Talk:History of the Jews in Odesa

Did you know nomination

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 00:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that during the Second World War, Odessa was attacked by the combined forces of Romanian and German troops in August 1941? Source:page 41-60

• ALT1:... that Odessa's Rabbi Berish ben Yisrael Usher was beaten to death by several Jews because they were unhappy with the rabbi's strict approach to the observance of Jewish law? Source: [1]
• ALT2:... that the Jewish population of southern New Russia had increased by 333% during the period between 1844 to 1880,by 1921 Odessa had the largest Jewish population in Russia. Source:[2] and [3]

ALT3 ... that at one point in the Odessa's history, Jews comprised 89% of the population in the city? Source: Zipperstein, p. 41

ALT3a ... that at one point in Odessa's history, Jews comprised 89% of the city's population? Source: as above

Created/expanded by Ratnahastin (talk). Self-nominated at 07:57, 27 July 2021 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - Too heavily reliant on Zipperstein (and when I say it, I mean it); some quotes left unreferenced; ref #4 (Cambridge Companion of Jewish Music) - I was not able to confirm these words despite having access to the book.
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems: - See comment

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting: - See comment

QPQ: None required.

Overall: ​ Let's start from the good news. The article was new enough and long enough at the time of nomination. The article is fairly neutral for me and the fragments seems not to follow the text too closely. The hook is cited. And I would like to commend you for the effort you have done for what indeed a very important topic for Odessa.

Unfortunately, I've also got bad news, and I've got a lot of it. First, sourcing. The book by Zipperstein is a valuable reference, indeed, but whole subsections relying on one source only (sections: Economic life, Second wave, Galician Jews) is not something I think is good enough to pass the "sourced" requirement. And referenced 19 times, which is almost as much as all other sources combined? No, that's not how I believe it works. Pages cited from books are also needed, or, if the pages aren't available, quotes. Btw, how is it possible that WJC says there are 45K Jews in Odessa when the 2001 census in Ukraine says that Ukraine as a whole has 13.4K?

Second, the language. Please consider submitting your text to another else prior to publishing, because at times I felt that what you have written wasn't written in English. Try to write in simpler sentences, and other editors with better knowledge of the language will care of the rest (some clarification requests have been put because I can't decipher the sentence as it sounded in the original). Keep particular attention to placing spaces after commas, capitalising names and adjectives of nationalities (Jews, Jewish...) etc. I couldn't help laughing when I came across the fragment which said that Jews had been managing "cockery stores" in Odessa (apparently they were hard-working and yet have constantly been at the cutting edge of cocking about).

The tone and selection of information is also something that should be fixed. By the end of the article, it looked acceptable, but the beginning was pretty awful.

Now, to the hooks. I reject ALT0 because it says absolutely nothing about the Jewish population in Odessa. If anything, that hook could be OK for "History of Odessa in WWII" article, but not this one. ALT1 is not brilliant but if you have absolutely no other ideas, it might go, though I'd strongly suggest to change it. I'd propose the hook to the lines of "at one time, Jews constituted almost 90% of Odessa's population" (as it appears in the text) or that "despite the massacre in 1940 and WWII in general, Jews still constituted more than 10% of Odessa's post-war population", or something about Jewish culture, architecture, trade influence, whatever.

I don't want to fail the nomination outright, so I give you 2 weeks to research more materials on the topic and address the issues as outlined here. You might want to get help from editors who know Russian and/or Ukrainian (personally I know both but I don't guarantee I will have time to help you).

Requesting second opinion for the nomination. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:31, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Note to second reviewer. Some changes have been implemented in the article, including clarification or removal of some dubious fragments + a few citations have been added. While it seems a little better now, I still would want someone to have a second look on the article. Cheers, Szmenderowiecki (talk) 02:13, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki: comment: given how long this page has been dormant, I'd say no other reviewer wants a piece of this. You are, of course, within your rights to request a second opinion. However, as a cursory scroll, the reviewer's points seem pretty valid. I'd try to bring the article up to their standards—it's probably faster than waiting for a second opinion. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 09:09, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

theleekycauldron, Szmenderowiecki is the original reviewer, and was hoping that someone else might have an opinion on the article beyond their review. It looks like the nominator, Ratnahastin, made a series of edits after the initial review but prior to Szmenderowiecki's 14 August comment, and subsequently added two inline source citations, but no significant changes have been made since then. Tomorrow will be two weeks after the original review; at that point, Szmenderowiecki, perhaps you should make a follow-up assessment below to see where things are now and what's left to do. If issues are still significant, perhaps a final seven-day period to bring the article to DYK quality. Ratnahastin, as nominator, it's important for you to post here as well as editing the article. Thank you all. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:35, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

oh, I misread that, I thought nominator went right to requesting a second opinion. ignore that. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 21:44, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

@Theleekycauldron and BlueMoonset: Theleekycauldron has read it correctly - I indeed requested a second opinion, but I've got the assessment from both of you, so I follow with a statement on progress.

@Ratnahastin: the article has undergone some changes, but these seem to be rather insufficient for a DYK-quality article.

