User talk:Ezhiki/2011

Skolkovo again

Hello and Happy New Year!

I have again to turn your attention to the Skolkovo innovation center article. Some IP editors continue to add a link to apparantly self-published, unreliable source of unknown origin, with no stated authors [1]. I've tried to engage one of the IP's into conversation, but wasn't successful so far [2]. Can you please semi-protect the article for some time, or perhaps there are other ways to solve the problem?

Also, forgive me please for not having started an expansion of the Skolkovo article, which I had promised to do. I was a bit too much fascinated and carried away by other projects of mine ;) But I hope to return to the work on the Skolkovo article eventually. GreyHood ^Talk 17:10, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Happy New Year to you as well. I have just semied the page for a week. Not only is the link in question a selfpub, it also fails WP:EL and contains nothing but original research and copypasted news excerpts. I would have been happy to explain all this to the anon as well, but the fella keeps changing his IP addresses, which renders posting a note moot.

As for the expansion (or, rather, lack of it), I understand completely. There are always things around here to carry us away from one task to another :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 4, 2011; 17:25 (UTC)

Thank you! Reverting is a tiresome work, but at least this incident was a reminder to me not to become carried away completely %) GreyHood ^Talk 17:34, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Russian krais

Template:Russian krais has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Mhiji 22:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Sergei Starostin page move

Hi! I have a question regarding the [3] move request. I've seen a "Support" from you for this move. What are my next steps to have the page moved? And who will delete the [4] now-redirect page, to make the move possible? Thank you, and sorry for silly questions =) Arseni (talk) 17:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Nothing silly about this question. Move requests usually sit for at least seven days before being closed. After seven days, a notification will pop up in an appropriate queue and some admin will close the request (I can't close it myself because I !voted). You don't need to do anything, just wait; it'll be taken care of in a few days. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 18, 2011; 18:00 (UTC)

Question

You know a lot about the Russian censi, right...? Do you know when the 2010 census will be available?--Yalens (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Preliminary results should be available this April and probably won't be too detailed. The final results are expected in 2012. By the way, you can always check the 2010 Census official website to see if anything new is available. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 24, 2011; 00:13 (UTC)

Thanks. --Yalens (talk) 23:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Sets and dabs

Hello. Thanks for taking time to categorize the district disambiguation pages; however, I wanted to point out that you added Category:District name disambiguation pages to some pages which are set index articles, not disambig pages. I have reverted those tagged incorrectly. Fret not, it's not a big deal :) Welcome to Wikipedia. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 26, 2011; 19:23 (UTC)

It was you who claimed these are disambig pages in the first place. I adjusted your opinion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Set_indices_on_Russian_districts&action=history Madreselva (talk) 19:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it was my bad back in August. Thanks for catching and fixing this.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 26, 2011; 19:40 (UTC)

Also, a page can be either a dab or a set index, not both. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 26, 2011; 19:45 (UTC)

Again, it was you who claimed it in the first place http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Set_indices_on_Russian_inhabited_localities&action=history and removed that claim only 19:43, while my edit was at 19:40. Madreselva (talk) 19:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but I thought you had already seen the analogy by 7:40 PM :) Anyhoo, that's no big deal either; I just wanted to save you time. Keep up good work.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 26, 2011; 19:53 (UTC)

Seeing an analogy is one thing, following claims made by authors editing Russian geography articles for a long time another. I saved both of us time by only editing Druzhba, Russia. You could have told me in your 19:45 message that at 19:43 you adjusted your claim. That would have saved me time looking that up. Madreselva (talk) 20:09, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, as luck had it, I did not think about the other SIA cat until I saw your edit to Druzhba. At any rate, all should be well now. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 26, 2011; 20:14 (UTC)

Russia ToDo list

Hello! I have been waiting for your return to editing after the weekend. I need your advice and possibly some help.

During my last 1.5 years on Wikipedia, I have accumulated several extremely large-sized to-do lists for my Russia-related projects. Mostly it is Russian inventors (link), Russian inventions (link, to-do items are commented and hidden), and Russian economy (link). These lists are not very neat and not comprehensible enough for other editors, so I'm thinking about reworking them into a better format and putting them into some place where they will attract more attention than on my userpage. Such place could be Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia, but obviosly I can't put the contents of these huge to-do lists right into Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia or Portal:Russia/Things you can do, as it is recommended on the project's page.

So how do you think, what other page related to Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia or Portal:Russia could be used to store information on requested articles and article expansions related to Russian economy and technology, and perhaps even wider range of Russian topics? Best of all, such a page should be topic-structured, like it is done at User:Greyhood/ToDo#Projects. Perhaps we could have separate pages for economy and technology etc. Could we set up something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/ToDo/Economy, Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/ToDo/Inventions and a general page Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/ToDo by topic, and provide big noticable links to these lists from the main page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia?

I make this request because I feel I would never be able to perform all those multiple planned contributions myself - it would take longer than a life! Also, I fear I will have to significantly reduce my activity on Wikipedia since mid-February due to real life business. So I hope to engage more people into editing Wikipedia's areas developed by me.

Cheers, and hope you can help me with this mission. GreyHood ^Talk 22:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello there! You know, the last twenty or so wonderful productive active editors of WP:RUSSIA-related topics who announced their intent to be busy for a period longer than a few weeks are yet to be seen back. Which makes me kind of sad but hoping (against the odds) that your case will be an exception and we will see you back to active editing after all. At any rate, real life obligations are real life obligations. Hope you'll be victorious :)

Regarding the question, WikiProjects normally organize topic-specific to-do lists around task forces or workgroups. Those are basically mini-WikiProjects in their own right; however, their scope is smaller and they rely on the main WikiProject's infrastructure to operate. The task force pages are usually the subpages of the main project and can be of various degree of complexity. While it is generally not recommended to start a task force unless a group of interested (and active) editors already exists, that's hardly a rule set in stone. I remember WP:RUSSIA discussing the possibility of setting up some task forces, but the idea languished due to the lack of interest. Still, for your purposes it could be beneficial—even if there is no interest, if we keep the overhead low (i.e., keep it simple around the to-do list instead of adding all those bells and whistles like taskforce-specific assessments, workflows, etc.), it might indeed be helpful to future editors if they see that some specific areas are better organized than others. There's definitely no harm in having them.

So, here's what I propose you do (and I will, of course, help, if you need help). Start with a simple page that describes the taskforce's scope, provides a places for the participants to sign up, and gives access to the to-do list (which at this stage will be the most elaborate feature). Looking at your projects, "Economy of Russia" task force would cover most of the things you have on the list. Perhaps having "Techonology in Russia" and "Inventors from Russia" task forces would also be warranted. Once those are set up, we'll link them from the main WP:RUSSIA page, so they are easily accessible, and we can also make an announcement to the other applicable WikiProject(s) (in case of "Economy of Russia", it would be WP:WikiProject Business). Once people start signing up, the structure and the direction of the task forces can be further discussed. Does this help?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 1, 2011; 17:11 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is a good solution, thanks for the proposal! Despite my rather long editing history, I'm a bit of novice in the area of WikiProjects, so I hope you could help at least in setting up the proposed task force pages and adding the links to them to the WikiProject Russia. Perhaps, it should be this way:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Economy of Russia task force (could it be also integrated with Wikipedia:WikiProject Business/Economy of Russia task force?)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Technology in Russia task force (I think inventions and inventors could be covered on this page; afterall, there is no need to create too specific task forces on this stage)

Of course, I can start the related pages in my userspace first, but I think that there is no particular need for it. Also, I think that User:Nanobear and perhaps User:Slon02 are likely to quickly sign up for these task forces if asked.

So, could you start the two proposed pages (if you agree with their titles), provide few basic sections headers for them (Scope, Participants etc), add categories down the page and perhaps some other decoration? Then I'll add the description of scope, start adding the contents of to-do lists and ask few people to sign up. What do you think about this plan?

(Also, I'm not going to leave Wikipedia completely for any period, I'll just have to significantly reduce the number of my edits per day, perhaps several times less. But hope I'll be around here most of the time)

GreyHood ^Talk 18:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm not too good with WikiProjects myself, although I'm probably the most knowledgeable guy around about what's going on with WP:RUSSIA. Sad, eh?

Regarding the decision to set up the task force at WP:RUSSIA or at WP:BUSINESS, it's largely up to you. WP:BUSINESS is a more active and vibrant project, but I suspect they don't care too much about nation-specific task forces. You might want to ask them there—it's certainly a possibility, just the one I can't help you much with. On the other hand, if you decide to incorporate the task force into WP:RUSSIA, you'll probably have to deal with a lot less bureaucracy (since we don't have many members to support it). It's just that the task force should be incorporated in one place, even if it is an intersection of two projects.

If you decide to stick with WP:RUSSIA, please let me know. I'll start on setting up the basic task force infrastructure some time this or next week and will let you know when (and where) you can start transferring your to-do lists. The rest of the plan sounds good to me, and boy am I glad you are not temporarily leaving completely :) It's been great having your around.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 1, 2011; 19:51 (UTC)

Naturally, I want to incorporate these task forces into WP:RUSSIA. I just thought there could be some transclusion into WP:BUSINESS, or link from their main page, or redirect to one page from both of the red links I've proposed for economy task.

So, I hopefully request you to set up the necessary infrastructure at WP:RUSSIA when it is convenient for you, but preferably within the next two weeks. And thank you for your kind words on my part GreyHood ^Talk 20:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, you deserve them :) I will set everything up in the next few days and will let you know. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 1, 2011; 20:20 (UTC)

I've just thought that Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force or Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/S&T in Russia task force may be even better choice, since it will allow to cover Russian science along with technology and innovation. What do you think? GreyHood ^Talk 01:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense; I'll use that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 2, 2011; 01:46 (UTC)

OK, here we go: Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force. It's rather plain and no-frills, really. Take a look at it, give it a try, and let me know if anything isn't working for you or you think is missing. Once you are satisfied, we'll create one for the Economy in Russia task force, modeled after this one.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 2, 2011; 18:09 (UTC)

Thank you! I agree that it is right way starting one page and only then another one. I'll go on filling the page later this day or tomorrow. GreyHood ^Talk 18:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you think there is any sense in establishing task force parameter for the WP:RUSSIA template? It should look like this:

• {{WikiProject Russia|class=|importance=|S&T=yes}}

It would be nice to have not only WP:RUSSIA/PP, but also a subtopic list like this. GreyHood ^Talk 01:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

It's funny that you should mention a task force parameter for the banner. I was fiddling with just that only yesterday :) I finally got lost in the banner structure because of distractions, but I am certainly planning to re-visit this task. As for the popular pages listing, it doesn't really make sense to implement it now. For the listing to work (and be meaningful), we need to have a substantial body of articles already tagged for the task force. I will look into it once the banner is functional and tagging has started; in the meanwhile you may need to make do without such a listing.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 3, 2011; 14:21 (UTC)

Yes, of course some tagging work should precede the creation of the PP list. As for the banner parameters, I've just made some reading from a link that you have provided above (about task forces and workgroups). But I haven't found so far how to fix the problem, and I suppose you are more experienced in it, or at least you know a noticeboard where to ask a question. GreyHood ^Talk 14:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I've started my work on Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force. While I've done not that much, could you answer few questions:

Do you find the format of the Open tasks section good enough?

Do you agree with the specific goals of the task force?

Also, it would be really great if you check out the section Goals for spelling, grammar, and style. It is an important section, and I'm possibly not that good in literary English. GreyHood ^Talk 14:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Tweaking the banner is actually easier than it seems (but apparently more difficult than I thought yesterday :)). Several taskforce-specific parameters need to be added to {{WikiProject Russia}}, and then some maintenance needs to be done around the taskforce-specific categories, but that's pretty much it. Figuring out how the WikiProject banners work has been on my own to-do list for a while, so having the Russian scitech taskforce just gives me an additional incentive to get to it.

As for the questions, bear in mind that I'm not the one who'll be joining the taskforce :) (I have my own mile-long list of things to do, and they all deal with administrative and other divisions, so there's probably not going to be a lot of cross-pollination between the two areas). At first glance, the Open Tasks' structure seems fine—it's easy to get to the type of task one is interested in (creation or expansion), and it's also easy to get to the specific period. The Goals section is quite elaborate and detailed, I would say. You have your basic goals right in the first paragraph, and those who are still interested after reading it can glance through the task-specific subsections below. I'm sure you'll think of many new ways to re-arrange it all; I guess the important thing is not to get obsessed with it too much—after all, the purpose of the list is to give people quick pointers to the areas needing improvement, so as long as the list works, the presentation shouldn't matter too much. A taskforce page is supposed to be a tool, not a literary masterpiece :) I'll take a look at spelling and such later today though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 3, 2011; 15:12 (UTC)

OK, thank you. I'm not that obsessed with all this guideline stuff, but I just hope that the better page we do now, the easier will be the way to set up the Economy task force later, by simply copying the main infrastructure and changing some decoration. Also, I think we could even complete a larger project of covering the whole WP:RUSSIA with few task forces. These could be:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Economy of Russia task force

Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force

Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Geography of Russia task force

Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/History of Russia task force

Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Culture of Russia task force

I've already asked Nanobear to think about setting up the Economy and Politics pages, since these two are among his favourite topics. Also I think you could set up Geography task force and incorporate your administrative divisions there or into the Politics page. What do you think about this world conquering plan? %) GreyHood ^Talk 16:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a solid long-term strategy, but probably not of the highest priority at this point of time. I'm OK with creating taskforces where you can place already existing to-do lists, but in absence of active participants setting up other pages would probably be just a waste of time. What do you think?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 3, 2011; 16:36 (UTC)

Well, I don't propose to make this a number one priority for everyone, and I agree that it is very important to have active participants. It just happens so that for each of the proposed task forces I know one or two editors which are likely to participate. And I believe that starting the projects and doing even such small things as task force-specific tagging may attract more potential contributors over time. GreyHood ^Talk 16:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

What do you think about placing this strategy to the talk page of WP:RUSSIA, so that more people could discuss the proposed structure of subprojects and perhaps take part in establishing the Geography, History and Culture tasks? GreyHood ^Talk 16:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

About bringing this up at WT:RUSSIA, absolutely. I just thought you'd want to finish one taskforce page before doing so, but I think the scitech page is already rather informative as it is.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 3, 2011; 16:59 (UTC)

OK, I think I'll bring this to a wider discussion when I finish with the S&T to-do list. Its indeed reasonable not to try to get everything too fast, since it is not exactly easy to manage so many topics at once. GreyHood ^Talk 17:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your copy-editing efforts. I've changed one place though, so that specific goal titles have the same grammatic structures. GreyHood ^Talk 21:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 3, 2011; 21:32 (UTC)

Alexey

Hi! I don't know what is right way to write to you on Wikipedia. And write here. You has reverted my changes on Alexei page because copy-paste are deprecated by Wikipedia rules. What is a right way to change one page to another one? I know that is Alexei transliteration is better than Alexey and more popular around the world. Just compare in Google:

• http://www.google.ru/#sclient=psy&hl=en&newwindow=1&q=Alexey&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=3929e9f923004e45
• http://www.google.ru/#sclient=psy&hl=en&newwindow=1&q=Alexei&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=3929e9f923004e45 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.100.209.209 (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello there. In general, the right way to request a move is by submitting a move request. In this case, however, the article is located where it is located per the romanization of Russian guidelines, which, incidentally, explicitly say not to determine the article title based on the number of google hits alone (see WP:SET for why), so a move request will be moot. We don't determine "what's better" by googling; there is a great number of other considerations that need to be accounted for. Please read WP:RUS carefully. Of course, should you have further questions, feel free to drop me a note. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 1, 2011; 21:20 (UTC)

RFA proposal

You may turn your attention to User:Slon02. According to the userpage, this user is a member of WP:RUSSIA and wants to be an admin. Slon02 has made over 11,000 contributions and does much copy-editing and fighting against vandalism. Recently, in a short period of time this user made a really good work with the article Renewable energy in Russia, and expressed a wish "to continue to work on filling in holes on the coverage of Russia as a whole". I think he is an obvious and very good candidate for adminship. I suggest you contact Slon02, and if there is mutual agreement, nominate him/her. As a long-established and highly respectable editor and administrator, you could play a great role as nominator, and I believe WP:RUSSIA could have another admin in no time (not forgetting about me in perspective). GreyHood ^Talk 01:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. Slon02 is a great candidate whom I'd support any day, but he already ran twice last year and failed per WP:NOTNOW. "Not now" is pretty much a technicality to relieve certain people's uneasiness regarding the candidates who they feel haven't been around enough, so it's not a big deal, but in light of the previous two noms I think January is still too soon to try again. If I were in his place, I'd shoot for this summer or so.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 3, 2011; 14:28 (UTC)

OK, hope Slon02 will be successful next time. GreyHood ^Talk 14:42, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad to see this discussion, and I was planning on going for a third RfA closer to the end of the month, depending on how much I get done before then. However, at the moment I'm not content with my work, and I want to fill in some holes in my experience, specifically content creation and page protection, before I make another attempt at the mop. Thank you GreyHood for the consideration and thank you Ezhiki for your comments. --Slon02 (talk) 01:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

11,000 edits is a very significant amount of Wikipedia experience in my view, but you might also consider Ezhiki's advice and postpone your nomination, perhaps not until summer but at least for few weeks. Anyway, whenever your RFA will take place and if I don't miss it for some reason, my support is granted to you. GreyHood ^Talk 15:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Request for a speedy deletion

Hi, Ezhiki. Would you be so kind and delete the article Meshcherts people, which appears to be a smart hoax written by a blocked Russian vandal's sockpuppet? I'm asking you because one English sysop has already declined deletion for he couldn't see “what's blatant” about it [5] and our Russian friend is constantly removing the speedy deletion template [6]. See also a detailed explanation here. --Glebchik (talk) 06:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Glebchik! Since this is currently on AfD, procedurally I can no longer speedy it. I will, however, add my support for deletion. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 4, 2011; 14:12 (UTC)

Russian-Latin Transliteration

Ahoj, państwo! Czy by wy lepsze nie kazaly, szczo robić przed dorobkej tablicy? P.S. Bardzo dziękują za pojasnenia! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.220.33.64 (talk) 20:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I don't speak Polish, but from what I gather, you are looking for an explanation why I removed the RuLat column from the romanization of Russian article, right? The reason for that is rather simple—first, the system itself is not notable, and even if it were, you need to cite reliable sources from which the information was taken. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 4, 2011; 20:36 (UTC)

Щиро дякую за допомогу. Сподіваємося, що більш небезпек не уникне. ёёё By the way, what languages of the world do you know? 62.220.33.64 (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. As for the languages, they are all listed on my user page (Russian, English, and a bit of Ukrainian and French—the last two I can read somewhat but not speak). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 5, 2011; 02:04 (UTC)

Well, here I'd like to make you such a proposal.

You know, there are a lot of unofficial and home-made transliterations, as well as ONLine romanizations.

It will be a good idea to create a table where we can place some of them, as well as the RuLat. I suppose, that people who do not speak Russian need or must know that 4=Ч, bI=Ы and a bit of other interesting things, which existence in the Internet is undoubtedly. 62.220.33.64 (talk) 11:45, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it wouldn't be a good idea at all. There are literally hundreds of informal transliteration systems one can dig up (or make up), but Wikipedia is not in business to cover them all. All we care about is the notable romanization systems—i.e., only those which have been developed/accepted by major organizations and for which coverage exists in reliable sources.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 7, 2011; 16:34 (UTC)

The question is difficult because literally thousands of people use informal transliteration. And only scientists or lovers of linguistics use the scientific transliteration. And also they are in use with passports! But in the whole they can't dominate and practically every page where people write in Russian using Latin characters can be a source. By the way, even the article about romanization of Arabic has a column with inofficial transliteration.

I think we can collect different symbols and put them in one column. В конце концов это не так-то и трудно. 62.220.33.64 (talk) 17:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not about things being difficult or easy; it's about the purpose of Wikipedia. Take another look at this guideline—Wikipedia is not supposed to include a great deal of otherwise useful information, because including it is not what an encyclopedia is for. Whenever a transliteration system is of some notability, we would include it, of course (the article about the romanization of Russian does cover the passport transliteration system, for example). Additionally, nor can "every page where people write in Russian using Latin characters" serve as a source. We have pretty strict guidelines as to what is a reliable source and what isn't. A random page (or five hundred random pages, for that matter) from the Internets is not a reliable source.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 7, 2011; 17:18 (UTC)

I'm not very happy that we are going to be arguers and debaters. But life and facts sometimes force us to be them. So, I have an another proposal.

What do you think about a table where we will place Russian transliteration according to traditions of some Languages written in Latin script: Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian - that will help Russians to write their names, for example, in Hungarian orthography during the travel and so on??? 62.220.33.64 (talk) 21:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't specifically know about any of those systems, but they need to be approached in exactly the same manner. If a standard exists to transliterate/romanize Russian for use in Polish/Hungarian/etc., then the new article(s) should be titled accordingly and the sources need to be given. The topic is certainly valid, but again, you need to see what is notable, what isn't, for what reliable sources exist, and what is purely empirical.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 7, 2011; 21:49 (UTC)

To become empirical something must exist before.

After this I'd like to mention that there is actually no difficulties with finding sources in this sphere. Firstly, the orthography itself dictate the rules, that's why we write Wareniki or Vareniki, Piroschki, Pirozhki, Pirozskí and many-many words according to them; secondly, it is possible to find some books which can help - e.g., some editions which teach Russian printed in Poland, Hungary... Thirdly, notable is everything that we use. 62.220.33.64 (talk) 22:41, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You know, I'm linking my mentions of the guidelines (such as notability) for a reason—it's really pointless to argue about what notable and what is not if you haven't even read the guideline! Not everything we use is notable in Wikipedia; only that which is covered by third-party independent reliable sources is. If you happen to find a book on transliterating Russian for use in Polish, by all means go ahead and create an article. On the other hand, if your only evidence is a dozen forums where Polish speakers write Russian words using Latin alphabet and Polish conventions, that won't do. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 8, 2011; 00:14 (UTC)

Yes, I totally agree with you about forums. But I also think that this Encyclopædia must (or is likely to) show the tendencies which have become to be a tradition. I can't insist - you're right that everything here must, and only must have a notable resource. 62.220.33.64 (talk) 09:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Added template for SuggestBot

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Родина слонов

If you mean this story, than I'm happy to inform you that space food is already listed among the inventions of Soviet Russia ;) (along with space toilet, by the way %) ) GreyHood ^Talk 20:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, this reminds me to add the task for translation of ru:Россия — родина слонов to the S&T to-do list. Do you have any ideas about the exact translation of the phrase? GreyHood ^Talk 20:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It's the "motherland of elephants" (and there are even a few decent sources to support it!). On the other hand, it seems that the "fatherland of elephants was popular back in the 1960s :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 9, 2011; 17:18 (UTC)

Hm, seems that Google search for books has some merits... Thanks, especially for the 1960s reference! So the article should be called either Russia is the motherland of elephants or just Motherland of elephants (or should the latter become redirect to Russia? :) ). You see, it's an important article, related to the birth of the Russian Wikipedia, and the English Wiki also should have this article. GreyHood ^Talk 17:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I remember that article in the Russian Wikipedia... it actually was one of the reasons why I decided to stick with en_wiki instead of ru_wiki :) Not so sure about having an article about this phrase in en_wiki, though. Those few books I found do mention the phrase, but they don't really discuss it in detail. There's a difference between being covered by a reliable source and being mentioned in a reliable source (about something else). On the other hand, I haven't read those passages too carefully, so may be the idea has some merit...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 9, 2011; 17:49 (UTC)

Well, this article is not one of my immediate priorities, but if I actually start it later, I'll try to find more reliable sources. There are tons of sources in Russian language on this phrase, but finding the best ones may not be that easy... GreyHood ^Talk 18:09, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Ezhiki. You have new messages at Greyhood's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Task forces grand plan

I've added my proposals to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia#Task forces for the project. I still have many things to add to the S&T to-do list, and while I'm performing that old task, I'll wait for the outcome of the discussion. I've explained at the bottom of my post at WP:RUSSIA why I think it would be handier to create all the task forces simultaneously, and not one by one. As for the participation, I'm ready to sign-up for each of the task forces and I'll try to involve all editors which I think would like to take part. I hope you'll enlist yourself for the proposed Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Subdivisions and settlements of Russia task force (the exact name doesn't matter to me, change it please if you like).

I see you perform much assessment job, and I'm sure you would like to have more options. Actually, for me the sorting the WikiProject Russia articles by topic would be quite interesting spending of time, since I'm a great fan of making lists and sorting things. Also, I'll have little free time since the last week of the month to embark on larger tasks, where you couldn't so comfortably make a pause at any arbitrary stage of the work.

Another reason to speed the events up is my suggestion that having task force tags on each page of WP:RUSSIA will increase our chances to lure more editors to the project and its subprojects. GreyHood ^Talk 23:00, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll add my comment there (which may or may not be today). By the way, it seems that you copy-pasted most of that post from somewhere else, because there are still a couple references to "language and literature" where you mean a generic taskforce. That probably needs correcting. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 11, 2011; 15:32 (UTC)

Thanks, I've fixed my mistake. GreyHood ^Talk 15:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Consistency

Dear self appointed arbiter of consistency, could you do something about Инстинкт Обречённых, a Russian alphabet titled page appearing on English wiki? I've no idea how to even start dealing with that. Ran into it categorizing articles without categories. Thanks! Aelfthrytha (talk) 03:34, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The best way to deal with such situations is to use a widely accepted English title if one is available (and apparent from the sources) or, when there is none, to simply romanize the title as per WP:RUS (which is what I have done with that page). It is now fixed; thanks for letting know! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 12, 2011; 18:33 (UTC)

Caca

You have deleted a post by me with no explaination. Can you explain. The previous deletion got no explanation either even though I asked for one more than once. Is this your policy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cakebread (talk • contribs) 13:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Cakebread. The person who deleted the entry before actually already gave you explanations: it is a circular non-link and a non-article. What this means is that the Caca page is a disambiguation page, and disambiguation pages are supposed to adhere to the guidelines described here. In short, the entry should lead to an article, and it should not be a mere dictionary definition. I will remove the entry once again. Please do not restore it—unfortunately, there is no way to make it work, as dictionary definitions belong in Wiktionary, not in the encyclopedia. Also, on a slightly unrelated note, please mind the three revert rule—no one is supposed to do more than three identical reverts to the same page in a 24-hour period. Please don't hesitate to contact me or Bkonrad should you have any further questions, and I hope your next experience around here will be a tad more pleasant :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 14:59 (UTC)

How can it lead to an article when you delete it faster than I can write an article for it to link to. If you leave it alone I can link it. This is stupid. This is supposed to be for information right? So why delete it? there is nothing wrong at all in including it.

Why don't you delete the latin discription as well then? The two are the same.I do not see a difference here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cakebread (talk • contribs) 15:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

chinese anti cancer association does not have an article either. can this and the latin discription be deleted then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cakebread (talk • contribs) 15:44, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You cannot write an article about your entry for two reasons. First, the link you included in the entry points right back to the disambiguation page on which the entry is placed (which renders the link inoperative). Second, an article which only says something like "Caca is Old English for something round" would also be deleted, because articles are not supposed to consist solely of a dictionary definitions, per this. You need to go to the Wiktionary with this, not here. Wikipedia is supposed to include information, true, but not any and all information.

As for the Latin description, please notice that it is included in the "see also" section, not together with the main entries. Also, it leads to a quite valid and informative article on Latin profanity, which is a subject in and out itself. There is no similar topic to which your Old English definition could be similarly redirected.

And on the Chinese anti-cancer association you are quite right; thanks for pointing it out. I have deleted that entry as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 16:17 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining this more fully Ezhiki. older ≠ wiser 17:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 18:07 (UTC)

Libcaca also has no link.

The latin profanity are also just dictionary definitions of various latin words so why are they allowed? My link would also go to an informative article but I have spent so much time with this bit the article isn't finished.

So are you saying it can go in the "see also" section?

CB 22:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cakebread (talk • contribs)

Libcaca is OK because it is not a dictionary definition and because it meets the conditions set by the guideline dealing with the red links on disambiguation pages. Your entry was not a valid link (so it could not possibly meet those conditions) and it was a dictionary definition, which are explicitly disallowed, be it on disambiguation pages or as "articles". As for the Latin profanity article, it is not just dictionary definitions of various Latin words. It is an overview of Latin profanity in general, along with the list of words illustrating the subject, each of which has background information in addition to the dictionary definition.

To answer your question, if you manage to write an article for which academic coverage approaches that for Latin profanity, and if the word "caca" can reasonably be expected to serve as a redirect to that article, then yes, you can add a link to the "see also" section. Note, however, that the article should be encyclopedic and about a notable subject. If you are working on something like "list of Old English words dealing with shapes", that won't do. That's not an academic subject, and it will be deleted rather quickly; because of this. At any rate, entries to disambiguation pages should normally be added after the article is written, not before, unless compelling, obvious, or easily explainable reasons exist to do otherwise (and even then editors who are not as liberal with the disambiguation pages as yours truly would likely disagree). Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2011; 03:30 (UTC)

I wrote the article. It was then deleted within a millisecond (Speedy) with no reason given.

I GIVE UP!!!!

This is clearly not what is advertised. i.e. Anyone can input. Well..you can but it will be deleted straight away.

I won't be adding content again as I have already wasted valuable time on this. ::::::Knowledge is for all and as far as I can see, here, it is being supressed.

CB 14:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

If the article you mean is cakebread, it was deleted because it was perceived as vandalism. I don't know anything about that surname, but I can see how the article in the state you submitted it could be perceived as vandalism. What you needed is a better reference to support what the article was saying—the only link you gave was to a website which does not qualify as a reliable source by a long stretch. Surely you should know of an academic, verifiable source to support that article? If you could point me to such a source, I can help you format and reference the article properly.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2011; 14:14 (UTC)

The article was entitled "Cacabred" with 2 websources. Other sources would be added as well as more information later on.

Cakebread was also deleted some time ago for no good reason.

CB 19:40, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Cacabred has not yet been deleted; it is up for deletion. From what I see, unless you add sources which are truly reliable (as opposed to two random website of dubious quality), deletion will be the outcome. If this last name is so ancient as you are claiming, surely you should be able to add a reference to a book or two as opposed to the links you have provided so far?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2011; 19:55 (UTC)

The links are realiable actually. I have lots more to add. But, I was unable to access it. I check just now and It is "back"! however. this still doesn't solve the constant deletion of Caca. Which, if it is deleted, I am unable to link of course.

The amount of time I have wasted here could have been used to complete my work, links and references.

Just because a link works doesn't mean the page it leads to is a reliable source of information :) I suggest that you read WP:RS if you haven't already—it seems you don't quite understand what people mean by "reliable" around here.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 21:43 (UTC)

Icons for the task forces

Hellow! I've found more suitable icons for all task forces, and hope you will implement them soon in the template. Also, I wonder, if there is any possibility to fix the size of icons, so that all of them have the same width in the banner? GreyHood ^Talk 20:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I've missed this thread indeed. I'll take care of the icons (and research the width issue) next week. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 22:36 (UTC)

No particular need to hurry. See you after the weekend. GreyHood ^Talk 22:38, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello again! Thanks for changing the icons. I have few more proposals to improve icons and task forces, see them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia. GreyHood ^Talk 16:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I've created the pages for the splitted science and technology. GreyHood ^Talk 20:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing everything. Hope in near future there will be no need to change the entire structure, and we'll have to do only minor tweaks, such as changing icons when better ones are ready. GreyHood ^Talk 22:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

As long as there is no need to change the parameters (like removing "scitech" and replacing it with "sci"/"tech"), these changes are actually pretty easy to do. But anyway, I too hope that we are done with this at least for a while :) Thanks for your help as well. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 22:18 (UTC)

Krai

Dear Ezhiki, you probably are right that OED has Krai (Russian term for one of administrative subdivisions) etc, but it also then should have Krai in Buryatian, Mongolian, Chinese, and a hundred of other languages, all known only to the people intimately connected with their native languages. For consistency, the various linguistic expressions for the "Territory" are converted in English WP to an accepted English non-exotic equivalent, in this case Krai => Territory, this is routinely done with all local designations of the admin divisions, titles, ets. that have a well-established English vocabulary. I only followed the WP routine. Barefact (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You know, consider this. Wikipedia has been around for ten years, and the articles about various Russian subdivisions (as krais, oblasts, okrugs, etc.) have been around for at least seven of those years. You don't think that in all this time, today you are the first one to consider why that is? :) This matter had been discussed years ago, more than once, and every single time the outcome was to use the proper loanwords. Yes, it is OK to refer to oblasts as "provinces" and to krais as "territories" in passing where the entity status is of little concern (a newspaper reporting, say, a plane crash in "Novgorod Province" is fine, because the topic is the crash, not the intricacies of the administrative divisions), but we stick to precise terms when we discuss the actual subject matter or where the subject matter, pardon the pun, matters.

Besides, I don't think you understand what kind of havoc you'd wreak by switching to generic terms everywhere. Heck, consider my last edit before I noticed your moves—would you care to explain in generic terms how Leningrad Province was created as a result of a merger of five other provinces and was originally subdivided into nine district which, in turn, were subdivided into districts (and which in turn were also subdivided into districts, but I omitted that part as it would be too much detail for that article)? How will you discuss the switch from three level administrative divisions structure in the early RSFSR to a two-level one, if the only term you have to refer to all three levels is "districts"? How would you distinguish between the 18th century provinces (провинции) and later oblasts?

