User talk:Ezhiki

Yo? Yo!

---

Archived talk: 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

---

Sladkovo District

Hello, Ezhiki, thank you 1) for the welcoming support and 2) for making my page more wikipedian. I've really enjoyed working on wikipedia, even though it is not as easy as I had thought at first. You are the only living person I can contact here, so I think you can help me. You have wiped two maps and I understand the reason for it, could you please tell me how I can edit these two pictures and have them back on the article. Moreover that can be irrelevent to say here, but what motivated me (quite a modest and rather limited computer user) to write an article was the beauty of the Sladkovo District. Do you think it will be possible to have it later translated into French or German. Thank you, PavelYurasov — Preceding unsigned comment added by PavelYurasov (talk • contribs) 13:48, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Pavel! I should have been been more specific about the maps, sorry. The reason why I removed them is because later today I was planning to add an infobox to the article (it looks like one in this article), and that would have a map included. That would give the page a more standard look than it currently has. At any rate, thank you very much for your interest in Wikipedia in general and in this article in particular! Don't worry too much about formatting yet—no one would expect you to know all the intricacies right after you join :) Someone will always be there to help with that, or you are more than welcome to contact me if I can be of help with anything.

As for translating the article into French/German, that is of course possible (and desirable), but you'll need to do it in the French/German Wikipedias, not in this English one (I'm sure you know that already , but thought I'd point it out just in case). I, unfortunately, am not of much help to you in that quest—my French is very basic and German almost non-existent :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 14:13 (UTC)

Ruswelcome and WP:RUSSIA

Nice idea. I've added a picture for the template (yes, again Matryoshka; it shoud have been bread and salt, but there is no good enough image). As for the task forces, I'm not sure if we could add the full list of them to the template. Do you think it is possible? By the way, I wanted to discuss adding the list of task forces to the main page of WP:RUSSIA. I think we don't need such a large image on the top right corner of the page. Better move it to the top left corner and reduce in size, while adding the list of task forces to the right panel (we could just copy the list of task forces with icons from the talk page of WP:RUSSIA). What do you think about that? GreyHood ^Talk 17:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't mean to add the whole list to the welcome template; that would overload it too much. I meant we should mention them and probably give a prominent link to where the list of taskforces is located, and a good description of what it is to go with it.

As for the project page, I agree. I think the large image was a carry-over from the generic wikiproject template used to build ours. We can, of course, tweak the layout any way that works for us now. The right panel should work just fine for the list of the taskforces.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 17:41 (UTC)

So, we add the task forces to the top right of WP:RUSSIA and add a link to WP:RUSSIA to the template. I'll try to perform the task and see the effect. GreyHood ^Talk 17:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've done it (including the link in Ruswelcome). Please check if it works right an looks good. GreyHood ^Talk 19:02, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Looks great, thanks! By the by, what ever happened to the new icon for the performing arts taskforce? You were going to change the background to transparent, if my memory serves me right.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 19:27 (UTC)

Over time I've developed a liking for balalaika ;) and unfortunately figures of ballet dancers are a bit too small at low resolution. So let's cancel or at least delay changing this icon. GreyHood ^Talk 19:46, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Korolev

I have now made a move request at Talk:Korolyov (city), after you reverted the move I made. I am aware of WP:RUS, and I believe it should be called "Korolev" because this is the common name, and more importantly, the name probably preferred by Korolev himself (since it is the transliteration that his company Energia uses). Mlm42 (talk) 22:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, although it seems I have beaten you to commenting on both pages :) If you didn't get a chance to look at WP:RUS (our guideline dealing with romanization of Russian), you might want to review it now. You are dead wrong about moving the article about the city, and right on the money with the person (although for a whole different set of reasons) :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:05 (UTC)

I'm confused about your statement.. WP:RUS is the only thing I'm basing this decision off of. By linking to websites I'm claiming to provide evidence that the criteria in WP:RUS are satisfied. Without evidence, how else is one suppose to apply WP:RUS? Mlm42 (talk) 22:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

You must have skimmed it, not read it :) Here, from WP:RUS#Place names:

1. When possible, use a conventional English name (as defined below) instead of the default romanization.
2. A conventional name of a place is the name listed in major English dictionaries and should be preferred over default romanization at all times. [emphasis mine—Ё]

That's it. Last I checked, Korolyov wasn't important enough to be included into any major dictionaries. What the official website's URL is doesn't matter in the slightest, and even if the city had a website in English with a different spelling, that still wouldn't have mattered, because they are free to choose from half a dozen different romanization systems (all of which are good, but for different purposes), many of which produce incompatible results. We standardize on one of those systems, and it's BGN/PCGN, which is the industry standard when it comes to romanization of place names in Russia. We shouldn't be inventing new rules when there already is a perfectly good standard, which specifically targets Anglophones.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:20 (UTC)

Mozhaisk

I don't want to get into an edit war with you, so let's hash this out here. I understand putting the article under the spelling you prefer based on WP:RUS, but it is ridiculous not to include what is by far the most common spelling in English (not "what gets most hits on a cloudy day" -- try not to be insultingly dismissive) based on arcane Wikipedia rules. I have only rarely seen the -y- spelling in many years of reading about Russia and the USSR; Webster's Geographical Dictionary, to take one standard reference, includes only the Mozhaisk form. I can reinsert it with footnotes to as many references as will make you happy, or we can just agree that it makes sense and I'll put it in without the footnotes, but it is absurd to omit the most common spelling. I hope you're not going through Russian articles removing all alternate spellings; that would make Wikipedia a far less useful resource, which none of us want. Languagehat (talk) 22:25, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The "i" spelling is what you would most commonly see in publications dealing with history, while the "y" would be more common in geographical publications. Since Mozhaysk's history is quite rich, it's no wonder you'd be seeing the "i" spelling often. That, however, does not change the fact that our article is first and foremost about a geographical entity, which is covered by WP:RUS (which is a community-accepted guideline based on the industry standards, not some "arcane rule"—did someone mention "insultingly dismissive"? :))

I have nothing against including common alternative spelling in the article, but I don't believe they belong in the lead (and in the first line, of all places). Plus, with a redirect in place, what exactly is the loss?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:35 (UTC)

Your beliefs are neither here nor there. It is extremely common for Wikipedia articles to include alternate spellings in the first line, so your belief is evidently a minority one. I further note that in your response to Mlm42 you said "A conventional name of a place is the name listed in major English dictionaries and should be preferred over default romanization at all times" (emphasis yours); have you now abandoned that rule? I have quoted probably the most important English-language geographical dictionary, which has only the -i- spelling. Languagehat (talk) 22:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Webster's geographical dictionary is just one specialized dictionary with its own set of rules and guidelines, which in this case does not match ours. It is a useful resource, but not the ultimate answer to life, universe, and naming of geographic entities in Wikipedia. What WP:RUS is referring to is the general English dictionaries, those which only include places the names of which have unmistakeably indisputable spellings (think Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev...). Names of other places are romanized using the BGN/PCGN conventions, which have been developed specifically for this task, target specifically the Anglophones, and enjoy a widespread adoption.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2011; 22:52 (UTC)

You are clearly set on your own vision of how the article should be, and since you have more invested in it than I do, you win (the usual Wikipedia outcome). No, sticking the most common English spelling in a footnote with some far rarer ones doesn't "work" for me, but it's certainly better than not having it at all. I'm just glad I so rarely run into this kind of stubborn enforcement of rules that exist only in the mind of the enforcer, because every time I do, it makes me want to take a break from the site. "Good riddance," you may say, but I'm a damn good editor and have created some damn good entries (e.g., Alexander Veltman, by far the best thing available about him online in English). And I might note that the recently publicized disproportionate absence of women from Wikipedia is in part due to the unfortunate prevalence of крючкотворы on the site. Ah, well, so it goes. Languagehat (talk) 22:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I should add that I'm not female myself, lest you think I'm engaging in special pleading. No, I just think Wikipedia suffers from the fact that overbearing editors drive away contributors who don't feel like dealing with endless battles over trivia, and apparently that describes a lot of women. Languagehat (talk) 00:38, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

You know, you are very wrong about me thinking it would be a "good riddance" if we lost you as an editor. I've seen your edits (for some of which "damn good" would be an understatement), and I am an avid reader of your blog, most of the contents of which I find educating, entertaining, and informative—in fact, yours is one of only three blogs which I regularly follow. So no, "good riddance" is not at all what comes to my mind in this situation.

On the other hand, over my seven years with Wikipedia one thing I've noticed that it is the best content-creators who are most prone to battling over the piddliest of things. I've seen wonderful editors driven away because of use/non-use of serial commas, because of linking/delinking the dates, due to not having the dates formatted the way they preferred, because the assessment banners on the talk pages were "wrong", because there is too much "crud" (i.e., foreign spelling, pronunciation, alternative variants) in the first line of the lead, because there was not enough "crud" "useful alternative information readers can't live without" in the first line of the lead, and so on and so forth. Closer to home, years ago one editor bitched endlessly that it's impossible to enforce using "proper romanization" because there is no appropriate guideline in place. After WP:RUS was adopted, that same editor continued to bitch endlessly that it's too difficult to follow the guidelines (even as they incorporated the majority of things he himself used to favor).

Frankly, I don't know a good way to reconcile this disconnect. After quite a bit of reflection, it seems to me that if one can be driven away so easily by such minutiae, it means that they weren't here to create the ultimate reference work for the whole of humanity in the first place but were rather craving for some attention to their lovely, useful, prolific selves. I'm not saying this is what's going with you, by the way, but I am not saying that it's not what's going with you either. I just don't know, but it's starting to look awfully familiar, unfortunately. Based on my experiences, if my "крючкотворство" doesn't do it for you today, someone else's surely will, and it will do it sooner rather than later. As much as I hate seeing good editors go away, I don't think that pandering to their bloated egos (and for the record, for the purpose of this post I am not including you into "them") at the expense of having good workable guidelines is the way to go. It's very easy to think of my behavior as "overbearing" or to write it off as control issues, and if you are set in thinking about me that way, there's very little I can do or say to change your mind. My belief (and not just mine) is that a project of such a huge scope as Wikipedia needs good standardization guidelines, and I'm trying to do my part to help with that (and no, unlike with some other people I know, that's not the thing I'm here for). Perhaps if you consider my actions in that light, you'll understand why I am doing some of the things I'm doing, and why I'm doing them in a certain manner. It's not about "winning" for me—it never is; it's about what works best, based on what's been tried so far. And by the way, I've been known to change my opinion on what works best when pointed out the benefits of an alternative approach.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 15:03 (UTC)

P.S. On a lighter note, having observed the marital life of those around me, of my friends, and even my own (sorry, hon), I wouldn't say that women are particularly keen to avoid the "endless battles over trivia". In fact, some seem to be positively thriving on them :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 17:27 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words, and I appreciate that you have the best intentions and think you're operating for the good of Wikipedia. I continue to think that you're wrong, that you've got so caught up in the minutiae of rules that you have helped put in place (and thus have a special attachment to) that you can't see how absurd it is not to put the most common spelling of a place name in the first line, in bold. It is absurd, and any uninvolved party (I feel confident) would agree and tell you so, but given the structure of Wikipedia, if I want backup I apparently have to file an "amendment proposal," and (because I am interested in improving human knowledge as represented by Wikipedia, not in climbing the ranks of the Wikipedia bureaucracy) I have no knowledge of how to do that or how likely it is that the views of common sense would prevail, so I prefer to just let it go. It's not that important. But I suggest you read the March 2011 Update on the continuing loss of editors and consider carefully whether your attitudes and actions may have something to do with that. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere -- my participation has dropped off because I have a rush editing job -- but running into this kind of roadblock is discouraging, and if I ran into it more often I would very likely contribute less, and I'm a pretty determined guy. Just imagine the effect on the well-meaning outsider who runs into it; how likely is it that they will learn the hoops they have to go through to prevail? It seems to me a common attitude on the part of the Wikipedia nomenklatura is "We have all the tools and people we need, now we just have to hold the fort and repel intruders." This can only be disastrous in the long run. But again, I appreciate your kind remarks, and this is not in any way personal (I suspect we'd enjoy each other's company if we met in a bar or cafe) -- it's purely about rules and barriers. Languagehat (talk) 20:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting that you should be the second person in one week to point out Sue's letter to me. Time to self-reflect, I guess... I have read the letter, by the way, and most of the comments, too. The comments were an interesting read onto themselves, as many of them also mention the disconnect I mentioned above. As the quality Wikipedia's content increases, so does the complexity, and with added complexity it would be naive of the new editors to assume they can just do things their way without any regards to the guidelines the community agreed to follow before they joined. Some new editors get it, some need an explanation or two, some don't like it but grudgingly agree, for some having to follow someone else's rules is a deal breaker, and some find them so complex they don't bother editing after a try or two. Obviously, the larger the body of the rules, the larger the last group is going to be, and that's precisely what the trends show. I don't know how to solve this, folks who leave don't have any suggestions (unless you count "scrap all the rules" as a suggestion, which I guess would do miracles for retention, but would be equally catastrophic to maintenance), and judging by Sue's letter, the top brass has no clue either. And in the meanwhile in the field, I have to deal with stubborn and determined folks like you, and you have to deal with stubborn and pigheaded folks like me :) If you have suggestions on how to resolve this, I suggest you post them as a comment to Sue's letter... and feel free to use me as a shameful example of Wikipedia's "nomenklatura"—I'm not going to hold a grudge if you do. I'm just doing my job the way I understand it needs to be done (which, incidentally, is "holding the fort" but not "repelling the intruders"—I don't see the new editors as "intruders" but as folks who need help and information). Quite a conclusion for an innocuous little argument it all started with, eh? :) I wish we lived close enough for a chat in a bar or a café... Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 14, 2011; 15:30 (UTC)

Side comment

Ezhiki, I hope you haven't forgotten that consensus is more important than consistency. Often, but not always, consensus says we should have consistency. But rules have exceptions; and consensus can change. I think it would be better for everyone if you made more of an effort to ensure you have consensus on your side during disputes, rather than to consistently enforce WP:RUS without question, while simultaneously dismissing other editors' points of view. Mlm42 (talk) 02:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

No, I have not forgotten that. But I would like to clarify a few things with you. First, assuming you are coming from the discussion about Korolyov/Korolev, if you look at the !votes so far, you'll see four people basically stating in unison that for this case WP:RUS works just fine, and that the other side had not demonstrated how making an exception would be of any benefit. On the other side, you have three people each voicing three different opinions, which mostly result from misreading and/or misunderstanding the purpose of WP:RUS (something I went to great lengths to address, clarify, explain, and demonstrate, by the way—and that you see my efforts merely as "dismissing the others' point of view" is really sad). Now, for which of these two sides do you think the word "consensus" describes the situation better?

