Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 02:30, 30 September 2011.

Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union

 * Nominator(s): on behalf of —Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 29, 2011; 21:32 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because..., the principal author, asked me to. He feels the article meets the FA criteria and is ready to address any concerns raised during this nomination.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 29, 2011; 21:32 (UTC)


 * Oppose I'm sorry to have to oppose, but there are quite a few problems with prose and MOS issues that I do not think can be fixed within the course of the FAC. The subject matter is well researched, and I have no doubt it's comprehensive.  However, there a quite a few prose issues.  I give examples as follows:


 * "Since the question was asked with ironical smile, in the debate, Morozov replied, smiling ironically as well, “You know, dear colleagues, this is a very peculiar disease: there are not delusional disorders, there are not hallucinations, but there is schizophrenia!”[31]"


 * "In the 1960s and 1970s, theories, which contained ideas about reforming society and struggling for truth, and religious convictions were not referred to delusional paranoid disorders in practically all foreign classifications, but Soviet psychiatry, proceeding from ideological conceptions, referred critique of political system and proposals to reform this system to delusional construct."


 * "Cases of political abuse of psychiatry have been known since the 1940s and 1950s, including case of Sergei Pisarev, a party official who was arrested after criticizing the work of the Soviet secret police in the context of the so-called Doctors' Plot, an anti-Semitic campaign propelled at Stalin's instructions which should have brought about a new terror wave in the Soviet Union and possibly the extermination of the remaining Jewish communes that had outlived the Second World War."


 * I see several places where articles are missing before nouns, suggesting to me this has been translated from a Slavic language.
 * Just a comment: I've worked with Russians who speak English as a second language, and almost all of them have had difficulty with articles before nouns -- omitting them where they belong, putting them in where they don't. Looie496 (talk) 17:22, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I see a pipe to Russian Federation that as it is discussing matters under the Soviets, should probably be to Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Also, several disambiguation links need fixing.  That's easily fixed.


 * I have an issue with gross overcitation.


 * "There is probably more, but that's enough to doom it in my eyes.


 * Please do not ask me to reconsider unless you have at least one support from someone who has not worked on the article or related ones. If you can, I'll look more seriously at the article--Wehwalt (talk) 21:58, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Oppose at this time - while this article is interesting and fundamentally sound, it does not in my opinion currently meet the FA criteria. Specifically:
 * Overabundance of citations in the lead - per WP:LEAD, much of this material should appear and be cited in the article proper
 * Huge ToC, comprising many one-paragraph subsections - organization needs improvement
 * Manual of Style problems - italicization, ellipses, etc
 * Some paragraphs taking up two+ screens - should split to increase readability. In general, density of prose is an issue here.
 * Incomplete citations - for example, the credited author of FN 8 (according to the link provided) is the BMA
 * Inconsistencies in citation formatting - for example, some books include locations while others don't
 * WP:ENGVAR - inappropriate mixing of UK and US spellings and language conventions
 * Check disambiguation links using the toolbar to the right
 * Check use of terms and phrases potentially unfamiliar to the non-specialist reader, and strive to make the article as accessible as possible
 * Some copy-editing needed for prose quality, clarity and flow - for example, "Gorbanevskaya took part in the Red Square demonstration in a state of the mental disease"
 * Russia does not have freedom of panorama, so all images that include 3D objects (including buildings) need to include copyright info for those objects as well as for the photos themselves
 * File:Andropov1.jpg does not list the copyright holder (did Soviet copyrights pass to the Russian government?), but more concerningly the FUR is quite weak and likely does not support the use of a non-free image here. In general, the article employs more non-free images than it really should
 * File:GrigirenkoPetrZina043.jpg includes no proof of permission, and even if it did Kallistratova is likely not the copyright holder anyways - whoever took the photo is. Same issue applies to several other images - we need proof that the copyright holder has given permission for these images to be used
 * File:Volpin.jpg is tagged as lacking author information, without which the copyright status of the image cannot be conclusively determined. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:14, 29 September 2011 (UTC)


 * As a suggestion, you might be able to mine the Nikita Khrushchev article for useful images, they are from a FA which has been maintained and the images are all good.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:17, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - Sorry. I agree with Nikimaria and Wehwalt. The citation saturation was an immediate concern, and further reading revealed problems with the prose (has this been translated from Russian?) and WP:MOS compliance. And, as already pointed out, the article's images run into the minefield of Russian Freedom of Panorama Law and other copyright issues. I found the mixture of transliteration and original Russian in the citations messy (although this is probably not within the scope of the FA criteria). I expected more  sourced from Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about this in The Oak and the Calf. I think this important an engaging, well researched contribution would benefit from a Peer Review at this stage. Graham Colm (talk) 22:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Copyscape review - No issues were revealed by Copyscape searches. Graham Colm (talk) 22:59, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Question: I am surprised very much at such a short term for my nomination. The nomination lasted for five hours, from 21:32 September 29 to 02:29 September 30. I was asleep at this time. You have not given me time to reply to your remarks. Is it fair? Psychiatrick (talk) 16:49, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not really seeing how you've been abused here; some well-qualified reviewers have given you a lot of useful information in a very short time. - Dank (push to talk) 17:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * @ Dank. It is easier to give “a lot of useful information in a very short time” than to rewrite the whole article in accordance with this information in the same time. Moreover, civility means the ability to listen to replies. Psychiatrick (talk) 18:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, I was responding in my head to the comment left at WT:FAC about this (by someone else) rather than to your comment. Sorry. - Dank (push to talk) 18:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You need to take it to peer review, but as you have to wait for that, you might want to read over what we have written. We're not trying to give you a hard time.  You can ask us questions if you are not certain.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * @ Wehwalt I have a lot of questions. How many citations are allowed in one article? It is my first question. Please provide a link to a guideline that explains this issue. I need to find out how many citations I should paraphrase. Psychiatrick (talk) 18:32, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Ask all the questions first, and I'll answer. I think the relevant policies on citation have been brought out.  I would seek consensus to change the citation style, it's obviously causing a problem at FAC.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The lead of the article has too many references to sources. I’ve always thought the more references to sources the better. Am I not right? The problem is that the deletion of the references to sources can be qualified as vandalism. Psychiatrick (talk) 19:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article body, which is why citations in the lead are usually kept to a minimum - the intention is that the material is included, elaborated upon and cited in the article body. Thus, if there are currently citations in the lead that do not appear in the article body, the best approach would be to move them to the relevant part of the article text, not necessarily delete them entirely. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:52, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the lead contains information that is not replicated in the article body. For instance, the definitions of terms are not replicated in the article body. In addition, I don’t see why the information should be replicated there. Psychiatrick (talk) 20:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article. Graham Colm (talk) 20:43, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Graham Colm, do you mean the definitions of terms determining the subject of article need to be twice given—both in the lead and in the article body? Then the definitions will look strange, I suppose. In my opinion, the most appropriate place for the definitions is only the lead, not the article body. Please take a look at the article itself. Psychiatrick (talk) 21:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.