Talk:Fyodor Dostoevsky/GA4

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 13:23, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'll take this one. I'll do a first readthrough of the article today and/or tomorrow, and then begin the formal checklist. Looking forward to working with you, -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:23, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Misc. notes from first readthrough

 * "This and a better learning efficiency"-- the academy had a better "learning efficiency", or Mikhail did? I'm not clear what this phrase means.
 * The sections on Dostoevsky's personal life are so thoroughly detailed that they're not very useful to the casual reader. At times we appear to be following FD through his life almost day-by-day. Take, for example: "In May, Anna's mother visited the family to help them. They moved to a more spacious apartment on the Piazza del Mercato Nuovo, but the busy location near a marketplace and the summer heat caused the Dostoyevskys a great deal of trouble, and so they decided to leave the city for Prague. On their way to Prague, they stayed in Bologna and in Vienna. Three days after their arrival in Prague, they had to leave again because they could not find a furnished apartment to rent. They decided to return to Dresden, where they rented a house in the English quarter". It may be necessary to create a WP:SPINOFF for "Personal life of Fyodor Dostoevsky" if all this is to be kept.
 * This has nothing to do with his "personal life"; it is his biography. In this "Travels" section such information is not trivial, especially as those travels influenced his life. I am now confused why the reader does not want to know this comprehensive account of Dostoyevsky's life.--Tomcat (7) 15:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "Another reason for his abstinence might have been the closure of casinos in Germany in 1872 and 1873. It was not until the rise of Adolf Hitler that these were reopened." -- please provide citation to demonstrate that this isn't original research
 * I combined the section since Chocolaste split some sections and forgot to place footnotes at the end.--Tomcat (7) 15:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "She was described as educated, interested in literature and a femme fatale." -- by who--critics, contemporaries, FD himself?
 * By FD--Tomcat (7) 15:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The page seems to contain a number of repeatedly linked terms; though this isn't part of the GA criteria, I thought I'd mention it. Per WP:OVERLINK, I'd suggest linking terms like serfdom and nihilism and people like Sigmund Freud only once each after the lead section. -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "asserted that war may be necessary if salvation were granted" -- can you clarify this? I'm not sure what this means.
 * " Two pilgrimages and two works by Dmitri Rostovsky, the archbishop who influenced Ukrainian and Russian literature by composing groundbreaking religious plays, strengthened his beliefs." -- in what? I thought the big take-away from this section was that we weren't clear what FD's beliefs were.
 * his Christian beliefs.--Tomcat (7) 15:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "Several critics, such as Dobrolyubov, Bunin and Nabokov" -- it would be helpful to give first and last names of authors and critics when the names first appear.
 * Done--Tomcat (7) 15:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The footnoting is regularly problematic in paragraphs like this one:
 * Hemingway quotation needs citation.
 * "are on the list of 100 best books of all time." -- give context for list; many of these lists have been written. -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Dostoyevsky's paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were priests in the Ukrainian town of Bratslava. Mikhail was expected to join the clergy, like his father, but instead of going into seminary, he ran away from home and broke with his family permanently. In 1809, when he was twenty years old, Mikhail was admitted to Moscow's Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there, he was assigned to a Moscow hospital where he served as military doctor and in 1818 was appointed to senior physician. In 1819, he married Maria Isayevna. The following year, he resigned from his post to accept a new job at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. After the birth of his first two sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, he was promoted to collegiate assessor, a position that raised his legal status to nobility and enabled him to acquire a small estate in Darovoye, a town 150 versts (about 150 km or 100 miles) away from Moscow. Dostoyevsky's parents had five more children afterwards.

