User talk:Ezhiki/2007

Happy New Year!

 * Thank you for your warm wishes, Irpen! I trust your New Year celebrations were fun and joyful, and I hope that the year lying ahead will be more joyful yet!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Adygea
I can up the font - there are a few tricks. What size do you want the image to be? So I know how to optimize the font size... I don't cringe when I see your name, even if you did vote against me with Lake Skadar. Hah. Rarelibra 22:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Lake what? :) Kidding...  As for the font, I would like it to be readable at the current thumbnail's size (450 px wide).  As long as it can be done, the size of the actual image does not really matter, although I suppose the bigger the original is, the better it is suitable for other purposes.  Thank you for looking into this!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You are a funny guy. But imagine this... imagine if Adygea had independence and renamed cities and such... but the "English" world refused to recognize the names because they used some old name? Naming convention on wiki is always interesting, because you get the "number of books" or search engine counts, etc. It still doesn't make it correct. I think my example with Tenedos was a good one... where a girl is called by her grandmother's name instead because no one knows her but everyone remembers her grandmother's name. So imagine Adygea having their names 'dictated' by the "English speaking" world - not good. Rarelibra 22:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * While I am in no way eager to reopen this discussion, I must say this. An autonomous entity gaining independence and subsequently renaming its points of geographic interest is, in my book, completely different from name(s) English speakers happen to use by tradition.  Take Moscow, Russia.  Your way, it should always be called Moskva, English language traditions be damned.  It is further reinforced by the fact that the river of the same name flowing through the city (and for which the city was named) is called Moskva River in English.  Still, no one seems to complain.  Peterhof is still called by its German name in English, even though when you romanize Russian spelling you get "Petergof".  Now, if these entities were to be renamed tomorrow, it wouldn't take long for long-established English usage to be abandonded and new usage to catch up.  With Lake Scutari, however, the situation is that it was never renamed, it just had different names in different countries.  The situation is not very much unlike that with Côte d'Ivoire, where it took a while for usage to (mostly) catch up, or with Tuva (Tyva), where the change is still hardly recognized in English, or with Kiev (Kyiv), where both variants are now used in English, even though the traditional one is clearly still more common.  All these cases are not about the name change; they are about name choice and about national preferences.  Once you distinguish between these two types of situations, the Wikipedia naming policy immediately starts making a lot more sense&mdash;English Wikipedia should use the national preferences of the English-speaking people.  Am I not making any sense here?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I will get the changes you requested done sometime this weekend. Rarelibra 18:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I much appreciate your help!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Pavlovsk(y)
Heh, that's the only photo I could take. But believe me, all the signs I saw refer to it as Pavlovsk! Also no other Pavlovsks have the combination of coniferous forests, dirt road and water reservoir in the background ;)  Grue   18:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I never said I didn't believe you, but, looking at the problem logically, a picture of a road sign in the middle of nowhere is a poor proof of the statement in the article. Besides, no offense, but the quality of the picture is such that one can hardly make out "coniferous forests, dirt road, and water reservoir in the background", even if these indeed were a sufficient combination needed for proof.  That's not to say I don't appreciate the effort :)  Any idea why they would call the settlement differently from its official name?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The Novels WikiProject Newsletter: Issue VII - December 2006
The January 2007 issue of the Novels WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 20:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

1960 in television
Then should this be moved to 1960 in American television as per the 1976 standard? Fistful of Questions 21:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Per previous consensus, global events and births/deaths should stay in 1960 in television, but all American shows and events should indeed be moved to (currently non-existing) 1960 in American television. All other country-specific events/shows should be moved to corresponding country pages.  By the way, may I ask you why you decided to start with 1960 at all?  Just curious...&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * My original edit was to add The Westerner (TV series) as I fixing up that article. I never had an agenda to modify the 1960 in television article heavily, I only was discontent with the fact that the years would not properly redirect to other years in television, so I fixed it to my own personal preference and use. Fistful of Questions 21:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, OK. Like I said before, while I (and, mind you, "some others", as the guideline puts it) disagree with redirecting to other years in television from the date ranges, I just don't care all that much.  What really bothers me is inconsistency.  Changing the way years redirect in only one article in the middle of the series simply doesn't make sense.  That's the only thing I tried to convey from the beginnig.  If you are interested in working on the series and want to re-do the whole thing, that's alright, but don't just leave it a piece of it hanging out there as an eyesore, because it will get reverted eventually, and I won't be me who reverts it.  Anyhoo, if I can be of any help in future, you know where to find me.  Cheers,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Results of fan votes
Hi, what do you think of this change? Is this encyclopedic enough to warrant inclusion? Errabee 10:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Um, unless fandorin.ru itself is notable enough to warrant inclusion (which doesn't seem to be the case), I'd say no.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. I've removed this addition. Errabee 13:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Administrative divisions of Adygea
Hi Ëzhiki,
 * ''...If you have a few minutes of spare time, I would appreciate your comments here...

Just to acknowledge your message and say I'm looking forward to scanning the article and candidate-related comments – on first sight it looks "the business" (Tompw notwithstanding, though I've yet to read his/her concerns properly). I'll make some time to look at it soon, maybe a little later... one change might need to be the size of the first image, the administrative map; I just tried viewing the page in a smaller window and it began to overlap the Contents box... More later, David (talk) 21:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No problem, whenever you have time. The nomination is going to be up for a while; it's just the first day today.  Thanks much!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

''Hi, David! Thanks for looking at administrative divisions of Adygea and for trying to improve it. I much appreciate it!
 * My pleasure, as always!

''I do, however, have a few questions/concerns:
 * ''Could we remove the new infobox from the article until its quirks (see below) are polished? I understand that you are probably not done with this template...
 * Indeed; I began working on the first couple of points you listed, then realized these can wait. Re the remainder:


 * ''...the flag in the infobox is not level with the text. In both Opera and IE the flag is to the right and above the "Republic of Adygea, Russia" line.
 * Yes, I see this here with Firefox as well. It's the best I'm presently able to conjure without further complicating the table structure or using something inelegant such as relative positioning. Maybe, though, one these methods will need to be used... Meanwhile, I can try seeking counsel from one or other of the CSS/HTML experts I've met here.


 * ''any way the separating lines between the fields can be made invisible or very thin? Kind of like in the original template?
 * Here the original table is displayed with lines between fields, so I duplicated that in the template; however, I think a "toccolours" or similar class table should provide.


 * ''can the numbers be right-aligned?
 * Sure.


 * ''finally, the biggest problem is that I might need to modify the template in near future. For Adygea, for example, I have a more recent statistics on the number of rural settlements, but I still want to retain the 2002 Census data.  Anyway, we can deal with that when time comes.
 * Yes, as above, I too realized this need not stall the nomination.


 * ''My other concern is about the map. The reason why it was bigger than now was because the map labels are hard to read when the map is reduced in size....
 * Understood. Unfortunately, however, at 450px the map here presently overlaps the edge of the Contents box, in an area equivalent to a 1024 by 768 screen. If being able to read the annotations without enlarging the map is the priority, however, then I'd suggest trying to reduce the peripheral area included in the map rather than try squeezing the Contents box or

other elements. For instance, there's area to the left and right (west and east) of the republic that seems croppable; doing so might yield an image that retains its legibility when resized to avoid overlaps. Or, to use a nutshell, thin the image!

''David, please forgive me if my demands sound like those of a petulant child with a broken toy...
 * No pardon necessary, as your "demands" sound like useful feedback here – of which any regarding the rephrasings in the first two sections of this version of the page will hopefully benefit us both. (You might also spot some layout experimentation in the first district listed (Giaginsky) and, should you look at the page's code, the beginnings of an alternate layout for the "Administrative division structure" section, currently commented-out.) Best wishes, David (talk) 03:07, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * David, thank you for looking into this once again. Regarding the map, trimming it on left and right, in addition to increasing the font, is precisely what the author of the image promised to do.  Hopefully that'll be fixed soon.
 * I also reviewed the draft in your userspace, and liked it quite a bit. The prose reads so much better now!  I'll add my comments to the draft's talk page in the next few days, addressing the parts where you had the question marks/inaccuracies.  For now, I just want to tell you not to worry about the layout of the "administrative divisions structure" section.  During the FL review, several people suggested that the difference between the types of rural settlements be explained, and, luckily, I found a wonderful source describing precisely that.  I am planning to restructure that section and add more information as soon as I am done processing the source.  I wish I found it before I submitted the nomination, but what's done is done.  Anyway, once I add the types of settlements detail, I will welcome your suggestions regarding that section's layout.  If you think of anything else meanwhile, you are always welcome on my talk page!  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the info about the Administrative divisions structure section; hope it won't be too "dry" to process. I have Administrative divisions of Adygea on my watchlist, so should see as/when you develop it.
 * One thought, though, that's occurred to me is whether the article might be at risk of outstaying its Featured list candidacy (sp?), now that its candidature has attracted attention and contributions... I'll guess I should consult WP:FLC. Yours, David (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't worry about the list staying there longer than it's supposed to. After all, I am in no particular hurry, and if outstaying leads to a few more comments, I'm all for it.  I'd let the admins maintaining FLC worry about that.
 * As for the administrative structure update, I'll take care of it soon after I am done compiling this kind of statistics for all districts. So far I still have three to go plus Maykop (for which I don't have a source yet).&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This change
Evenkia and Taymyria are gone now, too; when will their members' terms elapse, and shouldn't we update the article to reduce the number of federal subjects to 86? &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 22:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, let me guess. Since the constitution still lists 88 subjects and hasn't be updated to reflect the loss of Evenkia and Taymyria... right? &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 22:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's it exactly. Frankly, I am not quite sure how to handle it.  The Constitution has indeed not yet been updated, yet it is a fact that both Evenkia and Taymyria are no longer federal subjects (there was a constitutional law to that effect, which, however ironic it is, introduced no changes into the Constitution itself).  So, if we are to reference the Constitution alone, then the number should stay at 88 for now.  Or, we can write an elaborate footnote explaining why the number in the article is two less than the number in the Constitution.
 * As for the Evenkia and Taymyria Federation Council members, they will continue to serve until December 31, 2007, which is also when the transitional period expires.
 * Let me know if you want to write a footnote yourself or if you prefer me to do it. Thanks!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I'd prefer to let the expert (i.e. you) handle it. :) &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 22:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, flattery to avoid work... An approach that always worked for me :)  Will do.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I flatter only those worthy of praise. ;) &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 22:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I see you're really good at it :) Which reminds me.  Can I ask you for a return favor and review this and this when you have time?  I'd be interested to hear your comments if you have them; if not, that's fine, too.  Thanks!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Done! &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 18:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was just wondering if you had any concerns regarding the proposal; apparently you don't, which is good to know.  Anyway, I've updated the Federation Council article on my part.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope, no problems; and thanks, I've already seen the update. :) &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 19:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

More confusion about translating film roles
Thank you for helping me with my little "режиссёр-постановщик"/"режиссёр" dilemma... I was wondering if you might have any information about something else that I came across, though: the difference between "художник-постановщик" and "художественный руководитель". "художник-постановщик", it seems, is always translated as "art director", but "художественный руководитель" directly translates as "art director". What exactly is the difference between these roles, if any? Here's an example. The English translation (flag in the upper-right corner) translates both of them as "art director", but is there actually a difference in role there? I translated it as "animation director" over here, but I don't know how accurate that is.

Oh, and if you don't know, please tell me if you know who I could ask - thanks. :) Esn 22:49, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm afraid I'm not much of a television/cinema expert. I do, however, have access to very decent dictionaries and a few friends who work as interpreters in those fields.  "Художник-постановщик" indeed best translates as "art director", a translation that's also often used for "художественный руководитель".  The latter, however, more accurately translates as either "artistic (or creative) director" or "artistic administrator".  As for the differences between the two, I am sorry, that beats me.  It looks that "х-постановщик" has more say in things directly dealing with the play/movie/TV program, while "х. руководитель" is more in charge of art-related things around the production process.  At least that's what my friends tell me, anyway :)  I don't have anything reference-worthy, unfortunately.  Hope this helps at least a little.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Italics
Re: (rv--we do not italicize Cyrillics; see WP:MOS#Foreign terms) in Высоцк, thanks for changing it back and putting the reason why. It's still ugly though :D -Yupik 14:27, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ain't gonna argue with that :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Sakha
I was mainly planning on translating what it is in the Finnish wikipedia with backup from the Russian wikipedia on each individual one. The biggest problem preventing me from doing so is that I know I'll end up translitterating the names wrong for some of the stuff in the articles (which is why I've not bothered to do much with Russian sources). Do you a schedule set up for doing the articles? -Yupik 09:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I don't really have much of a schedule. I am currently putting finishing touches on administrative divisions of Adygea, which is now an FL candidate (feel free to opine there, by the way), and then I promised to start working on administrative divisions of Tatarstan to bring it to featured status, which will take me a while.  I have no definite plans beyond that.
 * If transliteration issues are the only thing preventing you from working on Sakha, don't let it stop you. First, transliteration guidelines are all spelled out in WP:RUS.  Second, names of all major administrative units (uluses, settlements, naslegs) are already available through administrative divisions of Sakha; just use those.  Third, even if you make a mistake or two during your work, I can always fix it for you.  No matter which area of Russia I'm going to be working on, I can always make time to help a person like you who is willing to cover another area.  By the way, may I ask you why are you interested in Sakha at all, let alone in its administrative divisions?  Just curious.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, most people would say that the reason I'm interested in it is because I'm nuts, but I spent some time in ru:Чукотский автономный округ in the late 1980s/early 1990s and it's only one over after all :D Actually, I'm also interesting in Mari El as I've visited a number of places there later on. Some day I suppose I should scan some of the old pics I have of Провидения and Ureliki and include them in their articles. On Wikipedia, I've been trying to get articles in that people are doing, the main article I was working on, Skolt Sámi still has a lot of work that needs to be done, but it's getting there slowly. Besides Skolt, I tend to work on the Fenno-Ugric languages, people and culture, but sometimes I branch out into other areas. Plus I tend to create a lot of trouble on Translation by constantly requesting translations that I feel should be here but that I don't have the time or language skills to do. This week I'll be working on translating the rest of Lovozero (village) from Russian; I already translated it from Russian to Finnish, now I just have to do it into English. If you don't mind having a look at it next week when it's done for sure, I'd appreciate it. My Russian just isn't what it used to be :D Sorry for the rambling text, it's almost 1 a.m. here! -Yupik 22:42, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I got the translation done for Lovozero (village) if you want to have a look-see. I did smush some of the sentences together when translating it to give it better flow in English, but hopefully all the facts are correct still. Thanks a ton! -Yupik 23:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks! The more accurate information from the census is wonderful! I've never been able to pull up that site (it always times out.) Should the more accurate census info also be put in the Russian wikipedia? -Yupik 10:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. By the way, for user ru-1 you pulled more than a decent translation.  Looks like your Russian is not as rusty as you lead us to believe :)  Anyway, all I did is to re-format the article the way other articles on Russian settlements are formatted, corrected terminology in a few places (e.g., a vilage should never be referred to as a town), and added Census numbers.  Speaking of which, if you think you could use Census information in future, just send me an email, and I'll send you both 1989 and 2002 Census sheets.  As for the official Census site, it looks that they are having problems with the main page (again).  The actual data are still available, though.  You can still access Census documents if you start somewhere in the middle, or you can access it via google cache.
 * If I can be of any further assistance, let me know. I'm always happy to help.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Spaces
well, I tried. Maybe you have a nice way to avoid overlap of content/templates. Thanks Hmains 18:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Semirechie
No problem with the move, although Semirechie is much the most common transliteration to be found in academic works. I should also point out that Wikipedia's transliteration policy for Russian is at odds with that of the Library of Congress, and indeed pretty much every system I've ever come across. ь is almost universally transliterated with an apostrophe ('), whilst y is used to transliterate ы. Still, I don't imagine there's much we can do about that. Sikandarji 09:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comment, Sikandarji. I just wanted to point out that WP:RUS is far from being a non-standard oddball.  It is in fact a slightly modified version of the BGN/PCGN system, which is used quite extensively to romanize geographic names.  It is just as well established as the ALA-LC system, and, from my observations, is used more often.  Another reason not to use ALA-LC is its overall heavy reliance on diacritics.
 * Anyway, if matters of romanizing Russian interest you, you are welcome to add your opinion on WP:CYR&mdash;a policy draft for romanizing Slavic languages (including Russian), which is supposed to eventually replace WP:RUS. Let me know if you have any questions.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)]


