Talk:Grigori Rasputin/Archive 6

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Archive 7

Cremation location

Was the cremation in the boiler room a fact or a "more likely" explanation? This edit suggests it was a fact. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't see how simply adding a link to a picture, which already used as an image in he article, as a source reference, as in this edit really adds any support to the account of events that allegedly took place there. Or is that image, dated "!1900-1917" being offered as photographic proof? Is that a piece of broken crucifix I can see sticking out of the second boiler furnace on the left? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:23, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh and the sentence "Anything that had to do with Rasputin disappeared permanently", which was a hidden note (without any source) has now become a visible claim (without any source). For those readers with an interest in the occult, the words "disappear" or "disappeared" are used eight times in this article. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:46, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

remarks

• I used "disappear" or "disappeared" 8 times, is that a big problem? Does it mean I am mystifying? I try not. The same other wants me to add: According to ... another ten times. Is that really necessary when there is a reference? Maybe IPEditor has an idea? One is about Vyrubova, the information came from Alexander Palace.[2] It is possible the wording is from Moshein, but I would not be surprised he used a book. About an attribution to picture of the body with raised arms: Nelipa used two Russian sources, I cannot check and I have no idea who they are or what kind of document it is. Should we go that far? To mention the attribution all over is hyper correct, but not easy. I think just the reference is enough. That same author, a Master editor III, whatever that means, deleted yesterday four references without shame.

• Softlavender better leaves his remarks on the talk page. They were not helpful. The article is full with hidden information. You cannot delete them as they were very necessary to find out who wrote what, when and where. One never knows if the information is useful in a later stage. The hidden information does not harm.

• It is very complicated to work on an article for a long time when there are several authors adding to it. I hope I can add details before you wake up, because one book has to brought back to the library within a few days. Then I will add more from Figes and Smith. It could take days or weeks before all the information from Smith got into the article. He has hundreds of details. Taksen (talk) 09:38, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

• I am not very interested in long discussions, they distract and I don't like to waste time arguing with other Wikipedians about minor details and rules. The information on Rasputin is more dear to me than the ignorance of some authors.Taksen (talk) 09:45, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

If one theory about Rasputin's body is "more likely" than another, I think the reader deserves to be told why or, at least, who said that. I think claims are best avoided in neutral image captions. I'm not sure we should necessarily aim to put "all the information from Smith" into this article. If he's such an authority on Rasputin perhaps he should have his own article. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:16, 12 February 2017 (UTC) p.s. Softlavnder is not a him.

I don't need your opinion about a book you did not read! I never said "him".Taksen (talk) 10:31, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, you did. EEng 14:22, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The article is full with hidden information. Do you think that's a good thing? I have no opinion on that book, I was suggesting that trying to copy the contents of a book into an article might not be the best approach, however good the book might be. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:14, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Long, discursive footnotes are a sign of a certain kind of article...--Jack Upland (talk) 11:38, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

1905 Russian Revolution and February Revolution

How much background material is need to explain Rasputin's role, or association, in both? I'd say that this was too much. If the reader wants to read about the 1905 Russian Revolution, that's one click away. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:20, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The lead says Rasputin was connected with the downfall of the Russian Empire/Romanovs. It should be explained what was happening in 1905. Many authors think that the downfall started with the events in 1905, perhaps with the Russian Constitution of 1906; it depends on which side you are on. Rasputin was not invited early November for an ordinary chat with tea and cookies, but because of all the troubles in 1905.Taksen (talk) 13:34, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Again Softlavender deleted hidden stuff, is she as incorrigible? as .. Wikipedia is not scientific, more a Reader's Digest, repeating popular stories by people who probably have not read one book on him. Look what happened to Sergei Witte.Taksen (talk) 13:47, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

He died of a brain tumor? EEng 14:19, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

... and had a third class funeral to boot. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:46, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Or to galosh. EEng 14:56, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I have a sense of humor, but don't think these remarks are very funny. After all I think the section on the February Revolution improved.Taksen (talk) 10:14, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps you could tell us what you think "happened to Sergei Witte". It might help us understand what you mean. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:26, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The Russian Diary Of An Englishman: Petrograd, 1915-1917

Is there any agreed author of this book published by Robert M. McBride and Company in 1919? If it is a reliable source, might it useful to make all references to this source consistent throughout the article, i.e. by using the archive-org facsimile version with a page number? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I used it four times.Taksen (talk) 17:56, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

So, is there no need for consistency? Does it matter that the book is written anonymously? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The author is Albert Stopford: [3]. -- Softlavender (talk) 04:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I started that article, perhaps you may have noticed.Taksen (talk) 04:26, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Taksen, we are not interested in that. We are interested in getting answers to questions posed. Martin asked two questions, and you did not answer either of them. Softlavender (talk) 04:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Please remove the direct quotations from captions

At least five images are captioned with lengthy quotations which are not attributed (some have citations, but none of the quotations are attributed). This is a direct violation of WP:V and WP:COPYVIO. Please either attribute the quotes, remove the quotations, or remove the images. I'm going to give this approximately a month; if they are not fixed by then, since these are serious violations I am going to delete any images whose captions still contain unattributed direct quotations. Softlavender (talk) 04:19, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

There are already 450 references, do not exaggerate on the reliability. This is not fake news.Taksen (talk) 04:33, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Taksen, I don't know why you appear to be unable to understand and coherently reply to plain English, but your comment has absolutely nothing to do with my request above. Softlavender (talk) 04:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

All of the material not directly about Rasputin needs to go

This is a biography, not a history article. The article gets far too off-track and irrelevant in far too many places. All of that history material that does not mention Rasputin needs to be deleted. If someone does not know how to give brief historical context in a sentence which refers to Rasputin, they should probably not be writing or contributing to biography articles. Softlavender (talk) 04:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Three times I tried to reply but each time my reply was gone, because you were changing the talk page, and now the my changes to the article are gone too. Stop interfering, you are horrible. I don't want to be busy with you. Go to bed. I will report you.Taksen (talk) 05:37, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Who says Wikipedia should only contain biographies?Taksen (talk) 05:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Taksen, Wikipedia is a collaborative project. Stop the personal attacks; if you continue with them you can be blocked from editing. No one has edited this section since I posted the OP except you [4], so your claim that "Three times I tried to reply but each time my reply was gone, because you were changing the talk page" is bafflingly impossible. Your recent edit to the article was reverted because it added yet more lengthy irrelevant historical detail unrelated to Rasputin.

