Category talk:Defunct towns in Russia

earlier comments

There are obviously 2 kinds of "defunct towns" currently in this category

• Those that were physically destroyed or abandoned for one reason or another, such as Pustozyorsk, Mangazeya or Tmutarakan.
  • As a subcategory of this, there are places that have gradually decreased in size and influence (e.g. so that a town became a village), but have not been completely abandoned. E.g. Sviyazhsk, Makaryevo (formerly Makaryev, until 1816 the site of Makaryev Fair in today's Nizhny Novgorod Oblast)
• Towns which physically did not undergo any calamity, but disappeared as separate municipality because they had been annexed by a neighboring large city (Solntsevo, Babushkin, Sormovo, Kanavino), or merged together with a neighboring town into a new city/town (such as the predecessors of today's Navashino). This class probably includes dozens of municipalities absorbed by Moscow around 1960 (when MKAD became the new city line) and then again in 1980s-90s.

It may make sense to create appropriate subcategories to distinguish the two categories.

Somewhat related to the first category are places that were partially or completely destroyed by flooding (e.g. Chkalovsk that lost its old historical core to the Nizhny Novgorod Reservoir), or Shagonar, but were reconstituted at an immediately adjacent or nearby location. Cf. Category:Sunken cities.

Vmenkov 23:13, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I was going to ask the same question. Anyway, I don't see why we can't split this cat in two, except I can't think of good names for both new cats. Any ideas?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

For me it also look very strange that we have lots of really existing villages in this category, such as Staraya Ladoga, Beryozovo - they are not ghost towns indeed - a lot of people live there. In ru_wiki we have 2 categories: ru:Категория:Исчезнувшие города России and ru:Категория:Населённые пункты России, утратившие статус города MaxiMaxiMax 07:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This category is based on Category:Defunct towns in Massachusetts. If we place Staraya Ladoga or Samandar into something like ru:Категория:Населённые пункты России, утратившие статус города, then their most important, historical aspect will not be reflected in categorization. If we don't want them to be lost, the alternative option is to additonally include them into Category:History of Russia. This results in the latter category being littered with stubs of all sorts, making it of little use and generally unmaintainable, as was the case before I cleaned it up drastically. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:58, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Ghirla, could you clarify what you mean by "historical aspect will not be reflected in categorization"? I guess I don't quite follow your line of thought. Among other things, what prevents us from listing the equivalent of ru:Категория:Населённые пункты России, утратившие статус города in Category:History of Russia? This way the history cat would not be overwhelmed with individual entries, but those entries would still be available there. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)