 * I agree with you about diacritics (I try to avoid them myself). However as far as I can see both BGN/PCGN system and ALA-LC system transliterate ь with an apostrophe ('), and ы with y. I don't see why WP:RUS should differ from this (it is, as I remarked before, well-nigh universal nowadays) so I may take up your suggestion. Sikandarji 09:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:RUS romanizes "ы" with "y" as well, but omits the soft sign completely. The "y" in "Semirechye" does not stand for the soft sign per se, but rather shows that "e" is iotated.  Also, as I said before, WP:RUS does not match BGN/PCGN exactly; it is a modified BGN/PCGN.  These modifications were introduced only to increase readability&mdash;apostrophes for soft signs are omitted pretty much for the same reason why diacritics are not used.  Note that this practice was not invented solely for Wikipedia but mirrors common romanization practices.  Britannica does the same, for example ("Ulyanov", "Polsky").  Take any newspaper news about Russia&mdash;you are highly unlikely to see apostrophes in romanized names there.  Hope this answers your question.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Articles
Hello again! Is the discussion on not using "the" with district still hanging around somewhere? It's a really strange place to drop the article btw. Thanks also for all the census info! I still haven't been able to access the site. -Yupik 20:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't remember where it was, sorry. I'll try to find it for you.  The person I talked with, however, was an English major and a native speaker.  Also, note that Britannica does not use articles when referring to raions either, so that must be correct.
 * As for the Census, you are still welcome to email me if you'd like the data sheets. I have them in Excel format for both 1989 and 2002.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Templates
Hello Ezhiki! Some time ago KNewman added towns of Khanty-Mansi AO and Yamalo-Nenets AO to. Should they be there? - Darwinek 20:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, that's certainly not incorrect: both Khantia-Mansia and Yamalia are parts of Tyumen Oblast, even though they both are considered to be federal subjects. The way all other city/town templates are done, however, it would make more sense to list them separately, so two new templates would make sense.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OK. I will remove links from that template to keep whole process consistent. - Darwinek 21:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Sokha
Is there any way to use on the Sokha article? --Ineffable3000 16:37, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I strongly believe that the sokha article needs a picture and I would like to find one I can legally use. --Ineffable3000 16:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I also think a picture is a must. This one seems to be OK (judging from the caption, it was created in the 19th century, so it should be in public domain now), but other than indirect clues I can't find anything regarding this picture's status.  It certainly doesn't look like a modern picture to me, but my perception is unfortunately not a guarantee of the picture's free status.  I suppose you could email the site and ask them where the picture comes from.  I'll also try to scour my (rather limited) home library in case there is anything there.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A plow is a general term. A sokha specifically refers to a plow created during the 11th century (or somewhere around that time) in Kievan Rus'. It only relies on one horse and has a special design. A plow can be operated by oxen, many horses, and even a tractor. --Ineffable3000 17:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. Regarding your comment at the announcements board, I'll check my unabridged Merriam-Webster tonight to see if this is considered to be a loanword.  If not, it might probably be a better idea to make it a subsection in plow anyway.  Also, another question: is a sokha much different from an ard?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * From what I just read, an ard is from Ancient Central Europe, while a sokha is from Kievan Rus'. I couldn't find much information about the design of the ard. --Ineffable3000 17:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Sokha is not in Merriam-Webster by the way. Be bold. And can you also take a look at Uchraspred, Rabfak, ad Skhod. --Ineffable3000 17:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Have you looked it up in the unabridged version of Merriam-Webster? If not, you'd be surprised what they have there...  As for the other three examples, the first two don't really have an (approximate) equivalent in English the way "sokha" does.  "Skhod" can easily be translated as "gathering"; it's a legal term applicable to countries besides Russia.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Remove the "Loanword" category if you do not think it is a loanword. It is hard to determine whether something should have it's own article or not. has enough information on the sokha to make a big article about it. And I'll just fair use the picture for now. --Ineffable3000 17:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The only sure way (I know of) to find out whether it's a loanword or not is to check the OED. If a word is not there, it's not a loadword but a transliteration.  Unfortunately, I don't have access to OED, so I have to make do with unabridged Merriam-Webster, which is not nearly as complete.  As for the picture, fair use should be fine for now.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Please check when you have access to the dictionary. I am going to expand the article so that it doesn't need to be merged. --Ineffable3000 18:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Will do tonight when I get home.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you a professor at a university? --Ineffable3000 18:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll take it as a compliment, but no, I am not a professor :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you do? I saw that you are living in the United States. I live in the USA too. I live in Chapel Hill, NC and I am finishing up high school and planning to major in math. Russian history and military history are just my interests. I also do limited editing on other topics on Wikipedia. You seem to know a lot about Russian History. --Ineffable3000 18:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, my knoweledge of the Russian history is not as extensive as you seem to believe. I certainly know more than an average Joe (or Ivan), but not really all that much more.  Russian history is among my interests as well, but I never made a point to study it purposfully, and I prefer to contribute to the areas of Wikipedia where I can offer more expertise.
 * As for the information about myself, that's something I chose not to divulge for personal reasons. Sorry!  I can tell that I live in the Midwest, but I'd rather not specify where.  North Carolina is kind of ways off from where I live, so we are not really neighbors.  I do have an old friend living in Asheville though, but that person does not edit Wikipedia :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess you are Russian too though. Can you just tell me if you are a high schooler (like me), a college student, or an adult? --Ineffable3000 18:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That I am a Russian is a fact I never tried to conceal :) I though it to be obvious...  As for the second part of your question, of the three choices you offered "adult" seems to be the best match.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the category, Russian loanwords. --Ineffable3000 00:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Lists of the Russian subdivisions
Ёzhiki, привет колючим :) ~ so I finally did it, following our discussion at Featured list candidates/Administrative divisions of Adygea: I created Category:Lists of country subdivisions of Russia and placed it underneath the Category:Lists of country subdivisions. This way, all the lists you created can show by country Category:Subdivisions of Russia and additionally, sort as part of general Geography-related lists. What do you think? -- I was trying to come up with a better name and I'm afraid it's still not quite accurate nor stylistically sound... so to minimize the damage, I started with adding this category to the Template:Administrative divisions of the Russian federal subjects only, hoping that if this work of mine doesn't make much sense, it'd be pretty easy to undo. If you find that this idea is workable, then maybe some other lists, such as Subdivisions of Russia or List of heads of federal subjects of Russia or such, could go into this new category as well. Kind regards - Introvert • ~  03:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Vera! Thanks for giving me a nudge regarding this.  I am generally not very good with categories, so I am trying to avoid them whenever possible.
 * I think the general idea is quite good. The only thing I don't like, as you probably suspected, is the category name.  "Country subdivisions of Russia" is not a term we use anywhere.  "(Lists of) [a]dministrative divisions of the federal subjects of Russia" would be more in line with the terminology, but it's kind of long and unwieldy.  Still, it's the best I can come up with.  Also, subdivisions of Russia shouldn't go into this cat, because it is already the main article of Category:Subdivisions of Russia.
 * If you have any further ideas regarding the cat name, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll rename the one you created and start populating it in the next few days.
 * Again, thanks for your help! Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Ёzhiki! ~ thanks for your thanks, and by no means I consider myself to be any good with categories, no; I do find them very confusing and hard to work with. Perhaps this case is one of a very few that I somehow feel pretty positive about, and of course I also wanted to contribute something useful to yet another very fine piece of work you've done, I'm happy to admit that :) As to the category name, most certainly please change it to a better name, this is your area and I won't impose ever. If only I could add my 1.5c, I believe it's quite okay to drop the article in the category title and use a shorter title "(Lists of) [a]dministrative divisions of the federal subjects of Russia" -->"Administrative divisions of federal subjects of Russia", or an even shorter one, simply --> "Divisions of federal subjects of Russia".  While such expression may be not as sound in a proper sentence, such phrase when used as a title looks rather appropriate to me without the "the". And perhaps subdivisions of Russia could be a "see also" up in the category intro, if it doesn't fit underneath?  But please make your decision, I am sure it will be the best.  Congratulations on your good work, I hope you've enjoyed it - Introvert  • ~  21:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You are, of course, absolutely right about omitting "the"&mdash;it's perfectly permissible to do so in headers, titles, and other places where space is at premium. Well, that's what my English grammar references tell me anyway :)  I'll go with "administrative divisions of federal subjects of Russia".  Omitting "administrative" is inadvisable because it is somewhat ambiguous&mdash;there are plenty of types of non-administrative divisions.  I'll also add "subdivisions of Russia" as a see also link in the new cat.
 * One more time, thanks for your persistence and advice. See you around!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Похоже мне следует извиниться за занудство :) All credit is yours...yours and only yours. It's great to see this valuable informational resource better visible as it deserves. I am so glad if I could do at least something useful this time and am hoping this is not going to be the last one :)  Thank you! Best wishes to you in all your work - Vera - Introvert  • ~  09:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You make it sound as if I accused you of stealing credit or something :)) What I meant by "persistence" was not "занудство", but rather a motivation for me to further look at the category structure instead of thinking "I don't know how it works; to hell with it" :)  Best wishes to you too, and I'm counting on seeing you around next time something like this surfaces!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Re Adygea
Hi Ëzhiki – belatedly,
 * ''...I have significantly expanded "administrative divisions of Adygea", and the draft is currently in my userspace...

Sorry not to've acknowledged your message more quickly; I seem to've found myself involved in a few more threads than I'd imagined. I'm looking forward, though, to paying a visit in the next day or so. Hope all well, David (talk) 00:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * David, this is absolutely not a problem. I can well see that you had/have your hands quite full with other things.  Since I am not going anywhere any time soon, I can afford to wait no problem :)  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Ëzhiki. I've now combined the previous version of User:David Kernow/Administrative divisions of Adygea with the new material from your version of the page and made some amendments to / suggestions within it. You'll also see I've tried experimenting a little with the layout, which, if you're not keen on it, I understand – I'm not sure whether or not I am! If nothing else, however, I reckon the article ought to avoid using first-level headings (i.e.  ) as I believe these are meant to be reserved for articles' titles (WP:MoS...?)
 * If any of the alterations/notes within the text don't seem to make sense, please enquire; I hope they will make sense to me when I read them again! Yours, David (talk) 01:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * PS Re this, I took a look at the discussion and realised I don't have ideas either way, at least not at present. Thanks, though, for pointing it out.


 * Thanks, David! You can expect my comments later this week.  As you predicted, I am not sure about the new layout, but I guess it's nothing surprising considering that the choice of a layout has been a problem since day one.  I am yet to see one I truly like and think will work.  Not to discourage you from trying new ideas, no, sir! :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ping! David (talk) 17:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Predisambiguation of U.S. cities
There are people who agree with you and me that no article in Wikipedia should be disambiguated when disambiguation is not required, except perhaps for specific individual exceptions. However, when it comes to U.S. cities, at any given time only a few of us are present. Once in a while we have a majority, or even a consensus, which is how Chicago, Illinois and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania got moved to Chicago and Philadelphia within the last year, but most of the time the "comma convention" proponents gather enough numbers to prevent a consensus from being established. This seems to be the case with changing the guideline itself. Recently, so few of us were present that they were able to remove mention of the Chicago and Philadelphia and even longstanding New York City exceptions in the guideline.

In general, there seems to be a lot of support for the notion that within a given category of articles, they should all be named consistently, even when doing so results in unnecessary disambiguation. A recent exception to that was the naming of TV episodes where some pushed for including the name of the series in parentheses for any article about an episode in a given series. Thankfully, this was rescinded strongly. However, carrying that sentiment to other areas, like U.S. cities and royalty, is much more difficult. Not sure why. --Serge 18:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, stubborness and resistance to "damn foreigners trying to break our life-long traditions" probably plays a role here, wouldn't you agree? :) I could understand this sentiment if this were a US version of Wikipedia; however, since it in fact an international edition in English, such sentiments are quite harmful. I could also understand this if we were using pre-disambiguation everywhere else, but that's definitely not the case.
 * Anyway, since you seem to be a lot more involved with this than I am, feel free to leave me a note on my talk every time I miss something of this nature going on. Like I said, the convention works, and I am yet to see a convincing and a logical argument (i.e., something beyond the version of ILIKEIT) from the opponents' side.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It is policy that articles on American places should be in American English, which chooses to deal with the many American ambiguations by making Portland, Oregon and Walla Walla, Washington part of the language, even thogugh the second would be unambiguous as a municipal name. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

But if I seem testy, it is because Serge has been pushing this POV for months and months, always in a minority. He promised to leave it alone until March, and has broken his word. Please read, although it is a burden, the archive pages to the talk page; we have been through this before, and taken innumerable !votes, many from before I arrived. Enough! Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I definitely will go through the archives. As a newcomer to the discussion, I had no idea for how long this had been going on.  Nevertheless, since the issue is open once again anyway, I reserve the right to voice my opinion on it.  I am not going to (ever) re-open the issue myself once it's closed (I have a lot of other things to do without adding US cities naming conventions to my to-do list), but I am going to participate each and every time the discussion is legitimately re-opened, not because I am stubborn and unreasonable, but because I genuinly believe it would be for the best of Wikipedia, and because I find none of the opponents' points convincing.  That's my right as a Wikipedian, and I'm going to use it.
 * Rest assured, I have no personal prejudices against either you or Serge. No matter how many things we agree or disagree on, I don't see it as a barrier for any potential future collaboration.  If you see something you believe I can help with, you are very welcome to contact me and ask for my help; any time.  Hopefully, same is true the other way around.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * And, of course, contact me if I can help. I think I will fade again; one of the reasons I remember Serge's promise was the cheerful prospect of leaving that silly argument alone for a while.


 * You may find that you want to join me elsewhere when you've read the archives; there really is no benefit to WP proposed here. Lots of other subjects (the naming of royalty is merely another one I know) have naming conventions which tweak common name slightly, as this does. Serge just wants "one naming convention to rule them all", if you know Tolkien; Promenader wants, for some reason yet to be clear, Portland (Oregon); and another editor has grievance from back when the bot did it this way, It is a matter of judgment whether there is consensus for the present system; there has always been a majority. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, we can't expect everyone to want the same thing. That'd be too good to be true, wouldn't it? :)  Truth is, there are plenty of policies and guidelines in Wikipedia that I personally don't like, yet, as an administrator, have to uphold.  I am not challenging them all, simply because I know that my time could be far better used elsewhere, but I do usually participate when those policies are challenged by someone else.  If a policy is changed as a result, I can get back to editing happy; if it's not, well, then I just get back to editing.  No big deal, really.  (Universal) Consistency is nice and imprortant, and would be great to have, but content and organization (as opposed to lack of organization) are more important still.  After all, we are writing an encyclopedia here, not a "How to Write an Encyclopedia" manual.  See you around!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm disappointed to hear that the preference for always using City, State has not been put in a convincing manner. To me, it is partly a style issue rather than purely disambiguation.
 * I find that always using a state name means that it is likely that I correctly guessed the right name for the article I wanted on the first attempt if I'm editing a biography or a highway article for example.
 * I mostly edit Australian articles. Australian towns have had a naming convention similar to the one that Serge dislikes so much for almost two years, with no arguments. We ensure that all town articles are named , and that there is always a dab link or redirect from . Thus less time is spent as editor trying to ensure I've linked to the right article, without a redirect.
 * There's a naming guideline somewhere about using a name which is as precise as is reasonable for both editors and readers. When I'm a reader, I frequently see places I have never heard of. Often, waving my mouse over the link and seeing a state, province or country name is enough that I understand where the place is so I can keep reading the article I intended without getting sidetracked.
 * Cleaning up links to dab pages (named ) is much easier than fixing links inadvertently to the wrong article by some other editor who didn't notice they had linked to a different place than intended.
 * State (province/county depending on the country) is the "right" level of "disambiguation" as there are few name collisions, and these already have well-known (locally) ways of resolving the ambiguity.
 * The reason this naming standard is needed in Wikipedia but not other encyclopaedias is the sheer number of articles. Most towns in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia (and other English-speaking countries) have or could be expected to have in the future a Wikipedia article. This causes a much higher risk of a present or future naming conflict than is the case in a printed encyclopaedia, or even an online one that has to pay its authors and reviewers.
 * I hope this list of reasosns is helpful. --Scott Davis Talk 14:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Scott, for your extensive write-up. I can't help but notice, however, that the majority of the reasons you presented deal with the convenience of the editors.  As an editor who extensively works with a disambiguation scheme that's exactly opposite of the one you describe, I assure you that none of the "inconveniences" you listed is a major concern.  The problem, as I see it anyway, is not with the fact that "your" system is wrong and "mine" is right (or vice versa)&mdash;both can be used quite effectively when applied in a consistent manner&mdash;it is with the fact that both systems are basically incompatible while being used within the same frame (the whole of Wikipedia).  Seeing that pre-disambiguation is avoided in the majority of other areas, it seems only natural to convert to the system that does away with pre-disambiguation altogether.  If the majority turned out to be the other way around, you'd be seeing me vouching for using pre-disambiguation in all cases.
 * This is not to convince you to change your point of view or anything; I am just trying to explain my position. The bottom line is that I don't care what system we use, but I do want to see one system, or at least one with minor variations.  As Wikipedia grows, the more standardization we can introduce, the better it is for all, readers and editors alike.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thankyou for pointing out the bias towards editors in my response. I guess as a reader who "got hooked", I forget there are some readers who never edit.


