Talk:Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Grnrchst (talk · contribs) 10:47, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll take this one on! I was a keen follower of the 2020 events in Belarus, so I'm very interested to learn more about Tsikhanouskaya. As per my usual method of reviewing, I'll give my section-by-section comments, followed by a check against the GA criteria.

Comments

Early life

• "Among her books were those from the United States" "those" is an odd choice of word here. Maybe "some"?
• Spotcheck: [3] Verified.
• Per the source, it seems to be these American textbooks specifically about the outside world. Maybe it's worth merging this with the previous sentence, so it would read something like "which she read to learn English and about the world outside of Belarus".
• Spotcheck: [1] Source doesn't say anything about them meeting in Mazyr. Is this confirmed somewhere else? It also doesn't say that Tsikhanouski was a night club owner, only a "businessman-turned-popular video blogger". Given that this was before his vlogging days, maybe just calling him a "businessman" would be better?
• The main article on Tsikhanouski is still using the Russian transliteration of his name, but this article uses a mix of the Russian and Belarusian transliterations of his name, without much explanation. It might be worth either: a) adding a wee explanatory footnote on the different transliterations of his name; or b) standardising his name in this article to either the Russian or Belarusian transliteration. As this article uses the Belarusian transliteration of Tsikhanouskaya's name, I would lean towards using the Belarusian transliteration of Tsikhanouski's as well.
• "in which he interviewed the people" Think "the people" is a bit dramatic. Just "people" is probably fine.
• AP News citation is missing its author: Yuras Karmanau
• Radio Free Europe citation needs proper citation formatting, for consistency.
• Spotcheck: [3] "despite a lack of government interest in addressing the pandemic" Per the source, it seems her decision to pull her children out of school was because of the government's inaction, not "despite" it. This should be rewritten.

Background and building a campaign

• Might be worth moving the sentence about the start of Tsikhanouski's YouTube career down from the Early life section into this one. That would read a bit nicer than having a random sentence about his videos sandwiched between details about Tsikhanouskaya's life.
• Jalalzai & Jurek 2023 citation has page numbers outside the footnotes, but there's no page range in the citation itself. This should probably be included.
• Moscow Times citation needs proper citation formatting. It's also missing its author, Tatiana Kalinovskaya.
• Spotcheck: [3] Verified.
• Spotcheck: [8]:120 Verified.
• "Working with the other campaigns that had ended," Reads a bit odd. I think I understand what it's saying, but it might need rephrasing.
• "He had grown more unpopular among the people" Again, think "the people" is a bit dramatic. Could just be "He had grown more unpopular"
• Spotcheck: [1][8]:119 Verified, although only [8] is explicit about calling Lukashenka's rhetoric "sexism".
• Spotcheck: [1][8]:124 Verified.
• Spotcheck: [4] "Her role has frequently been compared to Joan of Arc" Source says Belarusian news outlets compared her to Joan of Arc, so I think we should be more explicit with the source of this comparison than just "frequently".

Campaigning

• Radio Svaboda citations need proper citation formatting. Title translations should also be provided, the language being Belarusian should be indicated, and the author(s) should be credited.
• Cut the space between "Mikola Statkevich," and the footnote.
• "Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic" Main article calls it the "Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic", as does the cited source here.
• Per MOS:IMAGELOC, this image should be aligned to the right.
• Amnesty International, Financial Times and BBC World Service citations need proper citation formatting.
• Title translation for first Radio Svaboda source incorrectly labels Tsikhaouskaya "Tikhonov". This needs correcting. "Радыё Свабода" ("Radio Svaboda") and "Дашчынскі, Алесь" (Dashchynski, Ales) should also be Romanised.
• Title translation needed for second Radio Svaboda source. "Радыё Свабода" ("Radio Svaboda") should also be Romanised, and I'm not sure "Svaboda, Radio" is needed as the author.
• Bel.biz source should list Russian as its language used.

Election day and departure from Belarus

• I recall there being a means through which Belarusian voters independently verified their votes for Tsikhanouskaya in the election. Maybe a wee detail about this should be included?
• Spotcheck: [8]:125 Verified.
• Link to State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus for "Belarusian KGB".

