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Archived talk: 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Hello! I would much appreciate it if you could make a comment here. It's in regards to the new parameters you recently added to {{Infobox Russian federal city}}. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:08, May 5, 2009 (UTC)

Здравствуйте ещё раз. Я не очень понимаю — Вы куда-то торопитесь или как? К чему все эти откаты-переоткаты? Давайте, может быть, оставим пока как всё есть и тем временем обсудим все проблемы в деталях, как цивилизованные люди? Если Вам трудно вести разговор на английском, я с удовольствием продолжу его на русском. Я не против добавления новых параметров, я против добавления бессмысленных параметров, которые непонятно откуда взялись и непонятно что означают. Тут, например, что такое "mean"? По какой территории оно было рассчитано —сама Москва, территория субъекта Федерации "город Москва", территория агломерации? Население агломерации — почему выбрана цифра с citypopulation.de, а не откуда-то ещё? Вы в курсе, что population.de — это чей-то частный проект и к reliable sources не имеет никакого отношения и соответственно использоваться не должен? Зачем тащить в инфобокс всякий мусор?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:42, May 22, 2009 (UTC)

Здравствуйте! Да нет проблем, можно и подождать. Но я все же не понимаю, почему вы называете эти параметры "бессмысленными"? Я считаю эту информацию важной, наличие котрой необходимо в статье именно в инфобоксе, поскольку обыватель, читающий статью, вряд ли будет выискивать какие-то подробности в тексте). Под агломерацией я понимаю Москву с прилегающими к ней крупными городами. На самом деле, если считать ее население по самым свежим данным, т.е население Москвы + Московской области, получится около 17 млн. Но официальных данные естественно нет, это же Россия)) Поэтому приходится пользоваться действительно непонятными ресурсами вроде citypopulation.de, которые дают информацию 5-летней давности, за неимением лучшего. В любом случае, все данные за 2009 год будут носить характер оригинального исследования, опять же потому что нет официальных данных. Но все же, я думаю что точность здесь не слишком важна, к тому же в информации по другим городам также используются данные citypopulation.de. В статье предлагаю оставить данные агломерации по citypopulation.de, все-таки они фигурируют во многих источниках, в том числе и на википедии, например http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity. Да и вообще, любые данные можно поставить под сомнение. Что касается evelation, 156 м также вполне адекватная и соответствующая действительности высота, опять же ни по одному крупному городу вы не найдете точных данных, поскольку их в принципе невозможно будет вычислить с точностью более 10 м. Так что предлагаю оставить данное значение, или округлить его до 160 м. Texmon (talk) 18:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Любые данные действительно можно поставить под сомнение, это естественно. Именно поэтому Википедия (не знаю как русская, но английская это точно) строго ограничивает, какие источники данных являются приемлемыми, а какие нет (прочитайте WP:RS, там всё подробно объясняется). Тот же citypopulation.de — от того, что какие-то балбесы использовали его в других статьях вовсе не означает, что этот источник вдруг неожиданно стал приемлемым, это просто означает, что никто его не перепроверил, никто не поинтересовался, что же именно он из себя представляет. А представляет он из себя частный проект некоего Томаса Бринхоффа, который надёргал откуда мог самых разнообразных цифр и оформил их в виде сайта. Я вот уже полчаса смотрю на этот сайт и никак не могу выяснить, откуда именно он эти цифры набрал. Я уверен, что для Томаса это увлекательное хобби, и что цифры скорее всего взяты из более-менее надёжных источников, но поскольку под определение "reliable, third-party, published sources" его сайт никак не попадает, то и мы использовать его в качестве источника не должны.

Далее. Найти хороший источник, оценивающий население московской агломерации вовсе не так уж и трудно. Дело в том, что вовсе не так уж трудно найти десятки надёжных источников по этой тематике. Проблема заключается в том, что все эти источники будут давать разные цифры, поскольку методик расчёта (да и вообще определения площади) агломерации существует превеликое множество. Почитайте хотя бы статью ru:Московская агломерация, в ней даётся очень неплохой общий обзор этой проблемы. Вы же вырвали наугад первую попавшуюся цифру и вставили её в инфобокс. Я понимаю, если бы существовали разнообразные методики, и одна из них была бы самой распространённой — мы тогда её в инфобокс бы и вставили. Но это же не так! Нет такой методики! Соответственно, какую-бы цифру Вы не вставили в инфобокс, практическая её ценность будет стремиться к нулю. Представьте себя на месте читателя — в одной строчке написано население Москвы по результатам переписи 2002 г. — тут всё понятно — а в другой — население некоей неопределённой "агломерации" непонятно на какой год и непонятно чем конкретно отличающейся от цифры в первой строчке и непонятно как полученной. Чего мы добились?

Та же самая проблема и с высотой над уровнем моря. Во-первых, нафига оно надо? Есть координаты, кому надо, тот запустит тот же Google Earth и найдёт высоту самостоятельно. Во-вторых, по какой территории эта высота рассчитана? По какой методике? Вы можете доходчиво объяснить, что именно означает цифра "156 м"? Даже если можете, не Ваша это работа — Вам надо указать, откуда эта цифра взялась (где "откуда"="reliable source") и что именно она означает. Если не можете, не указывайте; не надо добавлять свои догадки; это original research, который в en_wiki не приветствуется. Если источников имеется несколько и цифры в них не совпадают, то это опять-таки знак того, что цифра в инфобоксе просто не принадлежит; подробности должны быть в тексте. Если кого-то сильно напрягает прокрутить до секции "Geography" и найти эту информацию, то это не наша проблема. Наша проблема — убедиться, что цифры, которые мы скармливаем читателям, достоверны, проверяемы, несут какой-то смысл, и являются бесспорными. Население Москвы по данным переписи (или по оценкам Росстата) этим запросам соответствует, а население неопределённой "агломерации" без указания года и с непонятной методикой — нет. Убедил?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:36, May 22, 2009 (UTC)

Насчет статьи ru:Московская агломерация вы не поверите - частично она написана мной)). Если сомнения - смотрите в истории Texmon и 84.23.51.132. Кстати сейчас привел в статье данные по населению Москвы за 1 марта 2009 года по данным официального сайта города http://www.mos.ru/wps/portal/WebContent?rubricId=15408. Так что данные переписи 2002 года уже не актуальны. по агломерации - можно привести население агломерации как население Москвы плюс городов, которые обозначены в ==Структура и состав Московской агломерации==. По поводу высоты, в статье я уже обозначил, что это высота ВВЦ, и привел ссылку на сайт Московского метеобюро http://www.hmn.ru:8101/index.php?index=50&value=27612, который официально определяет высоту этой станции как 156 метров над уровнем моря. Можно вычислить среднюю высоту как среднее между московскими метеостациями http://www.hmn.ru:8101/index.php?index=50&value=27612, проблема только в том, что на территории Москвы находится всего 2 из них. Texmon (talk) 19:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: Сделал в статье всё, что успел, больше, к сожалению, сегодня возможности писать и общаться с вами нет, так как отключили инет и еще, увы, сессия, завтра зачёт, к которому нужно готовиться)) Так что, до свидания, спасибо за интересную беседу.Texmon (talk) 19:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Сами написали? Ну и зачем же я Вам тогда должен доказывать очевидное? Вы и сами знаете, что источников существует превеликое множество, и ни один из них не является "самым лучшим"; они просто все используют разные методики... Почему же Вы до сих пор считаете, что определение агломерации из секции "структура и состав..." является самым правильным, для меня до сих пор загадка. Ни у Вас, ни у меня, ни у кого ещё нет права указывать читателю, какое определение является самым правильным/удобным/whatever; это он должен сделать сам, ознакомившись с подробностями. Подробностям же этим в инфобоксе не место, для этого есть статья.

Что касается данных переписи, то они очень даже актуальны, поскольку являются единственными данными, позволяющими сравнивать населения разных городов/субъектов Федерации на один и тот же момент. Оценочные данные (Росстат) этого сделать не позволяют (хотя, если Вы предпочитаете пофигистский подход и качество энциклопедии для Вас пустой звук, то, конечно, можно сказать, что этой разницей можно пренебречь). Ну эту-то проблему решить просто — достаточно привести данные по населению по итогам переписи и отдельно по самой последней доступной оценке.

Наконец, что касается метеостанций, хочу ещё раз отметить, что "среднее между двумя метеостанциями" это самый что ни на есть махровый original research. Если у Вас есть источник, указывающий "mean elevation of Moscow" с описанием методики, как этот mean elevation был получен (пусть даже и усреднением высот станций), то милости прошу его указать. Как только Вы начинаете производить вычисления самостоятельно, Вы скатываетесь на original research, и это не есть правильно. Ну неужели это не понятно?

В любом случае, надеюсь продолжить этот разговор через несколько дней (в понедельник и возможно во вторник меня не будет); в качестве жеста доброй воли оставляю статьи о Москве, Питере, и шаблон в текущем бардаке (втайне надеясь, что кто-нибудь ещё обратит на них внимание). Вскоре напишу новый шаблон (этот я и так планировал переписать, ибо с ним уже и до этой дискуссии имелись проблемы помимо тех, которые Вы добавили), в котором все данные будут требовать источник, по типу {{Infobox Russian federal subject2}}.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:26, May 22, 2009 (UTC)

Только что осознал, насколько я не люблю мусорные данные — вот не удержался и сделал-таки {{Infobox Russian federal city2}} уже сегодня. Добавил его в статью о Петербурге; в Москве пока оставил старый (поскольку обещал). Давайте теперь начнём заново — Вы предложите новые параметры на Template talk:Infobox Russian federal city2, и мы с Вами их по очереди обсудим и по ходу дискуссии будем их добавлять/не добавлять/добавлять после модификации в новый шаблон. Если надо, привлечём третьих лиц для консультации, но ни добавлять параметры в новый шаблон, ни убирать их из старого пока не достигнем какого-либо консенсуса не будем. Как только покончим с обсуждением, добавим новый шаблон в статью о Москве. Пойдёт Вам такой компромисс? А то откатывать туда-сюда вовсе не продуктивно.

Я вернусь во вторник или среду (US Central Time); если у Вас не будет времени, то обсудим позже когда получится.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:29, May 22, 2009 (UTC) Извиняюсь за задержку; никак не могу выделить достаточно времени за один раз, чтобы написать нормальный ответ.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:53, May 28, 2009 (UTC)

Спасибо, посмотрел ваш шаблон, смотрится вполне прилично, но существенных отличий от старого не вижу). Есть правда недоработки стиля (что-то там накосячено с рамками), но, надеюсь, вы все исправите. Также думаю, что герб и флаг должны быть на самом верху, во-первых, так принято в русской википедии, а во-вторых просто лучше смотрится. Теперь по содержанию: с населением конечно получится не очень хорошо. Все-таки зачем приводить 2 раза данные по одному и тому же предмету, когда есть более новые. Тот, кто будет читать статью (а это, поверьте, весьма неосведомленные люди) просто запутаются. А чтобы была возможность сравнить регионы по переписи 2002, можно сделать Rank (2002 Census) или что-то вроде этого. По поводу высоты, можно привести несколько точек, для которых есть источники (с Питером проще - минимальная высота там соответствует уровню моря). Но лучше привести одну, чтобы у обывателя глаза на лоб не полезли от обилия информации)). Для этого и можно привести высоту опорной метеостанции, в любом случае их специально располагали так, чтобы они были представительны для для той местности, где находятся, значит их высота наиболее соответствует высоте окружающей территории, т.е. города. Для Питера кстати дается высота 6 м. Для агломерации можно сделать население региона (т.е Московской и Ленинградской области), написав Region of city или City region, которые будут ссылаться на соответствующую область. Вот цитата из статьи про Московскую агломерацию по этому поводу: "В настоящее время под Московской агломерацией в более широком масштабе подразумевается не только Москва с непосредственно примыкающими к ней населёнными пунктами, или Москва с двумя пригородными поясами, а Москва и вся Московская область (столичный регион)." Texmon (talk) 23:20, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Отвечу позже сегодня или завтра.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:28, May 26, 2009 (UTC)

Я считаю, что такой инфобокс должен включать данные и по городу, и по субъекту федерации (хотя только самые необходимые и однозначные). Потому что иначе будут недоразумения (уже были). Читатель привык видеть в инфобоксах других городов данные для города, а не для "федерального субъекта". Кстати, я давно уже предлагал сделать два поля для площади: площадь субъекта федерации (1439) и площадь "в черте города" (606). А иначе время от времени случается путаница (некоторые начинают недоумевать, как эти города получились такими большими по сравнению с крупнейшими городами мира, и исправляют данные – это уже было, и, кажется, не раз). Кроме того, поскольку плотность населения у нас вычисляется, а не указывается отдельно, тут могут получаться вообще фантастические, ничему не соответствующие и нигде не зафиксированные цифры, вроде населения субъекта в целом, деленного на площадь в черте города. Кажется, как раз прямо сейчас у нас такая ситуация с Петербургом (7,694/km² -- это именно оно). Даже если ошибочное значение плотности населения будет существовать в Википедии недолго, оно по нашей вине вполне может пойти гулять по интернету. Это желательно исправить. Colchicum (talk) 18:59, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Спасибо за напоминание о проблеме с площадью — меня как раз глодало чувство, что я забыл о чём-то важном. Оказалось, вот о чём :) Обязательно добавлю.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:28, May 26, 2009 (UTC)

OK, should be fixed now. If you see anything else I have missed, please let me know.

Additionally, if you have any other input regarding this infobox re-design, it'd be great to hear it out. In particular, do you have an opinion regarding the elevation and agglomeration problems I outlined above (those which Texmon disagrees with?). We could certainly use another opinion... Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:52, May 26, 2009 (UTC)

Если что-то вообще добавлять, я бы добавил часовой пояс. Но вообще чем короче, тем лучше. Events, по-моему, нужно сократить до минимума. Точные сведения по высоте (не по средней, а по диапазону) найти легко, но добавлять не имеет смысла, а параметры аггломерации, как уже было сказано, невозможно измерить единственно верным образом. И вообще, статьи-то не про аггломерации. Честно говоря, мне не очень нравятся коллажи - сжатые картинки получились очень плохого качества. Но если очень нужны коллажи, то ладно, а вот ночные снимки в них - это не совсем удачная мысль, ничего характерного там не видно. Дневные гораздо информативнее. Colchicum (talk) 22:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Спасибо за комментарии. Я тоже думаю, что чем короче, тем лучше. С теми же Events явно получился перебор. Данные по предыдущим названиям города можно сделать отдельным полем (которое места будет занимать существенно меньше), а даты переноса столиц можно найти и в тексте. Сделаю так.

