Talk:Vinnytsia

Latest comment: 2 years ago by JohndanR in topic KGB Spy School

Re the massacre --Gilded Lily 22:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Request to use only one name in English version

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Talk:VinnytsiaVinnytsya - VinnicaVinnytsia – to use only the current name in English language Vinnytsia.

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support I believe that only one name should be used in English language, and that name is Vinnytsia! Since this is the correct translation from Ukrainian to English. And Ukrainian is the only official language in Ukraine. --Oleg Kikta (talk) 23:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose The more established English name is Vinnitsa and according to WP guidelines that is what we should use. It's irrelevant what the "correct translation" is. We don't use "Moskva" for "Moscow" because that is the correct Russian translation. According to Google Vinnitsa is about 6 times as common as Vinnytsia. Gr8white (talk) 23:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • The article's name should be the Ukrainian Vinnytsia, but the Russian and Polish versions should be mentioned also since the city's been been part of both Russia and Poland and both names are often found in books and documents. The names are part of the city's history. Narking (talk) 16:31, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

The article's name absolutely should not be the Ukrainian version. It MUST be the English version as stated in the guidelines. It is not a matter subject to vote as it is Wikipedia policy. We don't use Deutschland for Germany, or Moskva for Moscow. Of course the other names should be mentioned but the article's title should be Vinnitsa, the established English name. This is English-language Wikipedia, not Ukrainian. Gr8white (talk) 17:59, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

I beg to differ. If you care to look at the official website listed above, you'll notice that they use the Ukrainian variant "Vinnytsya" in the text and the only "Vinnitsa" on the page is in the logo. I find there is no real need to change the article as I always say with any article titles. There always will be people who try to change titles back and forth (take a look at Talk:Kharkiv and see how many times people have argued to rename it to Kharkov) instead of actually focusing on what we are here to do---write an encyclopedia instead of pushing an agenda to support one position or another.
If you take a look at the Kiev and Odessa articles, they are named with their Russian variants (instead of Kyiv and Odesa, respectively) because those Russian name variants are established in the English language literature and academic sources much more than the Ukrainian ones are---and that is to blame upon decades of official support for the Russian language and less attention being given to the native language spoken in these places. The situation has changed since then, and Ukraine has one official language. I understand that that should have no real relevance when it comes to the renaming of articles, but really Kiev and Odessa are world-renowned cities, which I will say Vinnytsia is not. It's just like asking a tourist visiting America if they've heard of New York City or Chicago (which if they are informed, they should say yes :)) instead of say Arlington, Texas (which has the same population as Vinnytsia, btw) which would usually be much less know to them. --ddima/talk 23:28, 23 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Proposed Move

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I propose to move the article to Vinnitsa per Wikipedia Guidelines: Use the most commonly used English version of the name of the subject as the title of the article, as you would find it in verifiable reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). I'll move it in a few days unless someone comes up with a REALLY good reason not to. If you have any question as to the English name, check any English-language atlas or encyclopedia. The policy does allow for the "occasional exception" but there would have to be good reason which I don't see in this case. Gr8white (talk) 21:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

I guess you need to buy new maps. In other words maps made after 1991. Check them and you will see that the city is called Vinnytsia today. You can check online also; for example Google maps or Mapblast, the latter one using the spelling Vinnytsya. As for encyclopedias just check Britannica and you will find Vinnytsya. So the question is more if the spelling should be Vinnytsia or Vinnytsya. Vinnitsa is out of the question. Narking (talk) 21:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
I did check several maps made after 1991 that said Vinnitsa. And Encyclopedia Americana uses Vinnitsa, though you are correct that the Brittanica uses the other spelling (oddly enough, Encarta uses Vinnytsya). And I stand by my previous contention that Vinnitsa is the more common usage (by a factor of greater than 6 judging from online search) and is the most compatible with WP guidelines as stated above. But since you have pointed out that a few respected sources do use Vinnytsia, I won't go ahead with the move. We'll call this the "occasional exception". (The policy also states that exonyms should "at least" be considered and this also falls into that category.) Gr8white (talk) 23:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
Yes, we should stay with status quo here. The article's name will remain Vinnytsia and the Russian and Polish versions should me mentioned as historical versions. Narking (talk) 04:50, 24 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

Name variants

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Like it or not, the city is known by various names in English and the commonly used variants must be noted per WP guidelines. Just listing the Russian and Polish names does not give the reader any indication that variations of these names are used in English. They are two separate issues. For example, the article on Moscow gives the romanization moskva but does not list that as an alternative name because it is not commonly used in English.