You are also wrong to assume that the OED includes all kinds of junk. It does not. They have an involved and thorough routine which is followed before any word is included, and I assure you the OED does not contain "hundreds of" Buryat, Chinese, or who knows what else words. Only the words which have been shown to be used in English (i.e., only those which are supported by numerous citations) qualify. We do the same. Things like oblasts and krais are just fine, and things which are not we do change (the articles about the uluses of the Sakha Republic, for example, were moved to "districts" precisely because "ulus" is not an English loanword but rather a straight transliteration of a Russian/Sakha word).

The Wikipedia routine is to discuss the moves which are non-obvious—in many cases you'd be surprised to learn just how many reasons exist to do things the way which may not make 100% at the first glance. All that's needed is a second glance. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 20:26 (UTC)

Please do not move any more of these articles without consensus. I disagree with this move too. Nanobear (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Trezhbon, Czechoslovakia

Dear Ezhiki, Happy New Year!! I've been working on a translated Russian airborne regiment article (108th Guards paraborne regiment (Russia)), and one of the towns involved, mentioned during the Second World War, is Trezhbon (due to planned mergers, mentioned at ru:7-я_гвардейская_десантно-штурмовая_(горная)_дивизия as Трежбонь). Can you give me any guidance at all on which town this might be? Very much appreciate any assistance you might be able to give. Buckshot06 (talk) 17:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I am not 100% sure, but I think what you are looking for is Třeboň, which is usually called "Тршебонь" in Russian, but is occasionally referred to as "Трежбонь".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 12:57 (UTC)

Popular pages lists

This is not exactly urgent, but still I want to discuss it now. The bot compiles PP lists monthly. So perhaps there is some sense in creating PP lists for task forces before the end of February. I think it may be interesting even if we don't assess a majority of WP:RUSSIA articles by that time. What do you think about that? GreyHood ^Talk 23:06, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, with only a handful of articles in almost every taskforce cat, it's almost easier to look the most popular pages up manually, one by one :) At any rate, I can help setting these up, but I haven't yet looked at what it involves. Let me take a look and I'll let you know if I see anything that may complicate matters. Or, you could probably start the work on the PP lists yourself—I don't suppose there is any admin work or complex markup involved? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 15:32 (UTC)

Perhaps I could, if no admin work is required. Just hint me where to start. GreyHood ^Talk 15:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, I propose to use the File:Russia coa.png as icon for the History task force, because I've found nothing better, and the birch bark document looks bad at low resolution. Could you change it as well? GreyHood ^Talk 16:05, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the icon. As for setting up the popular pages, requests (one per each taskforce) should be submitted using this form. Note that once the popular pages are set up, it would mean additional hassle should we decide to merge/split more taskforces. That was another reason why I wanted to wait, but if you are sure we are done with the structure, please go ahead and submit the requests. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 16:09 (UTC)

Hm, I am almost sure.. Well, let's better wait until we assess more, you've convinced me. Also, I've made the background of economy icon transparent: File:Russian Gold Coin.png, change it in the template please. I'll see if I could deal with the background of matryoshka image.. GreyHood ^Talk 16:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Meanwhile, I've made a better icon for Religion, comprising the four traditional religions of Russia: File:Religions of Russia.png. GreyHood ^Talk 16:54, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

But what of atheism? It's not a religion, of course, but it is in the scope of the task force...

I've changed the econ icon, by the way.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 16:59 (UTC)

Also, if this icon is to represent the religions of Russia, the cross probably shouldn't be Latin.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 17:02 (UTC)

Well, atheism has no common symbol as far as I know, and it is not a religion strictly speaking. Of course we should include it into the scope of the Religion task force, but we can't add it to the icon. As for the cross, I'll try to change it. GreyHood ^Talk 17:04, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not a religion, but, strictly speaking, you are not making an icon to represent the religions, but an icon to represent the scope of the taskforce :) As for the symbol, this is probably the closest to a universally recognizable symbol of atheism that can be found. And another one that the icon does not cover is Slavic Neopaganism.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 17:09 (UTC)

I've changed the cross. I'm not sure that Slavic Neopaganism has more followers than non-Orthodox Christianity denominations in Russia. Anyway, there are adherents of every possible religion in Russia and we can't reflect all them in the icon. Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism are considered Russia’s traditional religions, legally a part of Russia's "historical heritage" - that's a line from Russia article, and that's why I think these four should be on the icon. As for the atheism, we could insert the Atom symbol onto the icon, of course, but is it worth doing so? We could possibly have, I believe, very few atheism-related articles, such as yet unexisting Atheism in Russia, while we'll have hundreds and thousands of articles about various temples, religious leaders etc., related to the religions. So I propose not to include atheism in the icon, but mention it in the scope of course. GreyHood ^Talk 17:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, technically it is better to have either 4 or 9 symbols on the icon, and while we likely couldn't have 9, we have to choose 4. GreyHood ^Talk 17:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

You are probably right about the neopaganism, but I disagree with your assessment of atheism. By different counts, the atheists comprise from 15% to 60% of Russia's population, and whatever number is right, it is certainly on par with the major religious denominations. And that we have so few articles to fall into scope of atheism in Russia is more of a testament to the condition of WP:RUSSIA in general and to the fact that atheism-related articles are of a different nature than those related to religions. There's a lot that can be written about the history of atheism in Russia, its current state of the matter, the clericalization of the country, pseudo-sciences which are becoming rampant, philosophy, lifestyle, and so on and so forth. Not much in terms of temples and leaders, true, but still plenty to cover.

Of course, there are still technical questions left (about how to fit the symbol, and what symbol, into the icon). You are right on that point. Let me sit on it for some time and if I can think of a better solution, I'll let you know. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 18:09 (UTC)

Atheism icon is not used by Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion, nor it is used in the Pluralism symbols on Commons. However, if you insist on the inclusion of File:Atom of Atheism (lowres)-Zanaq.png, I could try to add it, but we need one more symbol to have at least 6. We could use something related to Slavic paganism, but I'm not sure what to choose. GreyHood ^Talk 18:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Why does it have to be six? We could have three in the top row and two in the bottom row (kind of like Olympic rings).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 18:32 (UTC)

That requires a bit more effort, but technically possible of course. I'm still unsure about the inclusion of non-religion among religions.. By the way, what do you think about the idea of changing the name of task force to Religion and philosophy (changing the parameter to "belief=yes")? I've intended to include philosophy to Languages and literature, but perhaps it is better to combine it with religion? Then we could include not only the atheism symbol to the icon, but also anarchism, marxism/communism, and Pax Cultura? With the File:Sun symbol.svg for traditional religions we'll have 9 symbols. GreyHood ^Talk 18:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I always thought that philosophy is a science? I can see how some philosophies can be considered to be "beliefs", but certainly not the way the traditional beliefs in gods are? Not all philosophies explain the world in supernatural terms like religion does. Do you have any reservations about putting philosophy under "science and education"?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 19:10 (UTC)

Oh, I've missed that obvious option for some reason. OK, so do you agree to use 4 "traditional religions", the Sun symbol, and the Atom of Atheism in the icon, the total of six? Seems a good solution. GreyHood ^Talk 19:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Sound reasonable. But will you mind re-doing it if I think of something better later? :)) Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 19:38 (UTC)

Re-doing is OK, but just remember that I'm not very good with image editing, and can't perform complex effects on the images. GreyHood ^Talk 19:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Join the club :) I promise to keep it simple.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 20:02 (UTC)

Here is the file File:Religion in Russia.png. GreyHood ^Talk 20:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I already added the previous version, and since the file name has not changed, no other changes are necessary. I appreciate all your help with this!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 21:03 (UTC)

But I've changed the file name this time, so that we could have both files on Commons. It's File:Religions of Russia.png vs File:Religion in Russia.png. GreyHood ^Talk 21:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, crud; thanks for pointing it out. I'll make changes shortly.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 21:12 (UTC)

Tweaking task force parameters

Sorry for possible creation of even more work for you, but I believe the faster we'll deal with it the better.

Look at Talk:Ice hockey. We see the line WikiProject Canada / Sport there, while only WikiProject Russia below. For some reason the similar effect as with WP:CANADA happens only in case of Technology with WP:RUSSIA (see, for example Talk:GLONASS). This better be fixed somehow and sometime.

What is more urgent is that we still haven't assessed too many articles and can simplify task force parameters, so that to make assessment a bit easier.

• For example, in the case of WP:CANADA they have just "sport=yes" and not "sports=yes".
• We could also change "langlit=" to just "lit=" (literature will fill a vast majority of the scope anyway, and "lit" also hints to language, though vaguely).
• Also we could think how to simplify other long parameter names, "humgeo", "physgeo" and "perform". If there are any good ideas, better change them to shorter variants. I could perform the reassessment myself, if you agree to change something. What do you think? GreyHood ^Talk 21:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The nested descriptor screw-up is totally my own. I inserted the parameter into the tech taskforce section, but forgot to carry it over to the rest of the sections. An easy fix, but the catch is that it seems that the nested parameter is only supported for the five taskforces built directly into the banner, not for the ten additional ones supported via a hook. To cut the long story short, we can pick and choose the five taskforces for which the descriptor will be displayed (right now they are tech, demo, langlit, art, and perform); the rest will have to do without.

As for the alternative parameters, I've added both "lit" and "sport", but the old ones will continue to work as well (so we don't need to do any re-assessments right away). As for humgeo/physgeo/perform, I unfortunately can't think of anything to replace them with at the moment. I'll keep them in mind though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 22:02 (UTC)

By the way, not all WikiProjects find short parameter names useful. WP:MILHIST is the most illustrative exception, with such parameter names as "Russian-task-force" and "Ancient-Near-East-task-force".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2011; 22:06 (UTC)

That's really good that parameters can be fixed so easily, thanks! As for the descriptors I just propose to change obsolete "demo" with new "sport". And I've edited the matryoshka image so that to make it transparent and larger as icon: File:Matryoshka_transparent.png. Hope this finally ends our work with icons, unless accidentally we encounter better icon candidates. GreyHood ^Talk 22:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant "ethno", not "demo". Do you still want to replace it? The matryoshka icon I have taken care of.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 02:01 (UTC)

Yes, better replace it. I just thought there should be some logic in what five task forces we choose, and for me technology, sports, literature, visual and performing arts are the main areas of Russian culture and achievements. Thanks again for fixing everything. GreyHood ^Talk 02:05, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I have switched ethno and sports; sports should now display a descriptor when the banner is collapsed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 13:55 (UTC)

I can't resist awarding you

		The Teamwork Barnstar
		For your helpfullness, reasonable and cold mind, hard-working and good-spirited character! Establishing the infrastructure for fifteen task forces in a short while is a great achievement! GreyHood Talk 02:20, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! But you probably don't know how ironic this award is—team spirit is one virtue I very thoroughly lack :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 13:56 (UTC)

Me too :) But I believe the ability to productively work together is a different and better thing than team spirit. GreyHood ^Talk 14:04, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Minor tweaks

Hello again! I think we should better reserve politics task force exclusively for modern politics (after 1991), while everything else goes to history (anyway, all historical politicians will be covered by history).

Also, if it is technically non-problematic, I propose to move "Languages and literature task force" to "Language and literature task force". This looks better, and has the same meaning as a name of general topic. GreyHood ^Talk 16:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure I agree about politics—any reason why politics of, say, the Russian Empire, should be disqualified? Yes, it's history too, but something like the members of the first Duma would definitely be politics. Another reason is that even if you talk me into it, others will still consider politics to be politics, no matter which period. When some rule needs to be explained or pointed out to each person individually, it's not a good rule. Perhaps renaming the taskforce to "modern" or "post-1991 politics" will help?

As for the languages, it is my understanding that the taskforce is to cover all languages of Russia, not just Russian. Using plural emphasizes it. From the technical standpoint, it will require null-editing all articles in Category:Languages and literature of Russia task force articles (or waiting really long time until they update on their own).

Let me know what you think. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 16:19 (UTC)

Well, I've added the line about post-1991 to the scope of Politics task force, and I think that's enough. I think we should limit the scope to this period so that to have two different usable PP lists in future - one on modern politics and one on history. The primary topics of history are politics and wars, and we simply don't need two task forces with largely coinciding scope. If you think that defining the scope on the task force page is not enough, we may rename the task force to Modern Russian politics, but I think that there is no particular need in it, at least for now.

As for the language and literature, there is no emphasis on just Russian language. It is just a common general topic name, see for example Wikipedia:Good articles/Language and literature, or Russia#Language. The name "language and literature" just indicates that the scope is related to language in general, and literature in general, no matter how many particular languages and literatures in these languages fall within that scope. Also, It makes sense to include Russian linguists and philologists in the scope of this task force, even those who studied foreign languages and literature, and that's why the name of the task force should be as general as possible. GreyHood ^Talk 16:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree with the reasoning; I just think that adding a line to the Scope section is not enough. I'll stop tagging the political topics of yore with "pol" for now, but let me think about how to best handle this a little more.

I'll make corrections to the Lang&Lit taskforce name.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 16:44 (UTC)

I've changed the lang&lit to "languages...". As for the category, I filed a WP:CfD, which will take a couple days, but will spare us from the mind-bogglingly boring work on null-editing each article in the cat. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 16:52 (UTC)

Thanks! I fear you are getting bored about all these renamings and tweaks. I'm tired of it myself, frankly. But the quick fixing of everything right now means we'll not have to fix it in the future when it could become more problematic. GreyHood ^Talk 17:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Nah, I'm fine. But like I said before, no matter how much thought and effort we put into it, something that can be improved or change will still remain :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 17:06 (UTC)

Human geography of Russia

And one more thing, I've started adding items to the to-do list of Human geography task force. Do you think there is any sense in organising the list regionally (by federal districts and federal subjects)? Perhaps you could set some reasonable structure of sections there? I understand that there are tens of thousands of possible requested articles about Russian subdivisions and settlements, and we can't insert them all to the list. But still we need some structure for placement of expansion requests, and for especially important new articles requests. GreyHood ^Talk 16:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I was going to talk to you about that. Listing the districts, inhabited localities, etc. as you find them really doesn't make much sense. There are just too damn many of them. On the other hand, I was looking at my to-do list the other day, and while there are some things which I can transfer, overall it is built around my workflow which has very specific steps and order in which things are to be done. However, that's my workflow, and while I believe it to be the most efficient, organized, and blah-blah-blah, I don't think it's right to impose it on other members, who may have their own preferences regarding what to work on and in which order.

The best approach to take at this point, I think, is by identifying the clusters of information which need work. Take districts, for example. We have articles of various degree of thoroughness for the districts of all republics (except Sakha) and all the krais (through Primorsky). Those all have basic stats in place, but could really use some meat (history, economic overviews, etc.). On the other hand, districts of the oblasts and the autonomous entities are 99% red links. I'm going through them to fill the basic stats in, but despite small sizes, that's not easy work (see, for example, my original template for Primorsky Krai, which ideally should be 100% filled out for each district). With the inhabited localities, it would be really unhelpful if someone just started creating the stubs en masse (I won't go into the reasons so as not to bore you with details, but let me know if you are interested why). The first half of articles about the federal subjects uses the new infobox template, while the second half used an old, deprecated one. That needs to be remedied. I hope you see what I mean by "clusters". Each cluster would have too much to make listing individual entities practical, but identifying the clusters would still allow interested people to find the areas where work is needed.

Of course, the articles of special importance can and should be listed separately; that goes without saying.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 16:31 (UTC)

I can imagine why creating the stubs en masse won't be helpful.. Afterall, there is a working system of naming of inhabited localities, and everything should be interlinked with the related templates, categories, etc, which means a bit more work than creating plain stubs.

As for the clusters, that sounds reasonable, and I agree that the work should be organised over an hierarchy of subdivisions, with more priority to the upper levels. Perhaps you could insert at least the short descriptions of the main clusters to the task force page, while organising the section for requested articles and expansions somehow? GreyHood ^Talk 16:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I will, but it probably won't be today. Did you know that if every individual item on my to-do list were taken care of, the English Wikipedia would grow in size by 7%? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 16:59 (UTC)

Wow, do you have city districts on your list too? GreyHood ^Talk 17:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Why, yes. There are only 300 of them in modern Russia, after all, and even if you add the historical entities, you still probably wouldn't be pushing past 1,000. Now, microdistricts, those I try not to go into :) They are mostly non-notable anyway.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 17:14 (UTC)

Well, I do know that there are about 150,000 inhabited localities (населенные пункты) in Russia, but what makes the rest of your list then? GreyHood ^Talk 17:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but did you know that about 70,000 rural localities in Russia were destroyed (and many of which were never rebuilt) during World War II? Those account for a good chunk of the rest. Also, there's infrastructure (set indices like this one) and articles about low-level administrative divisions like selsoviets and volosts, which over the years split and merged like crazy. And then there are of course articles explaining the Russia-specific concepts like uyezd, and the chronological lists, and categorization lists, and so on and so forth. Of course, I'll be lucky to be able to even start working on even a small portion of all this before I die from old age :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 17:34 (UTC)

That's indeed impressive figures. Your knowledge of the topic seems to be great, and I think you shouldn't keep all your materials in userspace, but introduce them to a wider attention, so that there would be some working outline for other editors. GreyHood ^Talk 17:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

My materials consist mainly of an old-fashioned home library and the database of the Russian administrative and municipal divisions, which I am ever so close to finishing but still can't finish quite yet. In other words, it's not exactly something that's easy to share. Once the database is done, it would allow for all sorts of neat things. Even now, for example, I can generate set index articles like this by basically specifying the name, pressing a button, and waiting ten seconds for the output which can be copied and pasted into a Wikipedia article. Once I build the referencing feature in, I will be unstoppable :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 17:48 (UTC)

Sounds cool. Perhaps you could set up some kind of sofisticated bot that creates or manages articles about Russian locations. GreyHood ^Talk 18:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, a couple bot-owners had already agreed to run a bot once the database is in place. Doing it all manually would be an onerous task indeed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 18:25 (UTC)

That's very good news. If you really manage to add all these hundreds of thousands of articles to en-wiki, that would be the greatest Wikipedian feat I ever heard of %) By the way, you could also help people from ru-wiki, I heard there have been similar projects to create articles about all Russian localities. GreyHood ^Talk 18:53, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Later, maybe. Over my seven years around here, ru_wiki's editors had "планов громадьё" as far as the databases go, but I am yet to see one tangible thing to come out of it. All too often they all boil down to "let's just copy OKATO", which if they ever do would be a disaster of gigantic proportions and a pain in the ass to fix. So there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 18:58 (UTC)

Just interesting, what's wrong with OKATO? GreyHood ^Talk 19:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Theoretically (and from the point of its being a reliable source), nothing. It is supposed to be the aggregate of the information which the federal government collects from the governments of the federal subjects, uniformly organizes, and makes available for a variety of different purposes. In practice, however, the federal government does a very lousy job at said collecting and organizing :) There are still sections which were out of date even in 1995 (when the first revision was published), and waiting for them to catch up with more recent changes is worse than watching paint dry. Worse yet, the updates are not consistent. Some administrative changes make into OKATO just months after taking effect, yet some can take years or are not processed at all. Add on top of that the typos, the abysmal organization of legislative documentation in some federal subjects, and the general turmoil of the 1990s, and in practice the OKATO turns out to be far less helpful than it could (and is supposed to) be.

When I just started to work in this area in Wikipedia, using OKATO was my first thought, too. In fact, nothing better was available in 2004, and all but one article in the "Administrative divisions of..." series are still built upon the OKATO foundation. But even though those articles only cover the divisions through the district level (and give counts for selsoviets, and skip over the rural localities altogether), they are often way out of date. Obviously, fixing this situation is one of my top priorities, but after fixing the first one, I somehow keep getting distracted with other things :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2011; 19:23 (UTC)

Thanks for explanation. I see now how you became "self-appointed keeper of consistency" ;) GreyHood ^Talk 19:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Idel-Ural

Привет! Защити пожалуйста статью от анонимов - они переправляют статью о регионе на стать о проекте татарской государственности, совершенно игнорируя, что такая статья уже есть. --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ (see also:ә? Ә!) 11:01, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Semied for two weeks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 25, 2011; 14:34 (UTC)

Semen Korsakov

I've moved Semen Korsakov to Semyon Korsakov, but it was moved back again. I'm not particularly sure if this is the case where one can ignore WP:RUS. GreyHood ^Talk 19:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, WP:RUS was not ignored; the move was done in accordance with it. See WP:RUS#People for the list of conditions which should be checked (and which this article meets) before the default romanization (described in the table at the bottom of WP:RUS) can be applied. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 25, 2011; 19:16 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. I've read the policy, of course, and I've meant the cases when the default romanization could be ignored (sorry for not wording it clear). I just haven't time for proper checking the sources myself for few next hours, and my experience with transliteration issues is rather poor. There are two English sources in the article using Semen Korsakov, and if that's enough, OK. GreyHood ^Talk 19:28, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, as far as the enforcement of WP:RUS goes, you are not required to check the sources beyond those which are already in the article. Information in any article should be verifiable, and the choice of spelling is no exception. The default romanization provisions are there for cases where multiple incompatible choices are available, or when no sources in English can easily be found to establish the conventional spelling of a person's name, or in similar cases.

That, of course, does not mean you should never bother to look for more sources, but the assumption here is that if you do, you'll add what you find to the article.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 25, 2011; 19:38 (UTC)

Illustrating disambiguations?

I appreciate your diligence in reverting my contribution of an image to Mir (disambiguation). I started a conversation about the notion of images in disambiguation pages over here: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Images_in_special_cases. I figure you might like to join in. -- ke4roh (talk) 14:55, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting me. I don't really have anything new to add to what's already been said there already. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 28, 2011; 14:14 (UTC)

Few minor problems that require admin tools

Hello, there are few things that need fixing. The Category:Language and literature of Russia task force should be merged with the Category:Language and literature of Russia task force articles (there is a mistake in Template:WikiProject Russia, introduced by someone else).

Also, the disambiguation page Valeri Alekseyev has the talk page Talk:Valeri Alekseyev, which simultaneously is the talk page for Valeri Valentinovich Alekseyev (that's partially my mistake, initially Valeri Alekseyev was for some reason attached to the talk page Talk:Valeri Valentinovich Alekseyev and I've moved the latter page). The same problem is found with Yevgeni Alekseyev, which also has a wrong talk page. GreyHood ^Talk 19:00, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully everything is fixed now. Thanks for letting me know.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 28, 2011; 19:38 (UTC)

Thanks. Seems now everything is all right. GreyHood ^Talk 19:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually the category was renamed by a speedy CFD and the bot shifted it. Because of the template it takes time for the cache to catch up with the change. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It looks that it was me who screwed the request up in the first place. I gotta run now, but I'll take another look at this tomorrow and will do the fixes manually. Sorry about the confusion.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 28, 2011; 21:47 (UTC)

Ah, it seems we've been chasing each other's changes. Sorry for the mess. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully everything is now fixed. Sorry for the trouble again.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 1, 2011; 16:25 (UTC)

Talk:Yaropolk Izyaslavich

Hi!

When you rearranged the project tags on this page you deleted the sort value from |listas= in the Biography banner. I concede that the existing value was incorrect as "Izyaslavich" is a patronym but there are a number of reasons that the value should have been corrected rather than removed.

It is a goal of the Biog project that every biography article have a sort value in {{DEFAULTSORT}}. In order to track that there is Category:Biography articles without listas parameter with the understanding that the sort values in the two pages will be the same. This category is one of the subjects of the Cleanup project that is currently underway.

There are a number of bots, editors using AWB and editors working manually who are working on the category. Neither the bots nor AWB any high levels of discernment and are almost certain to apply the kind of sort value you found. If a correct sort value is inserted, even if it is the name of the article, the value will not be changed.

Does that make sense?

Just out of curiosity, why did you rearrange the banners? The result is not alphabetical and I can see no hierarchy.

JimCubb (talk) 19:40, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Jim! I am fully aware what the listas parameter is used for. As you rightfully noted, in this particular case a correction needed to be made, since "Izyaslavich" is a patronymic, not a last name, and we do not ever sort by a patronymic. Since there is no last name associated with this person, the sorting should be done by the first name, which is what I have accomplished by removing the listas parameter altogether. I can't help that the bots might restore the incorrect sorting later—as far as I see, it is the problem with the bots' programming and should be addressed accordingly. My philosophy is that bots should never be used in ambiguous situations when a human review is needed. Another option, of course, would have been explicitly setting listas to "Yaropolk Izyaslavich", but that still wouldn't be a 100% guarantee against the bots.

As for rearranging the banners, I sorted them in order of the relevance to the WikiProjects (the article is a bio about a saint who lived in Middle Ages and whose history is very relevant to modern Ukraine and to a lesser extent to modern Russia). Feel free to re-arrange them any other way you want though—that's not an issue I really care much about. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 1, 2011; 19:48 (UTC)

Actually, it would protect the value against the bots as they only work on articles that lack the value. Most of their owners / operators know that they are not smart enough to discern and repair incorrect values. I am acquainted with the editor who applied the incorrect value. He uses AWB and put the incorrect value on the article as well. I will let him know that he needs to be more careful about patronyms. (I care even less about banner hierachy than you do. After I added one banner it qualified for WPB and all the banner identities were hidden.) JimCubb (talk) 20:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll keep that in mind, thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 1, 2011; 20:35 (UTC)

I'm the idiot who screwed up the listas value. I wish I could blame AWB for the problem, but I decide what value should go into listas. I look at the DEFAULTSORT value as a consideration only because a bot may have inserted the wrong value. (so many Chinese names messed up by bots) I consider myself at an intermediate level at sorting, so being told I screwed up sinks in the message of patronymic that much better. I'm working on V's (Viktor, Vasily, Valery, etc), so I will go back and double check for mistakes. Is there any other suggestions?

It is a good idea to put a value in listas. There are bots adding a value and then there are the idiots like me. Bgwhite (talk) 06:12, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Now, I think you are being too hard on yourself :) It's not that big of a deal. Regarding the things to look for, the articles about the Kievan Rus' rulers would all have titles like this one. Also, if you can't tell a patronymic from a last name, you can take a look at the ending—if it ends with "-ich" (for males) or "-vna" (for females), there's a good chance it's a patronymic, not a last name. And of course, you are more than welcome to contact me (or any other native speaker of Russian/Ukrainian, for that matter) if you have doubts about a particular case.

As for my part of the deal, in situations like this I'll make sure to override the listas parameter with the value matching the article's title instead of removing it altogether. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 2, 2011; 14:40 (UTC)

I've finished off the list of missing listas that start with "V". Plus, I went back to look for any other "-ich" that I might have done wrong. I added or overturned the DEFAULTSORT value in Vladimir Olgerdovich, Vsevolod Mstislavich and Volodymyrko Volodarovych.
There are some modern day "ich"es that I didn't treat as a patronym. For example, Valery Karshakevich and Yuri Yakovich. I hope I did that right. Bgwhite (talk) 23:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Yup, you got them all right. As for the modern ones ending in "-ich", it is highly unlikely we would have any without a last name, so treating them as last names when you are not sure is unlikely to lead to any mistakes or problems. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 4, 2011; 15:59 (UTC)

Dabs

I agree that dabs have little encyclopedic value, but sometimes it happens that you find mistakes in dabs that should be corrected, and perhaps there is some sense (however little) in including them into the scope of WP:RUSSIA and task forces, so that to watch dabs in bot alerts etc. But if you insist, I may drop the practice. I've started it because there were some dabs in the project already, though most of the current 83 were assessed by me. GreyHood ^Talk 20:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't insist; I just don't see the value :) Having them tagged with the WP:RUSSIA banner is marginally useful because the AAlertsBot catches them when they are nominated for deletion or something else along those lines happens, but I just don't see the point of having them tagged for the taskforces as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 2, 2011; 20:11 (UTC)

Well, I just was going to ask you to install bot alerts for the task forces ;), just as you had done for the splitted S&T. You should remember my plan to start inviting people to the task forces, but before implementing that plan, we better improve the infrastructure a little bit more. I am going to add the lists of featured and good articles for the task forces (and update the list for WP:RUSSIA, btw), define the scopes of the task forces in more detail, and add more complex section structures for the to-do-lists. Could you help me at least with bot alerts? GreyHood ^Talk 20:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

As for the dabs, I'm not really going to assess all Russia-related dabs, that would be time-wasting, but I think that if I assess few dabs I'm passing by, there is no any problem. GreyHood ^Talk 20:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I will help with the alerts, sure. Just give me a holler when you are ready :) As for the dabs, I see your point, but it's probably unnecessary to have the dab alerts both on the main page and on the taskforce-specific pages, although it probably matters little in practice. Feel free to do what you think helps the taskforces. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 2, 2011; 20:28 (UTC)

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)

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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: [7] vs [8]. 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)

I've moved this.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 11, 2011; 18:21 (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)

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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. If you have another Wikipedia friends, please introduce this survey to them. Thank you so much. cooldenny (talk) 13:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! Yes, I've checked the pilot survey results—quite interesting! I also don't mind filling out the final version of the survey (will probably do it later today). As for the gift card, feel free to make an equivalent donation to Wikimedia Foundation instead of rewarding me personally (same goes for the fifty bucks, if I get to be the lucky one who wins it). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 5, 2011; 14:04 (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[9] 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)

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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)

Thanks for catching this! I am not yet properly awaken to figure out just what the heck is going wrong, but adding the 2010 Census line takes care of the broken template problem. I'll look into the actual cause later today. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 5, 2011; 13:33 (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)

Well, good question. I can assure you that the construct itself is correct and quite common (cf. взморье, заболотье, заречье, залесье, подлужье, приозерье, приречье, etc.). The soft sign in all these constructs is a suffix which indicates a place and has, to some degree, a meaning of aggregation (i.e., all of the area near the sea for "primorye"; all of the area beyond the river for "zarechye", etc.). The prefix clarifies the location ("при-" means "near", "за-" means "beyond", and so forth). As far as I can tell, this is the only way to construct a noun of this type (something like "при море" cannot be used as a noun on its own). Bear in mind, however, that I am not a linguist, and the above explanation is based on what I remember from my Russian lessons back in secondary school :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 5, 2011; 13:57 (UTC)

I think you inspired me to look into the Russian language a little bit, and I noted just how useful ru:wikt: is for that purpose.

So I have done this, perhaps you want to review my translation. The most difficult lexeme here for me was ru:wikt:резвиться. I assume this is from the adjective ru:wikt:резвый. Is this word, in your mind, connected with wikt:резкий "sharp, abrupt"? So, in the sense of "to make sharp, sudden movements". --dab (𒁳) 12:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I hope there's more where that article came from :) If I may ask, however, what prompted you to translate "ой" as "oy"? Now, I don't know how to best translate it—I myself used "oy" in the Korobeiniki article, and NPR even used my translation, although with the caveat that "it's from Wikipedia, so don't blame us if it's wrong", but this translation was later labeled by someone else as "terrible". Which makes me curious how you came to it.

As for the word "резвиться", yes, it's from the adjective "резвый", but no, it's not connected in my mind with "резкий". But then, I never gave this any thought before. So, I checked with Vasmer's etymological dictionary, and whaddayaknow, they are indeed related.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 8, 2011; 16:13 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Hi Ezhiki, a quick question. I am expanding the infoboxes in the Chukotka articles to include the administrative and municipal sections with refs to the relevant laws, but I am not sure how places like Krasneno and Nutepelmen, since they are now part of the inter-settlement territory rather than a rural settlement of their own should be described in the infobox. Should they just be described as "inter-settlement" territory with the ref to the relevant law abolishing their rural settlement status?

Also how should urban type settlements, such as Otrozhny, in the process of being abolished be described. Are they still part of their own urban settlement, or do they become part of the inter-settlement territory upon the decision to abolish them, or are they something completely different? Fenix down (talk) 07:53, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The infobox has a separate parameter for inter-settlement territories. Just set intra_settlement_territory=yes. Of course, the municipal district will still need to be specified, because the intra-settlement territory is a part of a municipal district which is not a part of an urban or rural settlement.