Secondly, rules do have exceptions, but as I mentioned more than once before, we shouldn't be making an exception for the sake of making an exception. There should be some benefit to the exception, and no such benefit has been demonstrated so far. Each time I ask to explain what the supposed benefit is, I get a lecture about something as vague as the virtues of WP:IAR, and now it seems you've switched to lecturing about the virtues of "consensus". To me, that's a red flag indicating either a personal preference or misunderstanding of the guideline's purpose. Catering to the former would make Wikipedia a great mess indeed, and addressing the latter is exactly what I've been doing with my comments.

Thirdly, I hope you understand that one of the duties of an administrator is to uphold the guidelines which the community previously agreed on (whether the admin personally agrees with them or not, I might add), so basically you are hounding me for doing my job. This helps nothing, is frustrating to both you and me, and will make quite a damage in the long term should your efforts at undermining the guidelines like that prove successful. In any case, we have numerous venues available to editors wishing to work on improving/amending the guidelines, but chastising admins for doing what they are supposed to be doing is not one of those venues. Establishing whether the consensus has changed or not should be done as a discussion of an applicable guideline, not by cherry-picking an article which warms the cockles of your heart and trying to negotiate an exception just for it. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I don't know in which better terms to explain it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 14:58 (UTC)

The reason I commented in this section, is because it appears Languagehat has had a similar experience here. I'm sure you are doing a fine job as an admin, and I don't mean to lecture; but from time to time people have to step back and question "do I actually have consensus for my actions"? According to the history of WP:RUS, you had a pretty big hand in forming it, so you have pretty strong ideas about what it should say, and clearly there is consensus that on the whole it's a good guideline - and I agree. But there is an implicit interpretation of the guideline (which you are using to refute both me and Languagehat), and that is: if a town is not in a major English dictionary, then we must use the default romanization - even if it could be shown that the town has a "conventional English name". I know that the guideline redefines the term "conventional English name"; I'm saying that I think Korolev is the conventional English name of this town (using the normal definition of the phrase).

My main concern is over how a regular reader will react when they see "Korolyov (city)" and "Korolev (person)", and then find out they have the same Russian spelling. What I did, was I made a move request - and I was even relatively familiar with WP:RUS. Others might say "oh Wikipedia, you're so crazy", and forget about it. Others may ask at the talk page, where they will be told about our quirky (and somewhat confusing) Wikipedia naming conventions. Ask yourself: how many readers will expect this difference in article titles? How many reliable sources would be happy with the sentence: "Korolyov was named after Korolev"? Not many, I think. Mlm42 (talk) 17:27, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You know, to me the best indication of a consensus is the fact that we have a standing guideline which had been unanimously accepted at the time of its adoption and which has never been directly contested since. Who wrote it is pretty irrelevant, because it is not the author that matters, but whether the community accepts it. And I don't understand why you find my involvement surprising—why would I invest a lot of time and effort into developing a guideline I care nothing about or which does not affect the day-to-day activities of the WikiProject I am a part of? People whose editing is going to be affected by a guideline (and boy, was mine affected before we had the guideline, and not in a good way, too!) are the best candidates to point out what works best and what doesn't work at all, just as the people whose editing is going to be only somewhat affected by the guideline are the best candidates to provide valuable feedback.

Over the years WP:RUS has been up, somehow not a single person who had a problem of one sort or another with it (including you) ever bothered to make a suggestion as to how the guideline can be improved or filed an actual amendment proposal. For whatever reason, it is always someone's pet article or two for which that someone wants special treatment. I wish I could say this case is different, but it isn't.

On your other notion, I need to point out that WP:RUS deals first and foremost with the article titles and, to a lesser degrees, with the first line of the articles' leads. Just because we have an article about the city under "Korolyov" and the person under "Korolev" does not mean you must always be using two different spellings in any sentence that mentions both; just as because the article about Gdańsk is located under "Gdańsk" does not mean that the "Danzig" variant needs to be purged from all other parts of Wikipedia. Piping, redirects, and footnotes exist precisely to take care of such problems. Having alternative spellings/variants as redirects and mentioning them in the footnote attached to the first word in the lead (as I did with "Mozhaisk" and as can be done with "Korolev") takes care of the vast majority of what you perceive as problems—and note how this approach does not require undermining the applicable guideline by carving an exception for each individual case.

On your other concern (that readers would perceive the discrepancy in title spellings as "crazy" or even leave Wikipedia in disgust), that can happen (and is happening) over a vast variety of other things; sometimes for valid reasons, and sometimes because people can't be bothered to dig a little deeper and uncover the reasons. With WP:RUS, its "problems" are exactly the same as the "problems" with the BGN/PCGN romanization systems as a whole—I assure you that both agencies are inundated with inquiries about why some things are done one way and not the other and with the suggestions for "improvements". However, it so happens that theirs is an industry standard, and we, the Wikipedians, are not in a position to make "improvements" to an existing practice, even if doing so is as easy as editing a guideline page. This really boils down to the question of the consistency of experience—explaining that we do things a certain way due to the fact that this way happens to be an industry standard makes a lot more sense than explaining the reasons behind each individual exception someone thought would be a good idea to make.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 18:08 (UTC)

But it appears we have already made an exception for Korolev the person, who's article is now titled contrary to those industry standards, is it not? Anyway, I've already made my case; I think "Korolyov (city)" should be an exception, and you disagree. Recall that the main reason (I think) "Korolev (person)" is an exception, is because the company he founded, which shares his name, spells it "Korolev". One could interpret this as (implicitly, at least) his ensdorsement of the spelling, and if nothing else we should title his article "Korolev" out of respect for the way he'd spell his own name. It seems somewhat disrespectful to throw this reasoning away when it comes to a town named in his honour. Notice that I'm not proposing a change to the guideline, because there's no need to - I'm saying this exception should fall under IAR. Mlm42 (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

No, Korolev the person is not an exception, and especially not an IAR exception. The article about the person is now titled in full accordance with WP:RUS as well. The "industry standards" I was referring to were developed to deal primarily with toponyms. While BGN/PCGN is routinely employed in other fields as well (and to such great extent that it makes sense to have it as the "default" romanization in WP:RUS), applying it to people's names the exact same way it is applied to the place names wouldn't be right (or even possible—as the general-purpose dictionaries do not list people's names, so there is no comparable reference frame). If there were a romanization system as accepted to deal with people's names as BGN/PCGN is accepted to deal with the place names, it would have most certainly been incorporated into WP:RUS. In absence of such a system, we have to rely on an elaborate list of steps to establish which spelling can be considered "conventional". I am yet to see a complaint about how we deal with people names, so WP:RUS is flexible where it matters, see? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 18:53 (UTC)

I never said Korolev the person was an exception to WP:RUS. I think you missed the point of my comment.. I'm not suggesting a far-reaching, precedent-setting change. I'm only talking about this rare exception; your main response is basically "it's not industry standard", rather than responding to the concerns that are specific to this case.. another productive response would be to provide evidence that the United States Board on Geographic Names actually uses "Chaykovsky" or "Korolyov", as you suggest they would. Mlm42 (talk) 21:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but just above you said that it appears we have already made an exception for Korolev the person, [whose] article is now titled contrary to those industry standards, is it not? It reads very much like you are suggesting that Korolev the person [is] an exception to WP:RUS. Color me confused?

On the BGN use, Pmanderson had previously provided a link to what they consider an "approved" version. I can't link to the result because it's not linkable, but you can play around with this form yourself. The strict BGN version is "Korolëv", which under the simplified BGN/PCGN rules (on which WP:RUS is built) translates to "Korolyov". Their "approved" version of "Chaykovsky" is "Chaykovskiy" (the ending is also shortened to "y" per the same simplified rules). Simplified (and not strict) rules were adopted by us because the strict version is rarely utilized (Britannica is one good example of the users of the simplified rules)—I am not entirely unreasonable, see? Neither "Korolev" nor "Tchaikovsky" are listed as possible variations. Does this help?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 22:08 (UTC)

By "those industry standards" I was referring to the default romanization, not WP:RUS. I still think the city Korolyov should be an exception to the default, since it was obviously renamed in honour of Sergei Korolev - an exception to default romanization. But I understand that you're not going to be happy with exceptions to WP:RUS. Mlm42 (talk) 22:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see. The "default romanization" I was referring to is the table at the bottom of WP:RUS (which is basically the rip-off of the simplified BGN/PCGN), and which is supposed to be used when the conventionality clauses (for either places or people) cannot be met. That's what used to romanize the name of the city, but not the person (the person's name can be determined fairly unambiguously using WP:RUS#People).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 22:56 (UTC)

Кавалеровский район

Здравствуйте ! Кавалеровский район является местностью, приравненной к районам Крайнего севера. Выходит газета " Северное Приморье ", чем местные жители гордятся. --Andshel (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Здравствуйте, сосед :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2011; 17:32 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Volgograd Oblast Kanchalan Vologda Oblast Autonomous okrugs of Russia Shakhtyorsky, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Derek Meech Federal cities of Russia Joe Cooper (ice hockey) Soar Valley College Mark Beaufait Leningradsky, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug David Bruce (ice hockey) Meynypilgyno Arto Javanainen Bagrationovsky District Fred O'Donnell Ryrkaypiy Voronezh Oblast Jack Darragh

Cleanup Land mine Jewish Autonomous Oblast Brian Lawton Merge All Ball 2010 Kyrgyzstani uprising Politics of Croatia Add Sources Ushakovskoye Hooley Smith Oblasts of Russia Wikify Winter storms of 2009–2010 in East Asia Dai Biaoyuan Coroners Court of Queensland Expand Steve Coates Helmuts Balderis Oryol Oblast

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 09:09, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Russia locator maps

Hi Mr. Hedgehog. How are you? Our Russian friend seems to have stopped production (again). I've had a go at creating my own locator map Template:Location map Russia Khabarovsk Krai. I've asked Ruhr to add a window in the corner of russia locator, should be good enough then. What do you think? Its not perfect but seems OK.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:07, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

P.S what's the situation with the Russian districts. Are there any still missing?♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The map is not perfect, but it is vastly superior to what we have now (which is nothing) :) Thanks! I'll incorporate it into the infobox today. As for the districts, there are still plenty which are missing. I'm only done through Primorsky Krai, but the work is slowly progressing (I'm trying to do at least one a day, although presently I'm reviewing some of the existing ones which could use some tweaking). Do you have any plans for the districts?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 14:12 (UTC)

Yeah we really need a complete set of maps for Russia, India and China. People seem to do a few and then relapse.. I can get the rest of the districts done, you'll have to be the boss though of how you want them done, something tells me not like the way Buryatia was one... Given the massive size of them in terms of area there is no excuse for them to still be missing. Indonesian regencies are also on my plate to complete too...♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:17, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, the ones I was going to work next are Murmansk Oblast and the Sakha Republic. We already have the locators for both (although, as usual, without the built-in locator within Russia), but the ones for Sakha are of an older type. After these two, I'll resume going through them in order (so it will be Stavropol and Zabaykalsky Krai and then the oblasts). If you want to start working on them in order as well, I'll have the maps available as I work. Does that sound like a plan? And thanks for doing it, by the way!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 14:23 (UTC)

Yeah Murmansk and Sakha need infoboxes and sources I think. I'll let you finish those. When done let me know and I'll start creating Stavropol and Zabaykalsky. What do you mean though by order? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:31, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I hope you understand that at the rate of one a day it's not going to be done this week :) So if you want you might as well start on those maps. By the way, are you planning to do them similar to the one for Khabarovsk Krai, or are you going to try to build in the small locator within Russia as well?