Please learn to correctly nest your replies under the posts you are replying to, using colons. I have done that for you above. "Who says Wikipedia should only contain biographies?" No one said or even remotely implied that. Softlavender (talk) 05:46, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A couple of things:

• This article is a biography. It is not an article detailing all the verifiable facts about the fall of Russia and the Romanov family and the Russian Orthodox Church and all about WWI and about Russian troop and so on and so on. It is an article about a man, the man named Grigori Rasputin, and the events having to do with his life and his death within the context of national and world events happening during his life and his death.
• As above: stop the personal attacks and comment on the edit not the editor. If an editor thinks that another editor has done something against Wikipedia editorial guidelines and they have tried all the steps in the dispute-resolution process?... Well then, WP:ANI is thataway.
• Many of the image captions are simply too long, for instance the caption that starts with "Entrance of Gorochovaia 64" and 'Ivan Goremykin. "Seventy-five years of age, a conservative, ..." ' and the caption of "In 1908, Fräulein Anna Vyrubova..." and "Felix's private apartment was on the east side of the palace, Embankment 94" and "Rasputin's corpse on a sledge. ..." and "Everyone who met Rasputin remarked on his eyes and how hypnotic they were. ..." WP:CAPTION states that captions should be succinct and use "no superfluous or needless words" and that "Succinct captions have more power than verbose ones."
• Honestly, I can barely get through the article. It is quite difficult to read, the word-choices and phrasing aren't in mainstream usage, plus there are grammar and punctuation issues. I do like the rewrite in the "Then let us begin" section above and think that it would be an improvement over the present content.

-- Shearonink (talk) 07:10, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Figes, Nelipa and Smith all needed about 700 pages to explain the story. Wikipedia prefers two? The text of the captions did not fit in the article in my point of view. That is why I put them under the photos. Please revert the article to 8 February 2013, but I am not interested to assist. Taksen (talk) 07:35, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

This is a Wikipedia article, not a book. What size article are you actually aiming at? We're currently at 223,532 bytes, although I'm not sure how much of that is hidden. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:54, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

As I've said a few times, I dont think adding claims and sources into image captions, like you did here is a good idea. Captions should just be simple statements of fact. Any narrative claims, together with supporting sources, should be in the text. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Where can I complain about two authors who are trying to simplify the article?

Last week there was an announcement that Wikipedia likes to invite more experts. This is a good example why they stay away.Taksen (talk) 06:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is a whole page about gaining consensus on editorial matters, sounds like you need to refer to Dispute resolution process and figure out what you want to do - it can range from mediation to filing a report at Administrators noticeboard for incidents.Shearonink (talk) 07:19, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

In my point of view the two editors push their limited view on the article. What they don't know is not important. The real problem on Wikipedia.Taksen (talk) 07:22, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Again, stop with the personal attacks and comment on the edit, not the editors.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is built on consensus, that means we have to all work together - no matter how infuriating that process might be to anyone. If these two editors have a different point of view then it sounds like they could have consensus for their point of view. Complaining about other editors on this talk page does no good - you really need to follow the steps in the dispute resolution process if you're having a content dispute. If this is merely a tussle over content, then filing a report at WP:ANI without first going through all the other steps will be useless - admins will reject your report asking if you haven't tried everything else in WP:DR first.

Also, so-called "simplifying" an article isn't against WP guidelines or policy. My point in the previous thread above is that an article about Rasputin should not include every possible assertion about the Romanovs or the Russian Revolutions or Russia or whatever during the times of Grigori Rasputin's life. This article is about the man & his times, obviously, but first it's about the man - his life, his background, his family, what he did, who he knew, what he knew, what part he played on the world's stage, how he lived and how he died. The article is presently at over 40 (FORTY) pages if printed out...that's starting to get too long, we can't shoehorn every possible assertion into this article - at some point it has to stop. If you are interested in writing or editing articles about the various Russian Revolutions there are already several articles about them... Russian Revolution, Revolution of 1905, February Revolution, October Revolution, Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks, etc. Shearonink (talk) 14:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Why does the article have 285 hidden comments?

I just checked, and the article has literally 285 hidden comments (you can verify this by doing Control+F <!--). These all need to go. The article is already 220,000 bytes long. No top-importance article should have hidden comments, much less 285 of them.

I think two months is a reasonable amount of time for this cleanup. I will revisit the article in two months and remove any that have not already been removed. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 02:48, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. I poked around WP to try to find any pertinent MOS & WP pages and, while there is no guideline explicitly stating how many hidden comments is too many.

• MOS:COMMENT states that "Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors."
• MOS:HIDDEN-Appropriate uses for hidden text enumerates the various uses for hidden text, all of which have to do with communicating with other editors. None of the listed uses have to do with "hiding content from Wikpedia's readers"...

Shearonink (talk) 04:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll give the article a read and start removing some of these. Agreed that this is too many. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 04:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I was working for four years on this article, not everything was clear to me in the beginning. They were necessary, and they could be still to find out the real chronology.Taksen (talk) 07:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Hidden comments are never to be used as personal notes to oneself. Softlavender (talk) 23:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Who says that? It is not a helpful rule. I doubt if that exists at all.Taksen (talk) 01:58, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Honestly Taksen, your rudeness, personal attacks, and lack of knowledge about Wikipedia are not helping your case at all. As it is, you've made a mess on this article that other editors are now having to clean up. If you want to make notes to yourself, hidden or otherwise, do it in your own userspace, not on a live Wikipedia article. Softlavender (talk) 02:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

February Revolution

YourEEng talk page(s) is/are very long, but the article should be as short as possible? Besides you introduced the word "coward" here and you illustrated your changes with "What the hell is this". I have strong doubts in your interest in history and the February Revolution which is commemorated this month. It could survive at least till the end of the month.Taksen (talk) 07:40, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Who are you talking to and what the heck are you talking about? Softlavender (talk) 07:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Do I have to busy with you all the time? This is not FB.Taksen (talk)

Taksen, please for heaven's sake learn to correctly indent your posts with the correct amount of colons, so that your post nests under the post you are replying to. I have now done that for you above. I have reminded you of this several times. I will post on your user talk page with a diagram, and perhaps that will make it easier to understand. Also, please learn to sign your posts with four tildes, not three or five. Please also have the courtesy to answer questions when you are asked, and when you post a thread addressed to someone, please identify who you are talking to and specifically what you are talking about, providing WP:DIFFs if necessary. Lastly, do not ever strike someone else's post or alter it in any way (as you did here [5]); read WP:TPO. -- Softlavender (talk) 07:52, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Not many people have paid attention to the time between the murder and February Revolution. It became clear Alexandra was no longer accepted, she became sick after the murder of Rasputin. Besides there was a real problem with interrupting the Duma until February. The decision was taken on 16/17 December 1916, but nobody seems to know exactly when the Duma was opened. Some Russian historians paid attention to it, but it seems to me the Duma was kept closed till 14 February and did not convene in January.Taksen (talk) 08:44, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

What does IPEditor think about deleting this section? Taksen (talk) 10:43, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Taksen, when you add a new post to any thread, do so in the correct chronological spot, not appended to a post you made previously which has already been responded to (which you did here and here, which I and EEng corrected). Please review the chart I provided on your talk page. Softlavender (talk) 00:07, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Citations: Most of the non-Bibliography citations lack critical information

Most of the non-Bibliography citations lack one or more of the following pieces of critical information, and need to be filled out:

• Title
• Author
• Publisher
• Date (access date does not count as date of publication)
• Page number
• Work
• Source
• Access date