With the inhabited localities in the process of being abolished, no municipal data needs to be filled out in the infobox. Technically, those places are treated as intra-settlement territories (i.e., the population gets the municipal services from the municipal district authorities), but since this is not documented in any of the laws or other sources, we shouldn't be specifying it either. The infobox only has one mandatory parameter (federal subject), so not filling out any other lines would simply suppress them. Does this answer your questions?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 12, 2011; 13:29 (UTC)

It does indeed, I wasn't sure about the settlements being abolished and hadn't seen the inter settlement lines in the infobox template. Thanks a lot. Fenix down (talk) 14:23, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Taldysay

Hi. Can you do a dab page here. If you search in geonames you;ll see multiple settlements in Kazakhstan and Russia. I started a third of the Kazakh settlements a while back as stubs and they've attracted one giant mass AFD . ♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:51, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that AfD. Interestingly enough, I myself learned of that site only last month (and didn't find it all that thrilling :))

As for Taldysay, there is no place in Russia by this name as of this year (I don't have an ability to quickly and easily check for abolished places, though). The geographic.org search also doesn't return anything by that name located in Russia. Can you perhaps link to the search results you are getting, so I'd have a starting point? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 13:45 (UTC)

See Imeni Sverdlova for instance. Click the search link for geonames and search for it, these types of entries turn up the usual mass of multiples for Russia etc. Can you help dabbing these Kazakhstan places with RUssian places? I've salvaged Saudia Arabia and Oman and am now working through Almaty Province.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:36, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

If you give me a list of names you want me to dab (or point to an appropriate cat), I'll be happy to. I suspect, however, that some of the place names will be too "ethnic" to be found in Russia (Taldysay is one example of this).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 15:44 (UTC)

Template:Almaty Province I'm currently ploughing through. A lot of them have an extremely high duplicate rate with Russian villages and other Kazakh villages like Isayevo. Just click on the search and you'll find them. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I have better means to do the Russian duplicates, though :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 15:48 (UTC)

Oh I know, but a lot like Karagayly have loads of Kazakhstan duplicates too..♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:57, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, let me take care of Russian duplicates first, and then I'll see what I can do about Kazakh ones. Check out Yubileyny: I moved the Russian places into a dedicated set index, moved the Kazakh place to Yubileynoye, Kazakhstan, and edited the dab accordingly. If I do the rest of them the same way, will this work for you?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 16:02 (UTC)

Sure, any way which is easiest and most convenient. Be sure though if you move pages to dab them in the Almaty Province template. Given the expansion of that village previously at AFD I'm certain it is worth having these articles. In fact many of them appear to be small towns rather than villages in certain parts.. I know sub stubs are not a good idea but when you work on geographical development to the extent I do at times it just feels the right thing to do... ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'll remember to edit the nav template. Are you planning to be editing it in the next few hours, by the way? Because if you aren't, I'd rather do all corrections in bulk rather than one-by-one (which, however, is fine, if you need to work on it as well).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 16:09 (UTC)

Well some of the links to need fixing to capitals but I won't touch the nav box until you've finished with it. Some entries which are problematic I'll db author so those red links can be removed later. The vast majority it seems though are fine.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:13, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, never mind that. I keep getting interrupted all the time, so I'll do the edits to the template one at a time. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 16:22 (UTC)

I redirected Mezdurechenskoye but merged your info, this name is OK or worse? It was a duplicate. BTW if you add something to an article can you replace the ref with the geonames one now in this articles and then remove the tag at the top?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't really know. We don't have a guideline for the romanization of Kazakh, which complicates things. Looking at BGN/PCGN romanization of Kazakh, however, they recommend to romanize "е" as "ye" at all times, so I guess "Mezhdurechenskoye" is better. What we really need, of course, is a couple of Kazakh editors interested in such things, so they could put together a guideline for us to follow.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 17:47 (UTC)

Mmm Geonames though seems to have approved the o and the a without the Y like Nikolaevka, Kazakhstan not Nikolayevka..Not sure which is current but to me it looks more neutral without the y..♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:51, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It sure is easier to do dabbing between countries when the spellings match, though. For Russian, we use pretty much the same BGN/PCGN conventions, which use "y" extensively.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 13, 2011; 17:59 (UTC)

Metro station naming

Because all metro stations are named after something else, like a locality or street (which in turn is also often named after something or somebody else), a common naming convention is to add a suffix of the bracketed system name to all stations. This makes the subject clear to someone not looking for the station. In the case of Baltiyskaya, the station is not the primary useage of that name as the disambiguation page you created clearly explains. Apparently it is also a brand of Russian vodka. Baltiyskaya now redirects to that disambiguation page. Sw2nd (talk) 17:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The station is named after the rail terminal, which itself is called "Baltiysky, so the titles aren't identical and there is no collision. The vodka currently does not have an article (nor is it even mentioned on the dab page), so there is no collision there either. Since the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC clause of the disambiguation manual of style applies only to the existing articles and to the red-linked articles that satisfy WP:DABRL, I disagree with your assessment of this situation. I would agree to having the metro station article at a disambiguated title if the vodka article is created (providing the vodka itself is notable, of course), or at least red-linked properly; otherwise you a redirecting from a simple form to a disambiguated form for no good reason. Additionally, you seem to be unaware of the BRD cycle—when an edit/move is reverted in good faith, you are supposed to initiate a discussion, not to re-revert (even if that re-revert is followed by a discussion). If you believe the original move was right, a move request would have been a better course of action than a re-revert. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 16, 2011; 17:54 (UTC)

The vodka reference was just a throw away comment to show that it is one of many things or people that users could be looking for. Another editor is currently working feverishly on those Saint Petersburg Metro station articles cleaning things up and giving some consistency :) to them. I don't like to mess with someone who is spending the time to improve a series of related articles like that, and so I reverted your solitary reversion of "a move in good faith". I don't know where you are from in America, but if you check out any US metro, subway or commuter railway in Wikipedia, you will see that they always include the system name with the station and this has become a naming convention there. I am watching this page, so if you respond here I will see it. Sw2nd (talk) 18:28, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Where I am from doesn't really matter one bit. What is of importance, however, is that Wikipedians exercise different approaches to naming of articles about stations pertaining to different transit systems. If the US commuter lines are preemptively disambiguated, more power to them—it must be what worked best for them, or perhaps they didn't want to spend time on fixing all of those unnecessary disambiguators. Russian stations (including metro stations), however, are only disambiguated when the title is, well, ambiguous, which, by the way, is in spirit of the Wikipedia disambiguation guidelines overall. A quick look around, say, Category:Moscow Metro stations would confirm this. If somebody's interpretation of "consistency" is that all Russian metro articles should have a parenthetical metro system disambiguator following the name, I'd say it's a problem, not help. I don't see anything on the WP:SOVMETRO's talk page about mass renaming the articles to make them conform with the US naming scheme or whatnot, which implies that if mass moves are taking place, that's not because a consensus was first established in a relevant place. I only watch a handful of metro articles myself and am not that terribly interested in the subject, but notifying potentially interested users of such actions is a matter of a common courtesy, if nothing else. Just because I don't care that much doesn't matter no one else would. Which is why the BRD cycle and move requests are important—they allow for a broader input as opposed to our semi-private chat on my talk page.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 16, 2011; 18:50 (UTC)

I see you have now contacted the editor who originally moved the station. That is good. I didn't want to debate something with you that neither of us is directly involved in. The reason I asked where you came from is so that you could look at a system you might be able to relate to, but you don't really care anyway. Just relax - it wasn't a personal question. Since there is no universal naming convention for stations, I agree with you that it is better left for each project to decide. This should be discussed by the participating editors. They do all the work - not us. Note that the Russian Wikipedia versions of Saint Petersburg and Moscow metro stations all included a system suffix. You would not expect Roseville Road to be about a station, and yet, although there is no conflict with any existing article, it is about a light rail station. I think that is ambiguous. Following on from that example; station articles without disambiguation are usually the name of the street or community where they are located, which would be the primary usage in life even though those articles do not exist in Wikipedia. Although we disagree on this, I do appreciate you position. I too will leave those other editors to decide what they want. Thank you. Sw2nd (talk) 21:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, mine wasn't a personal answer either :) Being an admin it is my job to point out when guidelines or procedure are not being followed. I realize that occasionally makes me sound like a pompous ass, but that's a part of it :) I just wanted to point out that we don't normally follow what Wikipedias in other languages are doing—they may very well have other reasons to pre-disambiguate article titles—it could be a custom, for a linguistic reason, or by their community consensus. In the English Wikipedia, however, we have our own guidelines, which is what I was trying to point out. No harm done either way, though. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 12:49 (UTC)

Hey Mr. Pompous

Hey Mr. Pompous Stupid American, have you heard from Bakharev lately? He seems to be AWOL (not MIA as I specifically never gave him permission to desert his post), so am curious if he is still around. --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 14:22, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, nice to see you, too, trying to think of a mildly offensive term for Australians... "kangaroo bangers" is perhaps a bit too strong, no? :). Nope, I haven't heard back from him, and honestly it's a little troubling. He may not have been around that much in the past couple of years anyway, but at least he always made sure that the bot of his is running, and it's no longer the case. Since you are close and all, perhaps you'd care to go on a quick road trip to see if all is well?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 14:29 (UTC)

trying to think of a mildly offensive term for Australians... "kangaroo bangers" is perhaps a bit too strong, no? :). - nah ozstrylians can take the piss (try any web based slang dictionaries for that one northern hemispherical one) - even if they have stupid user names .... oh hahaha - to see the St Petes Metro staion name issue never go away in all this time, no? SatuSuro 14:34, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, the trouble with using the slang dictionaries to come up with a witty term is that if you don't know about the subject at least a little already, it's all too easy to pick a term that you'd think is mildly offensive, but which in fact "slang" used by kiddies in an Australian kindergarten or something :) I'm afraid Russavia has an upper hand on me there, as he has no trouble whatsoever finding the pejoratives for Russians or Americans (or, in my case, both) :) As for St. Pete, well, I wish I caught it sooner, but I sure ain't gonna move them all back now... Anyhoo, what brings you to my talk page? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 14:43 (UTC)

Don't mind the Chukchi Satu, they're a litle slow ya know lol --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 14:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I, too, think that this stupid guideline has long outlived its usefulness and should be replaced with this :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 14:51 (UTC)

Cool, then if you initiate the discussion, I'll come and second it for you lol --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 14:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

BTW, have you seen this yet? Pissed myself at the Kompromat. Imagine having to remove that stuff from articles lol. --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 14:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Will have to watch it at home. Is someone really trying to insert a youtube clip into articles as a source?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 15:04 (UTC)

no, no, no. just watch it, you'll see what i mean. --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 15:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Answering a question lost above - despite my very low edit at the mo something about st petes metro station names caught my attention I always thought that north american usage of piss as part of any expression was different from that of australian - 'take the piss' means that we australians can take/handle the insults without any real offence SatuSuro 23:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Ushakovskoye and Lavrentiya

Hi Ezhiki, a quick couple of questions (as usual!!). Firstly, I note in article 13.2 of Law 33, which does not appear to be have been altered or repealed, that Ushakovskoye (on Wrangel Island) is still counted as a Rural Settlement. I had always assumed it had been abolished. Are you aware of any updated law for Shmidtovsky / Iultinsky district outlining its abolition as I cannot find one.

Secondly, I note a correction to the municipal divisions section of the Chukotsky District article you made a few months ago, where you separated Lavrentiya and Lorino into individual Rural Settlements. I'm sure it is my poor reading of the russian, but I was certain that Article 7.1 of Law 47 indicated Lavrentiya to have Lorino as its administrative centre, strange though it did seem to me.

Are you able to clarify, please? Fenix down (talk) 17:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. Law #33 is the law on the administrative-territorial division; it has nothing to do with the municipal divisions. Article 13.2 in particular lists the rural localities, not the rural settlements. Rural settlements may include more than one locality, although in Chukotka it's usually not the case. Ushakovskoye itself, of course, is unpopulated, but it has never been officially abolished (there's quite a bit of bureaucratic overhead involved with officially abolishing a place—it has to be inventoried first, for example—which is why I guess the authorities never bothered and just let it hang). However, since there is no population, it is not mentioned in the laws dealing with the municipal structure of Iultinsky (Municipal) District. It's not a very thorough approach, but that's how things are in Russia :)

As for the Law #47, yes, Lavrentiya and Lorino are incorporated as separate rural settlement, and no, your reading of Russian is not poor—the law does indeed indicate that the administrative center of Lavrentiya Rural Settlement is in Lorino. That could be a mistake in the law (shocking, eh? :)), but it could very well be true. While it is not very common for a municipal formation to have its administrative center in an outside place, such things happen. What there is no doubt about, though, is that Lorino and Lavrentiya are municipally incorporated as separate rural settlements. Hope this helps!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 19, 2011; 18:48 (UTC)

Ğabdulla_Tuqay

Привет! Можешь защитить от малолетних анонимных идиотов? --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ (see also:ә? Ә!) 13:12, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 20, 2011; 13:23 (UTC)

merging articles

Hello friend, how are u?? i would like to merge the article of Online questionnaires into Computer-assisted web interviewing. I left there messages few days ago and no resistence so far. how do i merge them?Superzohar Talk 12:49, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Since you are the only editor of the "computer-assisted web interviewing" article, I think the easiest way to go about it is to move that article into your userspace, move "online questionnaires" into its place, and then incorporate the material from "computer-assisted web interviewing" into it. You should be able to do all these moves yourself, but do let me know if you run into any difficulties.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 22, 2011; 16:25 (UTC)

Hello it wrote me i can't move the online questionnaires into computer-assisted web interviewing and that i should contact administrator. so maybe u can perform that action pls? Superzohar Talk 15:08, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

That's because you needed to move "Computer-assisted web interviewing" (the page you created) into your userspace first. Anyway, I moved it to User:Superzohar/Computer-assisted web interviewing and moved "online questionnaires" into its place. You can now incorporate the material from the userfied version into this article. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 23, 2011; 15:48 (UTC)

Saint Petersburg Metro

Hi. Sorry for delayed response. Thanks for pointing out some errors I've made with creating new articles. It's a bit unclear to me what you mean by "unnecessary disambiguators". I have limited experience with Wikipedia edits, so I would appreciate some additional information what how it could be fixed. Is that related to articles I've moved?

I also had a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Metros of the former Soviet Union and added myself as participant, thanks for mentioning that to me.--Maxim75 (talk) 02:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to rush you. What I meant by "unnecessary disambiguators" are the redundant parenthetical portions in the titles of the articles you are creating (e.g., Zayeltsovskaya (Novosibirsk Metro)). Since there is no article under Zayeltsovskaya or Zayeltsovsky, the metro station article title is not ambiguous, and does need to be disambiguated. A disambiguator is only needed when the title collides with the title of another article, although something like Didube (Tbilisi Metro) would also be fine (there is nothing under Didube, but a quick search reveals Didube Pantheon, meaning that "Didube" should be a disambiguation page. Please let me know if anything in my explanation isn't clear. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 23, 2011; 13:53 (UTC)

Thanks for explanation. Yes it definitely makes sense, the only downside is that it adds more complexity while using station and services templates, which rely on naming conversions by default, but it could be handled by changing station templates. As of this moment I'm planning to create stub articles for stations with basic info such as name, location, date opened and service info. The info on metro stations is sketchy, even in Russian Wikipedia. Thanks --Maxim75 (talk) 03:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I know what you mean about the information being scarce... it's good we have a passionate fellow like you to dig up whatever's available, eh? :) Seriously, once again, thank you for your work.

As for the links, the templates should allow piping links just fine, do they not? The Moscow Metro templates, for example, have been around for a long time, and the links can be piped no problem. There is some inconvenience in having to track which links are disambiguated and which are not, but that is not a major issue, and that is only an inconvenience to the editors. Avoiding unnecessary disambiguation, however, benefits the readers, which is the only thing that matters.

Speaking of conveniences, you might want to check out this script, which colors the links on the page according to the page type they lead to (so redirects would have one color, disambigs would be highlighted, stubs would have the colors of their own, etc.). It takes a little while to get used to, but once you do, it's hard to go back. I personally find this script invaluable for just the kind of jobs you are doing. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 24, 2011; 14:00 (UTC)

Infobox oddness

Thanks. I disabled the rule that was causing it but still have no idea why it was happening! Rich Farmbrough, 16:13, 23 May 2011 (UTC).

I remember asking you once to not replace "Infobox Russian city" and "Infobox Russian town" with "Infobox Russian inhabited locality" (the former two currently redirect to the latter). Could it be related to that?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 23, 2011; 16:39 (UTC)

It's certainly the rule concerned. But I have not the time to dig deeper, and this is a simple exercise, so the rest will have to wait for another day. Rich Farmbrough, 16:55, 23 May 2011 (UTC).

Thanks!

Thanks for reverting that awful edit to the {{Automatic taxobox}}! I hope not many pages were affected during those several minutes! Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, the template is transcluded on almost 2,500 pages, which is why I semi-protected it to prevent this from happening again. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 24, 2011; 18:24 (UTC)

!!!! That's a highly used template...now that you mention it, I thought we had it redlocked like the other parts of the taxobox template system! Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

That's one useful purpose vandals serve—they find holes that need to be patched and point us to them :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 24, 2011; 19:16 (UTC)

Indeed! Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:44, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

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Thank you

WikiThanks

For being the voice of reason on WP:CITE. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:28, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the thank you :) To tell you the truth, "shocked", when I saw the number of opposes in that thread, would be putting it mildly. "Hysterical stupor", I believe, comes a little closer...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 1, 2011; 17:32 (UTC)

I guess you saw my comment on Jimbo's page? But even he seems to miss the point... :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:09, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

No, I haven't seen that one (I stumbled upon the WP:CITE thread by accident). I think Jimbo's got a point to some extent, although it puzzles me somewhat that he seems to give more weight to a stylistic issue over what really matters. If we had a tool or mechanism of some sort to efficiently address the problem of "ugly" cites, I'd sure be using it, but in the absence of such a tool, referencing every sentence is the best defense we've got. Not being able to reference every sentence, not having time for it, or even not wanting to do it in principle is not in itself a sin, but actively preventing others from doing it is, in my opinion, quite harmful to the project.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 1, 2011; 18:26 (UTC)

[10], [11]... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:53, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Sad indeed... How can "readability" possibly be more important than verifiability?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 2, 2011; 21:00 (UTC)

Yo!

• 
• 
• 

Sounds familiar? (see image descriptions) NVO (talk) 20:02, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Damn! Busted! :))—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 1, 2011; 20:03 (UTC)

US spelling

Hi,

I've spent quite a bit of time investigating. I now see it isn't as large an issue as I first thought it might be. This is because 'er' spelling only occurs when the metric unit is put first, in full form. The second place unit is symbolic and has no spelling variation. Most US articles put the metric unit in second place, in symbolic form and weren't affected.

Some uses of the templates specified the spelling, others didn't. It may be that the default 'er' setting was deliberately applied to the article in some cases, in other cases the editors may not have worried.

Some cases of the template are within other templates. These affect many articles.

Now, what to do? I have a list of affected articles. I can do a run to apply US spelling to each template in each article. Or I can do a run to apply the symbol form to each template in each article (I found many instances where the symbolic form would be an improvement or entirely acceptable). Or I can do part and part.

The easy decision is to apply US spelling to the few that are US articles. I'll do that anyway.

1. What is your preference for the others?

2. I notice you reverted a change to a template within a template, are you open to reconsidering that?

Regards Lightmouse (talk) 17:13, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Good catch about the issue existing only when the metric unit is first; I've missed that. Glad to hear it's not as bad as I first thought :)

Regarding the list you have compiled (thanks for taking time to do that, by the way), I think since this is a bot run, it would be OK to restore the US spelling where templates such as {{km to mi}} were used. Even if the template was clashing with the rest of the article, one still needs to look at what the first contributor's choice was, and that's not a job for a bot. Restoring the spelling that existed would maintain the status quo—if the article's spelling choices needed to be cleaned up, they will still need to be cleaned up after the bot is done. I think that would be the most reasonable approach; what are your thoughts on this?

My other concern (for lack of a better word—I don't really care that much) is why it is necessary to replace these old templates at all. Wouldn't it be easier to make them into {{Convert}} wrappers instead (similar to how {{km2 to mi2}} is done)? That makes it easier to take care of the spelling issue and also of the folks who continue to use the old templates because they are used to them—otherwise you'll have to repeat those runs periodically. Why do thousands of edits when one edit will suffice?

As for my template revert, feel free to re-revert (taking care of the spelling choice this time), or, if you choose the path above, it can stay as is. My only concern with that revert was breaking the spelling choice in articles that transclude that template. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 3, 2011; 17:30 (UTC)

Hi, I've tracked down and updated articles for 'sp=us'. I've also updated the procedure and the code so this shouldn't happen again. Phew. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

I think it's an excellent idea to turn the templates into a wrapper for {{Convert}}. I didn't know that's how {{km2 to mi2}} is done - they're black boxes to me. If it isn't already done, would it be possible for the templates to recognise parameters used in {{Convert}} such as 'on', 'off', 'sp=us'?

Are you able to edit 'Template:Infobox Swiss town' ? If so, could you update the convert templates in there?

Many thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 14:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of it! As for the parameters, it is possible to make the template into a {{Convert}} wrapper (which supports all of its applicable parameters) and yet retain support for the old legacy parameters as well, so the old transclusions will continue to work. It's actually a rather simple task. I can look into doing it in the next week or two, if you want, but it'll probably be quicker if you ask one of the {{Convert}} coding gurus to do the code re-write (I'm going to have a crazy busy next week).

As for {{Infobox Swiss town}}, yes, I can update it, but since I am not one of the regular users of that template and may not be aware of all its caveats, it would probably be more appropriate to post an edit request on that template's talk page. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 5, 2011; 15:30 (UTC)

Re: A quick question

Yes, I think it would be helpful to have a similar category for WP:RUSSIA. Sometimes I have to spent some time checking what is already assessed with task force parameters and what is not, and this time could have been saved. Could you provide such a category?

By the way, it seems that our PP lists have been finally created, and some of them are quite interesting. GreyHood ^Talk 21:04, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

No problem. If I don't get a chance to create it over the weekend, then next week for sure. As for the PP lists, yeah, there are some shockers there :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 3, 2011; 22:23 (UTC)

Thanks! Your helpfulness and knowledge of useful wiki-features is really great! I'll start working with this category next week. GreyHood ^Talk 18:29, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Korolyov again

Hi again; since this page is still on my watchlist, I noticed that today a user on the Korolyov talk page thinks the page should be moved to "Korolev". Perhaps you'd like to respond on the talk page? I suspect you'll state WP:RUS overrules photos of the city itself, but hey, it's worth a shot. Thanks, Mlm42 (talk) 23:58, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up; I'll respond. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 8, 2011; 12:09 (UTC)

One of the reasons I started that RfC was to ensure WP:RUS is being applied in a way that is consistent with community-wide consensus. I sometimes get the impression that you treat that page as unquestionable law with unanimous support.. but really, how much community-wide support does it have? Mlm42 (talk) 20:00, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Judging by the fact that random moves of articles about places in Russia went down considerably (and I mean considerably!) during the first year after WP:RUS had been adopted, and that the new articles are being created under the titles WP:RUS recommends, I'd say the support is there. People who think the guideline makes sense and abide by it have no reason to post comments of any kind; it's the dissenters who are the loudest and most persistent. Take you, for example—what practical problem do you hope to fix by diluting WP:RUS to make it more vague? I know it is your personal preference to see "Korolyov" moved to "Korolev", but I won't for a moment believe that's the main reason why you bother with the RfC and all the discussions we've had so far. But if not that, what then? I mean, Russian geography isn't even the area you edit much, which leaves me even more puzzled! I try putting myself in your shoes, and it just doesn't make any sense to me—it's as if I suddenly started to tell the folks at WikiProject Medicine that one of their more esoteric guidelines is wrong and that a more generic guideline would do the same job just fine, even though I don't know much about medicine or am even willing to hear out the explanations. That's how it looks from where I stand—and if you could shed some light on this situation, I'd be most grateful. We might even work something out!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 20:18 (UTC)

I think in practice, the change I'm suggesting will change very little; after all you're pretty much running the show when it comes to Russian geography. I think broadly speaking WP:RUS has community-wide support. My point is that general support doesn't mean absolutely everything in the guideline has support. I've question one of those things in the RfC. One of the things I'd like to accomplish with this RfC is to convince you that maybe some things in WP:RUS actually don't have community-wide support (contrary to the "unanimous" vote in 2007). Mlm42 (talk) 20:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

If teaching me a lesson is the main reason, I must say it's rather disappointing. Discussions are necessary, of course, but I was very much hoping there was something tangible behind this one... I doubt there is one single policy or guideline in Wikipedia where absolutely everything in the guideline has universal support.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 21:01 (UTC)

Obviously the end goal is to change WP:RUS so that the community actually supports it in full. One step in achieving this goal is convincing you that the community doesn't support it in full, as it is written currently. Mlm42 (talk) 21:15, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Such a goal can be set for any guideline we have, as for any given guideline one can find people who disagree with it as a whole or with some of its part. However, if there are no practical implications (at least you haven't given me any yet), why waste time? The guidelines are supposed to be helpful to those who use them (i.e., readers and editors who edit in that area), and, amazingly, unlike in 2007, none of the folks who commented so far edit in the area the guideline is supposed to affect. Which brings me back to my WP:Medicine example and leaves me in a state of perpetual puzzlement. Is something going on I'm just not seeing?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 21:30 (UTC)

One implication is that Korolyov could be changed to Korolev (sorry, I couldn't resist). Just because editors don't regularly edit in the area doesn't mean they should stay quiet if I think there's something wrong. I'm suggesting this is different from most guidelines, because there is a particular part with which most people would disagree. So this part should be changed. Also, the more editors (and in particular admins) dig in their heals, the more I want to dislodge them. The articles on Russian places exist within Wikipedia, so their editors have to answer to the wider Wikipedia community. Aren't admins supposed to be more interested in what the wider community wants? Mlm42 (talk) 22:00, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

As an admin, the only thing I am interested in is what's best for this encyclopedia. Quite often it is what the wider community wants, but sometimes it isn't (and when that's the case, it's usually because the wider community doesn't have a clue about something that concerns an esoteric area of knowledge... like romanization of Russian). In fact, my unique skill set is precisely why I am volunteering my time and expertise in areas where the "wider community" would have otherwise fly by the seat of their pants and might very well not even land.

I realize that may sound quite snobbish, but when you contribute solely with the interests of the encyclopedia in mind, it makes perfect sense. The more snobbish editors like that we have, the better the end product is. But if you are here just to argue with editors and admins in order to show them who is (or isn't) the boss, I'm sorry, this is where we part our ways. I'm not here to boss people around; I'm here to build the damn best encyclopedia in the world. Are you?

With regards to Korolyov, suppose we do move it. Then, apart from appeasing your tastes, what practical problem will we have solved for most of our readers? Why undermine solid rules to accommodate a non-problem?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 22:14 (UTC)

Wow.. I'm a bit shocked right now.. what you've said goes beyond snobbish. The more you speak, the more I think you shouldn't be an admin.. sorry. It's like you have forgotten about Wikipedia:Consensus? Seriously.. Mlm42 (talk) 22:32, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Yet you haven't tried to refute one word of what I've said... I'm sorry, but I am losing any respect I had for you really quickly...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 23:07 (UTC)

What's to refute? I don't doubt your expertise when it comes to technical issues in romanizing Russian. But I think the community wants a broader definition of "common English usage", and you are trying to overrule them, because you're an expert. Not a wise move. Mlm42 (talk) 23:19, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Then, let's continue dumbing down the encyclopedia and making it harder to edit for those who care for the sake of consensus? Don't you think there's something wrong with that? I know Wikipedia has a generally disdainful attitudes towards experts of any kind, but do you, personally, think that's the best, or wise, attitude to take? Just curious.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 23:28 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia has disdain for experts. I think Wikipedia has disdain for editors who think they can overrule consensus "because they know better". Experts in specific areas don't necessarily know what's best for Wikipedia.

Look, I didn't think this would turn into a heated discussion. I thought one of two things would happen: 1) The community agrees with your interpretation of WP:RUS, and nothing changes, or 2) The community disagrees with your interpretation of WP:RUS, and (as a responsible admin) you would recognize that and accept the community's will. I didn't expect 3) The community disagrees with your interpretation, and you reject them because you think you know better. If there's ever a good time to WP:TROUT someone, now seems like a good time. Wikipedia works well because of its consensus-fueled decision-making procedures, not in spite of them. Mlm42 (talk) 03:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Of the two of us, the only person who needs to be trouted is you; for the conclusion you jump to in your #3. I am not flouting any consensus, because there is no consensus to flout.

When the discussion is closed and the guideline is properly amended (and no, hastily amending it in the midst of the ongoing debate is not a proper procedure), then, if you see me acting contrary to what the guideline says, you'll have a full right to trout me all you want, and that would be a correct thing to do. As things stand now, we don't have a consensus; we are trying to build one. Editors voicing their opinions is a part the discussion process, and if you expect me not to point out the problems the other parties are mostly ignoring, you better think again. Just because we have more people supporting one side than another doesn't mean the other side should immediately shut up. I'd think that much would be obvious.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 13:59 (UTC)

You're right, we have to wait. I may have misinterpreted your statement: As an admin, the only thing I am interested in is what's best for this encyclopedia. Quite often it is what the wider community wants, but sometimes it isn't. I took this to mean you were willing to go against consensus and enforce what you think is best. Mlm42 (talk) 16:01, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, honest mistake then.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 16:03 (UTC)

Fyodor Fyodorovich Ushakov

What about moving it to Fyodor Ushakov, which is redirect currently? GreyHood ^Talk 19:45, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Done; thanks for finding it!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 20:19 (UTC)

Thanks! By the way, what has happened with the Category:WikiProject Russia articles with no associated task force - the number of items there suddenly fell down from about 15000 to about 13500, and just a pair of days passed since I've checked last time.. Surely we couldn't have assessed so much articles in this period. GreyHood ^Talk 20:35, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my doing. I took a look at the cat's contents after it finished populating, and discovered that it includes everything that doesn't have a taskforce assigned. Since the category is supposed to contain only articles, I made some tweaks to ensure that cats, files, portals, etc. would be filtered out and only articles remained. Hence the drop. It didn't work perfectly, because the filtering is tied to the value of the class parameter, and cases where the class is automatically detected and populated (such as Category talk:B-Class Russia articles, for example), still go through. Those can still be excluded if the class is set explicitly (i.e., class=Category). It can also be automated, but I think that'd be more trouble than it's worth.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2011; 21:07 (UTC)

GA review of Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union

I've begun the review at Talk:Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union/GA1. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:41, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've only submitted this for the creator of the article, however, and have no intent to participate.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 13:32 (UTC)

Romanization

Please see my edit on its talk page which I posted immediately before this one. Demands for non-neutrality conflict with core policy; retaining the language about dictionaries is to enunciate guidance which has no consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:22, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I've responded there as well. All in all, you don't have the prerogative to decide what violates our core policy and what doesn't; that the community's job. I've seen you usurp the right to make an ultimate decision on more than one occasion, and that really becomes worrisome. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 16:30 (UTC)

Nor does any one editor have the right to declare what is a guideline and revert war for the ancient text. All I have done is to remove what only you support. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:40, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

This is getting a bit out of hand.. there's no rush here.. it's not an urgent matter.. maybe we should try and get a few more opinions. Mlm42 (talk) 16:45, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:RUS was up for discussion for over a month in 2007 and had universal support before being promoted to a guideline. You can't get any more "official" than that. I have not added a single word that altered the spirit of the guideline ever since, hence there can't possibly be any parts which "only I support". What I am doing is reverting to the version that has been supported as a result of a formal proposal so those who want to participate in the RfC would have the current version to work with. You, for some reason I don't understand, seem to think that I added chunks between 2007 and now. This is not the case, and this is just outrageous. Are you going to mark all guidelines which you don't like as "essays" now? If you are having a hard day, please take a break to calm down, but if this your genuine attitude, then I think a request for your conduct is in order.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 16:56 (UTC)

All those who supported this page as it stands should have been invited to challenge the policies with which it is incompatible, which include not only WP:COMMONNAME but WP:NPOV and WP:V. I trust they would have failed; they are welcome to try again. No local consensus can make guidance against policy acceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:46, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It is true that no local consensus can make guidance against policy acceptable. It is, however, not your place to decide whether it is the case. There are only two ways in which the incompatibility of a lower level guideline with a higher-level policy can be determined—the community discussion and the ArbComm decision. As a member of the Wikipedia community, you have the same right as anyone else to identify the problems and fix them in the articles, being mindful to the fact that if your identification is challenged, you will need to initiate a discussion nevertheless. You also have the same rights as anyone else to pinpoint the incompatibilities between the individual policies and guidelines. What you do not have a right to do with the guidelines is to unilaterally act on your own judgement—especially not when the discussion between other members of the community is ongoing. That is neither right nor civil. With that in mind, please revert your changes to the pages in question and kindly let others discuss the issue in a calm environment.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 13, 2011; 12:56 (UTC)

Tsardom of ..

Hello Ezhiki. I've made another analysis (in my view, a more comprehensive one than Vmenkov's) on the usage of Tsardom of Russia vs. Tsardom of Russia. Could you please check this and write your opionion on the issue? Thank you very much. --Voyevoda (talk) 10:10, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking time to do that. I'll most certainly review the results. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 13, 2011; 12:58 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:F to C

A tag has been placed on Template:F to C requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 17:20, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with this template being deleted.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 13, 2011; 12:59 (UTC)

Irkutsk killings

With a fresh controversy over the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs case, could you help on what the words on Nikita Litkin's shirt mean or refer to? The image is here, the words are "Расчленённая ПугачОва". Could this be from a pop group or song, eg here? Thread at Talk:Dnepropetrovsk_maniacs#Copycat_case.3F.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:49, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll respond on that talk page.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 13, 2011; 13:07 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Km2 to mi2

A tag has been placed on Template:Km2 to mi2 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:22, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Reopening a discussion

I want to reopen the discussion Naming_conventions_(Cyrillic)#Example_convention regarding bibliographic references because I think Unicode changes the game somewhat. Since you have participated in the same talk page, I hope you will visit the discussion and give me your opinions. Thanks! LADave (talk) 23:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I've left a comment there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 20, 2011; 13:25 (UTC)

Yeniseysk and Tuva

Hi. In your article on the Yeniseysk Governorate, you claim that Tuva, as the Uryankhay Krai, was merged into the same administrative framework as Yeniseysk. What sources did you base this on if you don't my asking? All the ones I've seen assert that it was declared an autonomous protectorate of the Russian empire on 17 April 1914.--Morgan Hauser (talk) 05:29, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Hm. I remember that, for whatever reason, I wrote that article rather hastily, but I can verify that most of the information came from the source cited in the "References" section. That, however, would only be the post-1920 information. Where the pre-1920 stuff came from, I wouldn't remember if you put a gun to my head! Quite embarrassing, actually. I kinda sorta remember that it was something solid (i.e., not a random bit off the internets), but for the life of me I can't recall what it was, nor can I recall why in the world I didn't list that source along with the other.

