Talk:Religion in South Ossetia

Did you know nomination

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 AirshipJungleman29 talk 18:20, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the Alans remained pagan after converting to Christianity? Source: Foltz, Richard (2019). "Scythian Neo-Paganism in the Caucasus: The Ossetian Uatsdin as a 'Nature Religion'". Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture. 13 (3): 316. doi:10.1558/jsrnc.39114. "It was through their political relations with the Byzantines—and also through the inmuence of missionaries from neighbouring Georgia to the south—that the Alan elite nominally accepted eastern Christianity during the tenth century. This seems to have had little effect on the general Alan population, however, and the thirteenth-century Flemish traveller William of Rubruck states that of Christianity ‘they know nothing apart from the name of Christ’."
  • ALT1: ... that the capital of South Ossetia once had more Jews than Georgians or Ossetians? Source: "Цхинвали" [Tskhinvali]. Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia (in Russian). Vol. 9. 1999.
  • ALT2: ... that there were no churches at all in South Ossetia during the Soviet period? Source: Matsuzato, Kimitaka (Spring 2010). "South Ossetia and the Orthodox World: Official Churches, the Greek Old Calendarist Movement, and the So-called Alan Diocese". Journal of Church and State. 52 (2): 274. JSTOR 23921867.
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: I've gotten mixed feedback on which one of these hooks is the best, so I'm nominating them all to get some more opinions. I can't decide which one is my favorite!

Converted from a redirect by Sawyer-mcdonell (talk). Self-nominated at 21:28, 26 February 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Religion in South Ossetia; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

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

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: QPQ is not required as this appears to be the nominator's first DYK hook according to the QPQ checker, verifying this could be appreciated. I am approving ALT2 in particular. ALT0 doesn't seem very interesting in my opinion, and unless I'm missing something, ALT1 is not verified within the article itself (the Jews outnumbering Georgians is, but not the Ossetians) and therefore this leaves ALT2. If it turns out I'm missing something, then I believe ALT1 to be more interesting, but I'll leave it up to whoever promotes this hook further. λ NegativeMP1 22:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@NegativeMP1 It's not my first DYK nom, but it is my 4th, so QPQ is still unnecessary. I've clarified the information relating to ALT1 in the article, so it should be more easily verifiable now (it was in the sources, just not explicitly stated in the article itself). Personally, I do think ALT0 is interesting, because generally you become Christian when you convert to Christianity. Either way, thanks for the review! sawyer * he/they * talk 23:02, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Passed. Learned a lot of new stuff!— VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 07:09, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Religion in South Ossetia/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vortex3427 (talk · contribs) 07:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Taking this up.

@Sawyer-mcdonell: I haven't even heard of South Ossetia before looking at this, so feel free to disagree, but here are my initial thoughts. I will be back tomorrow with spotchecks and maybe more suggestions.

• Link syncretism in the lede and both instances of Middle Ages.
  •  Done -s

• Are there any good sources you've found on the treatment of various religious groups by South Ossetian laws and authorities e.g. ban of Jehovah’s Witnesses, religion in the constitution, South Ossetia's current views of GOC? There's some information in these U.S. Government reports and other installments of the Report on International Religious Freedom: Georgia, which cite reports from Democracy Research Institute, a think tank, such as this one. However, I don't know about their reliability or reputation. Also, are there any reliable religious demographics for the state, since I was interested in the percentage of Christians vs followers of uatsdin? I downloaded and machine-translated the 2015 census but it doesn't make any mention of religion despite this (so it may contain incorrect information?) saying otherwise (although the census would be of dubious reliability regardless). (saw, ref 5, sorry, but why don't you use the approximate figures from refs 4 and 5)
  • This is a tricky issue - due to the geopolitical situation (South Ossetia being heavily supported by Russia) I'm skeptical of the reliability of the US State Department, as well as the reliability of the Georgian and South Ossetian governments, for obvious reasons. I can start workshopping a "religious freedom" section though, and let me know what you think.