Часовой пояс добавить нетрудно; подумаю, куда его лучше прилепить, когда разберёмся с остальными проблемами.

Насчёт высоты, вернее, насчёт того, что данные по ней найти просто, я не совсем согласен. Если мы указываем две площади (субъекта и собственно города), то при указании диапазона надо также указывать, с какой из этих площадей он соотносится, а то получится как с Владивостоком (в некоторых источниках Орлиное Гнездо до сих пор указывается самой высокой точкой города, хотя город уже давно разросся и включил территорию с сопкой куда повыше). Не знаю наверняка, проблема ли это в случае с Питером, но при наличии двух площадей такой вопрос у вдумчивого читателя наверняка возникнет. Но в целом я согласен с тем, что ценность данных по высоте над уровнем моря в инфобоксе довольно маргинальна. Включать её только потому, что "а у других так" по-моему довольно глупо, а практической ценности я просто не вижу. То же самое и с агломерациями (плюс проблема с источниками).

Насчёт коллажей у меня устойчивого мнения нет. У Москвы, по-моему, коллаж вполне приличный, а если включать только одну фотографию, то это верный шаг к постоянным спорам. Ну не слайд-шоу же туда встраивать :) В документации к шаблону я указал "collage or skyline image"; конкретику оставляю за теми, кто интересуется доработкой собственно статьи, а не дизайном инфобоксов.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:11, May 27, 2009 (UTC)

Are you the main author of the article? As I'm looking the article is fine, but for a current FA I think it needs to incorporate the citing guidelines, using the templates provided for that. I'm thinking of placing it to a FA review, just to improve as it has been 3 years since it was listed. What do you think? I think it is a good article, not a FA. OboeCrack (talk) 16:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, I am not the main author; I just happen to be the person who argued a lot about what the title should have been :) If my memory serves me, most work was done by Zscout370 (talk · contribs). Considering that the article got its FA star in 2006 (which is ancient history in wiki terms), a FA review might not be a bad idea after all—the FA guidelines got much stricter since then. In other words, I have nothing against listing it for a review (if that's what you are asking). If you do list it, you might want to drop a courtesy note at WT:RUSSIA as well—I personally am not all that interested in anthems, but I know some of the folks there would be. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:53, May 26, 2009 (UTC)

Hi there! Im sure your edits to surname pages (like Kotov) are good faith ones. But it's not at all helpful to turn surname pages (which are NOT dab pages!) into disambiguation pages, especially when terms you are adding are really of the secondary importance. With you kind permission, I've reverted your edits to Kotov and created Kotov (disambiguation). Would you please, in the future, in the cases when surname is unambiguiously the primary meaning of the term also do it the `proper' way, by creating separate dab page and not by violating surname page. Thank you. Henry Merrivale (talk) 09:52, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Henry! Thank you for your feedback. In response, however, I would like to point out that it was you who neglected to set up a disambiguation page in the first place, opting instead for inclusion of the non-name entries in the "see also" section. I merely added one entry and re-formatted the page within this already faulty framework. Why you decided to give me crap about that is something that I frankly do not quite understand, but I am sure it was done with best intents :) No offfense is taken on my part (I indeed shouldn't have been this lazy and should have set things up properly).

That said, thank you for the fixes you've made. I am kind of not sure regarding your decision to make the surname page primary and to relegate the disambiguation page to Kotov (disambiguation) (instead of making "Kotov" a dab and moving the surnames to Kotov (surname), to which the said dab would link), but that's not really a big deal either.

Please let me know if you have anything further on this subject. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:48, May 28, 2009 (UTC)

Hi, there is really no reason to be angry, use offensive language and blame other people. Here is the sequence of the events: 1.I've created surname page, because surname is clearly the primary topic here (see WP:DAB for explanations and guidelines); 2.You've edited it into quasi-dab page, w/o actually converting it into dab page. And that is a very confusing thing to do!; 3.I've reverted your edit at the same time politely explaining my reasons here.

So,now to your points: 1. There was no neglect on my part. Creating dab page wasn't my intent. I was creating surname page. Why should I create dab page? 2. Format of surname page was (and is) faultless. Section see also was included because both terms directly relate to the individuals mentioned on the page. Kotov attack and asteroid are both named after chess player. 3. I din't give you crap, it's you who is giving me the lip (Excuse my pun!). Thank you. Henry Merrivale (talk) 21:48, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Henry, I am not sure where exactly in my comment you saw angriness, offensive language, or blame-putting. Perhaps my sarcasm did not translate as smoothly as I intended to your side, for which I apologize. Regarding the matter at hand, I consider the issue closed. I could keep explaining the situation further until cows come home, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that would be interpreted as more anger/blame/offense, and the matter isn't really worth it. For what it is worth, I hold no grudge. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:57, May 29, 2009 (UTC)

give smbd crap? is not exactly a term of endearment, especially when used in non-idiomatic form like you've done. no language lessons intended. Henry Merrivale (talk) 02:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Henry, first, I apologize for missing the above comment of yours, and second, I would like to assure you that while I did not mean what I said as endearement, I most certainly did not mean it as a straight-in-your-face offense either. In circles where I revolve, this phrase is used so routinely often that it is easy to forget that it can be perceived as offensive, especially when one cannot read the facial expression and the intonations of another. If it did offend you, I, once again, apologize. I hope we can close this matter now. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:09, June 8, 2009 (UTC)

Four Listvyankas in one oblast?!? Disambiguation nightmare, isn't it? Anyway, I was just reading Leonov's interview here. He says that his Listvyanka is quite old (Yermak age), located some 300 km NE of Kemerovo. Maybe that should narrow it down... Óðinn (talk) 17:47, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I've just checked Leonov's article on ru_wiki, and they say it's the one in Tisulsky District. I've made the corrections accordingly (a reference still would be nice, of course). I've also converted Listvyanka into a set index, and listed all four places in Kemerovo Oblast. And no, four is not a nightmare—it's when we have two (or more!) villages by the same name in the same oblast/district/selsoviet, that's when we need to get creative to distinguish between them :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:51, May 29, 2009 (UTC)

In case you are not aware, the Wikimedia Foundation has proposed that the copyright licensing terms on the wikis operated by the WMF – including Wikipedia – be changed to include the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license in addition to the current GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) as allowed by version 1.3 of the GFDL. The community has approved this change with 75.8% in favor, and on June 15, 2009, the change will take effect.
You currently have {{NoMultiLicense}} on your user or user talk page, which states that your edits are licensed under the GFDL only. On or before June 15, this template will be changed to reflect Wikipedia's new licensing terms. If you accept the licensing change, you do not need to do anything (and feel free to remove this message); if you do not accept it, we regret that you will no longer be able to contribute to the encyclopedia. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#NoMultiLicense template if you have any comments.

Delivered by The Helpful Bot at 20:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC) for the Village pump. Report errors here. [reply]

Why exactly do you think the article should be deleted? Contrary to what Martintg said, it contains more material than either of the two other articles. It's also not only about Russians. There is still a lot that should be improved, but why delete the article instead of letting it develop? Offliner (talk) 05:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I normally do not like to keep parrotting after someone else, but in this case I really don't have to add much to what Colchicum said—one cannot present both sides of an argument in a POV fork with a POV title. If you want to continue developing the article, there is nothing precluding you from moving it to your user space, balancing it to present both sides of the argument, and then moving it back to main space under a more appropriate title ("Human rights in Estonia" is certainly better than the current one). When I said "delete", what I really meant was "remove from mainspace", because in its current shape and form the article does not belong there. I do not object to the content of the article (it is well-referenced and certainly encyclopedic); I object to the way that content is spun and presented to the general audience. I hope this answers your question.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:35, June 3, 2009 (UTC)

I have an argument with others on disambiguation. I want to add some useful information to ACE, NME and PMF, but other people always delete them. The link is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#need_help_on_ACE_and_NME Could you please have a look? Thanks.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 20:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of all people who could help you picked me? :) The reason I am amused is because you couldn't have possibly picked a person who is less qualified to help you. While I certainly sympathize with your cause, I've long learned that trying to add actually useful information to disambigs is a completely futile effort if there is even a slight chance that it does not meet some silly random WP:MOSDAB provision. Given my history with the MOSDAB crowd, they are going to shoot me on sight regardless of what I propose, even if it makes sense on some level, and in this particular case they'll just quarter me right after my first post. With that in mind, my only advise would be to drop this matter and wait out until the stubborn ilk of the MOSDAB dies out on its own and more reasonable people take over. Best of luck,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:36, June 8, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the GFDL translation of "Korobeiniki"; what a great contribution to the project, under the circumstances!
--Jerzy•t 16:20, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it was a fifteen minute job, so no big deal, but hey, I'm glad that NPR folks liked the translation enough to use it!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:38, June 8, 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to make a wikitable out of this: [1] (if you know of newer numbers, let me know.) We already have a map of the 2006 numbers, but a table would be great because you can sort it and see which regions are the richest and which are the poorest. Do you have a script which could do the conversion or would you have time to write one? I'm trying to write one but it seems to be taking much longer than doing the conversion by hand :P Offliner (talk) 21:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind about the script, I think I got it working after all: [2]. The names need still to be corrected and a rounding error fixed. Do you think we could insert this table in some article? Also, do you think the federal subject infobox could have a GRP pro capita entry? I think it would be very interesting and important info. Offliner (talk) 23:32, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a script for HTML table to wiki conversion, but for a table like this I found it easiest to just copy it to Excel and then run this excellent Excel-to-wiki conversion macro. You'll still need to do some follow-up cleanup, but all in all the script is nothing short of amazing.

The table itself, I think, could go to the economy of Russia article, unless you have a better place in mind. Regarding the infobox, technically, we could add a line with the GRP (the numbers are well-sourced and complete), but I am not sure if it isn't going to be too specialized. Perhaps we should run it by WP:RUSSIA to gather more opinions first? As you might have noticed, I am rather conservative when it comes to adding more parameters to infoboxes :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:52, June 8, 2009 (UTC)

Why? It's in The Constitution of Russia (http://kremlin.ru/eng/articles/ConstEng3.shtml). I think The Constitution is the most important source. nejron (talk) 18:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have replied at WT:WikiProject Russia#Nizhny Novgorod oblast --> Nizhni Novgorod oblast. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:37, June 8, 2009 (UTC)

Dear Ezhiki,

User:Brettastic has added an external link Buy Paulownia Trees to the page Paulownia tomentosa.

Is this opportune? Wikipedia does normally not add commercial hints to its pages. Please advise. --Réginald (To reply) 07:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Réginald! Linking to commercial websites is not exactly prohibited, but should only be done when no free alternative is available. In this case, the site provides fairly good pictures, yet we already have pictures in the article, plus the first link in the list (bioimages.vanderbilt.edu) leads to more pictures hosted on a website of a non-commercial entity. Thus, we have plenty of images to illustrate the subject, so linking to a commercial website is unnecessary. I have removed the link in question, as well as the other link leading to a tree nursery site. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:48, June 10, 2009 (UTC)

I chanced upon the article for one of the districts and it made me sad that it was a boring old stub. In my search to improve the article, I found the "Infobox Russian district" template and thought it might be an improvement to the article -make it look a bit more "official" looking instead of an ugly stub. I could find no info sources, so most of the boxes are empty. I was hoping they could be completed (by myself or others) once more info could be found. Even though putting the infobox on the page doesn't add any new info, I think it is helpful to visually locate the information wanted. For example, a person may want to know the population of each district in the oblast, they can quickly locate that information in the infobox on each page instead of having to read in paragraph inorder to find it. Isn't that the point of the infobox? I'm sorry if I did the articles disservice by not including every element of the template. I had hoped that the template worked like others I've used where if the information was empty, you'd end up with a smaller infobox instead of empty lines. I tried to improve the syntax in Tosnensky District, but I don't think it improved the page at all. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to improve the articles. Kpstewart (talk) 02:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of infoboxes is actually to present an overview of the most important facts in the article, so for articles which are only a few lines long having an infobox is just redundant (even if an appropriate infobox exists). In something like Giaginsky District (which is still rather short), having an infobox makes sense, but for Tosnensky District it is definitely an overkill—one can get the facts from the prose just as quickly as from the infobox.

Anyhoo, the information to populate these boxes does exist, but it is in Russian. If you have no trouble with that, I can point you out to the appropriate sources (some are listed in the above-mentioned article about Giaginsky District), and you'll be able to have all the fun with these district articles you want :) That is, of course, providing that you want to work on these! I aint't gonna blame you if you don't wanna, but in that case it would probably be best to have the boxes removed. In this state they tend to attract more disinformation than genuine useful editing (sadly, I am talking from experience). Let me know what you want to do—like I said, I'd be happy to help you out. I could populate the boxes myself, but there was a reason why I didn't do it in the first place, and that reason is time constraints :( Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:39, June 11, 2009 (UTC)

Sure, give me some sources. My Russian is definitely in need of practice. It will give me something to do on those nights when insomnia hits me. Kpstewart (talk) 03:17, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, on the second thought, never mind that offer. The sources I have are mostly Word files; if they are available online, it's a pain to find the right versions (especially if your Russian is only basic). The documents themselves are also written in that particularly horrible form of Russian legalese which you probably won't find all that fascinating to wade through. Still, if you want, I can send you an example document, and if it doesn't scare you off, I'll gladly send more (just shoot me an email first, because one can't attach files when initiating communications via wikimail).

The source for the districts population figures is available here (in Excel format).

Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:59, June 15, 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be considered, if it were better to have this account outright blocked. By now, no useful contributions, just (on various talk pages) some Trotsky-inspired rant on evil Stalinists having robbed the good Bolsheviks of their communist label and misidentifying themselves as communists and so on. The last edit was clearly vandalistic [3]. --Miacek (t) 12:23, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I can't outright block a user whose interactions I did not get a chance to observe over a reasonable amount of time and whose contributions are not obvious vandalism. Yesterday was the first time I stumbled upon this user's posting (on the LDPR talk page), and while I do see a definite pattern of his/her contributions, the actual number of edits s/he made, in my opinion, is far from the disruption threshold. If anything, the user demonstrates a clear lack of knowledge/understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, which is hardly a blockable offense (not without prior attempts to educate the user in these areas, anyway). However, if, based on your previous interactions with the user, you don't believe a content/policy-wise discussion with this user is going to lead anywhere, please escalate the matter to WP:ANI. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:42, June 17, 2009 (UTC)

I reorganized and expanded the article Political groups during Vladimir Putin's presidency. What is your opinion of those edits? Offliner (talk) 14:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Structure-wise, it's definitely an improvement over the previous version. Content-wise, I am not going to comment as I don't know this subject all that well.