Establishing a government in exile

• Original Reuters article should probably be linked to, rather than the Yahoo mirror.
• "She felt that she had betrayed her supporters by leaving the country" We should probably include quotation marks, just to make this clear that she said this directly.
• "the State Security Committee of Belarus announced that an attempt was being made on Tsikhanouskaya's life, saying that the protesters needed a "sacred sacrifice"" Was there any truth to this? We should probably be a bit clearer that this is something that they alleged. "announced" and "saying" might be a bit too passive.
• NHK World-Japan citation should probably use the name of the publication, rather than the web address.
• Authors should be credited for the Reuters and DW citations.
• No need to list Radio Free Europe as the publisher of Radio Free Europe.
• Link to 2020–2021 Belarusian protests for "a period of protest".
• "de facto" should probably be italicised.
• "Tsikhanouskaya has denied that she leads a government in exile." The source gives more context for the denial, so we probably should too. Also, if she denies that she's formed a government in exile, should we really be declaring that in wikivoice in the section header? That reads very poorly. I'd advise giving more detail on her denial and rewriting the section header to something else.
• I don't think we should be citing a Facebook post if we have alternatives. We should probably cut this.
• Regarding the translation of the Seimas source's title: It appears as though "Rezoliucija" was dropped from the beginning of the title. So the title should read "Rezoliucija dėl neteisėtos ir Baltarusijai Rusijos primetamos sąjungos" ["Resolution on the illegal union imposed on Belarus by Russia"]
• Authors of the Seimas resolution were Seimo Pirmininkas and Viktoras Pranckietis, they should be credited.
• Actually, do we have any secondary sources for Lithuania's recognition of Tsikhanouskaya that we can use, instead of a primary source from the Seimas itself?
• Translation of the title for the Voice of America and RBK citations should be provided.
• Author should be credited for the RBK citation.

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

• Author should be credited and publication date provided for the Miami Herald citation.
• "a strategy of underground dissidents in Belarus" Should this say "a strategy for underground dissidents"?
• No access date for CBC citation?

Awards

• "other Belarusian leaders of the country's democratic opposition" Reads odd. Maybe "other leaders of the Belarusian democratic opposition"?
• "in a ceremony on December 16" Rest of the article uses DMY formatting, so this should too.
• Norwegian citations should be tagged as using the Norwegian language.
• Authors should be credited for Dagsavisen and LRT citations.
• "other Belarusian leaders of the country's democratic opposition" Again, reads odd. Rewrite per above.

External links

• It seems odd to have this citation to The Atlantic unused in the external links at the bottom of the article. Is there anything from this that we could add into the article, so that we could cite this inline?

Lead

• Maybe move "authoritarian" from before "president" to before "rule"?
• "she has led the political opposition to his rule through a government in exile operating from Lithuania" But she denied it was a government in exile. This reads quite badly, considering. This should be rewritten in order to bring it in line with the body.
• Might be worth including a sentence on her proposals for her presidency.
• "has established an alternate Belarusian government-in-exile" There it is again. This should be cut.

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   Very well-written without any obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes. I've suggested a couple rewrites/rephrasings, but nothing major.

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   For the most part. There's only one case of a word to watch, with "despite". I have recommended that be rephrased, per the cited source.

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   The formatting is a bit all over the place. Some citations don't use proper formatting, others don't include author credits, dates of publication, or other key details. This is the main thing that I think needs fixing before I can pass this.

   B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):

   Every statement has at least one inline citation.

   C. It contains no original research:

   Spotchecks mostly verify what is said, with one or two minor exceptions. The lead and a section header's assertion that Tsikhanouskaya formed a government in exile, despite apparently not being sourced, reads like possible OR.

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

   Earwig mostly flags direct and properly-attributed quotes. One case of a direct copy-paste of text, in the awards section.[1] I have already suggested a rewrite on this sentence.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   For the most parts. Descriptions of Lukashanko's "dictatorship" have basis in the sources. But the assertion that Tsikhanouskaya formed a "government-in-exile", despite mentioning her denial of such and not mentioning anything to the contrary, reads as non-neutral.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

   There have been some reversions over the past few months, but nothing major that has approached an edit war or that has drastically affected the article. Article has been largely stable since the beginning of October.

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   Images are all in the public domain or licensed under creative commons. Most of the images provided are from state sources, with one being an original work.

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   All images are relevant and captioned. Although alt text should really be provided for them.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   When it comes to prose and broadness, this article is all good, with only minor notes. The issues are mostly with incomplete and unformatted citations and a couple cases of OR/NPOV. I'll put the review on hold for now, until these issues are addressed. Ping me once they've been seen to and I'll give the article another look over. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:47, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

   Concerns addressed, passing now. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:27, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Grnrchst

• I wasn't able to find anything about independent verification of votes.
• It does feel like a slight POV problem to remove a fact about the subject (that she leads a government in exile) simply because she denies it, but I've switched it to opposition government.
• The Atlantic link under external links is an interview, so it's not an ideal source. I just left it there when I began editing the article.
• I've left some of the foreign language references untouched, and there were a few references where no author was listed in the source. For what it's worth, reference formatting is one of the things that reviewers are explicitly not expected to look for.
• I've made all of the other changes.

Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:15, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks good! Thank you for addressing all of my concerns :) Regarding the POV problem, I would agree, except we don't have any sourced text in the article that does describe it as a government in exile. If we had, I would feel differently. And apologies if I went a bit overboard with reference formatting suggestions, it was just an issue I was coming up against when trying to verify stuff. Anyway, I'll go ahead and pass this now. Thanks again and excellent work on this article, as always. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:25, 24 October 2023 (UTC)