As for the order, I meant the order in which they are listed in this navbox. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 14:36 (UTC)

Sure I can make some more, you'll have to let me know which federal subject maps are missing. I can replace some of the ecisting ones too if they are really bad. But it might be more productive to keep hounding Bzuk or whatever his name is for more locator maps.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I can keep hounding him alright :) It's just that your first post gave me an impression that you gave up expecting anything more from that particular map stream :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 14:59 (UTC)

Can you give me an indication of how many maps are completely missing and how many he has actually created maps for?♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:03, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll have to look that up. It may not happen this week, but I'll put this on top of my list.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 15:15 (UTC)

You'll have time though to update the infobox coding for the new map/s though? Can you restore User:Blofeld of SPECTRE/Missing locator maps, I vaguely remember I had a list of Russian maps linked.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, certainly I will. I was actually about to do it, when I saw Ruhrfisch's message on your talk. If he's going to add an inset, I'll wait till he's done (maps with an inset go into another section of the subtemplate handling the maps than maps without an inset). I've also restored the subpage you asked for.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 15:40 (UTC)

You can add Template:Location map Russia Amur Oblast to that. I will see to the others.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:30, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Done. If you are going to do a bunch, just let me know when you're done and I'll add the whole batch. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 16:32 (UTC)

Too tired right now for doing the lot. But I've done Template:Location map Russia Kamchatka Krai. Quality is very good for that one actually. I'll make the others over the next few days. Orenburg however is a problem because of the scale it is either small or too big to crop out... Fixed.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:59, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll add it, although would you consider later moving the inset to the top left corner instead? Bottom-right looks too much like it's a Russia-shaped island floating to the southeast of Kamchatka :) Other than that it's indeed good. Now go have you rest. Shoo-shoo :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 17:03 (UTC)

Adygea, Astrakhan and Chelyabinsk Oblast are also done with the window locators. top map can be removed from them all. Unfortunately Nenets Autonomous Okrug has the same problem as Orenburg in terms of scale. Can you specifically request Bzuk creates maps with insert locators of Nenets and Orenburg? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:28, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed Adygea (Astrakhan and Chelyabinsk are fine). I'll ask about NAO and Orenburg.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 18:48 (UTC)

Buryatia is the same with the off scale. There is a huge difference between one notch and the next one kind of like the Czech Republic locator in Europe vs the national map.. But NAO and Orenburg are priority as they are missing entirely. BTW, why is the regional map not showing in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky? Server lag?♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:51, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Must be. I've been having cache problems in all sorts of places in the past few days. I usually blame it on our company crappy proxy, but I've been having the same kind of problems at home—even purging does not always help. I'm not seeing anything wrong with the posmap subtemplate, and the infobox in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is filled out correctly. I'd wait for a day or so; it should refresh eventually.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 19:00 (UTC)

Scratch that. My bad.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 19:02 (UTC)

Damn, the map is slightly off. It must be the East West issue we had with Chukrug.YOu'll have to ask Bzuk for one of this too. According to NNW the scale is impossible to work apparently. pLease ask him on Russian wiki for these four maps..♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Will do. In the meanwhile, I'll comment this one out of the combo section, so the default location map is used instead.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 18:10 (UTC)

We at Ukraine Wikiproject....

would like to join NATO... just kidding ! We like to start a Politics of Ukraine task force. I noticed you set up the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force. So I now wonder if any editor can set up these task force pages or does an administrator, as yourself, has to do that? — Yulia Romero (formerly Mariah-Yulia) • Talk to me! 22:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Yulia! Compliments on the new name :) To answer your question, no, you don't need an admin to set up a taskforce, although, depending on how developed the end result should be, you may run into some tasks which require admin intervention—for WP:RUSSIA such a task was updating the assessment banner, which is protected and can only be edited by an admin. Other than that, the decision on whether to establish a taskforce and how many is the matter that's made solely by the participants of the WikiProject under which the taskforces are being created. So, putting up a note on WT:UKRAINE stating that such and such editors are going to establish such and such taskforce for a few days is pretty much all there is to the formalities. There are some recommendations as to when establishing a taskforce is generally not beneficial, but in the end it is always the WikiProject's participants decision. I hope this answers your question. If you have more, or if you need help with the process of establishing the taskforce, please don't hesitate to contact me—I'll be happy to assist. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 14:18 (UTC)

Thanks for the info; I do not have much time these days but the info above will certainly be used one day . — Yulia Romero (formerly Mariah-Yulia) • Talk to me! 21:21, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Bot instruments for the task forces

Hello! I think I can congratulate you and you can congratulate me, since our task force project has some success, and the talk section above is just one testimony for this ;) Also, we already have the first article started on the request on the History task force page, the First Russian circumnavigation (really nice name for the first article!).

I've less jubilant news as well. Firstly, my long-expected and long-delayed business in real life starts this week, and I'll have to reduce the level of my activity on Wikipedia for the next several months. However, while it might be a downgrade compared to my performance in recent weeks, I hope it will be quite a high level compared to average standarts.

Secondly, I have to ask you to help me in completing the task force infrastructure. I don't want to delay for long the plan of asking other users to join, but for me alone there is too much work. In order to make the pages as useful as they should be, we need to do the following:

• Install bot alerts at the bottom of every task force page (including military)  Done.—Ё
• Install the bot created lists of featured and good articles (military already has one and sets an example, and all other task forces will have at least few good articles, since I ensured it by assessing all good and featured articles in the scope of WP:RUSSIA)  Done.—GH
  • (Also, we could install the bot created list to Portal:Russia/Featured content.)  Done.—GH
• Finally, we need to install the popular pages lists for the task forces (military already has one, but the size of the list should be expanded to 1500).

I've checked this link which you have shown me last time, and noticed that the request form requires a category for article assessment. This means that likely there should be some tweaking of parameters in the WP:RUSSIA template, so that the PP lists could include the articles' classess. That's why I should ask you to try to install the PP list for the History task force yourself, and check how everything works. The History task force has about 2000 items assessed, and I think that all task forces will have eventually over 1500 articles assessed, so all PP lists should have the maximum length, 1500. We could install the lists gradually, checking the numbers of assessed articles at the Category:WikiProject Russia articles (currently, I believe, we could install PP lists for History, Politics and Technology).

As for the other bot instruments, I hope you will help me at least by installing the bot alerts.

Besides that of course, I'm going to finalize structuring of the to-do lists, expanding of scopes/goals, and illustrating the pages. GreyHood ^Talk 00:17, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Darn, I was hoping that your current level of involvement is already at what you call "reduced" :) Anyway, thanks for the roadmap. It seems I am going to be swamped at work in the near future as well, but your outline above is a great reference on what needs to be done. I'm not making any promises regarding when I'll finish all that you asked for above, but I will start working on it. I'll be taking care of the article alerts first, and it's really not that difficult—one of those cases where observing somebody do it is easier that trying to explain all the steps that need to be done. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 15:34 (UTC)

Thanks! In fact I'm already very busy in real life for a pair of days, and if my current level of activity doesn't seem reduced, that's great :) As for the question of when everything should be finished, there are no any deadlines of course, but I just think that since PP lists are refreshed at the beginning of each month, we should try to establish as much PP lists for task forces as we can by the end of March. If you fix everything in the WP:RUSSIA template in advance, I can take the task of filling the application form and establishing the rest of PP lists myself, but I think it makes sense that first you try how it works at least with one task force. GreyHood ^Talk 15:47, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Re:Pavlovsk

We are here to serve readers and average editors. Pavlovsk is nothing more than a locality (other uses, and thus the current primary dab page, are derivative). The reader should not click twice to get through our bureaucracy. There aren't many Pavlovsks, which is why I merged, but if you want to keep two pages, make the index primary page (and merge with non-Russian Pavlovsk localities like Mariupol). I am not sure why indexes should not be merged with dabs.

An irrelevant note, you have designed the set of Russian census citation templates, like {{Ru-census}}, which are unconventional and hard to handle because they include <ref name=> into the template, whereas those tags should remain visible in the article, for reuse of the references and for user choice of ref name tags (there are many dozens of such reference templates around to see the common practices). An average editor will not find/understand the actual formatting. It might be too hard to change them now in the articles, but at least add the explanation on how to reuse those references to all the template docs. Materialscientist (talk) 01:58, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

On the first point, you are actually preaching to the choir here :) I personally find the whole concept of set index articles an idiotic exercise in futility and opaqueness. However, let me forecast what would have happened if the two pages you had merged remained merged. First, in the next few days someone would have removed the {{SIA}} tag, because a page can either be a disambig page or a set index, but not both. With that taken care of, in the next few weeks someone would have removed the red link to Pavlovsk in the Sakha Republic, because the entry fails WP:DABRL. If you never heard of DABRL before today, I wholeheartedly recommend you get acquainted with it because you are going to run into it sooner or later, and it might be quite a shock—it is a prime example of a guideline created to address a real problem, but which in turn creates more problems than it solves. With Pavlovsk, only one link is at stake, but for many other places the dual disambig/set index set up is the only way to collect a list of places by the same name on one page without having to create stubby abominations like this or this. And if you think adding references to such red links on dab pages would have helped anything, it would have only led to removing the link sooner, because the dab pages aren't supposed to have references. Ever.

If this situation makes you indignant (which I hope it does), please by all means comment on the talk page of either WP:MOSDAB or the disambig project. I myself sunk numerous hours just trying to amend DABRL, and I am not setting my foot in that neck of the woods again because I've had enough. If you succeed in making the disambig guidelines more reasonable, I promise to personally drown you in a sea of barnstars. So there.

On the second item (the Census refs), you have a good point. However, those templates were one of those things where a job needed to be done, and no one around cared about the solution. Between making a quick template right away and waiting three years for an interested critic like you to appear with a better solution, the first option somehow seemed more productive :) Anyway, to answer your question, yes, I am fully aware of the problems with this template, although I should add that it helped solve more problems than it created—the rate with which random numbers were passed as "official Census results" went down drastically in the past few years, the rate where real numbers taken from the linked source were added to other articles went up considerably, and in the past three years I can recall only one case where an editor was confused specifically about figuring out where the tag comes from. This of course doesn't mean there is nothing to improve, but I would have preferred a concrete solution from you rather than a generic critique. If you are interested, my plans for this template are as follows: it will be expanded once the 2010 Census results are available, a switch allowing the display of the Census data in either short or long form will be added (the short form being what it is now, and the long form being a sentence format such as "The population was XXX,XXX in the 2010 Census{ref}, which is up/down from YYY,YYY recorded by the 2002 Census.{ref}") Finally, the template should be designed for substitution, not for straight usage. If this sounds as a solution to you and if you want to start on implementing any of this yourself, I'd be only too happy to share the burden. If not, I'll take care of it at a latter date.

As for mentioning the reference name in the documentation—good catch, thank you. I for some reason was sure it's already there, but apparently not. I'll have that fixed. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 15:26 (UTC)

Re: 2nd point - what I would do is create copies of current templates with the standard <ref>{{template}}</ref> coding, and whenever you change the articles, replace those templates with the new ones. This is merely a blunder which should be fixed, with minimum pain (Trust me this is a standard use of ref templates. Further, I saw articles with no references suddenly re-citing some of your invisible <ref name=xxx/> ref, which is definitely not user friendly). As to the new census data - I see no reason citing both 2002 and 2010 and showing "trends" - most people are interest in what is now. Trends are off course important, but are to be presented by tables/graphs/text with longer statistics - 8 years is too short and can lead to wrong conclusions; whereas most stats are smooth, some have/had spikes. Materialscientist (talk) 00:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Re: 1st point. Why not swapping Pavlovsk (inhabited locality) and Pavlovsk? (I believe arguments that dab should be the primary page can be beaten in this and such cases, if arise) Materialscientist (talk) 00:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

On the first point, why not; although I don't think the distinction in this case is that important to bother. If someone wants to switch them, s/he won't be getting any argument from me.

On the second point, using <ref>{{template}}</ref> is a possible solution, but it requires establishing "yet another template" that needs to be watched, updated, and maintained. Tweaking the existing templates to work with substitution is, in my opinion, a better way to go about it, and takes care of the problem of the invisible refs just as efficiently, while still being more convenient to use.

With your assessment of the trends between censuses I disagree, but it should be noted that it was never the intent to use this template to replace a fully developed demographics section. It was intended as a quick tool to add referenced population data to short, stubby articles (which we still have plenty of). Ideally, if an article already has a Demographics section, this template should not be used in that article at all. As a quick tool, it works just fine—and it's better to show a trend between the censuses than not to have anything at all, wouldn't you agree? Of course, the trends between 2002 and 2010 aren't nearly as telling or useful or interesting as the differences between 1989 and 2002, so your argument has that going for it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2011; 15:15 (UTC)

One important thing I suspect you have not even noticed is that the {{ru-census}} template is also integrated into the inhabited locality infobox. Before you think "say whaaa" :), I fully realize this approach is inviting more problems that it solves. It's another one of those ideas which seemed good at the time but turned out to be not so much. Anyway, here's the solution. Please note it is more of a stopgap measure than an actual solution, but it does break the integration and solves the invisible ref problem at the same time. I'll continue working on this further, of course.