Further improvements could include shortening section titles in the History section, formatting and weeding the references in the History section and below, and replacing or explaining the term "siloviki" in the lead, as most readers would have no idea what the word means (it should at the very least be linked to). Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:36, June 17, 2009 (UTC)

Yes good catch! It must have been an accidental copy/paste from another tag page. I just searched him now on Google and all links pointing to him do not give a date when he died... which means it is all good hehe! Cheers!Calaka (talk) 14:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for double-checking! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:05, June 19, 2009 (UTC)

If you're feeling like a break from your normal round, I could use some help with the translations here. Don't bother if you're busy. Hope you're having a good weekend, Buckshot06(prof) 17:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind helping you out with this, but I should admit that the military terminology is not something I am very comfortable translating (I am capable of translating it, but I can't guarantee the quality of the output). However, I could supply the links to the articles about the populated places, if that helps you any. I wish I could help with the airports as well, but I don't really have anything to look them up properly, so it's going to be hit-or-miss there. Let me know what you want me to do.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:21, June 22, 2009 (UTC)

Please do help me with the translation. After that we can figure out the links. Thanks Buckshot06(prof) 18:51, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey thanks very much for the start. Please don't bother with the aircraft types - I have enough Cyrillic to translate those, and by now I can practically read them anyway. I can (slowly) cope with everything except the Склады, базы хранения и ремонта, авиаремонтные заводы section, so that's where your help would be most appreciated. Thanks again Buckshot06(prof) 10:57, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've translated the portion you requested, but I want to once more re-emphasize that I wasn't very comfortable with the quality of my translation—it felt as if I was guessing, rather than knowledgeably translating, way too often. I hope the translation helps you get the idea of what all those facilities are, so you could then copy-edit it to conform with the established English military terminology. Let me know if there is anything else I can do. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:24, June 24, 2009 (UTC)

Hey. I started Ýolöten a while back and have been expanding it. I wondered if you could find the Russian for it and if possible link to the article on Russian wikipedia or on the Great Soviet Encyclopedia site. Any population figures etc. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Иолотань or Ёлётен Colchicum (talk) 22:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Any idea what Говурдак is. Can't find a settlement named "Govurdak". It must be a major city as it has 64,000. Does it refer to modern Bereket (formally Gazanjyk)? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 23:36, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, sure, of the two requests the fun and easy one has already been taken care of, so I get stuck with the one that's a pain in the ass to find! :)

Anyway, I'll try. In the interest of full disclosure, I don't really have any high-quality sources on Turkmenistan, so the bits that follow are basically the dregs I scrounged around from the sources which are not really citable.

To the point now. Russian Wikipedia does have an article on Говурдак, placing it at 37°48′N 66°03′E / 37.800°N 66.050°E / 37.800; 66.050 in Lebap Province. "Govurdak", or "Govurdag" rather, seems to be the Turkmen dialect name, meaning "sulphuric mountain" ("govur" is "sulphur" and "dag" is "mountain"). Russian occupants, of course, had to butcher the name, so in Soviet times the place was known as Гаурдак (Gaurdak). Incidentally, that's the name under which the article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia is located.

One thing that's missing from the Russian Wikipedia is the fact that the town was renamed in (or around) 2002. Its new name seems to be Магданлы (Magdanly—note, however, that this article points to a different province, but that's your problem :)). It definitely has nothing to do with Bereket, which is a different place entirely.

Other interesting facts about the place I've found are that it was founded in 1947 (looks like it was an urban-type settlement from the very start), and that as of 1949 it was in jurisdiction of Charshanginsky District of Chardzhou Oblast.

Hopefully this should be enough to continue your search! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:05, June 24, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:56, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could you translate from here or use some Russian sources? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 07:29, 26 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I don't get to it today, I'll try finding time next week. Will that work for you?

Also, I forgot to ask—what did you revert yourself on Magdanly for? The province, at least, is definitely wrong (should be Lebap, which is what the navbox at the bottom shows anyway), and the rest I saw no problem with either.

And, oh, welcome back! I'm glad folks were able to knock some sense into you after all :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:58, June 26, 2009 (UTC)

Hokay thanks! I got confused over which was which with Turkmenistan due to the provinces! If you spot an error please change it! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I must say that for me this really isn't an exciting topic to write about, so, since I see that you only wanted me to work on it to address the unreferenced BLP concern, I copyedited the article a bit and provided a link to his bio on the official website of the Ministry. That should be enough as far as formalities go; I'm going to leave shaping the actual article to Mr. Shchyogolev's numerous fan base.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:46, June 29, 2009 (UTC)

If I read the history right, you made the last substantial edits to Template:Height, which may mean you have a chance at understanding the logic in the template.

It produces less than optimal results for 1.52 and 1.82 meters, respectively:

1.52 m (5 ft 0 in)
1.82 m (6 ft 0 in)

I'm not terribly surprised that this error occurred, but I don't see how to fix the template. Any chance you could, or point me to someone who might be able to help?--SPhilbrickT 12:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't quite recall what the problem exactly was, but I do remember it was not easy to fix without some major re-design. To bypass this bug, you can either specify the fractions:

{{height|m=1.52|frac=16}}→1.52 m (4 ft 11+13⁄16 in)

{{height|m=1.82|frac=16}}→1.82 m (5 ft 11+5⁄8 in)

or use {{convert}} or {{m to ft in}} instead of {{height}}. You can also drop a note at template talk:Convert asking to re-examine and possibly re-design the {{height}} template. When I was working on it, {{convert}} did not support conversion to vulgar fractions; I think it does now, so re-writing the template should be a cinch to the conversion templates-writing mavens. If for some reason they can't/don't want to help, please let me know and I'll take another look at this template myself. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:36, June 29, 2009 (UTC)

I've found in the past that it is sometimes helpful to explain what you are really trying to do, rather than narrowly describe the problem, as sometimes the larger issue is easier to resolve than the narrowly stated one.

That almost turned out to be the case here. Let me explain, and if you can help, or point me in the right direction, I'll be grateful.

Issue - rosters of athletes are often displayed in a table, including, player number, name, height and other information. I think it would be valuable to users to make those tables sortable, and I have been working to do that. Heights expressed in English units are problematic. My first solution was to embed a hidden zero next to single digit inches. It works, but it's kludgy, and not easy to write in a macro to fix a large number of such instances.

Then I realize if I converted heights to meters, they would sort correctly. So I wanted the value converted to meters, but displayed as English (optionally in both). The Height template almost works, except it messes up for some values.

You suggested looking at Convert. Almost perfect - it even has a parameter to create a hidden sort value! Exactly what I'm looking for - except… Except that when it takes English units as input, it uses only the first value. Precisely, utterly useless. In fact, I'm struggling to think of an example where you would use that option. If you start with metric as input, the output isn't sortable, but the input already is sortable, so there's no need to use the option. If you use English as input, the output is sortable, but the option uses the unsortable input. If that option could be changes it would be very useful. On the chance that there is some use or the option I haven't understood, obviously the template shouldn't just change to use output, but ass a parameter to allow the user to specify that the sortkey is generated from the output.--SPhilbrickT 14:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wish I could help you with {{convert}}, but I was not involved with its development and have only a very general idea of how it works. I see you have already requested help at that template's talk page; hopefully the folks there will be able to help. If they don't, let me know, and I'll try to do something about {{m to ft in}} (which is the template relied on by {{height}}, which is why they both have the same bug with displaying "12 inches"). Sorry for not being of much help with this!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:19, June 29, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing up the meaning of the в гробу, я всех вижу phrase. There is one other outstanding puzzle in this case, and your thoughts would be appreciated. The story behind the murder of Sergei Yatzenko is in the article, and at 4:03 in the video, it is possible (stressed, as this is not certain) that Yatzenko speaks. There is audio of this section of the video here (no graphic content, audio only). Suggestions for this have been "Oh my God" or "о парни нахуй" ("oh guys, fuck"). Whatever it is, it is muffled and hard to decipher, like much of the audio in the recording.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 20:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the "нахуй" part is pretty clear—I'm pretty sure that's what it is. What precedes it, however, beats me (I listened a dozen or so times). I guess it could be "о парни", but I really doubt that's what it actually is. The word "парень" is kind of on a bookish side, and while it is not uncommon to hear a forty-something year old or an older person call someone in his thirties, twenties, or late teens "парень", among those in their thirties, twenties, or late teens the word is hardly ever used. "Пацан" or "мужик" would be a much more natural choice.

If I had to make a wild guess as to what was said in the clip, I would go with something like "опа(на) нахуй". "Опа" or "опана" is not really a word; it's an interjection which you probably won't find in any dictionary. What it would normally express is surprise that something mildly unexpected has happened. The expletive portion following it would emphasize the surprise.

Of course, this is pure original research. It's kind of hard to understand what is going on in the clip without seeing the action. If you could post the video (say, ten seconds prior to this phrase and maybe five or ten seconds after), perhaps it would be more helpful (and yes, I understand this may turn out to be very graphic). An extended audio version might be useful, too, so let's try that if it's easier for you to cut out.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:55, June 30, 2009 (UTC)

This case is currently at the appeal stage. The defence has insisted that the video evidence is wrong in some way, although it was accepted as genuine at the trial.[4][5] The Yatzenko video was the most controversial piece of evidence.[6] The dialogue in this video is hard to decipher, and consists mostly of swearing and laughing at the victim's suffering. Here are some non-graphic stills from it, showing Igor Suprunyuck: [7][8]. The "Oh!" exclamation at 4:03 may be Yatzenko, but this is hard to tell, even while watching the video.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the audio track of the Yatzenko video as presented in court on October 29 2008.[9] Apart from the swearing, the main things of note in the audio are (possibly) the voice of Yatzenko at 4:03 and a train/factory whistle at 5:12. See also [10]. When Suprunyuck and Sayenko denied that they were in the videos and photographs, "Столь явная ложь вывела из равновесия даже невозмутимого судью Ивана Сенченко. "Вы думаете, вас слепые судят? - не выдержал он."[11]--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:36, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've listened to the portion around 4:03, and am almost completely sure that the phrase in question is "опанах", which is a common colloquial contraction of what I suggested yesterday. You still might want to get a second opinion, though, because, as you pointed out, this wasn't exactly easy to hear. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:16, July 1, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, this was very kind of you. The real mystery (and one that may never be solved) is whether the "опанах" is Yatzenko's voice. It does not seem to be either Suprunyuck or Sayenko, one of whom says the "(muffled) нахуй" phrase immediately afterwards. At 3:52, Yatzenko moves his right arm, prompting the attackers to express surprise that he is still alive.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, considering the meaning of the phrase and the intonation with which it was said, I would highly doubt that was Yatsenko...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:46, July 1, 2009 (UTC)

Hey Ezhiki, any chance you can restore Category:Companies listed on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange to the state it was in before it was, unexplainedly, deleted last year. Cheers, --Russavia ^Dialogue 04:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:18, July 5, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you kind sir. --Russavia ^Dialogue 04:04, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Является переводом шаблона ru:Реки и каналы Санкт-Петербурга. Если найдёшь время, посмотри названия статей в соответствии с правилами. Спасибо.--Andrey! 08:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Вдогонку ещё и {{Placename toponym Ligovo}}, если можно.--Andrey! 08:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.P.S. Не срочно.--Andrey! 08:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Как только расплююсь со своим списком наблюдения (запустил за время праздников), так сразу же пройдусь по этим шаблонам. В шаблоне с реками и каналами, кстати, крестики что обозначают?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:15, July 6, 2009 (UTC)

Что касается транслитерации, то я по обоим шаблонам прошёлся. Также поправил кое-где ссылки, где надо было заменить строчные буквы на заглавные (river→River; pond→Pond, и т.п.), но поскольку в этой области я со всеми правилами не знаком, то заменил только те, в которых был уверен.

Также один вопрос — во втором шаблоне присутствуют две станции метро: Ligovo subway station и Ligovsky Prospekt (Saint Petersburg Metro). Вторую я знаю, а вот что имелось в виду под первой, не очень уверен. В статьях о питерском метро такая станция не упоминается. Можно прояснить? Спасибо!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:02, July 6, 2009 (UTC)

Please do not remove speedy deletion tags from articles you created, as you did with Avtozavodsky City District. If you do not believe the article deserves to be deleted, then please do the following:

1. Place {{hangon}} on the page. Please do not remove any existing speedy deletion tag(s).
2. Make your case on the article's talk page.