 * Naming conventions (precision) is the naming convention I referred to above. That page mentions readers more often than editors. My first point was written as editor of a biography, but equally is about a reader of a place article. Naming articles precisely allows the redirect to later be turned into a disambig page without inconveniencing either readers or editors. Using that level of precision with a standard style means that regular readers can either type the exact name they're looking for in the box, or type the short form and (possibly) go through a disambig page, without having to think about whether there would be another use of the name.


 * Cleaning up links to dab pages or wrong primary use pages is definitely an editing task, but it is for readers. Most readers can probably cope with a link that led to a dab page, but if they follow a link in one article and end up in the wrong target article, confusion abounds and the credibility of the whole project is brought into question for such an "obvious error" (to the reader). We will never train all editors to always check the target of every link they make (we can't even stop vandalism!), so making it easier for other editors to find and fix the dodgy links is an overall benefit.


 * My "long term dream" would be for all place articles to be named with a comma for precision, and completely abolish the "primary use" concept - if it needs a dab, put that at the primary name and move all articles to a more precise name. This is not all that far from your position on preferring consistency. --Scott Davis Talk 22:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess we share the same long term dream, except I would prefer to standardize things the way the majority of things are already standardized (which is without using pre-disambiguation). Having to move less articles is better than having to move more articles, wouldn't you agree?  Especially considering that the number of articles to be moved may well run into thousands.  Even if it were only the question of optimal distribution of resources (editors' time and servers' capacities), it would alone have been sufficient to make an informed decision.
 * As for which way it's easier for editors to edit, that can be a subject of many more theoretical debates. Truth is, we have no evidence either way.  You say pre-disambiguating, when done properly, is easier on editors.  I say that I had no problems with unique titles and disambiguating only when necessary (again, when this is done properly).  None of us can support these statements with cold hard evidence, except that both of us can demonstrate lack of problems.  One thing seems logical, though&mdash;having cities in a few countries named one way and cities in most of the rest of countries named the other way has a great potential for confusion and disruption, as well as increased training costs.  Would you care to comment on my proposal here?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Gavri(i)l Popov
Hi there,

There are two people called Gavriil Popov (Гавриил Попов) - a composer and a former mayor of Moscow.

In the English Wikipedia both of them are called Gavril. I don't understand the reason for that. Google does find "Gavril Popov", but Gavriil is more common and more correct.

I tried to move the former mayor's article to Gavriil Popov, but couldn't do it, because it exists as a redirect. Can you help me please? Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni 09:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Any help?.. --Amir E. Aharoni 14:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I haven't missed it. I'll take a look at it later today, I promise.  Sorry for not acknowledging your inquiry earlier.  Cheers,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, done. I did it the right way, however :)  Since we are supposed to always disambiguate by patronymic (occupations can be used when the patronymic is unknown, or in addition to patronymic when there is more than one person called FN+P+LN), I moved the composer to Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov and the politician&mdash;to Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov.  I then pointed both Gavril Popov and Gavriil Popov to the Popov disambiguation page (it wouldn't make sense to create a separate dab page for "Gavriil Popov" as there would only be two entries).  I also straightened out the backlinks.  Hopefully, I didn't miss anything.  Thanks for spotting this, and let me know if I can be of similar assistance in future!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Novels newsletter : Issue IX - February 2007
The February 2007 issue of the Novels WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

Delivered by grafikbot 17:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Haiku Reservoir
re: "deprod--all geo-locations are inherently notable, no matter how small."

My personal opinion is that sort of overzealous and absolutist reasoning is flawed. Where do you draw the line? Apparently you are unwilling to draw any line. Taken to the extreme, it means that every geocache location should get a Wikipedia article, every park, every road, every church, every supermarket, every bodega, every preschool, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. I believe that your stand is a violation of What the Wikipedia is not (specifically "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information").

I haven't decided what my next option is, but I will very likely either send the article to AFD, or merge it with the appropriate larger location (presumably either Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii or Haiku Valley).  Blank Verse  06:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, BlankVerse! Thank you for your comments.  The way I personally draw the line is by differentiating between geo-features and landmarks of local interest.  Mountains, rivers, lakes, plains, and yes, reservoirs, are all geo-features, all inherently notable and worth having an article about.  Parks, roads, churches, schools, monuments are landmarks of local importance, and as such are subject to notability criteria set forth in WP:LOCAL.  There probably is something that can be seen as an overlap between the two, but as an inclusionist I prefer to err on the side of, well, inclusion.  Hence deprodding the stub about Haiku Reservoir.
 * You are still welcome to go through AfD with this. I will definitely vote "keep", but at least the fate of the stub will be subject to several people's opinions, not just yours and mine.  Let me know if there is anything I can help with.  Cheers,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Most manmade reservoirs are non-notable in my opinion, just like most parks. Very few are as notable as say Griffith Park or Balboa Park. In the dinky town that I live in there are two non-notable reservoirs that are part of two non-notable parks. The parks are (briefly) mentioned in the article on the town, but the reservoirs are not (well almost not, because one of the parks is Reservoir Park).  Blank Verse  13:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine. I myself wouldn't create a stub like this, but since it's already there, I see no reason to delete it.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Request
Hi there, Ezhiki! I would like to upload a few images to the Pyatigorsk article, but don't know how to do it. Could I send them to your email and ask you to do that for me? I took them myself a few days ago while vising my father-in-law :). KNewman 13:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Kirill! Uploading the images is actually very easy.  Just go to the Commons, log in, and select the "Upload file" option in the menu in the left part of the screen.  Press "Browse...", and select the file from the location on your hard drive.  In the "Summary" field, provide a brief description of the image, and in the "Licensing" drop-down box select the license you wish to share the image under (I assume it will be "own work, copyleft").  Press "Upload file", and voilà&mdash;you are done.  Do this for every image you want to upload.
 * If you still don't want to do it yourself, I'll gladly upload the images for you. Just email them to me and let me know what descriptions and licenses to use.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Map of Adygea
Ahhh... more modifications. More lists. This is starting to become more complicated! I will need some time, as I am quite swamped right now. How much time do you need? Rarelibra 21:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds like someone needs a break :) Whenever you can get to do it will be fine; I am in no particular hurry, honestly.  You have already done more than I could have ever hoped for.  All I need to know is whether you agree to do it some day, whenever it might be.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Districts of Tatarstan
Есть ещё предложения насчет шаблона: добавить ещё 1 язык названия как минимум; причём чтобы было видно, что он не официальный язык этой республики, а локальный: например, ни один из языков дагестана не является государственным, но каждый из них важен на уровне своего района, на них издаются газеты и т.п.... например в вышеупомянутом нурлатском районе на таком положении чувашский язык. Но в то же время, в отличие от русского и татарского этот зык не официальный в РТ...

Как бы скрыть тот факт, что флаг и герб района не доступны (я не уверен что в РТ у районов вообще есть флаг у муницп образований кроме казани). А вцелом всё классно реализовано! --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 18:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Язык местного значения добавить совсем нетрудно, только я не знаю, как его лучше отобразить, чтобы было сразу понятно, что он неофициальный. Что касается герба и флага, то их я спрячу.  Гербы и флаги, насколько я помню, полагаются всем муниципальным образованиям (включая, по-моему, даже сельске поселения), но разработали их пока очень немногие.  Ну и напоследок, думаю, что плотность населения должна считаться автоматом, вместо того, чтобы заставлять редакторов считать и вписывать её вручную.  Тоже сделаю.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Кстати, надо наверное ещё добавить в табличку главу района, телефонный код и дату расформирования (на случай, если район упразднят). --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 16:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * А оно надо? Про глав районов статьи писать вряд ли кто-то будет; не такие уж это значительные и интересные люди.  К тому же, кому-то надо будет следить за тем, чтобы эту информацию обновлять, что возможно, но очень трудоёмко.  Что касается телефонного кода, то это, по-моему, тоже лишнее.  Телефонный код нужен в инфобоксах городов; для районов я смысла в нём не вижу.  А вот дату расформирования добавлю.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Огромное спасибо за обновления шаблона городов! есть одно маленькое замечание: можно ли чтобы у республик писалось не Administrative center of, a capital of? --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 20:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Это я в Казани просто забыл указать нужный параметр. Шаблон это предусматривает (параметр AdmCtrType).  Сейчас поправлю.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Speedy criteria?
Hi. I came across several pages of random lists of Filmfare awards without sources. Do they qualify for Speedy Delete?

The author is a repeat offender and one of his usernames was blocked indefinitely. See Please advise.

Anwar 14:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi! Lack of sources is indeed not a speedy criteria.  In general, speedy deletion is reserved for the articles which are either clearly nonsense, vandalism, copyvio, or which cannot be expanded given the information available in the article (see the complete list of reasons at WP:CSD).  Contributions of banned users can also be speedied on sight, but I don't see that particular editor in the list of banned users.
 * To me, the best course of action seems to be AfD. That is, of course, if you are reasonably sure that the article has no place in Wikipedia.  Hope it helps.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * See User:Prin and his confirmed fertile farm. Also see WP:CSDUA Can I be bold here? Anwar 14:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * CSDUA is still in the proposed stage. Prin certainly looks abusive, but s/he has not been formally banned.  The Filmware lists do not meet CSD at this point of time.  No matter from which standpoint you look at it, speedy deletion is simply not justified.  Being a person who has great regards to procedures, I'd say you should go with AfD for any of Prin's articles that do not explicitly meet CSD.  You could also prod them first, but I don't know if that would have much chance of success.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Re ...Miscellania
Hi Ëzhiki, I think I've sorted out Infobox Russian District (aside: Before any pedants take note, I believe infobox names are sentence-cased after the initial "Infobox", i.e. "Infobox Russian district") – at least it seems to be okay – during which I (1) added comments within the code to aid my following it; and (2) tinkered a little with some formatting (in particular, the Website parameter). Hope, therefore, the template now doesn't feel too foreign! Nice work, David (talk) 17:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC) PS Any thoughts re Infobox ADRFS or is that best kept shelved for now...?


 * Hi, David! Thanks for looking at the template and straightening it out!  I apologize for the lack of inline comments and overall mangled structure&mdash;I'm afraid that's the way I am when it comes to coding.
 * Overall, I like the way the template looks now. I do, however, have a few questions.  Can I ask you why you left-aligned the table headers (they used to be centered)?  Was it done in order for the numbers (of cities/towns, etc.) to look more balanced?  I take it there was no way to adjust the column width of the "administrative structure" and "municipal structure" sections to be different from those in the rest of the table?
 * Again, I appreciate your help! Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. I have not forgotten about Infobox ADRFS.  I intend to revisit it sometime soon.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've simplified the inline comments a little, now that I've been through the code. (The code structure wasn't mangled!)
 * The left-aligned headers were an oversight; I'm used to rows beginning "!" centering their contents, but must've forgotten that this doesn't occur with "infobox geography". All should now be repaired. Re the Admin and Municipal structure sections, I meant to say that a subtable is my first thought as regards implementing different column widths, but the template seems fine to me without this complication (especially with the padding-right now added); I wasn't seeing "urban-type settlements" wrap on Nurlatsky District, for example. If, though, I'm missing the point, please repeat (with apologies for thick skull).
 * I also forgot to mention a query I'd left as a comment within the code for displaying the map; it begins "<!--__Should the following..." Yours, David (talk) 21:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, "urban-type settlements" does span two lines ("urban-type" and "settlements") for me when I look at the template. "Municipal urban settlements" and "Municipal rural settlements" span three lines (one for each word), and "rural localities" and "district newspaper" also span two lines.  I looked at the template in both IE and Opera.  Would a screenshot be helpful?  I understand that even if the left column's width were increased, lines would still probably wrap, but at least the numbers wouldn't be that far to the right from the label.  Aligning those numbers vertically would probably be a good idea, too.
 * As for your in-code inquiry, sorry I missed it. Putting the legend inside the then-statement probably wouldn't hurt.  I don't think anyone would put in a map legend without the actual map, but hey, people tend to do all kinds of stupid stuff!  I'll have it fixed just to be on the safe side.
 * Thank you very much for having a look at it; it was very helpful! Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * ''Hmm, "urban-type settlements" does span two lines ... for me when I look at the template...
 * Curious... Since "Municipal urban settlements" appears here to be the longest entry, it's now spaced using s; any improvement...?  David (talk) 21:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup, that fixed it! Simple and effective; thanks a lot!  Just out of curiousity, you said entries did not wrap in your browser&mdash;are you using Firefox?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes! Version 2.0.0.1 (reasonably up-to-date, I think...)  Useful to be reminded never to take any formatting for granted. Yours David (talk) 21:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protection
Zdravstvujte! I see some pages having a semi-protection-status. It says that new users cant edit those pages. How do you describe a new user? How long do i need to be a user so i can edit the pages?

Also is it ok to speak in russian in user-talk pages? If not, does it help at all, if i write the thing in russian and english both? :) Ilyushka88 23:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Ilya! "New" users are the users who registered within the last four days.  Since you only registered yesterday, you won't be able to edit semi-protected pages for two more days.  This is done mostly to prevent vandalism from throwaway accounts, but also to give new users time to learn the ropes, so to speak.  In any case, if you find  semi-protected page you really need to edit, you can put the editprotected template on that article's talk page, or you can ask someone else directly to edit it for you (you can ask me if you want :))
 * As for leaving messages in Russian on users' talk pages, that is generally OK, but should not be done without necessity. This is the English edition of Wikipedia after all!  There is a Russian edition of Wikipedia, by the way; you could always write in Russian there :)
 * Hope it helps. Let me know if I can help with anything else.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you :) I am slowly getting into the editing and stuff. Ilyushka88 12:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Russian federal subject
Hi again Ëzhiki,
 * ''Hi, David! I hope this is not becoming annoying...

Not annoying, especially as it isn't an intricate technical issue!


 * ''...The new ... Infobox Russian federal subject ... is pretty much a modified copypaste of the Infobox Russian district's code... What I would like to do is to use the blue color instead of green...

I've tried "lightskyblue"; how does that look...? I first tried the Russian flag's #0000ff, as I guessed you may've done, but yes, it was too dark and there was insufficient contrast with the links. There's probably a standard way to create shades of a particular color, e.g. maybe #0011ff, #0022ff, etc; or #1111ff, #2222ff, etc; but I haven't tried these experiments.

This (selected from this) will probably be of interest! Yours, David (talk) 04:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, David! Lightskyblue, unfortunately, does not really associate with the blue color of the Russian flag, but I guess there hardly is a closer color match that would retain a good contrast.  Lightskyblue it is, then :)
 * And thanks for pointing to the color names list; it's going to be of great help. I guess I have to make a point to browse your userpage and its subpages more thoroughly&mdash;you seem to have got tons of useful stuff there!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Have substituted "deepskyblue" for "lightskyblue" (and tidied the comments I left when first working through the template); what do you think of this color...? It does, at least, share one-third of its definition with the Russian flag's blue!  (Here, though, it's somewhat dark / of poor contrast, but that may be due to my monitor's lowered settings.)  I also tried "dodgerblue" (which also shares the "FF" part-definition) but I think that will be too dark. Regards, David (talk) 05:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, David! I think lightskyblue worked better.  Deepskyblue creates contrast problems with visited links (dark purple) and language names (light grey), yet it still does not really associate with the blue color of the Russian flag.  If you don't mind, I'll change it back to lightskyblue.  Thanks for trying out other options anyway!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Sakhalin not in Siberia
Hello again!

Hmm the thing seems to be a little complicated. On the wikipedia page of Siberia, it says on the small map on the right, that in some cases Siberia is reaching the Russian Far East.