I created {{ru-pop-ref}} today, which is basically a collection of the four documents which are most often used to ref the population data (and more documents can be added, of course). The template can be included between the "ref" tags. Also, the infobox template has a parameter called "pop_2002census_ref", which is there to be able to override the 2002 Census reference the template otherwise inserts by default (it was intended for smaller places not listed in that document, but for which Census data is available elsewhere). So, when editing a page with a Russian inhabited locality infobox, you can set "pop_2002census_ref" as follows:

|pop_2002census_ref=<ref name="PopCensus">{{ru-pop-ref|2002Census}}</ref>

which will solve the invisible ref problem (see a usage example in the Izhevsk article). This, of course, is only a solution for pages with an infobox, but with the "ru-pop-ref" template you can expand the {{ru-census}} instances as well. For example, something like

{{ru-census|p2002=1,000|p1989=5,000}}

can be replaced with

1,000 ([[Russian Census (2002)|2002 Census]]);<ref name="PopCensus">{{ru-pop-ref|2002Census}}</ref> 5,000 ([[Soviet Census (1989)|1989 Census]]).<ref name="1989Census">{{ru-pop-ref|1989Census}}</ref>

Like I said, it's by no means a final solution, but it should address your immediate concerns. Please let me know if you have further comments or suggestions.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 23, 2011; 17:17 (UTC)

Just as an FYI, I asked Rich Farmbrough to do an automated run to explicitly add the ref for the 2002 Census figures to all infoboxes which have it and he was kind enough to oblige. The articles which have infoboxes no longer suffer from the "invisible ref" syndrome, and the articles without the infoboxes but with a census template can be corrected as we encounter and edit them. Does this address your concerns? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 13:59 (UTC)

listas

Ok you crazy, hedgehog loving Russian, we meet again..... (queue frightening, sinister music).
I came across a talk page where you went crazy with listas.

1. In a banner containing a listas, all other banners below it (not above) will inherit said listas.
2. If a biography banner contains a listas, all other banners on the page will inherit said listas. Biography banners should be first anyway, thus also satisfying #1.
3. If a banner contains a listas, it will not inherit the value from #1 or #2

Boy, that was enjoyable making fun of a mistake you made for a change. Now I must go back making my own mistakes.Bgwhite (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, ha-ha-ha (queuing the same frightening, sinister music), it was not so much by mistake as it was by choice. I know that the rest of the banners would inherit the listas of the first one, but since people delete, add, and move around the banners all the time, it often results in a good number of screw-ups which later need to be cleaned up, again and again (OK, maybe not so much in the bio articles, where WPBIO comes first, but still). Specifying listas in all the banners prevents this problem from ever occurring, which I've always presumed to be a good thing, no? Does my "overlistassing" create any problems I am not aware of? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 20:53 (UTC)

Nope, it doesn't cause any other problems that I am aware of.

I think I misunderstood my self in #2. If a listas is in a biography banner, all other banners, no matter where on the page, will inherit bio's listas. So, if you put a listas in a bio banner. I then come along and add a banner before and after the bio banner (sounds fun, I think I'll do that on your pages). Those added banners will inherit bio's listas.

Just wanted to mention it in the first place so you don't have to do anymore typing than you should. Bgwhite (talk) 21:06, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I normally copy-paste them, which ensures that I don't screw them up, so typing-wise it doesn't really matter to me. Thanks for being vigilant though! Not many people these days would bother to point out something minor like that. See you on the pages I assess :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 21:14 (UTC)

Oops, would have helped if I mentioned the page so you can go back and fix my mistakes. It is Talk:Yekaterina Chemberdzhi— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bgwhite (talk • contribs)

Nah, yours is not a mistake either, it's just a different approach. I don't mind either way.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 22:11 (UTC)

Kryukov

Простите, а зачем так исправили? Шаблон lang|ru — вообще не шаблон, он совсем не виден в статье. В кавычки брать слово "крюк" тоже ни к чему — в русском тексте при переключении алфавитов кавычки обычно не ставятся, вот и здесь так же. The Other Saluton (talk) 21:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Дык он и не должен быть виден — он нужен только для метаданных и указывает, что текст написан на русском языке (а не, скажем, на болгарском или украинском). Очень полезно для поисковых двигателей и прочих систем автоматизации, работающих с текстом статей. А кавычки это и вовсе простая грамматика (английская, не русская), и то, на каком языке написан термин, роли в этом не играет. Можно, с точки зрения грамматики, с таким же успехом использовать вместо кавычек курсивное начертание, но тогда во-первых пропадает контраст с транслитерацией, а во-вторых курсивное начертание текста не на латинице специфически осуждается правилами Википедии.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2011; 21:21 (UTC)

Star City

I guess the reason I've been encountering you a lot lately is because I started editing articles to do with Russia (via the Soviet space program), and you seem to be the top contributor at WikiProject Russia. By the way, have you read Sue's recent message?

I'm not sure what the big deal with Star City is, and why it's causing such big discussions.. but I think it might be related to the Korolev / Korolyov issue we're also discussing. That is, I believe there should be a preference to use usual English names, while you appear to have a preference for the default romanization. It seems to me, that "Star City" is the English name for this region - whether incorporated or not. Notice on other language Wikipedias, including the Russian Wikipedia, they don't have two articles on the area.. after all, the Russian names are the same. Maybe there's a dispute here on English Wikipedia because the English name (the one originally used by NASA) is different from the default transliteration (just like Korolev / Korolyov).

Basically, I think the definition of "conventional English name" in WP:RUS isn't quite compatible with the usage in WP:COMMONNAME. In particular, WP:COMMONNAME doesn't require the sources to be "dictionaries". But WP:RUS does require the sources to be dictionaries, and I believe this difference is causing problems. WP:RUS is not a key Policy or Guideline (maybe it's more like a WikiProject advice page, that achieved wide support in 2007); as such it should elaborate on the key policies, not change them. I think the "dictionary" requirement should be reworded, to allow for situations where the place name doesn't occur in a dictionary, but can still has a conventional English name.

I'm generally not a fan of lengthy discussions over relatively insignificant issues, like the organization of "Star City" articles, or what Korolyov (city) is named (I don't actually care very much). One of the reasons I've engaged in discussions with you, is because you are an experienced editor, who apparently oversees a huge number of Russian-related articles. I'd like to change your mind regarding WP:RUS - that we shouldn't be insisting on "dictionaries". Mlm42 (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I am getting tired of writing long messages no one seems to ever read (judging by the fact that I keep answering the same, only slightly re-worded questions again and again and again and again, and did I mention "again"?), so I'll try to keep it brief this time (which for me, admittedly, is a challenge).

1. I read Sue's message. I understand the problems she is pointing out and the reasons behind those problems. I also try to do my best to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
2. Yes, I watch a lot of Russia-related pages, which shouldn't be surprising, as that's the topic I've been working on for seven years now. Watching this page is a part of my daily routine. I try to act on as many items on that list as I can, and the ones you edit/nominate usually qualify. That we often bump into one another has everything to do with that and nothing to do with my personal view of you (which is mostly favorable anyway, certain attitudes notwithstanding).
3. The deal with Star City is not at all "big". It is, however, a "deal", and I do what I can to provide the necessary explanations. The issue with Korolyov/Korolev is unrelated to this, although it is similar.
4. What you and I "believe" matters very little. What matters is the preferences the community has approved. Those disagreeing with the community-approved guidelines always have an option of filing an amendment proposal. We could argue about the finer points of the guidelines until cows come home, but unless you are going to file an amendment request (something which you previously said you are not willing to do), we are both just wasting time. You need to decide whether you care about this enough to start working on the text of the amendment proposal and then submit it for community's consideration, or whether you indeed don't care about this all that much and just let it remain as is. I'm fine with either choice, and of course will participate in the discussion should you pursue the first option—that, unlike privately mulling over things between just the two of us, would be productive.

Please don't take the spartan manner in which my comments above are written as rude or dismissive. I am only trying to be concise (although looking at the length of the response, I have failed miserably).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2011; 19:29 (UTC)

P.S. On your point that WP:RUS is not compatible with WP:COMMONNAME, that is not so. The WP:UE section of WP:COMMONNAME specifically deals with foreign names and anglicization and for further details refers editors to the Wikipedia:Romanization page, where WP:RUS is listed as the guideline for Russian. The guidelines are thus fully integrated.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2011; 19:44 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel I don't read your messages; I do, so you don't have to repeat yourself. Your lengthy responses may partially be because you respond to points that don't warrant a response? The main point of my message was regarding the word "dictionary", and how WP:COMMONNAME does not require the sources to be dictionaries. And I'm perfectly willing to request an amendment to the guideline; I previously thought IAR would be enough.. but now I'm thinking it might be better to change the wording so this doesn't happen in the future. I've already brought it up at the village pump to get other editors' opinions. Mlm42 (talk) 20:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying the part on lengthy responses; I appreciate it.

As for WP:COMMONNAME, it does not require the sources to be dictionaries because it is a general overview of all the topic- or country-specific naming guidelines, and for most of those mandating that the source must be a dictionary and only a dictionary will not work. Heck, even within WP:RUS dictionaries are only mentioned for the toponym subset! A general guideline like COMMONNAME can't possibly take care of all the idiosyncrasies of dealing with foreign names of various origins, which is why it delegates that job to the sub-guidelines. Note how different, contradictory, and incompatible the individual guidelines listed on the WP:Romanization page are—there can't possibly one way in which they can all be reconciled into one generic guideline that works for all cases, and if you look at them closely, you will find at least one discrepancy from the general overview WP:COMMONNAME gives. Most of those discrepancies will be by design, too. As long as the practices are consistent within one topical area (in this case, romanization of Russian toponyms), thing are just fine.

I will comment at the village pump as well; thanks for the link.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2011; 20:16 (UTC)

Minkovo

ell if there are multiple names in a district or oblast you don't need to link all of the hierarchy divisions in the actual name. xxx, xxxx District etc will do... Otherwise the titles would start to get very long!! P.S. why haven't you asked the Russian map maker to make those desired maps? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:47, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

What you failed to notice is that both entries referred to places in the same district of the same oblast. Using the selsoviet name inside the title in addition to the district/oblast is the only way to address this properly, and it's what our guidelines recommend, too. Yes, the name will be quite long, but creating the network of redirects/disambigs/set indices addresses that. Titling an article "Minkovo, Bereznikovsky Selsoviet" makes it very difficult to do such incorporation, and the name at the same time still remains ambiguous (there are at least four selsoviets by this name in Russia, two of which are in Vologda Oblast—how is the reader to know s/he landed in the article they needed?). Anyway, this is moot now. The other place turned out to be called "Minkino", not "Minkovo", so I made the appropriate corrections.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 15, 2011; 18:54 (UTC)

P.S. Hit me on the head. Will do so now.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 15, 2011; 18:54 (UTC)

I didn't fail to notice anything. You had two Selsoviets in the same district previously. xxx, xxx Selsoviet will do, you don't need to list districts and federal subject in the article dabbing...♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I do need to (and you do, too), because that's how all other articles on places in Russia are titled, and that's what the guideline tells us to do. "Minkovo, Bereznikovsky Selsoviet" is one of the worst titles one could come up with—it's ambiguous, emphasizes an obscure administrative unit type at the expense of mentioning what readers will actually look under (i.e., oblast or district), and is impossible to incorporate cleanly into the overall structure. It's like moving Washington Township, Warren County, New Jersey to "Washington Township, Warren County" (only even worse)—there are numerous Washingtons and numerous Warren Counties. The county designation is meaningless without mentioning the state, and the selsoviet designation is equally meaningless without mentioning both the district and the federal subject.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 15, 2011; 19:09 (UTC)

We bite back

Can I remind you of the following: Wikipedia:Do_not_bite_the_newcomers

And in particular the following points, since you are an experienced user and I am not:

Recognize and praise the best work: work that is detailed, factual, well-informed, and well-referenced

Example:

No example from you.

Attract and honor good people who know a lot and can write about it well

Example:

No example from you.

Give praise when due. Everybody likes to feel appreciated, especially in an environment that often requires compromise. Drop a friendly note on users' talk pages:

Example by Mlm42: "By the way, I just wanted to say again, great work on the Vladimir Komarov article - it's much appreciated! Many of the cosmonaut / astronaut articles are in need of some serious improvement; and the books Burgess and Hall, and Hall and Shayler are great resources!"

Terms like "racist", "sexist", or even "poorly written" make people defensive. This makes it hard to discuss articles productively. If you must criticize, do it politely and constructively.

Example:

"Seems too trivial to warrant a mention as it bears no significant meaning."

• Trivial is a very negative term. Even after I explained the point and was supported by another editor, you did not accept it with good grace. Rather, you used sarcasm and indirect criticism:

(but I guess I gotta be careful with making such remarks, lest you accuse me of disparaging the intellectual level of the Australian academia and glorifying the erudition of the Russian peasants like me)

• This is a highly insulting statement.

"I won't be jumping in until I get assurances from Aakheperure that he's not going to see my edits as another insult to his intelligence. Better have incorrect information (not that it makes much difference in this case) than lose another editor, eh?"

• If you wrote your suggestions in a constructive manner, I would not interpret them as insulting. Don't threaten not to participate, phrase your suggestions in a more positive and less patronising manner so that you are encouraging people to contribute instead of appearing to devalue their efforts. You invited my input on the Star City page then disputed it. If you don't want my opinion, then please don't ask for it, in the same way I did not ask for yours.

Example by Mlm42: "Burgess and Hall, can use phrases like "Belyayev was affectionately known as Pasha", but at Wikipedia we should make it more neutral, so the word affectionately isn't really appropriate. I rewrote this to: "Belyayev was known as Pasha to his family.""

Avoid loaded terms:

"I know I am probably not the person you would like to see after we got to a wrong start in another place, but I thought I might be helpful here for a change :)"

• Being helpful marks a change in behaviour for you? Are you acknowledging that by driving me away from the Star City page that you were being unhelpful?

Avoid the use of the imperative voice

Example: "see if I care!"

• That phrase is highly confrontational, as is this:

"Whatever."

• Neither of these phrases should not be used after conceding a point because it calls into question the voracity of the concession.