Administrators will look at your reasoning before deciding what to do with the article. Thank you. - SDPatrolBot (talk) 16:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the page did not meet CSD G8 under which it had been nominated.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:36, July 6, 2009 (UTC)

Hi there; if you feel that the page should be retained, then fine, leave it in. I point out that it consists solely of a disambig page leading to two redlinks. Do you expect these articles to be created? Because otherwise it is difficult to justify the retention of the article. --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 21:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Anthony! The tag has actually been already removed by someone else. In response to your question, though: I would never create a page like that if I do not intend to make the links blue later on. Problem is, considering the scope of the project I am working on, "later on" often translates into "much, much later on", but that still doesn't mean that the red (and, I should point out, WP:DABRL-compliant) links have no use to either readers or editors. Anyway, I appreciate you taking a minute to answer this. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:02, July 7, 2009 (UTC)

Fair comment; and compiance was never an issue. Happy wikying. --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 14:04, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have nominated Avtozavodsky City District, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avtozavodsky City District. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Guy0307 (talk) 19:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, your lucky page ;) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know! I swear, if it's voted down to be deleted by folks who don't know the difference between a set and a dab, I'll write both bloody articles right there! Then let them sit there for several years until I can get to them properly. Thanks for your support, by the way.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:00, July 8, 2009 (UTC)

He he. No problem about the !vote. Anyway, seems like the decision's going to be keep here... - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you know we have a few new maps. Could you ensure the places within these oblasts display the new regional maps:

• Template:Location map Russia Penza Oblast ‎
• Template:Location map Russia Oryol Oblast
• Template:Location map Russia Novosibirsk Oblast ‎
• Template:Location map Russia Kurgan Oblast
• Template:Location map Russia Kemerovo Oblast

Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 11:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, these are the ones I myself asked User:Obersachse to transfer to en a couple days ago. I have already integrated them with the city infobox and they show up nicely—see, for example, Novosibirsk. At any rate, thanks for the note; much appreciated!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 11:55, July 10, 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. I've set the photograph about 50px bigger in the template though so it is exactly in alignment with the regional maps. The national locator is OK smaller in the midle but it gives a better balance that way me thinks. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really like the white margins this produced, but I don't care all that much about them either. The infobox is due to re-design anyway :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:03, July 10, 2009 (UTC)

A re-design you say. ANy ideas? Maybe we could remove the block titled green sections and move it to the side as standard and remove the colour or something. I think it could look more condensed using the space that it does already perhaps Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've been thinking about the re-design for about a year now. The way I work, it could be another year or so until the re-designed template actually materializes :)

Making the new template more condensed is definitely one of the ideas (I'm thinking of cutting the whole Events section out and replacing it with a two-liner for previous names—that's the information the section mostly contains anyway—and the rest is too much detail and belongs in the article). Moving stuff to the side, not so much. The template needs to be consistent with the rest of the Russia-related templates, so the color/tiles aren't going away. Besides, with the Events section gone, the length of the template isn't going to be much different from a similar template not using tiles/color. All in all, however, if you have any additional ideas, I'm listening.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:29, July 10, 2009 (UTC)

That seems a much better way to go about things. I think the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug would benefit from a template like Primorsky Krai, as there are quite a few little settlements that are by definition excluded from a simple towns / cities list, which makes things very difficult for the casual browser. Do I assume correctly that were I to produce a new template box for all Chukotkan settlements split by type that it would replace the current box as opposed to being placed alongside it? I dont want to delete anything in error. Fenix down (talk) 15:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, in the articles it would replace the existing one (which, once the new template is in place, can be turned into a redirect—cf. Template:Cities and towns in Primorsky Krai). If the background story interests you, the existing one is a part of a set of similar templates which were produced for each federal subject quite a while ago. The reasoning for inclusion of only cities/towns was, at the time, that most of the urban-type settlement and district links would be red. A navigational template with a sea of red links, as you understand, hardly assists in navigation :)

While for the most federal subjects this is still true, there are many more articles about the urban-type settlements now than when the templates were created. For Chukotka, however, since it is such a sparsely populated region, this is less of a concern. Eight districts, three towns, and thirteen urban-type settlements are hardly going to be overwhelming.

Anyway, if you need help with developing the template, please let me know; I'll be happy to assist. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:46, July 14, 2009 (UTC)

I have produced a first draft "Settlements of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug" and have added it to all cities, towns, urban-type settlements and rural settlements I could find. I have added in all the urban-type settlements from the administrative divisions of Chukotka article which has produced a few red links (which I'll have to write later!). For the rural settlements, as I could only find a map in the Petit Fute guide which had what could be called a list, I only added in those which already had articles as I felt that too many red links in the box at the start might prove counter-productive.

Your feedback would be most appreciated. Also I have only been able to get the box to show one of the images of the coat of arms and flag of Chukotka on the right hand side. I can get one on each side but it doesnt look right, is there anyway to get to thumbnail images on the right hand side of the same box? Thanks Fenix down (talk) 12:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, for a first draft it looks quite good! I do have a few comments, however.

First off, for consistency sake, I would recommend renaming the template to {{Chukotka Autonomous Okrug}} and to include the CAO's districts. This will be in line with the similar {{Primorsky Krai}} template—hopefully, as articles get written, we'll be able to replace the city/town templates with their full administrative divisions counterparts.

Second, I see you were trying to include the rural localities into the template. I would strongly advise against that. There are 44 rural localities ("rural settlement", by the way, is a term we reserve for a municipal formation type) in CAO as of 2009, and that's actually a pretty low number compared to other federal subjects (only Nenets AO and Ingushetia have fewer rural localities than that). Even so, if you list every single one of them, the template is going to be unnecessarily overloaded even if they are all blue. It's important to remember here that these templates are not intended to hold everything but the kitchen sink; they should only list the most high-profile stuff (urban-type settlement level is a fairly good threshold) and be consistent within themselves (if some items are included but not the others, it should be easy to figure out why exactly those others were excluded).

Finally, with the image, one (a flag or a coat of arms) is enough. It's purely decorative (and probably redundant) anyway.

Hope this helps!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:08, July 20, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, I'll take it on board. Are you basically saying that I should take out the rural localities and replace that section with the various districts? Is there any way to group rural localities together, even though many of the articles are short, I find them quite intetresting and it seems to me that they are somewhat lost and difficult to get to unless one knows precisely where to look. Fenix down (talk) 10:03, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, pretty much. Rural localities are interesting (I'll be the first person to tell that to anyone who asks :)), but there are just way too many of them for an average federal subject to fit comfortably on a template like this one (even a sparsely populated Murmansk Oblast already has over a hundred of them, and that oblast is in the bottom ten of the list). In the past, the solution was to list them on the pages of the corresponding districts (which really is the only logical way to group them)—and if we have districts on the templates, finding their rural localities is going to be just a click away. Of course, this would require writing articles about the districts, but I can help you with that, if you want.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:04, July 21, 2009 (UTC)

I see your reasoning with regards to the rural locailities. Before I make any changes to the template, I was wondering whether you could clear something up. In the article I started on Mys Shmidta, I reference the german wikipedia page which states that the Schmidtovsky district and the Iultinsky were merged in June 2008 to form the Wostotschny district. However, I have since noted that this comment is unreferenced, and I cannot find anything to support it in english on the web. On the other hand, the sources I have found that describe the regional make up of Chukotka do not seem massively up to date. Any input you have would be welcomed before I start, so I'm not making changes that will just have to be corrected themselves. Also, I assume I should refer to them as districts no raions, but should I anglicise the names so Schmidtovsky Raion becomes Schmidt District? Finally, if there are any areas you have particularl expertise in do let me know and I will leave them for you to wirte if you want. Fenix down (talk) 10:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As a matter of fact, yes, I can help you with that. First, however, I need to clarify that when speaking of Russian districts, one should distinguish between the administrative districts and the municipal districts. Not to bore you with the details, the main difference is roughly that the former are set by the government of the federal subject, while the latter are formed based on the decisions of the local self-government. The process and setup has its peculiarities from one federal subject to another, so I'll just focus on Chukotka from here on.

As a side note, I should also point out that in English Wikipedia articles are created about the administrative divisions, and the municipal divisions are mentioned in those articles. Russian Wikipedia takes the opposite approach (the majority of their articles are about municipal units). Just something to keep in mind when translating articles between Wikipedias.

Anyway, back to Chukotka. As in many other federal subjects, the borders of the municipal districts of Chukotka match the borders of the administrative districts exactly, although, legally, it does not have to be that way. In other words, it is entirely possible to have municipal districts which are completely different from the administrative districts; in practice this is not usually done because when the districts match, it is easier to coordinate the state (=federal subject's) matters with the local matters.

In July 2008, Iultinsky and Shmidtovsky Municipal Districts of CAO were merged to form Vostochny Municipal District, and Anadyrsky and Beringovsky Municipal Districts were merged to form Tsentralny Municipal Districts. Note, however (and I can't emphasize this enough), that only municipal districts were merged; the administrative districts remained in place as before (so we would still have articles about all four, while the Russian Wikipedia would have only two).

The reason why you won't find any mention of Vostochny or Tsentralny Municipal Districts anywhere is because the law mandating the merge was amended in October 2008—as a result of the amendment, the names "Vostochny" and "Tsentralny" were discarded and replaced, correspondingly, with "Iultinsky" and "Anadyrsky". So, as of today, CAO has eight administrative districts (Anadyrsky, Beringovsky, Bilibinsky, Chaunsky, Chukotsky, Iultinsky, Providensky, and Shmidtovsky), but only six municipal districts (Anadyrsky, Bilibinsky, Chaunsky, Chukotsky, Iultinsky, and Providensky). Iultinsky Municipal District is formed on the territories of Iultinsky and Shmidtovsky Administrative Districts, and Anadyrsky Municipal District is formed on the territories of Anadyrsky and Beringovsky Administrative Districts.

The German Wikipedian probably caught the July change, but not the October's, hence the problem.

Regarding your other questions: we do not anglicize the district names, we romanize them (so, it's "Shmidtovsky", not "Shmidt")—the reason is that within the romanization guidelines you can get only one variant, whereas with anglicization numerous variants are possible, and it is often unclear which one should be used ("Shmidt"? "Schmidt"? how should the names of other districts be anglicized?). There is no way to establish an unambiguous guideline if you go the anglicization route.

As for my expertise, while researching Russian administrative divisions and their history is only a hobby of mine (I am by no means a professional in this area), within the confines of that topic I know quite a bit about everything. However, as far as editing is concerned, don't worry about me at all—while (within this topic) I can write an article about pretty much anything, at this point I am focusing mostly on the organization (i.e, on having clear and logical naming guidelines in place, making sure the articles are interlinked properly, ensuring that the terminology is used consistently across all articles, etc.). It doesn't mean I wouldn't write something when asked to, but please don't limit your content-creating efforts on my account. I add each and every new article to my to-do list, and while it usually takes me a while to get back to review them (to do basic fact-checking, to make sure everything is up-to-date, to ensure the terminology usage is correct and consistent), I don't have a habit of ignoring them. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:29, July 22, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this, that has cleared a lot up in my mind, particularly with regards to how "Shmidt" should be romanised. From what you have said I assume the template box should not have both the administrative and municipal districts in the section below urban-type settlements and where a municipal district contains two administrative districts note this in the administrative district article (saying something like admin. district X forms municipal district A along with admin district Y) rather than write a new article?

I've put at least something down for each of the urban type settlements so I think it would be best for me to tackle the administrative districts next so that those articles might be populated with links to relevant rural localities.

One further thing please, is it preferable to refer to districts as such or Raion in articles. I'm not sure and it has occurred to me that I have not been using one or the other consistently in the articles I have drafted so far. thanks for all your assistance, its a big help in getting my head round this subject. Fenix down (talk) 15:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad I could help. I am also very glad that someone else took interest in the same topic I am working on—this doesn't happen very often :) Considering how poorly this subject is covered in en_wiki, every little bit helps a lot. Thank you for that.

To answer your questions: the template box should only list administrative, not municipal, divisions, because this is how the information is structured in the English Wikipedia. Of course, the municipal divisions should be mentioned in the articles about corresponding administrative divisions (so, the Iultinsky District article should say something to this effect→"Iultinsky District is an administrative district of CAO... Municipally, it is incorporated with Shmidtovsky District to form Iultinsky Municipal District, which covers the territories of both administrative districts..."

As for how the districts should be referred to, while "raion" is technically correct, for consistency (and out of respect to English speakers most of whom would have no clue what a "raion" is), we use "district", which, in this case, is a very good English equivalent. In many situations (e.g., "oblast" vs. "province", "krai" vs. "territory"), translating a term can be ambiguous and confusing, but with "raions" we are in luck—we are not adding to confusion elsewhere by using a translated term.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:22, July 22, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks foryour answers to previous questions, I was wondering whether I could ask a couple more, please?

Firstly, now I am looking at making a start on the rural localities in Chukotka, was wondering how best they could be represented in their respective district articles. So far, I have just added them as See Also as I have not been able to find any other pages concerning districts that goes into that much detail. I'm not going to do a template box given what you've said previously, I dont want to set an unwiledy precendent, but is it acceptable to have sub-headings in a district article listing the various towns / urban type settlements / rural localities. As an aside to this, I assume I need not update the administrative divisions of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug page, as those types of pages only seem to go down to urban-type settlement?

Secondly, how should I best refer to settlements below urban-type? I have just been referring to them as rural localities, but is it ok to call them all villages / selo? I am confused becasue some from my research seem to be old selsovets or the remains of Kolkhozs.

Thirdly, how can I reference censuses within a table? I have tried doing this on the demographic evolution table I did for theMys Shmidta article, but when I put in the ru-census template, nothing happens and I want to try to avoid multiple citations of the same source to try to tidy my refs up a bit.

Finally (!), I noted a couple of people have added infoboxes to some of the articles I have created. That's not a problem, I was just wondering to what level one should go with these? Should all urban type settlements have them, or just those that are administrative centres? I assume there is no need for rural localities to have any?

Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fenix down (talk • contribs) 13:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But of course you are welcome to ask as many questions as you need! If/when I don't know/don't have time, I'll let you know that right away :)

With rural localities, the idea is to have them listed in corresponding district articles. As an example, see Giaginsky District, but if you have a better idea how to lay them out, you are more than welcome to try it out. I was using Adygea districts as pilots for this kind of work, but those are still in pilot phase and can be improved. The grouping of rural localities that makes most sense is by selsoviets, but since neither Adygea nor Chukotka have them any longer, the next best thing is to use municipal rural settlements (Giaginsky District is done that way).

Administrative divisions of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug does indeed not to be updated—even though it's possible to jam all rural localities on one page for Chukotka, for most other federal subjects such an approach would simply overwhelm the list.

As for how to refer to the rural localities, for Chukotka it is rather simple, as they all have the same designation (selo). This is not the case for most other federal subjects, mind you. In general, when it comes to selos, in the lede we refer to them as follows: "a village (selo) of Foo"; and after that it's OK to refer to them just as "villages". As an example, you can use Galyonki.

Regarding the Censuses, the {{ru-census2002}} and {{su-census1989}} templates are named, accordingly, "Census2002" and "Census1989". The {{ru-census}} wrapper retains those names as well. So, once you used any of these templates, you can refer back to them by using <ref name="Census2002" /> and <ref name="Census1989" /> after any other statement that needs to be referenced back to those censuses. I should probably note this somewhere in the template docs. If still you need examples on how this works, let me know, I'll create a test diff for you. It's easier done than explained :)

The infoboxes that had been added shouldn't have been. Presently, we only have an infobox for cities/towns; adding it to the articles about urban-type settlements and rural localities makes no sense whatsoever. I'll be cleaning those out (by offloading useful data from the infobox to the article's text) when I get to the articles in question. Eventually, proper infoboxes for urban-type settlements and rural localities will be created, but so far the consensus on WP:RUSSIA has been that we don't yet need them.

