Talk:The 1930s in Soviet Russia

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 24 February 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jwisehar. Peer reviewers: Jrichers.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:07, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

John Richerson's Peer Review
Hello Group 9, Great job creating a whole new article, that’s a lot of work and you picked an important topic. -	It seems you haven’t gotten to the lead paragraph yet, but you have very clear sections in the article for Foreign Policy, The Purges etc., so it should be easy to summarize each into a brief but informative lead section. -	Really liked how you broke down the different aspects of the decade by culture, economics, etc. and I think you were right in giving the Purges their own section. I noticed some bolding of the text in the paragraphs under the Purges, not sure if that is a temporary thing while editing, but I would consider removing it when making the article live. -	This topic makes it very difficult to find balance and neutrality, since the things that happened were obviously horrendous. That being said, I might consider making some of the wording in a few places a bit more formal. One example might be, “After taking power following Lenin’s death Stalin worked incredibly hard to create and maintain an iron grip on the Soviet Union.” For Wikipedia’s preferred style, it might appear more neutral with wording like, “After taking power following Lenin’s death, Stalin used various tactics to maintain control of the Soviet Union.” I find the way you wrote it more engaging, but it seems with Wikipedia, the less colorful the better. -	Really impressed with the large number of academic sources you’ve put together. Also, it appears all the information you’ve provided is cited thoroughly, great work. -	Since you are covering a particular decade, perhaps a timeline of significant events might be a good visual addition? Also, I think the Wikipedia commons will have some photographs that might work for you. There is one called Stalin-Gorky-Voroshilov.1931 that you might find relevant. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stalin-Gorky-Voroshilov.1931.jpg -	Wish I could think of more suggestions for you - the article is looking really excellent! (Jrichers (talk) 10:42, 14 February 2019 (UTC))

Peer Review 2-15-19 Caitlin Scolaro
Right off the bat, with the number of sources you have, I can see that you have invested some time in your article. All of your sources seem appropriate, scholarly works and books. It was nice to see you reference the class textbook as well. This is a great job for a new article. Reading it, it feels very professional and very objective. In the sentence "an era of improvement took place...." you leave me wondering what the improvements were, what changed? There are also a few grammatical errors, although I know the article is far from finished. I know this is not a necessity, but do you think there are any relevant pictures that you could input into the article? All of the links that I tried to use in your article did work, and I appreciate how many of them there are. The article “Soviet Culture” has a lot of good information, but I think it could be organized a little better. I like all of the sections you have, very pertinent, but maybe it could do with one more? Overall your article is looking great! You have good information, good sources, and the writing style is perfectly suited for this type of project. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucyinthesky17 (talk • contribs) 21:39, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Chandler Mattice - Peer Review 2-15-19

First off great article! I want to say that it is very well laid out. The information provided is exceptional. The use of citations as well as links is very well done. I did find a few grammar errors but nothing too serious at all. I also wanted to applaud you on how you worked as team and communicated through the article. I think that this article could expand a bit on a few things, but for the most part it flows very well. I also wanted to make a point of telling you that this article to me is not biased at all! This is truly a place to just find information that doesn’t sway anyone in thinking on way or the other. All and all this is a very well put together article. Again, the only thing that I think would need to be fixed to make this perfect would be the fact that the grammar errors throw you off a bit when reading. Also cleaning up the question marks throughout the article would help a bit too. I think a good way of fixing this issue would to be go through what has question marks and do the research to either confirm or deny the claim. If it is able to be confirmed maybe adding a link to where you confirmed it from. Great article and great work!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Chan Mattice (talk • contribs) 01:30, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

James' Peer Review
There is plenty of informative content that this group has added to this article. It is evident that each member of your group has dedicated a great amount of effort into their research to update and expand their respective article sections. As a new article, the page itself is looking very promising so far. Your group has provided a number of reliable and varied sources, however, five of the 14 listed sources are from the same book, Stalin and Stalinism by McCauley Martin. While undoubtedly a great source for information, this book is still only one source. Remember, carefully constructed and reliable articles have a variety of sources to reduce the amount of bias in them. The ASU Library website is an excellent resource for finding sources, and many of the articles and books are free to access. Another critique for the article is just cleaning up some of the grammar issues that I noticed when reading the following sections: The Purges, Stalinism Triumphant, and Politics and Economy. Some of the sentences in these sections have too many words or are missing some punctuation. I would suggest copying these sections and pasting them into a word document to locate the errors. Lastly, in the section The Purges I noticed the use of in-text citations alongside the citation link. While I'm not completely sure if citing sources twice is within standard practice, it does appear redundant to list the author and page number in conjunction with a link that does the same thing. Nonetheless, I do realize that this article is in the drafting process, but I thought it should be pointed out. Magnificent work to the group members composing this article from scratch. To follow such an endeavor is no easy task. This article has plenty of potential and should definitely be expanded. The end result would certainly be a good article that contributes even more to the topic of the Stalinist era. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwisehar (talk • contribs) 02:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)