Correct me if i am completely wrong. Ilyushka88 12:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi there! It is usually OK to refer to the Russian Far East as "Siberia" when you speak of it from historical point of view, or when you refer to the whole region in general, or when precision does not matter, but once you need to pinpoint an exact location (such as the island of Sakhalin, for example), you need to distinguish between Siberia proper and the Russian Far East.  In modern geography the two are considered to be different regions.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay. Thanks for telling me this. I just wasn't sure how this siberia-thing goes. Ilyushka88 16:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Moscow is in FAC now
As you have contributed to the article Moscow I wanted to let you know it is in Featured Article Candidates list now. --Hirakawacho 08:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Pretty much all of my contributions to that article consisted of vandalism reversals and light cleanup. I'm afraid I can't offer much more as far as this article goes.  Thanks for letting know though.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

GSE template
Hi there, Ezhiki! I think it's high time we created the Great Soviet Encyclopedia template (similar to the RBD template: RBD). Do you know how to do that? I'd appreciate your assistance. Thanx! KNewman 21:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Done :) See GSE.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! KNewman 22:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Anju and Olga of Primorye
Dobry Den, Ezhiki ! I don't agree with your modifications Anju or Olga are the same cities and before being administrated by Balhae Kingdom it was occupated by Northern Mohe tribes and particularly Yulou Mohe tribes who settled there many centuries ago before Russians, i will add external links as references. Bring me your sources before modifying this article so as to improve the quality of this article. Spasiva ! Whlee 15:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Whlee! I think you misunderstood the nature of my edit.  I never argued against the fact that Anju existed many years before modern Olga or advocated that Anju and Olga are the same thing.  My point was that there was nothing there by the times Russians showed up in 1860, as Anju ceased to exist long before then.  Now, I don't have any references handy to back that up at the moment, but from what I know Russians founded Olga in an uninhabited location.  Of course, modern Olga is not the same as ancient Anju, but since as Anju existed on the same territory as Olga (and since you yourself think that mentioning this in the article about Olga is appropriate), it's only fair to inform readers about this.  The way your edit was constructed, however, readers might get the impression that ancient Anju eventually developed into modern Olga, which is incorrect.  If you have suggestions as to how to word the article better, I'll gladly hear them out.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Done Whlee 16:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! It sounds a lot better now.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Have a look on this page User:Whlee/History of Manchuria it will probably contribute to help us to complete Far East History. RegardsWhlee 09:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Question Conerning
I would like to know which are the four most southern districts of Khabarovsk Krai i was only able to identify one among them Bikin (Бикинский) so as to create an article of the Mohe and Jurchens living in Outer Manchuria. Among the four districts Khabarovsk Krai : Verkhnebureinsky (Верхнебуреинский), Vyazemsky (Вяземский ), Nanaysky (Нанайский ) and Lazo (имени Лазо), one of them is not located on the south Lazo (имени Лазо) and Vyazemsky (Вяземский ) are located on th south and they are close to Heilongjiang China and Primoski Krai. but i'm not able to locate Verkhnebureinsky (Верхнебуреинский) and Nanaysky (Нанайский ) districts. Regards. Whlee 20:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * [after edit conflict] Sure. The most southern one is, as you correctly determined, Bikinsky District.  The one immediately to the north is Vyazemsky District.  The big one to the north and east is Lazo District.  The one to the northwest of it (bordering with China) is Khabarovsky District.  The one to the north of Lazo District and Khabarovsky District (and which is about the same size as Lazo District) is Nanaysky District.  Finally, the one south-east of Nanaysky District is Sovetsko-Gavansky District.  Verkhnebureinsky District is the one bordering Amur Oblast in the west and the Jewish AO in the south.  If you follow the western border of Khabarovsk Krai, it will be the seventh district from south to north (the biggest one in southern Khabarovsk Krai).
 * Let me know if you need anything else!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Ufimsky
Thanks for copyediting the article; you were pretty quick about doing it. When you copyedited it, you deleted reference to Октябрьский and Юматово, which I assumed were посёлок, but did the п stand for починок instead? Anywho, there are two selsoviets now missing off the list of selos and derevnyas (should be 19; only 17 are listed). Could you put them in their appropriate place? Thanks! -Yupik 10:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Yupik! Yumatovo and Oktyabrsky are not посёлки, they are both сёла.  The full name of Yumatovo, by the way, is "село Санатория Юматово им. 15-летия БАССР".  But, these two account for the missing two selsoviets; thanks for catching that.  I'll work on this article a little more to polish it further.  As for the "pochinok", this type of settlement does not exist in Bashkortostan (they only types of rural localities they have are "село", "деревня", "аул", and "хутор").  In any case, "pochinok" is a type of rural locality, not urban.  Hope this helps!  Let me know if you see anything else that's out of order.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * What a mouthful that name is! :D It would be rather interesting to see a table that lists the names of places and what kinds of settlements they can have... Hmmh! I know absolutely about Ufimsky, so I'll be happy to leave it to you to fill out the article as it is now. The original poster by the way has uploaded a photo of Nikolayevka, but I don't know how long it will be sticking around. -Yupik 15:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree. That name is a fine example of the Soviet system :)  As for the types of settlements in each federal subject, it is my ultimate goal to put that information into the "administrative divisions" series.  Currently, however, only Adygea has that information (you may also be interested in seeing its revised version, which has more details).  If you need that information for another federal subject, let me know, I'll look it up for you.  It is, unfortunately, not something I can quickly compile, so it'll have to be on case-by-case basis.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I've created an article on the town of Bulgakovo. The Russian article has the term сельцо, which I haven't been able to find anywhere (except for referring to a town by that name). Do you happen to know what it means? -Yupik 22:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do. In short, if you translate it as "village", you won't be very far off from the truth (as far as I know, there is no exact translation of this term anyway).  The long answer requires some explanation.  As you probably know, historically there were two main types of "villages" in Russia&mdash;деревня (derevnya) and село (selo).  The difference was that the latter had a church, and the former did not.  Churches, of course, were built in larger settlements, so selos as a rule had more inhabitants than derevnyas.  Now, seltsos were different in the sense that they were villages around estates of pomeshchiks (помещики, landowners).  They were usually comparable in size with selos, but they either only had small chapels or did not have religious facilities at all.  Hence the intermediate status of such settlements&mdash;seltsos.  Hope this helps!
 * On an unrelated note&mdash;have you received the Census spreadsheets I emailed you last week? I just want a confirmation&mdash;my email service acts up every now and then, so email I send does not always get to the recepient.  If you haven't received my email, let me know, I'll re-send it.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I wonder what the next village name I'll run into will be :D The Eng. wiki has an article on Seltso, but perhaps a disambig page should be created to explain the village name version instead of the town name (if that makes any sense). And I didn't get them; I was going to ask soon because my mailbox is acting up lately, too, because of people sending large attachments for work! I'll send you e-mail back confirming that I got them when they arrive, ok? -Yupik 14:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I forgot about Seltso. I don't think it's a good idea to touch that article, but having seltso (disambiguation) does make sense.  I'll make that one today.
 * As for the spreadsheets, I'll re-send them to you tonight when I get home and will keep re-sending them once every day until I get your confirmation. The attachment is a ~700 KB ZIP file.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, those files should come through fine! Thanks for both :) -Yupik 14:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Towns
Hello Ezhiki. How do you do? We haven't talked for several weeks. It seems we are successfully killing red links in List of cities and towns in Russia. Another featured list? :) - Darwinek 21:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey, that's an idea! :) If you want to start working on it, I'll join later.  Will definitely help to bring it to FL status if it comes to it!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Nearest goal is to finally kill all red links and cover all Russian towns. Then, that list can become featured, maybe after few months. Now, I edit rather occasionally, comparing to holiday time :). University duties are back in full strength, it ain't gonna be easy in this semester. :) Tons of books, essays, exams etc. - Darwinek 21:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand. But since we aren't in any kind of hurry, I don't think it's a problem.  When you have free time for this, let me know, I'll sure help out.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Adygea
Wow, now that's weird. I completely skipped through your note... Just noticed it now, sorrry :) I like that the new format has a couple sentences - I am a fan of at least some human language. The only thing that I don't particularly like is that each okrug has two lines - one for English and one for Russian name. It makes the table seem bloated. But I understand that they would not fit into one line. So in short, I am in favor for the two sentences at front and the old table format. Renata 23:18, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem, that happened to me more than on one occasion, too. I just figured you were too busy to answer.  I'm glad that the new format is more to your liking.  As for the two-line solution, I don't really like it myself, but everything else I tried worked even worse.  Anyway, if six months after today you suddenly think of a great solution that would address remaining formatting problems, please don't hesitate to let me know&mdash;I'll gladly do the tweaking!  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Romanization
Hi! I am not sure that it is wise to use Russian toponymics as a basis for transliteration if it is secondary by itself. Hiitola is far more common spelling in English texts than Khiytola (even if Finnish sites are excluded). Besides, in Wikipedia yesterday we had 5 red links to Hiitola and no link to Khiytola. Khiytola yields only 13 hits in Google, and it looks very unusual. I wouldn't immediately understand it if I see it. Colchicum 21:07, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * See WP:CYR: They may be names borrowed from Russian through another language, e.g., Petergof→Peterhof. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Colchicum (talk • contribs) 21:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC).
 * The general consensus has always been to use romanized modern Russian names for titles of all inhabited localities in Russia. The reason why the number of Google hits is so low is because the settlements in question are extremely obscure, and most of the references you are finding are to their past histories, which, obviously, employ Finnish spelling of the names.  This problem is correctly fixed by establishing a network of redirects (I see you were doing that as well, which is good) and by listing the old names in the article, not by using old names as primary.
 * As for the WP:CYR clause you cited, it generally applies to cases on a larger scale; a smaller settlement would certainly fall under the threshold. The bottom line is that there must be a very good reason to not use a romanized name; names that get only a few hundred google hits certainly cannot be called "conventional".  Note, for example, that none of the settlements in Kaliningrad Oblast is titled in German, even though most of the German spellings would get more google hits than romanized Russian versions.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, it is not really important, but I see no mention of a threshold in the rules, and I would disagree that a key railway node and important place in military history would fall beyond it. As to Kaliningrad Oblast, I have never been there, but to my knowledge the settlements of Kaliningrad Oblast mostly have totally changed their names and hence they are irrelevant here. Colchicum 21:43, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The threshold is implied by the very definition of "conventional" name&mdash;if the name is not widely known (which is the case for the vast majority of Russian rural localities), then there is no conventional name. In such cases, other guidelines kick in, and in this particular case that other guideline is WP:RUS.
 * As for Kaliningrad Oblast, I don't see how the example is irrelevant. You yourself established that Taipale was renamed to Solovyovo, Uusikirkko&mdash;to Polyany, and Inkilä&mdash;to Zaytsevo.   This is very much the same as what happened in Kaliningrad Oblast after WWII.
 * In case you wondered, all this is not to say that people must be using modern names at all times. On the contrary, in historical contexts it is very much encouraged to use historical names, and if you need to link to the article, you can either do so via a redirect, or via a piped link (i.e., if you are writing about Inkilä, you can link to it like this: Inkilä, or like this: Inkilä).  Hope this clears the misunderstanding.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is not to enter into a dispute (I have named Uusikirkko Polyany or Rautu Sosnovo myself, as to Inkil&auml;, the railway station is still Inkil&auml; and there is really little more than the station, but whatever, go ahead), but the case of Hiitola/Khiytola or Lahdenpohja/Lakhdenpokhya is certainly different. The settlements in Ladoga Karelia haven't been renamed, their names have been borrowed. Frankly, I think it would be better to look at some modern English or American maps to decide which transliteration is conventional and which is not for this purpose (I haven't yet done this). Again, I am not going to dwell on this, but double transliteration looks ugly. Colchicum 20:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It only looks ugly to those who know where and what these places are :) Anyway, here are a few points to consider:
 * Russian is the official language of Russia. Hence, all places in Russia have official names in Russian.  Those places could have been directly borrowed from the local languages and adopted to Russian orthography ("Хийтола" is a good example), but even in those cases the Russian version is always official or co-official.
 * The term "conventional English name" refers to names which are widely recognized in English. With Russian geography, conventional names are quite often romanized official Russian names, because they are usually taken directly from official Russian sources.  Exceptions from this are far and few between, and deal mostly with such established forms as "Moscow", "St. Petersburg", or, a marginal case, "Peterhof".  All conventional forms are documented in major English language dictionaries.  If a word is not there, it means no conventional form of it exists in English.  When no conventional form exists (which is the case for any variation of "Лахденпохья", for example), Wikipedia guidelines generally prescribe using romanization of the official name as a title, and listing all other important versions in the article's body and as redirects.
 * All English-language maps of Russia use a certain convention. The ones I've seen so far predominantly use BGN/PCGN, ALA-LC, sometimes even the GOST, or some variations of these systems.  No matter which romanization system mapmakers choose, however, they consistently romanize official Russian names, not the local names (many don't even show "Moscow", but do "Moskva").  You are, of course, welcome to doublecheck this and look at some maps yourself, but I have my doubts they will be using versions taken from the local languages.  In any case, whatever you find, please let me know&mdash;I never made a point to verify this, but am very interested in knowing the result.  It may very well be I have just not seen a proper map yet :)
 * Hope this helps!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Update
I realize that you had said that you don't see this issue as a major problem, but I would still like to provide this update, mostly for future reference sake.

I visited a bookstore this weekend, and did some research using the atlases they had on display. The research is by no means scientific, but it should be sufficient to see the main point.

The atlases the bookstore had in stock included Rand McNally, Oxford, Harper-Collins, DK, and Barnes & Noble. Some of these were concise versions, so I couldn't check the names of smaller settlements. Here are the findings: I hope this is sufficient to show that the majority of English-language atlases use BGN/PCGN romanization and romanize the Russian versions of geographic names.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * All atlases in this roundup (except Rand McNally) use BGN/PCGN romanization (or slightly modified version of it). Rand McNally seems to use scientific transliteration.
 * As I previously stated, all atlases romanize the Russian version of the names:
 * Rand McNally uses Lahdenpohja to refer to "Лахденпохья", which matches the scientific romanization of this name in Russian
 * In Oxford's consise atlas, none of the settlements we previously discussed are shown. "Суойарви", however, is romanized from Russian as Suoyarvi.
 * Harper-Collins was the most complete of the atlases in the store. In this atlas, Суойарви, Хийтола, and Лахденпохья are spelled as Suoyarvi, Khiytola, and Lakhdenpokh'ya.
 * DK atlas was also rather concise. It only had Суойарви, rendered as Suoyarvi.
 * Barnes & Noble atlas showed Суойарви and Лахденпохья as Suoyarvi and Lakhdenpokh'ya.
 * National Geographic atlas was, unfortunately, sealed, but its (very) concise version also uses BGN/PCGN. None of the places mentioned above are shown in the concise version.

