 03:16, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments
  • 1a TPH mentions several prose issues but the entire article suffers with prose problems. Thorough copyedit needed.
  • 1c Is a major problem. Many citation needed tags, several paragraphs without citations and dead links. WP:NOENG should be followed.
  • 1d Seems to be a long standing problem with this article. Talk page threads are full of disputes.
  • 2c There is no uniformity of citations whatsoever. Missing requirements for authors and publishers. The "further reading" section is unbelievably large. There is no "bibliography" section for the material that was cited in the article.
  • 3 Too many problems to bother listing each file. Incorrect licensing, incomplete information on authors and publication dates leaving files with questionable copyright statuses.
  • MOS Problems with MOS:Images, MOS:LINK. Brad (talk) 20:38, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a more general question but one that I've been wondering about for awhile and this is as good as place as any to raise it - what exactly is the problem with "one-sentence paragraphs"? I mean, obviously if there's a bunch of them, then that's a problem. But if you look at lots of scholarly articles (though I'm sure this varies by discipline) or even literary works, one sentence paragraph, while uncommon are usually not entirely absent. Sometimes a one sentence paragraph says exactly what it needs to say and it does its job in a way that it's supposed to. Is this addressed in MOS anywhere (I looked, couldn't find anything about it, might have missed it though)? Or is this just another one of those Wikipedia conventions that have developed (for no reason, except possibly hubris on part of some past reviewers)? It's not hard to fix here, but the question is, should it? Volunteer Marek  22:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Brad says: "Many citation needed tags". NO. There are 2 (dos, dwa, two, 1+.9999999999...) cn tag in the article currently. That's not many, that's something that can be easily fixed. Let's not have a replay of what happened at the Katyn massacre FAR. Please take some time before making comments here. Volunteer Marek  22:18, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Paragraphs, "The number of single-sentence paragraphs should be minimized, since they can inhibit the flow of the text;". While I (and I think pretty much everyone else) agree that occasionally single or double sentence paragraphs are a good thing, since they help to provide emphasis on certain points, having an excessive amount of them can render the article listy and choppy. On the issue of location of publishers (I just saw your question elsewhere, but am answering it here for ease), the convention is to include publication locations for either all books or no books, for the sake of consistency. AFAIK, there is no guideline that says you must include them, but to follow FAC criteria 2.c (consistent citations) the article needs to be internally consistent about either providing them or not. If you would like examples of this being enforced, I can provide them from current FACs. Hope this helps, Dana boomer (talk) 10:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it does, thank you very much, both for the location and thing and the single sentence thing.
However, I'm not so sure that "two" single sentence paragraph is "too many". Actually, I don't see any single sentence paragraphs in that section (Diplomatic front, part 1) - there are two two sentence paragraphs but they are used to summarize and "wrap up" the section, which I think is stylistically appropriate. I guess they could be combined into one four sentence paragraph if this is really that important.
Also, I took care of the two citation needed tags, and the "ibid" thing in the refs. The reference section does need to be cleaned up a bit and streamlined though it's not as bad as it's being made out. The "Further reading" list is in fact too long, but removing unnecessary cruft is easy and quick. Volunteer Marek  11:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have went and did image cleanup, all seem to be free. I've added descriptions and sources to the ones which were missing them (but they were PD anyway). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Media criteria 3
The "Missing US copyright tag" issue - looking at images in a whole bunch of other similar (warfare) FAs on military topics that are non-US centric, I'm not seeing many US copyright tags. Are they always necessary or something? For example Battle of Arras (1917)'s images mostly have copyright tags for the EU, UK and Australia. Most images in these kinds of articles have the tag that states "This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years." - which I presume includes the US. But that's essentially the same tag as the images here. I don't work with images that often so am I missing something? Why isn't that tag sufficient? Volunteer Marek  10:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hrrumph. I think that commons:Template:PD-1996 may be the one useful here (since 20+70=90<96), so adding it to all the pictures should deal with this breeze of meta:copyright paranoia. That aside, I am however curious about commons:Template:PD-EU-no author disclosure which I think is the one VM mentions. This seems applicable for numerous items from 1926 to 1940 (and of course, from before 1926). I see that this template says nothing about requiring a corresponding US copyright tag. Why the difference? Also, the weird claim about having to prove it was not published with a claim of autorship seems like a joke, how are we supposed to prove something like this satisfactory? Other than saying "the used source does not cite an author", I see no reasonable way to fulfill this condition. PS. Anyway, why does it even exist when commons:Template:Anonymous-EU makes no such requirement? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There isn't much doubt that the files in question here are PD. The trouble is making sure that the files have the correct license. A lot of the older files on commons are a terrible mess for various reasons. {{PD-old}} is the tag that claims Life *70 and you will see that it also requires a US copyright tag. If the author is unknown the file should have a tag based on date of publication from the country of origin or commons:Template:PD-EU-no author disclosure seems to fit as well. Commons requires files to be out of copyright in the US because the commons servers are located in the US. For FAs the copyright tags need to be without question. Those of us here are confident that the files are PD but it must be made clear via the license for those who don't. To make every file look nice and neat and uniform the information template should be used: {{Information |Description={{en|}} |Source= |Date= |Author= |Permission= |other_versions= }} Brad (talk) 11:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think I fixed the templates for all but the Russian posters, for those I am not sure what other template would be more appropriate. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:36, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I struck the ones that are ok now. If you can't fix the licenses on the remaining files ask at commons for help or remove them from the article. Brad (talk) 07:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not that the sentence begins with "the". It's that so many of them do, and many of them are adjacent. In other words you have "The blah blah blah. The blah blah blah. The blah blah blah. The blah blah blah" and it reads rather tediously. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 18:37, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • TPH and Brad, can you provide more specifics on what needs work, maybe by striking the issues above that have been resolved? TPH, can you please provide examples of the spots where you feel that the prose needs work? Above, you mention that the prose of the Battle of Warsaw section is repetitive with sentences starting with "the", but I can't find any spots in that section where two consecutive sentences start with "the", and only half a dozen or so sentences at all that start with "the", which is definitely not too many. I believe some other issues have also been resolved, including the "ibid"s and a pruning of the furthur reading section, so an update to the comments above would be appreciated. One thing that I should mention is that the image sandwiching in the Prelude section needs to be resolved, per MOS:IMAGES. Dana boomer (talk) 15:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I changed this number to about 48,000 based on Norman Davies's White Eagle, Red Star. I can only see a snippet on Gbooks [6] so I called a friend who owns a copy of the book to verify the context. Because I see the 96K number as an outlier that isn't confirmed by either a search of the book or of other sources, I also removed the ref named Urb 493. Novickas (talk) 21:31, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So what did your friend say? Typo? Wrong context? I believe it was me who added the Urbankowski's refs, so I am curious what did I do (read) wrong? I don't have the book with me to check it now, unfortunately. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 23:03, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Davies passage reads: The Polish-Soviet War did no more than perpetuate the existing misery. It was fought off people's nerves, off the remnants of inherited resources, off foreign relief, and with surplus weapons. The effects of its termination were far more definable than the effects of its prosecution. In Poland, miserable conditions were mitigated by the belief that 'victory' would bring improvement. Conditions did not suddenly improve, however, and for a time actually deteriorated. The winter of 1920-1 saw hard times indeed. Demobilization started in January 1921. Casualties totalled a quarter of a million; the number of dead stood at nearly 48,000.(reference) The number 48,000 is repeated in a University Press of Kentucky book. [7]. Up to you and other readers and reviewers about the 96K. Taking in good faith that you found the 96K deaths in a book by Bohdan Urbankowski, I would still want to note that the author is not a historian. Per the Bold/revert/discuss policy you had ought to restore it if you are vouching for it. Novickas (talk) 02:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Query - are reviewers satisfied that this article can be kept without FARC, or do significant issues remain? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:10, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC; like I said a month ago. Anything that I've not stricken from my review above is still an open problem from 2 months ago. There are still dead links and maint tags. New problems are a neutrality tag and File:Bij_Bolszewika.jpg which has an incorrect license. Instead of fixing the problems they just ram in more photos and move commas around. Brad (talk) 22:31, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Neutrality tag was added by an anon without an explanation, removed. What's your problem with Bij Bolszewika image? It is pre-1923, so clearly PD. Which links are dead? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I already explained to you in an above conversation the reasons for correctly licensed media. From that above conversation you did fix many files but three others are still awaiting correction. Asking me what links are dead when there are tools available to find them and links that are clearly marked with the dead link tag totally boggles the mind. Brad (talk) 00:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So as far as I can tell, everything has been fixed. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 02:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate note - extended commentary related to Brad's !vote has been moved to talk. Everyone please remain calm and civil, and keep commentary focused on the article rather than on contributors. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:57, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See this tool for a list of dead links - it looks like four dead links altogether. There is also a fact tag in the Diplomatic front, part 1 section which needs to be dealt with, but that is the only maintenance tag that I see. Dana boomer (talk) 13:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, these are the four Ukrainian and Russian ones that were left in there with the hope that someone who speaks these languages fluently can track down an up to date link. Anyway, I just removed the links, though where available I left the Wayback Machine version. The cn tag - I'll try to put something in there though the tag is really superfluous as the citation is right there at the end of the sentence. Volunteer Marek  16:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Re cn tag - nm, I see what the problem is. Hold on. Volunteer Marek  17:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, fixed. Volunteer Marek  17:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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The initial nomination focused on prose, referencing and general structure. Quite a bit of work has been done on the article, and the nominator has stated that he thinks the article is now in a state to be kept. However, another editor has disagreed, and no other uninvolved parties have commented. I am hoping that by moving this to the FARC section we can get some outside commentary that focuses on how this article does or does not meet the featured article criteria. Dana boomer (talk) 16:17, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. So how long will we keep this dead horse live before agreeing that we can keep it and moving on? :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Kicks the tumbleweed, mutters about bureaucracy, and moves on. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Sorry, Piotrus, I hadn't seen your comments until just now. I was planning to close this today (due to no-one apparently taking an interest in it), but then saw a few things that needed to be addressed:

  • Brad is correct that there are still three images that need licensing work. Listing them here:
  • Two dead links (see here.
  • A mix of British and American spelling - I see both organize and organise, neighbor and neighbour, realize and realise, for example.
  • It feels like there's rather a lot of images stacked along the right-hand side of the page, but they're not sandwiching text or anything, so this is more of a personal preference.

Other than that, the article looks fairly good (although I didn't do a full read-through of prose). So, unless anyone else pops up with concerns, I think it should be good to go once the above are addressed. Dana boomer (talk) 19:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the deadlinks, removed the Podarok file (since it DID have inaccurate license) and standardized the spelling. For the two other images, it's true that the author is unknown. But isn't this often the case with historical images? Anyway, I'll see if the authors can be tracked down.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is strange. For this image [8] the "description" given is completely incorrect "Petlyura (second from left) and Polish General Antoni Listowski (left). 1920 Petliura (segundo desde la izquierda) y el General Polaco Antoni Listowski (izquierda), 1920 |Source= http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Image:Petlyura_Lis" - and it appears to refer to this image [9] instead.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:08, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly don't know about that specific image... As for the author thing, there's another tag that (I think) licenses an image as free use if it was first published before 1923, and is used especially for when the author is unknown. I don't know what the coding is for it though :( That might be helpful here, if you know when the images were first published. Dana boomer (talk) 21:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, you should simply go away and stop wasting people's time.VolunteerMarek 06:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
VM, that was unnecessary. Brad, if you have comments that relate directly to the FA criteria and are presented in a polite manner (no commenting on contributors!), then please, go ahead. Please be sure to present solid examples, rather than generalizations. It is looked kindly upon if the article editors work through the whole article with a reviewer's comments in mind, rather than just fixing the given examples. I feel like a broken record here. You guys are adults - you should be able to figure out a way to work together to improve content without all of this bickering. Dana boomer (talk) 23:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proceeding with caution I'm expecting my concerns will be dismissed as usual so I won't list everything atm.

  • Citation # 10 is a broken harv ref claiming credit to "PWN" but there is nothing linked to or identified elsewhere in the article that tells us what "PWN" is.
  • File:Bij Bolszewika.jpg has no author information listed but is using the life+70 copyright notice. Obviously +70 cannot be determined when the author isn't listed.