Hope this helps!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:18, August 12, 2009 (UTC)

That's very useful, thanks. Looking at the Giaginsky District, it indicates that each municipal district is then divided into rural divisions, with a headquarters and a number of Selos / selsovets under its jurisdiction, if I read it right. Does Chukotka work in the same way? I was under the impression that the rural villages operated on their own under ther auspices of the municipal district, given their sparsity. I cant find anything on further administrative divisions below municipal district for Chukotka. If so, I'm thinking a seperate box might be overkill and that sections listing the towns / u-t okrugs / villages and maybe a very brief geographical location description might be the clearest way to explain things.

One other thing now municipal districts are on my mind again (!), do you have a citation I could use for the changing of the names of Vostochny and Tsentralny back to Anadyrsky and Iultinsky as I note they still use the pre-october 2008 names in the russian wikipedia. Thanks again! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fenix down (talk • contribs) 16:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Subdivision of municipal districts into urban okrugs/urban settlements/rural settlements is federally mandated, although the process of partitioning is left to the federal subjects (although it should be carried out within the federal law guidelines). You are, however, right to point out that the rural localities in Chukotka are located sparsely, so in order to meet the federal law requirements, each of those villages is incorporated as a rural settlement (bearing the same name as the village itself). Exceptions are as follows: Tavayvaam is administratively subordinated to Anadyr and is municipally a part of Anadyr Urban Okrug; Apapelgino is administratively subordinated to Pevek and is municipally a part of Pevek Urban Settlement; there are also five settlements I forgot about in my previous post. Note these are not urban-type settlements, but rather settlements of rural type, which are considered to be rural localities just as the villages (selos) are. Those five settlements are Otrozhny (Anadyrsky District); Vesenny and Dalny (Bilibinsky District); Bystry and Yuzhny (Chaunsky District). Neither of the five is municipally incorporated; all are considered to be inter-settlement territories. The remaining thirty-seven villages (selos) are all incorporated as rural settlements in corresponding municipal districts.

Regarding Vostochny and Tsentralny Municipal Districts, there was actually no document explicitly renaming them back to Anadyrsky and Iultinsky. Here's what happened: on May 30, 2008, the laws merging the municipal districts were passed. In those laws, the new (merged) districts were referred to as Vostochny and Tsentralny. On October 23, however, these laws were amended—in effect, all mentions of "Vostochny" and "Tsentralny" were purged and replaced with "Anadyrsky" and "Iultinsky". Now, the important thing to remember here is that every geographical renaming in Russia (including naming of newly formed municipal entities) requires approval on the federal level. No request for approval was submitted with the May 30 law, so "Vostochny" and "Tsentralny" were never officially names of the new municipal districts. My guess (and it's pure speculation!) is that the bureaucrats in Chukotka didn't want any hassle with the approval of new names, so they simply amended the law to use names that already existed (which does not require federal approval). With all this in mind, I don't think that "Vostochny"/"Tsentralny" names are even worth mentioning, as they never had an official status of any sort. Isn't Russia's bureaucracy machine fascinating? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:36, August 12, 2009 (UTC)

Why did you revert the Torgo page to the last state? What I wrote was factually accurate, and considering the podcaster in question has upwards of 2,000 listeners, at least 500 of which are dedicated enough to tune in to a live show at 1:00 GMT, there is a very good likelihood that someone will try and look him up. There's no reason that that link shouldn't be there on the Disambiguation page.

Admittedly, I wasn't logged in at the time I added that, but just because it's from an IP address, doesn't mean it's not a valid contribution.

I don't want it to turn into an edit war, so please reinstate the newer version of the page. I'm not surprised so many articles are stubs when valid contributions are immediately reverted.

As I know you're logged in, I'd appreciate a response very soon.

ShmenonPie - You wanna slice of me? (talk) 22:12, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there! There are actually two reasons for that revert. First, disambiguation pages, being purely navigational (not informational) constructs, are subject to a number of rather rigid criteria, which you can familiarize yourself with here. One of those criteria is WP:DABRL, which states that a red-linked entry can be included on a disambig page if and only if the following two conditions are met:

• the description of the entry contains a blue link, and an article at that link explicitly mentions that entry in the text;
• the red link has at least one incoming backlink pointing to it.

Neither of these two conditions was met for the podcaster entry you added.

Another issue is notability. Based on what I was able to find, and now also on the information you supplied above, I do not believe this person passes the notability test. How many people tune in to listen to his podcast is not really relevant here; what matters is whether this person received significant coverage in reliable third-party sources independent of the subject matter.

I admit I might be wrong about the notability bit—you, after all, seem to know about this person a lot more than I ever would want to, so if you believe that his notability is easy to establish, you are welcome to create a (referenced) article and to see it through if someone nominates it for deletion because of the notability concerns. Once the article is in place, there is no problem with re-adding a link to it to the disambiguation page as well, because the disambig constraints are only of technical, not editorial, nature. Hope this helps. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:17, July 15, 2009 (UTC)

I need some help on categories.

1. If I add an article to the category "Engineering companies of Russia", for example, should I also add it to the main category "Companies of Russia" as well?
2. Is there a category such as "Companies based in..." for all Russian federal subjects? If yes, where can I find them? If not, should they be created?
3. Would it make sense to create categories "Companies based in..." for all major cities as well, if they don't exist yet?
4. If I want to create a new category such as "Satellite manufacturers of Russia", who should I ask for permission? I'd also like to create something like "Companies involved in the Russian space program" (if it doesn't exist yet) because I think it's inconvenient to have such companies in the general "Aerospace companies of Russia" because I think the space companies are very special. How should I proceed?

Thanks for helping. Offliner (talk) 22:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there is no need to ask anyone's permission to create a category; just be bold and go ahead! As long as the category name is neutral, not an exact duplicate of some other category under a slightly different name, and contains at least two items, you are good. Now, as to your other questions:

1. Normally, when an item is placed into a child category, it should not also be added to a parent category. There are, of course, times when an exception to this rule is warranted, but more often than not such an approach simply overpopulates the parent category without providing much benefit to our readers. My recommendation would be to add the companies to the "Engineering companies of Russia" cat, and that cat—to the "Companies of Russia by industry" cat.
2. I don't believe there is a developed set of the "Companies based in..." categories for Russia—there are a few like Category:Companies based in Vladivostok, but that's it. Having a category set by city/federal subject makes perfect sense, though, and it's been done for the US/Canadian/UK companies already. I see no reason why it shouldn't be a viable approach for Russia.

Hope this helps! Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:33, July 15, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. Personally, I think it would be good to add an article both to the child and the parent category, because if one wants to take a look at all Russian company articles, it is easier to do this if everything is in the same category rather than having to click through all subcategories. It's also stupid that some articles are in the main category now but many aren't; if the reader clicks only on the main category, he may think that there are no more companies than is present there. I think I will create a company category for every federal subject and city which has at least two company articles. There's probably no harm in doing that. Also, I've noticed that many of the Russian company articles I've worked on get almost zero hits in a day. This may be because the article isn't linked to in enough places. Which places do you think would it be approriate to place a link in? The economy chapter of the region's article and the city's article are the only places I can think of. Ideally, every industry sector should have its own article, (such as Defense industry of Russia, which could be easily expanded a lot), and links could be placed in them, but most of the sectors (I think there are very few right now) do not have an article yet. Offliner (talk) 18:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the problem with almost zero hits a day is due to the articles not being linked to from enough places; I think it's more due to the fact that the articles are about not too well-known Russian companies in English Wikipedia :) From what I've seen, high-profile articles like Moscow, Russia, and Vladimir Putin are guaranteed to get a lot of attention, but the rest of the pack—not so much. Here's systemic bias in action for you :) Most readers just don't care, and that's OK, because the info would still be available to a few of those who do.

Regarding the child/parent categories, I would disagree. The parent category is supposed to hold the articles which are either too general (and can't be further subcategorized), or which apply to multiple subcategories, or which do not yet have a subcategory to assign them to (e.g., if we have subcats for Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok, but not for Samara, the articles on Yek/Vlad-based companies would go into subcats but a lone article about a Samara-based company would stay in "Companies of Russia"). This assists the cleanup efforts quite a bit, whilst if you just dump every single Russian company into one parent cat, not only would the cat be impossible to navigate efficiently, it would also make it that much harder to find an article which is not assigned to a subcat when it should be.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:46, July 15, 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Ezhiki, would you mind helping move the Timoshenko article to the Semyon Timoshenko version? I'd do it myself, but it doesn't budge without admin intervention... Thanks! PasswordUsername (talk) 09:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What goes on in the heads of the people who think "Семён" is best romanized "Semen", I will never understand :) I have moved the article to Semyon Timoshenko, which didn't require admin rights to do. I suspect you were trying to move it to "Semyon Tymoshenko", no?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:21, July 16, 2009 (UTC)

Never quite understood it either–and I think you're right about the y too. Thanks a lot for the help. PasswordUsername (talk) 13:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He is Ukrainian, not Russian. Why should the article be called with Russian name? --Riwnodennyk ✉ 14:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Because he was Soviet, and since the Soviets oppressed and heavily Russified Ukrainians, he is best known under his Russified name, even in English?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:07, July 16, 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to propose a voluntary moratorium on commenting on others people's !votes in bilateral relations AfDs. At this point, I don't think there's anything to be gained from such comments--obviously no one is convincing anyone--meanwhile, the acrimony rises and uninvolved editors are discouraged from weighing in. See this masterpiece for a prime example. So how about we just don't comment on each others' votes? This moratorium would not cover general comments, i.e. those which aren't indented under and/or in response to a specific !vote (e.g. [12]), but these should be kept to an absolute minimum. I intend invite all of the "usual suspects" to join this moratorium. I've missed someone, please invite them. Please discuss, and ideally note whether you intend to abide by this here. Thanks. Yilloslime ^T_C 17:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What ever happened to the proposal to suspend the AfD nominations of the bilateral relations articles altogether; until this whole issue could be discussed from a broader philosophical standpoint? I recall seeing such a proposal around, but for some reason can't find where it was held. That would probably be a solution to a long-term problem, as opposed to this moratorium proposal, which I generally support but do not believe to solve anything apart from the short-term problem with tempers running high.

Thanks for the message, though. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:36, July 16, 2009 (UTC)

This stub was created by myself, but it's too short. It would be fine, if you could translate the russian article and this way save the article. --Obersachse (talk) 21:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So sorry about missing this! I was off on Friday and busy with building a shiny new PC at home all weekend, so I wasn't checking wiki at all. I see the article is no longer prodded (and not even AfD'd), and that you expanded it yourself. Hopefully that'll be that. If you still want me to add more to it (by translating parts from ru_wiki), please do let me know. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:56, July 20, 2009 (UTC)

OK I think its time some of the infoboxes were updated. I've lightened the colour to a standard blue on them which I think renders better with the page and made some changes see Bryansk for instance. I don't want to seem as if I am "invading" your territory but I do have some suggestions. See Kaliningrad Oblast. I think we should really do away with the block sections it wastes space and does not help the user. I think having block banners for small sections like area is certianly and I think we could do without the others. Coat of arms and flag well you can see it is that given they have labels anyway, population, government etc, the bloc headers are not really needed. Also could you explain to me the use of having Charter of... and Representative Body linked because where I've seen an infobox it is always red linked. Is it really necessary, because i think red links in infoboxes look untidy. Most of the time Charter and Representative Body seem unneccessary. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:02, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've made some changes. See Omsk. I think the infoboxes look tidier and more straightforward now. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:58, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some further recommendations. I would suggest adding a parameter for timezone, Russia is so important in this respect. I would remove the unsightly timezone section from the oblast articles and add it neatly in the infoboxes. Also I would set the infobox at default hide, meaning that if one of the fields isn't filled in it hides it rather than says N/A. The amount of towns with no infobox or coordinates is really not good enough and any data is better than nothing. Nobody can expect you to fill in everyone but I think you should make the infoboxe shide the empty paramters by default and not display N/A.

Another thing, can you remove the oblast locator maps form the russian city template? With the regional pin locators they look very awkaward because most often they look nothing like it on the nationanal oblast locator map because it is tiltled 90 degrees! It makes it more difficult to understand from my persepctive. I would recommend removing the oblast locators and replacing it with the Template:Location map Russia for all. I've requested a better locator map of Russia so hopefully soon enough we will have one but I think it is best to use two pin maps than the awkward oblast map in city articles. It will be much more useful for you to replace it with the national pin locator alongside the regional one. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:20, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What I like about you, Blo, is that you are never afraid to fuck up a million little pieces in one fell swoop :) Anyway, my official response is that I will diligently review the changes you made and will post a carefully written, balanced analysis ( hopefully without strangling you in the process :))... as soon as I get some damn work done around the place that is kind enough to continue providing employment to a lazy (albeit a very valuable and irreplaceable) ass which is me. And by the way, it's your turf as much as it is mine or anyone else's—no hard feelings there! Just because I spent numerous hours carefully planning the layout and setting the interdependencies does not at all mean you can't go in and re-arrange everything.

In case you are not sure, the above was said in a cheerful, friendly tones, although some sarcastic notes were intentional :)

—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:18, July 20, 2009 (UTC)

Hey, Blo! Sorry for the delay with the answer, but apart from being busy I also needed some time to think this through. I'll try addressing your suggestions point-by-point, so it's easier to keep track of them. Feel free to comment on each one separately as well.