Avoid indirect criticism

Example:

"Better have incorrect information (not that it makes much difference in this case) than lose another editor, eh?"

• You have found 1 "error" that I made in 1 article, when I used a reputable source in good faith as was found by another editor, but this statement implies that my articles contain incorrect information. By doing this you devalue my contributions and encourage me to leave, because you show no faith in my ability and do not acknowledge that my contributions are of a good quality. If it didn't make much difference, why did you make such a huge issue of it?

Further indirect criticism:

Example: "I'm always happy to explain my position, but explaining it over and over again gets really tiresome after a while, especially when it's done on the same page."

• I did not accept your argument and made it clear although you claimed I had not given reasons:

"I do not think that Zvezdny gorodok warrants a separate article: if it is the same place that has simply had the nickname officially adopted then it is still the same place, in which case this should be added as a section that notes the evolution of the site. If it is an entirely new entity with nothing to do with the GCTC then I doubt it meets notability standards." Aakheperure

• Simply restating your argument that I (and another editor) disagreed with over and over does not make your argument more valid and this statement suggests that we are inferior because we don't share your point of view.

"Did you get a chance to read what I wrote above about the two being different concepts not mixing well? Why do you think this situation is any different?"

• I did read your argument, and I disagreed with it, for the reasons I had already stated above. Asking me to read it again is a criticism. Instead of wasting time reiterating an argument you are not prepared to accept, I applied etiquette and walked away from this discussion after restating my considered position, while you continued to argue about it and nothing was contributed to the article.

Mlm42 reminded me to assume good faith, which I tried, but I find that the indirect criticism, sarcasm, confrontational language and inability to accept consensus makes it impossible for me as a newcomer to do so. Since I cannot recall you ever making a positive statement about my work, I have come to consider your general tone as negative. I have already the target of vandalism by a number of sockpuppets, and I'm afraid my tolerance for unfriendly behaviour on Wikipedia has now been exhausted.

Mlm42 reminded you not to be bitey.

Other suggestions:

Don't troll user/talk pages with lengthy dissertations that provide few or no visual cues to assist readers (especially those who are vision impaired like myself). Deal with 1 idea per paragraph.

You have written more on talk pages about my article than what is contained in the article itself. This seems disproportionate to me and discouraged me from improving it and others. Example: Sergei Korolev.

Details of critical interest to you may be of less significance to the articles of others. The prime purpose of the Pavel Belyayev article is to document the achievements of a pilot cosmonaut; not an examine the locations of Russian villages, please maintain a sense of perspective. It has taken me several considered hours to compose this post, time which could have been spent on writing an article.

Was I rude to you? Possibly. Could I have phrased my response better? Probably. But then, I am new, I am just learning.

If you have forgotten not to bite the newcomers, perhaps being bitten back will help you to remember.

Be kind to new people or we will keep leaving. Try to make me the last editor you drive away. Thanks. Aakheperure (talk) 10:22, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Aakheperure! While I am a little (well, frankly, more than a little) surprised by the sheer amount of personal negativism you've read into my individual comments, I will readily admit that overall you do have a point here. My last few weeks weren't all that swell (mostly for off-wiki reasons), and looking back, I can see that it shows here on-wiki as well. Having a bad time, of course, is never an excuse to bypass common courtesy or to make acidic remarks, so I do sincerely apologize for the comments which you found hurtful. Please, however, consider that my comments are more an indication of being passionate about Wikipedia overall and about the geography of Russia in particular than of a general ill will towards the newcomers, and that I tend to pay great attention to detail and accuracy when it comes to the topics I am involved with. Sometimes too great of attention, it so seems, and at the expense of praise which the work you've done so far undoubtedly deserves. I hope this is something you can understand, if not forgive.

In conclusion, as far as the specific points you raised above, if you want me to respond to any of those individually (rather than to acknowledge them in bulk), please let me know; I'll be happy to oblige. And, as the Irish say (and if they don't, they should)—let each of our next encounters be more joyous than the ones that preceded them.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 13:03 (UTC)

On a related note, I find this to be an example of the real biting of newcomers. While it all may strictly follow the guidelines, I think that most users in such situation would never return to editing again, which is a pity, since the started articles seem to pass the notability threshold in principle. GreyHood ^Talk 15:05, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Re:Bot instruments

Ah, so we'll have to wait... By the way, I'm in the midst of reassessing WikiProject Russian History articles with WP:RUSSIA tag and "hist=yes". It will take a pair of days to finish, and better postpone the installation of PP list until Monday. GreyHood ^Talk 20:14, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Gaa, I forgot to tell you that I tweaked the "Russian history" banner so it categorizes all those articles under the history taskforce automatically. There's a server lag issue, but eventually they'll flow to the taskforce cat automatically. We should definitely be changing those banners to proper "WikiProject Russia" when we stumble upon them, but I don't think we need to hunt them down specifically. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 20:21 (UTC)

No problem, I've noticed your tweaks, it's just that Russian History articles usually are not properly assessed with class and importance parameters. But if you think that won't hinder the PP list making, there is no need to wait, possibly. GreyHood ^Talk 20:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't hinder it. Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Popular pages, for example, currently includes a completely unassessed article under #1499, and its being unassessed did not prevent it from being included anyway. Taskforces aren't any different. There is another problem, however (not sure if you've seen it yet).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 20:48 (UTC)

Hm, so we need to wait for Mr.Z-man's answer. By the way, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Russian and Soviet military history task force/Popular pages has only class and no importance rating. Better have importance, of course, but it is not really important :) Perhaps the problem could be solved by making the required class-related categories only. GreyHood ^Talk 21:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The PP request form does not ask for an importance cat (the importance listed on the results page is probably simply poached from the banner during compilation), but it does specifically ask for a quality assessment cat (and for some reason, only the one for B-Class). The quality cats can be populated automatically via the assessment banner by tweaking a few parameters, but it is only possible for the first five taskforces, not for those added via the hook. I was hoping it would be possible to submit a request manually—but that'll only work if the bot can create cat intersections.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 21:05 (UTC)

In the worst case, even lists of page views without any class or importance ratings would do. GreyHood ^Talk 21:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, yeah, I agree. Let's see what the response is going to be. I'm afraid we are unlikely to be able make it in time for the next run, though :( Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 21:12 (UTC)

Hm, if we look at WP:MILHIST we see it works with multiple task forces, so there definitely should be some way to fix everything. GreyHood ^Talk 21:19, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

MILHIST's banner is custom-coded. Our is built on the standard foundation, which doesn't allow for some bells and whistles.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2011; 21:21 (UTC)

OK, let's wait and see what could be done. GreyHood ^Talk 21:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Just so you know, it seems I've reassessed all WikiProject Russian History articles. Also, I see you have got Mr.Z-man's answer. What are we going to do? GreyHood ^Talk 16:06, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I am going to go home, open a half-liter bottle of you-know-what, and contemplate the problem very intensely :)

Seriously, though, it looks that if we want PP lists for every taskforce (and not just the first five), the assessment banner will need to be re-designed, probably in the image of what MILHIST uses. I'm going to look into that and see if it's feasible. In the meanwhile, if you have any other ideas, I will of course will gladly hear them out.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 21, 2011; 16:09 (UTC)

I liked the first idea of yours ;) Seriously, I agree that the assessment banner will need to be re-designed, if there is no other way to have all instruments. What I can suggest right now, is that if we don't manage to fix the banner until the end of March, we could make B-class category for top five task forces by number of assessed articles and launch 5 respective PP lists. Then, by the beginning of May we could make request to change the settings. GreyHood ^Talk 16:18, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I was actually hoping there would be an easier way of automatically creating the taskforce-specific quality cats based on the general quality assessment already in the banner. That still would require tweaking the banner, but hopefully it wouldn't be so drastic as a complete re-write. Having a completely custom banner allows for some neat additional and otherwise unavailable features, but with a custom banner there are many more people capable of tweaking and maintaining the infrastructure.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 21, 2011; 16:30 (UTC)

If there are simplier ways, I'm all for it. Right now, I should note, the number of people which could edit the banner is restricted more by its protected status, than by it's complexity ;) GreyHood ^Talk 16:54, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, there's always {{edit protected}}, if you are up for it :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 21, 2011; 17:09 (UTC)

OK, check this out (and, incidentally, this :)). If you can help me set up the same category structure for the rest of the taskforces, I'd very much appreciate it. The cats are being populated automatically, but they still need to be created so they don't show up as red links. After the cats are done, the PP requests for the rest of the taskforces can be submitted. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 21, 2011; 20:43 (UTC)

Do you mean we can set up ALL of the task force PP lists? If so, that's great! I'll help with categories, of course. GreyHood ^Talk 20:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Yup, that's exactly what I mean :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 21, 2011; 20:56 (UTC)

I've made categories for the first 5 task forces. Unfortunately, there are no red links for the rest... Also, I've made two excessive categories - it is better to delete them: Category:A-Class Russia (sports and games) articles and Category:Portal-Class Russia (sports and games) articles. GreyHood ^Talk 21:27, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the banner will only show you the links for the first five. It doesn't matter, though—the rest of the cats are still supported and populated. See, for example, Category:Stub-Class Russia (physical geography) articles. The names of the cats after XXX-Class can be found in the banner code under TF_#_ASSESSMENT_CAT (where # is the number from 1 to 10).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 21, 2011; 23:20 (UTC)

OK, I'll return for that task tomorrow. GreyHood ^Talk 23:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Hello again! I've resumed the work on the categories, and there is one more page mistakenly created: Category-Class Russia (demographics and ethnography) articles. GreyHood ^Talk 17:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the fixes. Hope I'll finish the categories soon. As far as I understand, we don't need the categories for the Military task force. GreyHood ^Talk 18:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. Thank you for helping out! As for the military taskforce, you are right, the cats for those are not needed, since they would be a duplicate of WP:MILHIST's infrastructure. Also, I've created the cats for mass media and demo&ethno. If you are not done with the rest of the cats today, I should be able to finish this task tomorrow.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 22, 2011; 18:46 (UTC)

Seems I've found a quick way of creating categories and will finish the task myself, even though I am a bit sleepy today. But please remove an extra space from "(science and education )" in the WP:RUSSIA template. GreyHood ^Talk 19:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. Corrected.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 22, 2011; 20:10 (UTC)

I've finished with categories, but making submissions is a bit too much for me today, and likely I'll be rather busy tomorrow. So please see to that if you have time. Also, since we have created the class-categories, I think it makes sense to provide bot-generated statistics tables for the task forces, like the one we already have in the Military task force. GreyHood ^Talk 22:45, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again for helping out with this—much appreciated! I already submitted most of the PP requests yesterday and have just finished submitting the remaining two. Hopefully they'll make it by next month—I see the pending queue still has some entries from March 12. I'll also look into setting up the stats tables. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 23, 2011; 13:14 (UTC)

Another hoax?

Arthur Gregorovitch. Not as blatant as the last one we discussed, but looks hoaxy. GreyHood ^Talk 15:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Someone's got quite a talent for writing fiction! Too bad they choose to play with Wikipedia instead of channeling it towards something more productive. Yes, this certainly looks hoaxy. Just for kicks, I tried searching for some sources, and of course there is nothing in either English or Russian. On the very remote chance this is legit, I have not speedied it as a hoax, but labeled it as a potential hoax and an unsourced BLP.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 18, 2011; 16:19 (UTC)

Apology Accepted

Thank you. Aakheperure (talk) 07:30, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Dmitry Smirnov

I do not understand why you changed this page. It would be good to know your reasons.

Please note that I never use the spelling Dmitry for my name, but prefer to use Dmitri instead. So I do not like this spelling in the title of the article Dmitry Smirnov (composer). Is it possible to change this? My full name is Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov, but because there are so many people with the same name I normally sign my works Dmitri N. Smirnov. I would prefer to rename this article to Dmitri N. Smirnov or to make such a redirection link to this article. Dmitrismirnov (talk) 10:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Another problem: There are quite a few composers in Russia having the same name Dmitry Smirnov or Dmitri Smirnov (at least 3 or 4). So, this is why I am not satisfied with the title of the article Dmitry Smirnov (composer) and would prefer to rename it to Dmitri N. Smirnov. What you would suggest? Dmitrismirnov (talk) 17:51, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Dmitri! Thank you for your inquiry and welcome to Wikipedia! You have good points, and it is also good to know that you are the person about whom the article is about.

The changes I made were strictly procedural. Dmitry Smirnov itself is a disambiguation page, the sole purpose of which is to provide links to articles which readers can reasonably be expected to search under "Dmitry Smirnov". The spelling of such a disambiguation page's title is chosen in accordance with our romanization of Russian guidelines, and that choice is independent of the spellings of the actual articles listed on the disambiguation page. Also, we have certain rules as to how the disambiguation pages should be formatted, which is why I formatted the entry about you the way I did. I'll be happy to explain this further, if you like.