The footnotes give a page range rather than specific pages that the sources are coming from, and are still more complicated by the fact that two sources are being combined; an editor who wants to verify a fact from this paragraph now has to do 30-40 pages of reading. It would be better to more clearly indicate what facts are coming from what sources, and on what pages. Since this is noncontroversial material, I don't think it's an issue for the GA Review, but it's something that could be improved. -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem is that Frank's books (2,500 pages overall, I think) are extremely comprehensive and partially unclear, as he sometimes mixed biographical material with quotations and opinions, so that explains the large page ranges. For me, Kjetsaa's biography is easily understandable, comprehensive, short and clear, so I am seriously thinking to remove some of the Frank short footnotes and put the references into a "Further reading" section.--Tomcat (7) 15:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

3a.
One item conspicuously lacking in the article are brief explanations of his major works. Crime and Punishment and Brothers K are mentioned several times, for example, without a simple two- to three-sentence summary of each book's subject, structure, and themes. While the reader might glean bits here and there from the general Themes section, a more direct approach to this would be helpful.

3b.
At more than 15,000 words, the article is far too long for its subject, closer to a novella than an encyclopedia article; my first reading took more than an hour. I have great respect for the amount of time that's been invested here, but the desire for thoroughness has to be balanced against the need for an accessible article. Lots of detail can and should be cut, particularly in the biography section--the cemetery in which one of FD's children is buried, alternate names he considered for his children, the print run of a stamp with his picture, the blow-by-blow details of his move to Prague, the fact that he once ordered a copy of the Quran, etc. I would suggest cutting the article's length by at least one third. (If desired, much of the work that's been done could be preserved as a WP:SPINOFF at something like Personal life of Fyodor Dostoevsky.) A good model would be the featured article Anton Chekhov (just under 8,000 words), which has excellent summary sentences like "Chekhov also enjoyed a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher", rather than detailing biographical speculations about each.

