Talk:MS Mikhail Lermontov

message: The article has significant issues, not limited to the lack of citations.
Use of the word "screwed" to describe the state of the vessel after hitting rocks isn't encyclopedic in style, and has been reverted to the previous "doomed".
From article: As was common in the Soviet Union, the top priority in catastrophes was avoiding negative publicity, even at the cost of human life, hence no distress signal was sent to the local authorities, and rescue ships, seeing that Mikhail Lermontov was in trouble, were gruffly told that their assistance was not required. Fortunately, the rescue ships knew that their assistance was required, and stood by to evacuate the passengers.
* Problem 1 with this statement: This may be true, but there is not only a lack of citations that this was a general Soviet practice but there are no citations that this was true in this instance.
* Problem 2 with this statement: The tone is extremely pejorative and not one expected of a Wikipedia article.
* Problem 3 with this statement: There are no citations to show this is actually what happened.
There appears to be factual errors. A casual Internet search (from several sources that cite the Preliminary Inquiry) has already shown that:
* The pilot (Capt Jamison - which is the correct spelling BTW, and not Jamieson) was REMOVED from command/decision making following the collision, so other than making some radio transmissions to authorities, he did not have a role in saving the ship. 
** Thus he did not attempt to beach the ship, when it was the Russian captain that attempted to beach the vessel.
** He did not try to lower the anchors. It was an option that the Russian captain did not use, why he did not or could not is a matter of conjecture.
* A distress call WAS made at the time. The call was then rescinded as the crew attempted to recover the vessel. 
* The Lermontov ASKED the MV Tarihiko to stand by for evacuation, but continued to attempt to save the ship.
* Once it was plain that the vessel was not salvageable, evacuated was initiated and aided by the crew.
* Although there were criticisms of the emergency equipment and procedures, as well as of the delay to initiate evacuation, the Russian crew (as well as the CTC Cruises staff) were praised for their actions during the evacuation.
It is apparent that there has been a subjective attempt in this section of the article to minimise the role and culpability of Jamison and maximise that of the Russian captain and crew, through omission of pertinent facts, selective choice of presented facts and the inclusion of POV editorialising. 
The fact there wasn't a rigorous official inquiry into the collision and sinking hasn't helped prevent the confusion and mystery surrounding wreck. It seems there were efforts to cover up or minimise what happened from all sides: Jamison (with the help of his maritime union) has refused to speak about that night except to official questions, and he was helped by the "Preliminary Inquiry" which was less than rigorous (many witnesses were never interviewed) and was conducted by Capt Steve Ponsford who is described by critics of the inquiry as "a friend of Jamison" and "best man at Jamison's wedding", the NZ government has refused to conduct a full inquiry into the matter and hasn't made the evidence gathered during the inquiry publicly available, and the Soviet government wished to minimise the affair by being uncooperative. All this was helped by the fortuitous fact the only fatality was the Soviet sailor, so there was no public pressure for an inquiry. 
I was hoping that I would write my objections to the tone of the article and ask for someone more familiar with the issues than myself (and maybe a New Zealander) to do a re-write, but now that I have written all this out, I'm thinking I may as well do it myself. I'll leave this in the Talk section as background to the article. 113727b (talk) 16:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Issues 

message: http://www.benthic.ca/report.cfm?report=24 for description of the death from diving the wreck...  66.92.218.130 23:16, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing 

message: The recent expansion, insofar as it's based on reliable sources, is welcome. What's of real concern is how much of the above discussion, as well as the current version of the article, seeks to draw conclusions based on WP:NOR and WP:SYNTHESIS. This requires a great deal of oversight by objective editors to separate wheat from chaff, so as to conform to WP:NPOV. JNW (talk) 23:46, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The now reverted talk I referred to above . JNW (talk) 13:37, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  All the above, culminating in recent expansion of the article 

message: Offending information removed and will not be re-posted after considering WP rules.  You should also remove note #8, as that refers to my unpublished work and is therefore similarly not acceptable under your rules, however I did not add that so I won't remove it.  Its all yours.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.152.213.224 (talk) 02:36, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: To be clear: nobody asked for a blanket reversion of all the previous edits--please read my above thoughts, as well as Wikipedia policy. Nor did I wade through the article's history. If what's there is improperly sourced or non-neutral, then it, too, needs reassessment. For better or worse, published sources do take precedence over original research and personal interviews. Clearly 'any old lie' is not the preferred basis for encyclopedic content. However, making such claims in Wikipedia articles or talk pages, without the support of an official determination, may leave one vulnerable to legal action--here Wikipedia's interests are to protect both accused and accusing parties, as well as the website itself; WP:BLP is also relevant, as accusations of criminal or even unethical behavior against living people must be scrupulously sourced. And yes, even if the information that's been unearthed uncovers a truth, Wikipedia is not a venue to publish investigative findings. If those findings are first published in a reliable source they may then be suitable for inclusion. So the 'hmmm' should be directed at the encyclopedia's policy, and not with an implication that there's an attempt to cover something up here. For my part, I'd never heard of the accident or anyone who was involved in this until now. JNW (talk) 18:19, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing 

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thread_title:  External links modified