1. Infobox colors. I am actually of two minds about this. The blue color for the federal subject (FS) boxes was chosen, if I remember correctly, to match the blue of the Russian flag; the colors for the city/district boxes were pretty much arbitrary, but matching the color saturation level of the FS box (the light green is also the same one the Russian Wikipedia uses for the city boxes). In the hindsight, that was probably not the best selection—the color looks fine on the flag, but when used in an infobox it makes it pretty gaudy. So, you softening the colors is something I have no problems with. What I am concerned about is that now all the boxes (FS/city/district) use the same (ugly!) purple color. I hope your love to this color doesn't go as far as to insist on keeping it :), but I am actually more worried that using the same color on the boxes does away with the color coding. What I mean is that an average wiki reader would have no idea what the difference between an FS and, say, a district in Russia is; color coding the infoboxes makes it immediately obvious that the article about, say, Kaliningrad Oblast and Giaginsky District are actually about two very different concepts. I would strongly advocate for using different colors for different concepts; as for what colors to use, that, of course, is open to discussion (preferably not between you and me, but on WT:RUSSIA, in case anybody else gives a damn).
2. Sections. I disagree that sections in the boxes are not useful. Sections allow grouping related bits of information in a clean and logical manner. Only when we have too many sections does that become a problem. Your removal of the "Area" section, for example, is something that makes perfect sense (I recall making it a separate section because I was planning to add more parameters to it, but in the end all that was left was just the area itself); on the other hand, merging the "Administrative" and "Municipal structure" sections on the district box would be something that actually makes the information much more confusing. With the flag and coat of arms, I was trying to fit links to the heraldry and flag articles along with the links to the articles about the CoA and flag of the entity itself—I agree that the section approach wasn't the best in this case. Not sure how to do it better, though, so if you have ideas, please don't hesitate to share.
3. Charter and representative body. Charter and legislation of a FS/district/city are actually very important concepts in Russia. I realize that the links to those are presently mostly all red, but that's only because just like with many other important Russia-related things there are not enough (interested) people to work on those. When interested people show up, we get articles like State Council of the Chuvash Republic, which is short but still very worthy of being linked to. Having entity's charter and representative body listed is just as important as listing the president/chairperson/head/mayor/etc.
4. Timezone. The idea of adding a timezone parameter was shot before more than once. With the federal subjects, all articles already have a time zone section; as for the districts/inhabited localities, their time zone would always match the time zone of the federal subject they are located in. The only localities that would benefit from this parameter are those in the Sakha Republic (which spans three time zones) and in Sakhalin Oblast (which spans two). If you want to re-open this can of worms, feel free to post an inquiry on WT:RUSSIA. Myself, I don't believe this parameter is needed and feel that the way it is going to be filled out is by people doing a random google search and inserting the first piece of data they can find. Unlike with the rest of the parameters, there is no one good authoritative source which gives up-to-date information on the Russian time zones.
5. N/As in fields. When I was designing these boxes, I deliberately did not make the sections auto-hideable. If one is to approach filling out these infoboxes diligently, the data for every single parameter can be found without much difficulty. If one adds an infobox which mostly shows N/A's, it means that the person added it just for the heck of it and it is unlikely that s/he took time to make sure that the few parameters which had been added are actually correct. You yourself the other day had to go through a bunch of boxes which were basically copy-pasted across a number of articles—someone did not even bother to check that the names were changed from one article to another! How good do you think is the rest of the information in these boxes? On the other hand, the N/A's had been implemented before the auto-map feature was enabled; today, even if all one can add is a name the resulting infobox would probably still be useful because of the automap it would show. I'll keep that in mind during future design efforts.
6. FS locators vs. {Location map Russia}. The problem with {{Location map Russia}} is that when it is stuffed into a cramped infobox, it's very hard to understand what's going on in it. This is especially true for small republics like Adygea, Chechnya, etc. I know what you mean about the FS locators being somewhat confusing (although I don't quite get the part about some maps being tilted 90°—would you have an example handy?), but I still believe they are an improvement over the locator map for the whole of Russia. If you manage to get a better locator map of Russia which wouldn't have these deficiencies, I'll be all for using it, of course.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:15, July 24, 2009 (UTC)

Hey buddy we can negotiate a return of the green colour if the blue default is not to your taste. I was a bit worried that you'd explode at me so when I saw your name I was concerned because now is very bad time. I've encountered a great deal of unplesantnessness on here in the last 24 hours causing one of the good guys to leave wikipedia. I hope we can come to a good agreement and I'm sure you'll see why I made a lot of the changes. I didn't get a reply for a while so I was Bold. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:28, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I do get annoyed real easy, but I don't ever recall "exploding" :) Especially not on you!

As for these darn infoboxes, I want to improve them just as much as you do; I just prefer thoroughly planning the process first and implementing the changes later—apparently, in those regards I am a unique individual, as everyone wants to have everything changed right away. Oh well, such is life.

Anyway, whenever you are through with the Poppe conundrum, you are welcome back to my talk page; we'll discuss the infoboxes then. In the meanwhile, I'll try to go back to the drawing board and hopefully will have something for you when you return (unless I get distracted in the process, which happens more than I like to admit!). Best of luck,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:37, July 24, 2009 (UTC)

Hey amigo, well lets discuss it now then, it may take my mind off it. As long as you don't want to revert all of my changes!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:41, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I do want that very much, but it wouldn't be, erm, what's your British concept for that, ahh, polite! :)

Seriously, though, if you want to comment on the points I laid out above, that'd probably get the ball rolling. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:51, July 24, 2009 (UTC)

Hokay, I've restored the green anyway, although the "purple" is actually intended to be blue and is the standard we have for templates!! Right then. I thought the charter was also obviously of some significance otherwise you;d not have included it eh? I would like to see more articles on them though if this important. I don't mind one or two hearders seperating say administrative information from historical information. Personally though I thought the section for area and population was unnecessary and could basically be fitted in the main section. I felt it important to add the overall country section to the infoboxes just to avoid any confusions and for people who may not be familiar with the subject. We do this all over wikipedia and for those who know the cities it may seem silly, for instance who diesn't know London is in the UK? LOL. But overall I think the boxes look a lot clearer and understandable that way. Personally I'd like to keep the data given in the boxes as simplified as possible. It is a shame about the charter and the other because I added a few infoboxes with all the information except that and another and it made the infobox look a little ugly with the na. I think it is important that the urban type settlements at least have the infobox with the map/coat of arms, population/ area and the details I've been adding. If you are sure every town in Russia willl have a Charter article eventually then I'll accept it, I jus tthnk it would look tidier to hide it until somebody decides to start the article articles thats all. Do you follow? P.S I imported some photographs from Russian wikipedia and uploaded them to the commons for us to use. I'd like to work with you at adding infoboxes to our urban settlement articles and at least get them at a standard level. I was surprised how many tiowns particularly in Siberia which look notable in my atlas that are stubs!! Where possible i have also recolored the maps to green and sandy to look more lik emaps rather than looking like upper Greenland. They look more attractive I think. Also, OK we'll keep the oblast maps only until we get our decent location map svg which should avoid all of the previous problems and look nice and clean. I have a feeling we may have to wait quite some time for that though but I've asked, at least. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1. Gween is good :)
2. As for the charters, here's a stub-creation idea for you! This task lends itself easily to automation (the basic information that needs to be added is the title, adoption date, effective date, list of amendments, table of contents, and a link to the Charter's full text, which also serves as a self-reference), although I could imagine for you the difficulty would be the fact that everything is in Russian.
3. Adding the country field, that, I think, is just silly. Every single city article would say that this is a "city in Russia" right in the lead (and if in some it doesn't say that, it should be added); mentions of "Russia" would further be scattered throughout the article, the infobox would have a map of Russia prominently on top—why the heck do we need another line to state the obvious? You yourself find it funny that the London article explicitly clarifies that that's the city in the UK. Why add something that is so clearly redundant? Not to mention that for Russia the traditional break-down by "country-province-district-county" levels cannot be done cleanly. Once you drill to the federal subject level, where you go next depends on whether you are interested in the federal subject's administrative or municipal divisions. Neryungri, for example, is administratively a town of the republican significance (i.e., it has the same status as the uluses), but municipally it is only an urban settlement, albeit one that's the administrative center of the municipal district which the territory within the administrative borders of the city of Neryungri comprises. Good luck programming around that. With sections, at least, both aspects of the city can be presented separately. When you "simplify" the box by mingling both sections in one data flow, you are not simplifying life for those for whom it matters the most—our readers. Remember some time ago I was explaining why Russian cities should not use the generic {Settlement} infobox? This is one of the very good reasons why—things for Russia are just too different to neatly fit under one-size-fits-all approach. If we care about our readers at all, we should recognize when making exceptions is warranted and justified. I am sorry if this may sound offensive, but sometimes it seems to me that you believe I just want to control my own version of the infobox for no particular reason at all, apart from satisfying my control-freak personality. I assure you that is not the case.
4. As for the box for the urban-settlements, previous consensus on WP:RUSSIA was not to create one until most of the articles about the urban-type settlements grow to at least Start level. An article with an infobox which is five times longer than the text hardly entices anyone to believe that the information in the box is well-researched and accurate, wouldn't you agree? At any rate, we shouldn't be bothering with creating an urban-type settlement infobox until we have a stable infobox for the cities, or we risk to simply create a maintenance nightmare for the WikiProject with the membership base that is hardly active as is. If I learned anything in real life, it's that the surest way to kill any project is by assigning too much work to extremely limited resources—people will get overworked and quit, deadlines will get missed, and in the end nothing (except harm) will be done. WikiProjects are no different—you keep dumping dull maintenance work on them, they die.
5. It is important to remember than having an infobox is not the final goal, it's a means to an end. "An end", in our case, is creating a thorough, usable, and well-referenced article. Once the content hits critical mass, it makes sense to summarize it, and that's where adding an infobox becomes most useful. In a two-page article, it helps to have something to quickly glance through to get the most important facts and to find out what the most important links are. In a two-line article, an infobox does not help anything except creating an impression of sloppiness and lack of professionalism.
6. On the maps issue (them being green), I concur; they do look better that way (not to mention they now match the green scheme of the infoboxes nicely!). And, of course, thanks for all your work with the pictures—much appreciated!
7. On an unrelated note, can you take a look at this list and let me know what you think? This is supposed to be the pilot version of how the set indices on the Russian inhabited localities will look like—I've implemented (in one form or another) all of the ideas I had, and am now looking for more input by uninvolved parties. These, by the way, when done, can double as sources for article-creation bot runs.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:17, July 24, 2009 (UTC)

The list looks fine, I would clean up the oblast division lists though as some of them ar ewuite hard to follow. I saw a table somewhere and thought the information was best presented in table format like that. I know for major cities the country name often seems redundant but I just think it is easier to follow from a world perspective. I just anybody should be able to find any place in the world , look at the infobox and know immediately where it is. Some people may get the wrong impression that the Russian republics are countries etc so that is why I insist of clearing it up. Remember people of a big age range and background use wikipedia and it is not always obvious. IN the same I dislike just regional/locator maps with know reference to where it is in the country as people who don't know the country have no idea. Spainand the United States more often than not are guilty of this. At least the Russian maps you get the idea. I'm happy to create the charter articles with sources but I would say first priority is the expand some of the towns and create the districts with some information. I do think the infoboxes are paart of developing a stub into a start class (in terms of improving quality anyway) and I think the benefits of the location map, coat of arms, population, area and other data is more useful than not just because the article may not be full length or one or two fields are missing. If the article is a one liner I agree but if it is a paragraph or so long and referenced I think it is OK, especially if a photoraph is available and fits conviently in the box. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:28, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could you, please, clarify what you mean by "hard to follow"? As for the table layout, I didn't go that route that because for a list that size the page would take forever to load (try looking at or editing this more than once to see what I mean), but for smaller lists it would definitely be an option to consider. Thanks for the suggestion.

As for the Stub→Start development, one doesn't really need an infobox to do that, what is needed first and foremost is content. Besides, coat, flag, and even a locator map can be all added separately without overwhelming a stub as much as a full-blown infobox (even with hideable parameters) would. Sorry, not buying this one still.

On mentioning "Russia", I kind of like the blue bar on the infoboxes on the US cities (e.g., Kansas City, Missouri), which says "— city —". I think for Russian cities adding a similar bar which would say "— a city in Russia —" would be a neat way to address the problem you mentioned above. What's your opinion?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:42, July 24, 2009 (UTC)

That would certainly be fine I was going to also suggest that. I can just about agree with you most of it but the Russia name, I definately think it should appear in the infobox. If you are talking about adminstrative information I think this should always be at the top followed by province/ district/ municipality/commune etc. Well I'm perfectly happy with how the infobox looks for Omsk now. It think it looks clear and neat, if we had a regional locator for Omsk oblast it would look even better.... If we could add like a blue line at the top for urban status this would be the icing on the cake I believe. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you maybe misunderstood me (or maybe I you)? If we have "a city in Russia" at the top (something you said you had been thinking about yourself), what's the point of having "Country: Russia" listed again further down the box? And as I previously explained, we cannot do the province/district/municipality tree in the template, because, first, we'll need to have two such trees (administrative and municipal separately), and second, oftentimes those trees are not going to match one another (see the Neryungri example above). Which again brings me back to the fact that (these two, at least) should be handled via separate sections. You gotta make peace with the fact that the template isn't going to look exactly like the "standard" templates used elsewhere :) This is one case where it is important that it doesn't.

As for Omsk, I am not happy with it at all. Everything is now in one heap, it's too darn messy! Placing area/population/postal code/telephone code/etc. in one flow is not really a problem (everyone intuitively knows what those are), but when it comes to highly country-specific information (administrative status, local government, municipal aspects) such mingling is simply inexcusable. These two sections are the very least that need to be restored in order for the box to make at least some semblance of sense. Try removing all subheaders from the article itself, so everything seamlessly flows into everything else—you'll see right away why this doesn't work.

I am not trying to say that the version before your edits was ideal; it was not. I am still planning to completely re-design this infobox (this one still has technical glitches, has no parameters for such important thing as references, and includes such unnecessary stuff as "events", which really should belong in the text) and, as per this discussion of (h)ours, I will try keeping the number of specialized sections to a minimum (i.e, there'll be no sections such as "area" or, god forbid, "other information I didn't know where else to stuff in"). I can't do away with vital grouping such as admin/mun separation, though; I hope you understand it's not my pigheadedness, but actually a valid concern. And of course, I'll give you a holler when the template is ready for prime-time, because if I don't, it wouldn't be, what's that word again, ah!, polite :) And I am a polite person, even though it's not always obvious :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:36, July 24, 2009 (UTC)

Aww!! It looks fine! If you want to restore a column or two then do so. I will fully support it if you want to restore two main columns anyway. I believe I did keep the sections intact for one templates anyway. I understand that Russia is different from any other country its sheer size and a range of places makes that clear. But the old infoboxes were far from ideal. I think it would be a shame to restore it as it was before. I think we should adjust the current one to one which you are also happy with and we can find a happy medium. I think the colour change from bright cobalt blue on the oblast templates was also the right one to make. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 08:57, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've readded the columns per our discussion, I think they look good actually with adminstrative information, history and other sections. Any more and it would be too much I think... So it kind of looks like it did before anyway! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 09:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC) What I'd so now is remove the Municipal status section from the main and add it in the blue bar at the top like you see on the others. So it would be Omsk then under neath it would read plainly Urban okrug or Urban settlement etc. Sound good? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 09:18, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing, what would you say about getting the actual name of the settlement to appear on the regional pin maps? For some reason I couldn't get it to appear, only on hovering. Could you add the label so it would feature say Bratsk next to the red pin on the map? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 09:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Слушай, если будет возможность напиши на странице участника, как надо переименовывать страницы и что для поиска что Łapka что Lapka безразлично. Спасибо.--Andrey! 18:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Вообще, он всё-таки прав. Названия страниц разрешения неоднозначностей могут содержать диакритику, если все вхождения на этой страницы также содержат диакритику. В данном же случае у нас имеются польская Łapka и российская Lapka, из чего следует, что дизамбиг должен быть под "Lapka". Ведь если польскую Лапку в английском тексте запросто можно увидеть под "Lapka", то обратное утверждение (для питерской реки) будет неверным. Другими словами, "Lapka can refer to Łapka, a village in Poland", но "Łapka cannot refer to the Lapka River in Russia".

