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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Russian explorers/archive1

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

The list was not promoted by Giants2008 23:27, 23 January 2012 [1].

List of Russian explorers

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List of Russian explorers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):--INeverCry 06:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because it is comprehensive, well-written, and informative.--INeverCry 06:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose This article was on my to-do list. It is nowhere near FL-status; just a few examples: Lead is very thin, you could describe the history of Russian exploration (for example access to the Black Sea during the Catherine II-era, access to the Gulf of Finland during the reign of Peter the Great, the first explorations in North Russia, etc.); do not start with "This is a list of", because it is redundant; WP:YOU, WP:ACCESS, WP:BOLDFACE, WP:OVERLINKING etc. violations; references are not ready (WP:BAREURLS, {{ru icon}} is only for ELs, references should be converted to cite templates, dead links, questionable sources); generally heavy WP:MOS violations. These are just examples; this nomination should be withdrawn, because it does not meet WP:GA?, #2, #3, and maybe more. It needs heavy work before nominating.--♫GoP♫TCN 08:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Would you like to help improving all these issues right now? I suppose this shouldn't take too much time. I agree with all the problems named except perhaps WP:BOLDFACE and WP:OVERLINKING. Boldface is useful to highlight the main achievements in the long texts, while WP:OVERLINKING might not hold for such lists at all, since it is not an article necessarily expected to be read from top to bottom, but from any particular place a reader might like to check in the list.
As for the lead, I could write a longer one very quickly if someone is willing to help with other technical problems. GreyHood Talk 12:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I will work on references. I disagree with your assertion that boldface hightlights the main achivements. It is not exact what the main achivements are; everyone has a POV whether something is more notable than everything else. For example in the first cell of the "Achivements" column, is "Albanov was one of the only two survivors of the ill-fated 1912–14 Brusilov expedition," really significant? I agree "helped Vladimir Vize to calculate the coordinates of previously unknown Vize Island.[1]" is notable, but not the first. So I am for removing boldface. Also it will reduce the page size, resulting in faster loadings.--♫GoP♫TCN 14:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, we may reduce the number of things boldfaced, but removing it entirely will only reduce the usability of the list. Not every reader is willing to read all those long descriptions and to find the main points on their own. So either boldface stays, or we change the conception of the list entirely, reducing the descriptions to main points only. The first variant allows more uses of the list. GreyHood Talk 14:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let's make a list of things to be done. Please place  Done beside an issue when it is fixed.
I'll work on these issues soon and hope for a further help with MOS issues. But where are WP:YOU problems concretely located, what are the suggestions to improve WP:ACCESS, and which sources are questionable? GreyHood Talk 14:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, let me do the cite thing, please ;). YOU violation in "For the full plain list of Russian explorers on Wikipedia, see Category:Russian explorers. See also the list of Russian and Soviet cosmonauts; several cosmonauts, who've set important records, are listed here." - also, is it really true? A category has the "full list" and this list has only a few examples? Also, nobody really knows if this is correct. ACCESS violation in tables; should have "!scope = row", etc thingy, see also MOS:DTT; we must make sure that it meets WP:COLOR. And I saw words like "famous"; they should be also removed.--♫GoP♫TCN 15:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is the current table:

Portrait Person Achievements Image
Valerian Albanov
(1881–1919)
 Russian Empire

Imperial Russian Navy officer, lieutenant, Arctic explorer 		Albanov was one of the only two survivors of the ill-fated 1912–14 Brusilov expedition, the other being Alexander Konrad. They left the ice-bound ship St. Anne and by ski, sledge, and kayak crossed the Kara Sea, reached Franz Josef Land and were finally rescued by Georgy Sedov's Saint Phocas. The data about ice drift of St. Anne, provided by Albanov, helped Vladimir Vize to calculate the coordinates of previously unknown Vize Island.[1]

A glacier in Severnaya Zemlya is named after Albanov. Either Albanov or Konrad is a prototype for a hero in the novel The Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin.
The Kara Sea

This is how it should be per MOS:DTT:

Portrait Person Achievements Image
Valerian Albanov
(1881–1919)
 Russian Empire

Imperial Russian Navy officer, lieutenant, Arctic explorer 		Albanov was one of the only two survivors of the ill-fated 1912–14 Brusilov expedition, the other being Alexander Konrad. They left the ice-bound ship St. Anne and by ski, sledge, and kayak crossed the Kara Sea, reached Franz Josef Land and were finally rescued by Georgy Sedov's Saint Phocas. The data about ice drift of St. Anne, provided by Albanov, helped Vladimir Vize to calculate the coordinates of previously unknown Vize Island.[1]