Stress accents
Stress accents are only used (generally) in Dictionaries. You insist on using them in general Wikipedia articles. This is not done for English, Danish, Dutch or German articles. Why only for Russian? I can understand for the difference between "ye" and "yo". But why do you insist on a visually obtrusive arrangement that serves no purpose other to aggrandise one pronunciaciation over another! If you can provide a verifiable pronunciation expert for Siberian placenames, I will accept your cultural imperialism ~ "A" v "O" inter alia! BUT provide some proof! Are you an Irbitskiy? Or merely a control freak? Unless you are a local, BACK-OFF! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by M-72 (talk ∙ contribs).
 * Hi, M-72. First of all, I strongly suggest that next time you engage in a discussion with fellow Wikipedians, you study WP:CIV and WP:AGF, the former of which is a policy, and the latter&mdash;a guideline (and a very good one, too).  Incivility and revert warring are not the Wikipedia way and will get you blocked sooner than later.
 * It takes time to be a good Wikipedian. I value truth too highly.
 * Now, to address your concerns:
 * Stress marks are not only used in dictionaries. They are generally used in educational and reference materials, including encyclopedias.  Check out a copy of Great Soviet Encyclopedia&mdash;you'll see that all title words bear accent marks to indicate stress.  Russian Wikipedia does it as well.
 * I was refering to English language encyclopaedias, which need it most. Usage in a foreign language source has little importance in an English language source.
 * Unlike with Russian, there is no tradition of indicating stress in reference material in the English, Danish, Dutch, or German languages.
 * Regarding the arrangement being "obtrusive", please note that stress marks are there not on my whim, but are a result of previously established consensus. The matter had been discussed on numerous occasions before, and the consensus was to use them as they add encyclopedic value, are not readily available through other sources, and are not trivial or obvious.
 * cite
 * Pronunciation (and stress) of any Russian placenames (Irbit is not in Siberia, by the way) is easily verifiable through toponymic dictionaries. Even when some cases cannot be easily verified (and Irbit is not one of them), it is generally preferrable to request citation before removing a piece of data altogether.
 * You may like to look at the WP article []. According to it, Irbit IS in Siberia. The locals also regard themselves as Siberians. As to "request citation before removing a piece of data altogether" you failed to do that in the beginning. Had you supplied some information with your first revert, we would not be here.
 * I am not a native of Irbit, if that's what you mean. Russian, however, is my first language, and I have a great interest in geography of Russia.  Any literate Russian person will tell you which syllable is stressed in Irbit; it's just not one of those cases where there could be doubts.
 * With all that in mind, I am reverting your edit once more. Please do not remove valuable encyclopedic content again.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) ∙ (yo?); 13:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I will not revert your changes immediately, I will give time for you to provide citations and reasons why it should be allowed for accent marks that visually distort the cyrillic spelling in several OSes should remain. Should you choose to do the proper thing and place the accented spellings in a seperate space, with notation that this was a stress spelling I would certainly have no objection. You should also note the number of times that you have reverted corrections without offering explanations. I may not be a nice person, but I know when the pot is calling the kettle black. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by M-72 (talk • contribs).
 * Thanks for the responses, M-72.
 * Civility. Nobody expects you to be a perfect Wikipedian after less than three months of being here, and nobody expects you to know all the policies, guidelines, rules, and regulations from day one.  What is expected of you, however, is being civil.  The bottom line is, as long as you abide by these five basic rules and as long as you are willing to learn as you go, you'll do just fine.  Upholding truth in a civil manner is a lot more efficient than shouting insults at fellow editors every time you disagree.
 * Stress marks. Here are a few links to some of the previous discussions I could find: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  I have probably missed something, but these should address you main concerns.  Especially note that the fact that while accent marks may indeed be displayed incorrectly on some systems, it is not a reason to remove them.  The problem lies not with the accent marks, but with those systems which cannot display Unicode (or its subset) correctly.  IPA, for example, probably creates even more problems (for one, it's almost completely unreadable on my pocket pc), but no one would advocate removing it from the encyclopedia!  Anyway, if you find these threads insufficient, you are very welcome to ask other editors around the Russia portal, as well as linguists specializing in the Russian language, whether or not there is still a consensus to use the accents.  From my experience, however, you are the first editor in quite a while now to take a stand that strong against their usage (but then again, you thought they are only used in dictionaries...).
 * Siberia. Funny that you mention this article.  I had my eye on it for quite a while now.  For one, the picture with the "broadest definition of Siberia" is completely unsourced.  And the "broadest definition" is pretty much just that&mdash;it refers to any place in Asian Russia.  Can't get any broader than that!  It's good enough for a news reports mentioning some obscure town to the east of the Ural Mountains, but it's definitely wrong to say so in an encyclopedic article.  Furthermore, what the residents think is utterly unimportant.  Can you provide sources that the majority of the Irbit residents think of themselves as Siberians?  Were there polls?  Studies?  Anything published?  Wikipedia does not accept personal opinion as a reliable source.  Here is a counter-example: I come from Primorsky Krai, which is also included into "the broadest definition of Siberia".  I assure you, if go there and tell the residents that they live in Siberia, they will have a good laugh at you.  People there associate themselves with the Russian Far East (RFE), which they in turn completely disassociate from Siberia.  You'll, however, have the last laugh, because historically RFE is included into Siberia, even though in modern geography it is regarded as a separate region.  Now, I don't know (or can possibly check) what the Irbit residents think of themselves, but, considering that nearby Yekaterinburg proudly bills itself as "the capital of the Urals", I find it strange that they would think of themselves as Siberians.  Again, not that it all matters in the end, as the fact in unverifiable in the first place.
 * Reverts. I stand behind every edit and revert I make and can provide explanation for any of them.  It's not to say that I never make mistakes (I am but a human, after all), but I am perfectly able and willing to admit them.  Let's take a look back, shall we?  On December 19, 2006, this set of edits popped up on my watchlist.  Now, it is not at all uncommon for newbies unfamiliar with the guidelines, conventions, and existing consensus to make edits like that.  Sometimes accents are removed, sometimes Russian spelling is taken off altogether, sometimes IPA is the target.  Since the change is so trivial, I simply revert the change, with the idea that if you need an explanation, you'll ask for it.  When you don't ask for one, I forget about the incident altogether.  On February 25, 2007 you come back and make the same change, which again pops up in my watchlist.  Note, that since more than two months have passed, I don't recognize this is your second identical edit to the same article&mdash;I deal with issues like this by the hundreds and can't remember them all.  Hence, I do the same thing&mdash;revert a trivial edit by a newbie.  This time you come back on the same day and re-revert.  Now, go ahead and read your edit summary&mdash;it seems to imply that accent marks are not used in Russian at all and says something about "other OSes".  The first part is obviously untrue to me, as I know perfectly well that accent marks are used, and that this has been discussed in Wikipedia before.  I now see that while your edit was in a good faith, you edited something you don't really know much about.  Hence, I restore the accents again.  Now, at this point I realize that my edit summary would probably be insufficient to satisfy you, so I also leave a short note on your talk page.  Again, the idea is that if you disagree, you'll take it to me and try discussing.  Instead, I get this rather rude note, in which someone who, from what I can see, isn't even Russian tries to educate a native speaker about usage of accents in his native language and then to, I quote, "BACK-OFF!", end of quote.  It's kind of like if I tried to educate you about dangers of riding a motorcycle, when all I know about motorcycles is that it's a fancy bike with an engine!  Having written your tirade, you revert again.  Well, in my three years with Wikipedia I've seen worse behavior than that, so I provide the explanation and even provide a citation to something that should have been bloody obvious from the very start.  Now tell me who is the pot and who is the kettle in this scenario?
 * Anyway, I hope this is all not for nothing. Judging by your contributions, you'll make a very decent Wikipedian once you tone your rhethorics down, and that's all that matters to me in the end.  If I can be of any assistance in the future, I hope this little incident won't prevent you from contacting me.
 * Also, if there is anything else about this dispute that you think I have not yet addressed, let me know, let's address it together. The beauty of Wikipedia is in cooperation and collaboration, not in outshouting each other.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:57, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Re ADRFS and more
Hi Ëzhiki,
 * Infobox ADRFS
 * User:David Kernow/Administrative divisions of Adygea

The template looks great! I couldn't resist tinkering with it immediately; by all means revert/adjust/etc anything you're not keen on. I'd say, though, that I'd prefer no flag rather than the "flag missing" picture; I reckon anyone who might have a flag to add would know this is possible from those pages that included them (such as Adygea).

I tried fiddling with the flag cell's formatting in an effort to center the Adygea flag, but so far have failed to do so. (Maybe you've already done the same...?) Looking at the flag's image, I don't see why this isn't possible; maybe it's an effect of the class="infobox geography" that needs more heavy-handed suppression.

Would you mind if I renamed the parameters thus...?: ...or do the "Districts"/"Cities/Towns"/etc headings in the template need to be made generic...?
 * name                    =
 * flag                    =
 * admin_center_type       =
 * admin_center_name       =
 * admin_structure_date    =
 * districts               =
 * cities_towns            =
 * urban-type_settlements  =
 * selsoviets              =
 * rural_localities        =
 * municipal_structure_date =
 * urban_okrugs            =
 * urban_settlements       =
 * rural_settlements       =

Thanks for the transformation! David (talk) 20:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * ''Hi, David! By all means tinker with the template all you want (you are the author of this idea, after all); I was actually hoping you would!
 * ''To answer your questions:
 * ''I used the "missing flag" image because images of flags of all Russian federal subjects (with the exception of one or two which have not adoped a flag yet) are available in Wikipedia. My thought was if the flag is accidentally omitted when the template is populated, then the "missing flag" image would provide an immediate clue.  Not that it matters much in the end, as I am afraid I'm gonna be the one populating these templates anyway!  Plus, it's there mostly for decoration; to make the template look a little more lively.
 * Have left the status quo, because if you reckon the template is (near-)ready, I'll locate flags as/when adding it to federal subjects' pages.


 * ''I don't know what the problem with centering the flag is either. Admittedly, though, I haven't tried all that hard to fix it.
 * I think I've fixed it, but am not sure as I suspect that the rendering is most dependent on how the software scales down the flag images...


 * ''I have no objections if you rename the parameters to make them conform with conventions used in other infoboxes, but I do in fact want to keep (at least some of) them generic. While the default values would work for most cases, they will cover everything (and even with generic values the template is unusable in articles about the administrative structure of the Russian federal cities).  In particular, the "selsoviet" field shows quite a variety (see selsoviet), and uluses and kozhuuns are used in the Sakha and Tuva Republics instead of raions.  "Cities/towns" can be shortened to just "towns" in some federal subjects (such as, for example, in Nenets Autonomous Okrug).  "Urban-type settlements" and "rural localities", on the other hand, can be hard-coded no problem; I made them generic purely for consistency.
 * I've renamed them thus:


 * name                    =
 * flag                    =
 * admin_center_type       =
 * admin_center_name       =
 * admin_structure_date    =
 * district-type_div       =
 * _district-type_divs    =
 * urban_locality_div      =
 * _urban_locality_divs   =
 * urban-type_settlement   =
 * _urban-type_settlements =
 * selsoviet-type_div      =
 * _selsoviet-type_divs   =
 * rural_locality_div      =
 * _rural_locality_divs   =
 * municipal_structure_date =
 * _urban_okrugs          =
 * _urban_settlements     =
 * _rural_settlements     =
 * Hopefully these are sufficiently generic...?


 * ''Hope this helps! Let me know if you have more questions or if there is anything I can help with.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * By the time you reach this line, I reckon you will've already done so! Yours, David (talk) 01:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup, this should work just fine, and thank you for having implemented this already! There is only one little thing&mdash;"urban localities" refers to both cities/towns and urban-type settlements, so the name of the "urban_locality_divs" field is not entirely correct.  I doubt anyone is ever going to notice the difference, though :)  Again, thanks!  Oh, one more thing: can you tell me when you think you'll have time to return to the Adygea draft in your userspace?  I addressed a few points today and am planning to work on it a bit more during this week, but since it's in your userspace, I don't want us to collide in edit conflicts.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 03:20, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Have switched "urban_locality_divs" to "cities_towns". Re returning to User:David Kernow/Administrative divisions of Adygea, I shelved it in anticipation of your responding to the annotations and/or inviting my attention again, so please edit without fear of edit conflict. As/when you'd like any feedback, let me know. Must go now, unfortunately – David (talk) 03:56, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Funny enough, I shelved it in anticipation of your replies to my previous comments, but I guess there just wasn't much to act on! :) Anyway, I'll make sure to let you know when the draft is ready for another review.  Cheers!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Draft latest

 * ''...The draft is ready for your review once again. Here is the summary of the main changes:


 * ''...I restored the Tlekhuray references for now, because I can't think of a way to attribute this source in one clean sweep.
 * How about the one line I've placed below the relevant section's heading (Rural localities)...? Suggest the density of Tlekhuray s too great otherwise, so something like the above needed.


 * ''...As for the overall layout (with a linked summary in a separate section), the more I look at it the more I like it. Visually and navigation-wise, it is certainly the best of what has been tried so far.  My concern, however, is that it makes it very hard to edit the article in the future, especially for unexperienced editors.  The layout provides way too many opportunities for screw-ups, and it is quite unorthodox and non-obvious.  The only other idea I have is to split some sections into separate articles...

I share your concern, but also think (hope?) that as/when somebody is motivated to update/edit this and similar articles, their motivation would also prompt them to seek help about anything they don't understand – in other words, I guess I'm banking on the people wishing to contribute to this and similar articles being the kind of people who are happy to seek help when necessary! (Maybe too optimistic!) Alternatively, if someone passes by and leaves say a frustrated note on the talk page, then that could be a prompt to rework the format.


 * ''Anyway, if you could go through the draft when you have time (no pressure here!), I'd certainly appreciate your comments. Note that I did not remove those of your previous highlighted remarks which I was not sure how to deal with.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * ...and I, in turn, have removed further highlights, especially as a result of the below:

Other amendments

 * s in the infobox : "reference must follow punctuation!": Must it? I hadn't intentionally placed them before the bracket; it's just a consequence of the code... and something I suspect would be less than straightforward to accommodate...


 * "History" section, ¶2 : I think I highlighted "district" (currently linked to Raion) as I wasn't sure whether this was the correct name or link...


 * "Administrative division structure" section : I've amended "State Council–Khase" to "State Council (Khase)" – but kept the parenthesis as part of the (red)link – as I'm (still) not convinced by the mingling of languages in the former. If (as I'd recommend) the link is to State Council of Adygea – which seems reasonable as it's in English – then "State Council" is its foreshortned form in English and Khase an acknowledgement (hence parenthesis) of the native name. If, however, this is not sufficiently representative, then I suggest making the link Khase, use the phrasing "..are authorized by the Khase (the State Council)" and thereafter use Khase rather than "State Council-Khase". (Hope this makes some sense!)


 * Surplus commented-out code in "Summary" section : " " I think this is a remnant of an earlier version that I retained in case of fallback. Have now removed.


 * Double/extra lines in IE : "Double horizontal lines look horrible in IE" "In IE, there is too much white space between the section title and the horizontal line below" – stupid, wretched IE. In lieu of the lines (now removed), I've tried a slightly different background for some of the headings; what do you think...? (Not 100% sure myself.)


 * Source for "Settlements" : "I can't source the 1930s claim" – Would've only been for completness' sake; note now removed.


 * District tables : Centered figures under "Number of rural localities".

Hope something in all the above works! Yours, David (talk) 01:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * As usual, thanks for the detailed analysis, David! My comments are as follows:
 * Tlekhuray refs. I agree that the density of the refs is probably a bit too high to digest comfortably, but I also have never seen the main reference shown right after the section title.  Can it be moved to the bottom of the section, perhaps?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Have moved the note to the bottom of the first section; if you meant after the "Stanitsas" section, I'd be hesitant to do so, as I reckon anyone using the article might be more likely to miss it if they scrolled down only as far as the information they required... (I don't think, though, that's what you meant!)
 * ...On second thoughts, scanning through the article before saving it with the other amendments below, I think placing this note just before the "Auls" subheading is ambiguous: it might be read as applying only to the "Auls" subsection. So I've returned it to its original position; I'd say it doesn't look out of place there as it resembles a seealso or main link. Maybe, though, there's another possibility or I'm misunderstanding your suggestion...?


 * Overall layout. After doing some thinking, I believe I worry about this way too much :)  Wikipedians are a pretty smart bunch, and one can indeed always ask for help when/if formatting seems to be an obstacle.  Let's leave this formatting and see what happens.  With the list being featured and all, I imagine there would be plenty of people watching it, so if anyone screws up anything, that should be fixed expeditiously even if you and me aren't around to take care of it.
 * That'd be my hope!


 * Refs vs. punctuation. That one was mostly my note to self to fix it later.  This particular issue was raised during the peer review, which is why I tagged it.  Also note that WP:REF WP:REF placing references immediately after punctuation, so I believe it must be fixed even though the solution would indeed be less than straightforward.
 * Well, will try to engineer this a little later. (Please try before if it seems clear!) Without wishing to enter the "official" debate about footnote formatting, I wonder how the WP:REF formatting distinguished between a footnote applying to a whole sentence and one applying only to its last few words or clause...


 * Raion link. Although raion is an English loanword, I don't suppose many English speakers are familiar with it.  Since we translate it as "district", that's what the link shows.  It does still link to raion, because that's the article which specifically deals with Russian districts (raions).  In short: nothing to fix here :)
 * Thanks; I just wasn't sure whether the "district" was a raion-type district or a something-else district. Now cleared.


 * Khase. Linking to State Council of Adygea and putting Khase in parentheses when it's first used will probably be an acceptable solution.  As a native speaker, you probably know better when a particular usage ("State Council–Khase", in this case) looks awkward :)  Would linking it like this&rarr;State Council (Khase)&larr;be acceptable?  I just don't want the "Khase" part to stand out as if it is something separate (it is a part of the official name, after all).
 * State Council (Khase) seems fine if it fulfils both criteria (an appropriate description; but without mixing languages). Have amended accordingly.


 * IE lines & highlighting. Yeah, IE sucks; no doubts about that.  The double lines looked very clean in Opera.  As for highlighting, I don't think that's a good solution, however.  The good thing is that identation seems to provide a reasonably good contrast already; so if we just get rid of highlighting, the flow would still be sufficiently clear.  What do you think?
 * Looking again with fresh eyes, the indents are fine but I agree that the backgrounds detract from the article; duly removed.


 * I have no comments other than these. I think we are getting close to completing this!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes; hopefully a model for similar articles. Two final beige backrounds appear to remain and I can't recall whether or not you've addressed them – so apologies if you find yourself directing me to your responses: (1) In the first sentence of the "Urban localities" section, the phrase "urban areas" is highlighted – this is probably because I wasn't sure whether this is an appropriate description; and (2) see footnote 2. Yours, David (talk) 03:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Tlekhuray ref. I tried yet another idea for this source; still not sure if this is going to work.   I did indeed thought of moving it to the very bottom of the "Rural localities" section, but after your note I very well see how it's not a workable solution.  Why do simple things always have to be the ones creating the most difficulties? :)  Anyway, I'm open to any other ideas.
 * I think this is the best idea yet, which I've tweaked using lower (also the sources linked below the "Numbers of rural localities by year" table).


