Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hovhannes Bagramyan

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 05:45, 9 March 2007.

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Hovhannes Bagramyan

I began work on this article in early January and helped expand upon the biography of one of the most famous generals during Soviet times. The original article was only several kilobytes long [1] and so now in its expanded form comprehensively covers much of Bagramyan's life, especially his career during the Second World War. Its nomination coincidentally comes only 1-2 weeks after another article I nominated, the Nagorno-Karabakh War, passed its FA nomination. I believe the article meets the criteria to become an FAC: its stable, is well written in a NPOV perspective, is abundantly cited from a variety of reputable, verifable and easy to find sources and has plenty of images.--MarshallBagramyan 01:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Object -- almost every image is entirely unsourced, and are candidates for speedy deletion. One is claimed fair use without credit to the copyright holder, while the others we're claiming that the copyright holder has been dead since 1954 and that the images were first published before then, with no reason to believe either. Please fix the image problems here. Jkelly 01:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I'd guess that most of the photographs qualify as PD-Russia anyways, having been produced by the Soviet government; the ones actually showing WWII scenes are all clearly pre-1954. Kirill Lokshin 03:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Most of the photos were found right here (in Russian) [2]. In regards to the Sassuntsi-Davit Tank Regiment image, it was scanned from the Soviet Armenian encyclopedia (1984 ed. Vol. 10). The image of Bagramyan and the commanders was scanned electronically from a book in early January via Amazon or Google's scanned book features (I believe it was from Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War (Hodder Arnold, 2006) but I have to dbl-check). The image nevertheless clearly depicts the three leaders in obvious war planning). What remains is this image, [3]. I'm unsure who took it but is appears official (SovFoto agency perhaps) but the page does show numerous other websites that are using the image ([4], here [5] and here [6].) I'll try to find the one with Bagramyan and the Timoshenko but I'm unsure on how to go about resolving the information on the color photograph.--MarshallBagramyan 03:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep in mind that we need to demonstrate that the photographer died before 1954 for the work to be in the public domain in both the United States and Russia. This is very difficult to do when we don't know who the photographer is. Other people publishing something doesn't help us... random websites often worry less about copyright infringement than we do. Jkelly 17:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, how come this issue was not raised on the Alexander Vasilevsky page and its use of WW-2 photos. I agree with you there however as that precondition "and" and if the author is known is next to impossible to verify unless specifically mentioned. We have many pre-1954 images of the USSR, have we raised issues with the authors of the photographers on all of them too?

Update. Ok, I verified and updated the source for the image of Bagramyan and the other commanders image. It can be viewed and be found in this book here [7].--MarshallBagramyan 20:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the only real answer to this question is that getting image copyright right is not one of our strengths. This isn't really surprising; there's no reason to expect that the ability to write good encyclopedia articles is related to familiarity with U.S. copyright law and international harmonisation. That said, "We must know who the copyright holder is for any image we republish, or must be able to demonstrate conclusively that copyright has expired" is not that complicated, in theory. Jkelly 20:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, besides the images taken during the war, I assume that the color photograph of him is, judging by the pose, an official work of the Soviet government, taken during the late 1960s or 1970s. It's a widely circulated photograph but asides from that (to reiterate, at least 4-5 unrelated links have published it, but it appears no other information about it can be extrapolated.--MarshallBagramyan 07:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I gave the photograph's fair use rationale one more shot but if does not suffice, I suppose we have to look for a substitute picture.

• Conditional support, once the image issue is resolved; the article appears to be in excellent shape otherwise. I'd suggest removing the "Notable units" section; they're mostly linked (or can be linked) in the text, and it's not at all clear what those units are just sitting alone like that. Kirill Lokshin 03:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Excellent job. Is it possible to incorporate the notable units within the infobox?-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 15:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Another one of the fine works by this dedicated user. Very thoroughly researched. Good job Marshall! - Fedayee 03:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Marshal does it again! :) Artaxiad 05:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.