Anyhoo, if you have sources attesting to the contrary of what that particular sentence states, then please by all means rephrase the sentence and cite your source. If I happen to stumble upon the material I used, I'll let you know. And sorry about the confusion!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 20, 2011; 13:33 (UTC)

I'm not gonna change it right now, but I don’t actually need any evidence to disprove a positive claim – you need evidence to prove it.

Reason I’m asking is because I'm currently involved in a collaborative online map project, and we found contradictory information on Tuva's status from 1914 to 1921. If it was declared an autonomous protectorate inside of the boundaries of the Russian empire (along the lines of Bukhara and Khiva presumably), it would seem rather strange that the Moscow authorities incorporated it into an adjacent province/gubernia, which suggests outright annexation.--Morgan Hauser (talk) 17:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, since I'm obviously as stumped about where the claim came from as you are, you can replace it with another positive claim and add evidence to back it up :)

As for Tuva's status, I may have some books about Tuva's history (with the emphasis on its administrative status, since this is the kind of books I collect) in storage, but it may take me a while to get there and look. If I find anything interesting that may be of help to you, I'll let you know. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 21, 2011; 17:30 (UTC)

Ok, thanks in advance.--Morgan Hauser (talk) 17:55, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I haven't had a chance to check out what I have in storage, but I've dug up something that confirms the inclusion of Uryankhay Krai into Yeniseysk Governorate. This article in "Tuva Asia" says that the krai was included as a part of the governorate, and it is sourced to a quite authoritative source by Dubrovsky. I don't know if this helps you any, but it should be a good starting point. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 12, 2011; 18:33 (UTC)

Sorry to intrude here (I was looking at Ezhiki's page for the answer to a different question)... Otto Manchen-Helfen writes in his Journey to Tuva that Tuva was "incorporated into Yenisei Gubyerniya" one month after the outbreak of WW1. In the note, he writes that "The annexation, which had been decided upon on April 17, 1914 (four months before the outbreak of World War I), was announced to the Tuvan population in the autumn. Shortly thereafter, the city of Byelotsarsk was founded by the Russian government." Check out pages 195-196 of Journey to Tuva (Czarist Annexation of Tuva, 1911-1917). In Appendix A (pg. 234) there's the history from the People's Revolutionary Party's Fourth Congress: "In 1913 the Russian officials finally forced the acceptance of Russian czarist "protection" upon the Tuvan rulers of the day. The government of Nicholas II dispatched a Commissar Extraordinary, and Urianghai was gobbled up by Yenisei Gubyerniya.". In the Tuvan Manual: "In July 1914, an official communicated the Czar's willingness to grant the Tuvans protection to the Ambyn-Noyan Gombodorji. The latter accepted the provision that "no relations of any kind (were to be maintained) with foreign states, including Mongolia" and Tuva came under the administration of the Yenisei Guberniya. The Russian action was to be kept secret." Hope that helps. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 04:17, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Stacey, this is very helpful and no intrusion at all. I should have thought to ask you earlier!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 13, 2011; 13:21 (UTC)

Thanks for the sources, both of you! Judging from this information the Russian government seems to have assumed the continued existence of a Tuvan nation under formal Russian protection in spite of the annexation, so I'd say the joinder with Yeniseysk was more for administrative simplicity than complete submersion into the system of direct rule. Annexation was presumably interpreted to rather mean detachment from China and inclusion into the metropolitan area of Russia.--Morgan Hauser (talk) 04:35, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Sveinald (Varangian warlord)

Hello! Could you move Sveinald (Varangian warlord) back to Sveneld. The latter title is more nice and simple, and the latter name is much more popular both in google hits and google book hits, even when searching English sources only, [12] vs [13]. GreyHood ^Talk 16:14, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I believe it was obviously incorrectly moved without starting a move request. GreyHood ^Talk 16:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about the "incorrectly" part, but the move is certainly unexplained. I've moved it back.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 22, 2011; 16:23 (UTC)

Thanks for the back move. I mean that it was incorrect technically (brackets addition to unambiguous title) and procedurally; by the way what's with the talk page? Talk:Sveneld (Varangian warlord) is attached to Sveneld and not to Talk:Sveneld. GreyHood ^Talk 16:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

My screw-up. I'm taking care of it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 22, 2011; 16:32 (UTC)

Mariya Svistunova

Hello, This is an article which started as a very poor translation of an unidentified Russian text. It has been upgraded quite a lot since then but I found some problems with the Russian names as well as the dreadful translation. Forms of Russian names often have many Latin alphabet transliterations depending which European language has been used for the purpose. Many libraries use the ALA-LC romanization for Russian but I have not seen much sign of that in Wikipedia. Deciding how to change the names that were wrong was difficult.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 21:16, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Felix! We don't normally use ALA-LC romanization in Wikipedia because its use is mainly limited to the library catalogs and not to the actual publications. As for the spellings of people's names, we should stick to the spellings used in the sources being cited (I mean the sources in English, of course). If no such sources are available, we use this system (note that it is currently under discussion, but the discussion concerns only a few minor details). Let me know if you need anything further. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 27, 2011; 15:27 (UTC)

Thank you, The history of that article Mariya Svistunova is very peculiar: when I began to edit it it was of disputed notability which I thought was a mistake. The first version includes sources like this:

Notes

↑ Peter S. Svistunov (1752-1808) ↑ Memoranda Alymova ↑ House Svistunov ↑ Russian portraits of 18-19 centuries. Т.3.Vyp.3. № 79. ↑ Russian portraits of 18-19 centuries. Т.3.Vyp.3.№ 78. ↑ Christin F. & La Princesse Tourkestanow. Lettres ecrites de Petersbourg et de Moscou: 1817-1819. Kristen Ferdinand and Princess Turkestanova [Ilinichna Barbara (1775-1819). Letters written from St. Petersburg and Moscow: 1817-1819. Supplement to the Russian archive. Moscou: Imprimerie de l'Universite Imperiale (M. Katkow) [Typography Moscow Imperial University], 1883 / / Russian Archive, 1882. ↑ А. J. Michael-Danilevsky. Notes of 1814-1815 years. — SPb, 1832.

↑ D. Fikelmon. Diary 1829-1837. The whole Pushkin's Petersburg, 2009 .- p.55

So I suppose it is a machine translation from a Cyrillic encyclopedia article but there is nothing to show the title or edition of the encyclopedia. (The advantage of the ALA-LC romanization is that it works well in both directions but it would be unsuitable for Wikipedia to adopt it as a standard.) I think these sources ought to be retained somehow. --Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 23:07, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't have access to any of these, unfortunately. From what I see, all these are originally in Russian (except, of course, the one in French), which means that for spelling guidance [[this page is your best bet (at least until you find anything relevant in English).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 28, 2011; 13:35 (UTC)

Malaya Sadovaya street

• Коллега, не могли бы вы ознакомиться с этими двумя небольшими статьями, посвященными картинам русских художников Александра Семёнова и Николая Тимкова: Malaya Sadovaya street (painting) и Russian Winter. Hoarfrost (painting) и высказать здесь и здесь своё мнение по поводу целесообразности их удаления? Как я вижу, среди инициаторов удаления созданных 3 дня назад статей нет занимающихся русским искусством или хотя бы элементарно знающих язык. Статьи являются переводом статей, существующих в русском разделе Википедии: Малая Садовая (картина А. М. Семёнова) и Русская зима. Иней (картина Н. Тимкова) С Уважением, Leningradartist (talk) 21:57, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Я прокомментировал, но в будущем рекомендую вам не охотиться на участников поодиночке, а обращать внимание на подобные ситуации на WT:RUSSIA.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 27, 2011; 15:12 (UTC)

Спасибо за совет. Сделал. Пока не хватает опыта в этих вопросах. Leningradartist (talk) 20:45, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

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Highlighting in the page history

Perhaps you could explain what the highlighting in pale colours is (as on My contributions to the Russian WP, Polish WP & Hungarian WP). As I do not know enough of those three languages to find an account of what those colours means either not knowing or consulting an editor who will know. I know there is a huge difference between us in time zones (here is GMT +1) so am quite patient.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 12:18, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

That the article's sighted version status. You wouldn't see these colors on the en_wiki because this feature is not implemented here. A pale yellow highlight means that the article needs to be sighted, while pale blue means that the article had already been sighted by someone. The exact implementation details may vary from one Wikipedia to another, but in general your edits will always be marked as unsighted in Wikipedias where you don't have an autoreviewer status, and you can do nothing to change that unless you have a reviewer status. The bottom line—you can safely ignore that highlighting :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 28, 2011; 13:27 (UTC)

BlagovesHchensky, Russia

Blagoveschensky, Russia VS Blagoveshchensky Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

That's a typo; I've fixed it. Thanks for catching it!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 1, 2011; 17:49 (UTC)

Zyuzino

Maybe you can bring Zyuzino, Russia to SIA standard. The is also one locality in Belarus, so even under your system it would be ", Russia" at least after article creation for that one. But the SIAs don't ask for any article creation to exist, so maybe even under your system, knowledge of the Belarus entity is sufficient, independent of an article or entry in WP. Please no reply on my talk. This was just to inform you. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 21:10, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I have reformatted that one. As for your question, if I know for sure that a place by the same name exists outside Russia (whether we have an article on it or not), I always take that into consideration when naming the set on the Russian localities. Doing otherwise would just add to future maintenance for no good reason. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 13:55 (UTC)

Still no reply on my talk page needed:

• Loyno, Russia - the current rural needs to go to ", Kirov Oblast". Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
• Omolon, Russia - details on Magadan would be nice. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:16, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed Loyno. As for Omolon, there is currently no inhabited locality in Magadan Oblast by this name. There used to be a state farm, but it was never classified as an inhabited locality. I'll double-check the historical records though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 19:31 (UTC)

The sovkhoz was in Magadan? Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:59, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes (although they may have been one by the same name in ChAO as well). Also, don't forget that Chukotka Autonomous Okrug was once subordinated to Magadan Oblast, so geonames might have taken the data about the same place from different sources and treated them as distinct places. The coordinates, of course, aren't the same, but then geonames isn't exactly a reliable source (I've already found an error in their coordinates data for Loyno).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 20:06 (UTC)

• Argun, Russia - move needed for Argun, Chechnya Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 23:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Three SIAs needed, you probably have better data:

• Yuruzan, Russia - Yuryuzan (town) i (correct, although the other one is a tiny village of dubious notability)
• Alatyr, Russia - Alatyr (town) i (correct, although the other one is a tiny village of dubious notability)
• Furmanov, Russia - Furmanov (town) i+o (the one in Russia is a tiny village; no Wikipedia article for the entity outside of Russia)

Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 23:46, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• Kataysk http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=Kataysk&country=RU - maybe SIA Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:03, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
• Dmitriyev (town) http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=Dmitriyev&country=RU - maybe SIA Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:03, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Will do, thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:21 (UTC)

Article importance script

I'm writing a script which would automatically insert article importance next to the article name on a task force page. I don't know how to write a bot, but an offline script should also work; one just needs to save the task force page on disk and then cut-paste the result back to WP :). You can see a test run here. As you can see, there are still some problems, but I hope I can fix them "soon". Any suggestions on what the script should do? Is format (just adding importance in parentheses at the end of the line) ok? Nanobear (talk) 15:23, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Some color-coding would be useful (perhaps it is enough to color-code the importance in parentheses). Also, it would be nice if the script could read the tags on page tops, such as clean-up, neutrality tags etc. and insert the relevant information next to importance. GreyHood ^Talk 18:04, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, color-coding is a great idea. Any suggestions for the color scheme? Perhaps Top, High, Mid, Low. The tags could be mentioned in smaller text, not to make the page too distracting, like with Tags: npov, references, deadlinks. Nanobear (talk) 18:26, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Good, but the tags a bit too small. I'd propose this size and style: Tags: npov, references, deadlinks GreyHood ^Talk 19:21, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Also I think the word "importance" could be dropped, Top, High, Mid, Low are just enough. GreyHood ^Talk 19:25, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I think finding and inserting all tags may not be feasible. There's a huge number of them, and one cannot just get all templates on top of the page, because that would also include stuff like infoboxen. If there was a way to get a list cleanup, neutrality, etc. tags directly through the API, it would work. I tried looking but did not find such a feature there. Maybe I could write a predefined list of, say, 10 main tags we want to be listed, like "npov", "unbalanced", "refimprove", "blp", etc. The question is, would it still be a useful feature with this limited list of tags it recognises? Nanobear (talk) 20:55, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Another test run: User:Nanobear/tftest. Does the coloring look good? Perhaps the font should be a bit larger or at least it should be in bold? If you spot any mistakes made by the script, I would be grateful. Nanobear (talk) 21:17, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think 10 main predefined tags would be enough. Coloring is quite good! Check the line with "Russian Amber Company" - it is a red link, so where from does it take importance? GreyHood ^Talk 22:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I think the best way to check which tags are present in the article is to look in the hidden categories [14]. The script now recognises these categories. I made another test run with the tags listed: User:Nanobear/tftest. Any comments? Does it look OK, and did I select the right categories? Nanobear (talk) 16:45, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Btw, was the style you suggested Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup or Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup? (The markup you mentioned was different from rendered text) Nanobear (talk) 17:21, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

The last variants looks OK. A bit too many brackets, though. Maybe it is worth coloring those additional brackets as well, not sure. As for the style of tags its OK either way (perhaps grey is even better), the main point was the font size. GreyHood ^Talk 18:25, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's a list of some possibilities:

• 1. Article (Top )(Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup)- current style
• 2. Article (Top; Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup) - two brackets less
• 3. Article (Top; Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup) - two brackets less; grey color
• 4. Article (Top) (Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup) - first brackets have same color as their content
• 5. Article (Top) (Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup) - all brackets have same color as content
• 5b. Article (Low) (Tags: NPOV, refs, cleanup) - all brackets have same color as content

Of these, I think 4 looks the best. I cannot think of a good way to have less brackets. 5 has the disadvantage, that everything is of same color if importance is low, as 5b shows. We can always change the style later. A new run of the script always just overwrites the old output.

The main problem is probably going to be that the script needs to be manually run each time; if we want to keep the task-force page always up-to-date, one needs to run the script after every addition. A more realistic scheme would be to run the script only once in a week. A way to make the updating quicker would be to write a PHP script instead, and add it to a web page. Then, one would simply enter the URL of the task force page to the web form, and would receive the updated page as copyable text, which can be pasted back to WP. For smaller updates, one could enter the name of the article you have added to the task force page, and the script would give its importance and tags. The problem is, I don't have a web server with PHP support. Nanobear (talk) 19:17, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Agree, #4 is the best variant. As for the running issues, let's wait for Ezhiki's advice or perhaps ask some bot-runners, such as User:Alex Bakharev. GreyHood ^Talk 19:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I have to admit that most of the technical stuff related to this is way over my head (I don't know PHP and never learned just how it is exactly the bots operate), so I'm afraid I'm not of much help in that area. We need a willing bot owner to run this, because running this manually every week is not a practical solution, I know that much :)

As for the variants, I also like #4 best.

All in all, great job! I think automating this task was a great idea, and the implementation is pretty good, too.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 14:50 (UTC)

Indeed, doing it manually is not a solution at all. GreyHood ^Talk 15:21, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

NCRUS - DAB populates places

I started a WP:NCRUS related vote at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2011/July#Remove Russia-specific clause and apply general rules. It would simply mean to remove the "Dikson (urban-type settlement)"-rule and would result in Dikson, Russia by applying the general Wikipedia rules. I hope we can at least agree on that one. Especially for "urban-type settlement" I see only five or so articles that would fall under the clause anyway. For "rural locality" I couldn't find a number.

I agree with your move http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shamkhal,_Russia&diff=437870425&oldid=437373607 - I made a mistake here, applying the subdivision name, but that is not supported by the rules. Sorry. Again, no need to reply on my talk. This was just to inform you. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 13:52, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

And once someone writes an article about the port called Dikson, "Dikson, Russia" will be referring to... what? And the article about the urban-type settlement will be moved to... where?

As for Shamkhal, no problem.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 14:39 (UTC)

How would you name the articles on the settlement and on the port if there would be Dikson, Belarus? Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 16:12, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Using parenthetical disambiguators, of course (in addition to country specifier when necessary). This applies to Shamkhal, by the way, since there is a railway station called Shamkhal (although we don't yet have an article about it).

My point is that no guideline will ever cover every possibility, and the more possibilities you try to document, the longer and less usable are the instructions. Look at the length of your proposed NCRUS—just how, may I ask, does it "reduce instruction creep" (which was the whole point of your original proposal)? Instead of three simple rules covering most cases you now have kilobytes of instructions which still don't cover all cases!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 16:22 (UTC)

It is you who invented a massive set of rules. But you have them in your head and didn't write them all down. I only documented what I found you have put into several pages. And I found it was inconsistent. You have to compare all your rules with all rules that would result from my proposals, i.e. written down + your head VS written down as proposed by me. But lets stay at the topic, how would you call the Dikson articles? Please write down the links, as I cannot see what you mean. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 16:31, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

You know, I'm actually the person who works on these articles most. When I create an article, it needs to go under some title, and no one else will name it for me. And it makes sense to name new articles the same way as the articles that already exist. At some point, it makes sense to document the general trends of how these articles are titled, hence the three simple rules we have. That's really the only way to do things when no one else cares much about the work being done but generally agrees that the work is good and necessary. You wouldn't expect me to wait five years to start creating articles just because there is no one else around to discuss the "naming rules", would you?

Also, the existing rules aren't just in my head; they are actually implemented and can be observed. Note that no one is expected to follow the rules in every little detail you have so far documented—if the three major clauses don't cover a situation neatly, then one may use whatever works in that particular situation. Hence most of the "inconsistencies" which you've found. Some of them can be fixed, some can't, but it doesn't mean that we should replace the three rules with pages and pages of instructions covering every possible situation! The guidelines are supposed to provide general guidance, not step-by-step instructions on how to handle every possible combination of entities we may ever face. And the three general rules allow for more flexibility than two.

To answer your question about Shamkhal, there are multiple ways to handle the situation. If I were faced with this task today, I'd place the articles at "Shamkhal, Iran", "Shamkhal (urban-type settlement), Russia", and "Shamkhal railway station". However, I'd use this setup not because some rules tell me to do it just this way, but because no existing rule covers this situation neatly and this particular approach works reasonably well. If a better way is found, the three articles can always be re-named, but it doesn't mean that we need to add a separate rule to cover the situation of this type.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 17:07 (UTC)

Even if you are the only editor, you should follow WP rules. And if there is no need for Russia specific rules, you shouldn't invent too much. Shamkhal, Russia and Shamkhal railway station see Category:Railway stations in Russia, would be sufficient. Railway stations mostly don't go under the plain name. The only articles the almost always go without the type are localities. They use comma and that's it. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 17:22, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

There are no rules to follow in this area; there are only guidelines to help editors make a choice. Again, these are guidelines, not policies. When the guidelines are inadequate (which in this example they are), it's perfectly alright to make an exception or to use whatever makes sense at the moment. As long as readers can find the article, it's all fine. And if it can be found easier under a certain title without having to click through several pages, it's even better. There's no need to re-write the guidelines for that, especially if the re-written version will no longer conform with the real state of the matters!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 17:35 (UTC)

But you are enforcing your self-made "guidelines" on others [15]. As long as readers can find the article, it's all fine. - Why then, you make so much drama? Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 17:58, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Because it's easier to find an article about an urban-type settlement when it is labeled as such instead of generic "Russia", especially when the other entity is also in Russia? The title needs to be disambiguated anyway, so what use is there in choosing a less specific disambiguator? Just because a generic guideline tells us so? Do we not have our own heads to think with?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 18:06 (UTC)

But lakes almost ever use the word "lake" in the name. The comma is very much pointing that the article is about a locality. And, there can be other settlements called Khasan, e.g. Khasan, Pakistan. WP is far from being complete. Shield the articles from the need for moving around in the next 10 years, by applying ", Russia" in cases where a disambiguator is needed anyway already. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 18:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

It's "pointing" for you and me, not your average Joe seeking to find info about "something called X in Russia". If Joe is looking for "X Mountain" in Russia, a list such as "X Lake", "X (cake)", "X, Russia" isn't even telling him that we don't have an article about the mountain; it'll just lead him to click through "X, Russia" and be disappointed. A list such as "X Lake", "X (cake)", "X (rural locality)" at least makes it abundantly clear that we have nothing about the mountain. Similarly, if a Jane looking for the Russian village, the first list gives her no clues that the entry she seeks is the last one, while the second list makes the selection immediately obvious. All in all, you are sacrificing readers' convenience just to prevent us from moving an article on the off-chance something else pops up. That's just wrong.

And if another place, outside of Russia, turns up, then of course the articles will need to be moved and the disambig page edited accordingly, but I don't see the current rules interfering with that process at all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 18:44 (UTC)

So, how come...

...I didn't get an invitation? Canvassing is a sin, you know...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 18:49 (UTC)

What is else is the above [16] than an invite? Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:00, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

My bad, apologies.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 19:30 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	You seem to have put a lot of energy into articles on Geography of Russia. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:39, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks. I should note, however, that I would have done a lot more of said writing if I didn't have to spend oodles of time on revisiting perfectly functional guidelines because someone is itching to improve them just for the heck of it :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 19:46 (UTC)

I help you to have less guidelines, so you need less time to spend on revisiting ;-). Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 20:00, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

What you are doing is making them less flexible and more confusing, which doesn't really help any. Not mentioning parenthetical disambiguators doesn't magically rid us of all the situations where using them is an acceptable (or only) solution; it just removes the explanation of their use from public view. But anyhoo, thanks for the barnstar all the same.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 20:10 (UTC)

Have a good summer!

		The Socratic Barnstar
		For the skillful and intelligent comments in defence of your views. GreyHood Talk 09:50, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry that I have to support a different position. As I should say, Ezhiki is my friend, but unfortunately I don't like the parenthesis...

I'm going to be absent from wiki for some time, perhaps a pair of weeks, but maybe more. (That's both good and bad news for you ;) on one hand, I won't be able to support "X, Russia" proposal anymore, and on the other hand you have been very close to convince me to change my vote.. )

Please watch for the task forces and assessment for the period of my vacation.

So, see you later! Cheers! GreyHood ^Talk 09:50, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar! It does make me feel better that the problem is not so much with my arguments as it is with people's personal tastes clouding their judgement :)

Seriously, though, no problem. We all have different views on some matters. If the proposal doesn't pass, it doesn't pass. If it does, at least I can feel comfortable knowing that I put up a good fight.

I hope you have a great vacation and will return to editing refreshed and invigorated. It goes without saying that I'll keep an eye on the assessments and will continue with my daily batches.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 11, 2011; 13:39 (UTC)

All-Russia People's Front

Hi! can u please help expanding this article using ur russian reading skills? (there is quiet big article in russian wikipedia). Have good day! Superzohar Talk 16:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I could help with that article as soon as I have some time. I'm quite busy now, so maybe in 1-2 weeks. Nanobear (talk) 02:13, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

If you could do that, it'd be great. I'm not big on doing translations, and the topic isn't something I'd feel excited to work on anyway. In a couple of weeks right after the industry of the Kola Peninsula, right? :)))—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 11, 2011; 13:43 (UTC)

Maps

I notice we now have a few svg like File:Outline Map of Altai Krai.svg but without the inserts. Can you ask our Russian friend to kindly add inserts to the maps so we can remove the double maps in the infoboxes?♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:55, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't think the guy is around much any more. I asked him about the other thing you wanted a few months back, and I never got a response. His last edit in ru_wiki was in February.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 11, 2011; 13:45 (UTC)

Sergey Shoygu vs. Sergei Shoigu

Could you remind me again why we spell his name Sergey Shoygu instead of Sergei Shoigu on Wikipedia. The reason I ask is because I came across this recent article on CNN that spells his name Sergei Shoigu [17]. I previously cited the tuvaonline.ru news site that spells his name with an i. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 04:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Neither spelling is incorrect; it's just different romanization systems. We mostly follow the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian, but multiple other systems exist, too. All systems enjoy some use, and even the same organization may not always follow just one consistently.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 13, 2011; 13:30 (UTC)

Block needed

Hi Ezhik, can you look at this. Warning has been given, perhaps a block is clearly in order though as well. --Russavia ^{Let's dialogue} 17:32, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll add it to my watch and will block after another incident. Those IP cowards are getting tiresome!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 13, 2011; 17:35 (UTC)

A little request

Hello! Would you mind revising the article Tarkhankut Lighthouse which I created quite long ago and fixing grammar and vocabulary at least where it's really worrisome? Frankly speaking, I supposed the article to be noticed swiftly by participants of the respective projects but now the readers are either rare or seemingly indifferent to it. Should any doubts occur, the Ukrainian version, also composed by me earlier, was the source. Thanks ahead! --Microcell (talk) 13:40, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Is there anything in particular you want me to look at? I could copyedit it a bit, but in general it's OK for a Start-class article.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:23 (UTC)

Tarku

Tarku in India and Nepal. Can you find one Russia, see Ghazi Muhammad. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:44, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

There are no inhabited localities in Russia called "Tarku". The Ghazi Muhammad article should link to Tarki (which is called "Таргъу" in Kumyk, which is why it is currently spelled "Tarku").—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:26 (UTC)

Thanks. Won't interfere with spelling, created Tarku, Dagestan as redirect. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 12:07, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Russian magazines

You might have something on Rabotnitsa and Zdoroviye.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't have anything specific, but if you have anything in mind for me to find, shoot. My mother used to subscribe to Rabotnitsa in Soviet times, by the way :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:28 (UTC)

Any chance you could find some suitable articles to add a Category:Communist magazines to?♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I can try. I don't think the English Wikipedia has many articles about Soviet magazines, though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:48 (UTC)

Here's one.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:51 (UTC)

Set indices on populated places in Russia

Renaming proposed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 July 19#Category:Set indices on Russian inhabited localities. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 12:30, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 14:29 (UTC)

User incl

You must have been angry to have chosen to start a deletion request for populated place? I would appreciate WP has an article on populated place /and/ on inhabited locality. Or the latter mentioned within the former. Can you bring any sources for the term "inhabited locality" into the article space? For the record, I am not happy with "populated place", since some of them are not populated anymore, a problem one does not have with "settlement". Also locality might be a good general term, and at the end, all "populated places" could be moved to "inhabited locality" or populated locality ([18]).

Please can we work on sorting this out, without content deletion? Thanks for the kitten. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 12:18, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

No, I didn't nominate it because I was angry (I thought you knew me better than that), and even though I am frustrated in general, that's not the reason either. The only reason I nominated it is because it was a disgraceful stub about a non-notable concept. If someone expands it to show notability and supplies references (a process that I see is already ongoing), that'll be great, but otherwise there just isn't a reason to keep that little abomination around. I wish I could help with expanding it myself, but you are keeping me rather busy in half a dozen other discussions which I barely keep up with, and I don't want to pile up yet another task on top of that.

Also, I don't have any problem with using the term "populated place" (or any of the other synonyms, except "settlement", which is just too confusing in the context of several countries) to name the upper level categories. The purpose of the upper level categories is to provide means to readers so they could easily compare the same concept across many different countries, so it makes sense for the terminology to be uniform (horizontally). However, once the reader locates the category being sought, there just isn't a need to stick with generic terminology any longer—using more specific terminology in the context of that particular country is a lot more helpful (not to mention encyclopedic). There is even less need to use the generic terminology in the actual articles. If more precise and/or more common terms are used in a particular context, that's what we should be using, too. If multiple terms exist, we should use the one that's more common than the others. That's all I'm trying to convey. I find the notion that the choice of terminology in our articles should be guided by the choice of terminology for our upper-level category names rather revolting, is all. I thought Wikipedians stopped doing that years ago, but apparently not everyone is yet on board.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 20, 2011; 13:27 (UTC)

Please, transfer your knowledge of "more precise and/or more common" into the article space. Otherwise it looks just like your private opinion and you will have to repeat it again and again to users. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 13:39, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I can't. There are things one can look up and add as references, and there are things one learns from observation. I've read dozens of books on the administrative-territorial divisions of Russia, and most of them use the term "inhabited localities" when they describe the concept with any specificity, but none would directly say that "'inhabited localities' is the term used to refer to legally defined areas of human settlement in Russia", because it is not the term by the virtue of some mandate, but merely by the virtue of usage in a certain context. The term also fits nicely into the whole urban/rural localities classification terminology, which, to me at least, makes the choice a no-brainer. In other words, I stick with the view that if multiple translations of the same term exist, the one that fits best into the encyclopedic infrastructure should be preferred. You seem to stick with the view that if multiple translations of the same term exist, the one that fits best into the auxiliary (navigational) infrastructure should be preferred. However, since we are building an encyclopedia (where content is supposed to be king), I can't subscribe to that view.

Compare it to the situation around "populated places". It's not hard to find a bunch of generic definitions, but you will not find a source confirming it's the preferred choice when one needs to call areas of human habitation something. We just agree that, in general, it is, based on what the sources out there tend to use. It's not something we can reference, but it's something we can agree on. There never had been a discussion which established that we should be using this term in all contexts, though; the consensus was merely regarding the upper-level categories.

All in all, if you can't or aren't willing to accept my testimony in good faith, just say so. I seem to be the only person interested in the classification of the inhabited localities in Russia anyway—something I have always thought of as being an asset, because I can contribute something unique that others can't—but it seems that others (and, unfortunately, you) prefer to think of this situation as if I were trying to impose my "personal opinions" in an area no one else really has a clue about. If Wikipedians don't want my services in this area, I'll be happy to free up the next seven years of my life for doing something more productive. I most certainly can't be very productive in an environment where the opinions of an editor with a knowledge of some pretty esoteric (yet encyclopedic) matters are routinely dismissed in favor of simplistic (and occasionally plain incorrect) approaches and where that editor is forced to waste all his available time on "improving the guidelines" instead of being able to work on the only thing that really matters—the content. When people (not you) say in my face that their main reason for arguing with me is "to show me my place", when most of the people opposing my views never even contribute to Russia-related articles yet keep following me to each new Russia-related discussion I happen to be (or have been) a part of, when they find my arguments "convincing" but don't support them strictly because they have a strong personal preference of their own, all that is not exactly an incentive to keep contributing.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 20, 2011; 14:26 (UTC)

You might find contributing more pleasurable if you learned to go with the flow, sometimes. I do this by mostly ignoring my own personal preferences (even in areas where I'm more knowledgeable than most), and by attempting to understand what "everybody else" wants. Mlm42 (talk) 16:21, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

That'd be a great piece of advice if my goal here were to spend time pleasurably. As it stands, I am here to contribute to an area of knowledge no one else is willing to contribute, which means there is no "flow". It is one thing to disagree with a group of fellow editors who might have different views on a subject but are all knowledgeable about it. It's a different thing entirely to disagree with a group of editors who are arguing with you not for the sake of the readers, not for the sake of the content, but for the sake of maintaining integrity of the guidelines and regulations regardless of whether doing so makes sense in the context or not. Even that wouldn't be so bad if those editors were at least willing to listen to the reasons being presented to them, but they either don't listen at all, or stick to personal preferences of their own, or say something like "I don't understand any of it, but I will oppose because someone else did". It's not really that hard to understand what "everybody else" wants here—they want the problem gone, and dismissing it or bundling it with the ways of doing vaguely similar things is often the easiest way to do so. It takes care of the problem alright, but Wikipedia does not become better as a result. And according to you, my only option is to stop caring about subject-specific problems if I want to continue editing or perhaps to switch to editing less esoteric subjects, those with a "flow". Great. I truly don't know sometimes why I bother contributing at all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 20, 2011; 17:15 (UTC)

I just mean that it's not worth fighting over every tiny issue - it's a waste of your time. If the rest of Wikipedia is doing something (like using the term "populated place" in category names), why fight it? Just go with it. It doesn't really matter anyway. Being grumpy, ranting about it, and generally showing diva-ish behaviour, isn't really going to make anyone happy, including yourself.

And yes, I think you'd do well to consider subscribing to Wikipedia:Don't-give-a-fuckism. Mlm42 (talk) 18:55, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The funny thing is that these "tiny issues" are a waste of time for pretty much all people involved and lead to nothing constructive no matter what the outcome is. They affect no one but the editors working on the administrative-territorial divisions of Russia (which most of the time, unfortunately, happens to be just me) and the readers who are interested in understanding this topic in any kind of depth (which there aren't that numerous either), yet the people complaining about them and chasing me around belong to neither of those two groups. I have no problem with Wikipedia using artificial or arbitrary constructs to name the upper-level categories which contain artificial or arbitrary collections of things (like most, if not all, of the "populated places in Foo" cats). I am, however, very much against transferring these arbitrary conventions to the article space or to the names of categories which are supposed to be based on articles. That's a fight worth fighting, because the quality of the encyclopedia is at stake.