Ideally, whoever added all of these non-Bibliography citations needs to fill them out with the above information. Alternatively anyone can fill them out or help fill them out. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 08:26, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Softlavender I have started working to fill out and complete some of the incomplete citations, but I have noticed that some of the hidden notes also have references. What about those. I looked at one at around #257 and it was more like hidden paragraph with a reference included. Should the whole hidden message with the reference be removed? Should I fill the reference and just leave the hidden message in? Not sure on that one. I never have seen something like that before. Any ideas? Thanks. Antonioatrylia (talk) 02:35, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Antonioatrylia. Only the visible and readable citations need filling out. I realize that may be hard to gauge when looking at the editing view. We are dealing with the hidden comments as a separate issue (see the dedicated thread above). Your edits are greatly appreciated. Softlavender (talk) 02:47, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Before we put too much effort into cleanup of the current version, I think we should decide the reversion issue one way or another -- see #What Is To Be Done?. EEng

Talk Archives

Is it just me or are the archives not showing? I can only see 4 instead of 6.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:11, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

The box is hardcoded for Archives 1-4, probably because it also has the "penis archives". I'm guessing the right thing to do is have a special box just for the penis stuff, and let the bot manage the archives for this page, but that's way above my pay grade. EEng 03:35, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that the past (manually archived) Archive pages (Archive1, Archive2, Archive3, Archive4) are malformed/mis-named. The Bots name archive-pages as "Talk:[article name]/Archive[sp]#. This talk page has the manually-archived pages that are [erroneously] named "Talk:[article name]/Archive#. The Bot is now doing its work (as seen here) but the link is not showing up here. Yet. Oh and for some reason Talk:Grigori Rasputin/Archive 5 or /Archive5 does not exist. I'll see if I can get an admin to take a look and figure out what to do. Shearonink (talk) 07:22, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Fixed, in response to your post at Drmies's talkpage. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

A special box, for the penis stuff, User:EEng? Nice. I think I remember reading that his sea cucumber was kept in a walnut box, and that it looked like a rotten banana. Drmies (talk) 16:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Drmies, if it won't be too hard for you, could you give your opinion at #!votes_on_reversion? EEng 18:18, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

User:EEng, I'm trying to stay somewhat out of the vote casting, but we both know that while size matters, it's not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean. Drmies (talk) 18:33, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Is this really necessary? EEng 18:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Re: The archives - thanks to User:Joshua Jonathan for the fixes. I do have a question: The Merge-to template gets messed up by the redirect and instead links to the article main talk page - instead of to the actual merged-from talk page. I took at look at Template:Merged-from and couldn't figure out how to make the Template on this page link to the https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:Rasputin%27s_penis&action=history instead of to https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:Grigori_Rasputin&action=history . Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 19:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

What to do

Buy the book by Smith on Rasputin, and add from him. Delete my information, where he found a better or more convincing explanation. I think that is the easiest way to clean up.Taksen (talk) 06:53, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

When you delete all the hidden stuff, the article will be around 113 kB. That is about half of the article.Taksen (talk) 08:28, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Taksen, place new sections at the bottom of the page, not in the middle of the page as you did here: [6]. I have moved this to the correct placement at the bottom. You have been on Wikipedia for 10 years and have made 12,000 edits, including 1,480 edits on talk pages. It's high time you learned talk page protocol and also how to communicate collaboratively and coherently with others rather than issuing orders, insults, or non sequiturs. Softlavender (talk) 08:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I just found this. Articles of more than 200 kB (~30 pages) exist for topics that require depth and detail, but it's typical that articles of such size get split into two or more sub-articles. However, there are ~1,000 articles larger than 200 kB, the largest being ~1.1 MB (as of Dec 2016). I could not find anything on personal use on Hidden text.Taksen (talk) 09:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

"Editors use invisible comments to communicate with each other in the body of the text of an article." (emphasis mine) [7]. At this point your disruptiveness has become so prevalent that no one is really listening to you, but if you continue to disrupt and continue to post unhelpful nonsense on this page you may end up being banned from this article completely. So I recommend desisting if you are not able to listen to far more experienced and far more knowledgeable Wikipedia editors. This article needs cleaning up, and having to babysit you (for instance, most of my posts on this talk page have been to babysit your talk-page posts) while we are attempting to do that is too much of a drain on the community. Softlavender (talk) 09:34, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think one can replace a well-referenced document with something that is poorly referenced or not at all. That would be forgery.Taksen (talk) 11:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

As usual, that comment makes no sense, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the post you nested it under. Softlavender (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

One cannot expect to find everything covered in the rulez. If there is 40k worth of hidden stuff, the hidden stuff needs to go. Drmies (talk) 16:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Lists -> Prose

Just a comment but Perception and Popular culture sections should be switched from bullet list to prose format. Shaded0 (talk) 19:11, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Archiving?

Now that the article has been reverted to an older version, does anyone have an objection to archiving some of the talk page discussions that are exclusively about the old version (and don't discuss the revert?). I might give it a week and then archive some of them if no one objects. Fyddlestix (talk) 06:35, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Discursive, overgrown

As observed elsewhere on this talk page, the article contains way too much not directly related to the subject. EEng 07:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The article is quite informative, but you don't seem to appreciate that. It became a story, perhaps unusual for Wikipedia. When I add from D. Smith in the next few days, it will grow more. (He has a lot of new details!) The murder was a political act. Perhaps politics are not your interest? I think every detail explains the next incident, but maybe I should check again. The information in the article is undergoing changes, and most of all it is not an easy subject. (talk) 09:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Anyone starting with this post by you [8], and following forward through your next N posts, will readily see how the article got into the rambling state it's in. Large parts of it are essentially unreadable. EEng 15:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not going to discuss taste; it is a waste of time. You have to come up with facts, and mention the details that are not true, unreadable or unnecessary. Taksen (talk) 10:47, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Taste has nothing to do with it; you have no idea how to write an article that (a) anyone can read or (b) that comes even close to adhering to policy. Everywhere you look there's unsourced stuff like "It was an appalling and libelous account" and statements and characterizations (cited or not) in WP's voice such as "Purishkevich, a buffoon character", "The 'peace offensive' was bound to fail", "The theatrical details of the murder given by Felix have never stood up to scrutiny", and "Alexei Khvostov, a cunning, ambitious young man" -- not to mention unintelligible stuff like "which made it practically impossible to hiss at the new prime minister" and "For the Tsarina: 'Nobody needs their opinion – they rather will address the question of sewage'. According to Kiryanov the Duma had a party and journalistic character" (with sewage linked, as if what the reader needs to navigate this meandering maze of verbiage is information on what sewage is). The article's a mess. EEng 13:58, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

These issues have been noted for years.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:25, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

The shame of it is that it gets 8k views per day. I'm on the verge of proposing that we work together to bring it into line. The first step would be axing the long discursions about the war and political situation, which should be described only to the extent they assist the reader in understanding Rasputin's role. The problem is that it's so impenetrable I'm not sure I can even begin to wrap my head around it. EEng 23:39, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

