Talk:Suwałki Gap/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: OliveYouBean (talk · contribs) 05:01, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

G'day! This looks like a really interesting topic so I'm gonna have a go at reviewing the article. Given the length it could take me a while to go through the whole thing and take notes, but hopefully it won't be too long. OliveYouBean (talk) 05:01, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Lead: All good :) Background: All good :) "The area is home to some ethnic minorities, particularly Ukrainians, Lithuanians (close to the border with Lithuania) as well as Russians, but they are not very numerous on the Polish side." - I feel like you should use "and Russians" instead of "as well as Russians" here to be more concise. Also, does the "they are not very numerous on the Polish side" apply to all of the minorities or just the Russians? "Poland and Lithuania both gained independence as an aftermath of World War I" - I think this should say "in the aftermath"; the phrase "as an aftermath" isn't really correct usage of the word "aftermath". "while Vilnius was captured by the Poles in a false flag operation known as the Żeligowski's mutiny" - Should this say "by the Poles" or "by Poland"? If it's talking about the country I think it's better to say Poland. Also there shouldn't be a "the" before "Żeligowski's mutiny". "only 65 km (40 mi) of Polish territory separates two parts of the rival Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Union State." - I don't know if it's clear enough for the average reader that the CSTO and Union State both include Russia and Belarus, especially since this hasn't been established yet in the article. Civilian interest: All good :) "The first time a special corridor between Kaliningrad and Belarus (planned to go via Poland) was discussed during a 1990 meeting between Yuri Shemonov, a senior official in Kaliningrad Oblast, and Nikolai Ryzhkov and Mikhail Gorbachev, Premier and President of the Soviet Union, respectively." - This should say "The first time a special corridor ... was discussed was during a 1990 meeting ..." or something similar, otherwise this isn't a complete sentence. "including signing the treaty which obliged Poland and Russia to open a border crossing near Gołdap" - Which treaty is this? Calling it "the treaty" implies it's a specific treaty the reader should know about. If this is the case, the treaty should be named; if not, you can use "a treaty" instead. "while some politicians from then ruling coalition" - The phrase "ruling coalition" needs to have an article: either "the then-ruling coalition" or "the ruling coalition". "the new countries of the European Union" - Could this be "the new EU members" instead? Saying "the new countries" almost makes it sound like new countries are being created. "the citizens of the oblast" - Is there a reason why "oblast" is italicised? "Kaliningrad Oblast was since generally supplied by freight trains transiting through Lithuania." - The phrasing "was since" is a bit clunky, could you say "has since been" instead? Military considerations: All good :) "but NATO did not agree to it as it was afraid it would potentially run afoul of the 1997 Founding Act, which inter alia constrains NATO's ability to build permanent bases next to the Suwałki Gap." - I had to google what the expression "inter alia" means. It could be a bit technical for the average reader, or I could just be a below average reader lol. "In addition to that, Arvydas Anušauskas, the Lithuanian minister of defence, claimed that Russia has already got these in the exclave." - Maybe it would be better wording to say "claimed that Russia already has these in the exclave." "An Estonian MP estimated that Finland's membership in NATO, for which the country prepares," - This kind of language can become dated very quickly (especially since Hungary and Turkey are the only countries that haven't ratified their membership yet). I think it's better to say something like "for which the accession protocol was signed in 2022". "reported that a large majority of Russians could support an invasion of another country should the "special military operation", as Russia officially calls the invasion of Ukraine, succeed" - Instead of using scare quotes I think it's better to just say "should the invasion of Ukraine" succeed even though that's not the wording that would've been used by the pollster. You make a good point about making sure people know what the question asked, so I'm all good with it as is. "The natural defences largely obviate the need for additional military fortifications" - The word "obviate" could be better replaced with a less technical word, like maybe "eliminate" or "reduce"? "The other one, codenamed Zima-20, was conducted by the Polish War Studies Academy on MoD's request in 2020." - hovering over shows that "Zima" means "winter", but it doesn't specify the language. I'm assuming it's Polish, but I don't know if that's clear enough. Also, the acronym "MoD" should be introduced before it's used. "Very few locals are expected to endorse an invasion, in contrast to what was happening in Crimea in 2014," - I think it'd be more concise to say "in contrast to what happened". "Hunzeker and Lanoszka, who say that fears over the bottleneck are exaggerated, as they also argue is the case of Russian war against NATO, conclude that nothing should constrain the Alliance from attacking Kaliningrad Oblast or Belarus (if the latter engages in the conflict, too),[119] also advocate for a permanent presence of US military but with units dispersed all over Poland instead of one big military base, and crafted in a way that avoids as much Russian rebuke as possible." this is a pretty long sentence. I'd advocate breaking it up. If not, the word "and" should at least be added before "also". This section (particularly when listing current units in the area) does get a little bit technical. The wikilinks help enough that I don't think it needs any changes, but that's something to watch in future since it will probably need to be updated at some point. In fiction: All good :)