I wish I could just ignore these things and merrily go about contributing stuff in a haphazard manner, but there is so much material involved that the importance of organizing it all efficiently is paramount, yet the organizational efforts is those folks' primary target. Hell, of course any organizational structure can always be improved! It shouldn't be improved for the sake of improvement, though; the improvements should affect the actual articles or solve actual problems! Yet it never ends. Six years ago an editor wanted, among a bunch of other silly things, to rename most first-level administrative divisions of all non-English-speaking countries to "provinces" regardless of whether that's the term used by the sources or not; three years ago the argument was about how the term "settlement" is the best one, like, ever, and should be used whenever possible (my opposition to that, by the way, played a part in editors finally gathering together and replacing "settlements" with more sensible, although not perfect, "populated places"); now we have a similar group arguing that "populated places" is the way to go, always and regardless of regional peculiarities and preferences. It's almost seems like we have a group of "editors" whose only purpose and joy is in writing the guidelines and ordering others around instead of contributing to articles.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 20, 2011; 19:47 (UTC)

Should I pressume that you are calling me an Apparatchik (a derogatory term I've never heard of), or were you referring to someone else? And I think it's a bit sad that you believe that "the quality of the encyclopedia is at stake", if we use the term "populated place" instead of "inhabited locality" in a category name. It's not even article content - it's a category name. Sheesh. No wonder you seem so stressed. Sometimes you just have to learn to let it go. Changes like this can be done with bots, and most readers don't even know what categories are.. so it's really not worth worrying about. Mlm42 (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I am not calling you anything, I'm just ranting at no one in particular and you happen to be around (you can run while it's not too late :)). Also, while I did have several specific people in mind when making the apparatchik remark, you aren't one of them. However, if you think the shoe fits... well, that'd be sad, too.

Another sad thing is that you don't seem to realize that to an uninvolved person the problems of someone else always seem easy to fix and nothing of significance is ever at stake. The bigger picture only starts to uncover once you dig deeper (and in this case, a lot deeper). Problem is, most of my opponents not only aren't willing to dig deeper, they aren't willing to dig at all, aren't interested in hearing out the counter-arguments, and generally don't give any sort of fuck about the content affected by the changes. All they are interested in is their opinions, which they aren't even willing to substantiate or to explain how they are better on the content side. Did you notice how I usually deconstruct each and every argument thrown at me? And did you notice how nothing of the sort ever comes back in return? The only things that come back in return are circular reasoning, "others do it differently and there are many more of them" sort of arguments, and "I have no idea what it's about but I'll oppose anyway" remarks (do prove me wrong). Ever tried to explain the importance of anything in such an environment?

Cat names aren't the only thing affected, by the way. Bogdan's ultimate goal is to rename a bunch of articles and to replace much of the terminology (here's the first step; by all means, join), only he isn't willing to do any of the maintenance work himself. Successfully moved categories are one of his main "arguments" for changing articles. Are you still wondering why I am frustrated? He mentions bots, too. Bots, however, aren't magical beings which will fix everything for us; they need to be programmed properly, and the consequences of many of Bogdan's proposed changes wouldn't be easy to fix even with the bots. What gives?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 20, 2011; 20:44 (UTC)

I think generally Wikipedia editors have open minds about things; I also think they generally do not want to engage in lengthy debates about things they don't care about.. but they might still weigh in and leave. 1000+ character-long posts may or may not be read by everyone who weighs into a dispute. In terms of convincing people of something, a concise, powerful, single sentence argument is going to be much more effective than a detailed multi-paragraph rant.

For example, after reading much of the discussion, I still don't understand the Talk:Types of inhabited localities in Russia#Move to Types of populated places in Russia dispute.. this is an article about the different kinds of places where people live in Russia. The first sentence of the article has a citation needed tag.. the more pressing questions for me are: why do we have this article? (Would it survive an AfD?) Is the first sentence original research? (If not, what is the source of this information?) Mlm42 (talk) 23:31, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, people not reading the discussions in which they participate is not a problem intrinsic to Wikipedia. One could argue that's the whole reason why democracy never works as well as it's supposed to! It is, however, an interesting question why some people find it compelling to contribute to a discussion about a topic they neither care nor know about... is it just to be heard? If so, such !votes should be weighed accordingly.

Regarding the article, yours are the questions I can live with and are very good questions to ask. I'm not sure why the first sentence has a citation needed tag, though. That sentence serves as a lead—a summary of the article written with a higher degree of generality, and as such doesn't really need a citation. Lead citations are usually needed only when the lead statements are controversial or aren't otherwise supported by what the main article says. Do you find that the lead does not summarize the article contents? Does the article give no indication that the classification system used in Russia indeed possesses some peculiarities other countries lack? Of course, one sentence makes a sucky lead in any case, the article itself is far from being complete, and one could argue that any country's classification system is peculiar in its own way. So, if you have a better suggestion about how the lead should be worded, go right ahead.

As for why we have this article, I'm not sure what you mean. Why do we have any articles at all? It's a valid encyclopedic topic, is it not? The classification exists; where else would we talk about it?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 14:08 (UTC)

A beer for you!

It looks like you really need one. Hopefully you don't let Wikipedia eat you alive. Mlm42 (talk) 22:50, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

It might be too late for not being eaten alive, but thanks for the gesture anyway. You know there is a problem when alcoholism seems to be a better option than editing Wikipedia :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 13:42 (UTC)

FYI

Thanks for the heads up, I must admit, I was rather sad to hear it! What is the policy regarding former districts, obviously there would be the relevant comments in the articles for the districts into which they were absorbed, but is there scope for a "former districts" section in the Chukotka nav box? How would they be referred in the Administrative divisions of chukotka autonomous okrug article? Are they listed separately as former districts, or expunged altogether? Fenix down (talk) 15:20, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

We don't have a policy about the former districts, nor do we have enough articles about them to establish how they are normally dealt with. I'd say do whatever feels right :) When we have more than a few such articles, we could start thinking about how to organize them best.

As for mentioning them elsewhere, the historical information like this indeed belongs in the "administrative divisions of XXX" articles. The one about Chukotka is a barebones liststub, but that's where the information ultimately should go (compare, for example, with how Murmansk Oblast or Adygea are done). The navbox, that I'm not so sure about. It's probably OK to include the historical districts in Chukotka's, but for some other federal subjects the lists of historical districts will contain dozens and dozens names; including them all in addition to current districts would make the navboxes very unwieldy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 22, 2011; 15:34 (UTC)

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Nomination for deletion of Non-sovereign territories templates

Non-sovereign territories templates have been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 20:59, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Re:Taskforces

Well, since criminals are related to law enforcement and the latter is related to politics we should use the Politics of Russia task force, isn't it? GreyHood ^Talk 15:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That was my line of thought, too, but it is not obvious at the first glance and looks quite weird. Perhaps we should have a taskforce for all things legal?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 3, 2011; 16:31 (UTC)

I thought about renaming "Politics of Russia task force" into something like "Politics and law of Russia task force" or "Politics and law enforcement in Russia task force".. GreyHood ^Talk 16:34, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That could work. "Law" is probably better than "law enforcement", as it is broader and could include legal stuff that would otherwise have to be put under "science".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 3, 2011; 17:14 (UTC)

Indeed, "Politics and law" is better. If you feel we need the change (personally I'm OK without it, but that's a matter of habit), please rename the relevant pages (though, what about the bot-generated content?). GreyHood ^Talk 17:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't really have time for this now, but I'll add it to my to-do list for later (or, if you want to try taking care of this yourself, you are more than welcome to). I'm not sure about the bot-generated content either, but it should be easy enough to figure it out once we start digging. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 3, 2011; 17:45 (UTC)

OK, I've moved pages around and submitted an amendment request for the PP process, but I'm sure I've missed stuff. Please give the whole structure another look and let me know if you see anything that should be fixed (and you can't fix it yourself). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 1, 2011; 19:28 (UTC)

OK, I'll check it later, thx! GreyHood ^Talk 15:20, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you again for the job. I've made few fixes and assessments, and now almost everything seems alright to me. But have you submitted a request for Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics and law of Russia task force/Popular pages instead of Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force/Popular pages? (btw, the military task force PP list needs enlargement from 500 to 1500 items)

Also, I've just remembered we planned to insert bot-supported article statistics tables into each task force. GreyHood ^Talk 07:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

No, I did not submit a new request, but I did file a request for configuration change (asking to change the target pages). I no longer see it in the list of requested changes, so hopefully it has been processed and will take effect with the next run. I also remember requesting the change from 500 to 1500 for the military task force at the same time when I was submitting the requests for the rest of the taskforces; I'm not sure why that hadn't been processed. Anyway, the PP tool page now displays a notice saying they stopped taking new requests till November, so I guess that'll have to wait.

On the bot-supported article stats table, could you please remind me what that was about? I vaguely remember discussing it, but don't recall the details, sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 8, 2011; 13:36 (UTC)

I mean making tables similar to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Russia articles by quality statistics for each specific task force. GreyHood ^Talk 17:33, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

City vs. federal subject again

Do you notice something wrong with the infobox here? Colchicum (talk) 23:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, not really... There are a couple minor things that could use a tweak, but overall it looks fine to me. Could you elaborate what's wrong? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 4, 2011; 13:13 (UTC)

I mean "rank within Russia". It is not really "2nd", is it? Colchicum (talk) 14:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, my bad. I've made the corrections. Of course, the rank should be the same as on the page the link is pointing to. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 4, 2011; 15:24 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, but it is only a short-term solution, which will last until someone else introduces the same very likely error again. The last one survived long enough to worry about it. Colchicum (talk) 15:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, editors just need to pay attention to what it is they are changing :) I sure screwed up myself this time, but that's not a good excuse.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 4, 2011; 15:38 (UTC)

Primorsky Krai

I switched the location map template with a new map with window. Please update.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 4, 2011; 17:08 (UTC)

Boris Gmyrya

Hi vsem yejikam! Vy ne mogli by proverit my English. Spasibo. Please check my English. Thank you. --Lawrentia (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem; I have copyedited it a bit. I wasn't sure about what some of the sentences were supposed to convey, so please double-check that I didn't accidentally twist their meaning. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 5, 2011; 14:29 (UTC)

Infobox for Russian subdivisions

Hi Ezhiki! I noticed that the current infobox for Russian federal districts seems to be outdated and somewhat ugly when compared to the ones found in other articles, so I tried to rework it a little, and since you've been here quite a bit longer than I have and you edit many Russian-related articles, I wanted to ask you for an opinion. Do you think that my edit (which you can find here) is an improvement over the current version? Thank you for your time! --Lady Pablo (talk) 01:08, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Lady Pablo! First of all, thank you for your time and interest in this! It's always good to have another pair of eyes looking at these templates.

As for the re-design itself, I'm really of two minds about it. I do very much like that your version is not as tall as the current one and that it looks a lot cleaner overall (design and visual appeals are not really my fortes :)). On the down side, I've noticed the following:

• your version has no grouping headings, which makes particular groups of data harder to find—it all just flows continuously. Mind you, I'm not saying that the current green blobs are the best way to address this, but some sort of grouping cues would certainly be helpful. I just don't think separators alone do the job well enough.
• the new version is a wrapper around {{Infobox Settlement}}. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I've never been a fan of that particular infobox. One can do a lot of things with it, sure, but only some of those things would be done well, and there is little flexibility in how things can be done (it's kind of like Apple products :)). What's especially hard to control is where a particular line would go in the overall structure (with your example, for instance, the names in English and Russian really shouldn't be split by the federal subject type descriptor, and the flag and coat of arms should follow the map, not precede it). Of course, with some ingenuity, one can make certain lines appear in certain places, but that same effect can be achieved a lot easier by using generic building blocks instead. Now, don't take me wrong, the current version is not an epitome of flexibility. It is quite the opposite, but that's because it is the last of the templates on my to-do list which I was planning to re-design until you beat me to it :) My idea was to use the same approach as in, for example, {{Infobox Russian district}}, which is built solely on the generic {{Infobox}} template and where re-arranging the building blocks or adding new ones can be done in a snap.
• I haven't looked at the code closely, but I've noticed that while you are passing the 2002 Census parameters to the template, they don't all show up in the output. I understand how showing both the 2002 Census and 2010 Census results seems redundant, but right now it's a necessity, because the 2010 results aren't yet finalized. Once they are, the 2002 Census lines can be taken out completely, including from the template code. The "latest" population, would still be there, of course (right now it is the 2010 Census results which are the latest, so that parameter is never filled out).

This is probably a lot more feedback than you hoped for, but I hope it's constructive. I'll be thrilled to hear your opinion in more detail in return! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 8, 2011; 14:01 (UTC)

I have made a few changes to the template (the new version is the one in the middle). Cheers, Lady Pablo (talk) 00:28, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I think this should work! It certainly looks much nicer than the current version. Thank you! Just a few minor things:

• the head/governor information should come before legislature, as is customary;
• the head, head name, legislature, and administrative center lines lost their reference tags;
• the area figure needs to be dated, because borders do occasionally change, and the value is used to calculate the population density (possibly using the population count from a different year when nothing better is available);
• the density line lost its explanatory note, and since it is bundled with the rest of the census data, one can get an impression that the value of density also comes from the census sheets, which is not true;
• with "urban" vs. "rural", it's just "rural", not "rural area". The percentage shows the urban/rural population distribution, not the area distribution;
• the "website" line probably doesn't need the "website" label. What do you think about just centering it as it is done in the district infobox?
• "languages" should really be "official languages", otherwise the label gives an impression that all of the major languages spoken in the federal subject should be listed there;
• I'm not sure about the location of the "holiday" line at the very bottom;
• are you planning to try out wrapping this template around {{Infobox}}, or is this your final version?

Regarding the order of the symbols vs the map, it's not so much about the preference, as it is about addressing the readers' needs. The image at the top of the infobox would often be the only image readers see when they first load the page (especially on smaller resolution screens), and the map immediately answers the question of "where", which is the first question readers looking to familiarize themselves with the topic would ask. The flag/coat look nice, but don't really answer any immediate questions, which is why it makes sense to move them down.

Also, I would appreciate your opinion about the charter/constitution line. While each charter/constitution should ideally have their own article, currently none does, so the link on this line is always red. One could also argue that it is not the kind of link that's important in an infobox and is better covered by the text. Do you have an opinion about this?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 9, 2011; 13:49 (UTC)

Gennady (Archbishop of Novgorod)

Suggest moving to Gennady of Novgorod, the name under which the subject is venerated and which corresponds to other wikipedias. For some reasons sometimes I can move articles over redirect and sometimes can't, strange. GreyHood ^Talk 13:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

You can only move an article over a redirect when that redirect constitutes the whole editing history. "Gennady of Novgorod" has a bot edit on top of the original redirect, which requires deletion.

I have moved the article to match the naming scheme in Category:Russian saints. There are also a couple more parenthesized titles in that cat you might want to look at, but most are titled "Religionist of Foo", so it makes perfect sense to unify them all that way. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 10, 2011; 13:42 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll look at other titles, and thanks for the move and explanation. GreyHood ^Talk 13:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

FA nominee

Hi, Ezhiki. Could you help me nominate the article Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union for featured articles? Please put this article on the appropriate page of the Wikipedia. After you had done it last time, this article has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. So it seems to me that you bring luck. I have improved the article since its recent nomination. Thank you in advance. Psychiatrick (talk) 21:56, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about good luck—you'd probably be better off thanking the person who did the GA review! All I did was add a line to a page where it was then picked up by a bot :)

As for the FAC submission, I'll be happy to help with it as well, but please note that before an article can be nominated, it should undergo a peer review. The process consists of five easy steps, and while I can certainly submit the article for peer review for you, it makes more sense if you do it yourself, because it's you who'll be the one answering the questions and addressing concerns anyway. Once the peer review is finished, the article can be moved on to FAC.

By the way, great job on expanding that article! It's a very interesting and educational read. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 11, 2011; 13:38 (UTC)

The point is that corresponding articles related to this topic in the Russian Wikipedia were the subject of a long conflict between users and were considered as a challenge to struggle for preventing them from being nominated for the good or featured articles. I would not like the English Wikipedia to have the same conflict. That is why I would like you to submit this article for peer review and help me. Psychiatrick (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are being stalked by your opponents from ru_wiki, I don't see why you would have the same problems here, and it would be you fending off the questions which will come up during the peer review anyway. Submitting a nomination involves going through five mostly procedural (and easy) steps, but if you insist, I'll submit it for peer review next week. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 12, 2011; 19:03 (UTC)

From my previous experience, I know that the procedure for peer reviewing and nominating an article is difficult and brings a user nothing but stress at best or blocks at worst. To start this procedure, I need to feel at least a little bit of moral support that I don’t feel now. Putting an article on the page for peer review can be a sort of moral support. Maybe I’ll nominate this article in half a year. Thanks. Psychiatrick (talk) 21:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

If me nominating this article for peer review would count as moral support and help you deal with the questions better, then I will gladly do so :) I was just making sure. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 12, 2011; 21:52 (UTC)

My apologies—I fully intended to submit it for PR on Monday, but it completely slipped my mind after the weekend! Anyway, better late than never. Good luck.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 1, 2011; 18:33 (UTC)

Good time, Ezhiki. I am now having too many problems. For the two last weeks I had problems with my Internet connection because personnel of technical support service of my Internet provider sold me and installed a new modem that did not work. After this incident, problems with software installed on my computer have recently cast a shadow over my relations with a Russian very large software producer. Despite all this, I will try to respond to criticisms on the peer review page. Thanks. Psychiatrick (talk) 19:58, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, best of luck to you in dealing with the Russian providers :) As for the nom, I'll keep half an eye on it, but it probably will take a while for someone to actually notice and review it, because of the extensive PR backlog. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 1, 2011; 20:01 (UTC)

Sometimes I feel myself like a twig in the ocean, not a master of my ship. From this perspective, it seems a little foolish to aim at or struggle for promotion of my articles to higher status at any cost. But I will respond to reviewers from time to time. Psychiatrick (talk) 21:09, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

How are you? Please compare:

Phrase in the source is as follows: “Злоупотреблением психиатрией, в том числе и в политических целях, является умышленная экскульпация граждан, по своему психическому состоянию не нуждающихся ни в психиатрическом стеснении, ни в психиатрическом лечении”.

The same phrase before being copyedited in the article is as follows: “In other words, abuse of psychiatry including one for political purposes is deliberate action of getting citizens certified, who, because of their mental condition, need neither psychiatric restraint nor psychiatric treatment.”

The same phrase copyedited by FiachraByrne in the article is as follows: “It entails the certification and committal of citizens to psychiatric facilities based upon a political rather than a mental health rationale.”

When copyedited, the phrase looks as if it has been taken from different source. People have the right to ask me what source this phrase was taken from? I do not know. That is a fundamental problem of Wikipedia and means it needs professional translators for editing and reviewing the articles based on sources using another language. I faced similar problems not too many months ago when I wrote an article based on sources using another language, and these problems are still discussed in ru-wiki [19]. Psychiatrick (talk) 01:11, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Ezhiki. Peer review for the article was completed. If you don’t mind, let’s proceed to the next stage related to the nomination. The most difficult thing for me is to put the article on the necessary page. Psychiatrick (talk) 18:09, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Here we go. Good luck!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 29, 2011; 21:33 (UTC)

Thanks. How much time do I have to address the issues on the nomination page? In ru-wiki, any author is usually given several months to reply to questions and remarks during such a process. When the article was nominated for the Good Articles, one of the requests was to make subsections in the article and resulted in that its table of contents became long. Now, on the contrary, one of the requests is that the table of contents needs to be shortened because it is too long. These opposite requests add to the excess vain work on the article. If one takes into account the above, every reviewer in Wikipedia appears to have his or her own standard for reviewing articles. That is not good for them and their authors at all. Psychiatrick (talk) 07:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh wow, they sure fail FA noms quickly these days! I logged out yesterday, logged in this morning, and it has already been killed off without even giving time to respond. Whatever happened to common courtesy, I don't know.

Anyhoo, to answer your questions. I don't believe there is a specific time frame during which the nom should be processed, but it is normal for noms to be denied if no visible progress to address the concerns is being made. On the other hand, if the author/nominator are visibly at work addressing those concerns, the nom can stay open for quite a while (even now there are a few noms open since mid-August).

I've never nominated an FA myself, but I do have one FL (featured list) under my belt, and as far as opposing demands go, the situation there was sort of similar. The best one can do is to point out that various people want to exercise mutually exclusive approaches to formatting and then to go with whichever side has more support in the end. Certainly don't start changing things right away when opposite demands start pouring in!

As to what to do now, I would recommend addressing the concerns from tonight before re-nominating. We could make a point that closing a nomination so quickly is just not a nice thing to do, but some of the things pointed out even in such short a time do need to be corrected, so it makes sense to address them before re-nominating. I wish they were pointed out during the PR, but oh well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 30, 2011; 16:08 (UTC)

Have a cat lol

Ezhiki even if we disagree on that references thing I wanted to let you know that I appreciate your input and believe that the template has improved because of it! Let's work together again some time soon ok?

Lady Pablo (talk) 09:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

What an ugly little creature :) Thanks!

Just so you know, I do appreciate your input and effort just as much (even though it probably doesn't show :)) The template has certainly improved, and disagreements are a part of progress. I'll be happy to work with you in the future. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 12, 2011; 14:27 (UTC)

Give Ezhiki a hedgehog next time ;) Or better a big beautiful porcupine ))) GreyHood ^Talk 15:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

No, not a porcupine! Those abominations, bah!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 12, 2011; 15:54 (UTC)

OMG whatwasdat ?&!? Pork&pine? That's indeed would be toooo much unhealthy attitude ;))) GreyHood ^Talk 16:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Try this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

That one looks a bit too nerdy for my taste :) But thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 13:36 (UTC)

You could imagine Harry Potter's glasses on it I guess.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:04, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Картина «Васильки» С. Осипова

Добрый день Коллега, не мог удержаться и не пригласить вас на это обсуждение, которому предшествовало это обсуждение номинации, длившееся более месяца. Речь идёт о нравах участников в связи с обсуждением русской версии статьи Cornflowers (painting). Без комментариев. С уважением, Leningradartist (talk) 21:00, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

MKAD

Suggest moving to Moscow Ring Road. This would correspond better to the naming of Russian article; MKAD is an abbreviation not widely used or recognizable outside of Russia. GreyHood ^Talk 22:01, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

By the way, currently there are several Russia-related requested moves under discussion. GreyHood ^Talk 10:45, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

So, it it going to be "Moscow Ring Road", or "Moscow ring road"? :) I suggest we wait for the outcome of the St. Petersburg Ring Road request before the move. Myself, I don't have a preference either way (shocking, eh? :))—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 16, 2011; 13:42 (UTC)

OK! GreyHood ^Talk 16:17, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 14:09 (UTC)

Thx! GreyHood ^Talk 14:10, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Howdy there. Bad move. "Moscow Ring Road" should've been a disambig. NVO (talk) 14:15, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

What's the other one?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 14:19 (UTC)

There are several Rings of Moscow, yes. But the only one is generally known as the "Moscow Ring Road". GreyHood ^Talk 14:27, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I don't believe the rest are generally known as "Moscow Ring Road" in English, an even if they are, only this one qualifies as primary. Perhaps tweaking the hatnote is all that needs to be done?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 14:35 (UTC)

Unfortunately we haven't the article Rings of Moscow in English still. GreyHood ^Talk 14:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Nagatinsky Zaton

Btw again, Nagatinsky Zaton is capitalized in the Russian wiki. And a number of official cites like this and this use capitalized version. Given this inconsistency, I'd suggest to use capitalized version since it is more in accordance with general naming customs. GreyHood ^Talk 13:37, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, Russian wiki is hardly an authoritative source, and the official websites screw up every now and then, too. The applicable laws of Moscow is where the correct spelling should be looked up, and those consistently do not capitalize "zaton". Even with this, if you look closer, you'll see that only the website header has the word capitalized, and the actual texts don't. The GKS simply capitalized it wrong—even the bureaucrats don't pay that much attention to the details when those details aren't the primary focus of the document!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 13:44 (UTC)

There is also the problem of consistency with general English place naming customs, which strongly prefer capitalized names. I'm not sure why we should strictly follow the laws of Moscow in this case. The popular usage of capitalized version even in Russian official sources give us an excuse to ignore those laws and uphold the general naming style, and we can't follow those laws to the letter anyway, because we use Moscow and not Moskva. GreyHood ^Talk 13:54, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Looking closer at all those official cites I found they use both versions extensively, often at the same page. Looking on the results of the Google search the capitalized version seems to be more popular. GreyHood ^Talk 13:57, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Why? Because it is the the laws which specify what the correct name is, and we, as an encyclopedia, should be striving to use what's correct? Moskva vs. Moscow isn't really a valid analogy, because the use of "Moscow" can be verified by literally thousands of independent reliable English sources, while the name of this district would only be found in a handful of publications most of which are neither reliable nor even on the subject of the district's name. In other words, there is no "common English name" to use, and in such cases we normally romanize the official name verbatim (including the choice of capitalization). Doing otherwise would be original research on our part.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 14:04 (UTC)

Than why we capitalize District if "район" is not capitalized in the Russian texts? Your approach has this obvious fallacy. Why in some cases we apply general English language rules and in other cases ignore it, just because of a little inconsistency in Russian sources which has no serious consequences for Russian usage, but give birth to strange monsters in English? Nagatinsky zaton District looks way too funny, sorry. Capitalized - non-capitalized - capitalized - this is totally against the English language naming style, according to my experience. In fact, such capitalization sequence is against almost any language naming style I suppose. Capitalized descriptor, which is of lower significance, and non-capitalized part of the name, which is of higher significance. GreyHood ^Talk 14:29, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no fallacy. The word "district" is not a part of the proper name; it is a designation, and it is customary to capitalize designations in English. We do the same with "Street", "Oblast", etc. Designations are translated, while proper names are romanized. What's more, we have a certain leeway in choosing what the designation could be (for example, we stick with "district" when we refer to the raions in Russia, but the Ukrainian Wikiproject went with "raion" instead, even though there hardly is any difference between the two concepts), while we have no leeway with what the proper name should be—it is either what's commonly used in English, or, as in this case where no common English variant exists, we follow the guidelines the community previously agreed on (the transliteration clause of WP:UE). As you can see, the case is pretty well covered by the existing guidelines, and changing the absolutely correct spelling to something else just to fit some vague "style" concerns is simply not my idea of encyclopedicity. Just because a bunch of folks out there can't spell the name right doesn't mean we should follow them on the path off the cliff :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 14:45 (UTC)

Why should we romanize ignoring English naming customs (there seems to be no such proper names or expressions using the discussed capitalization scheme)? This seems to be a clear case of guideline inconsistency. Also, consider the scheme of naming hydronyms in English where the descriptor is always capitalized: Moscow River, Ladoga Lake, Clean Ponds etc. "Zaton" is also a hydronym descriptor, and as hydronym Nagatinsky Zaton should be capitalized, isn't it? GreyHood ^Talk 14:56, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

While the word "zaton" on its own is indeed a hydronym descriptor, the article is not about a hydrological feature, it is about a district named after that feature (cf. Ulitsa Podbelsogo—an article about a metro station named after a street; the article about the actual street would be under Podbelskogo Street). In this case, "zaton" is a part of a proper name, and we never translate proper names—we either romanize them, or use whatever common English name that exists and can be verified. Since there is no common English name for this district, we romanize the official Russian name in full accordance with WP:UE (which says nothing about "English naming customs" on top of straight romanization). I see no inconsistency here whatsoever. I'm not aware of any guidelines which would put style issues over encyclopedic accuracy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 15:09 (UTC)

So you mean that as hydronym Nagatinsky Zaton is capitalized, but as a part of the district name it is not capitalized? You drive me mad %)

WP:UE doesn't say anything about capitalizing District or River, but nevertheless we always do it because there are general rules for English usage which are above guidelines. WP:UE says: In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage. If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader. We have to translate "район" in the discussed case, and in case of "затон" we should do a little minor thing - capitalize it for the greater understanding and consistency. Since capitalization doesn't hinder search, there is no problems with accuracy or encyclopedicity. Problems with accuracy or encyclopedicity would be if we claim that "Нагатинский Затон" is the official Russian name (and we wouldn't be entirely incorrect), but when translating it into English we should care of capitalization much less and not enforce Russian version over general English usage. GreyHood ^Talk 15:23, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of driving you mad even further, no, that's only a part of what I'm saying :) The article about the hydrological feature would probably not be named "Nagatinsky Zaton"; it would be named "Nagatinsky XXX", where "XXX" is the best English term to which the Russian word "затон" translates (sorry, I'm drawing a blank on the actual translation. "Cove"?). Whether "XXX" itself should be capitalized depends solely on the conventions regarding the naming of similar hydrological features the community had previously agreed upon. I'd guess it probably would be, if the conventions for rivers, lakes, etc. are of any indication.

As for WP:UE, you are not looking at the applicable part of it. What it says is [i]f there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject, which in this case means "do not capitalize 'zaton'". It further says that [n]ames not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated. Adding one and one, we are transliterating the proper name, and we follow the conventions of the Russian language. The part about deciding whether and how to translate does not apply because we never ever translate proper Russian names. We either romanize them, or we use an established common English name (which isn't at all the same as "translating"; "translating" would be referring to Nizhny Novgorod as "Lower Newcity" despite "Nizhny Novgorod" being an established English usage). We do, of course, translate the descriptors, but as I previously mentioned, descriptors aren't a part of the proper names, and the decision of whether to capitalize them or not is based solely on the concept-specific guidelines we have.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 15:53 (UTC)

WP:UE doesn't say anything directly about capitalization. When it recommends to romanize or to translate it doesn't say we should capitalize or not capitalize. That's why we should turn to common sense, to established practices and to other guidelines (such as WP:CAPS), or to take WP:UE's own general recommendations and use them as to the question of capitalization. Why do you think the phrase [i]f there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject refers to the conventions of Russian language and not English, or to the conventions of Russian language only? And why Russian language conventions should override general English conventions especially if we can easily avoid it (again, technically capitalization doesn't affect usability)?

As for the word "затон" I'm not sure it should be translated to English at all, because it combines the meanings of boatyard and backwater, and I'm not sure that backwater is used as a descriptor of hydronym names in English.

See again, the capitalization sequence in Nagatinsky zaton District is inacceptable. Firstly the entire expression could be considered a proper name and therefore should be capitalized in English (Proper name#Capitalization). If we consider just Nagatinsky Zaton a proper name and District a standalone descriptor, we again should capitalize Zaton. If we consider zaton to be a descriptor (as it is done in Russian), than there rises a question (in the case of English usage) why we capitalize one descriptor but do not capitalize another descriptor (and, importantly, preceding descriptor amidst an expression)? GreyHood ^Talk 16:44, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Btw, did you notice the above talk section about MKAD? GreyHood ^Talk 16:47, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:UE is fairly all-encompassing when it says to follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject; to me, that includes all sorts of things, including capitalization. Additionally, when we romanize a word, we always retain its capitalization, so that's not a good argument either. If we don't retain capitalization, then we are doing something else, something which is not romanization or transliteration and I'd argue it's called "original research" :)

The phrase [i]f there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject refers in this case to the conventions of the Russian language and not English because of what follows that sentence ([use] German [conventions] for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on).

On translating/not translating the word "zaton", I really have no opinion. However, whether we translate it or not, as long as it is used as a descriptor and not as a part of a proper name, its capitalization would be decided by the conventions we apply to the names of similar hydrological features.

The rest of the guidelines you found would not apply because WP:UE is a policy (which is crystal clear about how to deal with this situation), and policies take priority over the guidelines.