First of all: It is not a shame. Your wording is not very helpful. It would be a shame if the text was full with mistakes or scandals. Secondly RASPUTIN was killed during a war for political reasons. So the information on war and politics is necessary to understand what happened. Upland is right. I have been working here for years not only on Rasputin but also on some ministers and have not met anyone who knows the subject too. Wikipedia needs experts, there are too many lay man. (It will take you months/years to understand Rasputin, and it is a lot of reading. The subject seems endless.) Last, tell me your favorite article with historical interest or show me something you worked on, than I will decide. If you delete the context, something most Wikipedians would love to do, even if they have no special knowledge of Russian history, the article will become middle of the road. Taksen (talk) 02:19, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Did someone say WP:OWN? Jack Upland, are you up for this? EEng 02:32, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I added maybe more than 400 references, you cannot say I am stupid or unexperienced. Thousands/milions of people read this article, not very many complained. When you check the books and articles about this topic you will understand Purishkevich was a buffoon character, the Tsarina, like the Tsar autocratic. As you may have never heard of this you might think these labels were invented by me. Should I add a reference after each sentence? Not everything can be written out and the author has to prove or to be trusted he is honest and not making up stories. (I think I had a similar problem four years ago. How do I know this politician is left, right, pro or against Rasputin. It takes time.) It is clear to the whole world Americans have a bad or almost no sense of history. Their education is bad, maybe not if you own a lot of money, but it is quite possible that does not help either. Upland's profile is not convincing, too short.Taksen (talk) 04:41, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean about "not everything can be written out", but everything needs to be cited, and contentious opinions such as those I quoted above need to be explicitly attributed. You need to review WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR, because assuming J.U. is willing to participate, we'll be applying them to this article soon. I notice that on your Rasputin website [9] you say, "I would like to see my view on Rasputin more popular this year", and in that regard you'd do well to review WP:FORUM.

I'll ignore your ignorant nationalistic comments for now, but if you keep them up you won't be editing this article, or likely any article, much longer. EEng 05:05, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It is clear you are a bureaucrat, who shows his knowledge of all the rules, and did not delete (any) items on his talk page. I have not seen any topic on Russia, a reasonable question is not it? I found this: "I am blocking you for your continued disruptive levity toward a serious and important educational enterprise. "" in making inappropriate puns and convoluted lame jokes on other editor's Talk Pages. He deserves a permanent topic ban from Gage for relentless WP:OWN issues."

You are trying to take over the article, but, I can predict, you will sink in the enormous amount of details as it is one of the most complicated and never solved subjects from 20th century. Taksen (talk) 05:26, 10 February 2017 (UTC) Again there 450 references, which seems a lot. If I don't understand something I would check internet or a library, that helps. You only checked my website to find more reasons to attack me. Taksen (talk) 05:36, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

You link your website from your user page. Your quotes from my talk page are people (Martinevans123, 3family6) making jokes; that you don't see that adds to the evidence that your limited English impairs your ability to be an effective editor. If one or two others are willing to join me in cleaning up this article then I'll start doing that; if not you'll have free reign for at least a while longer. EEng 06:22, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm willing to help because this has gone on too long.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I might be willing to help, as I have access to an excellent source. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:52, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Nothing new, many Wikipedians are interested in deleting, not in adding, as you do not need any specific knowledge, usually they cut what they do not understand. That is a serious problem on Wikipedia. What looks unimportant to you, could be interesting for others. I showed this article to quite a few people, even historians; many articles on Russian history are worse and less reliable.Taksen (talk) 11:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC) Some of the information I copied to different articles on Russian ministers and prime ministers, the Imperial Duma, the February Revolution, Alexei, Vyrubova, Yusupov, Purishkevich and others, that is why the article is full with information and references, and I will copy more details, when I gathered enough information. I also used books without an index, so I had to make references my self, to remember who wrote what, when and where and adjust the chronology.Taksen (talk) 11:56, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I've cut "Kalmykov, Nelipa and Moe" from that picture caption as I don't think they belong there, being non-notable and being wholly unexplained. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:54, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Martinevans123: You removed attribution; These sources are cited throughout the article and removing attribution is not ok. You might not "think" that the attribution belongs there, but unless it is necessarily common sense, and everyone in the whole world agrees that that is a picture of where Rasputin was burned, it is necessary to include attribution. --IPEditor (talk) 00:59, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The debate over what was done with Rasputin's dead body is an intriguing and important one which should be discussed more openly in the article text, with the required sources and an explanation of who the main commentators are and what their respective credentials are. The image caption should not make any claims, It should stick to simple fact merely as an illustration e.g. "The boiler room of the Petrograd Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute." Martinevans123 (talk) 09:35, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

What Is To Be Done?

After looking over the article and its history with an eye toward making it something like readable, I've come to the surprising conclusion that the best way forward is to start by reverting to a much earlier version, and then asking the article's most prolific contributor to selectively build back and modify from there, subject to consensus. Take a look at this version [10] and compare it (mentally) to the current one; I suspect that the appropriate version to select is somewhere on this slice from the article's history [11]. EEng 03:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I explain this proposal as trying to go back to the long-time existing and vague and common ideas about Rasputin. But there is a recent book by D. Smith on Rasputin that is more up-to-date and more reliable than most other books. After you read it you will see your proposal is non sense, based on a retarded view of Rasputin and Russian history.Taksen (talk) 08:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

So that's this one, that's reviewed here, although Smith himself doesn't yet have an article. It looks like it would be another good source here, but it would be novel to use it just as a means to evaluate past content? Martinevans123 (talk) 09:03, 11 February 2017 (UTC) p.s. there may be a case for creating Douglas Smith (historical author): [12].

The article should certainly makes use of the best up-to-date sources. Unfortunately, the edits making use of Smith have been part of a transformation of the article into a completely unreadable state. It's so incomprehensible that I see no way to salvage the current version, Once we agree on which version to revert to, Smith and other recent sources can be reintroduced to replace and correct outmoded material. But this process has to start with returning the article to a readable state. It's completely useless now.

As a default I suggest we use the version I linked above, but (again) there are other candidates on the history slice I also linked above. I don't think we can use anything later than that slice, because after that slice the article goes very seriously downhill. EEng 20:47, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Go ahead and revert. Sorry to say I've lost my patience for some reason. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:59, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@EEng:, the guy has been dead for over 100 years, so "up-to-date sources" are, technically, any sources that are less than 100 years old. Granted, some western sources might only recently have learned of secret, old, Russian facts, but reliable original sources from 100 years ago are indubitably better than some recent fringe conspiracy publication.

Reverting to an old version of the article isn't "The way forward". The prolific editors that want there opinion in the article are definitely not gone. Please, please, never assume that "prolific" editors are "good" editors. This article is semi-protected so I think I'm fair when I assume that there is some contention as to the facts. If you really want a brand new version of the article so bad but don't want to do the edit's yourself, you can always hire (or solicit pro bono) a competent encyclopedia editor to do a rewrite of the current version (obviously still having access to all previous versions).

I spent the better part of today trying to explain to one of this article's "prolific contributor"s that they should not remove actual attribution in favor of attributing to an anonymous source.

If you revert to an old version and just leave it to the hyenas to improve it, don't be surprised if you get a good piece of carrion as result.

People with a "special interest" in the topic don't usually have "special access to the truth". Too often they just want the article to read what they already believe.

The only solution is to solicit smart, competent editors that aren't invested in the topic to do an impartial review/rewrite. If that isn't currently possible then it's ok to wait. Wikipedia doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. --IPEditor (talk) 22:04, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

You're suggesting we "always hire (or solicit pro bono) a competent encyclopedia editor" to rewrite this article? Why am I now described as "one of this article's "prolific contributor"s"?? The outcome of our little "discussion" is now simply that the existing sources have been moved out of the text and into an adjacent image caption. How is that an improvment? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:11, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I said the article should use "the best up-to-date sources", not just any ol' recent sources, and no, not any source under 100 years old is up to date. I have no idea what you mean with your talk of hyenas and special interest and soliciting editors.