A glacier in Severnaya Zemlya is named after Albanov. Either Albanov or Konrad is a prototype for a hero in the novel The Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin.
The Kara Sea

I don't like the grey column, but I belive we must live with it :/. What do you think?♫GoP♫TCN 15:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually i don't see significant visual difference other than the grey column. Is it really so much need to implement this change and are there any ways to avoid gray column? GreyHood Talk 16:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid so. Ok, now we need to add an accessible sign, see also User:The Rambling Man/FLC things to check. "! # $ % ^ & * ~ § " are accessible signs, as well as {{†}} and {{‡}}♫GoP♫TCN 16:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I will do it now--♫GoP♫TCN 16:34, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering if we could do without all the flag icons? Any reduction in size would help with the slow load time, and there are probably 1000 or so flag icons.--INeverCry 18:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A reasonable proposal. Would you like to remove them all, leaving only the names of states? GreyHood Talk 23:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Done.--INeverCry 02:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why you did that. You could just remove the flag icons, but not the nationality. Also "(born in Estonia, Baltic German descent)" is original research and should be removed.--♫GoP♫TCN 11:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Since all people were Russian/Soviet nationality, though some born elsewhere, it doesn't make sense to repeat it multiple times, afterall. I'll remove the Estonian bit. GreyHood Talk 13:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it would be useful for our readers. I removed the rest. The lead plus the infobox looks impressive, very nice! The references are now the major problem. I cleaned up the references from Z-R, and I will work step-by-step. I left out dead links, to which I could not find any archived pages. --♫GoP♫TCN 14:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I will finish when I am back :). I struck out my oppose to avoid archivation. Regards. ♫GoP♫TCN 10:34, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – This isn't a full review, just a few basic things I noticed while skimming through the list...

  • There's no reason the History of Russian exploration subsection shouldn't be a full section. It's structured like a regular section, and having a section like this isn't any kind of FL disqualifier, especially when the list is this large. Done
  • Check to make sure that all images have alt text. There's a lot of them, so this may take a while.
  • Colors should have matching symbols per WP:ACCESS. That goes for the key and entries.
  • Speaking of the colors, I feel like they're overdone in the list. I like the colors in the Person column, but am finding that the coloring elsewhere is distracting to me. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I'd like to see coloring limited to the Person column.
    • Agree with other your proposals, but not with this one. Coloring is related not only and not primarily to explorers, but to what was explored, so the Achievements column should be colored as well. As for the third column, it just contains images, and the coloring couldn't be seriously distractive there, while it is technically easier to color three columns rather than two of them. GreyHood Talk 13:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The persistent bolding in the Achievements column also distracts me, and is a violation of MOS:BOLD, which recommends against excessive bolding. It says that italics can be used as a replacement, but I'd recommend that it not be used as a replacement here. I fear that italics would be nearly as distracting. Done
  • Sources will need careful attention, particularly regarding whether they are reliable. I'm not an expert on the topic and can't read Russian, so this is tough for me to judge properly.
  • See also should be moved before the references. Done Giants2008 (Talk) 01:41, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

  • Criterion 2. Nowhere do I read the criteria for inclusion on (or exclusion from) the list. There is a long list of names on the list's talk page; the discussion implies the reason for excluding them is at least in part editorial convenience, not some objective criteria. (See WP:LSC.)
  • Content. The History of Russian exploration section, while a commendable topic, should be in a separate article. At a minimum its first two paragraphs (summarizing early Russian history) are unnecessary here.
  • Structure. For this list to be useful, it should be sortable by meaningful dates (e.g. the date of each entry's most prominent discovery), and by geography explored. Dividing into alphabetic tables makes this impossible. (Right now for example, there is no way for me to group together the major explorers of Russian America.)
  • Prose. I know people have been working on the article; it needs copyediting (e.g. "oversees" in the lead?)
  • Media issues. All of the images I spot-checked (File:Admiral-Wrangel.jpg and File:Przewalski.jpg, to name just two) have inadequate provenance. While many of the images are probably public domain, they need defensible assertions of sufficient age (and ought to have English descriptions if they currently don't). (I recommend all images used have properly-filled-out {{Information}} templates.)

-- Magic♪piano 03:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ a b Valerian Albanov. In the Land of White Death
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