I'm willing to put the review on hold for a week for the above work to be done if you're interested. Otherwise, I think I have to say "not yet". -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, we have much larger articles which were easily promoted to GA and even FA-status. As we don't have an article on Sonya, I think such information is welcomed. Alternative names are important to avoid confusion. It is not unusual to mention the print run of stamps. See above regarding Prague. The fact that he once ordered a copy of the Quran is very important as it influenced his whole life. Prince Myshkin from The Idiot, for example, was compared to a Muslim rather than a Christian. The article is a very short summary of his life; if you would have read biographies and other books you would understand me. Chekhov is a bad example as it is not comprehensive, for example it does not discuss his style.--Tomcat (7) 15:41, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * On a second thought, there are indeed irrelevant and trivial phrases. I will read through the article once again and remove those.--Tomcat (7) 16:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I checked a few other lit. biographies for comparison, working straight down the alphabetical list: Balzac is 7,500 words; Augusta, Lady Gregory, 3,500 words; Maya Angelou, 9,000 words; James Robert Baker, 3,000 words; Ann Bannon, 8,000 words; Mário de Andrade, 5,000 words. Of the lit biographies I checked, only Achebe was even close at 13,000 words. (Note that these numbers are from cut-pastes into MS Word, not a more exact scan).
 * Downloading the script to do a more exact scan of FD's article, there's 72 kB of readable prose. Per WP:LENGTH, "At 50 kB and above it may benefit the reader to consider moving some sections to other articles and replace them with summaries per Wikipedia:Summary style - see WP:SIZERULE for "a rule of thumb"."
 * The more important point, though, is that this article "reads" long; the article is regularly bogged down in minor details like those I noted above. I'd suggest that a much briefer article (50-60% the current length) remain at Fyodor Dostoevsky, while a closer accounting of his life can be hosted at subarticles. Most readers of this article simply won't need details like an international copyright meeting invitation that FD ultimately declined, the details of a financial dispute over a home sale, the time his daughter broke her wrist, etc., and including this level of detail makes the article less useful to these readers. -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks--I really appreciate your work with this. Just leave a note here when you're ready for me to take another pass. -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * 50-60% is far too much. The prose size is now 70 kb (11384 words), which I think is just fine. I may cut some more phrases. I just don't understand why people want to split articles into subarticles. Isn't this article about Dostoyevksy, say his biography, works, personal life, etc?--Tomcat (7) 10:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that the article should contain his bio, works, and personal life, just not in such detail. Doubling the average length of a Wikipedia literary bio makes it much harder for the casual reader to make it through. This article appears to me to still be very far from meeting criterion 3b. I'll list a few more examples here, taken from randomly selected paragraphs:
 * "They continued their trip through Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe."
 * ❌ because the next sentence would not make sense.--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅--Tomcat (7) 12:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "He was deeply impressed by the paintings, especially Raphael's Sistine Madonna."
 * ❌ because earlier it is written " where he sought inspiration for his writing.", so we need to know which exactly impressed him. Also it was influencing for Demons, see for example "Maidens in Childbirth": The Sistine Madonna in Dostoyevsky's Devils. Should I mention that?--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Will add a bit more information--Tomcat (7) 12:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅--Tomcat (7) 19:28, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Thus they left Geneva and moved to Vevey and then to Milan so that he could complete his novel. After enduring some rainy autumn months in Milan, they travelled to Florence"
 * ❌ because the trips influenced his next work.--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "In May, Anna's mother visited the family to help them. They moved to a more spacious apartment, but decided to leave the city for Prague because of the busy location near a marketplace and the summer heat. Three days after their arrival in Prague, they had to leave again because they could not find a furnished apartment to rent. They decided to return to Dresden, where they rented a house"
 * ❌ I don't see any issues here. Similar as the above point.--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅--Tomcat (7) 12:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * " In March 1866, Dostoyevsky moved with his brother-in-law Alexander Ivanov to a country house in Lyublino to escape the heat of Moscow. He returned to St Petersburg in mid-September"
 * ❌ ditto.--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅--Tomcat (7) 12:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Lyuba had injured her wrist a few weeks before and, although a doctor told them she had a sprain, it was in fact a fracture"
 * ❌ because the reader wants to know the background. --Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * " and lived with Adolph Totleben in an apartment owned by the German-Baltic Dr A. Riesenkampf, a friend of his brother Mikhail."
 * ❌ because we need to know where he lived, and the ill people were influential.--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * " The prisoners were divided into groups of three, composed of one convict, one gendarme and one military policeman. "
 * ✅ removed.--Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Initially scheduled for 26 May, the date of the unveiling was rescheduled to 6 June because of the death of Empress Maria Alexandrovna."
 * ❌ because we need to know the background and that it was delayed. --Tomcat (7) 14:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅--Tomcat (7) 10:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Saying that "FD and Anna spent a weekend in Prague in the year 18xx" or naming a painting that FD liked is a level of detail that seems to me unhelpful for most readers. Maybe some of these details are significant to understanding FD's life in ways I don't understand, but without explanation of their significance, they come across as trivial. FD seeing a horse whipped shows up prominently in Crime and P, if I recall, but a casual reader wouldn't be able to learn that from this article, and so the detail simply bogs down the article. (This would probably best be moved to our sub-article on C and P).
 * I still suggest giving this a major rewrite to reduce the level of minor detail--roommates, apartment rentals, cities visited in passing, casinos gambled at, who wrote a letter to whom when, etc. Right now the detailed explanation of FD's insignificant move from Florence to Dresden gets more article space than The Brothers K, for example, which is hugely unbalanced.
 * If you don't want to undertake this, I'll completely understand. I have a lot of respect for the research and effort you've already put into this one. But I think that's what this one would need to get listed as a Good Article. -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I will now go through this article and remove trivia. I will also check the Kjetsaa pages, since I used two editions. Please give me some time. Regards.--Tomcat (7) 17:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, I'll be glad to. I'll put this on hold for now. Thanks again for your work. -- Khazar2 (talk) 18:18, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I won't fight you on individual points, but it seems we're at an impasse. I agreed to give you a week, so I won't close this yet, but it's only fair to tell you that since the action points above have been largely rejected, I'm almost certainly going to recommend that the article not be listed at this time.
 * To summarize my concerns for future editors/reviewers, I feel that the article is at times overly detailed, and therefore fails criterion 3b. It's possible some of this really is necessary to explain FD's work, as the editor states, but since the article never explains the significance of events, the non-expert reader can't sort out what's of value here, and what's just a list of details. Expounding on how each city visited, each painting viewed, each horse whipped, etc., affected FD's novels is better kept in the subarticles on these novels, except in exceptionally important cases.
 * Meanwhile, the events for which FD is really known&mdash;the composition of his major novels&mdash;recede into the background with almost no discussion; the writing of Brothers K is treated the same as a weekend in Prague. The balance needs to be corrected by serious trimming of the biographical background and an expansion of discussion of the novels. A good model might be featured article Chinua Achebe, which organizes his biography in part around the novels, giving dedicated subsections to the major ones. This would also help highlight the most important events--the novels-- and give focus to the biographical material around them.
 * Thanks again for all your work. -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:52, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There was a short and neat description of The Brothers Karamazov . I could add it here. Regards.--Tomcat (7) 15:17, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That seems like a good start, but could use another sentence or two describing the book's plot (the climactic murder investigation/trial doesn't appear to be mentioned, for example). I agree with this previous draft that the Grand Inquisitor sequence should be at least mentioned.
 * As a side note, if there's been a book-length study of FD's views on Jews and Judaism (the Goldstein source given in the previous version linked above), this is probably worth a sentence or two in the political or religious views section; for comparison, his views on the Russo-Turkish war, which don't seem to have as much study, get three full sentences. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:47, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅I cut the copyright thing. Described his last novel. Will also describe his anti-semitism. --Tomcat (7) 10:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Not ready at this time
Coming back to this a week later, it still appears to me that the article is incomplete without discussion of the major novels, as I mentioned above. There's a good paragraph on Brothers K now, but still almost no direct discussion of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, for example; a nonexpert reader wouldn't be able to gather what these books were even about from this article. (Some of the generalizations also seem to have factual problems--Raskolnikov and Ivan don't actually commit suicide, do they? Is this meant metaphorically in some way?). My suggestion is to rework this article with more emphasis on and explanation of FD's writing and less on his various financial travails, affairs, etc.--you might even consider giving a dedicated subsections to at least some of the major novels, since these are the things for which FD is truly remembered.