It's not OK to wait. As the article is now it would almost be better to have no article at all. Far better, if imperfect, versions are available to revert to. Improvements can be made from there as editors feel inspired to make them. EEng 22:42, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• Softlavender, since I've seen you editing the article just now I'd like to draw your attention to this thread. This won't be an easy decision. EEng 22:57, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Eng, I actually only came here via noticing the odd thread title on Martin's talkpage, and in checking to see that the nonsense was taken care of (by searching for the word "supposed"), I made one edit. I noticed quibbling about captions (Martin's TP?) and in glancing I noticed captions full of unattributed quotations. I don't have any expertise or real interest in Rasputin, nor do I know the history behind the two versions you refer to (why do they differ, how widely do they differ, and in what general respects?). I don't think I have the time to put in to this right now; you might want to post your query on a Project board or other board. Softlavender (talk) 23:16, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Softlavender: Too late! You've come within our orbit! Just to provide a fresh eye, could you just give us your opinion on the readability of the current version of the article (esp. from the Controversy section forward), and whether reverting to this version would not be a radical improvement. Don't think it would take long for you to evaluate that. EEng 23:33, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

The article is 222,000 bytes long. I'm not willing to make that determination, especially without an explanation of why that version is being selected. I'm sure however that any number of other editors who have time and interest would be. Softlavender (talk) 23:37, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Coward! EEng 23:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

But that is quite a drastic move. You might want to consider opening an RfC to embark on such a course of action? Martinevans123 (talk) 09:29, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

It might come to that but first I wanted to see how far we could get with whoever the regulars are here. EEng 13:56, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

While I agree there are problems with the article in its current form, I think that a massive revert would be too drastic. I think the best approach would be to work through the article section by section editing as needed.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:37, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Softlavender, given your comments elsewhere I wonder if you'd take a moment to revisit the idea of reverting to a version before Taksen began editing, as suggested at the very top of this thread. Jack Upland has weighed in against the idea so more discussion will be needed before we're all on the same page, but I thought I'd start with you to see how much more open to the idea you are than you were before. That doesn't mean there's nothing worth keeping in the current version (though, frankly, that wouldn't surprise me) but it seems to me that selectively adding back the good will be much easier than trying to remove the huge amounts of bad. EEng 20:33, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

One option might be to check whatever other encyclopedia or biographical dictionary articles on the subject can be readily found, and, maybe, if any are PD, you the PD ones as the "first draft," adding further data and information as it appears in others. Finding more "secondary" sources later would probably be comparatively easy, particularly if one also looked to see which sources are referred to in the bibliographies of those articles. John Carter (talk) 21:45, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I suppose that's possible, but I suspect anything PD would be hopelessly out of date. I don't even know where to start to look, but if someone comes up with something along those lines of course we should consider it. In the meantime, can you take a look at the version linked in my OP? I think the situation is desperate and (IMHO) reverting to that, or some other version from around that time, would be an immense improvement (at least it's readable) and we can work from there. Notice that your proposal and the revert-to-way-back proposal both agree on one thing: the current version is unsalvageable. EEng 21:54, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Support reversion to some earlier version, and the one suggested is probably at least as good as any others. this page might contain a decent recent bio. John Carter (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Doesn't look like the article you linked is PD or CC-licensed, but it does look like a good model to follow to make sure we're not leaving out any important aspects of the subject. EEng 22:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

There is an old PD Encyclopedia Britannica article over at wikisource:1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rasputin, Gregory Efimovitch, but, like you said, it might well be dated. John Carter (talk) 22:34, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it's beyond debate that for this topic, nothing (in any language) before the Krushchev era (at the earliest) can possibly be taken as a reliable source other than for its own content. (One of the problems with the current article is its frequent reliance on stuff from the 1920s and 30s.) It's interesting, though. EEng 22:49, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Taksen's contributions are here: [13]. His first edit to the article was this: [14]. The previous version is this: [15]; I don't think that early version is adequate however. I am indeed concerned about Taksens's competence level on this article (the fact that he has created quotation captions which are not even exact quotations but apparently composites of two different sources is to me indicative of the sort of problem we're dealing with), but I don't know precisely where the article entered a problematic zone. Perhaps an intermediary version can be selected that has good material but which has not yet crossed over into problematic territory. Or perhaps sections of early versions can be substituted for current sections which are problematical. Softlavender (talk) 00:59, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

nfortunately that's not all of Taksen's edits, because the tool gives a max of 500 edits -- and that takes us back only to mid-2016. The history "slice" I linked in my post opening this thread includes Taksen's earliest edits (Feb 2013). The real trouble begins with an edit in Oct 2013 adding 14K; the result is nothing like as bad as what we see in the article now, but the signs are there, hidden notes and all. That's why I've focused on the Feb-Oct 2013 period as containing the probable best target for reversion. EEng 01:45, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

It is all of his edits; to view the earlier ones click "Next 500 results". Softlavender (talk) 02:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Oops, I never noticed that. Anyway, my other points stand. I forgot to add (responding to your last points) that I think all the sections are problematic, so we might as well do a complete revert to a versions that's acceptable (I'm not married to any particular one, but I'm pretty sure it's in 2013 somewhere). Anything useful from the current version can be cannibalized and inserted into the reverted version. EEng 02:47, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

!votes on reversion

• Support reversion to this or similar version of the article. I am also willing to help trim/clean up the article from its current state, but that is going to be one heck of a time sink for multiple people. Happy to help either way, but reluctant to spend too much time on cleanup until a decision is reached one way or the other. Fyddlestix (talk) 03:07, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support reversion to version linked by Fyddlestix == which happens to be the one I pointed to in my OP, though if someone finds a better version to use please speak up. I'm sure there would be no problem adjusting consensus any version that seems better. (Pinging others who have expressed an opinion on this elsewhere on this page, or otherwise participated, so maybe we can get to a conclusion on this: Martinevans123, Jack Upland, I JethroBT, Taksen, Shearonink, John Carter, Antonioatrylia. Sorry, Softlavender, for all the pings recently.) EEng 04:32, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support I am happy to help with the article either way, but it maybe easier to use the previous version. I will hold off on filling the references that are incomplete until a decision is made. Someone please give me a ping when a decision is made. Thanks. Antonioatrylia (talk) 10:41, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Shearonink (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I was asked to comment here by EEng (not an issue for canvassing as I have disagreed with EEng before and he had no reason to expect any particular opinion from me). And I know little about Rasputin except from the Boiled in Lead song. But too much of the present version reads like a fictionalized biography for children, with all the more adult controversies glossed over and with made-up-sounding details of unwitnessed events added in their place, leading me not to have much confidence in it. The Fyddlestix version has some issues, too, but at least looks like an encyclopedic base for a new start. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Undecided — I can see arguments on both sides.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
• Noting that Martinevans123 supported reversion elsewhere on this page, we've got six editors supporting reversion and one on the fence. Therefore I'll wait a day or two more, then revert as proposed. EEng 22:29, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Reverted

