Wikipedia:Featured article review/Dmitri Shostakovich/archive2

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

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 3:04, 3 September 2022 (UTC) [1].

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Dmitri Shostakovich

Notified: Henry Flower, CurryTime7-24, Wikiproject Composers, talk page notice 2022-01-28

Review section

In late January, I brought up the article's problems at its talk page. It was last reviewed in 2007 and is unfortunately the poorest quality of all composer FAs. Sourcing is the most critical issue. Some pages are missing, and there are multiple CN tags present, though there should be far more. Some paragraphs rely on a single inline citation; the entire "Recorded legacy" section is an example. The article lacks enormous amounts of information available both in print and online. The "Early career" and "Later life, and death" sections both display elements of "list of events" rather than prose. They are also dull and monotone. Thank you and good luck to anyone who is willing and able to keep this FA. Wretchskull (talk) 16:07, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

• Agree with Wretchskull above, and also the English is often unacceptable shoddy, e.g. "Even before the postwar Stalinist anti-Semitic campaigns, Shostakovich showed an interest in Jewish themes", and "Thereafter, Shostakovich would celebrate the date of his symphonic debut for the rest of his life." The 'Music' section is painfully thin to the point of transparency. But where and how to begin reconstruction?--Smerus (talk) 18:24, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I think the biography is largely salvageable with some care and a few more citations. I'm concerned that the music section would need a complete rewrite. There seems to be three approaches to music sections on WP, those considered with genres, those with style and those with chronology. The style group works best when composers stuck to a single or few mediums/genres, like in Chopin or Mahler. The genre approach works well with diverse oeuvres (Berlioz, Ravel), and the chronological approach can be used in similar situations effectively (Debussy, Holst). Currently Shostakovich is using a poorly written stylistic approach, which I don't think works well, and either the genre or chronological one would be considerably more effective. Aza24 (talk) 19:16, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm starting to realize that the lead is like, really bad... Aza24 (talk) 19:14, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

    Yes but the thing is there's not much point rejigging the lead until the article has been rewritten. The lead presently contains much text which is not validated by the article, and contains a host of citations referring to matters not covered in the article - as well as contradicting itself (e.g. "Long dismissed by Western scholars"/" throughout his life was regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century".) Really all a bit of a mess. The article should certianly be stripped of FA status at present.--Smerus (talk) 08:39, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

    Tbf I added the "Long dismissed by Western scholars", only because Grove says "For many years, serious scholars in the West had scarcely bothered with Shostakovich", but the situation is impossible to explain properly without a well-researched reputation section to pull from (and the one at the moment is not ideal). Aza24 (talk) 08:23, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• CurryTime7-24 has made some edits to the article. Are they hoping to continue working on this? Z1720 (talk) 01:07, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

  When time permits, yes. I do what I can in the moments available to me to improve this article and other Shostakovich-related articles. I will add that as perhaps the editor who has worked on this article the most in the past few months, Smerus' gripes about my contributions being among those whose "English is often unacceptable [sic?] shoddy" is incredibly discouraging. I don't purport to be the second coming of William Strunk Jr here or anything, guy, but to me matters of prose style are secondary to the slips, errors, personal speculations, and outright falsifications that passed for "facts" here prior to my involvement. Moreover, I think in the few exchanges we have ever shared, I've been unfailingly polite and encouraging to you. Yes, much more work remains to be done, but I'm not a retiree with vast amounts of free time at their disposal. So rather than complain about other's hard work, please do feel free to grab a shovel, so to speak, and help out. Thanks. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 20:19, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• Move to FARC just to keep the process going; it looks unlikely that this article can be brought to standard, but should a monumental effort occur, it can still be saving during the FARC phase. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:44, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Apologies CurryTime7-24, I did not realize that some of the contributions I criticised were from you - I thought they were accrued over the ages, and no personal affront was intended. You have absolutely correctly hit on the shortcomings of range and fact in the article. The prose quality of course is also an important component of FA. I am indeed a retiree, but with no vast amounts of free time at my disposal alas due to all sorts of commitments (so I'm not the only one to make assumptions), but I will do my best with you over the forthcoming period to polish the article up. --Smerus (talk) 20:34, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

No progress whatsoever in last two weeks, I am still at Move to FARC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:41, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@CurryTime7-24: are you still interested in working on this? Z1720 (talk) 00:57, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

I will begin work next week starting Monday, editing section by section. Have not been able to start yet or do much editing here in general because of pressing commitments elsewhere, but I should have enough time to work on this over the next two weeks, at least sporadically. If any other editors can help me by chipping in with improvements to style and grammar, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 20:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

FYI: Work will start Tuesday, followed by a day-long interruption Wednesday. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 01:57, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I've gone through the first couple of sections and tried to make a few small improvements to the prose. I may get around to editing a few more sections in the next several days, but I can't promise that I will. For what it's worth, my main reaction so far is that the high level of detail in much of the article (especially the Biography section) makes it more challenging to write clear, concise paragraphs - so far I have left this alone, and as someone who finds Shostakovich interesting I'm reluctant to say that we should have fewer details about him on Wikipedia, but overall I think the article might benefit from someone going through and considering which details could be moved to other articles or removed as less important. --Opus 113 (talk) 03:26, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Opus 113, CurryTime7-24, and Smerus: Are you still interested in working on this article? Is it ready for new reviews? Z1720 (talk) 19:33, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I would love to work on the article but I have little time for serious application to WP at present because of other commitments. These ease up at the end of this month so I will make a real effort then. Smerus (talk) 20:18, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Smerus, we're arriving at the end of the month - is it still your intention to work on this? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:18, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nikkimaria, it is still my intention but I still don't have the space at present to do the necessary work. Every time I look at the article I am increasingly aware of how much needs doing. Smerus (talk) 19:43, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing, prose and comprehensiveness. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:46, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Delist. No progress. Article would need huge work to be retained. Ceoil (talk) 05:02, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Delist. Too big of a cleanup per Ceoil. Would take weeks of dedicated work (in the quickest possible scenario). Aza24 (talk) 00:20, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Delist. Essentially echoing Ceoil and Aza24. Wretchskull (talk) 17:27, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Delist Ceoil was doing some great copyediting, so if their recommendation above is to delist, then I trust their judgment. No other editors have been editing the article. Z1720 (talk) 12:38, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Delist per Ceoil and Aza24, whose judgments I trust here. Hog Farm _Talk 13:56, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:04, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.