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	MOS:LEAD: All good :) My biggest concern is MOS:LEADCLUTTER. I understand that this is an area surrounded by four different countries with different languages, but having a long parenthesis with eight different ways of writing the title in four different languages does make it harder to read. MOS:LEADLANG says "If the subject of the article is closely associated with a non-English language, a single foreign language equivalent name can be included in the lead sentence, usually in parentheses." Since there is no single foreign language most associated with this area I'd suggest that none should be included in the text itself. Maybe they could be included in a footnote? As an example, the featured article Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia puts Abkhazian, Georgian and Russian translations of the name into a footnote in the lead sentence. On a similar note, MOS:LEADPRON says "If the name of the article has a pronunciation that is not apparent from its spelling, include its pronunciation in parentheses after the first occurrence of the name." As someone who doesn't speak Polish, I have no idea how to pronounce Suwałki (and I'm guessing the same would be true of a lot of English speakers), so I would personally appreciate including the pronunciation there. Last note here, and this could just be a preference thing, but it feels weird to me that Poland and Lithuania are wikilinked much later than Lithuania–Poland border. If I were doing this I'd have Poland and Lithuania linked in the first sentence, then link the border article at the start of the second paragraph. I'm not fussed either way though, so if you prefer it the way it is that's fine. MOS:LAYOUT: All good :) MOS:SEEALSO says "As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body." The link to Fulda Gap already appears in the article (in the History section), and I don't think it belongs in a list of "Other NATO vulnerabilities" anyway since it hasn't been a vulnerability since the Cold War. MOS:WTW: Under the Strategy/Attack section, "The reasons for the supposed attack are seen not to be primarily the occupation of the three former Soviet republics by Russia but to sow distrust in NATO's capabilities" this is a bit of a weird word choice. I think it's better to stick with just calling the attack "hypothetical" because the word "supposed" can have some different connotations. In the Escalation of tensions section, "As the war on NATO's eastern border unraveled, NATO dispatched more troops to its eastern flank, though it insisted it would not establish permanent presence on its eastern borders." I'm not finding where in the source NATO "insisted" this, so it feels like a bit of WP:EDITORIAL and a bit of MOS:SAID. It's better to just say what NATO did and what NATO said without the "though it insisted" bit. There are two uses of the word "currently" in relation to the Polish expressway through the area. In line with MOS:REALTIME this should be changed to something along the lines of "as of October 2022" because the "currently" could go out of date in the next few years. Similar to this, there's a few uses of the word "since", but I'm not really sure how to better phrase those sentences. In fiction begins with "The Suwałki Gap, while of relatively recent interest, has already gained some interest in literature." Saying "relatively recent" and "has already" definitely violates MOS:REALTIME, you should be more specific with timing there. e.g. "The Suwałki Gap, while only becoming of interest after 2014, had already gained some interest in literature within the 2010s." or something along those lines. On reflection I'm not concerned about this, it's something that will probably be updated anyway if/when more relevant info is added. MOS:WAF: Not sure if this really applies here since only one short section deals with fiction, but nonetheless there's nothing wrong with that section :) MOS:EMBED: All good :)
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	All good :)
	2b. 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).	I'm having a bit of difficulty with this because a lot of the sources are in non-English languages, so it may take a while for me to finish this part of the review. Just some notes on the English sources though: I'm not convinced that globalsecurity.org is a reliable source. The only place where it's used there are two other inline citations, so it doesn't even really need to be there. Do you have info on the website's reliability? The link to the Center for European Policy Analysis paper is a deadlink for me. It's archived so that's fine, but you might want to put that it's a dead url in the template. Looking through the refs, a few times "The Guardian" doesn't have the "the" capitalised, other times it does. Not so much about reliable sources as it is about consistency.
	2c. it contains no original research.	As far as I can tell, this is all good :)
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Preliminary check came up with no copyright violations (will do further checking later). All good :)
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	All good. :)
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	For my personal taste, the "Current standing of forces" section seems excessively detailed. It's not a huge issue, but I do want to hear from you why you think such a detailed listing needs to be in the article. Happy with what you've said about this.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	I'm satisfied that the article is neutral. The text does a good job of staying focused on the objective facts and attributing anything outside of that to its source so that it's not speaking in Wikipedia's voice. I noticed there was a conversation a few months back on the talk page about the article's neutrality, but I disagree with the IP editors there. If the reliable sources (from both Russian and NATO perspectives) are exclusively focused on military strategy in the event of a Russian attack, then that's all the article can focus on. Within that, the article does a good job of presenting the various viewpoints that exist from both sides.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Article is stable.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	All good :)
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Very good choice for the first image, and all the images are relevant to the article. The captions for the map of Europe and the tri-point image could use some work (the last sentence probably isn't necessary in both), but everything else is all good :)
	7. Overall assessment.