 * Punctuation vs. refs. Unfortunately, it does not seem clear at all.  I'll try some ideas; hopefully together we'll think of something.  I don't like this particular provision of WP:REF myself, but have no desire whatsoever to "officially" challenge it.  If we can't fix it, people who don't like this will have to solve it themselves :)
 * Looking again, I realize I'm simply not motivated to complicate the code in order to achieve this effect; if, however, a peer review (re below) takes a dislike to the status quo, I guess it'll need to be addressed.


 * Urban areas. "Urban areas" and "urban localities" are pretty much synonyms.  The only reason I defined one via another is because the urban area article is reasonably well-written and can be helpful to readers needing more information.  If you think the link looks out of place, feel free to remove it.
 * Not out of place; I was simply unsure whether it was the correct wording. Thanks for confirming.


 * The map. I removed the highlighting from the map's caption, because there is nothing I can do about it.  Let's hope Rarelibra will find time to improve the map soon.  If we get desperate, I can crudely crop the map and move some labels around myself, but there is no way I'll be able to add any new objects.
 * I toyed for a moment with trying to source another map to adapt (e.g. derived from here, or perhaps something emailed from this place) but then thought it wouldn't be right to override Rarelibra's work. Perhaps the one action to take is a slight crop of the image's lefthand edge, so its thumbnail form won't start to overlap the Contents box in smaller windows/screens. (Would you like me to try to effect this, since I already see it here...?)


 * Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. I wonder if it would make sense to subject the article to another peer review before we move the contents to the main space.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess so, if this article is to become a model for others; are you thinking similarly...? Yours, David (talk) 19:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Tlekhuray. I, too, now think this is the best solution thus far, especially after you tweaked it.  I only wanted to note that it should be perfectly OK to compact the source reference under the table to one line (i.e., to Sources: 1897–...).
 * Punctuation vs. references. Indeed, let's see what the peer review results are.  I am not motivated to sink who knows how much time into addressing this seemingly minute detail either.
 * Map. I like Rarelibra's map quite a bit, so I wouldn't want to override it with anything else either.  Thanks for the links though (you may be interested to know that Tlekhuray herself worked for the AGU when she wrote her work I used so extensively; but she doesn't seem to be associated with them any longer, unfortunately).  In any case, if you don't mind tweaking the map yourself, go right ahead; otherwise, I may try doing it myself this weekend (if I have time).
 * Model. Yes, it was precisely my intent to write and polish one article so it could serve as a template to the rest of the articles in the series.  Ultimately, I'd like to see all 86 (or whatever the number is going to be by then) lists featured.  Of course, with my current pace it might very well happen only after I retire :))
 * Peer review. I think we can nominate it for peer review this or next week.  We might want to move it out of your user space first, though.  Moving it to administrative divisions of Adygea/Temp will probably be the best.
 * Misc. Just to let you know, I have not forgotten about my promise to research the benefits/downsides of city/town/urban-type settlement status.  I haven't been able to find anything reference-worthy so far, but I'll keep trying.  Like I previously said, the status is more of an acknowledgement than a reward, hence there isn't really too much available on this topic.  I'll keep my eyes open; the subject already proved to be intriguing :)
 * Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Konstantinovskaya
I asked a question today about a suburb of Pyatigorsk, thinknig about Konstantinogorskaya, probably it was Konstantinovskaya as you informed me. Pretty close for my Russian. I met a girl from Pyatigorsk called Iula, who lived in that suburb of the city. Thanks for the info.
 * Glad to be of help :) Feel free to let me know if you need anything else.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 03:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Krasnodar
Hello Ezhiki, a newbie here, I should have been playing in the sandbox trying to make the list of groups more readable, as I have now made it just a very long list which is not really readable Could you please reverse the 2 edits I made today, and I need some help creating a simple table or some other appropraite format Thanks a lot Paulalexdij 16:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Paul! Actually, any editor can revert to previous versions; you don't have to ask anyone to do it for you.  To undo your changes, go to the Krasnodar Krai page, click on the "History" tab (located immediately to the right of the "edit this page" tab), which will bring you here.  Now, to revert to one of the previous versions, click on that version's datestamp.  For example, if you want to revert the article to the version as it was after STDBotD edited it, click on "tt:21, February 26, 2007", which will bring you here.  Now click "edit this page", type in an edit summary in the "edit summary box" ("reverting self" or something along those lines should do fine), and click the "Save this page" button.  Voilà&mdash;all your changes are now reverted.
 * Try it out. If you find this confusing and still prefer me to revert it for you, just let me know again, I'll do it.  I just wanted to show you that it's not a task with which you have to rely on anyone else to do for you.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:06, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks Ezhiki! It is actually quite easy once one knows how and you explained it so clearly! I tend to only resort to the manual if all else fails :), but I will certainly do some reading of the manual inbetween edits soon ... ciao ... Paulalexdij 18:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Happy to help! Cheers,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Settlements
Yes, I know every country is different. I am just talking about the categories named 'Settlements of F00'. Many country categories have a 'Settlements of F00' subcategory. This settlements category includes all cities, towns, villages and hamlets subcategories for the country. Russia may also have living places named settlements (in English) that also would have their category fit into the overall 'Settlements of Russia' category. This is all I am doing. Thanks. Hmains 04:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That was exactly my concern&mdash;how are you planning to include "settlements" [a type of inhabited locality] in the list of "settlements" [top-level term] without confusing folks who are later going to browse the category structure?  Why not stick with the terminology used in the corresponding article in the first place?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:55, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Would descriptions (where missing) in the category help? I am not sure what other category name than 'settlements' or 'human settlements' is available that would encompass cities, towns, villages and the like.  It seems to work; WP editors have not found another one.  Thanks Hmains 03:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the one that seems to work for all occasions is the one that you reverted&mdash;"inhabited localities"! It covers absolutely every type of "human settlement" and offers very little room for ambiguity.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 03:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Okrug
Привет! тут в статье Autonomous okrugs of the Soviet Union раписано, что такой тип регионов появился в 1930. а на страничке Komi-Permyak Okrug - в 1925. Не ясно. да и потом, может быть про Коми-Пермяцикй Национальный/Автономный Округ стоит создать отдельную статью (он ж был федеральным субъектом как-никак)? Ведь созданы же такие про все автономные республики и области, поменявшие в последствии статус?--Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 10:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Спасибо, верно подмечено! На самом деле в 1930 г. была создана основная масса национальных округов, в то время как в 20-е гг. Коми-Пермяцкий был первым (1925 г.) и Ненецкий &mdash; вторым (1929 г.).  Я поправил в основной статье.
 * Что касается Коми-Пермяцкого АО, то отдельная статья про него и так есть. Располагается она под его современным названием &mdash; Komi-Permyak Okrug.  Когда специальный статус округа внутри Пермского края истечёт, статью можно будет перенести обратно в Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug (сейчас это редирект) и пригладить, сделав её более исторически направленной.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Translation
Hello. Please see Kamennogorsk article, user whom you have reverted in other pages, translated the name of the town. I suspect it is also wrong there. Regards. - Darwinek 16:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That one is good enough for a "rough translation". The name cannot be translated exactly anyway.  I actually question the usefulness of this translation more than its accuracy :)  Unfortunately, since my toponymyc dictionary does not have an entry on Kammenogorsk, I can only replace this with my own speculation as to what the name means exactly (the "-gorsk" part can mean either "mountains" or "city/town"), but that wouldn't be much of an improvement.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose there are not larger mountains in Leningrad Oblast :). - Darwinek 16:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No :) The names, however, don't always refer to large mountains.  Sometimes it's just hills that residents perceive large enough to be called "mountains".  Also, many of the names were artificial; assigned with no rhyme or reason.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:56, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Kudos! Great idea
re: Having drawn inspiration from your nifty little functional templates, I thought I'd try something of the sort myself :) After putting some work in, I've come up with these two pilot templates: km to mi and mi to km.  Supposedly, they will help with the boring and error-prone task of unit conversion.  So, now, instead of having to manually calculate how many miles are in, say, 355 km, one only needs to type  to get this:

The templates also provide a set of parameters for fine-tuning of the output.

''As you obviously work with this kind of templates a lot, I would appreciate if you could double-check these two and possibly advertise them for general use (I have no idea where to begin, except starting to use them myself and hoping that people would notice). If these two prove useful, other convertors can be created very easily. If not, oh well, at least I had fun :) Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)''
 * Kudos -- Do ft to m and M to ft too! Drop notes on the GeoscienceS, History, Engineering and such WikiProjects pages and the like, AND the VP. If I ever get back to editing articles again, I'll use them. If you like template work, I can use help in WP:TSP!!! How well do they subst? Could be important. // Fra nkB 07:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your support, Frank. I tested the pilot templates, and they seem to subst no problem.  I'll make the ft-to-m and m-to-ft convertors today, and their "squared" versions later, and then advertise them as you suggested.  As for WP:TSP, that certainly seems to be an interesting concept.  I'll watchlist the project page, although I can't promise to participate on a regular basis (while I enjoy making templates every now and then, I don't think I'll like doing it full time :))  Again, thank you for the feedback and advice.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:58, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What happened to my note above??? Yikes! I shoulda used tlx as a buffer, from the looks! OK -- fixed now. Whew with a LOL!
 * I was thinking more of a small scale systematic effort at helping with the category or documentation chores. Sort of two or three a day mode steady tortoise effort, not some massive effort ala the hare. I'm finding the later to be the biggest time sink, yet it's the most important to the most people in the long run. Add in the effort can help anyone become familiar with what's already 'out there' as a tool, and the eventual diminishment of the time waste on people in TFD. All good thiings.
 * Now that Mike Peel and David have done such a bang up job re-organizing the catgegorization of utility templates, a systematic effort to document them and build a handbook type of guide is something that would be a service to a lot of people. Among other things, I work so many so late while so woozy, I know I get wordy, and just having someone go through and copy edit behind me would be a good thing. ttfn, and nice to meetchya! // Fra nkB 15:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Frank, if there is one thing I hate doing more than the dishes, it's writing documentation :) Don't take me wrong, I'll be happy to help when I can, but to expect me working on this more or less systematically won't be, erm, prudent.  Sorry if this sounds too selfish, but I have my hands full with other projects and only dabbed into template making out of necessity and, as it's the case with the conversion templates, for recreation.  Before I engaged into template-making about two weeks ago, I haven't produced a template for over a year, so my skills are rusty at best.  Still, don't give up hope on me just yet :)  I may not be of much help in all this, but I'll make a point to visit every now and then.  It's a pleasure meeting you, too!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. M to ft and ft to m are now completed, and so are km2 to mi2, mi2 to km2, m2 to ft2, and ft2 to m2.  Enjoy!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ROTFLMAO! I thouroughly Grok that! (Why else ask fer help! But misery loves company!) It's occured to me that there is a 'announcements' facility somewhere on the Help pages, that perhaps would be a good venue for these... anyone can add a notice that stays for seven days, iirc. I've used it once or twice many months ago. I'd also do a spam template in a user sandbox and subst that message some places. Good contribution! // Fra nkB 16:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Conversion template
Do you mind if I tweak it a little? &mdash;MJCdetroit 17:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not! The templates are hot off the press, and are not used anywhere yet.  If there is a good time to tweak and polish them, it is now.  Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Let's keep the discussion over here; I'll watch the page.


 * &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
 * I tweaked the abbreviation for square miles but something is not quite right there 258.99 km2 should equal 100 sq mi. Also, why not the other parameters showing? &mdash;MJCdetroit 17:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I knew I'd mess up something important, and, of course, I used multiplication where I should have used division! Thanks for having this fixed already.
 * As for the other parameters, it's a valid concern. Only the first parameter (num) works when the parameter name is not specified; all others require being spelled explicitly.  So, instead of  you'll have to write  .  The reason for it is that I didn't want to overcomplicate the templates by introducing too many conditionals, but if you feel it could lead to problems, I can fix it.  It's amazing how much a fresh look at the "final" product can reveal! :)  Thanks!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I should have looked closer. I will play with them some more later.  Also, I wouldn't release these until all/most bugs are fixed. &mdash;MJCdetroit 18:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, that was the point&mdash;I released them for broad review because I was reasonably sure that there had been no serious bugs. Of course, the one template I failed to test turned out to have faulty calculations.  Anyway, thanks for looking at this!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK like I said I play with them later. &mdash;MJCdetroit 18:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. This is a great idea, but I'm having a problem: people usually add a comma to separate three digits, like 1,274, but these templates don't seem to recognize this formatting. Also, with the documentation, it took me a minute to realize that it was km to mi|num and not km to milnum. Also, it would be good to have km to AU, a conversion utility to convert 24.5 days to 24 days and 12 hours, 0 min, and kmpersec to mph. Lunokhod 22:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Lunokhod! Thank you kindly for your feedback.  On documentation (mi|num vs. milnum), adding spaces on both sides of the pipe character should probably minimize the confusion&rarr;  .  I'll go through the documentation and fix it.
 * I also have no problem with creating additional templates (such as km to AU, kps to mph, etc.). Just let me know which are the priority and which ones exactly you need.  I figured that units of length, area, and temperature were a no-brainer, so I made those first, but I have no clue as to what else people might want and/or use regularly.
 * Finally, regarding people pre-formatting the numbers, I am afraid this is not something that can be addressed. You see, the set of functions available for template creation is extremely limited; it is certainly not even close to what's available in a full-fledged programming language.  We can only hope that when someone passes a pre-formatted number as a template parameter, s/he would double-check the result, see that it generates an error, make the corrections accordingly (and never pass pre-formatted numbers to a template parameter again :)).  In any case, it is probably a point worth including into documentation, so I will do that as well.
 * Let me know if you have any further concerns and/or suggestions, please. Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Some NaN in the right places fixed the comma every 3 digits problem that Lunokhod was having. &mdash;MJCdetroit 01:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, my impression was that Lunokhod was worrying about people writing something like, which, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be taken into account from inside the code.  If it really was just regarding formatting the output, then yes, of course FORMATNUM will do the trick.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:06, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I just thought about something for your templates. When copyediting conversions in text, the Manual of Style states that units in text should be spelled out while conversions should be abbreviated.  In other words, I live 11 miles (17.7 km) from....  This could be a very helpful third option in the abbr part of your template; maybe   or something.  Just an idea I thought I'd mention before I forgot. &mdash;MJCdetroit 01:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, that particular MOSNUM clause escaped me. I'll add this option to the templates and set it as default.  Thanks for pointing this out!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Location map Russia
Немного подробнее о карте. --Obersachse 23:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Thomas! I should have probably checked back on that thread after I watchlisted it :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Re Quick help request
Hi Ëzhiki,
 * ...please, take a look at my user page? I don't quite understand why the section that is supposed to be hidden (the one with the barnstars) shows by default...