Не следует также забывать, что дизамбиги из двух предметов в целом бесполезны — гораздо проще в польской статье сверху добавить "For the river in Russia...", а в русской (когда она появится) — "For the village in Poland...".

Для целей поиска это всё большого значения действительно не имеет, но с точки зрения правил оформления — это важно.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:26, July 21, 2009 (UTC)

Blimey, sorry about that, I thought I'd IAR to save an admin a bit of work, and ended up causing about 50 times more work by the time you'd finished. I'll be more cautious next time...--Kotniski (talk) 18:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No biggie. It was an easy fix... or so I thought until I fucked up in the middle of the process myself :) Still, everything now seems to be where it's supposed to, plus it was fun!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:51, July 21, 2009 (UTC)

Добрый день, Ёжики! Национально озабоченный словенский (татарский) вандал никак не уймётся - ему всё еще кажется, что Алия Юсупова не казашка, а татарка. В ру-вики Торин поставил на три месяца статью под полузащиту (edit=autoconfirmed). Можете поставить такую же защиту в англо-вики на тот же срок? Это тот случай, когда анонимы могут больше навредить, чем дать пользы проекту. Спасибо! С почтением, --Ds02006 (talk) 03:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Да вот вчера вернул опять как было. Пока вроде не очень часто домогается, защищать особого смысла не вижу (проще откатить; в списке наблюдения эту страницу продолжаю держать). Если разбуянятся, обязательно защищу.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:47, July 23, 2009 (UTC)

Should we move Boris Efimov to Boris Yefimov? It's currently move-protected, and I'm not sure what to do about it. PasswordUsername (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The page was protected indefinitely because a vandal moved it ten months ago. That's no good. I've unprotected the page, moved to it Yefimov (because you are right, that's where it belongs), and watchlisted it, in case the vandal hits it again. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:28, July 25, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for assisting. :) PasswordUsername (talk) 05:26, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1. Слушай, есть ли здесь аналог ru:Шаблон:перенесено с. А то пишут некоторые на личную страницу обсуждения не по делу.--Andrey! 16:32, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2. Посмотри на ru:Александровская колонна#Установка колонны. Видишь там двуязычную цитату? А в Russian submarine Kazan мне не удалось так изящно выкрутиться. Есть ли шаблон цитирования с такими возможностями?--Andrey! 16:32, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1. Нету. Есть практически никем не используемый {{Moved to}}. В принципе, можно по аналогии создать и {{Moved from}}.
2. Насколько мне известно, шаблона с такими же возможностями у нас нет. Опять-таки, если надумаешь портировать ru:Шаблон:Oq, вряд ли кто будет против.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:52, July 27, 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Any chance you could find some sources in Russian? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:13, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What are you looking to reference? The only sentence in the article is already supported by the external links.

A quick search also produces this review on the Tatarstan's Ministry of Culture website; more is available, but I guess it depends which way you want the article to develop.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:14, July 27, 2009 (UTC)

Sources that could be used to flesh the stub out a little bit. I came across the orchestra on YouTube and wanted to write a bit more about them. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:16, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The MinCult review would be a great start then. I guess you are probably planning to feed it to a machine translator, but let me know if you see any passages that need to be clarified. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:18, July 27, 2009 (UTC)

Yep that was exactly what I was looking for. I wasnt' sure though if the "society" was the same thing as the orchestra. I think I'll move the pagename to a different title. Hey are you happier now with the readded columns in the infobox? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:26, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure where the "society" part came from in the link description; rest assured, the website is about the same entity (although, unlike the MinCult review, it is an unofficial website, so use caution).

As for the infobox, I haven't had a chance to look at it yet (I've just returned from my weekly weekend wikibreak), but I'm planning to look at it after I catch up with my watchlist monitoring.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:30, July 27, 2009 (UTC)

Hokay, I've added a bit of info, seems to make sense. If you could just proof read it if you have time. The name of the current leader didn't translate too well, can you add it? I listed up until 2003. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:32, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May be ru:Участник:Rubin16 can help you. He is a nativ tatarian and understands english language. --Obersachse (talk) 20:31, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I recall your sound advice and assistance with Ivanov, and I cant help but feel that your opinion over here (Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Clive_Fiske_Harrison) would be invaluable and could ensure that the deletion process comes to the right conclusion (either supporting or opposing my view). Irbisgreif (talk) 23:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you know, I normally avoid AfDs about the subjects which are completely alien to me, so the comment I supplied is based strictly on my interpretation of the policy/guidelines. Like I said, if additional sources are introduced by folks who are more familiar with the subject than I am, I'd be more than willing to re-assess and, depending on the quality of those sources, possibly even change my position.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:04, July 29, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for giving your reasons cogently. However, you did not address the articles, presented in the comment before your judgement, reprinted below--Fiskeharrison (talk) 14:01, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I have made this remark elsewhere, but I will put it again here: notability in the business world does not translate as celebrity. However, there is a reason that the lead financial columnist for The Times describes Clive Harrison as, "one person whose views I respect."[13] Equally, when the newspaper of the City of London, the Evening Standard, ran two articles [14] & [15] about the head of Uk's financial regulatory body. The two separate financial journalists quoted the same four people: the chairman of Treasury Select Committee, the chief executive of Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers, the director-general of the Association of Independent Financial Advisors AND Clive Harrison (note that 2 of the other 3 have Wiki entries, and the third should). This raises the question, do the editors here know more than the journalists whose lives revolve around this world? Or are they claiming the business world is somehow less notable in itself? It is for this reason the editorial board of Debrett's People of Today placed him in their business leaders section[16] under the advice of the editor of that section and his contacts. As for other sources, here is a couple: The Independent [17] and also, the Investor's Chronicle [18], which, under the headline 'Fiske Holds Its Own' began this article: "A year ago, Fiske's chief executive and founder Clive Harrison predicted a tough 2008 for stock markets, and so it proved. But Fiske has old-fashioned virtues to keep it going in hard times: for starters, it2 has plenty of cash and has been cash-positive ever since the company was formed 35 years ago.--Fiskeharrison (talk) 11:47, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have posted a follow-up response on the AfD page and will post more once I review these additional sources. Thanks for pointing them out. Sincerely,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:25, July 29, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your diligence. I understand your reasoning, and realise that the default position when there is a COI is delete (rather than trying to rescue the article). The company does pass the CORP regs, not least because they explicitly mention 'Hoovers' directory with reference to publicly traded companies - I have added the link to the article and the AfD. I cannot write the Fiske article as I can't be bothered with more AfDs (next thing they'll try and delete bullfighting too because I edited that). With ref to Clive Fiske Harrison himself, I genuinely believe the use of terms like renowned when Fiske was named 'top broker' by Bloomberg here [19] and respect by The Times simply do add up to notability - they indicate that within the world referred to, an undoubtedly important world at that, the figure is noted. i.e. notable. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 16:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They do add up to notability, just not to the kind of notability WP:BIO aims to establish. Our guidelines are more restrictive, is all. Other than that (well, and the COI concerns), I have no prejudice against this particular article; as a matter of fact, being an inclusionist, I would very much love to see it kept. I just can't justify such a "keep", based on the information presented so far and on how it falls within our guidelines framework.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:22, July 29, 2009 (UTC)

I have a little problem with the categorization of some Russian companies. There are many companies whose sector is machine building. But I guess this is not the correct English term, since it doesn't have an article. The corresponding German article de:Maschinenbau links to the English article mechanical engineering. Is mechanical engineering the correct term for the industry sector? In any case, the category Mechanical engineering companies of Russia does not exist. There are only categories Engineering companies of Russia and Manufacturing companies of Russia - should the machine building companies should be put in one of these two? I'm also not sure what "engineering companies" exactly means. I don't even know where I should ask about this. Offliner (talk) 18:54, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Машиностроение" is indeed translated as "mechanical engineering". As for what "engineering companies" are supposed to comprise, I have no idea (I would guess that "mechanical engineering companies" would qualify, but the whole concept of the cat eludes me). You might want to contact user:Beagel, who started Category:Engineering companies of Russia and ask him what the big picture is supposed to look like and where in that picture this particular category would fall.

If that fails, I'd recommend to start Category:Mechanical engineering companies of Russia and make it a subcat of :Cat:Engineering companies of Russia; that should work reasonably well, at least in the interim until you figure out how everything works together.

Sorry for not being of much help with this; I don't deal with these cats too often.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:14, July 31, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll ask Beagel about his. But I have another question: I'd like to create a category for all companies involved in the space program. I guess Category:Aerospace companies of Russia actually already covers the space industry companies as well (it's called aerospace after all). But I'd like a more specific category. But what should I call it? "Space industry of Russia" would sound good, but can this be made a subcat of "Companies of Russia by industry"? Or maybe "Space industry companies of Russia" would be better? Offliner (talk) 19:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I had to deal with this myself, I would just go with Category:Space industry companies of Russia and stuff it under Category:Aerospace companies of Russia. Seems to be the most logical approach to me. Have you checked how this was solved for other countries, by the way? Sometimes it's easier to copy someone else's cat structure rather than to go through the pains of inventing one on your own.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:39, July 31, 2009 (UTC)

You said earlier that you may support the deletion of Russian influence operations in Estonia. There is now an AfD discussion here. Offliner (talk) 21:24, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the title of a book is what is written on the cover; thus as "The Romulan War" is the only title to appear, and hardly anywhere else lists the book as having the "Beneath the Raptor's Wing" subtitle, it would make sense that it will not be included in the full title. And I think it will be the only "Romulan War" novel. Dave (talk) 18:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:08, August 3, 2009 (UTC)

Hi again, "they've" officially named the novel as you wrote it, I have corrected the link on the page and now created the article for it. I think no-one had absolute confirmation earlier, slight confusion amongst the "Trek masses" as well! Dave (talk) 22:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wrt to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Issa&diff=305826301&oldid=305679132 what exactly did you mean? There are no incoming links for International Sports Sciences Association, and I suspect there never will, either. -- Egil (talk) 16:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there are two. I can't tell if they are of acceptable quality myself, but if the entry is to be removed from the dab, someone will need to consider them. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:32, August 4, 2009 (UTC)

Point taken -- Egil (talk) 07:24, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Есть шаблон по вокзалам Санкт-Петербурга в русской википедии. Он мне кажется чересчур неоднородным. Я хочу его перенести сюда и сделать несколько связанных между собой шаблонов. Это позволит не распыляться в статьях и поддерживать связность навигации.--Andrey! 10:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Проверь пожалуйста уместность названий шаблонов и изложи своё мнение относительно идеи.--Andrey! 10:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Извиняюсь за задержку с ответом — совершенно не заметил это сообщение.

По шаблону у меня особого мнения нет — если будут все в одном, то пусть будут; будут отдельно для ж/д, автобусов и т.д., тоже нормально. Единственное, что мне не нравится, так это то, что они все записаны как "вокзалы". Если шаблон разбить, то эта проблема будет решена.

Кстати, для ж/д вокзалов шаблон у нас уже есть: {{Rail terminals in St. Petersburg}}.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:45, August 11, 2009 (UTC)

Потому что вместе плохо сочетается тематика - я разделил на вокзалы и пр. (связность через подвал шаблона). Оставлю пока так.--Andrey! 18:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

У меня 100 новых статей в разделе.--Andrey! 18:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Сделал для interwiki Template:Terminals in St. Petersburg. Если можешь, поправь интервики на него. А где стиль чётных, чтобы отделить их друг от друга?--Andrey! 06:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, я не знаю, что такое стиль чётных... Это что-то из ru_wiki?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:53, August 14, 2009 (UTC)

Это когда задаётся цвет фона для всех существующих чётных строк навигационного шаблона. Вот пример серого цвета: Шаблон:Санкт-петербургский трамвай.--Andrey! 18:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Есть ещё один навигационный шаблон Template:Stations of the railway with transfer on sea transport который я так же, как и этот по факту написания разделю на российский, стран Балтии, белорусско-украинский, кавказский и азиатский шаблоны.--Andrey! 18:57, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if it's approariate to point out an AfD discussion to you, when you haven't previously been involved (is it?), but here seems to be another pretty bad case of WP:SYNTH: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Communist_genocide. Taking a look at the sources used in the article, I have found absolutely nothing to confirm that "communist genocide" is a real term or concept, not to mention a notable concept enough for its own article. We could rename it to "Genocide commited by communist governments", but even then it seems too much like an advocating POV article and original synthesis. All the material is surely already present in the different genocide articles, so there doesn't seem to be any need for this kind of article. It seems pretty shocking if this kind of article is allowed to stay. Offliner (talk) 11:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The only good use this article has is setting a classic example of what synthesis looks like. This one is no Red Terror.