I checked some other Ukrainian place names and they generally agree with my position. The article on Kiev, for example, starts with "Kiev, also spelled Kyiv" and proceeds to give the Ukrainian and Russian spellings with romanizations (in one case the same as the English variant, in the other not). The Kharkiv article starts "Kharkiv or Kharkov" and gives the Ukrainian and Russian versions without romanizations. The Psel River article starts with "The Psyol or Psel" and gives Russian and Ukrainian spellings with romanizations, which match the spellings used in English. (The Lviv article is an exception - it does not mention the common English variant Lvov though it does give the Polish and Russian spellings - in my opinion an omission, though at least Lviv does seem to be the more commonly used name.)

This is English language Wikipedia, and it simply makes no sense not to indicate the commonly used variants, especially when they are in more common usage than the one used in the article. Just listing the foreign names is not an indication that they are used in English (e.g., Moscow). And the Polish name isn't even spelled the same in English, so that gives no indication at all that "Vinnica" is used in English. Gr8white (talk) 22:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

I would suggest you search a little further, and especially Ukrainian cities west of Kyiv. Try for example the following cities in the vicinity of Vinnytsia: Zhmerynka, Berdychiv, Novohrad-Volynskyi, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Cherkasy and Chernivtsi. There you won't find the many alternative variants of the names in the first sentence, even though in many cases you will get a higher Google count for the alternative spelling. So Lviv is far from an exception. And that Psel River article states two names isn't strange since it runs in both Russia and Ukraine. I would suggest you can put the alternative variants in a special section further down in the article, like in the Chernivtsi article. Narking (talk) 16:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)Reply
I don't have any objection to putting the variants in a separate section, in fact this is recommended [2] when 3 or more alternatives exist:
Alternatively, all alternative names can be moved to and explained in a "Names" or "Etymology" section immediately following the lead, or a special paragraph of the lead; we recommend that this be done if there are at least three alternate names, or there is something notable about the names themselves.
I just think it would be wrong to omit them altogether (or assume that showing the foreign-language equivalent is sufficient). This has the added advantage of allowing more explanation of why the alternatives exist, historical basis, etc. without being too awkward . Gr8white (talk) 21:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it's better now with the alternative names in a separate section. Now it's also possible to explain why there are so many different variants. Narking (talk) 19:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

KGB Spy School

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A CIA video on YouTube [3] (US National Archives Identifier: 896138) as well as an April 27, 1959 article in Time Magazine describe a city located in Vinnytsia which was an extensive spy school for (presumably) non-official cover KGB agents destined for deployment in the United States. It was reported to be a complete mockup of a working city of the period. I went to the wikipedia article for this city looking for information, and found nothing. Do any of the regular contributors have information on this, if it is even accurate or verifiable? Matt (talk) 09:39, 13 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it was a CIA documentary, with Time simply regurgitated the cold-war myth dutifully. The majority of those films were accurate, but a small subset, such as that one, were simply designed to scare the pants off of people that KGB American replicas were indetectably infiltrating churches, hotels, kindergartens, dispensing ice-cream sundaes to vulnerable teenagers, etc.
The reason why this article makes no mention of it is because the credibility of the tale entirely collapsed long ago.
Hundreds of cold war, and after, KGB mole and spy defectors would almost certainly have been the temporary denizens of such purported cities as their finishing school before shipping off to the real thing. Otherwise what would be the point of them? Since the fall of of the iron curtain, it would have become one of the worst-kept secrets of all the various closed communists cities. Those spies would have nothing to tell us about the nuclear weapons research closed cities, it's not part of their need-to-know. Language/culture enclaves would be the exact opposite. Their existence would be exactly the thing they would have to have knowledge, intimate knowledge and experience, of. JohndanR (talk) 00:52, 6 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Visually, this page is a mess!

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Hello to all working on this page.

It's lovely to see you trying to develop it, but the layout has become utterly shocking.

  1. Is the comprehensive climate table absolutely necessary? Surely it could be cut down to a bare minimum, particularly as it leaves a huge blank in the relevant section where it is pushed underneath the right-hand infobox.
  2. Images have been stacked up under each other. Please, if you wish to use so many photos, set them up as a gallery underneath the other content & add a link to Wiki Commons where the reader can take a look themselves if they're interested.

Thank you for your attention! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:56, 21 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate that the climate table has been reduced and a gallery has been added, but am wondering why so many photos are loaded beside the text. Surely the gallery allows for ample images. Якщо потрібно допомогу, прошу до мене звернутися. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Romanian name

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Why would there be a double N in the Romanian name? That is not in line with Romanian spelling I think. 188.27.189.189 (talk) 19:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

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