I'm not sure either, but hope the switch to hidden also works where you are. Here, using firefox, the "Awards" titlebar extended across the whole page (i.e. cut through the "Ëzhiki" panel), but rather than try fiddling with its width I reckoned it would be more robust if curtailed by the double-pane table. If (1) this layout doesn't work / generates problems / interferes with subsequent edits you'd like to make on the page; and (2) a solution isn't obvious, let me know and I'll try to sort it out. By then I may've learned of a simpler, neater approach! Yours, David (talk) 04:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

PS Re ...Templates, I see User:Fabartus and folk above have already contributed; hope, therefore, any gremlins found now removed...?
 * This is absolutely wonderful, thanks! Previously, the titlebar stretched across the whole page not only in Firefox, but in Opera as well (curiously enough, IE displayed it correctly).  Now it works like a charm.
 * As for the conversion templates, I've got all my questions answered. While one can never be sure if all the gremlins are now gone, at least templates' standard applications seem to function flawlessly.  Frank above mentioned a handbook of such templates&mdash;is this something that's already started (if so, can I have a link, please), or just an early concept?
 * Again, thanks for your help! I'll address the Adygea issues later today.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Conversions
I've reverted your deprecated messages from some unit conversion templates. I've created improved version for unit conversion too, e.g. Unit length which provide the necessary functionality for the Category:Geobox series and haven't upgraded all Geoboxes to use them instead of these ones and when I do so I'll put speedy message to them. Anyway, why should they be replaced by exactly those templates you suggested? – Caroig 19:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Caroig! What I was trying to do is to clean up the Category:Conversion templates to get rid of the duplicates.  The templates I removed (and deprecated) all had a counterpart with better functionality.  For example, Unit km was deprecated because km to mi does exactly the same conversion, but provides more formatting options.  There just is no good reason to have both templates&mdash;it only confuses the end users!  On the other hand, you are right about Unit length, but that one is not a direct counterpart of any of the templates I deprecated.  It, however, aims to do the same thing as conv-dist, but, again, the latter does it better, so it would make sense for Unit length to go.
 * I am not suggesting that "Unit x" templates are to be deleted, but you might want to consider upgrading their functionality by borrowing from the code of the "x to y" templates (and then speedying those). The conversion templates have a far greater potential for usage besides geoboxes, so artificially restricting their functionality for one single purpose (geoboxes) completely forgoes other benefits.  On the other hand, if for one reason or another geoboxes do require a set of dedicated templates of their own, then, of course, my decision to deprecate them was incorrect.  In that case, however, you might want to consider updating those templates documentation to clearly state their limited purpose.
 * I hope this provides a sufficient explanation for my actions. Now, if you wish to complete the cleanup on your own, it would be wonderful.  Let me know if I can be of any help.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I fully support the idea of having just one set of universal conversion templates. I'm aiming at a similar goal with the Geobox series. It's a project under construction so I'm still trying new things. I'll probably shift all unit conversion handling to Convert which is even more comprehensive than those you suggested but I'll still need some "translation" templates to provide the functionality required for Geoboxes. What I objected was, first, putting the deprecated statement rather than suggesting better templates and, second, deprecating in favor of just one of many better templates. I'll try to remove those duplicates as soon as possible so we might remove them from showing in the Category:Conversion templates – Caroig 19:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I, too, think that the universal templates are the way to go.  Unfortunately, I learned about their existence only after I created almost a dozen of unit-specific converters.  Fortunately, the ones I created turned out to be better than those already listed in Category:Conversion templates, so I thought I'd start with cleaning up those first (there had been duplicates there even before I showed up).  Anyway, I don't know how far you are from reaching your goal of the unified conversion template, but the idea was that no matter how soon (or late) it is going to happen, people wouldn't have to wade through the duplicates in the conversions category in the interim.  A half-assed cleanup is better than no cleanup, wouldn't you agree? :)  The Category:Conversion templates now contains 47 entries (including the duplicates you restored) instead of previous 60+.  I'd say it's an improvement.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * So now they are only 34, I removed those templates of mine from the Category:Conversion templates and I'll try to clean up the conversion templates in Geoboxes too. I'm not working on the Convert template, that's someone else's doing. I created those templates solely to be used within Geoboxes as they take some special formatting paremeters (I probably shouldn't have put them in this general category). Well, you kicked me to sort out the mess I had created … :-) – Caroig 20:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, at least some good came out of it! :) In any case, I apologize for deprecating the templates before asking.  It was due purely to my laziness, but that, of course, is no excuse in such matters.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I noticed you deprecated SquareMilesAndKm and replaced its use on some articles with mi2 to km2. The replacement has some nice features and is a tidy and short name. My only real complaint is that it is misnamed. The name implies that it produces only one output value: km², when it displays two values. Now, if it were named mi2 and km2 I would think it's perfect! —EncMstr 19:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion, EncMstr! I will not make the changes right away, but I will take care of the naming issue later, when (and if) all the disputes similar to the one with Caroig above have been settled.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There was a thread quite awhile back (June 2006?) in Village pump (technical) about so-called universal conversion templates. Some wiki developers and, I think, a wikimedia.org developer or system manager said not to use such a thing, strongly recommending a small assortment of special-purpose templates instead.  I thought convert was the one mentioned—it had been tagged deprecated—but that doesn't seem to be the situation now.  Not sure if I'm remembering the wrong template name, or maybe the underlying issue has been addressed (which involved "template expansion memory" or something like that).  You might want to investigate a little more before making a lot of changes.  Cheers, —EncMstr 22:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up! I'll make sure to investigate this.  I am pretty new to this conversion stuff, so there may very well be something important I am missing.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, I responded to your question related to the above. I might suggest taking all this to Category talk:Conversion templates and inviting all interested parties to take part in discussion of a standardized set of templates there. --CBD 03:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I copied that thread to and replied at Category talk:Conversion templates. Thanks for the feedback!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Sosnovo
Hi! Yes, you are probably right, at least now it is not an urban settlement. Colchicum 23:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Tatarstan
Hi Ezhiki! While doing my research I found details of an interesting (sub)nationality. So I have added a paragraph to the section on ethnic groups in the article on Tatarstan, which might be controversial and/or upset Tatar nationalists, although I hope it doesn't. Please tell me what you think. Thanks, Paul —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Paulalexdij (talk • contribs) 02:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC). Belated signature Paulalexdij 02:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, the theme is rather disputable. However, the Kerashen Tatars are only ethnocultural grou p of Tatars, as they speak a pure Tatar. If the speak dialects, this dialects are spoken also among the surronding Muslim Tatars. there is also another POV, stating that they direcdtly originate from the Kypchaks or the pre-Bolghar pagan population. In 1926 Census they were counted separately, but duriing the atheistic Soviet epoch the most of them mingled with other ethnic group. For the most part, Kerashen practise the Orthodox faith, but have a Tatar self-determination. (As for the Kerashens I had to communicate). Another fact in this paragraph is an underestimating of the Jews.--Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 13:50, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I know the theme is controversial, but 18,760 people in Tatarstan did voluntarily self-identify as Kriashen, and the linguistic experts (see link) state that their 7 dialects are mostly similar but still somewhat different ... are there other links on this topic? I did see some other info like you say in the article on Tatars, which did seem though to be written a little over-assertively perhaps ?? Nevertheless perhaps some of that info could be included or perhaps there should be a separate page for this or perhaps this is already enough ... Personally I just want to be fair with my limited knowledge (I read only Germanic, Romance, and Hellenic languages, and unfortunately neither Russian nor Tatar), and would rather just deal with numbers, and facts, and perhaps facts about POVs but not necessarily POVs themselves. As for the number of Jews, the 2002 census counted 3,472 out of 3,779,265 which is 0.0918697%, which I have rounded to 0.09% since I am everywhere using only two decimal points. If there is evidence the census is inaccurate we could note that. I could however add the 0.5% back to the Tatar grand total, while still keeping the Kriashen on the list. In fact i am going to do that now. Paulalexdij 19:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Note, that in the last census Keräshen (self-spelling) or Kryashen (Russian spelling) were counted, but they number is included to the general number of the Tatars, as well as number of the Siberian Tatars and Astrakhan Tatars, however, Crimean Tatars weren't. As for the separate article it is planned for all sub groups of the Tatars, but it is done only for Siberian Tatars and Volga Tatars, whose part Kerashens actually are, and still not complete. The most problem group with the most non-Tatar self-determination, the Nagaybak, are also described. If you is interested in, please, be patient, as I am not going to research this theme right now. --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 11:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you Untifler for that information. You are right the Census is quite clear that Kryashen, Siberian, and Astrakhan Tatars are subgroups while Crimean Tatars are listed completely separately. The story of the early origins is very interesting but quite complicated ... I will research a little but am not going to write anything on that or on the Nagaybak or anymore in the Tatarstan article ... I am not in a rush, just very patient, and glad there is so much interesting info here. Paulalexdij 14:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Untifler and Ezhiki. I made some changes to try to be as neutral as possible.  I'm not going to make any more now unless somebody else really wants me to. Paulalexdij 23:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, folks! I see you had a pretty productive discussion without me. Is there still anything left I can help with?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey Ezhiki, yes it has been a productive interesting discussion. I dont think there is anything in particular that needs immediate resolution, however.  I think the page on Tatarstan is fairly static now, and more-knowledgeable folk may do more work on the various pages for the tatar people(s) at some point in the future :) Paulalexdij 17:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Good; I wasn't sure if you still wanted me to do anything or not. Anyway, I apologize for not responding right away&mdash;I am usually not around Wikipedia much during weekends.  Feel free to drop me a note if you need anything else, though!  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Admin help
Кстати, Ёzhiki, есть просьба. я как-то напереименовал свою собственную старницу эксперимента ради, теперь вернуться не могу. нужна помошь админа! И ещё! Можно перенести Mintimer Shaymiyev на Mintimer Shaymiev. Это ближе к другим транслитерациям и принципиально с точки зрения татарского языка. (ий в татарсокм не существует). И ещё, при подстановки таблички про татарстан пропала ссылка ни гимн (а статья про енего, между прочим была, только не помню под каким названием) Заранее спасибо, --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 13:50, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Страницу перенёс, с остальным разберусь после выходных.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Из того, что я видел, фамилию Шаймиева по-английски пишут кому как не лень. Вот "Вечерняя Казань", например, использует "Shaymiyev".  Другие варианты встречаются тоже довольно часто.  В таких случаях логичнее всего использовать спеллинг по WP:RUS.  А вот с гимном это я ошибся.  Я его перенёс под официальное название, а в шаблоне использовал другое.  Сейчас починю.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Russian federal subjects
Кстати, о шаблоне регионов. там есть одно замечание по республикам. В 1920 году была провозглашена Татарская АССР. Однако датой возникновения современно Татарстана считается 30 августа 1990. Как именно разрешить конфликт этих двух дат я не знаю, т.к. не представляю как с учётом современных политических представлений можно назвать последнюю дату. Но под каким-либо соусом её абсолютно точно надо указать!"--Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 14:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Республика Татарстан является полноправным преемником Татарской АССР. Оба образования имеют статус республики в составе РФ/РСФСР, оба занимают идентичную территорию.  Поскольку Татарская АССР была образована в 1920 г., то и дату образования собственно Татарстана в шаблоне я указал именно эту.  1990 же год упомянут в секции "Politics".  1990/1991 год в шаблоне я не стал указывать ещё и по той причине, что если для республик и АО эта дата ещё имеет определённый смысл, то для краёв и областей она имеет очень узкоспециальное значение.  Можно, конечно, сделать вместо одного поля ("дата образования") сделать два ("дата образования административно-территориальной единицы" и "дата образования федерального субъекта"), но особого смысла в этом я не вижу.  Это же всего лишь шаблон с общими данными; подробности же должны быть в тексте.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Admin divs of Adygea update
Hi again Ëzhiki, Just to let you know:


 * Tlekhuray. I, too, now think this is the best solution thus far, especially after you tweaked it.  I only wanted to note that it should be perfectly OK to compact the source reference under the table to one line (i.e., to Sources: 1897–...'').
 * Done!


 * Map''. I like Rarelibra's map quite a bit, so I wouldn't want to override it with anything else either...
 * Have cropped and added a few extra annotations (approximately locating Krasnodar, the Krasnodar Reservoir and the Caucasus Mountains, as mentioned in the article) in this version of Rarelibra's map. It's also now sitting in the article. Are you happy with this version – and do you think Rarelibra will be too...?


 * Model''. Yes, it was precisely my intent to write and polish one article so it could serve as a template to the rest of the articles in the series.  Ultimately, I'd like to see all 86 (or whatever the number is going to be by then) lists featured.  Of course, with my current pace it might very well happen only after I retire :))
 * I say aim for what you reckon are the major 22 subjects first!


 * Peer review''. I think we can nominate it for peer review this or next week.  We might want to move it out of your user space first, though.  Moving it to administrative divisions of Adygea/Temp will probably be the best.
 * I moved it to Administrative divisions of Adygea/archive2 before being reminded of the above; hope that's no problem.


 * Misc''. Just to let you know, I have not forgotten about my promise to research the benefits/downsides of city/town/urban-type settlement status.  I haven't been able to find anything reference-worthy so far, but I'll keep trying.  Like I previously said, the status is more of an acknowledgement than a reward, hence there isn't really too much available on this topic.  I'll keep my eyes open; the subject already proved to be intriguing :)
 * Don't let this interfere with article generation; it was just a passing thought! – and on second thoughts I guess similar conferments in other countries are also essentially ceremonial.

Hope all well, David (talk) 05:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Wonderful! The map turned out better than I could have hoped.  I left Rarelibra a message; let's hope the map will be taken care of, but for now (and for the peer review) the new cropped version should be quite sufficient.
 * I do have a question about the second part of your post though (I say aim for what you reckon are the major 22 subjects first!). Why 22?  In any case, it's too late for that&mdash;Adygea is hardly one of the 22 major subjects; it just happened to be the first in the alphabetically sorted list!  Not to mention that it is hardly possible to even arrange the federal subjects from major to minor without offending someone :)  If you are interested, I am planning to do Tatarstan next (because Untifler, being a native, can provide invaluable assistance), and then go on with Primorsky Krai (because this is where I am originally from :))
 * Oops – I meant to amend "the major 22 subjects" to something like "the first quarter of the subjects by size" before posting; apologies for oversight.


 * The list's new location (/update) is fine, of course. I'll be submitting it for peer review soon.  Would you have time to participate and answer the formatting-related questions, should those surface in the process?  Speaking of which, if you agree to participate, is there a good time to submit the nomination without having to distract you from other endeavors?
 * Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * "Yes (especially as I've tinkered with it)" and "Any time is as suspect good as any other" are the answers I hope you're glad to hear! Yours, David (talk) 08:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, then I'll put the revised version up for peer review as soon as I get a free moment. Thanks again for all your help with this!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Soviet Union
Hello Ezhiki. Should Cat:Cities and towns in the Soviet Union be deleted? It may be quite misleading and cause double categorisation. What do you think? - Darwinek 09:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm not really sure. On one hand, if its contents are kept strictly to other categories and not individual entries, it may be fine to leave it.  On the other hand, considering that its only subcat now is Category:Hero Cities of the Soviet Union, and that it itself is a subcategory of Category:Settlements in Russia (??!!), it is already double and improperly categorized.  I'd say CfD it, and if any good reasons to leave it exist, they will surely surface during the CfD.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:10, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello. I've put that cat to CFD, please comment or vote. I have also another one question for you, as you are Russian native :), shouldn't "USSR national football team" and related FIFA World Cup templates be renamed to "Soviet Union" form? We already use United States instead of U.S. or USA. Thank you. - Darwinek 17:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I voted to delete the cat. As for the soccer teams, when you put it like that, it makes sense to rename the templates.  However, not being a fan of soccer at all, I'd rather leave this to discussion by editors who are more qualified than me :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:45, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Nikolay Zimyatov
Could you take a look at some of the issues here? The current transliteration of his name is hardly acceptable. -- Ghirla -трёп-  14:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I moved it to WP:RUS-compliant romanization. It should stay there unless someone can demonstrate that (and why) some other spelling is more preferrable.  Thanks for the heads-up.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help on this. Can you look at the other Nordic skiers for Russia and the Soviet Union as well? I would greatly appreciate it? Chris 19:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, will do.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:58, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Chris 20:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Yo (units)
You made some unit conversion templates for us, I made some documentation on them for you. Give and giveback: WikiProject_Space/phys unit templs. Rursus 15:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Rursus! If this is going to be helpful to the WikiProject Space participants, I am, of course, all for it.  Just wanted to mention that the templates provide more functionality than default conversion and are all documented at the templates' pages (see, for example, ft to m).  Since the additional parameters are pretty much all the same for all the templates (long/short form, spelling, precision, and unit wikification), you might want to add them to your documentation page.  Another thing I wanted to mention is a discussion Category talk:Conversion templates&mdash;the set of templates I've created so far may in future be replaced with another, better-written set, of which now only m-ft is available.  Anyway, let me know if there is anything I can help with.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:38, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I see! I'll add much (but not necessarily all) of that information to the template documentation page, and make an explicit invitation to refer to the template page in order to get full documentation of the template. My doc is intended to be an overview. Soon. Rursus 10:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Some provisional improvement by ripping info from your Template:Km to mi documentation, note How I perverted your Usage by adding tag namings (similar to Ada:s named parameters), and so on – I'm not sure my way is the best way, it clutters the text, which might be hard to handle by the template user. Rursus 11:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Forgot to say: more L8R, but first I wish your opinions (such as: "go"/"wait"/"do that"). Rursus 11:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, do that :) I take it the page is already useful to the WikiProject's participants, and it may later easily be adopted for WP:TSP project's purposes (you may want to let them know, by the way).  Thanks!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:32, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Rursus 18:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The Rochevs and Ms. Valbe
I will look at them tomorrow AM. Thank you for your assistance on all this. I really appreciate it. Chris 22:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to let you know I was unable to get review the information from yesterday. I hope I can get this reviewed either tomorrow or Saturday. Thank you for your assistance anyway. Chris 14:59, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem. Whenever you have time will be fine; just let me know what to do with Ms. Välbe (if anything) when you get a chance to review the situation.  Thanks!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Excuse me for butting in: Ms Välbe married an Estonian, Urmas Välbe. I guess that means it stays as Välbe? Sam Vimes | Address me 15:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information, Sam! Do you know if they both now have Estonian citizenship?  If so, then, of course, she should stay listed as "Välbe".  Otherwise, I don't know.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Eek, this is complicated. Unfortunately there aren't many sources around because she basically faded from the non-Russian-speaking world (and presumably the Russian-speaking one too) after retiring around 1998. Anyway, this article from 1997 (in Norwegian, sorry, there's scarce sources on skiers in English!) says that she first got a child with Urmas Välbe, then was in a relationship with Nikolay Zimyatov, and finally was supposed to marry a furniture dealer called Stanislav from Moscow (this being a tabloid newspaper, they saw no reason to mention Stanislav's last name).
 * In conclusion: she's probably no longer named Välbe and was never an Estonian citizen. However, as an active skier, she was always known as Välbe (or Valbe to lazy English-speakers without the knowledge of how to use umlauts) in Latin transcription, and almost never as Vyalbe. Mind, Encyclopedia Britannica uses Vyalbe, and it might be strictly correct based on how she wrote her name in Cyrillic. Sam Vimes | Address me 18:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and if you want some more transcription to check, there are two articles on Nikolay Kruglov and Nikolay Kruglov Sr. which are probably both at the wrong name, and that Sergei Buligine (there's an interwiki link there) is definitely wrong. Sam Vimes | Address me 18:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not being an expert on the subject of skiers, I'm going to leave this to you folks to sort out :) If you jointly decide that the article should be moved to Yelena Vyalbe (which is exact romanization from Russian) and need my help, just drop me a note, I'll take care of it.
 * As for the Kruglovs and "Buligine", I'm gonna straighten them up right now. Thanks again!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Regarding Mrs. Välbe, I have seen the spelling as Yelena Välbe. I have also seen the Norwegian version of this being listed as Jelena Välbe. Adjust the "J" to the "Y" and you should have it as that. I am in process of reviewing the Rotchevs right now, so we should get this little issue rectifired. I hope this helps. Chris 13:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I adjusted both Vasily Pavlovich Rochev (father) and Vasily Vasilyevich Rochev (son) from their redirect. I am able to pull all of this off if you wish to have a look. Chris 14:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Just a note on this&mdash;per WP:MOSNUM, the units of measurements are supposed to be separated from the numbers with a non-breaking space.  Not sure how exactly handle "4x10"-type of references, but there should either be non-breaking spaces or no spaces at all.  Otherwise you risk situation where "4 x " would be on one line and "10" would be wrapped to another line.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