Finally, on the MKAD, I have no objections. I'm leaving for today, but I'll take care of it tomorrow, if you don't mind.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 17:04 (UTC)

General English language capitalization practices are above Wikipedia guidelines. Well, I see your logic and respect your opinion, but it seems I should file a move request. GreyHood ^Talk 17:12, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

(I'm still here for a few minutes). General English capitalization practices are not above the Wikipedia guidelines because there is no such thing as "general English capitalization practices" anyway. There are various style guides which often recommend contradictory things, which is why we have our own guidelines to deal with the most common situations in a uniform manner. If we didn't know 100% what the correct spelling in Russian is, or if the laws were contradictory on this point (as they are, every now in then, in other cases), I'd move this article to a capitalized version myself. "When in doubt, follow the general style"—I am a strong proponent of this approach. In this case, however, there is no doubt whatsoever on what the correct Russian name is, and our policy says flat out to "follow the conventions of the [Russian] language" (romanizing it first, because the name is not in Latin alphabet). I can see how it is tempting to capitalize "zaton" anyway, but that would be neither honest to the encyclopedic spirit, nor logical. Logic, sadly, is one thing that fails and gets ignored often during the move requests...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 17:41 (UTC)

Capitalizing less important and less "proper" part of the name while not capitalizing more important and more proper one is not exactly logical. And again, romanization and capitalization are different things. GreyHood ^Talk 17:54, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

previous consensus and Wikipedia guidelines

You think this meaningless phrase give you a licence to revert every edit I make to that template? You need to learn a thing or two about article ownership, and there's no guideline that says other people can't edit that particular template just because you created it and you didn't like my edit.--LK (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the most recent version was not created by me, so your "ownership" remark is well off the mark. Now, if you have questions about why I reverted any particular part of your edits, I'll be happy to explain in more detail. There is only so much space in edit summary to explain the rationale, you know. At least I gave some explanation; you just removed a bunch of stuff without even trying!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 14:50 (UTC)

I've listed the problems with your edit, explaining my rationale in greater detail, at Template talk:Infobox Russian federal subject#Most recent edit.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 15:01 (UTC)

Dmitriyevka

Hi Ezhiki, greetings again - hope you're having a good summer. At Russian Air Force there is a mention of an airfield at Dmitriyevka ([Чебеньки]) in Orenburg Oblast, which I cannot find. Would it be possible to look up the details for this Dmitriyevka and add it to the set index article? Kind regards Buckshot06 (talk) 16:37, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Sure, will do. There are, however, five rural localities called "Dmitriyevka" in Orenburg Oblast, so if you have anything to add, it might help. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2011; 16:45 (UTC)

Thanks. I was careful to give you everything I had. Only other thing is that it obviously has an airfield in the vicinity. Sorry I can't help further... Buckshot06 (talk) 17:00, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem; I haven't even started looking when I asked the question :) I've greatly expanded the Dmitriyevka set index. The Dmitriyevka you need is Dmitriyevka, Sakmarsky District, Orenburg Oblast. Will this work for you, or do you need me to create that stub as well? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 16, 2011; 16:45 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I've now located the airfield article at Chebenki, purely by chance. Is Chebenki/Dmitrevika in Sakmarsky District ? Buckshot06 (talk) 17:00, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, this is getting a little confusing :) What is the airfield called exactly, do you know? Dmitriyevka is located in Sakmarsky District, but the settlement of Chebenki is in neighboring Orenburgsky District. The airfield is located at some distance from them both, although it is closer to Dmitiryevka than it is to the settlement of Chebenki (and it is in Sakmarsky District). I'll move the air base article to Chebenki (air base) and put a dab page at Chebenki, but let me know if there's anything else I can help with. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 16, 2011; 17:11 (UTC)

Sorry, as you've probably realised, I'm just working from the neglected work of long-departed User:Timvasquez. See User_talk:Timvasquez#A_statement_about_my_Russian_airport_work. Sorry I can't help further. Buckshot06 (talk) 17:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I've never seen that statement. It helps clarify the overall state of things quite a bit; thanks. Don't hesitate to let me know if you think of anything else I can help with. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 16, 2011; 17:19 (UTC)

Trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks

I might bore you with all those move requests, but I hope you like this one more than the others. Chaosdruid moved Trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks to Varangian-Byzantine trade route, apparently not realising the fact that the name is an idiomatic historical term. I've talked to Chaosdruid and he seems not to object to the idea of revert, but is reluctant to see for the procedure himself. Could you fix the name of the article? Cheers! GreyHood ^Talk 21:43, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, we have already fixed the issue ourselves. For some reason I was able to move the article to the old title. GreyHood ^Talk 22:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Russian populated places articles deleted

Hello again! Please look here. Wikipedia rules sometimes lead to quite unproductive results. GreyHood ^Talk 11:12, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

The situation with this is, unfortunately, more complicated than it may seem. I'll repair what I can.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 16, 2011; 14:09 (UTC)

Thx for fixing this! GreyHood ^Talk 16:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 17, 2011; 16:41 (UTC)

Hassan

Hassan or Hasan or Khasan are written the same in Cyrillic alphabet - Хасан. Therefore I think my action was correct. What do you think? Casesdailyhyui (talk) 18:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, if it were Russian Wikipedia, you'd have a point :) In English Wikipedia, places in Russia called "Хасан" are romanized as "Khasan", and these names have completely different etymology from the rest of Has(s)ans on another dab, so a separate dab is doubly warranted.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 16, 2011; 18:29 (UTC)

Town

Hello! Like you, I learned in Russian/Soviet school. Moreover, I live in Russia. Therefore I know that the Russian/Soviet dictionaries translate town as город, and посёлок as settlement. However, they are based on the United Kingdom realities of the XX century. Such dictionaries never are written from scratch nowadays. A new dictionary is simply an old dictionary with some extensions.

In the UK, may cites became towns in the XIX-XX centuries, but they are cities now:

The abolition of some corporate bodies as part of successive local government reforms, beginning with the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840, has deprived some ancient cities of their status. However, letters patent have been issued for most of the affected cities to ensure the continuation or restoration of their status. At present, Rochester, Perth and Elgin are the only former cities in the United Kingdom.

The situation in the USA is known to you better than to me:

In most places, town refers to a small incorporated municipality of less than 10,000 people, although some of these municipalities may be called "cities."

The word "settlement" has much wider meaning than посёлок now:

The term may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities.

Therefore, the following statement is obsolete:

Unlike English, the Russian language does not distinguish the terms "city" and "town"—both are translated as "город" (gorod).

Today the word "town" better corresponds to "посёлок", although these words are not fully equivalent. Ufim (talk) 04:56, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! Thanks for your comment, but I think we are talking about completely different things here. I don't at all disagree with the points you mentioned above—they are entirely correct. The problem is that you are talking about how Russians translate the English word "town", while the article in question deals with the concept of a town, and the "Russia" section deals with the concept of a town in Russia. The concept is, of course, described by the Russian word "город", which in turn can be translated as either "city" or "town", which is what the statement in question is about. Perhaps the sentence should be revised to make its meaning more clear, but it is most certainly neither wrong nor obsolete.

The "factual errors" I was referring to in my edit summary are with regards to the criteria an inhabited locality needs to meet in order to qualify for the city/town status. In your revision, you state that in Russia, a settlement can become city (gorod) only if it has more than 12000 inhabitants and the occupation of no less than 85% of inhabitants must be other than agriculture. That was true in the Soviet times, but is no longer the case after the adoption of the 1993 Constitution. Currently, the criteria are set by each federal subject individually; there is no federal regulation to that effect. While it is true that many federal subjects retained the Soviet set of criteria in some form, others did in fact diverge from it (in Khabarovsk Krai, for example, the 12,000 population limit is retained for the towns of district significance, but the limit for the towns of krai significance is 50,000, and the agricultural aspect is no longer numerically defined, while in Dagestan there is no district/republican aspect and the threshold is 50,000 for all cities/town; the agricultural aspect is also not explicitly defined).

Hope this clarifies the rationale behind my edit. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 17, 2011; 13:40 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification.Ufim (talk) 15:12, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Zyryanka

Hi Ezhiki. Can you create a dab page for this? I created an article on the town in Sakha but there are others with the same name.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Done.

On an unrelated note, may I ask when you are planning to finish your work on the districts of Russia? Some of those are a horrendous mess, and need fixing ASAP. Why didn't you ask me to create proper templates for them at least? You know I would have been happy to oblige (witness my earlier collaboration with Starzynka). Right now we have several hundred useless stubs which add nothing of value to what is said on the corresponding "administrative divisions of..." pages, and what little they do add is either incorrect or improperly attributed. This was very disappointing, what you did... Did they replace you with the evil Blofeld from several years ago or something? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 17:18 (UTC)

That's not very nice, seems as I spent several hours creating them, and that they are set up with the population, area and others ready to be expanded. I gather you haven't clicked edit on the pages and seen what is hidden? I tried to create them to they are in a position in which they are can be easily expanded. Of course nothing is perfect for you and you pick out the negative things, like in some districts it may be an urban type settlement others a rural being the seat but is minimal I think. The 1989, 2002 and 2009/2010 templates are there to simply be added to. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Not very nice? Are you pulling my leg or something? Let me say this once again—we have several hundred stubs which are either incorrect or improperly attributed. Every single one of them needs to be corrected. Every. Single. One. (well, OK, maybe 90%, but still). And until someone actually corrects them, they'll just sit there spreading misinformation. Spending several hours on something like that is nothing to be proud of!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 17:29 (UTC)

You know you come across as a major control freak. Unless anything is done your way you scoff at it. And don't give me the usual rant about being a "one man band" and how thou art not create an article on a Russian subject because Master Ezhiki can't take the "hrrendous workload". We should have had articles on the districts at least five years ago. As they stand they are in a position to be expanded. Of course it would help if I spoke Russian fluently and could fully expand them all. Anyway I recall asking you to help me create the remaining districts a while back and you weren't interested. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:34, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

So where are these errors enmasse then Ezhiki? Or are they simply minor issues which can be corrected when population and data is added? What is so hugely wrong about this. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Blof, this isn't about stuff being done "my way". While it is true that I have very high standards which are not always easy to meet, and that I prefer to take time to do something right once instead of going about it in iterations, in this case that's not about it all. Nor is this about the "workload" which I allegedly can't take. This is about the fact that you have created hundreds of articles which are factually wrong and incorrectly attributed, and instead of admitting it you are trying to counter-blame me. If someone pointed out to me that hundreds of articles I recently created have glaring mistakes, I'd be on top of it fixing things the next minute! You, instead, are trying to accuse me of being a "control freak". Take a responsibility for your mess for a change, will ya? Making two factual mistakes in a sentence that states three things and is attributed to an unrelated source is hardly a valuable contribution. As for me not being interested, that's not true at all. I may not have time to do them all myself, but I would have happily created templates like this one for you to work with, if you only had asked...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 17:47 (UTC)

Please tell me how this is much different. I don't seme to recall you leaving a message on my talk page of these huge errors apparent across 90% of the articles. So why didn't you tell me then. Why it is only now you bring it up if its that huge a problem? Because you were so pissed off you'd have blown your lid and said something you regretted or because maybe its not as huge an issue as you imply? As far as I can see all the articles need is to go through them and for data and links to be added and the occasional changing of urban type settlement to rural type settlement. You assume I would not be willing to go through them, have you actually asked for crying out loud? I could quite easily go through the oblasts already created and add in ready made templates if that's what you want but as I said I fail to see the difference between your ready made templates and my parameters which I've hidden.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing terribly wrong about Glushkovsky District, but that's one of those where skipping the references altogether was actually a wiser solution than adding a reference which does not apply. Minor problems (which are, however, not so minor once you multiply them by several hundred) include the implication that the administrative center is an urban-type settlement (which for this particular district it is, but for about half of other districts is not), using the accent mark in the interwiki template, and encouraging entering the 2009 population estimate instead of the more recent data. On top of that, the visible text adds nothing to what the administrative divisions of Kursk Oblast already says, and the parts which are commented out could have included many more useful things on which it would have been easier to expand later (and that's the difference between your template and mine).

An example of more serious problems would be something like Garinsky District, which incorrectly states that it is both an administrative and municipal district and attributes that misinformation to a source that does not even deal with the municipal aspect. I'd say 50% error rate in an article composed of a single sentence is a problem, no?

As for me not pointing this out to you sooner, until today I was under the assumption that you were not yet done with those articles. See, I have hard time imagining how an editor worth his salt would consider this kind of sloppy job "done". I know that your approach to creating articles is different from mine, so I assumed that you'll continue later, and the mess is only temporary. Well, I guess not, eh? Why, indeed—it's so much easier to blame me for not jumping right on it to fix it for you! It's sad that you aren't even willing to take responsibility for this. I will, of course, fix it all in due course, but I'm not going to alter my editing schedule just because someone though that creating hundreds of stubs on a topic they don't know much about is a great idea and an improvement.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 18:14 (UTC)

What? I've begun going through the districts adding the link, maps and some things. I most certainly have not "finished". You say "It's sad that you aren't even willing to take responsibility for this." If you had noted I had not finished, then how can you spout such utter crap?? Yes I will need your help with population being added but I am well aware it is you who apparently wears the trousers in any situation. I wouldn't dream of even attempting to order you to do something, you've made it 200% clear everything has to be done your way and according to you. Besides should you consider attempting to add population and data for a raion I would be more than happy to do further preliminary work for you and quickly update the hidden parameters so they can easily be added to. If you could highlight those raions which have the inappropriate reference I can ask to see if an AWBer can remove the reference and "municipal" at least until I or you get around to expanding them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:22, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, great, I'm glad we've at least cleared the pants business up.</sarcasm> Sarcasm aside, it's not so much about things being done my way; it's about things being done right. You see the difference, do you not? Things can be done right in many different ways, and I don't think I ever bitched about someone doing things right, but differently from the way I would have done it myself. And certainly there is a difference between someone creating a template which does the job but which I think could have been improved in many ways from the start, and someone creating a template which is just plain wrong and misleading!

Anyway, if you are not done yet, then why didn't you just say so straight up instead of sending the abundance of compliments my way in your third comment of this thread?

Back to business. On identifying the districts which need to be corrected, you realize that it will take me hours to go through all of them and create a list of those which need to be corrected? In other words, about the same amount of time it would have taken me to go through them and just correct them myself... Arghhh!

Still, a good place to start clean up would be Sverdlovsk Oblast. It has thirty administrative districts, but only five of them are also municipal districts. Another bulk change could be the removal of OKATO reference from the sentences which mention the municipal aspect. That reference can be moved to the "administrative" part, but it would be best to remove it completely, because for most federal subjects sources of better quality than OKATO exist.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 18:41 (UTC)

I began adding to the first two raions I created the other day and intend to proceed through them all adding the maps/flags and a bit of data. I was well aware of the urban type settlements vs selo and had spotted the accent which yes irritated me when I noticed that. I figured that when it comes to be edited it wouldn't take much to add selo instead. As far as I saw there were many urban type settlements so it seemed plausible to create them like that. Yes I did look through many and saw the administrative and municipal and started assuming they were all like that, You'll notice though that many were not created with a source or the "municipal" part. I was aware of all of the issues you identified before creation and I figured that changing urban-type to selo and 2009 to 2010 or 2011 might not be that much of a pain. I did forget though to add the Panoh part in the infobox.. OK its far from ideal but the way I saw it is that some framework is there now to add the basic data and maps and it gives me something to work towards. Tell me which districts are also municipal and I'll fix em. The reference BTW is intended to be for the number of districts. If saying one of the 28 districts ref for example is wrong then why does the raion and district list ref the figure in the box? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see; thanks for the explanation.

In Sverdlovsk Oblast, the districts which are both administrative and municipal are Baykalovsky, Kamyshlovsky, Nizhneserginsky, Slobodo-Turinsky, and Taborinsky. Thanks for taking care of that.

The number of administrative and municipal districts differs in some other federal subjects as well. The ref in the "administrative divisions of..." articles only references the number of administrative districts, and only per OKATO (which is not always current). Since the lists are titled "administrative divisions...", the municipal aspect is not covered at all, hence the ref is correct. Once the municipal aspect is described, those lists would look completely differently and are referenced differently, too.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 18:56 (UTC)

Something aint right with Alapayevsky District. The Russian name and link seems wrong. lso Russian for Artinsky District seems to be okrug.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:41, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you trying to synchronize these articles with the Russian Wikipedia? If so, that's the problem. They are going about these articles differently. We consistently treat the articles about the administrative divisions as primary (because the municipal divisions are often formed on the basis of the administrative divisions), while they usually treat the municipal divisions as primary, but they don't always do it consistently, so some of those articles in ru-wiki are a complete mess. Normally, such synchronization works anyway because a great number of administrative and municipal districts match 1:1, but this is obviously not going to be the case for Sverdlovsk Oblast (to which Artinsky District, an administrative division, is a good illustration—municipally it is incorporated as Artinsky Urban Okrug, and ru-wiki does not have an article about the district).

With Alapayevsky District, the Russian article you linked to is about the flag of Alapayevskoye Urban Okrug (which the territory of Alapayevsky Administrative District is municipally incorporated as), but the article itself is also incorrectly titled "flag of Alapayevsky District" (which assumes that something called "Alapayevsky Municipal District" actually exists—it doesn't). The bottom line: there is no corresponding article in ru-wiki to use for interwiki purposes in this case.

Another thing I would like to ask you is to please not copy the number of lower-level divisions from the "administrative divisions of..." articles. Those articles are based solely on OKATO, which is often outdated. There is little sense in proliferating that information into the actual articles, although, technically, doing so is not wrong (the information is attributed and can be verified). Each federal subject has laws on the administrative-territorial division, which are more up-to-date and accurate.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 19:57 (UTC)

Well I've fixed what you wanted. The ru versions as you say don't seme to match so I won't persist with adding the Russian and inter links. I will gradually go through the other raions I started.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 20:11 (UTC)

On the weekend will go through Amur, Astrakhan and Belgorod. What is the municipal score with those Ezhiki? Can you also add a image skyline option to the district parameters?♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

In Amur and Astrakhan Oblasts, the counts match (twenty administrative districts incorporated as twenty municipal districts in Amur Oblast and eleven administrative districts incorporated as eleven municipal districts in Astrakhan Oblast). In Belgorod Oblast, there are twenty-one administrative and nineteen municipal districts (Gubkinsky District is municipally incorporated as Gubkinsky Urban Okrug, and Starooskolsky District is municipally incorporated as Starooskolsky Urban Okrug; the rest match 1:1).

As for the parameter, it probably shouldn't be called "skyline"—I take it it's going to contain a typical view of the district, whatever that might be? I'll do it tomorrow, as I'm about to take off for today, but do you think it's really necessary? Districts are pretty large and seldom can be summarized by just one picture.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 18, 2011; 21:01 (UTC)

Montage images are usually appropriate for districts and provinces I find. Tomorrow I'll add the maps and flags to the Moscow articles and add infoboxes, maps and flags to those which are without them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, good point about the montages, although I can hardly think of an appropriate montage for the majority of the Russian districts. Most of them are basically a large decrepit village (or an urban-type settlement, or a town) surrounded by smaller decrepit villages with empty spaces in between :) Still, it's a possibility. I've added the image_view and image_caption parameters to the infobox.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 13:38 (UTC)

Onega, Russia

In the infobox, the municipal distict appears as unreferenced, though you have put in the reference there. I assume this is a general problem with the template (I tried Velsk, and it leads to the same problem). Could you please have a look at the template and possibly fix it. Thanks in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:53, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

The template is actually fine, but I misspelled the parameter name in the infobox (and it looks that you copy-pasted it to Velsk). I've fixed it; sorry for not noticing it right away!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 11:59 (UTC)

Apologies

Apology accepted. I knew why I didn't hear anything from you and figured it was because you could have said something you regretted and even lost your admin tools in the heat of the moment. That's why I let it cool down a little bit before I contacted you. I knew you'd be upset, but I sort of got impatient as I like to start things first and then build it piece by piece. Yes there is a huge amount of work to do but I don't think the task is that huge if we do it gradually. It would have to all be done anyway. The time I spent creating the remainder really is inconsequential, and can easily be overidden with more details and stuff. Yes if you give me a template I can go back over them as long as it is a stage at a time and in manageable chunks, so long as you will in the population data afterwards. Sorry to add to the workload but I consider districts as very important and I really feel we should have had these before many of the articles we have on small urban type settlements and selos.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Admin tools were the last thing on my mind when I saw the stubs... But you know, it's a humbling experience when you wake in the morning, re-read the latest threads on your own talk page, and think to yourself—"what kind of fuckhead would write something like this?"—and then realize that oh wait, that was me :)

Anyhoo, I hope we are good. You can use Alexandrovsky District as a template for the rest of the districts of Stavropol Krai, and I'll try to make one template a day for the rest of the federal subjects as well, starting next week. Does that sound like a plan?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 16:44 (UTC)

Can you do me a favour though, can you use your word program to save me time and bullet/wiki link all of the entries in User:Aymatth2/Articles. Once that is done I will resume with the Russian districts!♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Will do.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 16:44 (UTC)

Hehe, well Ezhiki I am always honest. I only really insult the people I really dislike and you are far from being classed in that category. Yes, if I'm honest I think you like to be in control and on top of any situation and don't like having your sense of order disturbed but I know many people like that and they are highly organized and quite impressive people. We both know what each other are capable of and you know the purpose of the articles is not for them to remain useless as they are currently. There is a plan... I know the stubs seem lousy right now but its more a psychological thing for me to think OK, stage 1 the articles are blue linked. For me it seems like there is less to do when the articles are already blue linked. While this is probably not true for me it gives us something to play with. The thing is Ezhiki I think of wikipedia like a world map conquest and an area missing at least the size of Europe seemed wrong.. . Anyway I will make a start with the aptly named Stavropol. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:52, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I thought you'd appreciate the starting point :))—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 16:56 (UTC)

Yes I do, and it takes a real ballsy guy to admit that, which makes me respect you more Ezhiki.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be some sort of navigation plate linking the Stavropol districts and the main settlements? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I forgot all about that; thanks for reminding. When I was working with Starzynka, he would always re-do the "cities and towns" template into one that lists also the districts.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 17:13 (UTC)

Ah I see, link the districts and major settlements in one template. It wouldn't be correct though to list districts under a template named cities and towns though.. Can we move it to just Stavrpol Krai? I see you have said twenty six, you do know though that is against the MOS guidlines to write numbers in words above 10?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:16, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I've moved the template and added the districts to it—that's how we always did it in the past. Should be good now. As for spelling out the numbers, no, I wasn't aware there's a MOS guideline to that effect (can you point me to it, please?). I occasionally copy-edit handouts in my company, and our style guide says to spell out all numbers below 100, which is how I ended up assuming it's what everyone (including Wikipedia) does. Apparently not. I'll make sure to remember this in the future. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 17:26 (UTC)

Thanks. Read WP:ORDINAL. Have started going through Stavropol now.17:29, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, OK. But ORDINAL says that ...in the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers from zero to nine are spelled out in words; numbers greater than nine are commonly rendered in numerals, or in words if they are expressed in one or two words... (emphasis mine). Seems to me that either approach is fine.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 17:34 (UTC)

Stavropol is ready for your input.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:27, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll make sure to go through them and make cosmetic changes where necessary (and create the missing ref templates). By the way, I've just looked at the History section of Alexandrovsky District, and unlike the Economy section, it didn't translate well at all. Too much specialized terminology google translate knows nothing about. Do you mind skipping those sections for now? Ru-wiki is notorious for not referencing them anyway, and usually they are taken from the official websites, where the quality of such information is abysmal.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 18:34 (UTC)

Remove whatever is incorrect. Would be nice to have a full articles on every district of course. I may see if I can find some sources for some of the others...♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:39, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Of course it'd be nice. Writing history sections like this one is the main reason why I stick around, by the way. Problem is, not only it takes time to produce a more or less acceptable result, it also takes time to figure out what's usable and what's not. Ru-wiki articles are mostly unusable as sources, except when they are well-referenced (which is to say, hardly ever).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 18:50 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For your quick efforts to format User:Aymatth2/Articles. Thankyou!! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but that was nothing. If you ever need a refresher course on how to do this quickly yourself, I'll be happy to oblige.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 16:59 (UTC)

I know about the ^p and control H and such but I tried it and it didn't work for this particular list for some reason! Anyway much appreciated!♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:01, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

More deleted pages

Hello again! There are still few Russian administrative division history pages deleted for some reason: Derbent Governorate, Irkutsk Governorate, Kaluga Governorate, Kostroma Governorate, Mount Shamkhal, Saratov Governorate, Saratov Viceroyalty, Suvorov, Russia, Yaroslavl Governorate. GreyHood ^Talk 18:06, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, you know what the reason is... G5. I'll take a look. Thanks for finding them!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 18:26 (UTC)

Brateyevo District

Доброго времени суток! Не очень понятно, зачем была удалена информация об автобусных маршрутах, связывающих один из районов Москвы (Братеево) с ближайшими статьями метро? В статье ведь говорится: "There are no metro stations in Brateyevo District. The nearest stations are: ..." ("В Братеево нет станций метро. Ближайшие станции: ...") Я добавил информацию, чтобы люди знали, как добраться до метро, если в районе их пока нет. Именно в этом контексте эта информация очень даже уместна. Источник по этой информации есть. Тем более что в аналогичной статье Русской Википедии она спокойно себе поживает.

За остальную помощь при работе со статьёй — большое спасибо! Английский у меня на средненьком уровне, поэтому переодически бывают ошибки.

Можете ответить как на русском, так и на английском. (понимаю я лучше, чем говорю, но лучше на русском!) --Brateevsky ^{(talk to me)} 10:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Добрый день, коллега! Мне, к сожалению, неизвестны правила, которыми руководствуется русская Википедия, но в нашем лесу партия нам спустила предельно ясные указания: Википедия — это не путеводитель :) Это не означает, конечно, что о транспорте писать вообще ничего не надо. Очень даже наооборот — надо, но только энциклопедическую информацию. Список автобусных маршрутов же это типичный материал для путеводителей, тем более что по вашим же словам вы добавили её для туристов, а не пользователей энциклопедии. В принципе, даже и информация про метро, наверное, попадает в разряд путеводительства, но это всё-таки более серая область, да и ссылки на статьи там есть, поэтому эту часть я оставил. Вот такие пироги.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 13:38 (UTC)

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Vologda oblast district templates

Could you now please have a look at Tarnogsky District — do you find it ok to proceed like this with the municipal division (especially ref), or do we need a separate template for each district? I follow your talk page, so that it is perfectly fine to reply here, without notifying me on my talk page. Thanks in advance, there is no hurry, I still need a couple of days to finish the essential articles pertaining to Arkhangelsk Oblast.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems fine, although I haven't looked too closely. I'll make sure to check those after I'm done with Stavropol Krai and will definitely let you know if I see anything amiss. Thanks much for your work; you have no idea how appreciated it is! :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 15:08 (UTC)

I'm planning to turn the Tarnogsky District article into a template next week. Also, I wanted to let you know not to worry about creating the administrative/municipal divisions sections. They must be taking you a lot of time to compile (and I wouldn't think you see it as a fun task, unless you share the same perverted idea of "fun" with yours truly :)), and I actually have a database which can produce those sections in just a couple clicks. The database is still missing the data for Arkhangelsk and Sverdlovsk Oblasts (and since you concentrated your effort mostly on the former, I didn't let you know this earlier), but for the rest of the federal subjects these sections can be populated in a matter of days. Also, the database is based on the actual administrative-territorial and municipal laws, not on OKATO. I'm planning to deploy it after creating the necessary disambigs for selsoviets/rural settlements (same way I did with the districts; cf. Leninsky District, Russia), and having all the links point to proper locations will be an important benefit. Sure beats doing it all manually! :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 26, 2011; 15:25 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Indeed, I will be doing Vologda Oblast next, I will then skip the Divisions sections in the district articles. I expect to finish the articles on Arkhangelsk oblast today or tomorrow (still need to finish Arkhangelsk, Arkhangelsk Governorate, Arkhangelsk Oblast, create one article and upload one image), but there is so much work to do on Vologda Oblast that there is no hurry anyway.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:33, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've tweaked Tarnogsky District so it can now be used as a template for the rest of the Vologda Oblast district articles. Please let me know if you have any questions. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 29, 2011; 16:02 (UTC)

Thanks/ Sure, I have questions. 1) Do these Law #371-OZ and Resolution #178 remain the same for all districts? Apparently, in Vologda Oblast they have separate laws for every district. 2) Did you removed the selsoviet list on purpose, in order to add them to all districts with your program? 3) Is the redirect Tarnogsky such a good idea given that the article on Tarnogsky Gorodok will be created within days (may be even tomorrow)?--Ymblanter (talk) 17:55, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

1) Yes, these two are oblast-level and list all the districts. The municipal laws such as #1123-OZ, on the other hand, will be different for each district—feel free to comment those parts out and I will create the necessary templates and uncomment them as I go through them later. 2) Yes. 3) "Tarnogsky" should not redirect to "Tarnogsky Gorodok", nor should we have a disambig at "Tarnogsky" listing "Tarnogsky Gorodok". We do not normally create redirects/disambigs for partial names (I should be able to dig up the appropriate guideline, if you want me to). With the district, since the "district" part is not a part of the name but merely an entity type specifier, the redirect is valid. The only other valid candidates for a possible disambig would be Tarnogsky Selsoviet and Tarnogskoye Rural Settlement, but those are unlikely to be created soon and at any rate they will be redlinked from the district article first. I'll be taking care of such cases once the database is ready to be deployed. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 29, 2011; 18:30 (UTC)

OK, good, thx.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Zabaykalsky Krai

I would rather not leave empty text lying about. Once you've done Stavropol I'll happily continue with Zabaykalsky Krai.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:49, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem, but just so you know, I wasn't planning on polishing more than three a day (because this task kind of cut ahead of pretty much everything else on my to-do list, and it's more labor-intensive than it seems on surface). I'm obviously not going to tell you how to structure your workflow, but if you change your mind, please let me know and I'll gladly continue creating the templates for you (without stopping my trudging forward with Stavropol Krai et al., of course). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 17:55 (UTC)

As long as they won't be left empty for months... I'll do Zabay tomorrow evening most likely. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, at three a day you can calculate exactly how long they'll stay empty and pace yourself accordingly :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 22, 2011; 18:00 (UTC)

Zabaykalsky Krai is done, although I missed those which had articles and data. They need infoboxes still. I will resume with the next when Stavropl is done and you have started on Zabay.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:26, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

'K, thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 24, 2011; 12:03 (UTC)

Antwerp

Our citation policy does not require citations at the end of every sentence, but it does require citations for all information. You will observe that featured articles do not have citations at the end of every sentence, but that all information is sourced; check Ambondro mahabo, a random one, for an example — everything in the body of the article is cited, often with citations at the ends of paragraphs. The lead has no citations, but per WP:LEAD, they're not required for information that's sourced elsewhere: everything, like in my preferred version of the Antwerp article but unlike in your preferred version, is based upon reliable sources. Nyttend (talk) 16:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Our citation policy requires citations for anything that is challenged or is likely to be challenged. Since I am unable to verify the source you used, please consider my citation requests as such challenge and source them accordingly. I obviously cannot attribute the sentences which I perceive as unsourced to the source you used, because I don't have access to it, so that job falls onto you.

Also, you have not addressed your removal of the information I added. Do you have good reasons to believe it is factually wrong? If not, I suggest you leave it there to be referenced later (perhaps not even by me!). Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 23, 2011; 16:08 (UTC)

Arctic policy of Russia

Hello! I noticed that you assessed the article Arctic policy of Russia that I created about a month ago. Would you be able to reassess it? I think that it has since improved beyond start-class. Although I'm still working on it, I think that it's more or less come together.--Slon02 (talk) 03:15, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I've re-assessed it as C. By the way, whenever you are improving an article, you are welcome to tweak its assessment yourself as well. The basic criteria are easy to check, and anyone can change those ratings (the only thing to remember is that WP:RUSSIA does not use A-Class). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 29, 2011; 13:24 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive248#Request to close a guideline proposal

Please see my reply at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive248#Request to close a guideline proposal. I hope that once things are made easier for the admins, someone will close the guideline proposal. Thank you, Cunard (talk) 08:11, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've re-organized the thread to be closed as suggested.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 29, 2011; 13:41 (UTC)

Yelena Viktorovna Panova

Can you check the translation of the theatre roles from Russian wikipedia?♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Seem fine.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 31, 2011; 15:21 (UTC)

Thanks, and the filmography?♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:36, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Filmography should use English titles for those movies which have been released in the English-speaking countries and romanized Russian titles for those which haven't been. Since I have no idea about these particular movies, and since most of those don't have articles, I'm afraid I can't help much. The translations seem more or less accurate, but if you have doubts about specific entries, I can look at those individually.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 31, 2011; 15:44 (UTC)

Women's Work is at Risk for Life-Investigator Hope Postnikov. Is Hope Postnikov part of the name of the film or her character?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Got that fixed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 31, 2011; 16:30 (UTC)

Returned from a Trip with my Husband , I think One, Two.., Do Not I and Mother Rent also look odd?♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:43, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

The husband one is a popular intro line from the Russian jokes; I've fixed it but perhaps there is a better (or more traditional) translation I am not aware of. As for the rest, I've fixed 'em. But, once again, this is just my translation, and the movies might have been released under completely different titles in English (or should simply be transliterated if they had never been released in English). Perhaps it would be best to limit the filmography only to the entries on which we already have articles?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 31, 2011; 18:51 (UTC)

new russian military organization

hi i wanted to start an article about the recently formed Западный военный округ. In some sources they translate it to "Western Operational Strategic Command" and in others "Western Military District". so which is the best name to call the article? best regrads, Superzohar Talk 11:27, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Since the articles on all other similar entities are titled using "military district", "Western Military District" is the best choice for this one, too.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 1, 2011; 11:59 (UTC)

Superzohar, thanks for your initiative in this area: we need the new MDs. While they were initially referred to in the discussion stage as OSCs (OCKs), the presidential decree (which you can find if you look) specifically refers to them as the Western Military District, Central Military District, Southern Military District, and Eastern Military District. Cheers and thanks Buckshot06 (talk) 12:04, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Russian images to Commons

Hi Ezhiki. There are a couple of images on the Russian wikipedia that I would like to add to wp:en articles, but they're on ru:wiki, not Commons. Would it be possible for you to move them? They're at http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Эмблема 22 ТБАД.jpg and http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Здание штаба ТуркВО.jpg . They're at the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division and the Turkestan Military District pages. Cheers and thanks Buckshot06 (talk) 12:04, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I've asked Russavia (talk · contribs) to take a look at your request. He's an admin on the Commons, and since he deals with this kind of tasks all the time, I'm more confident in his ability to take care of this properly. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2011; 14:18 (UTC)

Thanks Ezhiki - just asked you because my Russian is not up to the job of reading all the instructions.. Buckshot06 (talk) 14:32, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

These pics are deletion firewood on commons. Upload to :en directly (perhaps under fair use terms). NVO (talk) 14:44, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, the emblem, perhaps, but what's wrong with the picture of the building?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2011; 14:50 (UTC)

In reality, probably nothing wrong. But certain rather active editors on Wiki Commons operate under the premise that since a photograph of the building is a derivative work of the building itself, and the design of the building is the creative work of the architect... then a photo of the building cannot be "free" either, not until 70 years since the death of the architect(s) or some such. It is more complicated than that of course - much depends on the jurisdiction where the structure is located, and the artistic vs. utilitarian function thereof. You can look up the Freedom of Panorama rules on Commons for your amusement. -- Vmenkov (talk) 18:02, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I remember that nice little page now; thanks for the reminder. In fact, it happens to be one of the reasons why I don't frequent the Commons if I can help it!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2011; 18:05 (UTC)

I have uploaded both images to Commons, and they are available under their original Russian language names. The emblem is clearly PD-RU-exempt. The photo of the building is in my opinion able to be released into PD as the building is clearly utilitarian in nature - it is clearly a Brezhnev era office building, and the design is a dime a dozen; there's nothing artistic in its design that would be copyrightable. Feel free to contact me on my Commons talk page in case of any problems with these images. --Russavia ^{Let's dialogue} 01:21, 3 September 2011 (UTC) P.S. anyone can do the transfer by way of using this tool. Simply substitute the language code for the language code of the WP the image is on, in this instance, the code gets changed to ru. --Russavia ^{Let's dialogue} 01:21, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

russian military districts template

i updated the russian military districts but also ruined it. can u fix it pls? thx Superzohar Talk 19:51, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Template:Military Districts of the Russian Federation

You forgot to close the html comment tag at the end. I've fixed it. The template is not yet complete, right?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2011; 20:07 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Russian#Closing straw poll

Hi Ezhiki. Because you participated at Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Russian#Convenience header (permanent link), you may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Russian#Closing straw poll. Administrator SilkTork (talk · contribs) has reviewed the discussion and has opened a straw poll seeking clarification about several issues before he closes the discussion. Thank you, Cunard (talk) 02:32, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Infobox Russian city

I've just noticed that for some reason there are too much of "[citation needed]" in the infoboxes of some Russian cities, such as Oryol. GreyHood ^Talk 16:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

That's because hardly anything in that infobox is referenced :)

Welcome back, by the way. Did you enjoy your summer?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 7, 2011; 17:12 (UTC)

%), but it is seen that hardly anything is referenced even without those tags :) and they make the infobox too much tag-inflated. I don't insist on changing anything, actually. Just want to say it doesn't look nice and perhaps doesn't help much.

