Talk:Dolina effect

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by HurricaneZeta (talk) 22:58, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that one could sign a deed for an apartment and yet, due to weaknesses in Russian law, courts would often give back the "fraudulently" sold real estate but not require that the seller return the money? Source: Basically the whole premise of the article
• ALT1: ... that due to weaknesses in Russian law, signing the deed and paying money to the owner does not at all mean that at the end of the day, you will be with the apartment or the money? Source: as above
• ALT2 ... that criminals could scam buyers of their newly-acquired property by claiming in court that they themselves were scammed and so lost all money from the deal? Source:
• ALT3 ... that the livestream of the cassation hearing about Larisa Dolina's apartment deal was the most-watched in the history of the Supreme Court of Russia? Source:
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Snow removal in Montreal
  • Comment: The sources are almost entirely in Russian, so it would be preferable for the reviewer to know the language.

Created by Szmenderowiecki (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 11 past nominations.

Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 05:26, 5 December 2025 (UTC).

• sourcing 3678Agathe (talk) 10:45, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

This review was written in the context of an academic project by User:Assas CHEUNG .

The length of this article does respect DYK criteria because it is far longer than 1,500 characters of prose. Its multiple sections allow it to cover the whole topic, by not only explaining the precise case of the Russian singer Larisa Dolina, but also the scheme tactic on the Russian housing market as a whole. The article keeps a neutral tone by simply presenting the facts and explaining the impacts it had (such as proposed laws) which are interesting. However, while there are a lot of sources and inline citations, most of the sources are in Russian which does mean that we can’t really fact check whether they are reliable or not (except if you speak Russian which I don’t). So I would advice to reference more English sources than the only one there is now (Vanity Fair : reliable but can also be a bit altered for storytelling purposes). Finally, the DYK hooks do manage to captivate attention even if they are quite long (I would say that the alt2 is the least catchy one). Overall, the article in itself is good but the sourcing is what needs to be worked on to be able to be good to go on the main page. -- 3678Agathe (talk) 10:45, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

Non-English sources are as a general matter allowed and only should be replaced by English-language sources if available and of equal or superior quality. Just because sources are in Russian doesn't mean they are bad or are impossible to verify. It's just hard to do so if you don't know Russian. Which is why I specifically asked for a person who speaks it so that we don't have the language barrier issue.

Also, I can't help the lack of English-language sources. This is partially a translation from Russian and is a topic that only concerns Russia, so naturally almost all sources will be in Russian. I have a gut feeling that the scam has been tried in many other countries as well, but even if it was, the "perfect storm" only happened in Russia AFAIK. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 17:09, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

An actual review required by a non-Assas.--Launchballer 18:48, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki and Launchballer: I was about to review this and still may (see below). I'm an experienced DYK reviewer and perfectly fluent in Russian. However, the comment I can't help the lack of English-language sources rubbed me the wrong way. Non-English language sources can be used if English language sources can't be found, but in this case there are plenty of English language sources. I did a very brief web search, and found:

• https://en.iz.ru/en/1998796/natalia-belova-irina-ionina-sergei-iusov/state-effect-fraudsters-who-deceived-larisa-dolina-were-sentenced - Izvestia is used in 3 places in the article already, here they do their own English language translation; in fact, if you search for "dolina effect site:iz.ru" you get at least ten and probably 30 Izvestia articles in English.
• https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/12/19/2025-s-biggest-verdict - similarly Meduza in Russian is used as a source in the article, are there more like this?
• https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/general/how-the-scamming-of-a-pro-putin-pop-star-rattled-russia-s-housing-market/ar-AA1SC3jh Moscow Times
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/12/16/putins-favourite-pop-star-most-hated-woman-russia/?msockid=367d40e285426d1e1b17556b84626c60 The Daily Telegraph - paywalled, but I was able to capture a version in the Internet Archive that is not paywalled: https://web.archive.org/web/20260102214755/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/12/16/putins-favourite-pop-star-most-hated-woman-russia/?msockid=367d40e285426d1e1b17556b84626c60; also this version on Yahoo https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/putin-favourite-pop-star-became-193057813.html
• I wouldn't be surprised if there were more.

So, I'm pinging Szmenderowiecki because there are plenty of English language sources, please use them; and Launchballer because this article has been nominated for DYK for a while, and he tends to disqualify such articles after some time. Launchballer, how long can I give Szmenderowiecki to fix this and re-review before you remove the DYK nom? If I have to, I'll review the article with Russian only sources because I can, and because I am not sure "creator insists there aren't English language sources, even though there are" is technically a DYK fail criterion, but I would really, really rather he fix this. --GRuban (talk) 23:14, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

I copy this information, will return shortly. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 02:16, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

GRuban I will explain why I used the original Russian versions.

Izvestiya does not translate English articles in-house; instead, as you may note at the very bottom, it says that they use Yandex machine translation and presumably copypaste the output. Which is less than ideal, so I stuck with the original.

All other articles appeared way after I first wrote this article. The Vanity Fair piece was the only one I was aware of and it came out on the day I started translating the article.