Regarding the actual article about you, the spelling choice depends on what is actually used in English. Currently the article has a number of links to pages in English all of which use "Dmitri", and "Dmitri" is the spelling you yourself prefer. That is quite sufficient for our purposes, and this is also something I missed when making my edits earlier today, which is why I have just moved the page to Dmitri Smirnov (composer). As for the "composer" part, while there may be other composers by this exact same name, we currently don't have articles about any of them (and not all of them may even be notable enough to have an article written about them). If that ever changes, the article about you will most certainly be moved to a form using your patronymic, but we don't do such moves preemptively. I hope this resolves the matter. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any further concerns—I'll be happy to assist!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 22, 2011; 18:17 (UTC)

Andrianov

Oh, well, I've downgraded the rating a bit more. I agree that the assessment criteria is an important thing that probably needs more discussion. Usually I look whether the topic is central in some way, whether it is likely to be linked from many other articles in the project, and to provide links to many other articles. Andrianov doesn't fulfill those criteria, so I've indeed made mistakes with my recent assessments, thank you for correcting me... I'm really rather tired and weary in the last two days... But still the scale of his achievements is high, and he is likely to be interlinked with many other sports-related articles, both those within WP:RUSSIA and from other projects, so I've set importance to "mid". GreyHood ^Talk 21:33, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that your assessment in error. I just wanted to point out that we seem to have different approaches to assessment, and since the two of us are responsible for most of them, it'd be nice if we approached the task consistently. What shape that consistency will take depends, of course, on where we converge. As for myself, I am trying to roughly follow these guidlines. At any rate, this is not urgent. Have some rest; we need you to be lively and energetic :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2011; 02:50 (UTC)

We do have fairly good guidelines for articles classes, but the guidelines for importance are a bit too general and vague.. Also, it is an interesting question, how does the general importance assessment for WP:RUSSIA comply with what would have been assessment for its task forces. For example, if we had a specific assessment for our Sports task force, we certainly should have assessed Andrianov as Top-Importance or High-Importance article. But that seems too much for the general position in WP:RUSSIA. I think, that we should avoid task-force specific assessment, as it is too much additional work, and not really important work at the present level of the project development. But I think also, that the articles which would have been Top-Importance or High-Importance on a task force scale, should receive no lower than Mid-Importance rating on general scale. GreyHood ^Talk 15:43, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects actually implement separate priority/importance ratings for their taskforces. I agree we are not there yet, so our importance rating is specific to the whole WikiProject (even though the taskforces at the moment inherit it). While I am not terribly against considering the articles in the frame of the taskforces they belong to, I think doing so will unnecessarily complicate the assessment process. You and me may get it, but if someone else starts helping us with the assessment task, this point will need to be made explicitly, because I'm not aware of any other WikiProjects which do it that way. Besides, if an article is in the scope of multiple taskforces, then the process becomes even more complicated, and the whole "importance" thing wasn't really that "important" to begin with!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2011; 15:50 (UTC)

I think that now we better just proceed with assessment, and when we finish with adding task force parameters to the current WP:RUSSIA articles, we may just look through the Category:Top-importance Russia articles and Category:High-importance Russia articles, pick up the most likely candidates to downgrade or upgrade, discuss it between us or on WP:RUSSIA talk page, and be happy with it. Then, on the basis of what would be left in those top categories, we may even write more detailed recommendations on importance assessment, if we like. GreyHood ^Talk 17:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. After all, the purpose of the assessments is not having a spotless hierarchy of ratings, but rather helping editors with planning of various content-centered activities. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2011; 17:55 (UTC)

Perm Krai

it's not duplication of main article. There are some changes with administrative division in recent years, that not shown it main article (several towns with its own jurisdiction became districts). May be here need to create more readable list? Brainwashinguser (talk) 21:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! Thanks for your comment and the contributions to the Perm Krai article. As for the list, however, you are not quite right. The list which you added and which I then removed was that of the municipal divisions, not of the administrative divisions. There are thirty-three administrative districts in Perm Krai (just as the administrative divisions of Perm Krai article states), yet there are forty-two municipal districts. Ideally, the main article needs to be re-written to cover both the administrative and municipal divisions (as this one does), but it all still needs to be in one place. Having the same list duplicated in two places is bad enough, but having a list of forty-two unspecified districts in the article about the krai and a list of thirty-three administrative districts in the article dedicated to the krai's administrative divisions doesn't exactly imbue our readers with confidence about the quality of the material, wouldn't you agree? :)

For now, I added a short summary to the Perm Krai article. Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns, and welcome to Wikipedia!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 13:37 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I'll try to consider my mistakes. But i think, that there are also may be some problems with my English skills, may be some grammatic or style mistakes. Can u help me with it too? Brainwashinguser (talk) 19:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I sure am going to try, but you are just too prolific to catch up :) I do add the pages that need further copyediting to my to-do list, and, of course, there are other people who may correct these articles before I get to them. At any rate, if you have any specific questions, I'll be happy to help. Feel free to write to me in Russian if that's easier for you. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 19:40 (UTC)

What do u think about renaming of article 'Chernushka, Chernushinsky District, Perm Krai' to 'Chernushka, Perm Krai'? it's shorter and more convenient. It seems there are only 2 settlements in Perm Krai with this name, one of them is village under Chusovoy jurisdiction less significant than town. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainwashinguser (talk • contribs) 19:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

As long as the articles are properly incorporated into the navigational structure (which they are), it doesn't really matter how long the title is, especially for a low-profile place like this. The naming itself is per this guideline. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 19:59 (UTC)

Yes, it's really doesn't matter with long of title. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainwashinguser (talk • contribs) 20:03, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Hello. It's me again. Could you tell me why u redirect my article "Krasnokamsky District (Perm Krai)" to "Krasnokamsk". Krasnokamsk sure is center of this municipal district bu it's not the same thing. District's area is 957 sq. km, and there are many other settlements except Krasnokamsk. Why there couldn't be separate article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brainwashinguser (talk • contribs) 08:43, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The reason for that is because the articles in the English Wikipedia are structured differently than in the Russian Wikipedia. In ru_wiki, the articles are primarily about the municipal divisions, while ours are primarily about the administrative divisions. We don't normally create an article about a municipal division unless there is no 1:1 match with an administrative division. Krasnokamsk in Perm Krai is not just an inhabited locality which is the administrative center of the municipal district; it is also a town of krai significance (which encompasses the town proper and the territories in its jurisdiction). The town of krai significance is a separate administrative unit, but since there isn't much we can say about it to warrant a separate article, that information is merged into the article about the town proper. And since the territory of the municipal district matches exactly the territory of the town of krai significance, the municipal division information should go into that article as well. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 28, 2011; 13:32 (UTC)

Tula, Russia

I wonder, whether we could move it to just Tula, while moving the current Tula to Tula (disambiguation). This seems to be the only major Russian city and a capital of a federal subject with such a name form. All the other entries in Tula are much less significant, except of the Tula, Hidalgo, which still has three times less coverage in other languages, and at least twice less viewership: [1] vs [2]. GreyHood ^Talk 00:04, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I thought this exact thought a couple years ago, but eventually decided against it. Half of viewership for the Mexican town compared to Russian Tula still amounts to quite a bit of traffic, and in my experience (which is more empiric than anything), if you ask an English speaker (in my case, Americans), what "Tula" is, most wouldn't know, but those who do would say that it's a place in Mexico. Maybe it's different for Britons, Australians, etc., but since Americans make up a good chunk of the English Wikipedia users, we should take note of such matters. This said, you are of course welcome to file a move request and see if it goes anywhere. I personally don't believe that the coverage for the Mexican town can be discarded in favor of Russian Tula so easily.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 13:48 (UTC)

Hm, I share your concerns of course, but still I think that the current state of affairs is not convenient for anyone and there is way to improve encyclopedia. If the proposal is implemented, nothing will change for worse for Tula, Hidalgo - it will remain with the same name (or could be moved to Tula de Allende), and will retain the current link to Tula (disambiguation) (which currently redirects to Tula). But with Tula we'll have simplification of the name, twice less mouse clicks for the larger part of viewers, and no more need to dab many thousands of links to the city. It's a net gain. GreyHood ^Talk 17:51, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's not only about the convenience; it's also about not giving undue weight to one of the ambiguous variants. At any rate, I think it should be an RM, not a unilateral move. I myself will abstain :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 18:05 (UTC)

Judging by the numbers of views it is clear where we do have a greater weight. But, OK, I'll return to a RM idea later, perhaps after expanding Tula, Russia article, so that the significance of the city would be more clear. Afterall, Tula has every sort of cool stuff: Tula Arms Plant, samovars, Tula gingerbread, Leo Tolstoy etc. etc., not to mention that it is a living city and a capital of a federal subject, while Tula, Hidalgo has just few ancient statues and crippled pyramids ;) GreyHood ^Talk 18:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Do you not like Mexicans or something? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 18:20 (UTC)

I like everyone, but it is a question of where the greater weight lies ;) Also, I like gingerbreads and shiny stuff :) GreyHood ^Talk 18:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I can't help you with the latter, but with the former the RM is the best way :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 25, 2011; 18:51 (UTC)

article

But it is necessary to use only one variant of English for writing articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxim11maxim (talk • contribs) 19:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but that variant is supposed to be the one which the first major contributor to the article had chosen.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 28, 2011; 19:04 (UTC)

Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University of Aviation, Missile and Aerospace Systems)

How about moving it to just Moscow Aviation Institute? GreyHood ^Talk 12:14, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for it, but I'd first leave a message to User:Ksaine who moved it to the longer version. However, s/he's not been editing since last November, so that is unlikely to do much good, but it's still common courtesy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 13:38 (UTC)

Message is left here. GreyHood ^Talk 13:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll move it in a couple days. Ping me if I forget. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 13:57 (UTC)

Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)

I think it also makes sense to move Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher) to Vladimir Solovyov. He is perhaps the most famous Russian philosopher, clearly has much more weight than other people with this name. GreyHood ^Talk 14:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I usually am hesitant to do such moves unilaterally unless it is very, very obvious (on the same level of recognition as the Sun). It's a good RM candidate, though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 15:01 (UTC)

I've filed a request at Talk:Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher). GreyHood ^Talk 15:28, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Russian federal subject infobox and time zones

It seems that Template:Infobox Russian federal subject2 isn't handling time zone designations very well, specifically on Irkutsk Oblast and Republic of Buryatia. Neither of these zones are on IRKT/IRKST since 27 March 2011; rather, they're using Krasnoyarsk Time (UTC+8) and the newly-named Buryatia Time (UTC+9), respectively. The template syntax involved is a bit too complex for me to dive into, but I saw you've made several of the more-recent edits to it. Is this something you could take a look at? Thanks. --Tim Parenti (talk) 19:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. If you could give me a list of which federal subjects fall into which time zone, and the appropriate sources, I will be happy to update the template. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 20:01 (UTC)

I was under the impression that time zones were generally coded into the templates as variables on a per-page basis, to make changes like this easier as they arose. Nevertheless, if you'd rather code it into the template directly, Time in Russia is a fairly extensive and well-sourced article. --Tim Parenti (talk) 20:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's easier to have all the time zones information in one place and make updates there rather than to hunt down every instance that needs to be changed or to commandeer a bot to do the job. Consider that the time zone information proliferates not only into the federal subject infoboxes, but also into the infoboxes for individual districts (of which there are over a thousand) and the infoboxes for individual inhabited localities (of which there are ~150,000, which is a lot even considering that most of them don't yet have articles). And there's always the issue with the crap people put into the infoboxes with per-page time zone variable—something no bot can catch and which requires hours of maintenance. Anyway, as for time in Russia, I can see the list but not the sources. Would you be able to add them, please?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 20:15 (UTC)

Also, shouldn't the zone abbreviations be corrected? They are currently still listed for standard/summer time. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 20:21 (UTC)

Good point; hadn't thought about that complexity. It's a bit of a work-in-progress with this week's time zone reform; thanks for pointing out the inconsistency. The main source for the information on Time in Russia is the tz database and its mailing list. It wasn't until today that Buryatia Time even had a name, official or otherwise. Seeing that there's still potential for further change, an easy-to-update central source would be great. In the meantime, I'll work on beefing up the ref-sourcing over on Time in Russia. --Tim Parenti (talk) 20:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your work, too! I'll update the template tomorrow/after the standard/summer designations are corrected (whichever comes later ;)). For sources, the Russian government is planning to enact a new piece of legislation which will list all of the time zones in one place; for now I'll leave the template unsourced. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 20:40 (UTC)

Just let me know here when you've made your changes, and to what. Thanks. --Tim Parenti (talk) 20:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a date.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 30, 2011; 20:52 (UTC)

OK, done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 31, 2011; 15:28 (UTC)

Awesome. Now that I see where the data are actually stored, it seems fairly straightforward if further edits are needed. Thanks for your help. --Tim Parenti (talk) 17:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Just so you know: it seems Irkutsk Oblast didn't change it's time zone afterall. I've fixed Russian time zones articles and redirected Buryatia Time to Irkutsk Time. GreyHood ^Talk 16:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw your changes. The changes I was referring to above already take yours into account. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 31, 2011; 17:06 (UTC)

Thanks, that good. The situation with time zones reform in Russia is rather strange.. GreyHood ^Talk 17:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind it to be strange here in the US, too... See, I hate changing time back and forth... so I'm pretty envious you folks no longer have to do it :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 31, 2011; 17:18 (UTC)

article "Romanization of Russian"

You recently reverted some edits by 138.231.176.8 with the comment «(rv a good-faith addition--this one is not notable. There are dozens of "proposed improvements"; this page is for listing the system which have been widely adopted». Unfortunately this was only part of a long string of edits. The current version still contains the added column in the table and a partly constructed section about Olivier Roussel's reform. Do you have any way of easily undoing the other edits? There have been intervening edits. —Coroboy (talk) 23:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I missed the rest of it. There is no easy way to undo older edits when there are intervening edits in between—it has to be done manually. Fortunately, in this case the intervening edits seem to only have re-arranged a few spaces, so it shouldn't be a big deal. I reverted the article to the version of March 3. Thanks for catching this! Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 2, 2011; 00:41 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Zograf Peak FC Radian-Baikal Irkutsk Dobryanka FC Sibiryak Bratsk Ballinacurra, County Cork Lyubomir Kantonistov Adyghe Autonomous Oblast Yekaterinburg Time North Caucasus Krai Komi-Permyak Okrug Katun River Vladimir Shishelov Kirovsk, Leningrad Oblast Aleksandr Chikhradze Kumandins Politics of Monaco Terek River Khalaj people Zarechny, Penza Oblast

Cleanup Vehicle registration plates of Russia Kyrgyzstan Iraqi Turkmens Merge List of countries by native names Internment Foot Add Sources Turkey Selsoviet Basic law Wikify National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan Colin James & The Little Big Band: Christmas Edwardes College Expand Industrialisation Indigenous peoples of Siberia Ottawa

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 10:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Belushya Guba

Citation format

>Being around a while isn't really a criterion for being a reliable source. At the very least the citation needs to be changed to something like "National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency via Geographic.org". This way readers will at least be warned that the data are being accessed via an intermediary.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 4, 2011; 18:23 (UTC)<

- OK, done. Thanks for the suggestion.

