Talk:Vladimir Putin wins fourth term as President of Russia

Notes to reviewer

The last sentence mentions that Russian presidential terms were 4 years but now 6, and also, mention Medvedev. Same with Putin and United Russia. I don't think this is specifically in any of the sources. I will, however, assert these are indisputable historical facts and don't need a source. Next, I want to point out that the CEC source is in Russian, but the only thing I used it for was to confirm the % numbers from the media were accurate and, luckily, the CEC had this nice page for just that. I tried really hard on keeping NPOV for this. Thanks for your time. Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: The practical question is, can a reviewer verify the information. The classic example of obvious information that doesn't need to be sourced, "Paris is in France", is something the reviewer is (when that example is used) presumed to already know, and in the unlikely case that they don't already know, it's trivially easy for them to verify in ways that simply could not realistically fail. If you're asking a reviewer to go out and do nontrivial research to verify your assertions, you've left out something that should be there. --Pi zero (talk) 01:40, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I guess, it is a matter of what is trivial. Maybe I have followed Russian politics more than most and this is (for me) common knowledge. I am not allowed to point to Wikipedia as a source. And if I add this from 2012, it only answers a tiny bit of the "common knowledge". I suppose I can add this from the History Channel but they also put out so many garbage reality shows now that I don't know if they can be called reliable anymore. Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I added [1] from Biography dot com. --SVTCobra 02:06, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

NPOV missing -or- Misrepresenting a Nonelection?

While the article details seem to be factually correct, I doubt the NPOV here, because all cricitsm of this so called election, including that in the sources listed, is smoothed out, neglected or faded into 'some background noise'. Russia's most popular opposition politician Alexei Navalny had been excluded and a communist candidate was vilified by state-run media. from the BBC article is somewhat relevant to the reader when it comes to evaluating how much of a real election this was. The OSCE statement, which I watched, is highly misrepresented in the short blib it is given in the article, because OSCE spokesperson Michael Georg Link has clearly stated that this was anything but a democratic election that could be considered fair and free, not that "there wasn't a good enough competition". Et Audiatur Altera Pars - the other side also needs to be heard. The WN-article up for review needs to be edited still, to be more than a "nothing to see here, walk on" pro-Putin piece (and then needs to be published before it goes stale). --Gwyndon (talk) 12:06, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree, there's a difficulty here. The most common form of bias we encounter is failure to attribute, but from time to time submissions run into trouble due to misleading omission. --Pi zero (talk) 13:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Navalny was never the most popular opposition candidate. He was the West's favorite candidate, but he never garnered more than 3% in any opinion poll. The most popular opposition candidates were always Grudinin (Communist) and Zhirinovsky (Ultra-nationalist). I left out Navalny, mainly, because he was irrelevant in the broader scheme, and to mention he was disallowed opens a pandora's box where it becomes necessary to explain why, which is the fraud case, but then one has to go into the extent of whether the fraud case was just trumped up charges or not.

State TV's vilification of Grudinin seems to have been ineffective. He was always polling around 7 or 8% but ended up with almost 12% so is it worth mentioning? The ballot stuffing and weirdly high participation of the diaspora seems to have only served one purpose: stroke Putin's ego. It was not to change the outcome, because, like it or not, Putin is very popular in Russia. They like the direction he has taken the country in. Putin, for whatever reason, just wanted to win by a higher percentage than he had previously. What you see as me failing to have NPOV was really me trying to get a NPOV out of Western media. The press hates Putin more than anyone because of the lousy track record of journalists dying there. Cheers, --SVTCobra 14:14, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

It's a right mess, all right. I don't recall when I've encountered an article where neutrality was so elusive. I'm going to have to meditate deeply on this (and, with dispatch). --Pi zero (talk) 15:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

One important principle here is that if we start arguing about the degree of bogosity of the elections, we've already gone wrong; the Wikinews system is supposed to completely circumvent arguments like that. --Pi zero (talk) 15:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Next thought: I'm not at all sure the phrase added to the lede is an improvement; it might even be making things worse. --Pi zero (talk) 15:50, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

