Talk:Russian stove

Unclear passages
I've cleaned up the language of this piece a bit, but there were two sections where I couldn't make out what the meaning was, and I can't read the Russian-language sources to clarify.


 * 1) ""Hog" has an obligatory presence (made from bricks in an attic, sometimes it has a chamber for smoking), in order to slow down the cooling of the oven." - I'm guessing that the 'hog' is a slang term for a brick structure built inside the oven to retain heat. It would be good to have a clear explanation of what the hog is, and how it's named.
 * 2) "The oven suggests it to try pies, and subsequently, on a return way, hides the girl from a pursuit." - The girl asks the oven for directions, and it replies by telling her to eat pie?

--Clay Collier (talk) 05:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

1. The Russian word for brick oven flue also means hog, I've tidied the sentence up. AxaxaxaxMlö (talk) 21:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

2. Correct, same as in Grimm tales. "Eat my pie, and then I will tell you what you waht to know". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.78.0.149 (talk) 22:07, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Bad ISBN
Because it is causing a Checkwiki error #72: "ISBN-10 with wrong checksum", I removed the ISBN from the entry:

Гуси-лебеди. — Донецк: Проф-пресс. — 1999. — ISBN 5-88475-298-X

I have tried unsuccessfully to locate the correct ISBN on the Internet. Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 15:52, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

The "Usage" section needs clarification
In the usage section there is a claim that "the Russian oven can be used for washing". The next sentence explains that a man can fit inside of one, (and that people have hidden in them), but that still doesn't explain how a person bathes in the oven. Am I wrong in assuming that it would have been filled with water like a bathtub? If it was, then how is that possible with the hearth opening on the side? None of the pictures in this article shows that the hearth was covered with a door, let alone a fitted, watertight door. So that leaves me still wondering how one "washes up" in a Russian oven.

Perhaps what was meant was that a person could use the stove to heat water in a vessel for use in a "sponge bath", or to wash their face, etc? If that is the case, then more explanation is needed. Maybe someone familiar with Russian Ovens could please clarify this topic, and add it to the "Usage" section. That would be great.

What is special about it? Definition, history, evolution, types, description?

 * Changed the chat name to a more specific and less rhetorical form. Took into consideration edits already made by Gronk Oz: "unique" has been removed from the lead; on this claim: see article by Shkolnik, who offers technical details for why it allegedly is indeed unique - confirmation needed from a less partisan, preferably non-Soviet source, and then it can go into a much-needed section on description & technical details (see Shkolnik 1988). Arminden (talk) 13:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

A book called "Наука и техника", "Nauka y tehnika" = "Science and technology", is far from convincing me. Far too many Russian and/or Soviet claims to uniqueness coming out of the Ministry of Propaganda & Mass Dumbing-Down have crossed my way, with cute pictures and all. I know such stoves from places outside Russian influence. The Slavic word "nauka" has so deeply impressed the Romanians, that they've retained it as "năuc", 'dizzy' or 'confused', as after a blow to the head. I'm not kidding. So yes, do try harder. Didn't any academic, (much) preferably a non-Russian one, ever notice, in written, the uniqueness of this piece of technology? It's a wonderful place to spend a cold winter day, as human or cat, but prove it's a Russian invention. The fact that it can burn birch and you can recite 111 famous Russian poems about the stove is irrelevant. Arminden (talk) 21:22, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The article does not claim that this type of stove is "uniquely Russian". On the contrary, it says "It is used ... in traditional Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian households."  If you have reliable sources that claim otherwise, or which give a different name to this type of stove, then please show us.--Gronk Oz (talk) 22:59, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * What you're saying is not even a matter of semantics: see the fist sentence of the lead, "A Russian stove is a unique type of masonry stove". What does "a Russian stove is a unique type" mean, other than "uniquely Russian"? Arminden (talk) 01:45, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Many things are named after a country, without any implication that they are unique to that country. I ate my breakfast this morning from a china plate which did not come from China, Danish pastries are not unique to Denmark, chess players who don't come from Sicily can nevertheless use the Sicilian Defence, swimmers from all countries use the Australian crawl, orchestras all over the world have French horns, eggs Benedict are served on English muffins that have no association with England apart from their name, and for lunch I might have a Scotch egg which does not pretend to be from Scotland.  I could go on but the point is made - simply naming something after a country does not make any claim of a unique connection to that country.
 * In the interests of clarity, I just removed the word "unique" which did not add anything.--Gronk Oz (talk) 02:24, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate that. I am sure you understand very well what my problem is here, and that has absolutely nothing to do with French fries not being French. It's that this attempt at an article doesn't check almost any of the elementary "must do" boxes one needs to take care of when writing an encyclopedia article. So substance, not semantics.

Definition: what is, specifically, a "Russian stove"? I recognise in the illustrations and the scarce description a stove like any other in, say, Romania, and nobody tried to get a "registered mark" nomination for those either. A definition consists, by definition, of a general category (here: traditional countryside masonry stove), and a specific quality which sets it apart. Of the latter there is no obvious one proven yet.