  • Citations to Britannica are not high-quality sources. Brad (talk) 18:56, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Putting bad faith aside, I welcome constructive comments like the ones above. I restored PWN cite to an older version, when they were still not broken by the evil harvard template. Britannica is used three times, the first two in discussion of name and dates, where it is rather indispensable (proof that sources differ); the third time it is used for a rather "blue" fact and I think we can simply and safely remove it (needing to cite that JP had a major influence on Polish politics is like saying that Stalin had it on USSR, or Washington on US). Doh! Pic's license changed to PD-1923, as it dates to 1920, so it shouldn't matter who was the author. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My comments haven't changed since day one. But anyway... I see that PWN is Internetowa encyklopedia PWN which like Britannica, is an encyclopedia. WP is an encyclopedia too and citing WP articles with another encyclopedia is not acceptable for an FA. This situation is a big blockade that needs resolution. Keep in mind that a mixture of citation styles (harvs mixed with non-harvs) should not be used. This is a good place to stop for now. Brad (talk) 19:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
While tetriary sources are discouraged compared to secondaries, I am not familiar with a policy that they are not allowed, article class being a factor or not. WP:RS states clearly: "Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, obituaries, and other summarizing sources may be used...". I agree we should try to replace them with secondary sources, but I see it as an optional thing to do, not required by the current policies. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist From a quick skim of the article (focused on the references and without reading any section of it in detail) I noticed the following problems, any one of which would be sufficient to derail a new FAC. These all seem pretty obvious to me, and as they should have been fixed at the outset of this process I think that the article should be delisted.
    • A fair amount of material, including several paragraphs, doesn't have any supporting references
    • Several of the notes at the end of the article are referenced to works in the 'further reading' section. Page numbers aren't provided for these references.
    • I'm a bit uneasy about the use of three Polish propaganda posters in the article. Including one seems OK to give a flavour of the approach the Polish Government used to whip up public support, but three is excessive as these images obviously aren't NPOV (even if they are amazingly crude to modern eyes)
    • The lead is probably too long
    • At least one of the books in the 'further reading' section was actually used to reference material in the body of the article.
    • Several of the references to books don't include page numbers
    • The references section includes several notes despite the presence of a dedicated section for these
    • There does not seem to have been a consistent style used for the references
    • Given that Adam Zamoyski's 2008 book appears to be the most recent book-length English language study of the war, it should be used as a reference rather than be included in the 'Further reading' section
    • While the titles of most Polish-language books and articles are translated into English, several are not
    • What makes this a reliable source?
    • All the images in the article other than maps and a photo of Lenin are of Polish or Polish-aligned topics. As images created by Russians who died before 1943 are PD, it should be possible to include at least some photos of Russian forces.
    • I own the 2003 Pimlico edition of Norman Davies' excellent book White Eagle Red Star, and have checked the references to it in this article. Worryingly, all of them are seriously flawed:
      • Page 39 gives the Soviet strength in February 1919 as 46,000, and not "~50,000" as is referenced to it in reference 1
      • The text referenced to this book in the second iteration of reference 2 (which begins with "In the course of 1920...") has been lifted word for word from the book
      • Page 41 doesn't say that the strength of the Polish Army in early 1919 was "~50,000" as is referenced to it in note three - the only use of "50,000" on this page is in regards to the number of Polish World War I veterans from France who arrived to reinforce the Polish military during early 1919. The page doesn't appear to give an estimate of the total Polish strength at this time, though it states that Poland had 110,000 serving solders at the time the Army Law was passed (I'm not sure when this took place) and the military seems to have then been expanded.
      • Page ix is the right-hand side of a two-page map of the war's theatre of operations, so obviously doesn't support the text cited to it in reference 99
      • I'm not sure why the 1972 edition of this book is being cited in note 8 given that there's a much more recent edition available. Likewise, the reference to the Polish-language edition of the book seems unsuitable given that there are English editions available. Nick-D (talk) 00:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looking through it, I also have to admit that some (maybe all) of Nick's points are valid. I will try to fix some of these issues but given limited time it will probably take a while.VolunteerMarek 19:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll put in some time over the next week to make a full copy-edit pass for anything missed. I have the Davies book, so I can check through any of those as well. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 23:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can we get an update on how work on this is going? VM, is this possibly something you want to work on outside of FAR, given the limited time that you have said you have? Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 12:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Additional closing note - Based on the concerns identified by NickD, and the lack of work over the past month, I am delisting this article from featured status. If editors return to address the comments, the article can be taken to WP:FAC as soon as they feel the article meets the criteria. However, I would first suggest working with NickD to make sure that all of his concerns have been addressed. Dana boomer (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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