It still seems oybvious to me, that the OP here omits anything critical in the sources cited under the article, while only positive or absolving bits are kept. While as someone from the EU I do not think you need to copy or adopt the western POV on Russia, I am still convinced it would help to balance the article to at least mention the critical issues pointed out by any 'western media' given here, without going into an extended round of "he said - he said". "Western media have pointed out that..." / "The BBC in reporting argued, that" would be finde and NPOV in not taking their side, just showing it as well as Putins words. The Mercer article for example mentions Navalny *and* the fraud case without wasting many lines on that - and without leaving a neutral POV. "Is it worth mentioning, when he got some votes anyway?", you ask. I'd say definitely, because any election is (and reporting on it should be) not just about the result but also about the way that result came to pass. Picking a different part of the OSCE statement from the Mercer text points that out clearer, so I'll add that. --Gwyndon (talk) 16:09, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll be interested to see what you add (I'm going to be away for an hour or two). I suspect just a bit of trimming will make the middle of the article work better; the difficulty with the addition to the lede is that it tries to "weigh" what to say, and we should be trying to avoid weighing like that — news has to be something that can be done quickly without getting into these sorts of squabbles, so when the squabbles start a good solution should side-step them. Imho what the phrase in the lede should be saying is not "marred by irregularities", but rather, it should be saying that there was heavy criticism (or some such words). We have no business telling the reader how much irregularity to think there was; but it's highly appropriate for us to report that there was criticism. --Pi zero (talk) 16:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

"about the way that result came to pass" - Well, if the state-TV's negative coverage of Grudinin had no measurable effect, how is that part of how the result came to pass? Yes, Mercer is very brief about Navalny but he says "widely regarded as politically motivated." According to who? I can't attribute that to Mercer, since he's clearly relying on something. And we can't just repeat that. --SVTCobra 16:50, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Tried my best to balance the article in a way that the criticism is included, while passing the Navalny ball to WP with the wikified name. In the form last edited by me I'd review NPOV as okay-ish in a topic where every "reliable source" is biased but not necessarily wrong, and where facts aside from numbers are disputed. --Gwyndon (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

So it's OK to put a known falsehood (Navalni's popularity) into an article as long as we attribute it to the BBC? Hmm ... --SVTCobra 17:45, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

While I agree with you that any opposition person is not as popular as the president, I also note that this is due to a very tilted playing field, where TV access is granted in very unequal way. Let's not even go to the refusal of Putin to engage in a TV debate, which would have given the opposition more airtime and the people the chance to actually compare. So your "he is not very popular" and the BBC's "the most popular opposition figure" or the WSJ's "the man Putin fears the most" are, while hardly verifiable from here, not mutually exclusive. "the most popular opposition person" can still be "not very popular" as in "not even very well known outside of Moscow and educated circles". It is a known fact that Putin won, but it's news if we report not just his own praise for himself but also the circumstances and the criticism. The wording does not say - or WN:Assume - that the BBC's assessment is true, just that it was made, which is also a fact, and that this has been widely seen, in the free and in the publicly funded media of the west, as one of the reasons why the outcome was so clear from the start (and this not a "free and open election" by OSCE standards). Critics are not quoted any more than the pro-Putin side, which is what I would call, on a global scale, an NPOV representation of this election. Don't you agree at least more (criticism as important news fact) or less (Navalny as a person)? --Gwyndon (talk) 18:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I was never comparing Navalny's popularity to Putin, but to Gruinin and Zhirinovsky. See here for data: Early opinion polls --SVTCobra 18:31, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

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This sort of dispute is illustrative of one of the fundamental problems with the "balance" approach to neutrality. News production cannot engage in such disputation; there is no time for what could be an arbitrarily protracted foofaraw, and the goal of the exercise is ultimately to insert bias of some favored sort. The line I'm reminded of is "A strange game. The only way to win is not to play." (How about a nice game of chess?) News writing must use an approach to neutrality that works robustly without engagement in such disputes. --Pi zero (talk) 19:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Review of revision 4391437 [Not ready]