Title and notability: what is Russian about the "Russian stove"? What is special about the "Russian stove" that makes an article on ENGLISH Wikipedia a gain for enWiki? Russian Wikipedia is another story, everybody is allowed to deal with every aspect of national cultural identity on their own playground.

References: they have to be a) reliable, and b) on English Wiki, they have to be presented in English (translated title, author and publisher, at the very least), the more so as Russian is written with a different alphabet and is not really a language of large international circulation. Reliable means, preferably academic literature. There has been and still is plenty of ethnography and archaeology practiced in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, so that shouldn't be a problem. English-language literature should be given priority, or else it becomes a dead-end article, by Russians for Russians, even though it's on enWiki, which defeats the purpose and is quite useless, if not even misleading in this specific case.

History and evolution: unless there is a claim that Russians in the 15th century invented this type of stove (not yet defined, not yet shown to be a specific type) out of nothing, one must show what tradition it's part of, where the inspiration (or compete concept and technology) came from, and how it evolved in the last half of a millennium (15th-20th c.; I guess it's disappearing by now).

Folklore and cultural anecdotes are not enough, not by far.

As a hint why I was stunned to find it here in the form it is now: I've opened the very first Google hit for Romanian stove (here). Search for "casă românească tradițională" and tell me how that stove is different from the one in the Russian stove article. You'll find there lots of ancient and early modern masonry stoves from Italy and lots of other places. That article is quite poor too, but it made an attempt at offering a cultural and technological background, at showing examples from thousands of years of history, and at placing the Romanian stoves in the right context. You can find another Romanian one here. I'd be thrilled to learn from this article, once it's been fully reworked, how these beautiful and practical common heritage came to be, and if that's the case, how Russians and other Eastern Slavs taught others their self-developed technology. Or alternatively, how all of Eastern Europe learned from, say, the Germans, or the Martians, and combined their local traditions (Russia for instance, or at least the Rus', starts well before the 15th century) with the imported ideas.

