Talk:Russian language in Latvia/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Tayi Arajakate (talk · contribs) 22:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Hello Turaids, I'll be reviewing this nomination. I may ping you if I have a question or when an issue crops up. I hope my feedback will be helpful to you. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 22:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm putting this article on hold for the time being as I can see that it will need some time to be developed properly. Ping for any question or concerns regarding my review or if you want clarifications. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 09:01, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , I think I'll have to fail this article, feel free to re-nominate at any time on a later date. This is going to take quite a bit of work to meet the good article criteria. The article has been on hold for some time and there hasn't been much improvement in the meantime. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 08:37, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , thank you for your review! Could you please explain what you mean by "hasn't been much improvements"? I feel like I've more or less addressed everything you pointed out. I expanded the lead, removed the blue links in the headings, trimmed down the red links and added interwiki links for the remaining ones and still get failed for manual of style issues. I summarized the quotes you highlighted as problematic and still get failed for copyright issues. I expanded the article with the early influence of Russian, the extent of Latvian Communist Party purges and the susceptibility of ethnic minorities for Russification during the Latvian SSR and still get failed for comprehensiveness. Okay, the last point may be debatable, but I didn't add anything on the pre-1885 period because there wasn't really much going on at that time anyway. –Turaids (talk) 10:43, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , sorry the copyright problems are resolved, that was a mistake on my part. But regarding the lead, it should be a brief summary of the entire article, it still is not much more than a single line with a stat. There are also still overlinking of red and blue links in the body of the article, many of which are linked more than once.
 * These are easy to solve so I'm not putting that much weight on them, my primary concern is that the article could be expanded a lot with regards to history. For instance, an article about language should mention literature, literary figures, changes in language, regional variation, etc which is more or less absent here. "1958–1970" is still just about Thesis 19 and almost entirely sourced from one reference. There also seems to be a lot of references available on languages in Livonia and Courland, for instance I found that their administration was primarily in German and Russian between 1820 and 1890, that there was a shift in the policy on education with Russian educators instead of German becoming more commonplace during a 1860s modernisation effort, there was also a census in 1881. So, I don't think one could say that nothing was happening during this period. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 12:20, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * These are easy to solve so I'm not putting that much weight on them, my primary concern is that the article could be expanded a lot with regards to history. For instance, an article about language should mention literature, literary figures, changes in language, regional variation, etc which is more or less absent here. "1958–1970" is still just about Thesis 19 and almost entirely sourced from one reference. There also seems to be a lot of references available on languages in Livonia and Courland, for instance I found that their administration was primarily in German and Russian between 1820 and 1890, that there was a shift in the policy on education with Russian educators instead of German becoming more commonplace during a 1860s modernisation effort, there was also a census in 1881. So, I don't think one could say that nothing was happening during this period. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 12:20, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Comments
Tayi Arajakate Talk 08:59, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * There is one immediately noticeable issues with the article. This is concerning the manual of style and wikilinking (see MOS:LINKSTYLE). Sections should not have bluelinks in their headings and the bolded portion in the lead should not be bluelinked either. There is also overlinking within the article, particularly with redlinks. Please consider removing them in numbers to improve readability. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 05:42, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * There is another issue concerning the manual of style. The lead is too short, it provides a single line with a stat and does not give an adequate overview of the subject. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 05:47, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The history before Latvian SRR appears incomplete. It begins at 1885 skipping around 150 years since the beginning of the Russian Empire's expansion in the region. The sourcing is not very good, recommend replacing Demoscope Weekly. It should not be used to state "making Russian-speakers the 4th largest linguistic group in each of the governorates", since the source does not say so directly. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 06:06, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The section called "In Latvian SSR" too appears to be incomplete. The sources are much better in the section but sparsely used, the entirety of "1958–1970" is cited to one source, which ends up only discussing Thesis 19. Grenoble for instance covers this period as well but isn't used. i've a question regarding this section as well, . Why are the "Latvian national communists" being refered to as "so called"? I don't see anything alluding to this in the sources.
 * Large quotations (Letter 17 and Language situation in Latvia) are problematic as they are likely copyright violations, highly recommend removing them and summarising them instead. They also provide disproportionate focus towards specific viewpoints.
 * The section on education and mass media appears to be much more comprehensive and better sourced. The names of the newspapers should be italicised btw.

Assessment
 Comprehension:

Verifiability:

Comprehensiveness:

Neutrality:

Stability: Illustration:

