Talk:Sverdlovsk Raion

Proposed merge of Dovzhansk Raion into Sverdlovsk Raion

It's really odd that the post-2020 raion has its own page when dozens of others do not. The distinction between the 1938-2020 raion and the 2020-present raion is extremely unclear and confusing to readers who don't know the ins and outs of Ukrainian law. After all, the official name of the entity we cover at Sverdlovsk Raion was actually "Dovzhansk Raion" between 2016 and 2020.

For any editors who don't understand what the real distinction is, I'll explain - it's that technically, the post-2020 raion is a separate legal entity from the 1938-2020 one which was abolished in the law that created the new one. The Ukrainian Wikipedia actually observes this distinction in its categorization, with separate articles for uk:Бахмутський район and uk:Бахмутський район (1923—2020), but the English Wikipedia does not. For every other raion in the country, the English Wikipedia only has a single article that encompasses both entities before and after 2020, because it's less confusing that way and keeps all the relevant info in one place.

I think it is very WP:ASTONISHing to randomly have this one raion be split at the 2020 marker, just because it has a different name. If it was renamed in 2020 at the same time it was abolished and then immediately re-created, I think there would be more reason to keep it as is, but it was renamed in 2016, along with Dovzhansk/Sverdlovsk itself, leaving a confusing overlap in names between the articles. Readers who haven't gone and scrutinized the specific legal wording in the Ukrainian laws will be confused. Per WP:CONSISTENCY, we should just cover both entities in a single page, as we do with every other raion that kept the same name after the 2020 reforms.

I'm proposing specifically to merge it to the title "Sverdlovsk Raion" and not to "Dovzhansk Raion" for consistency reasons as well, since Sverdlovsk, Ukraine is the current title of the article about the city the raion is named for and centered in. HappyWith (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I was the person who created all articles about Ukrainian raions which were created after the 2020 administrative reform. Let me remark that what the nominator says is incorrect. For example, Dnistrovskyi Raion has the administrative center in Kelmentsi, but we have a separate article about Kelmentsi Raion which was abolished by the same reform. In the same way, post-2020 Dovzhansk Raion is a separate entity from the pre-2020 Sverdlovsk Raion. The situation is even more complicated since the area of Dovzhansk Raion has never been controlled by Ukraine, and Russia which controls the area does not recognize the existence of the raion. So we have two entities which have (i) different names (ii) different areas (iii) are controlled by different states. I do not see any good reason why they should be merged. Ymblanter (talk) 21:42, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Calling it the "pre-2020 Sverdlovsk Raion" is misleading - its official name was Dovzhansk Raion from 2016 to 2020. HappyWith (talk) 22:03, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Ukraine renamed something it did not control, so this is hardly relevant. The new raion is fictitious, the old one is not (and it continues to exist de facto in Russia). Ymblanter (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, Dnistrovskyi Raion / Kelmentsi Raion is obviously a very different scenario, since they never had the same name. It's not like Kelmentsi Raion was renamed to "Dnistrovskyi Raion" in 2016 before being abolished and reformed as Dnistrovskyi Raion - they just happen to have the same administrative center. That's not anywhere near the same thing as this, where the name was completely continuous between the two entities along with the names of their administrative centers and the chronological dividing point between the articles does not sync up with the renaming. HappyWith (talk) 22:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

No, this is incorrect. The name was not completely continuous. Ymblanter (talk) 22:24, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

How so? HappyWith (talk) 22:25, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

It is significant that Russia controls the raion and does not recognize the new administrative divisions. Ymblanter (talk) 22:26, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't answer my question at all, and I don't see why this is an argument against merging. If the raion is "fictitious", I would think that makes it even less deserving of its own article. HappyWith (talk) 22:32, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I hope other users will see. I expect the closer to post a rationale, unfortunately recently I saw a lot of bad closes without a rationale. Ymblanter (talk) 22:34, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Note that we already had exactly same discussion at Talk:Dovzhansk Raion, but the user just said they think it is ok not to mention that discussion here since they disagree with my arguments. Ymblanter (talk) 22:52, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Formal oppose, so that nobody can claim I talked a lot without ever opposing. Ymblanter (talk) 06:36, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

For the record, I also oppose a move which is being proposed, for the reasons I already outlined more than a dozen times. In short, the proposed move has nothing to do with the Wikipedia policies. Ymblanter (talk) 17:56, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

This is referring to a preliminary discussion two months ago where I was asking clarifying questions out of confusion about what the scopes of the pages were. I did not think it was something I needed to mention here. IMO you're being unnecessarily rude over a minor event and not assuming good faith. HappyWith (talk) 15:24, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

You say "we have two entities which have (i) different names (ii) different areas (iii) are controlled by different states" - but they're not? They're both 100% controlled by Russia. HappyWith (talk) 22:24, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Dovzhansk Raion is a fictitious (at this point) entity which only exists in the divisions of Ukraine. It does not exist in the divisions of Russia. Ymblanter (talk) 22:25, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

That Russia exists in Ukraine is a Kremlin fiction. One that reliable sources have not adopted as reality.