OK, I done it, and followed up in two ways. First, I imported such of the images that were in the prior version that I thought would be useful (thought that makes the article way overloaded with images for now -- layout or size changes might help). Second, I substituted the trimmed "Attempted assassination" section, as discussed elsewhere on this page. EEng 07:08, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Image placement violates MOS:SANDWICH and WP:IMGLOC

Per MOS:SANDWICH and WP:IMGLOC: "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, or between an image and an infobox or similar." Could someone fix this issue by moving or deleting the images that sandwich text? Softlavender (talk) 13:36, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

The images seemed like one of the few things worth salvaging from the article prior to the revert, so I retrieved them and stuffed them wherever I could. My experience is that it's a waste to try to remedy img placement/sizing problems while article text is under active development, because as text is added, deleted, and moved around it usually becomes apparent what to do with the images. In this case, probably a lot of them should be deleted (how many portraits of R do we need?) but I don't know which just now. So my recommendation is to just put up with it until the text settles down. EEng 16:05, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I did an initial trim and put everything on the right for now, largely because I find it awkward to edit/re-write the page with images all over the place. Feel free to restore anything I removed if you think it's useful - they can always be put back later. In general I agree that final decisions on what images to use (and where to put them) can wait until the page re-vamp is complete and it's relatively stable. Fyddlestix (talk) 22:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• 
  Rasputin's piercing eyes were often commented upon.
• 
  Rasputin, 1908
• 
  Note from Rasputin to minister Khvos­tov. According to Shelley the Tsarina taught Rasputin to write.< ref>Shelley, p. 54</ref>
• 
  Rasputin, Hermogen and Iliodor in 1906
• 
  The Moika Palace, along the Moika River, where Rasputin was supposedly lured and murdered
• 
  Rasputin's corpse
• 
  Rasputin with prince M. Putyatin, since 1911 Head of the Palace Board and colonel D. Loman on the rightside, photo by Karl Bulla, 1907 or 1908?

Then let us begin...

An easy section to start with is Assassination Attempt, which currently reads thus:

On 27/28 June, Rasputin arrived from the capital in Pokrovskoe.

Around 3:00 pm on Sunday 12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1914, Rasputin went out from the house in reply to a telegram he had received from the Tsarina on the threat of war. At that moment, he was suddenly approached by what looked like a beggar. When Rasputin was checking his pockets for money, this woman, the 33-years old Khionia Guseva who had her face concealed with a black kerchief, pulled out a dagger. She stabbed Rasputin in the stomach, just above the navel. Rasputin asserted that he ran down the street with his hands on his belly. Guseva claimed that she chased him, but Rasputin grabbed a stick from the ground and hit her. Covered with blood, Rasputin was brought into his house. A doctor from a neighboring village gave first aid. The next day, Alexandr Vladimirov arrived from Tyumen and assessed the mesentery was scraped.

On Thursday, Rasputin was transported by steamboat to Tyumen, accompanied by his wife and daughter. The Tsarina sent her own physician, Roman Vreden and after a laparotomy and more than six weeks in the hospital, where he had to walk around in a gown, unable to wear ordinary clothes, Rasputin recovered. On 17 August, he left the hospital; by mid-September he was back in Petrograd. According to his daughter Maria Rasputin was never the same man afterwards and started to drink dessert wines. (N.B. Since the beginning of the war, the manufacture, and sale of vodka was forbidden. It is likely Rasputin drank sweet or semi-sweet Crimean or Georgian wine.) Rasputin believed that Iliodor and Vladimir Dzhunkovsky had organized the attack.

A few days later Iliodor, dressed as a woman, fled all the way around the Gulf of Bothnia to Christiania. Guseva, a fanatically religious woman who had been his adherent in earlier years, "denied Iliodor's participation, declaring that she attempted to kill Rasputin because he was spreading temptation among the innocent." On 12 October 1914, the investigator declared that Iliodor was guilty of inciting the murder, but the local procurator decided to suspend any action against him for undisclosed reasons. Guseva was locked in a madhouse in Tomsk and a trial was avoided. The Tsar ordered more measures to protect Rasputin's life.

References

References

That text is almost completely tangential detail, some of it absurd (such as what the attacker was wearing, the name of the steamboat, and what Rasputin wore in the hospital), much of it is cited to completely unusable sources, and has that bizarre footnote. I propose rewriting it thus:

On 12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1914 Rasputin was stabbed in the stomach by 33-years old Khionia Guseva.

The Tsarina's own physician was sent to attend him and he recovered after more than a month six weeks in the hospital. According to his daughter Maria, Rasputin was very much changed by the experience and began to drink alcohol.

Rasputin believed that Iliodor and Vladimir Dzhunkovsky had organized the attack.

Iliodor fled to Christiania and though the investigator declared that Iliodor had incited the murder the local procurator suspended action against him for undisclosed reasons. Guseva was committed as insane and never tried. The Tsar ordered more measures to protect Rasputin's life.

References

Thoughts, please. EEng 05:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's good to trim away the inessential details.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Your version is much easier to read, but I think you may have trimmed too much. I found the narrative in that first paragraph quite gripping, so I think the details of stabbing should remain, if written in a slightly more flowing way. It all seems well-sourced. I'd also keep a bit about his time to recover and the dessert wines (possibly with the vodka as an actual useful hidden note), which surely is crucial to our understanding of Rasputin (- that he became effectively an alcoholic?) I'd also keep the mesentery, but then I do like the gory details. Tempted also to keep the transvestite disguise. But the rest, especially all the hidden notes, could certainly go. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:09, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that colorful stuff like the beggar costume and black kerchief are sourced to the daughter's 1929 book, which isn't an RS for obvious reasons. (That's why the bit about taking up alcohol is explicitly attributed to her -- and I'm not even sure that should be kept without a secondary source.) Please add back details you think are valuable, but please consider in each case whether it's sourced reliably; any detail that's no so sourced we're going to have to leave by the wayside. EEng 17:06, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's perfectly fair. Your version would be a sound place from which to re-start. Even your version has three "cn" tags? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:12, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Surely we should at least say where the attack took place? (The earlier version implies that it was on the street near his residence, and Khioniya Guseva states that it was in Pokrovskoye.) "33-years-old" comes off as unidiomatic and misplaced, and doesn't describe her background nor another salient feature that wouldn't be obvious to non-Russians from the name: that the attacker was a woman. And I don't see a good reason to vary from the transliteration of her name in our article about her. So I would replace that part by "...stabbed in the stomach by Khioniya Guseva, a 33-year-old peasant woman who had previously been a follower of Iliodor." (assuming we can source the Iliodor part properly). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I was trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Proceed! EEng 00:44, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Article overhaul

Per the discussions above, EEng reverted to an older version of the article here. I've been working on fixing up the lede and early life sections today, and... there is still a lot of work to do. This version of the article is much better but it's still in poor shape: bad sources, contradicts itself, basic factual errors (like wrong birth dates), undue weight on fringe theories. Lots of stuff wholly un-referenced.

I begin to understand how the article got as bloated as it was: sources on Rasputin vary widely in terms of quality, and there is a crapton of legend and misinformation out there. Even the types of sources that we'd normally think of as quite reliable seem to conflict on certain points, and it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff (and fact from legend).