Thanks for all your hard work on this one. While I don't think it's up to GA yet, I'm confident it'll get there. -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:50, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You started very good, but then left and suddenly failed it. I already removed some text, and there were indeed sections which discussed his major works, but Truthkeeper stated they are not needed.--Tomcat (7) 19:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that we disagree. To me, a biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky that doesn't discuss his major novels is like a biography of Abraham Lincoln that doesn't discuss the US Civil War; these are the things Dostoevsky is most known for, not his affairs, casinos he visited, various lengthy descriptions of his personal appearance, etc. I raised this point repeatedly in my comments above, and the "sudden" failing came after I gave you twelve days to address the issue. I'm sorry, too, that you got mixed feedback on this from your reviewers; I hadn't previously noticed Truthkeeper's comment, but I don't agree that the novels should be cut at the expense of minor biographical detail. If your next reviewer disagrees with me in turn, I won't be the least offended, but to me it doesn't appear to meet criteria 3a and 3b at this time. Good luck in developing this one further in the future. I'd love to see it as a good article, too, and would be glad to pitch in in some fashion if I can. -- Khazar2 (talk) 20:18, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Comment from Truthkeeper
 * To clarify: in the peer review I suggested removing the sections devoted to the novels as this is the biography article - mostly on the basis that the article is too long and daughter articles should be written for the novels, as has been done for other major writers. That said, I don't think FD's major work should be overlooked in the biography article but be woven in in the themes and styles section and even in the biographical material, so the reader knows what he was writing when. I haven't read the article recently, so don't have an opinion in regards to this fail. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)