As for the summer, I've finally enjoyed it in full scale :) Not only the sun but the sea as well. The most active phase of my vacation started a bit too quick and unexpectedly, so I hadn't placed the vacation tag on my talk page, sorry. Now I hope I'll be mildly active on-wiki at least until the end of September. GreyHood ^Talk 18:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It's actually designed not to look nice on purpose. The easiest way to make it look nice is by adding the references, which is the whole point (and I've seen people adding references to those infobox just to get rid of the tags, although, regrettably, not as often as I thought they would). See, for example, Novosibirsk, where the infobox contains no "citation needed" tags whatsoever.

As for the summer, I'm glad you enjoyed yours. Mine sucked, but I am really looking forward to my vacation in October. Will hopefully enjoy the sea and the sun, too, unless a hurricane sweeps Mexico away in the meanwhile :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 7, 2011; 18:30 (UTC)

Just so you know: other editors also don't like overtagging the infoboxes.

Hope nothing will happen with Mexico. I had a plan to go to Norway in October, but the summer events there made me change my intention. GreyHood ^Talk 07:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, but I do know :) It is really strange to me, though, that people are so unhappy about (properly used!) citation tags, yet they hardly ever complain about the rest of the article being unsourced. Take Yaroslavl, for example. Most of the sections there have no references whatsoever, yet it's the infobox that takes flak! If one were to scatter a bunch of "citation needed" tags across the rest of the article (which is anyone's full right to do), would it not look "unappealing and unprofessional", too? I just don't see how not marking uncited factoids as such suddenly makes the outcome any more professional. The way I see it, if the article has no sources, either add the sources (or ask someone to add them), remove the unsourced information, or live with the tags. Simply bitching about the tags not looking pretty does not help anything (and as far as I remember, the tag itself was made to look so ugly on purpose; to make people want to get rid of it... by adding sources, of course).

Thanks to Yaroslav for taking care of this, by the way. I was about to start working on this article this morning, and seeing that he has already added the sources was a pleasant surprise.

With Norway, you kind of sound like my in-laws :) Whenever my wife and me go on vacation anywhere, they will always dig up something scary about the destination and try to talk us out of going :) Or do you mean it is now harder for Russians to get into Norway because of those events?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 8, 2011; 14:05 (UTC)

Well, you are right again, of course, but I'd still prefer to have even the unfinished and unreferenced articles looking nice. Afterall, tags are for editors and not for the readers, and as a reader I usually see tags in wiki articles only in relation to some dubious and controversial information (and in this case tags are actually a useful hint to readers).

As for Norway, I was going to go there with my parents, and, no wonder, my mother is rather sensitive about such events. Also, Norwegians reinstated the border control with Shengen zone right around the time we were making a decision in mid summer.

It is a bit problematic these days where to go in Europe and around. In Egypt there is revolution, in Turkey there are multiple tourist poisonings, in PIGS countries there is economic crisis, demonstrations and unrest (as well as in Britain). GreyHood ^Talk 15:16, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, but the tags are for readers, too! What they do is emphasize that a particular piece does not have any sources, is thus unverifiable, and should be taken with a grain of salt. And nowhere it is more important than in the infoboxes. They are, after all, the only thing on a page many readers even look at. And since the infoboxes mostly contain hard facts and numbers—i.e., the pieces that are easiest to abuse and which thus need references and verifiability the most—they would naturally have more tags than the article's text would. At any rate, the infoboxes are supposed to summarize what the article already says, and when this practice is followed, one could simply re-use the refs from the text. Unfortunately, people tend to add huge (and, naturally, unreferenced) infoboxes even to stubs (and, worse yet, to series of stubs), and if a slew of "citation needed" tags helps discourage that even a little, it's only for the better :)

On traveling, I see your point. My wife and me simply decided a while ago to ignore such events altogether; it makes life so much easier and more pleasant. We are not, of course, as stupid as to go on vacation to Egypt in the midst of a revolution, but an unrest in London wouldn't have prevented us from going on vacation to, say, Scotland, had one been already scheduled :) Parents, of course, are always something else. My mother, for example, was a little scared to go to Cyprus because that island is still divided, even though there hasn't been actual serious trouble there for years :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 8, 2011; 15:45 (UTC)

Well, if we would tag all unreferenced information in wiki articles I believe too many of them would become tag-inflated and unreadable. Not every kind of unreferenced information should be taken with a similar grain of salt.

Cyprus, btw, also wasn't a good variant in this summer. The only major power station on the island was heavily damaged during the fire caused by an explosion on a nearby military base, and the whole island suffered shortages of electricity. Being small country is not always convenient. GreyHood ^Talk 17:29, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Don't take me wrong, I'm not proposing to tag all unreferenced information in Wikipedia :) Assuming that most of unreferenced information in Wikipedia had been added in good faith, it is probably mostly correct, and a lot of it can still be verified pretty easily. Infoboxes are different from the rest of the article, though, because the information they contain is so condensed. It's easier to vandalize a single value in an infobox (and to get away with it) than it is to change the meaning of a sentence; it's more sensitive to typos; and it's harder to verify (unless you know where to look). Thus, any unsourced value in the infobox is by definition suspect and dubious, and should be taken with a grain (or even a can) of salt. To illustrate, an editor recently took the values of areas of the districts of Stavropol Krai from the Russian Wikipedia (which is notorious for not referencing much of anything) and used them in en_wiki. I happen to have a source to check those areas, and roughly half (!) of them were wrong—sometimes by a little, sometimes by quite a bit. And this is far from being an exception. Still think they shouldn't have been automatically tagged as unreferenced? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 8, 2011; 17:46 (UTC)

Asbestovsky (rural locality)

Do coordinates and population exist for this?♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:01, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added the coordinates; I don't think I have population figures for this, though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 7, 2011; 20:05 (UTC)

List of cities in russia

A misspelled redirect (created by some физик/технарь ;)). Could you fix it please? GreyHood ^Talk 07:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

But what's there to fix? A redirect from the properly spelled variant already exists. I could delete this one, sure, but that's just a redirect, so its being misspelled is not a big deal.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 12:49 (UTC)

Indeed this is a little matter, but I thought that obviously misspelled redirects are better be deleted. GreyHood ^Talk 15:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Usually they aren't, unless they are completely implausible. The reasoning, if I remember correctly, is that if one person made a typo, another one could do it too. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 15:34 (UTC)

Hm, I'd agree to such reasoning when there is just one or two words, but not when there is entire complex phrase and a misspelled unit is right in the end of it. Also, while there is another redirect, List of cities in Russia, the misspelled variant is always suggested first in search. GreyHood ^Talk 15:42, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, that could be a problem, but I can't replicate it. What are you searching by?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 15:45 (UTC)

Search form in the top right corner of the page. GreyHood ^Talk 16:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Left-side column in my case :) But yeah, that's what I tried. When searching for "list of cities in Russia" (regardless of capitalization), the misspelled redirect is not even on the first page of results. Were you searching for some other term?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 16:32 (UTC)

It's in the drop-down list of variants when you typing in the search form. GreyHood ^Talk 18:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, that's weird. The variants in the drop-down box are supposed to be sorted by the number of incoming links, and the properly spelled variant has many more (so it should show up first). Perhaps that's a technical glitch. I'd say let's wait a few days and check again?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 18:24 (UTC)

Project categories

Hello again! I wonder, is it technically possible to create these two categories for WP:RUSSIA:

• Category:WikiProject Russia articles without Russian interwikies
• Category:Russia articles not assessed by WikiProject Russia. This category would create all articles from subcategories of Category:Russia not assessed by WP:RUSSIA. GreyHood ^Talk 18:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, have you noticed my last reply in the first section of your talk page? GreyHood ^Talk 18:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I honestly don't know, but let me sit on it and think. With interwikies, I'd think that unless there is a toolserver tool that can detect the interwikies (and generate a results set which could then be fed to a bot), it is impossible to do with just the templates, but I'm not 100% positive. With the other cat, I'm pretty sure there is already a tool that allows cross-connecting various cats (and I'll try finding it), but the results probably need to be processed by a bot as well. But like I said, let me mull it over for a bit; perhaps I'm forgetting something.

As for your response at the top, yes, I've seen it, but have not yet had a chance to respond. Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 18:30 (UTC)

Just as an update, I couldn't think of an easy way to populate those two categories. A bot is most likely required to achieve that (and with bots I'm no help at all). I'll be archiving this section soon, but I'll keep thinking about this and will let you know if an idea suddenly hits me.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 6, 2012; 16:09 (UTC)

OK. GreyHood ^Talk 16:13, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing Smolensk audio file

Привет! Я посмотрел Вашу страницу и решил написать по-русски. Спасибо за исправления в англоязычной статье о Смоленске! Я первый раз записал аудиофайл и разместил его в Викимедии Коммонз. Но почему-то у меня не получилось правильно добавить его в статью (о Смоленске). Хотя я делал по образцу статьи о Москве. Если не трудно, подскажите, пожалуйста, как правильно добавлять аудиофайлы в статьи Википедии, если сами аудиофайлы находятся в Викимедии Коммонз. Denghu (talk) 19:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Для добавления аудиофайлов на русском у нас есть два шаблона. Основной — это {{lang-rus}}, но в нём ссылка на аудиофайл не показывается, если нет также IPA-транскрипции. Это вообще баг, который надо починить. Пока же он не починен, можно пользоваться {{audio-ru}}, что я и сделал в статье о Смоленске. Первым параметром в нём идёт название на русском; вторым параметром — название аудиофайла (без "file:"). Если файл есть на Commons, то шаблон его найдёт. Если что-то осталось непонятным, пишите.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 13, 2011; 19:55 (UTC)

Lev Yashin II

Rather silly hoax. GreyHood ^Talk 10:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Deleted. By the way, you could also tag such articles for deletion, so there's a chance someone else gets to them before I wake up :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 15, 2011; 11:46 (UTC)

The author got already two notices for posting hoaxes (and this is all of his contribution), may be he needs to be warned in a more serious way.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Next district

I took a look at the doing the next district and saw fiddly little references in which I'd need to change the name of the district every time so I decided not to.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You could simply comment those refs out as you go and I'll do the necessary tweaks (and uncomment them) as I go through them.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 14:11 (UTC)

Hokay.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:42, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! By the by, do you have a problem with the yellow message bar appearing today? For whatever reason your messages aren't triggering it for me.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 15:01 (UTC)

Not that but a problem with saving, keeps coming up with a bug notice. I will do those districts in about two hours.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'm about halfway through Zabaykalsky Krai, if you are interested. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 15:22 (UTC)

Thanks!

I was just going to ask you to let me know on my talk page when the "genie" is back out of the "bottle" and I'd try helping to finish the cleanup! We hope (talk) 14:52, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

That's the least I could do!

I've restored the ref, so the cat should re-populate soon. Unfortunately, it seems there is a lag today, so it's not as quick as I hoped it would. For now, I'm going through the subcats in Category:Districts of Russia by federal subject and fixing the entries from O to Z. The ref error shows up in the affected articles, even though the cat isn't yet populated. If you want to help again, I sure am not going to refuse :) This is one hell of a boring job! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 14:55 (UTC)

Looks like we're D-O-N-E!! :-)We hope (talk) 16:39, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Yippee!!! :) Thanks again for all your help!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 16:40 (UTC)

Few tweaks needed

• Category:Politics of Russia task force articles and it's subcategories should be deleted.
• It looks like that the articles with task force parameter "law" continue to be featured in the Category:WikiProject Russia articles with no associated task force.
• Could you please return categories, templates and other stuff to the Category:WikiProject Russia articles with no associated task force? I'm going to assess them anyway, and in fact assessing categories and templates is the easiest part of the job. Thanks and cheers! GreyHood ^Talk 16:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've deleted that cat and its subcats—I was originally waiting for them to depopulate, but it was taking forever and I forgot to check back. Thanks for the reminder.

I also added the law param to the taskforce detection portion of the banner's code. It may take a while to take effect—replication is kinda slow today.

As for the cats/templates/etc., I can return them no problem, but I thought you'd want to go through the important stuff first? Besides, frankly, I don't see a point of assigning them to taskforces, although I'm happy to leave the final call up to you since it's you who's going to go through them anyway :)

Also, have you seen Colchicum's question at WT:RUSSIA yet? While I don't agree with his view overall, he does have a point.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 17:14 (UTC)

Well, you see, if we could remove all cats/templates/etc. from the category and return to them later, it would be nice. But most of cats/templates/etc remain in the category anyway, and removing just some 1000-1500 of them doesn't change the picture much. So please return them. And I've responded to Colchicum. I have a habit of assessment of new articles found by the bot for WP:RUSSIA and there are many moths for some reason. Seems it makes sense to assess only those endemic to Russia, not all of them. GreyHood ^Talk 17:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

As you wish. Once again, this may take a while to take effect.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 17:36 (UTC)

Thanks! GreyHood ^Talk 17:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, there is a problem with a small number of general project categories like Category talk:Automatically assessed Russia articles etc. I wonder, if we add "project=yes" parameter to them and prohibit them from the Category:WikiProject Russia articles with no associated task force, will it work? GreyHood ^Talk 17:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added a "notaskforce" parameter ("project" is too ambiguous and confusing). A page which would normally show up in the "no associated taskforce" maintenance cat will be excluded from there if you add "notaskforce=yes".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 18:02 (UTC)

OK, I'll try this! So far, however, some already assessed articles appeared in the category. Strange. GreyHood ^Talk 18:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Could be lag-related, but please give me an example or two in case it's a bug. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 18:06 (UTC)

It was a lag indeed. Now everything is OK. Thanks again! GreyHood ^Talk 18:36, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

No problem.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 18:37 (UTC)

Btw, the Category:Politics of Russia task force articles is still there. GreyHood ^Talk 11:27, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Not any more :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 19, 2011; 13:44 (UTC)

Administrative Division of Perm Krai

Hello. Information about ethnic composition of all districts of Perm Krai (according 2002 Census) is available in Encyclopedia of Perm Krai. So, I'll add this source to articles. Brainwashinguser (talk) 17:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2011; 17:17 (UTC)

deletion of Content

I have ensured that the information provided are correct which have gathered from the trusted source. Neither, violating the rules of Wikipedia . However, some of my contents were deleted? Please help me. wr i went wrong. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vandanir (talk • contribs) 04:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! I reverted your edit because its edit summary provided no explanation why some of the information was removed from the article; plus it was generating a huge red error message because the references weren't entered correctly. As long as those two items are addressed, I have no problem. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 19, 2011; 13:47 (UTC)

Polyus Nedostupnosti

Delete Polyus Nedostupnosti please, the contents have been merged to another article on the same subject. GreyHood ^Talk 14:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

It cannot be deleted per licensing requirements. A redirect should always be created after the merge is complete. I've completed the procedure. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 19, 2011; 13:43 (UTC)

Oh, of course, anyway we need that redirect, silly me.. Thanks! GreyHood ^Talk 19:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

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Amur

Done.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 22, 2011; 13:25 (UTC)

Imeni Babushkina

What would be the proper translation of ru:Село имени Бабушкина? Is it Imeni Babushkina? Thx in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:06, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes. "Selo" is not a part of the name; it is a rural locality designation and should not be a part of the title.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 23, 2011; 15:08 (UTC)

Tintagel image

Hello, In the Russian WP there is this image "File:Tintagel.jpg|Фрагмент стены с окном". It has recently been removed from the English Tintagel Castle article as misleading. It was described as a window in the castle walls but in fact is a doorway in a length of wall built in the mid 19th century. Perhaps it could be revised or removed from the Russian and Ukrainian WPs.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 19:30, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not very involved with the Russian or Ukrainian Wikipedia. You might want to contact one of the English-speaking admins there; ru:User:Obersachse comes to mind.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 23, 2011; 19:47 (UTC)

Russavia

What do you think of this? I've been really disappointed with everything that's been going on in WP recently. Nanobear (talk) 21:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Russavia WhisperToMe (talk) 04:45, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've stuck around this place for oh, over seven years now, and if there is anything I've noticed, it's that there is always something going on to be disappointed about. I hope Russavia will reconsider, but the decision is ultimately his.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 26, 2011; 13:23 (UTC)

Observation Ernst Krenkel

Unusual naming. GreyHood ^Talk 19:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Any particular reason you didn't want to move it to Ernst Krenkel Observatory yourself?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 27, 2011; 19:18 (UTC)

Thanks for the proposal, done. GreyHood ^Talk 20:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Tempac3

Hello. Some asshole is reverting my edits. Even though it is clear I'm Tempac3. 38.121.75.194 (talk) 17:38, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! It's actually pretty common for editors to revert changes made by anonymous IPs to someone's user space. You can easily avoid this by making changes while logged in (and maybe while you are logged in you may even want to acknowledge your IP address, if you don't mind doing so). Another option is to contact User:Drmies and to let him/her know that you are Tempac3 (and perhaps explain why you can't log in at the moment). Seeing how it's only a sandbox, I don't foresee Drmies will have further problems with this. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2011; 17:46 (UTC)

You can start by not calling me an asshole. And no, it is not clear that you are Tempac--why would it be? You can log in, and then you can play in that sandbox to your heart's content. Additionally, you have just connected your IP to a registered Wiki account, which could be a breach of your personal security. Drmies (talk) 18:00, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you folks should both take it easy. Tempac, publicly calling another person an asshole is indeed a no-no, and as you can probably see it's not benefiting you any. After all, Drmies did have a point when he reverted you. However, it is just a sandobox, for crying out loud, and the anon, whether he is Tempac or not, is not doing any damage to it; it's merely a work in progress. I don't see why a bit of good faith cannot be extended to the anon. Even if the anon happens not to be Tempac, it will take real Tempac only a few seconds to revert the sandbox to whatever state he wants to see it in.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2011; 18:07 (UTC)

Look, if some IP was messing up any of my sandboxes I'd be pissed. You'll note that I didn't warn the user for page blanking or vandalism, and in fact explained the situation to them. Drmies (talk) 18:23, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, look at it from the other side. If I, for example, were unable or unwilling to log in under my account (perhaps for security reasons, or while traveling, or for a myriad other reasons) yet wanted to poke around my own sandbox as an IP, being reverted would piss me, too. While I probably wouldn't call the reverter an asshole, refusing to be extended a little bit of good faith would still be maddening. The bottom line is that it is a sandbox that's at stake here; it's not anything critical or even visible to the public at large. Why not cut the IP some slack, take his word, and let him work on whatever it is he wants to work on?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2011; 18:29 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't see that other side. Not logging in and editing your own stuff and then saying it's you is in fact breaching that security--it connects the IP (and thus, possibly, location) to a user name. Some editors have an alternate account for that purpose. I just don't understand why someone would not want to log in, that is, suggest anonymity, but work on their own stuff, that is, suggest identity. But I'll drop this. If the editor refuses to log in and wants to work on their own stuff as an IP, I won't revert, but others might, and the editor/IP will just have to understand why. That it's a sandbox has little to do with it. Drmies (talk) 18:36, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Revealing the IP is not always a big deal. If one is traveling or using a public computer, revealing the IP is not a problem at all, and even with the personal computer or at work some people may be OK with that. From what I see, Tempac knows the implications, and if he is fine with them, then that's that. I'm dropping this too, by the way. The only reason I got involved is because of Tempac's/anon's note, and I don't believe I even talked to Tempac before today. I do, however, believe that a little good faith isn't going to hurt anything in this particular case. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2011; 18:55 (UTC)

Question

Greetings. I apologize for bothering you, but I have very little interaction with other users and sought someone who is linked with WP:Russia. Anyway, I wonder if there is any chance that the article about Mikheil Chiaureli's 1950 Stalinist personality cult film The Fall of Berlin (film) could ever be promoted to GA status? Do you know a user who would be interested in reviewing it? I have simply encountered a number of much less significant pictures which attained GA, and decided to give it a try. Many thanks. Bahavd Gita (talk) 12:16, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! No bother at all. The best place to ask for this would be WikiProject Soviet Union, but, unfortunately, it hasn't been very active lately. There is also WikiProject Georgia—I don't know how active it is, but it's worth a try. And, of course, you could ask at WT:RUSSIA, although the activity level there is not very high either, and I don't think we have users at the moment who are interested in cinematography. Still worth a shot, I'd say. As for me personally, I'm afraid I'm not going to be of much help in this area, as it's not something I know much about. Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 4, 2011; 13:22 (UTC)

Thanks! I thought so. I'll try in WP:Film. Bahavd Gita (talk) 13:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Bald–hairy

Hello! Could you move Bald–hairy to Bald – hairy please? As you see, I've again turned my attention to great and serious tasks ;) not only assessment. GreyHood ^Talk 11:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

So I see :) As for the move, what's wrong with the article remaining where it is? As far as I remember, whether the dash is spaced or not, it's both correct?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 12:05 (UTC)

Russian and Belorussian wikipedias use spacing. As for the English traditions, I'm not sure.. GreyHood ^Talk 12:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

In English, it's the matter of preference, not unlike the choice of the date format or using one or two spaces after the period. The only thing that matters is that one is consistent with his/her choice. I could move the article to the spaced version, because that's how it was before the moves started (wasn't it?), but I just don't see the benefit.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 13:19 (UTC)

Originally it was Bald-hairy which is wrong usage of hyphen. I think that unlike words with hyphen and single entities like North Ossetia–Alania the spacing nicely indicates that the article is about something more complex than a kind of bald-hairy creature :) GreyHood ^Talk 16:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

If you are wondering why I still haven't moved this, it's because I despise this kind of spacing with every fiber of my soul :) On a more serious note, there really is no difference between the two styles whatsoever—it's just a matter of taste/preference (as long as the dash of proper kind is used). Normally, we should never make any edits the sole purpose of which is to switch from one style to another (with the exception of changing a regional variety spelling in articles with strong ties to a region which uses a different spelling). I don't think the moves are any different.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 17:01 (UTC)

I'd still propose to move the article. Using non-spaced dash between non-capitalized words or between a capitalized and non-capitalized word doesn't look nice. I fully support using non-spaced dash between parts of place names or other proper names, of course, but this is not the case. GreyHood ^Talk 17:29, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I recommend that you put it up for an RM then. Since neither of us is a native speaker, we both have a chance of learning something new in the course of that RM. However, I still posit that the choice of style makes no difference in this case. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 17:32 (UTC)

OK. GreyHood ^Talk 17:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Astrakhan

Done.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:45, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 15:00 (UTC)

Omsk State Regional Research Library named after Pushkin

I wonder how to name it shorter and in a more correct way.. GreyHood ^Talk 18:31, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, one option would be "Pushkin Omsk State Regional Research Library", although I'll readily admit it's not much of an improvement (if it's even an improvement). Another would be just "Omsk State Regional Research Library" (unless there is another one in Omsk named exactly the same but not after Pushkin, it should work). Yet another option would be checking whether this library is known as "Pushkin Library" and to use that if it is. Perhaps other options are also available.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 18:35 (UTC)

I suppose Pushkin Omsk State Library or just Omsk State Library will do [20] [21]? GreyHood ^Talk 18:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why not.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 18:42 (UTC)

OK. GreyHood ^Talk 18:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Deletion request

Btw, could you please delete this Template:Did you know nominations/Yongning Temple Stele. The article was already nominated to DYK.. GreyHood ^Talk 20:21, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 6, 2011; 20:24 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! GreyHood ^Talk 20:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Move requests

Please move to Semyon Fedorets. GreyHood ^Talk 17:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 7, 2011; 17:22 (UTC)

Thx! GreyHood ^Talk 17:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Similar request: please move Aleksandr Pavlovich Smorchkov to Aleksandr Smorchkov. GreyHood ^Talk 17:31, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Moved to Alexander Smorchkov. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 7, 2011; 17:37 (UTC)

Thx again. Seems I've finished with the Korean war aces, no more requests should follow today. GreyHood ^Talk 17:38, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Those are rather obvious anyway and easy to move.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 7, 2011; 17:40 (UTC)

Eurasianists

Could you please move Eurasianists to Eurasianism? Looks like an uncontroversial change. GreyHood ^Talk 12:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Yup; done!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 10, 2011; 13:21 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Strange that it wasn't moved by someone long before. GreyHood ^Talk 13:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Settlements of urban type in the Sakha Republic‎

Shouldn't the Category:Settlements of urban type in the Sakha Republic‎ be moved? GreyHood ^Talk 18:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that would be beneficial. The Sakha Republic does not have urban-type settlements; the type was explicitly changed to just "settlements" some years ago. The cat is called "settlements of urban type" to contrast them with the "settlements of rural type" (regular "посёлки") elsewhere. I suppose we could rename the cat to just "Settlements in the Sakha Republic" (because they don't have any "settlements of rural type"), but that would just make it more confusing within the big picture, not to mention that the term "settlement" is ambiguous with a layman term for what we otherwise bill as "inhabited localities". All in all, in the context of Russia, the more specific the designation, the less confusing it is (although it is impossible to do away with all confusion, unfortunately). Does this answer your question?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 10, 2011; 18:18 (UTC)

Yes, I just have supposed there should be some reason why this category is named in a different way. GreyHood ^Talk 18:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	Super Disambiguator's Barnstar
	For all of your hard work setting up pages of place names with the same name! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! Nice change of pace, too—I normally just get beaten on the head for creating those :) I do hope, however, that they help those who are actually using them.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 15:56 (UTC)

Well someday we will have articles on them. How is the directory coming along. Will it be ready before 2020?♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:58, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

What, you are expecting it that soon?! :)))

Kidding aside, it is actually mostly done. There is still tons to do as far as refs go (for now they need to be taken care manually), and there are a couple federal subjects I've given up on and used OKATO (because nothing better seems to be forthcoming), but the data core is in and usable. I'm sorting out the high-level special cases now (such as this), and am hoping to start working on the selsoviets/rural settlements framework next—that'll make it possible to link the selsoviets on pages like this and also easily generate the lists of administrative/municipal divisions in the articles about the districts (similar to this). I don't expect anyone else to be much excited about these developments, but I sure am! :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 16:05 (UTC)

Did you say you have the ability to code and propose something yourself, or would he need a bot operator? Because the bot scene for content is in dire straits these days. I tried to get somebody to create lists of all of the listed buildings in the UK twice, with no success.. At times (like now) having surveyed the Vietnam district stubs and missing communes, the potential scale of wikipedia and sheer amount of work needs gets too much.You probably thought that after I created the remaining districts! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

We'll definitely need a bot operator eventually, but it's a bit too early to worry about that just yet. In order for someone to be able to program a bot, they'll need to know exactly what needs to be done, and I can't provide that information until I do a number of test cases manually and then program a rudimentary semi-automated script to test the flow. The data core may be in, but a bunch of bells and whistles is yet missing, and without those a bot run could easily become a total disaster. Don't worry, though—I'm not about to stop working on this now that the most boring and labor-intensive part is almost taken care of!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 16:23 (UTC)

Can you unlock Mường Luân. Cheers. Check again its blocked from creating an article at that page.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:44, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

But it's not protected? Is the link correct?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 21:45 (UTC)

Check again its blocked from creating an article at that page.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:44, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Nope; I'm not getting any warnings.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 21:49 (UTC)

Just try typing something into the page and saving it then. If it works I'll follow suite. Same with Mường Lói. I believe its blacklisted for some reason. I have an article waiting in my sandbox!♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:53, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to have abandoned you yesterday—I was one foot out the door when I got your unlock request and didn't get a chance to take care of the blacklisting problem. I trust this is now resolved?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 13:25 (UTC)

This OK. Its been addressed at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist although the stubborn response appears to indicate I'm stuck with it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Strizhi

A bit of a ложка дегтя as compared to the discussion above (which is a бочка мёда for me as well :)). Could you please move Strizhi to Strizhi (disambiguation), and Strizhi aerobatic team to Strizhi. The aerobatic team is clearly a primary topic here, it is one of two most renown in Russia and quite unique in the world. GreyHood ^Talk 16:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, at the risk of sounding like a village bumpkin, I never heard of that team before yesterday :) Just to be doubly sure—they are that well-known, right?

Also, you've just moved it to "Strizhi aerobatic team", which is a much better name than what I had come up with, and which seems quite fine on its own. Are you sure that just "Strizhi" is a better choice? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 16:53 (UTC)

It is the top military aerobatic team in Russia. Some say they were first in the world to perform on jet fighters, and along with Russian Knights they are the only team to use real military aircrafts (heavy jets) from an acting Air Force. They are seen on every 9 May parade and on various international airshows, regularly on MAKS Airshow. GreyHood ^Talk 17:04, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I don't doubt they are; I'm just surprised I never heard of them before. It's a little embarrassing, is all—my head is filled with all kinds of trivial crap, but the name of the top military aerobatic team in Russia doesn't ring a bell even faintly :)

Anyway, all I'm really checking is whether you really want me to move it back to "Strizhi", or would leaving it at "Strizhi aerobatic team" (with perhaps redirecting "Strizhi" to it and linking to the dab page via a hatnote) also work? I don't have a preference myself, in case you were wondering. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 17:10 (UTC)

The only thing I'm not sure about, whether it should be Strizhi or Swifts (aerobatic team). But if we don't translate, Strizhi should be used without a disambiguator. GreyHood ^Talk 17:12, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Wanna think about it for a day or two? I'll help move it to wherever necessary; just holler.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 17:15 (UTC)

Don't like to think on minor questions for long.. Google gives much more results for "Swifts aerobatic team", than for "Strizhi aerobatic team", so looks like like it should be translated. But shouldn't then Strizhi become a redirect to Swifts (aerobatic team)? GreyHood ^Talk 17:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

If the article ends up at "Swifts", then the redirect I'm not so sure of. A (n admittedly unscientific) gbooks search returns eight hits for "strizhi village|town|settlement" and five for "strizhi aerobatic". An even less scientific google search for these terms (with "-wikipedia" appended) returns fewer hits for the team. Primary topic requirements, however, say that the topic need to be more common than all other uses combined to be considered primary.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 17:43 (UTC)

Well, I'm pretty sure that a top aerobatic team is much more primary subject than several minor settlements. But, given the recent move, it is a minor question. Btw, recently I've had a problem with another translation: how do you think the phrase Камнем по голове should be correctly translated into English? GreyHood ^Talk 17:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, the urban-type settlement in Kirov Oblast isn't that minor, but you do have a point (and the fact that the article was getting about 1,000 views a month before I moved it certainly supports it). At any rate, I think we've wasted enough time on this. Just let me know where you want the article/disambig/redirect, and I'll do it :) If anyone has a problem with that solution, they are welcome to knock themselves out discussing the alternatives.

As for the translation, I honestly don't know (but it's probably not "stone onto a head"). However, since it is an album title, and since the album has never been released or reviewed in any English-speaking countries, the only acceptable way to title it is by transliterating.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 18:01 (UTC)

OK. With Strizhi let's leave it as it is for now. GreyHood ^Talk 18:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Re:assessments

OMG, the amount of stuff you created for wiki makes me crazy %) Now I'll assess that category as well, sure. By the way, by now we should have all federal subjects, districts, cities, towns, urban-type settlements, villages, military bases, and general articles and lists and set indices of subdivisions assessed. This means that the Category:Human geography of Russia task force articles should contain most things related to the topic we have on-wiki, except some historical divisions and categories related to big cities. From 1 December the PP list should reflect the viewership of the topic as it is. GreyHood ^Talk 21:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I can't stop now, can I? :) Those two cats only contain a small portion of what needs to be done anyway.

I've also figured out that you are concentrating on the human geography taskforce, since every day my watchlist gets inundated with hundreds of your assessments :) But yes, it is good news that we'll have at least one taskforce almost 100% assessed! Thanks much for your hard work—it's much appreciated.

By the way, I, too, have your talk page on my watchlist—feel free not to copy your responses here. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 11, 2011; 21:41 (UTC)

Reverting

STOP reverting my edits to Stavropol sometimes it helps to use a bit of WP:COMMONSENSE , Stavropol was known by the name of Stavtordt in the days of the Russian Empire, Simular to the renaming of Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad or St petersburg to Leningrad and then back again. Also, when you type "Stavtordt" in google or bing maps it always links you to Stavropol which may be a big clue. Also BOTH are in (or were) Ossetia and this guy happened to be born in Stavtordt, which was later renamed stavropol; i believe he stated that fact in one of his interviews with the New Scientist. User:Goldblooded ^{(Return Fire)} 21:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The name Stavtordt is unheard of in Russia, and all Google links to it both in Cyrillic and Latin are about Grigori Tokaty. That's strange. Perhaps that was some other location than Stavropol, but it is very strange that it is so unknown. GreyHood ^Talk 21:59, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

"Stavtordt" looks like an invented word. According to Russian article and references there, Tokaty was born in Ossetia, in the settlement of Novy Urukh (Novourukhskoye), not in Stavtordt or Stavropol. GreyHood ^Talk 22:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Forget about that for a sec, please answer my question on your talk page ; this is an important issue. User:Goldblooded ^{(Return Fire)} 22:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Ez, why did you call my article a hoax? Grigori Tokaty User:Goldblooded ^{(Return Fire)} 22:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Goldblooded! To answer your question, I didn't actually call it a hoax; I said I had reasons to believe it might be a hoax. That's why I requested a second opinion from an uninvolved editor instead of just tagging it with {{db-hoax}} and calling it a day. With the above discussion and a bit of more thorough background research in mind, I am now pretty sure that the person is real, but still think that most of the facts in that article need to be verified. Not something I can help with, unfortunately, but it always bears remembering that exceptional claims require exceptional sources.

As far as "Stavtordt" goes, I'm with Greyhood on this one. If this were really the former name of today's Stavropol, it'd be really easy to verify—it's a big city with well-documented history. As it stands, it can't be verified because it's simply not true. Consider this obituary, for example. Nowhere does is say that "Stavtordt" is the former name of Stavropol. Furthermore, Stavropol is not in Ossetia and never had been a part of it. More importantly, there is no official record of Stavropol having a different name in the 19th century. Just for kicks, I've consulted my library, and searched the three applicable books that I have. The registry of inhabited localities in Stavropol Governorate (published in 1911, using the 1909 data) lists the city as Stavropol. The military and statistical review of Stavropol Governorate, published in 1851 (which is fifty-eight years before Tokaty's reported birthdate), consistently refers to the city as Stavropol and mentions no other names—in fact, it states that the city was established under this very name in 1785 in place of a fortress that existed there since 1777 (something I knew already, but it's always good to have a verification). A somewhat amateurish, but still usable 1888 description of Caucasus Krai (which was the predecessor of Caucasus Oblast, which, in turn, later became Stavropol Governorate) also states no other names of the city. This, coupled with the obituary not linking "Stavtordt" and "Stavropol", is, in my opinion, quite sufficient to revert your addition to the Stavropol article.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 14:06 (UTC)

Grigory Tokaty

Looks like hoax at the first glance, but there is a Russian article: ru:Токати, Григори. Several points of the biography are highly unlikely, though, and they've questioned credibility of the information on Russian wiki too, but it seems that there are enough sources behind it. GreyHood ^Talk 21:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Why are you posting this on his page? Since i created that article wasnt this directed at me ?User:Goldblooded ^{(Return Fire)} 21:59, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

He's responding to the question I asked him. It is common courtesy to first make sure that the article is indeed a hoax before running to the author accusing him of the same.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 14:08 (UTC)

Dmitry Khvostov

Please move Dmitry Khvostov (poet) to Dmitry Khvostov. I suppose classic poets have preference over modern sportsmen. GreyHood ^Talk 16:03, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

That may be so, and the poet is definitely more notable than the basketball player, but both are still pretty obscure. I would recommend creating a dab at "Dmitry Khvostov" and listing both there. Better yet, create a last name article at Khvostov, list all people with this last name there (including these two Dmitrys), and redirect "Dmitry Khvostov" there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 16:08 (UTC)

Well, really, the "khvostovism" was a very notable phenomenon in the Golden Age of Russian Poetry! Alas, what an utter disregard you show to the person who was so eagerly ridiculed by Pushkin himself! :) Seriously, it needs to be moved. If we take the Russian sources into consideration, I'm sure that Khvostov the Poet is by far the primary topic compared to other Khvostovs. GreyHood ^Talk 16:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Unlike with Strizhi above, I know who Khvostov was :) It's just that in my book he falls into the category of notable but obscure people. An average reader isn't going to be shocked to land on a disambig page when searching for "Dmitry Khvostov", and neither article is going to get so many views to justify splitting hairs like that. This is by no means an issue I feel strongly about, but it is one I am reluctant to touch. I am one of those people who prefer to dab everything, unless primary topic can be overwhelmingly substantiated. Feel free to RM it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 16:31 (UTC)

I'm going to nominate the article for DYK and can't wait the result of RM (also the DYK article should be nominated no later than 5 days after creation). Also I'll go on vacation after two days, and don't like to start new discussions I should watch for. So I need to ask you to make the move. Is there any way through the wall of bureaucracy? ;) GreyHood ^Talk 16:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Whistle all you want, the answer is no :)) If I later need to explain the reasons behind the move, I don't want to have this picture as my only support :)

As for the RM, you can nominate the article for DYK and file a move request at the same time. Whether the article is moved before, during, or after the DYK process, I don't see how it is going to create any problems.

And did you say "vacation"?! Didn't you go just recently? You Russians work far too little! :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 17:02 (UTC)

%)%)%) OK. GreyHood ^Talk 17:10, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

A-class

Btw, why do you think WP:RUSSIA does not have A-class or should not have? There was at least one A-class article a month ago and recently I've assessed more. GreyHood ^Talk 19:57, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• There is even a Category:A-Class Russia articles. GreyHood ^Talk 20:02, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

A-Class isn't like the rest of the classes. To qualify, the article is supposed to undergo a review, similar to GAN or FAC, but with the criteria established by the WikiProject members (and the criteria should be high enough as the A-Class falls in between GA and FA). We have nothing of the sort (not many WikiProjects do, as a matter of fact). The category is there for consistency and convenience of automated tools, I think, and at any rate it's handy to have it around in case we ever develop a process to deal with A-Class.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 20:17 (UTC)

Couldn't we simply establish a rule that if some other project assess an article as A-class, than WP:RUSSIA can do the same? GreyHood ^Talk 20:54, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/A-Class criteria reads:

For WikiProjects without a formal A-Class review process, the proposal to promote to A-Class should be made on the article's talk page and supported there by two uninvolved editors, with no significant opposes. The review should also be noted on the discussion page.

This basically means we just could agree to use other WPs A-Class assessments it seems, if at least three users support it for an article. And I can't see why anyone should not support it in general, though of course there could be issues with some particular articles. GreyHood ^Talk 20:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Also all current A-class Russia articles are A-class in WP:MILHIST where they've undergone a review. GreyHood ^Talk 21:01, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

We most certainly could, but the would defeat the whole point of A-Class. It is supposed to be WikiProject-specific, and the A-Class criteria of, say, WPMILHIST aren't necessarily going to be a good fit for WP:RUSSIA. They would be looking at things which are totally unrelated to the goals of our WikiProject.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 12, 2011; 21:03 (UTC)

I still think that we could accept WP:MILHIST ratings as default, unless there is disagreement from some editors regarding some articles, which will leave assessment de jure project-specific. We could also use a simplified procedure described above to have some original WP:RUSSIA A-class articles as good candidates for FA or GA. GreyHood ^Talk 21:25, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

So, what do you think about this proposal, or at least about its first part? Won't you mind if I reset the WP:RUSSIA/WP:MILHIST articles to have the same assessments? Not only it may help to identify better articles, it is really nice to have more of different-colored bright icons in the lists of featured content :) GreyHood ^Talk 16:09, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't really like it, frankly. Try looking at it from another angle. Suppose we do as you suggested. The way I see it, in practice this would generally boil down to you finding an article during one of your assessment rounds and posting a message for me and another more or less active editor to come over and be one of the "three users" needed to form a consensus. We all diligently post a meaningless "support" vote, and you change the assessment letter from whatever it was to A. And what's the great benefit of this? Three people will have wasted a few minutes of their time on a bureaucratic procedure just to change an assessment letter from GA or B to A? I just think it's utterly pointless—just because it can be done does not necessarily mean it's worth doing. If we had an actual review process of our own, that, of course, would have given some meaning to that letter (not to mention the time spent on a review will actually go towards improvement an article rather than jumping through a hoop which we ourselves will have erected). Nanobear a couple months ago actually asked me about what I think about establishing a proper A-Class review process—I said that I generally support it, but don't think our WikiProject can pull enough interested people for the reviews to go anywhere.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2011; 16:29 (UTC)

OK, I drop my proposal for a simplified WP:RUSSIA-specific review, but still I think that we could agree to accept WP:MILHIST ratings by default, though reserving the right to disagree with them in particular cases. This is unlikely to do any harm to the project or to take any time from the editors. GreyHood ^Talk 16:37, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

True, but I think it still makes things more confusing to the users of our assessments. Come to think of it, it's often hard to draw a line between Stub- and Start-Classes; having A-Class in between GA and FA makes it even worse. Regardless of which process for A-Class is used, why do you think having it is better than not having it? All it tells, after all, is that the article is probably better than GA, likely is not up to FA standards, and that some WikiProject looked at it. What's in it for us? If we have no uses for a class, why bother with using it for assessments? That, I guess, is where my mind gets stuck at.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2011; 16:50 (UTC)

While the distinctions may be fine and subtle, nevertheless having A-class class helps to identify better candidates to be promoted to FA sometime. We have already over 170 GA-class articles and will have many more soon, and we have many of B-class articles. Orienteering in such an amount of stuff is not that easy, and having an additional grade makes the picture a bit more distinctive. When the work with assessment is largely over, I might very well to move my attention to promoting some articles to GA and FA, and A-class might be useful. GreyHood ^Talk 17:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

If A-Class is going to be helpful to you in identifying the FA candidates, then, of course, by all means do whatever is necessary, although I don't see 170 GAs to choose from as overwhelming (if you only attempt to improve the subjects you know a lot about, having to choose from ~200 candidates isn't really that hard). I would still recommend that we finish the rest of the assessments first before embarking onto the A-Class wagon :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2011; 17:08 (UTC)

As I've already said soon there will be more of GA-articles ;) (when I return from travel and continue assessment) And since all A-Class are already listed on the military task force page, it is not really a problem to manage the class. If you don't mind, I'll make all WP:MILHIST A-Class articles listed there A-Class articles in WP:RUSSIA as well. Also, it seems we should do that anyway for consistency, since our military task force is at the same time WP:MILHIST taskforce. GreyHood ^Talk 17:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is going to catch you and do this if you proceed that way, but as I said before, I am not a supporter of whistling, if you get my drift :) You're on your own there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2011; 17:22 (UTC)

This is a bit of, hmmm, "слишком образно сказано" for me ;) What d'u mean by whistling? GreyHood ^Talk 17:44, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Same thing you meant just yesterday :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2011; 17:48 (UTC)

Heh, that was about finding easier ways rather than dealing with the entire burden of wikibureacracy ;) But since we've already found rather peculiar and uncommon way to incorporate WP:MILHIST/RUSSIA to WP:RUSSIA, we could legitimately go along the same road a bit further in order to uphold consistency ;) GreyHood ^Talk 17:57, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I was actually wondering when someone's gonna notice our "peculiar and uncommon" solution and use it to beat the snot out of us :) Only shows how little it all matters unless someone decides to blow an elephant out of it :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2011; 18:00 (UTC)

This reminds me of the need to create the article Russia is the motherland of elephants ;) Should return to the task as soon as I can... GreyHood ^Talk 21:01, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Date format

Gee, I didn't know that it was so important for you to have US-centric date format in non-US-related articles. But, by all means, if you think that looks ok, enjoy.

Cheers. HandsomeFella (talk) 19:25, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! It is my responsibility as an administrator to uphold the guidelines the community has approved (in this case, WP:DATERET). Now, I don't occupy all my time here with seeking out the "date format violations", but I do make sure the guidelines are being conformed with once I stumble upon a situation that needs resolving. This isn't personal at all. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 14, 2011; 19:32 (UTC)

Hey. I've started a discussion here. Your input is welcome. HandsomeFella (talk) 20:14, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation, but that guideline does not really interest me that much :) I'm merely upholding what it says—if it is changed to say something different, then that's what I'll be upholding. Best of luck to you, however. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 14, 2011; 20:19 (UTC)

A funny consequence of my huge assessment activity

[22] [23]. If you don't go very soon on your planned vacation in October as well (do I remember right?) I hope you'd support my rather obvious statement on the intersections. Just in case %) (Btw, I believe by now there is many evidence to consider me your sock or vice versa %) ) GreyHood ^Talk 20:03, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh wow, that is unexpected an unexpected consequence if I've ever seen one :) Be careful, or you'll be blocked for a few thousand years as an "obvious" sockpuppet of every vandal and POV-pusher Wikipedia had ever seen :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 14, 2011; 20:06 (UTC)

Nooo, I'm Spartacus ! NVO (talk) 11:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I knew it! You guys are all the same.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 17, 2011; 13:40 (UTC)

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re:Please be more careful...

Hello, Ezhiki. You have new messages at Fastily's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

-FASTILY ^(TALK) 19:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:Alikovsky District

Just note the articles and missing categories from them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:56, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 3, 2011; 19:52 (UTC)

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Have you been to Tula? ;)

Welcome back! I was starting feeling lonely here with several Russia-topics editors banned, blocked or having significantly reduced their activity. GreyHood ^Talk 15:20, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome :) No, I didn't get to go to Tula—it's too far from the area I went to. I did, however, have a chance to enjoy this for three days. Did you know that Mexican authorities ban the consumption of alcohol during the hurricane watch? Arghhh!!! Other than that, it was not bad at all. How did your vacation go? Are you planning another one in a month or two yet? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 1, 2011; 15:48 (UTC)

Oh, that's too bad, I hoped the visit would convince you to do the move ;) My vacation was mostly great, since Paris and Loire Valley are extremely beautiful and hospitable even in the late October (and plenty of rose wine I enjoyed there viewing castles not hurricanes OMG :)). I've got cold on the way back, though, and still is ill. And no, thank you very much, but by now I have had enough vacations %) except for a brief Christmas trip, I suppose ;) but I really have no alternative on that one GreyHood ^Talk 16:08, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes, yours sounds delightful! It's been over six years since I went to Paris myself (and amazingly, one of the ugly pictures from that trip is still a part of the gallery in Antoine Bourdelle!), and I'd go back any time. Paris is wonderful any time of year, and I suppose the rest of France is well worth seeing too :) I hope you get better soon—at least you didn't get sick while still there!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 1, 2011; 16:33 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, and hope you've truly enjoyed your vacation in every sense of the word as well. Nice choice of the future destinations btw, over 50% corresponds to my own plans. GreyHood ^Talk 16:50, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, apart from the hurricane part it was indeed thoroughly enjoyable. As for the future plans, you aren't by chance going to London next spring? It'd be cool to hit one of 'em British pubs together one day and mull a few things over, eh? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 1, 2011; 16:56 (UTC)

I really hope we will end up meeting each other somewhere :), but I doubt I could go as far as London until at least the next autumn. Too much vacations already, you see, and my preferred next destination is Italy. But I'll watch for your future immediate plans and perhaps start announce my own on the user page, so I'm sure we'll have a chance to cross somewhere in Europe sometime. Belarus and Greece are also rather good candidates for that. GreyHood ^Talk 17:37, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Hey, there is no such thing as "too many vacations" :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 1, 2011; 17:49 (UTC)

Bryansk

Howdy, done. Howz that for quickness. Hope u enjoyed your holiday in hedgehogdom.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:49, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, that was quick... Suspicious! :)

The vacation was great, except for this. :)

—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 2, 2011; 16:52 (UTC)

Where'd you go. Hedgehogville, Honduras?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:57, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Nope, Hedgehogville, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 2, 2011; 17:00 (UTC)

Sorry wikipedia is just irking me off at the moment. If it isn't some dumb teacher trying to cause trouble at ANI its some cretin attempting to delete public domain images of Argentine cinema. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:19, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, welcome to the club :) Me, I find that performing some boring repetitive tasks at times like these helps quite a bit (although of course in this particular case my advice is tainted with selfish interests). Anyway, whenever you can do Chelyabinsk is fine by me. It's not like I couldn't use a break myself! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 14, 2011; 21:24 (UTC)

Sure amigo, will definitely try to get both oblasts done tomorrow. Regards.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Didn't mean to pressure you, by the way :) But thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 16, 2011; 20:13 (UTC)

Will start on them tomorrow morning promise.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:57, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

No problem—I've started cleaning up the Sakha Republic anyway, and I will be mostly out tomorrow. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 17, 2011; 22:00 (UTC)

B. I. Pankratov

Could you move the article to Boris Pankratov please. The scientist is the first translator of the The Secret History of the Mongols while the other person is a footballer, and a Belorussian one. I would not object to a dab and using patronymics though. GreyHood ^Talk 20:27, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. A dab is not really needed because the other person's name is spelled differently, although a hatnote could be useful.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 8, 2011; 20:33 (UTC)

Thanks! GreyHood ^Talk 20:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Nikolo-Torzhsky District

Do you happen to have a source on what was the center of Nikolo-Torzhsky District which existed in Leningrad Oblast 1927 through 1931? Most obviously, it must have been Nikolsky Torzhok, but I can not find any sources substantiating this. If you have the source, the most obvious place to add it would be Kirillovsky District. It is not a big deal, but at some point I will need to write smth on the history of administrative division of Vologda and Leningrad Oblasts, and having a district without a center will not look so nice. Txs in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, it's as if they were trying to hide what the administrative center was! :) I've checked what I have on hand, and apart from what's already in the article found nothing useful. I'll check the rest of my library at home tonight as well. One thing that's funny is how the name of the district itself is different in different sources—I must have found at least three different variants!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 9, 2011; 19:24 (UTC)

[24]--Ymblanter (talk) 15:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Great! That's one book I didn't have. I definitely need to get a paper copy for my library now :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 16, 2011; 15:31 (UTC)

Could you give your opinion please

I fear you wouldn't like the topic, as well as the very idea of being an experimental rabbit hedgehog :), but still I think I'd ask you. There is an ill-known article among admins, the Mass killings under Communist regimes. It was set on editing restrictions by Sandstein long ago, so that any substantial edit would be made only after consensus was reached on the talk page. Two months ago User:The Last Angry Man (TLAM) made such a major edit without pre-establishing consensus, but he was not immediately reported. When after some time the involved editors addressed admin Edjohnston to clarify the situation, he didn't took any action and just encouraged further talk. Paul Siebert tried to solve the problem by a long discussion, but didn't manage to change the opinion of his opponents, and since his revert of TLAM's edit was reverted by User:Collect, this AE request followed, which has shown that not only TLAM, but Paul Siebert and Collect violated the procedure of Sandstein, since reverting of edits, even those without consensus, was illegal without consensus ;) The article was full-protected, but the contested edit was not reverted, and Timotheus Canens advised the involved users to act per WP:WRONGVERSION and WP:PREFER, choosing an uninvolved admin to make a PREFER revert.

The contested edit is this one. I've recently discovered all this unpleasant story and joined the discussion, though of course Paul Siebert has long made all necessary explanations. The contested figures are controversial, the very approach of using such round numbers and totals was criticized even by the co-authors of the man who produced those numbers, and these numbers do not actually summarize the article since the complex question of total figures is not discussed in the body. This means fail of WP:NPOV. All the necessary explanations and references are provided in this short one and this long one thread. In the last thread Paul was supported by me, BigK HeX and TFD. In a side discussion, started by Collect, Collect was not supported, and another side discussion went moot. The main discussion on the MKuCR arrived to this curious statistical effect, which I believe is a good illustration of the entire situation with numbers related to Communist demographics on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

I'm not asking you to act on this issue, though you are free to do so as an uninvolved admin. I just ask for your independent opinion: whether the consensus was reached in the recent discussions on the talk page (in combination with the related discussions elsewhere) to revert the contested edit. GreyHood ^Talk 11:53, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking about me :) However, this is precisely the kind of situation I swore to avoid like a bubonic plague a few years ago (not always successfully, mind you, but still). Also, at the moment I don't really have time to invest in extensive background reading, without which any opinion I provide will be hasty and generally useless. Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 15, 2011; 14:11 (UTC)

OK, no problem. I've expected such an answer and quite understand your position, since me too tried to avoid troublesome discussions for a long time. If a similar request would be made at my talk page, I'd not be sure to heed it. GreyHood ^Talk 15:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

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Tsarevna Xenia Borisovna of Russia

Do we have policies which would favor such a junk name over Xenia Godunova? I noticed that the page was moved already four times, and twice by the same user who apparently insists on this name. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

We have WP:NCROY. I was never into this sort of thing, however, so I can't really give a good advice as to how that convention should be best applied in this particular case (but that page does say that article titles are not normally prefixed with "King", "Queen", "Emperor" or equivalent).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 16, 2011; 21:38 (UTC)

Thanks, I will have a look--Ymblanter (talk) 21:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Chelyabinsk Oblast

Done. Will do the next one Monday.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd better get cracking on these babies :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 14:39 (UTC)

WikiProject templates assessment

There is a couple of problems noticed by me and INeverCry, see here User_talk:Greyhood#Question. Template:WikiProject Russian history and Template:WikiProject Russia have categories and the bottom of the page, indicating that these templates are unassessed. But they are assessed at the talk pages. GreyHood ^Talk 00:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both for noticing these. I have fixed Template:WikiProject Russia and redirected the Template:WikiProject Russian history to it (since it is no longer used anywhere). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 14:58 (UTC)

Duplicate article

I came across a duplicate article while I was doing assessments. Admiral Sergey Gorshkov class frigate seems like a well written article, while the duplicate Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov is a stub with nothing that could be merged or added to the larger article. I've never nominated an article for deletion, so I figured I'd ask for your help/advice.--INeverCry 18:16, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I've simply redirected the latter to the former—as far as I can see, there was no new information there to merge. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 15:03 (UTC)

Thanks for this and for the WP:Russia template. I'm working on getting the number of unassessed Russia articles down to 0. I only have 350 to go.--INeverCry 17:43, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

That's great news; thank you for taking care of those! It's been several years since I started to do those assessments myself, and I tell you, if I never have to do another one, it'll be too soon :) Your help is much appreciated! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 17:45 (UTC)

I actually enjoy doing the assessments and other repetitive tasks. I've started up with AWB, so once I get a handle on that I'll see what I can do with it in regard to WP:Russia and Russian articles in general. You should check out another friend of ours who is doing epic work for Russian literature: User:Evermore2.--INeverCry 17:54, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

WP Russia in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Russia for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 23:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Mabeenot! I'll be happy to partake in the interview (WP:RUSSIA sure could use some coverage!), but since this is a holiday week and all here in the US, can you tell me when it is you need the complete answers by? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 15:17 (UTC)

It looks like all need to list our answers preceded by usernames like here. Did you mean that by dividing sections? GreyHood ^Talk 18:51, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

No, I actually meant to say "questions", not "sections"; sorry. If you could tell me which ones you'll definitely be answering, I'll try to concentrate on the remaining ones.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 19:13 (UTC)

Feel free to correct/refute my answers where I could just have said smth plainly wrong--Ymblanter (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to do the same with mine :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 19:18 (UTC)

From the editing history it looks like there are two week intervals between copying interviews to Signpost articles. So we should have some time.

• I see you have already invited Yaroslav Blanter, while you, me, Russavia, Nanobear and WhisperToMe were invited by Mabeenot. I'm going to ask more people from my list, namely GreatOrangePumpkin, Buggie111, INeverCry, Superzohar, Trust Is All You Need, Slon02 perhaps Любослов Езыкин, Федоров, Moryak.
• Could you invite some veteran guard people, like Alex Bakharev, KNewman, Vmenkov, Untifler?
• Do you think it makes sense to call for people who were less active lately? GreyHood ^Talk 19:44, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I was actually going to post a note on WT:RUSSIA instead. If someone's activity is so low that they don't even watch it, I don't think a personal appeal would make much difference. But for those who don't frequent the project often and are instead focusing on just one area, it could make sense.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 19:49 (UTC)

So you post it on WT:RUSSIA, and I ask few people personally, OK? Anyway that seems to be a good time to ask some people to join the project formally. GreyHood ^Talk 20:38, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 20:42 (UTC)

To answer your original question, the WP Russia interview is scheduled to be published on the 19th of December, so you have plenty of time. Feel free to invite other editors. -Mabeenot (talk) 05:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Attack page

Не могли бы вы взглянуть на страницы User:Хорошинда/User talk:Хорошинда с точки зрения {{db-attack}}. Alex Spade (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

It looks that someone else has beaten me to it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 23, 2011; 20:44 (UTC)

Zotino

It was a dab, but I reclassified it as a set index. Needs more work, likely. GreyHood ^Talk 09:34, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I've formatted the content the same way the rest of the set indices are formatted. I removed the population counts because the source is unclear, and I will re-add (more precise) coordinates later (that part I can only do manually). By the way, a page can be either a disambig or a set index, but never both. Thanks for finding this anyway!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 28, 2011; 14:59 (UTC)

Reval Governorate

Looks like the talk page was moved to Talk:Governorate of Estonia, but the article itself was not. GreyHood ^Talk 11:21, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

They had both been moved, but someone later turned the redirect into an article, which was later suggested to be merged. I've restored the redirect. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 28, 2011; 15:02 (UTC)

Cossacks uprisings

Could you move it to Cossack uprisings please? This is more accurate grammatically. GreyHood ^Talk 18:37, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 28, 2011; 15:03 (UTC)

what

i cant understand you message — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trosu (talk • contribs) 03:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

What it means is that edits like this are generally frowned upon :) Please contribute constructively. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 29, 2011; 13:08 (UTC)

Ohhhhh.....memories.....such "fond" memories

This is from Fast Forward, great Aussie TV comedy from early 1990s. Like I noted on FB, one of these babushka's is now living in a multi-million dollar apartment in Moscow and driving a Maybach, whilst the other is living in exile in London after embezzling a billion bucks from the State. Enjoy the trip down memory lane! lol Russavia ^{Let's dialogue} 17:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Over 1500

Here is a little but important milestone: everyone of the Russian task forces now has more than 1500 elements assessed, that is more than the upper limit of a PP list size. But we still have the military PP list at the limit of 500. GreyHood ^Talk 21:26, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Wonderful! I'll have to re-check what the deal is with the milhist limit—I did submit a request to increase it to 1,500, but perhaps it was overlooked. I'll try again.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 30, 2011; 21:30 (UTC)

One more milestone: there are over 40,000 items in the Category:WikiProject Russia articles. GreyHood ^Talk 19:06, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

You sure are quick :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 12, 2011; 14:42 (UTC)

Congratulations

		100000 Edits
		Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that very few editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work!

Buster Seven Talk 15:29, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

:) Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 1, 2011; 15:31 (UTC)

Congrats!!! Hope I'll catch you soon ;) GreyHood ^Talk 00:22, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

You know, after years of editing I'm still searching for an effective countitis cure, and here you all are making it worse :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 12, 2011; 14:43 (UTC)

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Administrative status of Anadyr

The sentence you struck from Anadyr (town) was in the article for a long time, and something like that needs to be there because the name of the district implies otherwise. Does Town status always imply that the unit is not part of a district? This needs clarification in the article and you are better placed than most to do so. Dankarl (talk) 14:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Second that.I do not doubt your authority, you may well be right about it being misleading; but removing information that is relevant and not essentially wrong is always a loss. Kindly improve the text to your best ability and information. Jan olieslagers (talk) 14:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The sentence was completely without a reference and, more importantly, it was factually wrong (was that not obvious from my edit summaries???). Removal of factually incorrect information is actually an improvement. However, since we now have three people confused by this sentence (each in their own way), I've clarified and sourced it, even though I still believe the sentence is redundant. Hope this settles the matter.

To answer Dankarl's question, no, town status does not always imply that a place is not a part of the district. While towns administratively incorporated as towns of district significance are always a part of the corresponding district, those incorporated as cities and towns of federal subject significance (such as Anadyr) are always administratively separate units (the Sakha Republic has some quirks that don't quite fit this statement, but it doesn't matter for the purpose of this conversation). Knowing which place is which, however, requires consulting with the sources and can easily be found in the legislative acts dealing with the administrative-territorial divisions of the federal subject is question.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 13, 2011; 15:00 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Incident closed, for me. Jan olieslagers (talk) 15:10, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome. I just want to add that I'll reference the second part of that sentence tomorrow or so (I'm away from my usual workplace today and don't have a copy of the other source). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 13, 2011; 15:12 (UTC)

Ёжики

Добрый день. Ваш ник как-то связан с Крапивинским персонажем Ёжики? INSAR (talk) 03:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Вы, однако, второй человек, который об этом спрашивает :) Нет, не связан (хотя и книжка, и персонаж мне нравятся).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 14, 2011; 13:02 (UTC)

List of Russian explorers nominated

• Wikipedia:Featured list candidates
• Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Russian explorers/archive1
• List of Russian explorers

Thought I'd let you check this out. Greyhood is the man on this one. I just copy edited it and did the nomination. We'll see how it goes.--INeverCry 06:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Irkutsk

What went wrong with Balagansky District?♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Not exactly sure, but it seems the ref is no longer recognized if its first instance occurs in the infobox. Used to make no difference. Anyway, these refs are going to be different for each district (and most of the templates they rely on do not yet exist), so if you could just comment them out (and replace the "Angarsky" substring with the name of the district being edited), that'll be OK. I'll take care of them during my pass. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 15, 2011; 18:20 (UTC)

Done.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Can you also create the five missing ones in Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug though? They would use the same template; the only difference would be in the lead ("a district of Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug of Irkutsk Oblast" instead of "a district of Irkutsk Oblast).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 15, 2011; 21:28 (UTC)

Done.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again! I'll start working on them next week.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 15, 2011; 21:48 (UTC)

Census again

http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/perepis2010/perepis_itogi1612.htm --Ymblanter (talk) 09:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, right on schedule—I've just finished the pass using the preliminary data :) I'll take care of this next week. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 16, 2011; 14:09 (UTC)

Pestovsky District

I would apreciate if at some point you could have a look, mostly paying attention to laws and resolutions. There is no hurry, I still have about a dozen articles to finish from Vologda Oblast. Thanks in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:59, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Done!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 19, 2011; 17:52 (UTC)

Great, thanks. I only do not understand why you removed the fact that Ustyuzhensky and Chagodoshchensky Districts belong to Vologda Oblast, whereas you left the fact that Sandovsky and Lesnoy Districts belong to Tver Oblast.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:33, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Because a notion that I am editing an article about a district of Vologda Oblast stuck in the back of my silly head, despite the fact that the text I was editing was most definitely about Novgorod Oblast :) Sorry about that, and I've restored the oblast specifiers. At least someone is paying attention around here :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 19, 2011; 19:03 (UTC)

No problem, thanks again--Ymblanter (talk) 19:04, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin

Please move to Dmitry Anuchin. Thx! GreyHood ^Talk 20:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 19, 2011; 15:54 (UTC)

Thx a lot! GreyHood ^Talk 00:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Litke

What do you think about moving Litke to Litke (disambiguation), and then redirecting Litke to Fyodor Litke, which seems to be primary topic by far? GreyHood ^Talk 17:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The usual. As you know, I prefer to err on the side of disambiguation, not on the side of "primary topic". I don't really mind if it's moved, but prefer someone else to do it. Additionally, the dab (regardless of where it ends up) really needs to include all those entries to which currently there is only a search link.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 23, 2011; 17:43 (UTC)

Sosnovy Bor

I didnt manage to figure out more details about the meeting place of Kim jong-Il and President Medvedev: is this place is a military base? or is it a closed town? even russian wikipedia has no article about it! from pictures of the meeting i cant tell if its a military base or settlement, and if it is settlement of which type? thanks for the help Superzohar Talk 19:57, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

It is a closed military garrison. While it is very likely notable on its own, it is not an "inhabited locality", as per the Buryatia's legal definition (it is not, for example, included in the Buryatia's registry of inhabited localities), so the entry does not belong in a set index on inhabited localities. In other words, the garrison's presumed notability isn't going to be the "inherent notability" which regular inhabited localities routinely fall under; it actually needs to be supported with good sources. Also, if an article about it is written, it should be linked from the Sosnovy Bor page via a hatnote or via an entry in the "see also" section, because that page is a set index and not a disambig. While it remains a red link, neither option can be exercised per our style guidelines, which is why I removed your addition altogether. Does this help?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 23, 2011; 20:23 (UTC)

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