• South Ossetian Orthodox, along with the Abkhazian Orthodox Church Add "Church", or alternatively South Ossentian and Abkhazian Orthodox Churches.
  •  Done

• After the establishment of the independent church When was the South Ossentian Orthodox Church established? Also the next sentence starts with After the ROC denied to incorporate the South Ossetians into the Moscow Patriarchate ("denied incorporating"), so maybe the "After the establishment" sentence could be placed before the "In 1992" sentence for chronology?
  • Reworded for clarity. All of this happened in ~1992, so I think the chronology is consistent, but let me know if there's still issues with it.

• Styr Nykhas (Great Council) This is what language? It might be a good idea to include translations of the religions in Russian and/or Ossetian if you can find them, although this is optional and I don't see similar articles doing this consistently.
  • it's Ossetian - added

• the Alans (ancestors of the Ossetians) nominally converted to Christianity You mention in the lede and the next section this is because of Byzantine influences, but not in the section about Christianity
  • added

• only one Jew, an elderly woman, remained in the Tskhinvali According to the NBC source, she's the only Jew in South Ossetia.
  • switched -S

@Vortex3427 I've addressed the suggestions so far, with the exception of the religious freedom stuff, which I aim to get done with today. Thanks for your feedback! :) sawyer * he/they * talk 19:40, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I've added a religious freedom section based on the State Dep report; I've decided to attribute it in the text just for transparency. sawyer * he/they * talk 20:15, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@Sawyer-mcdonell: Putting this on hold.

Spotchecks

• Lomtadze & Janjghava 2018:
  • Tskhinvali, the largest city in South Ossetia, historically had a large Jewish community, which sometimes outnumbered the Georgian population. Expand citation from p. 17 to pp. 17–18 to cover the last bit.
  • Relations between the Tskhinvali Jews and the other ethnic groups of the city were largely peaceful, although there was tension and some violence in the period following the Bolshevik Revolution. should be cited to p. 18 instead.
• Matsuzato 2010:
  • led by Alexandr Pukhate, which aimed to separate from the Georgian Church His first name is given as "Aleksandr" on p. 274. (I see Conroy uses this spelling)
  • In 2005, the Alania Diocese was created, and Pukhate consecrated a bishop by the Synod. Referred to as the "Alan Diocese" in the source, although Conroy clarifies the naming. Maybe append this with a citation of Conroy?
• Conroy 2015:
  • Everything checks out.
• Foltz 2019:
  • Same here.

Suggestions

• In the lede, Uatsdin should be italicized; Ossetian and nationalist-oriented to Ossetian nationalism. Also link eparchy
• capital of South Ossetia Tskhinvali Add commas or rearrange.
• the ROC denied these requests include motives, e.g. Matsuzato, p. 283 "considering canonical principle and friendly relations with the OCG [GOC] as more important"
• some five parishes remained with the Georgian Church Worth including that 15 local churches joined the South Ossetian orthodox community? (Matsuzato, p. 274)
• denied to incorporate sounds awkward somehow. "Denied incorporating" or "refused to incorporate"
• From Matsuzato, you could add that the South Ossetian Orthodox "gained the status of deanery (blagochinnyi) in September 20" (p. 284)
• efforts to organize it "It", more specifically, Ossetian "mythology to formal religion".
• One major annual ritual in South Ossetia takes place at the Usanet dzuar shrine Since this part is specific to South Ossetia it might be appropriate to give more info on the origins of this tradition as Foltz does (or the info might be better on the currently redlinked article).
• Precisely because the lines between Ossetian tradition and imported Abrahamic religions are often so fluid, the Uatsdin movement has triggered strong condemnations and oflcial complaints from Ossetia’s Christian and Muslim leaders. Info might be worth including (Foltz, p. 331).

— VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 08:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

All great suggestions - will ping you once I've implemented them! sawyer * he/they * talk 00:00, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

@Vortex3427 have done all of them! Regarding the Usanet dzuar shrine bit, I added some more information about it because it is still a redlink. Perhaps if it becomes a bluelink, that information can be moved to the article itself, but I think as it is right now, it's better to give more context than less. Hope this is sufficient! Thanks so much for such a thorough review!! sawyer * he/they * talk 00:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.