Russia edit
I’ve worked considerably on this article over the past month trying to bring it up to featured article status. I’ve added a lot of sections including ‘Armed Forces’, ‘Health’, ‘Language’, ‘Education’, ‘Fauna’, ‘Literature’, ‘Ballet’ and added supplementary information to most of the other sections. I’ve restructured the layout and resized the images to make it look more professional and added a lot of images which I thought were relevant and describe Russia well. I think what's left to do is add references to some sections. Also note that while the History section cites almost no references, I believe it is based on information from the History of Russia article which is a featured article. Please leave comments/suggestions on the current state of the article. I am planning on nominating this article for a featured article after I get some feedback from you guys. Thanks, --Ilya1166 15:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
- I'll try to comment on the article by section:
- General. The article is extremely long. Some sections need to be split off, moved, or removed. In particular, the sections on Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev are not necessary and would work better in a separate article. The Post-Soviet section could be summed up more succinctly. "Recent economy" needs to be shortened as well, and "Challenge" seems unnecessary as a separate section. The image in the sports section is broken- it shouldn't be too hard to find a free image. Some of the references are malformed or inconsistent, which should be relatively easy to fix.
- Lead section. The lead is alright, but in the third paragraph, there are too many bracketed sections. "After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the newly-independent Russian Federation emerged as a great power (although it is also considered to be an energy superpower)" could be rephrased as "After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the newly-independent Russian Federation emerged as a great power and energy superpower". Usually "see also" material can be incorporated into a pipe linked phrase in a rephrased passage, so "It is also one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (see Russia and weapons of mass destruction)" could be rewritten as "It is also one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction is the world's largest." You can rephrase it however you like, but the key is to avoid having bracketed statements at the end of sentences where possible
- History. This section is far too detailed, and if it were to be nominated for Featured Status, it would probably fail because of this. It might sound difficult, but I would try to shorten it to one to two paragraphs for each major time period. Each of the leaders during the Soviet era shouldn't get their own section. For a good comparison to a featured article, see India. Basically, try to keep a brief, concise summary for each major time period- name the major rulers, major wars, boundary changes, etc. Also, try to avoid recentism in this section too- the Soviet and post-Soviet era make up over half of all Russian history. Also remember that history made in the Soviet era is often misleaded and even false, due to propegandaism. One example: the article claims that 3,6 million russian soldiers died in german captivity during WWII, this will be heavy disputed in the West. It is closer to the truth that most of them died on the battlefield, slaughtered because of Stalin and his generals war tactics.
- Politics. Good summary. Concise, neutral, attributed, and gets the major points across. You may want to add historical context (ie former styles of government)
- Subdivisions. You may want to detail this section a bit more. What are the responsibilities assigned to subdivisions? What does the federal government control? Are the elections the same style?
- Geography and climate. The climate section needs better writing. Some parts of it don't make sense: "The coldest month is January (on the shores of the sea-February), a warm, usually in July." The section of Fauna is completely empty- it should be either filled in or eliminated. "Largest cities" should not be in this section- it should be in "Demographics"
- Economy. This section needs to be shorted significantly or moved to Economy of Russia. "Recent economy" should be shortened to just what is happening right now, and its should be brief to avoid recentism. "Challenge" is a bit of a strange section (and a possible POV fork), and it might be better off having its content merged into other parts of the article. "Prospect" is also an unnecessary section and should be shortened, with some of its material moved to the main Economy article. This section could potentially use a table to break down major economic factors: poverty rate, GDP, etc, although FA-quality country articles don't need to have this.
- Armed forces. Contains some redundancies. Namely, "Russia is spending more and more on its Armed Forces" is completely redundant with the sentence that follows. It should also have a section related to foreign policy. It could use a summary table to list forces and expenditure, but most FA-quality don't seem to have this.
- Demographics. "Language" and "Religion" should be in the section on "Culture". This section also needs to be more brief- just give a general summary of what currently exists.
- Culture. "Architecture" and "Cinema" need some footnotes. Try to avoid using subjective terms like "popular"- you can take the word out and still convey the meaning of the sentence. "Sport" needs to be pared down a bit too.
- See also. The link columns are unbalanced and don't seem to have any coherence to how they are selected. It may be possible to create a template like {{Canada topics}}, which can be used instead.
- Overall observations. This is a long, informative article. Right now, it's like a roughly carved piece of marble- almost a beautiful sculpture, but it needs to be chiseled some more. There is certainly work for the League of Copyeditors to do. Some sections need to be removed or merged, and others need to be moved or expanded. Specifically, politics, government, foreign relations, and the armed forces should be together or at least close to each other in the article, as they are in most countries. This article is good, but not FA-worthy yet. Hope I've helped.-Wafulz 22:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)