For now I've just got notes on the first couple of criteria. Nothing I'm saying is like "100% you must change this", so if you disagree with anything I'm saying feel free to tell me why. OliveYouBean (talk) 10:34, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I still don't have access to my computer, so I'll try to go from the last point to the first. I still hope to introduce the change shortly, but 2017 wikitext editor works poorly on mobile, while disabling it leaves me with a less comfortable solution to introducing templates/refs

6. Images: I will introduce the last sentence of the image #2 in the text of the lead; I don't think the last sentence of the tripoint caption needs moving because it describes the image itself.

3b. This has to do with the fact that in a military standoff like this one, the number and equipment of the units help determine how serious NATO/Russia are about that choke point. It might be a bit on the long side, but then I try to be as comprehensive as I can reasonably be without being excessively detailed. I looked up A-class and FA-class MILHIST articles for guidance.

One thing that should be done is updating that assessment of man- and firepower, because surely something has changed after 8 months of the war in Ukraine.

2b. I know I made use of several non-English sources; take your time to assess them.

globalsecurity.org had several RSN and MILHIST discussions but I can't make much of them. At least the articles I saw made sense, but I will dig deeper.

Will look for the CEPA paper link.

Will make Guardian references uniform. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:25, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

As for point 1, most of that is valid criticism, so I'll implement it. Anything I don't agree with will be mentioned in the edit summaries. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

OliveYouBean, thank you for your thorough review, your points should be addressed. The only thing in 1a I did not change was the special military operation so that people reading the text understand what exactly the pollster was asking. In any case, the only thing that remains to be done is an update to the balance of forces. There hasn't been much news about that, unfortunately, and for obvious reasons, the Russians are secretive about what exactly is happening in their military, but I will try to find the newest reliable information. If not, I will leave that section alone. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:38, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work! There's still a few of the non-English refs I'm looking at but should be done with that shortly. Once I've finished that, I'm happy to promote this to good article status. :) OliveYouBean (talk) 07:43, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki: my only concern is the use of a source from the Ministry of Defence of Russia to talk about NATO troop placements. It's referenced right at the beginning of the section, and as far as I can tell everything else in the body is referenced somewhere else so I'm not really sure why it's there. Is there information in that section which comes from that source?

Every other source that I could consider as being "biased" though seems to be used in an appropriate way (things attributed to the source rather than being written in Wikipedia's voice). So once you've answered the question about the Ministry of Defence source I'm happy to promote the article! OliveYouBean (talk) 08:02, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Good catch. I did initially use it, but now that source seems redundant.

I will double-check if the article is up-to-date before it receives the GA status. I'll ping you when I'm ready. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Okie dokie. Again really good work on this article, it was a pleasure to read and review it. :) OliveYouBean (talk) 09:30, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

OliveYouBean, I double-checked everything and the article as presented has the most up-to-date information I could find. I think I'm ready, please double check the article for any mistakes or doubts. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki: I've done one last check through, everything seems good to me so I'm going to promote it. :) OliveYouBean (talk) 00:38, 18 November 2022 (UTC)