Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia/Assessment

Top/High importance articles

I've taken the liberty to assign the following articles to Top-importance:

• Russia
• Russian Empire
• History of Russia

• Moscow
• Saint Petersburg
• Kazan

• Alexander Pushkin
• Leo Tolstoy
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Anna Akhmatova

• Ivan IV of Russia
• Peter I of Russia
• Catherine II of Russia

• Boris Yeltsin
• Vladimir Putin

• Peredvizhniki

• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

• Russian language

• Russian Orthodox Church

I hope that's all right with everybody. Errabee 14:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I've expanded/reorganized quite a bit, and added some High-importance articles as well. Please have a laugh at my expense: Category:Top-importance Russia articles and Category:High-importance Russia articles. Errabee 03:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

This is just my personal view, of course, but I don't believe that any article about a single person deserves to be ranked top importance. The number of top importance articles should be fairly small and restricted to articles which cover a wide array of information. We should take some guidance from Wikiproject Canada (see here - perhaps not quite that spartan, but approaching it). The number of high-importance articles can be larger and should cover broad subjects as well as important people. Above all, I think we should grow a backbone and stop ranking importance based on what we think the average Western Joe would look for. Why pander to the most ignorant? The point of wikipedia should be to educate people, not to reaffirm what they already think they know - so no, vodka should not be a top-rated article for crying out loud!! We must focus on what is important, not on legitimising Western stereotypes and misconceptions. If we do that, then we are not much better than mainstream Western news sources which report stories based on what the public wants to hear rather than on what they need to hear (ie. just about every news channel in America). Esn 01:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely wholeheartedly disagree. We would be no better if we enhanced these stereotypes and misconceptions; instead, due to our NPOV policy, we have a unique opportunity to set them straight. That's part of the reason why especially these stereotypical subjects should be of top-importance, and should be worked on with the utmost priority.

BTW, I seriously object to your use of the word ignorant. I myself know absolutely nothing about Canada, but I would expect Montreal and Quebec to be treated in an encyclopedia, as well as the Niagara Falls and Celine Dion. So would you consider me to be an ignorant (and most ignorant on top of that)? I'll let you know that I am a doctor in the field of theoretical chemistry, speak Dutch, English, German, a bit Russian, French and Italian, am quite familiar with the history of the Roman Empire, and I prefer 19th century/early 20th century classical music, operas and ballets (Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Giacomo Puccini); yet there are so many subjects that one cannot hope to master it all. Now I would be much more inclined to look up Montreal, Quebec or Niagara Falls than Geography of Canada, Celine Dion over Culture of Canada, simply because I've heard of them, but know next to nothing of them. An encyclopedia that only contains Geography of X, Culture of Y, Economics of Z subjects would be very uninteresting indeed, and I would not feel invited to read those articles. Perhaps after I've read these individual articles, perhaps. Errabee 03:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Difference between Mid and Low priority

I'm not sure I understand what the difference is between Mid and Low priority. They both talk about "specific knowledge" - yet, an article about a single song (eg. Katyusha (song), Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)) can be of mid importance while an article about the history of an entire distinctively Russian branch of filmmaking (eg. History of Russian animation) can be of low importance. Moreover, History of the Soviet Union - undoutedly one of the most important articles in this project - is ranked mid-importance as well.

I just really don't understand what's going on here. Could the descriptions on this page of the Mid/Low/etc. categories be made a little longer and more precise at least, so there's some less ambiguity? Esn 01:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

It depends on how much the subject is known to the general public outside Russia. Russian filmmaking (let alone animation) is, I'm afraid, not very well known outside of Russia (except for Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Bondarchuk and Andrei Tarkovsky); therefore, while I'm not denying it is an importance article, it gets low-importance for this project; box office successes like The Turkish Gambit and Night Watch (2004 film) will probably also be of low importance until they have made a big impact in the U.K. or the USA. Katyusha is well known outside Russia, Tchaikovsky's piano concerto is very well known outside Russia in several versions (also made popular by classical pianists turned popular like Liberace [1]). History of the Soviet Union rates mid, because History of Russia (a FA, BTW) contains a lot of information about the history of the Soviet Union. Errabee 02:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Errabee, This criteria you apply is flawed with systemic bias toward western culture. The key question to see is: would the same importance-standard applied for a USA-related article with the same local importance? Also doesn't seem a good idea to rely on the knowledge of the "general public"; instead, we should rely on scholars' opinions. --BMF81 09:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, your reasoning is flawed. Systemic bias is bias from editors (which means an overabundancy on technical subjects and marginal pop groups), the importance ratings are about bias from readers. While we can correct bias from editors, we cannot correct bias from readers. And readers are what this project is all about. Errabee 22:09, 3 June 2007 (UTC)