By the way there are links to pages in http://www.Geographic.org from the websites of educational institutions, e.g., MIT, and libraries. Those people, do not like to place links to Wikipedia, as they do not consider it an authoritative source...Christinebenson58 (talk) 18:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Good point, but I am only re-telling you what WP:RS is telling me :) One can't even find the contact information easily on geographic.org, which makes it nearly impossible to ascertain the quality of their data (or how accurately the data were copied from elsewhere). In fact, it looks that the whole website is a subsidiary of a commercial company, the primary business of which is immigration. To me, at least, this doesn't seem especially reliable.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 4, 2011; 19:01 (UTC)

Citation Needed

I actually have a source for "Founded 1897", which I will locate, verify and add it when I get the chance.

By the way, thanks for streamlining the introductory section of the article. It looks good. Christinebenson58 (talk) 17:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Geographic.org

From what I see, geographic.org has been around longer than Wikipedia.org....Christinebenson58 (talk) 17:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Being around a while isn't really a criterion for being a reliable source. At the very least the citation needs to be changed to something like "National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency via Geographic.org". This way readers will at least be warned that the data are being accessed via an intermediary.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 4, 2011; 18:23 (UTC)

Reliability of Source

The primary source for the names, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, MD, USA, has a great website at http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmaviewer/ You can verify the names there, individually, but unfortunately you cannot place reference links to the individual pages of individual location names, because there are no individual pages for individual geographical names.

The geographic.org geographical names cite has individual pages for each geographical name, which we can cite for references. I always double-check the GNIA web site to make sure of the accuracy of the date, i.e., name, geographical coordinates, etc., before placing the reference in a Wikipedia article.Christinebenson58 (talk) 17:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

>>Please take your grievances to talk. Calling other editors' good-faith edits "vandalism" is not really a productive approach. What exactly in my edits do you object to? Do you know that Belushya Guba was granted urban-type settlement status in 2005, which is why it does not show in the 2002 Census results? What is the point of referencing the name to an unreliable webpage, when every other (reliable) source in the article already contains this name?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 4, 2011; 16:48 (UTC)<<

Anger does not resolve issues.

- You may have noticed that most of the content, including the map, the sections/heading, the image on the article and most of the references were placed by me. I actually researched this article thoroughly, I made the map myself, and the derivative image from NASA as well, and provided most of the text.

- The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, MD, USA, is an excellent, and reliable, source of geographical names.

- In English, we do not consider a village of 2000 as "URBAN TYPE SETTLEMENT", regardless of its statistical designation by the government of the Russian Federation or its constituent administrative divisions. You may want to note under "History" of "Economy" (by the way, I created those sections as well) that:

"Belushya Guba was granted urban-type settlement status in 2005"

That would be a more meaningful comment to those who visit Wikipedia. And when you do so, you may want to also cite a reliable Rreference.Christinebenson58 (talk) 17:04, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I don't question your work (which was a great improvement—thank you), nor am I particularly angry. I am, however, puzzled as to why you take my corrections of a few inaccuracies so close to heart. As for the points you raised:

1. The "citation needed" tag in the infobox is added automatically to all lines which don't have a source—it's not a poke :) If you can find a source for 1897, great, if not, someone else eventually will.
2. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is an excellent source, yes, but that's not what the article references. What is references is "geographic.org". I understand that you can't put a link to the real source, but it doesn't mean you should blindly trust the first copycat site that claims to faithfully reproduce their data. Just say where the data came from—it is perfectly OK to have a source which doesn't have a link.
3. "Urban-type settlement" in this case is an official designation. We actually have a whole article about it. A village is a different matter entirely (and Belushya Guba had never ever ever been officially called a "village"). The infobox is supposed to show the official designation of a place, not the English colloquialisms (those are only fine when you mention a place in passing, not when you write an article, which is supposed to cover everything, including the official status). In other words, you got it exactly backwards—the infobox is supposed to show the official designation (it has fields designed specifically with the official designations in mind), while in those parts of the article which don't deal with the administrative status you are free to refer to it by whichever colloquialism you think is more suitable. Take a look at how other articles are structured—it's exactly the same approach everywhere.
4. I did cite a reference for the 2005 change. I am thus a bit confused by your comment above (you may also want to cite a reliable reference)—what exactly are you questioning?

Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 4, 2011; 17:27 (UTC)

Response re: Name References

>By the way, the source reliability issues aside, why do you feel the need to reference the name of this place? It is something that's immediately obvious from every other source used in the article (which is why I originally removed it altogether), and our own guidelines only require referencing the information that is being (or is likely to be) challenged. Do you think someone will be challenging it and if so, on what premise? Just curious...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 4, 2011; 19:09 (UTC)<

Sometimes there are errors in names, both English and native. When I make a new article, or expand a stub, I like to place references on just about everything I put there.Christinebenson58 (talk) 04:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, the particular references in the geographical names of geographic.org include google maps, based on the geographical coordinates, which are useful in finding the correct location of places, and in making my own maps. For example, you can verify that the satellite shot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Novaya_Zemlya_testing_map.png in the Wikipedia article for Novaya Zemlya shows the wrong location for Rogachevo, just by looking at the satellite version of the google map for "Belush'ya Guba". If I get the chance, I will fix that image.Christinebenson58 (talk) 05:20, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky

Suggest moving just to Nikolay Zhukovsky. The other Nikolay Zhukovsky seems of pretty minor importance. Hope I'm not getting boring with those move requests.. GreyHood ^Talk 23:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

No, you aren't, but I'm afraid I'm getting boring with my replies :) (as you might have already guessed, I am firmly in the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC-haters camp).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 6, 2011; 00:28 (UTC)

OK. The problem is that WP:RM procedure might get really long in case of articles with less views, and I'm in the Red tape-haters camp %) GreyHood ^Talk 14:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, we aren't on any particular schedule :) Plus, process is important.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 6, 2011; 14:48 (UTC)

St Petersburg

I've created a new map for this, see Moika Palace. I'll try to add infoboxes to all palaces in the city. I tried to create a more central one and a central one for Moscow but server trpuble is the reason.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:09, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't edit the articles on palaces much, but the map is mighty impressive; thanks! Any particular reason for having the labels in Russian, though?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 11, 2011; 19:16 (UTC)

That's the way it is, I guess the OSM contributors to it were Russian. i will try to get one of the centre and central Moscow within the next few days.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:20, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

But is there any way you could change these labels to English, since you are working on the map anyway? I can help with translating them, if necessary. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 11, 2011; 19:25 (UTC)

Nope, unless you join OSM yourself and change them or care to blank out the Russian names on the map and overide with English using paint yourself... All I can do it crop out maps of what exists I'm afraid..♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Bummer. I wish I were more proficient with the graphics, but I ain't.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 11, 2011; 19:37 (UTC)

Oh dear it seems Winter Palace has a guardian. He reverted my infobox and map locator. It does need an infobox because it should summarize architectural facts. Perhaps if he reverts me again we can form a consensus at WP:russia, because, looking at the history of the page he's showing a classic example of WP:OWN. not going to get into an editing war, Giacomo seems to have a lot of support.. I was under the impression that the the majority are in favour of infoboxes rather than against... ♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:20, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Heh, no. Giano is a well-known infobox-hater :) For some reason, the more a person is knowledgeable about architecture, the more likely they would be in the infobox-bashing club. I never figured that one out. Must be something in the genes :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 12, 2011; 13:35 (UTC)

Astounding. Who'd have thought that a Russian article would get that kind of response... must be a first..♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:14, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Check your email.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Flag icon template

Hey there. So apparently you got credit in a long line of people as being the originator of the flag icon portrayal on our user pages (see mine if you're not sure what I am talking about). I decided to be creative and not just list the countries I visited, but also the states and cities inside of them and call those flags up. It worked with some of them, but not all. I was wondering if you had any suggestions. Thanks for your help. Arnabdas (talk) 20:35, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, as far as I remember, I stole it from another long line of people, so I hardly deserve much credit :) For me it's just a silly thing to put on my userpage; I'm not really interested in tracking my travels by states and cities. As for your attempt to list all the states/cities flags, some of them do not work because there is either no {{flagicon}} template for them in place, or a "country data" subtemplate is missing. The reason for that, in turn, is partially this guideline, which kind of discourages the creation of city-specific flags. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 11, 2011; 20:41 (UTC)

closed cities

THANK YOU for notice me. I will add more closed cities from Russia. the ex-ussr thnig is to not actual. its 20 years after the dissolution of the USSR. And the closed cities that were not in Russia and not closed anymore so its ok to mention they were closed in the past but no need to put them in a template. Superzohar Talk 14:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Whatever works :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 13, 2011; 15:00 (UTC)

World Cosmonautics Day

Rather strange move from Cosmonautics Day, which is 100 times more common according to google hits. GreyHood ^Talk 12:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't really have an opinion on this one, but I don't see why you can't contest the move by moving the article back and inviting comments on the talk page or by asking the person who moved the article about the reasons. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2011; 13:57 (UTC)

Invitation to take part in a pilot study

I am a Wikipedian, who is studying the phenomenon on Wikipedia. I need your help to conduct my research on about understanding "Motivation of Wikipedia contributors." I would like to invite you to a short survey. Please give me your valuable time, which estimates only 5 minutes’’’. cooldenny (talk) 17:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, why not. Will you share the results when you process all responses?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2011; 17:57 (UTC)

I posted the results of the pilot survey you took part in here. cooldenny 16:48, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Ezhiki. I would like to know wheter you hwatched the survey results. I appreciate for completing the survey two weeks ago. I would like to return your favor with a reward of an online gift card with no condition. Please leave your email address in the final version of survey of my project. In addition, you can get chance to win $50 worth of gift card. It takes only 10 minutes to complete the final version because it contains only 35 questions. Thank you so much. cooldenny (talk) 13:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination

Hi, Ezhiki. I would like to nominate the article Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union written mainly by me for good articles. Could you help me put the article on corresponding Wikipedia page for its review and nomination? Thanks. Psychiatrick (talk) 18:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. It's actually very easy to do (the rest, including the creation of the review page, will be taken care by a bot). For future GA noms you might want to make, you can read the instructions at WP:GAN ("How to nominate an article" section). A pretty thorough article, by the way! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 15, 2011; 18:56 (UTC)

Thanks. Please don’t forsake me now because that’s my first good article nominee in the English Wikipedia. Psychiatrick (talk) 19:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm completely ignorant about the article's subject, so I won't be much help with the actual review process. However, I'll be happy to help with the technical aspects of the nomination or the article formatting, if that's the kind of help you need. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 15, 2011; 19:55 (UTC)

Don’t worry. Most people are completely ignorant about economics but they would like to have as much money as possible. Similarly, most people are completely ignorant about human rights abuses including those related to psychiatry but the people want to reserve as many human rights as possible. Nothing strange. Psychiatrick (talk) 22:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, you've got a point there, but having money (even a lot of it) does not automatically make one qualified to write encyclopedic articles about economics! Same thing with the human rights abuses—as much as a sympathize with the victims, I'd better be able to offer more than that if I were to write a competent GA review. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 18, 2011; 14:46 (UTC)

Карэ-Плуже

That's the name of the Russian equivalent of the Carhaix-Plouguer article, but it's clearly wrong -- ж would represent French -ge-, not -gue-, and the final -r appears to be pronounced (the Breton equivalent is Plougêr, and there are no silent r's in Breton). I'm pretty sure it should be Каре-Плугер, as it is in the Малый атлас мира (Главное управление геодезии и картографии при совете министров СССР, 1979). But I'm not about to try changing the entry name of a Russian article, so I'm dumping it in your lap! Languagehat (talk) 15:59, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not that much into geography of places outside of Russia, nor am I an active editor in the Russian Wikipedia, but you are 100% correct—the name used was simply plain wrong. I have moved the article. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 25, 2011; 13:48 (UTC)

No, thank you! Do you know any editors at Russian Wikipedia I could direct such requests to, in order to avoid bothering you? I know you've got a lot on your plate. Languagehat (talk) 15:12, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

When it's something as simple as this, I'll be happy to help. If it's a bit more involved, you can probably leave a message at the talk page (and I'll be happy to help with that, if you need help—I don't know how comfortable you are with leaving messages in Russian :)). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 25, 2011; 16:17 (UTC)

Not very comfortable; I'm afraid I take after my father (a foreign service officer who was terrified of making grammatical mistakes in foreign languages) rather than my mother (who within a couple of weeks of moving to a new country was happily chattering away in a mix of English and the local language, with ever-increasing doses of the latter and without the slightest embarrassment). Thanks very much for the offer! Languagehat (talk) 17:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Region databases

While writing the scripts for converting regional stats from html[3] to wikitable, I figured it's best to use an intermediate representation, since I may have to combine data from different sources and the format of the source may change. So now I have two scripts for doing the conversion in two steps: script "figsToDB.pl" converts from html to mysql database, and script "dbToWikitable.pl" converts from database to wikitable. For example, I created User:Nanobear/List of Russian federal subjects by average wage, which I think could be moved to mainspace once some of the region names have been fixed by hand (or the script improved to use correct names).