Things to do:

• The article is still overreliant on Zipperstein, though addition of some sources that has already taken place is of course welcome. There is still a great need of Ukrainian/Russian resources that would complement the picture and possibly replace some of Zipperstein refs, though this is outside the usual DYK review scope, so for DYK purposes, it's not an issue. Insert refs to some uncited facts written in the article please. Do not be afraid of sources that are not books written by scholars (but be aware that not everything is reliable).
• Some clarification tags are still unaddressed.
• There are some quotes in the article cited to various books, which should be summarised in prose.
• The hook alternative is not provided yet, and, as I said, ALT0 is not passing and ALT1 is not that interesting and is likely not to pass, as the article does not concern the rabbi.

You have a week to correct the issues. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 05:14, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

As for ALT2, choose either of the two facts in the hook. However, that's a good step forward. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:36, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

How about ALT2:... that the Jewish population of southern New Russia had increased by 333% during the period between 1844 to 1880...? Ratnahastin (talk) 03:49, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I've missed one thing while reviewing the hook: New Russia (Новороссия) is not really confined to Odessa - in fact, Odessa was only one of the cities in the governorate (which eventually split into Kherson, Tavric and Katerinoslav governorates, roughly the southern part of Ukraine), and not even a capital of any of the four entities (even if at some time it was the largest city in what is today Ukraine). Let's focus on Odessa, shall we? So no, this particular hook is rather out of question, but that fact from 1921 could be mentioned (though again, if we care to attract more clicks, then this one is still suboptimal, as among the cities that were in the Pale of Settlement and controlled by Russia in 1921, this would be rather obvious).

I would propose, based on the text you have, this one:

ALT3 ... that at one point in the Odessa's history, Jews comprised 89% of the population in the city? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:45, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes it's a fine hook and directly related to city,I think we can keep it as ALT3.Ratnahastin (talk) 04:59, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

OK, the hook is approved, now, there are still some unsourced facts, a clarification tag that needs to be addressed and paraphrasing of quotes. When you do that, I will allow the nomination to pass through. It wouldn't be probably the best article out there, but it would comply with the bare minimum of DYK requirements. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 10:26, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Szmenderowiecki,I think its much better now.Ratnahastin (talk) 13:45, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't really think you got what I meant by what I requested. The latest edit is more or less what I've had in mind. Quality-wise, the article is now acceptable in my opinion. Now let's wait for the reviewer to approve the hook. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

• New reviewer will be needed to check ALT3, since the original reviewer proposed it and cannot approve their own hook. They should also confirm that the sourcing, clarification, and paraphrasing has been done (and the latter is not closely paraphrased). Note that the article cannot be approved for DYK while the "tone" template remains on the article; it will be up to Szmenderowiecki to remove it when they're satisfied that the tone issues they found have been dealt with. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:55, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Ratnahastin and Szmenderowiecki: Hook is reasonably interesting and cited in the article. While the article is heavily reliant on zipperstein, it's not as bad as it used to be. However, there are several paragraphs that aren't sourced at the end. The language and topic selection seems to be acceptable, and Earwig isn't picking up any copyvio detection (although the Zipperstein source is inaccessible, so AGF). We're almost there, just a bit to go. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 19:07, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) I did some copy edit on the article and also wrote up a review, essentially in agreement with Theleekycauldron. I'll just add that while Google Books doesn't display the page, I was able to view the snippet by 1826 Jews made up 89 percent of the city's population which is good for verification. I'm also going to proof the hook since I'm not officially reviewing. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:33, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you for the feedback, waiting for nom's actions. Theleekycauldron, Reidgreg, could you please tag the relevant sections where sourcing is needed? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 07:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Szmenderowiecki: should be done theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 07:49, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
• @Theleekycauldron: I have inserted the citations as requested.Ratnahastin (talk) 10:28, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ratnahastin: Jewish Virtual Library is a generally unreliable source, see WP:RSP; besides, it doesn't really seem to support the sentence. Please find some better sources. Btw, the numbers they give are OK to fill in the table, as these are most certainly from censuses. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:35, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Replaced the pointed out unreliable source with more acceptable ones.Ratnahastin (talk) 17:20, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Nope. The source is good, but still it does not say what the sentence says (that Jews were the second largest ethnic group in the population of Odessa). You can change it to, for example, the second largest Jewish community in the Russian Empire (after Warsaw), because this sentence is in fact in the source and there is no need to restate the table in the section. And after that, we're done. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:08, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ratnahastin: You're wandering around the finish line - let's cross it! Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:22, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll sign off once that's met. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 19:49, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested changes implemented, I approve the nomination with ALT3a as hook. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 07:50, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Szmenderowiecki, but ALT3a is your own ALT3 with a very slight modification, and you cannot approve it. theleekycauldron, I think you said you'd be willing to give the final tick; are you satisfied? BlueMoonset (talk) 15:47, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset and Szmenderowiecki: yeah, I'll approve ALT3a in good faith, i can't access the Zipperstein source. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 22:08, 16 September 2021 (UTC)