I think it's worth having a conversation early on about which sources we can trust. What are some of the best sources available? Today I've been working off some academic encyclopedias, Rasputin: The Untold Story and Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. So far, I can tell that Furhmann gives some of the third- and fourth-hand info about Rasputin a lot more credence than Smith (he reports things as facts that Smith rejects as legends). Anyone have issue with either of these? What other sources might we try to use as a foundation/baseline? It seems like newer work (by writers who had post-Soviet-era access to Russian archives) is way more useful than older stuff (like Massie). Fyddlestix (talk) 06:32, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

First of all, your hard work so far is much appreciated. The conflict-of-sources problem is a very hard one for this topic, for the reason you indicate: in addition to the usual phenomenon of sources simply having different interpretations of facts, we have the additional dimension that some sources are working from a vastly widened base of primary material, and it's hard to know (for any given conflicting conclusion) which cause is more at work. Certainly anything before the 1960s is completely unusable except as a primary source, and see the excellent Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history). Unfortunately AFAIK (but maybe I just don't know) no one source is universally recognized as authoritative, so I fear that there will be no getting away from the "There is controversy about..."/"Sources disagree on..." style for many subtopics esp. his personal life, his role in bringing on the revolution, and his death. (And that's just about everything!)

I wish I could say that I stand ready to help with all that, but try as I might I just can't get myself excited enough about this topic that I want to go get all the sources and plow through them. I'll be happy to copyedit if someone pings me. EEng 10:30, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Drive-by source evaluations

I spent a few minutes with most of the English-language sources that happened to be on the shelf at (ahem) a modest local library last night, and here's my very superficial evaluation of them, for what's it's worth:

Well-researched, clear sources and citations:

• Cook, To kill Rasputin : the life and death of Gregori Rasputin (2005)
• Fuhrmann, Rasputin : the untold story (2013)
• (I was unable to look at Smith, but from what I know it should fall in this group.)

Unclear in its sourcing and the basis for its opinions:

• Moynahan, Rasputin : the saint who sinned
• Radzinskiĭ, The Rasputin file

Primary:

• Rasputina (daughter), Rasputin, the man behind the myth, a personal memoir
• Purishkevich, The murder of Rasputin

Couldn't decide, for some reason that escapes me now:

• De Jonge, The life and times of Grigorii Rasputin (1982)

EEng 22:34, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

A yes, "modest!"

This is helpful, thanks! I am planning a library trip myself this week to get my hands on some of these (Radzinksii, Cook, and some others) but so far still only have Smith and Fuhrmann's 2012 book on hand. Fyddlestix (talk) 22:45, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not only my favorite place in the world, I'm proud to say it's one of my 7-yo nephew's favorite places too. He loves books. If you need something special that's cataloged here [16] I can take a look for you. I can also get you almost any published paper. EEng 23:15, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Great work, everyone! EEng 23:34, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Reference style

Does anyone object to me implementing a single reference style throughout the article? I have been using the {{rp}} template to incorporate page numbers but I now realize that was probably a mistake, since the page numbers are getting a bit unwieldily/distracting in the article text and we now have mis-matched ref styles. It would be nice to make it consistent, my suggestion would be a conversion to author-date references using the {{harvnb}} template, as described here, as this would cut down on the clutter considerably. I'm happy to do the work of reformatting the refs (though it might take a little time), but I know it's important to get consensus first. Fyddlestix (talk) 05:39, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't like {{rp}}. Other than getting that off my chest (even though you said your plan is to move away from it), no objection. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:42, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm learning how awkward it is on this article. I sometimes use it in articles with a standard ref tag system when you need to specify the odd page number, but it gets really awkward when you need to use page numbers in almost every ref... Fyddlestix (talk) 14:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, I hate so-called Harvard refs (at Harvard they're called Princeton refs; at Princeton they're called Yale refs; at Yale they don't know what a ref even is) and have no love for {rp} either, but I love its grown-up cousin {r}, which tremendously reduces visual clutter in the wikitext and in the rendered endmatter. The little superscript page numbers seem odd at first, but quickly fade from consciousness. Take a look at Widener Library -- see how clean the wikitext is, and without millions of teensy footnotes at the end giving just author and page number. But it's up to you since you're doing all the work (and good work it is!). EEng 10:07, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I confess I don't really like the harv template either - in fact I've avoided using it up to now. Just looking for options to cut down on page number clutter. I will take a look at {{r}}. Fyddlestix (talk) 14:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

• Just as a demo (feel free to revert) I've made two edits showing how {r} makes the wikitext so clean [17][18]. As mentioned, the superscript-colon page numbers (e.g. ) seem odd to some editors at first, but I find they quickly get used to them.

I changed the "ref names" from Smith2016 and Fuhrmann2012 to just S and F since they're used so much. Of course, lesser-used refs can just keep the refnames they have. One of the nice things about {r} is you don't even have to "convert over" to it. Uses of {r|foo} and uses of < ref name=foo/> work fine together in the same article, even for the same source. I moved the Smith and Fuhrmann "source definitions" into the refs= section because I think it's cleaner there, but even that's not required to start using {r}; it can be used immediately without changing anything that's already there. EEng 18:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 March 2017

Mention of Boney M's popular 1978 song, 'Rasputin' 101.191.127.108 (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Not done: as stated in the article, we have a entire, separate, article Grigori Rasputin in popular culture - which lists that song and numerous other references to Rasputin. - Arjayay (talk) 13:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Was not there here another set of pictures?

From the last time I visited the page, not this set of pictures. They included some veritably Royal context pictures and looked much more older than the set currently in display. Pictures with the Empress and military attire, for instance. This character looks more like old pictures of Charles Manson, and a few people you can actually find in NYC. Is this a matter of geographical location and you get online pictures appropriate to the continent you are in? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.75.213.118 (talk) 12:42, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, some images were removed as part of an on-going rewrite of the article. Some of them are still available here, and others might still be available in this older version of the article. Any of those can be re-inserted if there's a consensus that they are better than what's in the article right now - we just have to be careful not to overload with too many. Fyddlestix (talk) 18:15, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

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Revert?

You are wrong, in many cases. This version should not be excepted, only when Wikipedia agrees, they only want an unreliable overview, where the legends and myths are repeated, and the arguments with better explanations, are deleted. Who is going attack this foolish view on Rasputin? In the first place 450 references were deleted. In my point of view that is a sin, which Wikipedia should not except.

It is unbelievable what a doctor in philosophy and a professor in computer science, can add (or agree with) such a non sense. This time you left out almost 50 references, although there is template that more citations are needed. How do you explain that? Mmmm. You are not an expert on the subject; you repeat the non sense, that common people know about Rasputin.Taksen (talk) 16:05, 1 April 2017 (UTC) Besides all the discussions in February on the talk page were removed as quick as possible; another sin and criminal. The Russian Politburo could not have done any better. Everybody can see how unreliable Wikipedia is by promoting the view of layman. Taksen (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2017 (UTC) They are interested in his dick; the details, especially on politics, are not important, perhaps too difficult.19:31, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Please, uh, moderate your rhetoric there, it's not helpful to describe a decision made through consensus as "criminal" and "sin," or to compare it to the Politburo. EEng is right, you need to focus on smaller, more specific changes and clearly explain your reasons for them. Recognize, though, that you are not going to find a lot of support for restoring all of the material that was here before (like the yar restaurant stuff, or contemporary newspaper accounts on minor details of the assassination attempt). We're writing an encyclopedia article, not a book, and the number of refs is not the yardstick we use for measuring an article's quality - your recent edit reinserted a lot of poor-quality refs and excessive detail. That's not helpful, it's bloat.