I remember you once said you were developing a database of Russian localities. Are you planning to insert statistics into your database? I just thought it would nice to have a huge combined database from which we can automatically generate all kinds of lists if needed. If you don't have the stats in your database, maybe we could just join User:Nanobear/Regional stats DB with it (assuming you are using SQL). Of course, the difficult part is developing the scripts for reading data from various sources to the database; since I'm no IT professional (yet) and I had to first learn Perl for this task, I found this pretty time-consuming. In any case, it would interesting to hear some details about your database. Perhaps we could work on it together somehow (with no promises or deadlines, of course). Nanobear (talk) 16:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I am hoping to eventually add at least some statistics to my database, but don't have any immediate plans for that yet. There's still much work to be done on the database core, but on the bright side, the database design is certainly conducive to adding whatever statistics on top of the core data. I'll certainly take a look at what you are doing, but the caveat is that my database is in MS Access, not in MySQL. I know that my choice of Access tends to raise a lot of eyebrows :), but, unfortunately, it is the only database product to which I have access both at home and at work. Additionally, my database experience is mostly with the commercial products such as MS SQL and Oracle, and my knowledge of the open-source products is very, very limited (not that I'm unwilling to learn them, mind you; it's just that I don't have any practical use for them). Perl, that I don't know at all (but again, I'm more than interested in learning it). If all this doesn't scare you away, please feel free to email me about any collaboration plans you can think of. It would most certainly be convenient to have a database which can be updated quickly and off of which scripts could be run to update the data in the articles—it certainly beats updating the articles manually every time new data are released! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 25, 2011; 16:33 (UTC)

Kaliningrad

The date of joining RSFSR (i.e. 04 April 1946) doesn't mean that Kaliningrad oblast has been established. The date should be based on that name "Kaliningrad" has been adopted. 173.33.62.229 (talk) 13:52, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly what it means. Please read the source being cited. The date in the infobox is the date the oblast was established, not renamed. Some oblasts changed their names more than once; it doesn't mean each time they are renamed they are established anew. I have reverted your change once again. Please bring this up on the talk page if you still disagree. I will copy this thread there as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 14:17 (UTC)

if you are right, the date could be counted earlier because that place was officially occupied by Soviet troop. Being the part of USSR doesn't mean "Kaliningrad oblast" has been established.173.33.62.229 (talk) 14:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know where you are getting these ideas from, but please see the talk page—I've just posted a link to the oblast's Charter, Article 3.1 of which explicitly states that the oblast was established in April and renamed in July.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 14:26 (UTC)

You can simply write down that the place joint USSR on the date of 04 April 1946 in the info box. I already added the explanation in the info box so pls don't revert my edit. I know you are an ADMIN, please don't abuse your power and distort the fact of history. 173.33.62.229 (talk) 14:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The source being cited (and the Charter) explicitly say that the oblast (under a different name, but the same oblast) was established in April and then renamed in July. There is nothing in these sources about "joining the USSR", and the said "joining" is not the intent behind the parameter in the infobox. The parameter is called "date_established" and is supposed to contain the date on which the oblast was established. Both sources explicitly use the term "established". If the infobox had a line for "date renamed", that's where the July date would have been placed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 14:37 (UTC)

"On the formation of Koenigsberg region in the RSFSR" and 4 July 1946 "On renaming the city of Königsberg in Kaliningrad region and the Koenigsberg to Kaliningrad Region. Forming of Koenigsberg region in the RSFSR is actually the same as joining that area. You should add more specific information in the infobox other than keep reveting my edit and distort the history. 173.33.62.229 (talk) 14:44, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Forming of Koenigsberg region in the RSFSR is actually the same as joining that area—not that I agree, but if you revert this, you'll get "joining that area is actually the same as forming of Koenigsberg region", which is precisely the point I am trying to bring across. The oblast (called Koenigsberg) was formed in April and renamed in July. The date in the infobox is the date the oblast was founded, not the date when Kaliningrad Oblast got its present name. Trust me on that one; I am the one who designed the infobox :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 14:48 (UTC)

Also, you realize that the Soviet Union occupied that territory since 1944 and that it was transferred to the Soviet Union (or "joined the USSR", to use your terminology) after the Potsdam Conference (as stipulated by the Potsdam Agreement) in 1945? Between 1944 and 1946, a special military okrug was established on this territory, which was reorganized as an oblast in April 1946. The name of the oblast was changed in July, but no other changes to its status occurred then. The oblast was not established in July; it already existed in July. It was established in April.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 14:58 (UTC)

Yes, but you don't understand one thing. The article is talking about "Kaliningrad" oblast. You may simply add additional information on the infobox and state all process that you above mentioned. You didn't do anything but simply reverting my edit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.33.62.229 (talk) 15:02, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

"Kaliningrad Oblast" is the name of the oblast since July 1946. The oblast itself, however, exists since April 1946, because that's when it was established (just like Tver Oblast was established in 1935 and renamed in 1990). And the parameter in the infobox is called "established date", not "renamed date". I reverted your edit because it is not supported by what the source being cited actually says.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 15:10 (UTC)

Okay, fine! both dates are now included in the infobox. I think that our argument should be finished right here.173.33.62.229 (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad I have convinced you, but the infobox parameter is supposed to include the foundation date only, not unrelated data. There is currently no parameter for renames, but I'll add it to the infobox and will amend the article accordingly. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 15:17 (UTC)

Alexandrovsk dab

Hello. Sorry I missed the redlink in edit mode. I am usually pretty good about checking those things per WP:DABRL. Easy mistake. I am curious, what else needs to be done to that page? I am still learning, so, in the interest of education, please tell me what needs to be cleaned up. I don't see any more problems or the need for the CU template at this point. Thank you, for your time and consideration. Best Regards, JMax (Okay, tell me. What'd I do this time?) 18:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, if I knew what else is wrong, I would have fixed it myself :) My main concern is with using the redirects, which is why I wanted someone experienced with dab cleanups to look at that page. Here you can find the discussion that lead to me adding a cleanup tag; please let me know if anything there is unclear.

Also, on an unrelated note, I re-instated the nav template which you removed. While you are correct to have removed it on the MOS grounds, the template on this dab page is not a permanent fixture—once all of its entries are properly converted into set indices, the problem will resolve itself.

I hope this leaves us with no hard feelings towards one another. I do, incidentally, appreciate your attempt to do a cleanup, and you have caught the most obvious problems with that page. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 27, 2011; 18:47 (UTC)

Timestamp in signature

Hi Ezhiki, please use a standard timestamp in your signature, so archive bots can recognise it. If you were to receive no replies to your message at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Monobook, the archive bot would never automatically move it to the appropriate archive page. Graham87 08:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but no, thanks. Bots exist to service people, not the other way around.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 29, 2011; 11:56 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Muharraq Polyarnye Zori 2979 Murmansk Kovdor Murmansk Airport Lake Seydozero Snezhnogorsk, Murmansk Oblast Severomorsk-3 Gadzhiyevo Baljkovac Zapolyarny, Murmansk Oblast Natalia Tolstaya Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal Kola River Zaozyorsk Severomorsk-2 Lake Lovozero Kirovsk-Apatity Airport Fryazino

Cleanup Kola Nuclear Power Plant Tomsk Veliky Novgorod Merge 2010 South Kyrgyzstan riots Krais of the Russian Empire Sunk 500 Add Sources M18 highway (Russia) Demographics of Siberia Vladimir Lenin Wikify Omsk Medical Academy List of current KHL team rosters Russian all-national union Expand Dnipropetrovsk Anapa Samara Oblast

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 10:55, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Ozyorny

Hi there! Good to be back, changed jobs some months ago and have had a lot less time, but have been reading a lot on Chukotka and think I can start to really expand some of the stubs and start rated articles I created, so am trying to make more time! I did have a couple of Qs which you might be able to help with:

• Should the urban-type settlements currently in the process of being liquidated be added to the list on the administrative divisions of Chukotka AO article? I'm happy to do this if needed.
• What is the rule regarding former settlements? Are they still notable enough for an article, or not?
• A lot of the edits I have done today have been to re-insert the refs to the Red cRoss Chukotka website, which although now down I have found archived. I presume it is Ok to use archived pages as refs?
• I assume from your previous message that Ozerny should be moved to Ozyorny?

Hopefully should have some photos to enhance the Chukotka articles in a few months as I am off to Wrangle island, Cape Dezhnev, Anadyr and the Bering Strait on holiday. Fenix down (talk) 18:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Congrats on your new job, and glad to hear about your expansion plans :) To answer your questions:

1. They should definitely be mentioned in the narrative, but since there is currently no narrative in this article, that means there's a lot of work to be done :) They shouldn't be added to the main list, though. The only source document I know of where these urban-type settlements are listed is the law on the administrative-territorial division of Chukotka AO, and even there they are not listed district-by-district, but rather as a separate list of names. Another option is to add a separate section just for these places.
2. Former settlements are definitely notable if they were notable when they existed (per WP:NTEMP: "notability is not temporary"), although the act of abolition may affect the article's title or even lead to its being merged into another article. Since you already added quite a bit of content to that article, I don't think merging it into Evgekinot would be a good idea, but it probably needs to be renamed Ozyorny Microdistrict or something like that, and the lead needs to be tweaked accordingly. I was going to do it myself (the article is on my to-do list), but if you are willing to work on it, I, of course, have no problem with it (although I'll probably go over it again later anyway).
3. It is perfectly OK to use archived pages as references. Even though it was me who removed the refs because the links were dead, I apologize that it didn't occur to me to replace them with links to web archives instead!
4. You are right about the spelling.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help with. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 2, 2011; 18:33 (UTC)

Cheers for the response, I have moved Ozyorny to Ozyorny Microdistrict and tweaked the lead for correct romanisation and clarification. Are you able to provide the correct legal ref? The legal ref we are using for Iultinsky District confused me a bit as the boundaries it describes as being those of Egvekinot do not seem to be large enough to accomodate Ozyorny, but I'm sure I misread it. Can you show me where you get all of you legal information from. I just used the Chukotka Duma website when I needed to, but I did not find it that user friendly. Is there a better source? Fenix down (talk) 12:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Provideniya

Was just reading some of the new(ish) laws on the CAO Duma website and this one: Law #89 seems to state that Sireniki and Novoye Chaplino have been absorbed into Provideniya urban type settlement at a municipal level. Am I reading this right, and if so, the relevant articles and table in provideniya district will need updating? Fenix down (talk) 13:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Whoops, didn't realise it was already changed! Fenix down (talk) 13:20, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I usually change the articles when I lay my hands on such documents :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 3, 2011; 13:26 (UTC)

Seeing these new laws has got me thinking though. I assume that Novoye Chaplino and Sireniki are still Selos themselves, just municipally incorporated into Provideniya Municipal urban-type settlement, but how are places like Nutepelmen and Krasneno treated. Now they are classed as in the inter settlements territory, are they no longer officiall Selos, but simply inhabited localities. I don't want to go making unnecessary changes to the relevant village articles. Can you confirm whether they are necessary? Fenix down (talk) 13:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct—all inhabited localities (urban or rural) retain their status unless abolished (like Ozyorny was). The municipal incorporation (or lack of it) has no effect on that status (because the locality type is the administrative aspect of a place, not a municipal one). So, when Krasneno Rural Settlement was abolished, Krasneno itself still remained a rural locality, only instead of having a local government of its own, it is now governed directly by the municipal district's authorities (and is considered an intra-settlement territory of the district). This is usually done when the municipal formation cannot afford the overhead associated with supporting a local government of its own. To that effect, I changed the list in the Anadyrsky District article, but I haven't yet gotten to changing the Krasneno article, so please go ahead and edit it if you want to. The situation with Nutepelmen is exactly the same (apart from its being in a different district, of course).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 3, 2011; 14:07 (UTC)

Cool, so Krasneno and Nutepelmen will still have Selo in their infobox and lead, but it will need to be made clear that they are not a separate rural settlement any longer. Will try to get round to this today. Fenix down (talk) 14:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Abakan

You may want to review your changes to the Abakan infobox; the pop density element has template errors. I was tempted to remove the unsourced value for area, which fixes the problem since it no longer tries to do the density calculation, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention instead. Cheers, --JaGa^talk 06:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Russian Far East

Thanks for your note. Perhaps, as a Russian speaker, you can clarify something that bugs me. Why is wikt:Приморье spelled with a ь? Or more significantly, the common noun wikt:приморье? I would expect "при море" (where "море" is the prepositional case) to mean "near the sea". But is приморье really used as a common noun, and why does it sport a soft sign? --dab (𒁳) 09:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)