Good luck. Arminden (talk) 03:25, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * you make lots of good points there to improve the article. I'm afraid I don't follow how most of them relate to the topic of this discussion: "Uniquely Russian"? Really? Says who?
 * I hope you don't plan to give up your day job and become a mentalist, because your claim that I somehow magically know what you're thinking is wrong: I am going by what you write, not by what is in your head. I removed the word "unique" from the lede, so you can stop fussing about that aspect.  I can't see any claim in the article that Russians developed them independently; indeed I cannot see any references to who developed it or where - so I just don't follow your complaint there.  If the same object is also widely known by other names then add those to the article.  If the same design is used across a broader area, then add that to the article.  Frankly I have no interest in even addressing your belligerent challenge to bring the article up to your standard, especially when you're complaining about straw-man arguments like these and finishing "good luck" as though you're signalling the start of a fight.
 * If you don't wish to improve the article as you outlined above, then I see three options for you: you can nominate it for deletion and make your case there. Or you can nominate that it be merged into Masonry stove.  Or you can leave your suggestions here in the hope that somebody else will upgrade it.--Gronk Oz (talk) 05:40, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I truly believe that I'm easy to understand. "Good luck" was simply meant as "I'm outa here, good luck with fixing this." Nothing belligerent. Any item called after a country or nation by that nation is a clear claim of cultural ownership and national primacy, hiding behind semantics is ridiculous. (The French have never called the pommes frites "French fries", the Americans have; but they're very jealous about their aptly called French Revolution, and what the Americans call "the American dream" themselves, they very much claim to be strictly theirs.) I have last night dragged one Russian-language article referenced here through Google Translate, and it does clearly make this obvious claim: that this is a 100% Russian invention, unparalleled, the technologically most efficient in the world, known & respected all around the globe as "the Russian stove" (Shkolnik 1988). This here isn't really an encyclopedic article because it lacks too many of the basic requirements to be one. Shkolnik, a "science candidate" (Russian term for...?), is much better and he does indeed build up his article very nicely. Somebody should bother and honour the non-Russian-speakers who humbly reach this page on enWiki, with a summary of that article. Shkolnik offers the historical background, the technical evolution, the latest (Soviet, 1980s) developments and scientific studies on the traditional and the modern improved models. His is a good base to bring this article up to standard. But he's of course a Soviet author writing for a national-minded magazine, that should be filtered out and put into perspective with some more neutral, non-Russian sources, if they are to be found. So nothing fancy, I'm only asking the Russian editors to respect the user's and the fellow editors' basic requirements and intelligence, which is so far rather lacking. Arminden (talk) 21:52, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * If you have spent the time to translate and read through that article, and it contains anything relevant - why not add that to the article? It might start to address some of the shortcomings you note.  If you are concerned that it is too biased then you might want to be careful to use just uncontroversial statements of fact.  If it contradicts other, equally authoritative, sources on important aspects then Wikipedia's job is not to determine which one is right: instead, give all sides due BALANCE.
 * I don't speak Russian at all, so I cannot comment on the sources. Of course, they don't have to be in English; the policy is clear at WP:NONENG: "Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. However, because this project is in English, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when they're available and of equal quality and relevance."  As you learned in the TeaHouse, an editor found over 200 books that discuss the topic at some level, so it's a matter of somebody with the appropriate skills devoting the time if they wish to.  After all, we are all volunteers here and it is nobody's "job" to upgrade any article.  If you look at the top of this page you will see that it falls within several WikiProjects: if you ask nicely there, you might find somebody who is willing and able to help you to improve the article.--Gronk Oz (talk) 00:45, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time with me, but I've arrived here totally on a tangent and I've spent a million times more time than I intended. What I wanted was to shake others up, those who do care about the topic, and move on, specifically because it's not high on my agenda. Those 200 books you mention - I'd be curious if they exist, or if that's the number displayed by Google at the top of the first page with search results, because these are two completely different things. Also, not translating the titles, publishers etc. cannot be right (I'm not much interested in WikiSpeak and concrete Wiki rules and regulations, but the spirit of the matter is clear: communicate with the fellow user & editor). Until I translated the Shkolnik details yesterday, 12 out of 13 references were either fully in Russian, or didn't contain anything other than the general name. Please don't tell me that I'm overly exigent when I call this not just sub-standard, but a bad joke! But yes, people are doing unpaid voluntary work here. Just tell me, if you see sloppy work, which is indeed unpaid, how do you keep your cool? Does unpaid mean: anything goes? Anyway, now I am going. Have a great time and thanks for all, especially your patience. Arminden (talk) 01:53, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You asked a question, then said "now I am going", so I am not clear whether you want an answer or not. Just in case, I will reply.  I often come across sub-standard articles when I patrol new pages; out of every hundred new pages there will be a handful that are absolute rubbish.  In general, my approach is: Firstly, I make a quick assessment of whether the topic seems NOTABLE, generally backed up with a quick search in Google News and/or Google Books and/or Google Scholar as appropriate.  If it seems hopelessly non-notable, I tag if for deletion (AfD, PROD or CSD as appropriate).  Otherwise, the focus switches to improving the article: I start by looking for where I can quickly fix any obvious problems.  Often that starts with small things like typos, bad references, or formatting problems - then perhaps go on to more subject-related aspects.  On rare occasions I might take it on as a project to fix it up, otherwise I put any specific suggestions and sources I found on the Talk page and I might add a couple of tags for improvement in the article.  I might advise the relevant WikiProjects if they don't already have it on their radar.  Then I move on to the next article.  If I am not willing to put in the time to improve it further, then I can hardly criticize anybody else for not doing it.--Gronk Oz (talk) 13:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. What I mean is, I won't spend more time on fixing the article because it's far outside my immediate sphere of interest. Of course I appreciate any dialogue and I will copy the advice you've given me onto my Wiki working file, to follow wherever possible, so thanks again. However, I'm not that new on Wiki as not to know that w/o a strong shakeup, nobody will even look at any talk-page comments for a topic like this. The WikiProjects advice is probably the key, I haven't used that tool yet. If you don't mind, how does one go about it? Are the relevant WikiProjects posted on the talk-page? As to not commenting when I don't have the intention to edit a particular subject: with that I dare to disagree. If I'm knowledgeable enough in a particular field as to signal out some severe problems, but not interested enough as to edit the page, I strongly believe that posting criticism is very useful and constructive. Those who have written the article are obviously much closer to the subject and more motivated, it's up to them and others who visit the site and are interested in it, to pick it up, dismiss it with good arguments, or amend the text accordingly. Perfectly legit and useful to us all. If you write an article, you take responsability for it, and must be ready to deal with, and be inspired by, well-founded criticism coming from anyone. Apart from that, we agree on everything else. Have a great day, Arminden (talk) 13:42, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry if there was a misunderstanding: you asked what I would do, so I tried to answer from that perspective. Not telling you what to do.  But for myself, I find it better to make suggestions about how to improve an article rather than complaining about the sad state it's in now.
 * If you look at the top of this Talk page, you will see a beige-coloured box which tells you about the Wikiprojects that have expressed an interest in this article. In this case it is  WikiProject Russia, and several task forces within that Wikiproject (technology and engineering in Russia, history of Russia, and demographics and ethnography of Russia).  I was quite surprised to see that this article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale, but that might help to attract somebody to work on it.  Each Wikiproject is linked from that beige box above.  Each one can be different, but in most cases they have a Talk page which is where you can discuss what you think should be done to the article.  In this case, that is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia.--Gronk Oz (talk) 22:13, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Gronk, thank you very much! I'm learning. Hope to cross ways with you again, and I will try to control my temper a bit better. All the best till next time! Arminden (talk) 22:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)