Ymblanter’s entire argument is an exercise in WP:OR, drawing on no policies or evidence from reliable sources, only on arbitrary POV labelling. The kicker is that they don’t try to create new articles about these supposed de-facto parts of “Russia” using sources, but try to impose this POV onto articles about the legal subdivision of Ukraine. Distasteful.  —Michael Z. 16:00, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I am afraid it would be difficult to me to respond to this without breaking NPA, but this argument above is a personal attack against me and otherwise has zero content. Ymblanter (talk) 17:57, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

No, it’s a good-faith assessment of what you wrote, which comprised little or no content in terms of “reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense,” per WP:CONSENSUS. Personal attacks are, for example, when one routinely or habitually applies disparaging labels to individual editors and groups of editors, stubbornly defends these attacks, and never deigns to retract or apologize.  —Michael Z. 19:32, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Support. This totally makes sense for an article about the subdivision of Ukraine. Sources consistently refer to subjects by their names, and in the real world don’t add parenthetical disambiguators, even when borders change or foreign occupiers make claims. The articles about other raions are precedents, as are the articles about gubernias (“governorates”) that existed in the Russian empire and Ukraine, sometimes changing borders, being renamed, dissolved, and recreated, under several successive states. (Selectively applying loaded terms “fictitious,” “de facto,” and “in Russia” [!] is just a bunch of POV spin attempting to create a false reality. Subdivisions of a government and territory are a legal, administrative, and organizational reality, and the evidence of it is acknowledgment and recognition in reliable sources, not the illegal presence of brutal war criminals and the Kremlin’s propaganda.)  —Michael Z. 15:27, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Of reliable sources recommended by WP:WIAN:

• GNIS[1] gives name Dovzhanskyi Raion, variant names Sverdlovskiy Rayon, Sverdlovskyi Raion, Sverdlovs’kyy Rayon. It displays the place marker north of th city of Dovzhansk and town of Batyr, clearly outside of the pre-2020 border and near the centre of the post-2020 borders.
• Maps:
  • Google Maps gives Sverdlovs'kyi district,[2] and shows the pre-2020 border.
  • Apple Maps gives Dovzhanskyi District[3] “in Luhansk Oblast,” with the place marker near the northern edge of the city of Dovzhansk. As far as I can tell, there is no such smaller district within the city, and this is a representation of the larger post-2020 raion.

So according to WP:MODERNPLACENAME, we should use the modern name (unless “a substantial majority of reliable modern sources” use older names, which they do not).  —Michael Z. 17:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not against this proposal - the only reason I didn’t propose to merge the opposite direction was because I thought it would be more controversial and get in the way of just merging the pages, and my plan was to do this, then move both the raion and the city in a single RM after doing research on what the common name for the city is. This is a convincing argument I hadn't considered, though, so I support this destination. If it doesn't get enough support from other editors, I still would prefer merging to Sverdlovsk Raion over no merge at all. HappyWith (talk) 17:43, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you’re right, renaming together separate from the merge makes sense, and WP:CONSUB.  —Michael Z. 19:18, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Anyway, two of the three sources appear to have updated their information since both the 2016 renaming of the raion and city, and the 2020 reorganization of the raion’s borders. There’s absolutely no reason to have separate articles on this single subject, even if the fact that Russia doesn’t recognize Ukraine’s organization of its own territory were sourced and covered in the article.  —Michael Z. 19:24, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

• Support merge. I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about in the above discussion but from a purely objective point of view (with complete disregard for the fact this is a currently occupied part of Ukraine we're talking about), both articles in question are barely not stubs and both would benefit from the merger. Personally, it could go either way but I think the best (and easiest) way to merge the two is to create a new section in the Sverdlovsk article called "Dovzhansk Raion" with most of the info in the current article copied over, most of the stats/info in the infobox turned into prose and put into said section, and the current map of Dovzhansk's raion turned into a thumb image. Hopefully this explanation is clear enough. Cheers, Dan the Animator 05:24, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
• Dovzhansk Raion (2020-).--That title seems fine to me.--Rationale, in part: Imagine that I own an entire city and its streets and the city blocks; there are rental properties on the city blocks.--Two city blocks have been taken over by squatters and there is one street between those two blocks.--Yeah, the squatters can keep re-painting street signs, for a bunch of years. However, the city administration decides the names of all streets (sort of like the govt of Ukraine - formally deciding everything, even where there are weapon-toting squatters - going on their second decade).--The name of the street now, and for the foreseeable future is
  Dovzhansk Raion (2020–).--Though one might expect a somewhat common rename of streets, starting next year: F16 alley. 2001:2020:319:E17D:912C:D0B:CBA1:5D83 (talk) 17:16, 8 December 2023 (UTC)