This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mikhail Gorbachev article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cold War, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Cold War on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Cold WarWikipedia:WikiProject Cold WarTemplate:WikiProject Cold WarCold War
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Russia, a WikiProject dedicated to coverage of Russia on Wikipedia. To participate: Feel free to edit the article attached to this page, join up at the project page, or contribute to the project discussion.RussiaWikipedia:WikiProject RussiaTemplate:WikiProject RussiaRussia
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Soviet Union, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Soviet UnionWikipedia:WikiProject Soviet UnionTemplate:WikiProject Soviet UnionSoviet Union
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Socialism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of socialism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SocialismWikipedia:WikiProject SocialismTemplate:WikiProject Socialismsocialism
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Result: Kept. The results are as follows: 1 Hold and 4 Keep. The arguments here were long and reasonable. Some argued that length doesn't matter, while others argued that "personality" should be removed.🗽Freedoxm🗽(talk • contribs) 02:21, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking back, I don’t think there are any significant NPOV issues. However, in terms of MOS, sentences like 'On 10 March 1985, Chernenko died.' may convey an unnecessarily emphatic tone. Overall, the tone throughout could be improved to sound more encyclopedic. While I initially said there were no NPOV issues, some examples, such as 'He would stop to talk to civilians on the street, forbade the display of his portrait at the 1985 Red Square holiday celebrations, and encouraged frank and open discussions at Politburo meetings,' come across as slightly biased and could benefit from a more neutral phrasing. And yes I used ChatGPT to fix my own phrasing. Sangsangaplaz (Talk to me! I'm willing to help) 07:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly didn't see any major issues with the article to begin with. To me, the reassessment was unnecessary. The article is long, but considering the importance of Gorbachev on history, it deserves this length.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 12:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Formally putting down a delist; no work has been done to slim down the general secretaryship section, and 17k words is far too long for any article. 13–14k would be a much better ballpark, and if it could be slimmed down even further that would be great. charlotte👸♥01:39, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a long article, but it's also a biography, which is one of those types of articles perhaps not as amenable to summary style as others. The obvious option for that would be to spin off the sections of chronology (Early life and education, Early CPSU career, Secretary of the Central Committee of CPSU, Leader of the Soviet Union (1985-1991), Unraveling of the USSR, and Post-USSR life), either together or individually (or a mix). Is there appetite for this? CMD (talk) 03:47, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I again have to repeat, 17,000 words don't bother me in this example. The article deserves this length, considering the major changes that Gorbachev made on history and the high amount of sources that cover him.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 07:55, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a workable yardstick, if we treated article length as a function of impact and source number we'd end up producing books. CMD (talk) 08:15, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: I've cut down the tagged over-long section from 4,800 to under 4,000 words, and copy-edited other sections. The article does not seem overlong really; it's far from being the longest biography. I think splitting out the main sections of his biography would be a strange thing to do in a biography article, and I can assure you, having just tried, that the material cannot readily be condensed much without discarding substantial and useful material. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:08, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Leader of the Soviet Union": reduced to "main" link (existing) with summary. That saves another 3,700 words, down to 11,900 in total.
"August coup and government crises": we're down amongst the weeds (minor tweaks), but reduced to "further" link" (existing) with summary. That saves another 400 words, down to about 11,500 in total. The article is now shorter than those of the major figures above, so it's time to stop cutting. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:30, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GA? 1a states "the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience;" In my opinion, the length of this article causes the prose not to fulfil the concise requirement, and the level of detail makes the article difficult for a broad audience to understand. Z1720 (talk) 11:05, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've implemented ALL your suggested changes, cutting the article from ~220,000 bytes to 169,000 bytes. Napoleon is ~190,000 bytes, for comparison. It is well within 'normal' length parameters now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:03, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Great work has been done so far to make the article more concise. I think there's still work to be done. I don't like using WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but Earth, classified as one of Wikipedia's most important articles, is under 9,000 words. Napoleon was also demoted from its GA status in 2021 and A-class status in May 2024, so I don't know if this article should be compared to that article.
While most of my suggestions were implemented, others were not (Personality section and reactions sections are still in the article). I am happy to discuss if they should be removed/merged.
No issue with Personality/Reactions, those'll be done now.
Personality s/section removed.
Reactions: much of this is just 'I'm very sorry to hear that' (no encyclopedic value), so cut. I've folded the small amount remaining into Legacy.
I think some sections are too specific in its detail right now because a lot has been written about him, and a concise article on a broad topic like this person would be more general in its information, while more detailed information would be in daughter articles. Upon a closer reading of the article, I see more information that can be spun out or removed. Some examples include Gorbachev's height and weight, extensive detail on who sent his family their condolences after his death (which is expected behaviour after a notable statesman has died), and Gorbachev's opinion on several major events in the 2010s in the "2008–2022: growing criticism of Putin and foreign policy remarks" section (including almost yearly quotes on his opinion on Russia's invasions of Ukraine). If editors want I can do a detailed look through the article and suggest other places where the article is not concise. Z1720 (talk) 17:49, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not keen on this stepwise approach. However,
Condolences have gone already (Reactions cut).
Personal life: Height, weight etc: gone, section trimmed.
Death and Funeral sections trimmed and merged.
"2008–2022: growing criticism of Putin and foreign policy remarks": radically cut down.
In same vein, have proactively trimmed "1991–1999" and "1999-2008" sections.
These edits have cut the article further from 169,000 bytes to 134,000 bytes. Over 40% of the text has been cut since I started on this; 17,000 words have been reduced to 9,000. This is not at all an unusual length for articles.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is probably the most important event of Gorbachev's tenure, and it's not only short, it talks a lot about the German reunification and the Gulf war (neither of which was in the USSR) while wholly ignoring the massive protests in the USSR, especially the in the Baltic and Caucasus republics, some of which which had declared independence, and where with Operation Ring and the Baku Pogroms, we saw ethnic cleansing taking place and the beginnings of a war between two of the republics. So how does the topic matter of this section correspond to what constituted the "Unraveling of the USSR"? RaffiKojian (talk) 18:04, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-4 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
.svg){kind=small}