I incorporated relevant English-language references where of equal or superior quality. Unfortunately, most of English-language sources that I saw did not really describe the case in detail, so I had to leave most of the sections untouched and at most supplemented the existing Russian-language sources with English ones. If there are any good sources I missed, let me know. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 01:16, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I guess I have to do the real review now, don't I? Can you at least link the translations to the Izvestia articles you used? I suggest in the ref itself, something like "[ref](cite Izvestia article lang=ru). Translated as (cite translated Izvestia article lang=en).[/ref]" Yes, they may be less than ideal, but they are the translations that the source itself provides, and for the 99% of our users that do not read Russian, much better than no translation at all. Perfect is the enemy of good --GRuban (talk) 17:39, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

And done so. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 06:36, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Main hook is good. I'd personally have focused on Dolina's case specifically, the not unreasonable hypothesis that she was getting special treatment due to being a friend-of-Putin, rather than similar cases in general, but you are the main author and the DYK nominator, and this one you propose is certainly acceptable.

• In a few places in this nomination you write "This is partially a translation from Russian". Did you mean by that that this was originally a translation from the RU Wikipedia article? I looked at the first edit of Dec 5, and it did not look to be an exact translation of the RU article of that date, so I'm going to let you decide whether you think you need to credit the RU article, per Wikipedia:Translation.
• The Vtomske.ru source which is basically the main one for the hook is currently a dead link (I know you say it's the whole article, but the hook specifically refers to other cases, not just to Dolina's specifically). Fortunately I was able to find it on the Internet Archive here; could you add that as the archive-url to that source, please?
• Thanks for adding the machine translations, but it looks like Template:Cite web is complaining about the external links in the trans-titles. I'd recommend fixing that, by literally having separate Cite templates within the same Ref tag. For example, take a look at how I do it in a few places in Stefi Cohen or Calvin Duncan (legal advocate), where I want to provide multiple links to essentially the same reference: <ref name="Rojas">{{cite news |last1=Rojas |first1=Rick |title=Calvin Duncan’s Unlikely Journey: Convict to Exoneree to Elected Official |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/us/calvin-duncan-new-orleans-criminal-court-clerk.html |access-date=13 December 2025 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=November 16, 2025}} Also available as {{cite news |last1=Rojas |first1=Rick |title=Calvin Duncan’s Unlikely Journey: Convict to Exoneree to Elected Official |url=https://dnyuz.com/2025/11/16/calvin-duncans-unlikely-journey-convict-to-exoneree-to-elected-official/ |access-date=13 December 2025 |work=DNYUZ |date=16 November 2025}}</ref> Not a DYK requirement, but presumably you want to remove the angry red complaints in the reference section?
• Also not a DYK requirement, but just advice; it looks like there are three main themes to this article: the Dolina/Lurye case specifically; the history of similar "babushka" cases besides this specific case; and the effect this case had on the Russian real estate market. I would recommend more clearly breaking out these as separate sections in the lead as well, not just in the article body, otherwise the lead is a bit confusing with how it jumps between the three themes. But not necessary for DYK. GRuban (talk) 16:15, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki: Basically good to go, but you may want to do just a few more things as above. If you're completely fed up, and don't want to touch it any more, say so, and maybe I'll do them myself; the approval is still good. Thank you for your patience with all the reviewer demands, this is a nice article. --GRuban (talk) 16:15, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

GRuban no worries, I can fix stuff.

• I added attribution. It's not strictly speaking a translation because I don't like the layout, they don't exactly cite the best sources and they don't cite some of the sources presented here, but I substantially relied on their work, so I guess attribution is necessary.
• Vtomske.ru works for me. I ran IABot through the article and all links are live. Maybe your ISP is being funny. For example, I can't access the webpage of the State Duma or the Russian courts from where I am, but for whatever reason I can visit the website of the Kremlin, which doesn't make sense. I added the archive for the ref just in case.
• I changed the lead, take a look.
• As for the hook, we don't know for sure if she was winning in court because she is a celebrity and has political connections. This was the general perception of the public, but I don't think we can state it as fact. After all, it isn't the first case in which elderly people were winning apartments without having to give the money back. A not-so-unreasonable hypothesis was that lawyers made up this plan, which IMHO wasn't ethical but it's the kind of the edge case where they could probably get away with it (and they certainly wouldn't sanction the acting solicitor general of all people).
• The choice of hooks is up to you. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 03:59, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

All good for DYK. I understand what you mean about the hook, yes, we should tread lightly around the BLP issues. I'd personally put "Valley of the dispossessed" instead of "untranslatable pun" in the title of one source; yes, it misses the pun, but gets the meaning. Not a DYK requirement. --GRuban (talk) 18:01, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Feedback

Just going to say that the lead doesn't do a very good job of explaining how the scam works, it was very confusing. The body explains much better. My brain's not working right now, so I'm not sure what I would do to improve the lead, but if I don't get around to doing so later, it might be worthwhile for someone else to take that on. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 18:44, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Compassionate727 by necessity I had to trim the lead to the minimum size that could at least hint at what is in the body. There isn't enough space for explaining the intricacies of Russian court practice, and the scam hinges on the pro-seller attitude of the Civil Code.
If you have come up with an idea how to improve the lead, I'm all ears. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 18:19, 21 February 2026 (UTC)