Revision 4391437 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 13:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC). Copyright: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Newsworthiness: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. NPOV: Not ready: See below. Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Comments by reviewer: I'm aware effort has gone toward neutrality here, but in practice it ends up underplaying the fake-ness of the election. Sometimes one has to step back and look at the big picture. If Putin hadn't won, folks in and out of Russia would have been flabbergasted, and the obvious question would have been, why did Putin decide to not win. Although objections are mentioned, they're way down toward the bottom of the inverted pyramid, suggesting it's a relatively minor aspect of the story. Tbh, it seems unlikely justice could be done to the prominence of that aspect of the story without giving it a substantial presence in the lede. See the discussion further up on this page. Questions about the above? Ask. If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.

Revision 4391437 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 13:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC). Copyright: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Newsworthiness: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. NPOV: Not ready: See below. Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Comments by reviewer: I'm aware effort has gone toward neutrality here, but in practice it ends up underplaying the fake-ness of the election. Sometimes one has to step back and look at the big picture. If Putin hadn't won, folks in and out of Russia would have been flabbergasted, and the obvious question would have been, why did Putin decide to not win. Although objections are mentioned, they're way down toward the bottom of the inverted pyramid, suggesting it's a relatively minor aspect of the story. Tbh, it seems unlikely justice could be done to the prominence of that aspect of the story without giving it a substantial presence in the lede. See the discussion further up on this page. Questions about the above? Ask. If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.

Review of revision 4391650 [Passed]

Revision 4391650 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 22:08, 20 March 2018 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: I wasn't comfortable with late additions referring to misdeeds of the Russian state that seemed out of place in their respective paragraphs and simply to address a perceived failure to sufficiently vilify Russia. I did find the previous incarnation of article out-of-balance, but acknowledging heavy criticism in the lede seems to me to resolve that problem — not analysis but reporting about criticism, a basic technique of news reportage to achieve rapid, robust neutrality. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 4391650 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 22:08, 20 March 2018 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: I wasn't comfortable with late additions referring to misdeeds of the Russian state that seemed out of place in their respective paragraphs and simply to address a perceived failure to sufficiently vilify Russia. I did find the previous incarnation of article out-of-balance, but acknowledging heavy criticism in the lede seems to me to resolve that problem — not analysis but reporting about criticism, a basic technique of news reportage to achieve rapid, robust neutrality. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Again... POV?

Here:

Foreign news media have been heavily critical of the election. Numerous CCTV recordings appear to show ballot stuffing.

What news media exactly? From what countries? does Writer assume all the world media agree with England-US-European media POV? What does sources say? --Zerabat (talk) 23:12, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Да, конечно. Это необходимо уточнить. --SVTCobra 23:27, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm don't much like the "improvement"; Western is not well-defined and implies an overismplified political dichotomy Putin might approve. --Pi zero (talk) 00:10, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but it is unfair to suggest all non-Russian media agrees. Unless we want to name specific outlets, I don't see an easy way around it. --SVTCobra 00:24, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that's a plausible interpretation of the words. "Foreign news media have been heavily critical" doesn't mean every foreign outlet has been critical. If it did mean that, then changing "Foreign" to "Western" would not help, since there's no possible way to verify that every "western" media outlet has been critical, even if it were true (which I don't believe), even if it were possible to say exactly which news sources are "western" (which it isn't). I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but as with the earlier "NPOV" objections, the problem may not match the objection... --Pi zero (talk) 00:34, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Could the original wording have been better? I imagine so; perfection is hard to find. In reviewing this I was likely distracted by other factors; if I'd examined this point more closely then, or if the issue had been raised while there was still time to address it by editing the article, I might have favored rephrasing to say foreign media reported heavy criticism, or something like that; but that's not about which media were critical, it's about ambiguity in the meaning of the verb "criticize". I'm not yet convinced the wording is unacceptable, but if you can convince me, then we'll need to issue a {{correction}}. Frankly I think most objections to this article are ultimately due to the Russian propaganda machine seeking to prevent neutral coverage of them (like Trump labeling neutral coverage of him as fake). --Pi zero (talk) 01:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)