I only got partway into the article in my own re-writing efforts, so I fully agree that everything after the "rise to prominence" section (and probably a few things above that too) still need fixing up. Life has been busy but I do plan to resume work on it shortly. Help is appreciated but please try to focus on brevity and clarity - both in the writing and in edit summaries. Fyddlestix (talk) 04:54, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

No thanks, I don't trust you. You produced rubbish after five weeks, nothing interesting about the days between the two revolutions.

Besides the lay-out is bad, and very childish. Is that because everybody should see Wikipedia is run by amateurs?

According to the rules it is possible to delete unreferenced stuff, but I have not heard of a rule that it is acceptable to delete referenced stuff, even if five people or so, who are all non-experts, agree.

Martin added the word "Rasputin" a few days before; two other people, against my earlier contributions, did not add anything in the past few weeks. And you both are struggling with the amount of available information. I still don't understand why this article, on a influential person, should be shorter than EEng talkpages.Taksen (talk) 05:39, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Who killed Rasputin?

I have recently made this edit, which has been removed for the third time and I thought I would start a talk topic instead of reverting as the editor in question reverting the third time has had previous friendly and helpful interactions with me. I thought the topic worthy of further discussion to attain consensus before replacing:-

According to Andrew Cook and Richard Cullen, Oswald Rayner is believed to have been involved in the final murder plot, and is supposed to have been the person who fired the shot that actually killed Rasputin.

This sourcing now includes 2 books published by reliable publishers (one by an intelligence historian, another a former MET Police commander) publicized in the Daily Telegraph and in nationally viewed television programmes by the BBC with accompanying press releases back in 2004. These are reliable and widely read sources and not in any way WP:FRINGE views. Most of the United Kingdom has known about this widely accepted theory for over 10 years now, so I suggest it's inclusion her very valid, justified and even perhaps, somewhat overdue. People keep mistaking Rasputin for Satan, even 100 years on and I really feel it's time to give his legacy some form of justice. More information r.e. the discussion that caused this edit to come about can be found in the suppressed section of my talk page. RaRaRasputin (talk) 14:15, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

References

• Personally I have never mistaken Satan for Rasputin although, admittedly, I have never seen them together in the same room. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:40, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
• Cullen I haven't seen, but there's been a weird fad recently for retired police detectives to opine on historic "cold cases" they otherwise know nothing about, which is (to be blunt) silly, and I note that no major libraries hold his book; I think we'd be wise to exclude it. The Telegraph and BBS bits are also worthless as fact sources on historical topics, unless penned by established experts or something. That leaves Cook, which based on my quick perusal (Talk:Grigori_Rasputin/Archive_6#Drive-by_source_evaluations) I do think is an RS. However, Cook's is still an isolated view; statements like Rayner "is believed" and "is supposed" make it sound like more than it is, and if it really is "widely accepted" then there'd be other scholarly works propounding it, which apparently there isn't. Until that changes I believe no more than a single sentence along the lines of According to Andrew Cook's 2004 book, British agent Oswald Rayner participated in the killing of Rasputin, and may even have fired the fatal shots is justified, maybe in an "recent theories" section. EEng 16:18, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

  Would support. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:21, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

  Thank you very much for your wise and considered input. I will replace exactly as guided by E's superior experience and information in this field. For your information (if you need it) the BBC documentary "Who Shot Rasputin?" can be viewed on YouTube and the last section of the video cover's Cullen's investigations with primary sources and some pretty revealing evidence in British Intelligence telegrams to support this inclusion. [19] RaRaRasputin (talk) 17:49, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

It had coverage in the telegraph, on bbc news, etc. so I'm not opposed to including a brief mention/description of this theory. It's basically bullshit though - the "forensic evidence" is a photograph (and conflicts with a whole bunch of other evidence), and Douglas Smith suggests that the document/memo Cook refers to either doesn't exist or is a forgery. The supposed memo is "apparently in the hands of Alley's descendants," but Smith says he was unable to locate it or even verify that it exists. Even if it does, the wording of it implies that there might have been British involvement but has zero specifics - certainly it's not enough to prove/support Cook et al's version of events. I added some of what Smith says about this to the article to make it clear that this is very far from the accepted (or even a plausible) account of Rasputin's death. Fyddlestix (talk) 19:05, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, note that while I don't actually have a copy of Cook's book on hand just now, this academic review of it (the only one I could find) says that Cook doesn't claim that Rayner fired the shot that killed Rasputin, but rather was only aware of the plot and may have been in the room. So we probably need to distinguish (and clarify the difference) between the claims made in Cook's book and the claims made in the documentary discussed in the news articles referenced above. FWIW, the book review also says that Cook's book suffers from "a number of methodological and factual errors," which "undermine" its value, and concludes with the statement that "little new is offered here" to change the more traditional account of the assassination. Fyddlestix (talk) 19:20, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

No objections to anything. I just checked this, which is not an WP:RS, but kind of interesting. My very best wishes (talk) 20:10, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I have started articles on the alleged accomplices John Scale and Stephen Alley that could be worked in somehow. MVBW's not WP:RS has big articles and pictures of this pair. RaRaRasputin (talk) 01:32, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

This is another online encyclopedia, Spartacus Educational, a good resource in my opinion. My very best wishes (talk) 02:52, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Er, um... you're kidding, right? EEng 03:54, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Not really. You'll see BBC History sources in those biographies I wrote featuring this story as late as last year. If the BBC keep teaching this line, you can expect the coverage of it to expand in time. No need to rush though dear fellow. I wouldn't want to make your brain hurt anymore after your magnificent work yesterday. RaRaRasputin (talk) 11:38, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you talking about Spartacus Educational? EEng 13:03, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

We are not going to use Spartacus for sourcing, however it provides links to other sources that qualify as WP:RS. He possessed a bullet [that killed Rasputin]. Hmm... Genrikh Yagoda kept two bullets that killed Zinoviev and Kamenev. Such is Russian history. My very best wishes (talk) 13:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I wonder what happened to those that killed Bukharin and Pyatakov as well. Someone could start a necklace with them... RaRaRasputin (talk) 14:16, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Sentence frag.

According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov.

– Vasily Maklakov what? Sca (talk) 17:03, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 May 2017

Please change "Rapstin's coat" to "Rapsutin's coat" in "...with Sukhotin wearing Rasptin's coat and hat, in an attempt..." 2404:4408:4098:FA00:7C84:F8AF:E4AF:5E34 (talk) 06:45, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Done Thank you for pointing that out! regards, DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 08:12, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 May 2017

The second paragraph in the "Death" section of Rasputin's page reads "has become the most often frequently told". Could someone please remove either the "most" or "frequently". Kcole2 (talk) 21:07, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for catching that! Fixed. Fyddlestix (talk) 23:16, 29 May 2017 (UTC)