As for the appropriateness, as long as you haven't posted this message to a hundred other editors who you think would also support deletion, I see no problem. In future, however, I would recommend you to consider limiting such postings to the talk pages of the appropriate wikiprojects. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:25, August 5, 2009 (UTC)

I can't believe this piece of rubbish was actually kept. Igny's prediction tells us what will happen next. We're at point nr. 2 now, and point 3 is about to start. In the end, the result will be a huge waste of time for all participants. The only good thing about the article (which was created by a banned troll) is that it's so biased, it's almost funny. I'm still laughing at the former opening sentence From the very beginning, communism forged a new order based on genocide. I guess the best thing to do would be to forget all about the article and let the trolls troll in peace. Sensible readers (if anyone's ever going to read the article anyway) will notice that something about the article is not right, and will take it to AfD again eventually, and then we'll start all over from point 1. Offliner (talk) 23:01, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Offy, in relation to the posting of messages, if you come across a relevant article in the future and it doesn't have the WP:RUSSIA tag on the talk page, you can add {{WikiProject Russia|class=|importance=}} to the talk page (you can add the assess and importance tags as well if you like), and it will then appear in the Article bot alerts section half way down the page of WP:RUSSIA, allowing others to see what is currently up for deletion. As to the article, it is amazing it was kept, but you are right in just letting it go, readers will know it is biased as hell and will hopefully ignore it. --Russavia ^Dialogue 02:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I've just PRODded this dab; please take a look at it and consider if there's anything that can be improved. Thanks, Boleyn2 (talk) 18:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for not responding sooner. I have deprodded this pages after having created all three stubs based on the corresponding GSE entries. I appreciate you taking time to notify me of the situation with this page and I hope the resolution will serve as a good-faith collateral ensuring that the majority of other Russia-related people dabs are similarly resolvable. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:29, August 11, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It was stupid of me not to doublecheck the NC first. --inquietudeofcharacter (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. There are so many of them NCs, no one can be expected to be able to keep track of them all :).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:06, August 10, 2009 (UTC)

Hello! I've noticed that you moved Eudoxia Streshneva to Yevdokiya Streshnyova per Wiki guideline. However, the move is against another Wiki guideline: common name. Eudoxia Streshneva is known to historians, but Yevdokiya Streshnyova isn't. Eudoxia Streshneva is used by 200 websites, while Yevdokiya Streshnyova is used by 10 websites. Even Britannica refers to her as Eudoxia. In other words, Eudoxia Streshneva is the most common name, while Yevdokiya Streshnyova is original research. I propose moving the page back to Eudoxia Streshneva. Surtsicna (talk) 16:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was unable to find more than a dozen references to support either variant (which means none of them is more "common" than another), so I moved the article to the variant most close to WP:RUS. That said, feel free to file a move request to move it back, if you wish. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:50, August 13, 2009 (UTC)

Will do! Thanks for reply! Surtsicna (talk) 16:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Consider, however, the fact that Slavonic and East European review refers to her as "Yevdokiya" (so no original research here). As a specialized academic peer-reviewed publication, it carries more weight than Britannica.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:56, August 13, 2009 (UTC)

It might not be original research, but the former name was certainly more common among the historians. Eugene Schuyler and other Romanov-specialized books refer to her as Eudoxia. See also results for tsaritsa Eudoxia and czarina Eudoxia. Surtsicna (talk) 17:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we both have a right to disagree on this. I logged my formal "oppose" vote on the RM, but will, of course, abide by the outcome of the discussion. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:11, August 13, 2009 (UTC)

Пожалуйста, посмотри. Интересует, кто может оказать посильную помощь в модификации шаблона. Спасибо.--Andrey! 05:27, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Я вижу там уже ответили. Помогло? Или нужна дополнительная помощь?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:51, August 14, 2009 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/SieBot - still blocked. Siebrand (talk) 19:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I have started a few articles that appear in my Hutchinson encyclopedia. Tilichiki I've expanded, may want to check it though, and I've started a number of articles, not sure if they are urban type settlements though or rural. The atlas of my encyclopedia shows what appear to be the main town and cities in Russia but it does so pretty evenly so it may include some rural villages in Siberia etc. Bulkur I am looking at now is located virtually on the same latitude as Tiksi and same longitude as Bulun. Maybe it now has a different name? The article in my encyclopedia just says village port in northern Siberia on the Lena River Delta. Plenty of google hits that verify it, see this. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:21, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Russian name according to google is река Булкур. Peka is rural locality I think... Does this ring a bell now? I await your response. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The google hits are mostly for the Bulkur River, which is most definitely at the coordinates you specified; and some other hits are ambiguous (i.e., it could be about a village, or a river, or a mining post, or whatever). "Река" also means "river". I'll keep looking, of course, but one thing that's 100% certain is that there is no populated place at these coordinates now. I would also speculate that if there ever was one, it was abolished in the 1980s, and it never was an urban-type settlement to start with (those are pretty well-documented; I would have found something by now). Mind if I move the article to Bulkur River and modify it accordingly? If something else comes up, we can re-start "Bulkur" no problem.

Tilichiki, by the way, is fine. I added it to my "to clean-up" list, but the village does still exist.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:35, August 17, 2009 (UTC)

This source and a number of others suggest it is a place too. It also mentions Bulun which is about 300 kilometres south of Bulkur. It shows that a botanist collects samples of a mushroom plant species at Bulkur in 1910. See here. Ah no, it refers to the Bulkur River. Move it to Bulkur River, maybe there was once a settlement named Bulkur, I seriously foubt my encyclopedia would pin it on the atlas as a settlement like tilichiki if not. BTW I also started Machevna. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Machevna, see here. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:46, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll move the article to "Bulkur River" and will keep my eyes open for anything about a possible settlement that existed in that area. "Machevna" also seems to be a problem—no inhabited locality by this name exists in Kamchatka Krai any longer, but I'll need to check a few more sources to determine when it was abolished (and whether it was an inhabited locality to begin with). I'll keep you posted on that one. Thanks for your help! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:50, August 17, 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. Well my encyclopedia is out of date... But you can believe be 110% that Bulkur appears on the encyclopedia atlas with a ring for settlement identical to that of Nordvik (Laptev Sea) west of the town. Nordvik it appears is a former settlement, I am pretty certain Bulkur was once a village, but climate too cold, people abandoned it maybe. The odd thing is that Machevna has the same sized ring as Magadan, you'd think it was a town... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:52, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Machevna also called Macnevna. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:57, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I by no means disbelieve what you are saying. I'm just saying that we need more information, and that the place no longer exists as of today. By the way, I've just dug up something in my legislative collection—as of 2007, there were three designated (industrial) fishing areas on the left bank of the Bulkur River, but they are not incorporated as an inhabited locality and, by the looks of it, are seasonal. Perhaps there used to be a permanent settlement there, perhaps not—we need more data! I promise to keep looking :)

"Machevna" is also bound to show up in searches, because that's the name of the bay on which the alleged inhabited locality used to stand. I need to do more research on this one, though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:01, August 17, 2009 (UTC)

Very odd... People moan about the reliability of wikipedia but just goes to show even seemingly reliable major encyclopedias can be questionable. The very odd thing is that the atlas of russia in it only displays a select number of towns and cities, you know settlements you'd think would be of note, and I am 100% certain it labels these places as towns. Oh yes I recall peka meaning river now it was familiar. BTW i would hazard a guess there are not permantely inhabited but are seasonal fishing locations. BTW Bulkur is mapped on the left bank of the Lena. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the encyclopedia you have is pretty outdated; it was not necessarily inaccurate at the time it was published. My sources on renamed/abolished/etc places reliably go back only to the early 1990s, the coverage of anything before that is pretty much haphazard. If a place was abolished in the 1980s, a reference can be quite hard to find. We need to be able to reconcile this in Wikipedia somehow; I just don't think presenting a place as existing based on an entry in the 1980s encyclopedia is a good practice; at least not when it is no longer listed in any modern sources.

On the other hand, why Machevna would be shown of the same size as Magadan, that beats me :) By the 1980s, Magadan was a sizable town already, not to mention the largest in that area.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:16, August 17, 2009 (UTC)

Actually it is emboldened Magadan so it is shown as more prominent.But Machevna is marked certainly no different from existing urban type settlements we already had article on on here.P..S you might want to check Kezhma, Nevanka, Yukti and Simenga. I won't create any more,but all of these are featured as towns in the encyclopedia. I would have thought there are rural localities though.... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Kezhma and Nevanka are both villages, not urban-type settlements. Yukti is a red link—did you mean something else? Simenga I can't find at all. Research, research, research, cleanup, cleanup, cleanup :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:42, August 17, 2009 (UTC)

Darned Internet connection trouble. Simenga is roughly 250-300 kilometres north of Kurya on the Tunguska river. Shame there aren't ten clones of you to build Russian content on here.... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about removing Gari (Kruševac) from Gari. I neglected to check if it was linked by other articles. I noticed that you cited MOS:DABRL. I know guidelines are constantly changing, but you might want to read it again, as it seems your edits were little different from what it specifies. I have edited Gari again, in keeping with MOS:DABRL is it reads, as well as MOS:DAB overall. ENeville (talk) 22:58, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did actually screw up, although not in the DABRL department :) What I did was to replace "Gari, Russia" (which had incoming links) with "Gari, Sverdlovsk Oblast" (which is correct per WP:NC:CITY#Russia), but I got distracted and forgot to change the incoming "Gari, Russia" links to "Gari, Sverdlovsk Oblast". No wonder you removed the latter again. That is now fixed. I also restored the "other rural localities" line (because otherwise the WP:NC:CITY#Russia requirements for the link to the Sverdlovsk Oblast urban-type settlement are not satisfied), but moved it to a dedicated set index (along with the Sverdlovsk Oblast entity), which is now linked to from the dab. Anyway, thanks for pointing out the original mistake, and hopefully the situation is now resolved. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:35, August 18, 2009 (UTC)

Yes that seems a very good idea. An automatic timezone would definately be a good idea. There is one major issue I have with the pin maps. I think some of the current regional pin maps look really ugly under the oblast locator. I think you should do away with the system you've got set up to control them and ge tthem to function in their own right. Meaning that at present the current map controllers forbid you to add the name of the place on the map unless it is a place where we don't as yet have an oblast locator. In terms of quality I would much rather see a single map like Omsk with the name actually on the map than a big regional map (a lot of them look like a piece of cod LOL) which has a tiny pin and is out of sink with the other locator. When we get our svg map of Russia I think we should just use that plan and simple. People can click the globe anyway for detail. I was wondering also if we could have a colour proposal, we both add a list of colours to use in the infobox and decide the best one. I must admit the green isn't to me taste, I would prefer a steely blue colour like on the oblast template or at least something a little different. I have no objections to the columns any more, you'll be pleased to know. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm as Omsk was before anyway with the name of the place on the map anyway... At present that map is offline and on the left on my PC. The problem is that in white russia the pin covers the the small oblasts and isn't so clear. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking something like this with white on blue (would at least cover two of the flags colours. Mmm I don't like the default citation needed either it makes the templates look untrustworthy and a mess.

Air Force Blue
Colour coordinates
Hex triplet	#5D8AA8
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(93, 138, 168)
HSV (h, s, v)	(204°, 45%, 66%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(55, 37, 234°)
Source	RAF[1]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Well, on maps, like I said before, if you can get one on which every location (even in small republics like Ingushetia or Chechnya) would be clearly visible, I'll gladly get rid of the regional maps (or at least make them switchable)—they often make the infobox almost half as long, which is not good.

As for the labels—that problem has been fixed. Did you get a chance to play with the new map_label_position parameter yet? You can set it to right/left/top/bottom (it is none by default), and the label will show up on the applicable locator map (map of Russia if there's only that, or the regional map, if one is available).

On the infobox color, I honestly don't care all that much (I just like green and dislike purple, and green is what used for these boxes on ru_wiki). The only point on colors that I think is very important is that we use different colors for different concepts—at the very least, the inhabited locality infobox should not be of the same color as the federal subject infobox or the infobox for the federal cities and the districts. It'd also be nice to have (slightly?) different colors for cities/towns, urban-type settlements, and rural localities, but that is not that important.

Default citations, those I won't budge on unless a dozen other editors corner me with it and threaten to lynch :) If there is one place where it's important to cite sources, it's the infobox—it is, after all, a brief summary of the most important details in the article, and it should be immediately obvious where the data came from. It's not that hard to reference something, is it? I would argue that if one cannot reference a bit of data in the infobox, then one shouldn't be adding that bit, and if one can't reference anything in an infobox, then one should probably have not been adding such an infobox in the first place. References is not an area which we can ignore because we don't like the "unreferenced" tags—information is either referenced or it's not. When it is not, it should be tagged as such. I think I mentioned this before—there is not a single line in the infobox which cannot be referenced fairly easily. Going through each and every city/town article and referencing the infoboxes is actually on my own to-do list, and fairly high on it at that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:26, August 24, 2009 (UTC)

Yes I think referencing is important but even on featured place articles we don't have that many citations in the infobox LOL! Maybe take one or two out? Anyway if we can get a good svg map of Russia like the used in Template:Location map Brazil we should make the change then...Himalayan Explorer 16:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Обратил внимание что во всех городах в инфобоксе города появились пометки требующие ссылок на источник по всем данным содержащимся в инфобоксе. Изменение не отразилось в истории ни по одной из страниц, поэтому подозреваю, что изменился шаблон. Если так, то с какой целью внесено изменение? И встает первый и гравный вопрос, а как именно ссылаться то? Все внесенные мной инфобоксы содержат ссылки на официальные сайты городов, по которым проверяется актуальность информации + строчка населения берется с сайта статистического управления- теперь что нужно давать построчно ссылки на конкретные разделы сайта? Так там 3/4 строк данных заполняются по стат листку города из раздела about city т.е. в одном инфобоксе при таком подходе будет до десятка ссылок на одну и ту же страницу официального сайта, а то и вообще на корень который и сам идет строкой того же инфобокса?!Вобщем я не знаю чео хотели, наверно как лучше, но получилось похоже как всегда... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Romualdas Arm (talk • contribs) 03:07, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Если честно, я не очень понимаю, почему это проблема. В отличие от русской википедии (в которой в основном вообще редко понятно, откуда что было взято), для любой информации в Википедии английской должен быть указан источник. Если источник не указан, информация помечается как "unsourced". Как по-другому то? Вы вот, например, берёте информацию с официальных сайтов, я — из первичных документов (устав, законодательство), кто-то ещё — из вторичных источников на английском. Если не указывать источник, что тогда делать нашим читателям — смотреть историю правок и спрашивать каждого участника индивидуально откуда он взял информацию?

Добавить источник вообще вовсе несложно. Взяли вы, например, информацию с офсайта:

param1=something from the official website

добавьте источник:

param1_ref=<ref name="Website">Official website of Nsk. [http:www.example.ru/stats.html Statistics].</ref>

Если та же самая страница используется в качестве источника для другого параметра, то тут тоже всё стандартно:

param2=something else from the official website

param2_ref=<ref name="Website" />

Если сайт тот же, но страница другая, то тогда да, надо ссылку делать отдельно:

param3=something from a different page on that same website

param3_ref=<ref name="WebsitePage2">Official website of Nsk. [http://www.example.ru/someotherpage.html Some other statistics]</ref>

Принцип, в общем, очень прост, и относится не только к данному инфобоксу, но и к Википедии в целом — не хотите/не можете/лень добавлять источник, не добавляйте. Если при этом глаз режет "citation needed", то не добавляйте параметр вообще. В новом инфобоксе, в отличие от старого, все незаполненные параметры (кроме субъекта Федерации) автоматически прячутся.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:52, August 24, 2009 (UTC)