More transcription trouble
Thank you for correcting all the cranky transcriptions. I have a few more requests regarding article moves due to faulty transcriptions. The following Russian (Soviet) biathletes have all got their names wrong, I suspect:


 * Aleksandr Tikhonov (Alexander)
 * Sergei Tchepikov (Sergey Chepikov)
 * Sergei Tarasov (Sergey Tarasov)
 * Sergei Rozhkov (Sergey Rozhkov)

And the following skier:
 * Ljubov Moukhatcheva (Lyubov)

As if this wasn't enough, quite a few persons listed in the category Category:Soviet Nordic combined skiers carry the same kind of mistakes. Being Norwegian, I'm no expert in these matters, but I clearly see they must be wrong (j's instead of y's etc.).

Best regards Guaca 00:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, lucky you; you have found the person who actually enjoys doing this kind of cleanup :) I'll take care of the cases above and go through the category.  If you find anything else of this sort, please don't hesitate to let me know&mdash;I'll help gladly.  Cheers,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, the cleanup is now complete. Bring more! :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yo! Great work! One more for you for now: Nikolai Kiseljov. I suppose we still might spot a few mistakes, findine the letter "j" in categories of Soviet/Russian people certainly makes me suspicious these days. Guaca 19:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the "mistakes" are not necessarily mistakes&mdash;there is more than one system for romanizing Russian, with each one having its uses. The problem is not that those systems are wrong (they are not), but that using more than one system in something that's supposed to be a standardized reference is confusing.  That's exactly why one system has been adopted, and that is WP:RUS.  There is, of course, room for exceptions (common English usage, personal preferences of the person about whom an article is written, etc.), but overall, the more standardized the spelling is, the better.
 * Anyway, Kiselyov is now taken care of. If you find more in future, just drop me a note.  Thanks!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Komandorskie Ostrova
Privet Yozhik, Thanks for tightening up the Komandorski Islands revisions. I was wondering if you could look over some additions/revisions to the Nikolskoye article and a page I created (my first!) about the Komandorsky Zapovednik (note, even here there is inconsistency in the spelling! But that's how the zapovednik spells it on their official site.)  Thanks, Eliezg 00:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Eliezg! I'll certainly look over the Nikolskoye and the nature reserve articles.  Regarding the spelling issues: having done a bit of research, it looks that "Commander Islands" is the name most used in English, so I'll move the article accordingly.  As for the nature reserve, it should probably be moved to "Komandorsky nature reserve" for the same reason&mdash;we should be using English, and "zapovednik" is just a romanization of the Russian word meaning "nature reserve".  Please let me know if you have any objections.  And, of course, thank you for your contributions&mdash;as your userpage righfully mentions, the area is remote and scarcely populated, so good quality information is hard to come by.  Keep up the good work!  If there is anything else I can help with, please don't hesitate to let me know.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Transliteration and proper names
Dear sir: you have corrected my spelling of the Russian town on "Taiga" to "Tayga," citing Wikipedia romanization guidelines. However, "Taiga" in English is emphatically not a Romanization. Sure enough, "Moska" is the Romanized version of the Russian capital, but the English Wikipedia article is listed under its common English-language name of "Moscow," not "Moskva." Simply Google "Taiga" - almost every reference to the town or railroad junction on the internet in the English language is to "Taiga" NOT "Tayga." I beg you to allow the common English name of this location instead of the unknown transliterated version "Tayga" as the primary reference. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kedrovi (talk • contribs).
 * The difference is that while "taiga" (a type of biome) is, of course, an English loanword, listed in most dictionaries, "Ta[y|i]ga" (the name of the town) is not. The town, unlike Moscow, is just too small and insignificant to have a "conventional name" in English.  In such cases, romanization guidelines always take precedence.  The subject, by the way, has been discussed to death many times before: note, for example, the spelling of "Mendeleev", the creator of the periodic table, and compare it with spelling of "Mendeleyevo", an urban-type settlement named after him.  Same goes for Kiev and Kiyevsky Rail Terminal.  The bottom line is&mdash;if the word is in the dictionary, use that form (taiga, raion, krai, etc.), if it is not, use the romanized version.  Another point to consider is that the maps in the English language most commonly use the BGN/PCGN romanization system (on which WP:RUS is based), so for smaller locales it is far more likely that the version romanized using that system will be used for search.  Hope this answers your concerns.  Let me know if you have any further questions.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Agydea
(only if I spelled it correctly) I got your message. Do you ever give up your perfectionism? :) Let me get back to you later when I have few minutes to snoop around. Renata 02:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I never give up :) Perfectionism is, unfortunately, the story of my life&mdash;I seem to never be able to actually finish anything because nothing is ever up to standards and can always be further improved :)  Anyway, if you could find a minute for a review, I'd certainly much appreciate it!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Vyatsky
Thanks for adding to the villages on the Vyatsky disambiguation page. Why did you delete the one in the Kirov Oblast? --Bejnar 23:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. I didn't delete the one in Kirov Oblast; I temporarily commented it out because I was unable to verify its location (it's probably too small to have been included in my master list, which covers about 20% of the largest rural localities in Russia).  I'll do further research next week and will restore it as soon as I find confirmation.  Best,&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:33, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Just do a Google search for Kirov and Vyatsky, it shows right up. --Bejnar 23:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Umm, that's not exactly what I meant by "verification". There were hundreds of villages abolished in Russia in the past few years; many of those might still show up in Google in various references.  I will have to check with the official government documents of Kirov Oblast to see if the village still exists.  Don't worry, if it exists, I'll find it and put it back in the list :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, it doesn't matter whether it currently exists or not. If it did once exist (which it did), and there are references to it (which there are), an entry is a disambiguation page is appropriate, and when linked it would go to the name by which the village is most often known in English, in accordance with Wikipedia Place name guidelines, which normally for small Russian villages is the transliterated current name. --Bejnar 16:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I know it doesn't matter, but we still need to know whether it still exists or not in order to word the entry on the disambiguation page properly. See, for example, Oktyabrsky to see what I mean.  In any case, I am planning to run a check today.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, a problem. I don't see this village (existing or abolished) anywhere in Kirov Oblast.  There is a town of Vyatskiye Polyany and an administrative/municipal rural okrug called "Vyatsky", which comprises eight villages, but none of those villages is called "Vyatsk[y|aya|oye]".  Would you mind pointing me to one of those google links you found, please?&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:45, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You are right. I suspect that it was Vyatskiye Polyany that I found, but there is also Bolshe Vyatskoye, and of course the former name of Kirov: Vyatka.  --Bejnar 16:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, Bolshevyatskoye and Vyatka are valid, but they do not belong on Vyatsky per Manual of Style for disambiguation pages. Vyatka, however, has a disambiguation page of its own, and Bolshevyatskoye can be added to the "see also" list (of both Vyatka and Vyatsky) once we have an article about it.  Thanks for taking time to look this up!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

New location map of Russia in ruwiki and dewiki
See here. --Obersachse 00:09, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Location map/Temp works (and should be compatible with existing location maps). --Obersachse 10:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Obersachse, ты меня опередил :) Кстати, придётся ботом поисправлять названия параметров. — Kalan 11:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

AOs
Привет! Хотелось бы выяснит один факт как у самого компитентного в этой области википедиста: Administrative_divisions_of_Karachay-Cherkessia не содержит ничего про Абазинский район.

Кстати, Калмыцкая АО кажется существовала дважды: в 1920-е, а потом когда им разрешили вернуться из депортации и в 1950е, непродолжительное время! --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 16:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Абазинского района в списке нет поскольку официально его ещё не существует. Был только референдум.  Это как, например, с Камчатским краем &mdash; создание его было одобрено, но официально он не появится до июля этого года.  Абазинский район же появится только в январе 2009 г. (см., например, )
 * С Калмыкией же всё сложнее. Калмыкский нац. округ был образован в 1920 г.  В 1928 г. он был включен в состав нового Нижне-Волжского края (но остался со статусом АО).  В 1934 г. Нижне-Волжский край был раздроблен, и Калмыцкий АО стал входить в состав Сталинградского края, и в 1935 г. был повышен в статусе до АССР (но остался в составе Сталинградского края).  В 1936 г. Калмыцкая АССР из состава Сталинградского края была выведена (последний стал в связи с этим называться Сталинградской областью).  В 1943 г. Калмыцкая АССР была упразднена, поскольку калмыки стали считаться пособниками врага.  Территория была передана в состав Астраханской области.  В 1957 г. Калмыкия была восстановлена в качестве АО и была включена в состав Ставропольского края, а в 1958 г. из его состава была выведена и поднята в статусе до АССР, чем и оставалась до 90-х гг.  Вроде ничего не забыл :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * В таком случае кто-то сильно загнался в статьях Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast и Kalmyk Autonomous Republic. Кстати, по поводу той же Абазинии: может есть смысл начать что-нибудь вроде National district и Proposed federal subjects of Russia по мотивом неудавшихся распадов республик северного кавказа? --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 09:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Загнался в том числе и я :) Стыд и позор &mdash; перепутал автономный округ с автономной областью.  В любом случае, те две статьи я переименовал и немного расширил.  Вообще, их все давно пора уже пересмотреть, но всё никак руки не дойдут...
 * Что касается national district и proposed federal subjects of Russia, то первую, в принципе, написать можно, хотя по сути это всего лишь районы с компактным проживанием местных народностей. Второе же уже и так входит в federal subjects of Russia (см. внизу, там где написано про объединение субъектов).  Расширить это было бы можно, но, боюсь, на полноценную статью материала наскрести будет сложно.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Adygea update
Hey - I am back on track. I found a wonderful reference, and will be updating the map for Adygea with a very detailed update, using THIS WEBSITE. Can you possibly help me with the translation? :) Rarelibra 18:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Boy, am I glad to hear that! Unfinished work itches me like flea bites :)  I will, of course, be absolutely happy to assist with whatever translation needs you might have&mdash;just give me a shout!  I just wish I knew that the cadaster site could be of assistance to you&mdash;I would have pointed it out earlier.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey Ezhiki - I went ahead and updated the Adygea districts map. You should see a considerable improvement in the quality and dimension. I am very sorry for the delay, but hope it is worth the wait... and will accept any other needs for adding to the map, just let me know. Rarelibra 17:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow, this is fantastic! The map looks so much better now; it was certainly well worth the wait :)  The only thing that's missing is the Caucasus mountains, but other than that I don't anticipate the map needing any further tweaking.  Thank you thank you thank you!!!  If anything I can help you with ever comes up, I'll be more than happy to return the favor!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:49, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar of Thanks

 * Hey, thanks a lot!&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:19, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. Chris 14:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I am just man enough to admit my errors. If you go to my userpage, one of my userboxes is "This user reserves the right to completely screw up his/her edits", even the minor ones committed when presenting awards like yours. No harm, no foul. Thanks again anyway. Chris 01:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Image:Information.svg
Будь добр, обнови отсюда — там уже довольно давно исправлен глюк с бликом. А здесь ещё нет. — Kalan 13:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Done.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 10x. А clear зачем убрал? :) — Kalan 16:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Место экономлю :)&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Wiki is not a paper :) + Можешь не дублировать мессаги на моей странице — я регулярно чекаю глазлист. И не юзай, плз,  вместо   в подписях и отделяй его пробелами с двух сторон. — Kalan 16:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Mdash пробелами с двух сторон обязательно отделяется в русском языке. В английском можно либо отделять, либо не отделять (главное выбрать и придерживаться одного из вариантов).  Я предпочитаю не отделять, потому что мне лень каждый раз вставлять неразрывный пробел перед mdash и обычный &mdash; после.  Что касается mdash vs , то с моим зрением первое предпочтительнее, тем более что на output это не влияет.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Хм, понятно. А что означает слово, которое ты пишешь в коммент к правкам в обсуждениях? — Kalan 17:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Это сокращённо от "response", "responded".&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ага, так я и предполагал. — Kalan 17:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Userpage vandalized
Thanks for reverting my userpage. Spasiva ! Whlee 16:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem.&mdash;Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Red (dead) links
In case you don't go back to my talk page, I'll respond to your comment here: I have seen no evidence that red links encourage people to write articles. They just clutter up pages and make them look unprofessional. Many Wikipedia editors unlink these dead links for that reason. If a subject is notable, someone will write an article. Not every topic or person is important enough for an article. Spylab 16:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I've seen otherwise, but that's not my point. In this particular case, the backlinks produced by these red links is what's important.  There are tens of thousands geographic points in Russia, all of which need to have articles eventually (geographic locations are not subject to notability criteria, by the way; they only need to be verifiable).  Absence of organization, categorization, disambiguation, and proper cross-linking creates unnecessary amounts of needless cleanup and maintenance after the articles have been written.
 * Additionally, no matter what your personal view of the matter is, removing valid red links is against WP:RED. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

irc-конференция
В Пятницу (30 марта 2007) в 15 часов по UTC на канале #wikipedia-ru состоится конференция по поводу усовершенствования шаблона "Город" и производных в ruwiki. Хорошо, если сможешь участвовать. --Obersachse 16:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Спасибо за сообщение, но, к сожалению, у меня как раз на это время на работе запланирована конференция :( —Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Жалко. Мы выбрали специально время, которое тебе могло бы подойти. Но делать нечего. Сообщу тебе результаты конференции. --Obersachse 19:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Прямо под меня планировали что ли? :) Жаль, время выпало прямо на ежемесячную конференцию, да и в любом случае с рабочего места в irc у меня выхода нет.  Но результаты изучу с удовольствием, спасибо за update!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ну, можем и перепланировать на выходные :) Если ты сможешь, конечно. — Kalan 05:12, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Да ладно, конферируйте без меня уже. Не хочу обещать, а потом не смочь появиться.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:09, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Лог в скором времени (через час-два) вывешу сюда. — Kalan 18:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Спасибо!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Krasnoyarsk
On my talk page, you mentioned "I also want to note regarding the map that Taymyria and Evenkia were merged into Krasnoyarsk Krai on 2007-01-01 (the map still shows them as separate entities)." I see the wiki article reflects this, but why is it not reflected on the actual Russian cadastral site? Rarelibra 18:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You seem to be under impression that Russian government agencies are striving to maintain their websites accurate and up-to-date :) In reality, I won't be surprised if the site will remain unchanged for a few more years.  Note that they don't show unified Perm Krai either, and that merger happened in 2005.
 * Anyway, if you need solid proof of these mergers (besides Wikipedia's articles, that is), I could dig up some official documents for you.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Pytalovo
As a hedgehog, you will probably like the way that you improved Swedish wikipedia. Your edit to Pytalovo provoked a bot into interwiki-linking Pytalovo to a Swedish article "Abrene", which actually claimed that "Abrene is a town in Latvia". I have since moved and edited the Swedish article. Not surprisingly, the guy who wrote that, got himself blocked permanently later on - for disruptions on Kishinev of all places. My Swedish is not good enough to see what was going on. His block is now being redebated and there is a Twincinema account on English wiki - but if it is the same guy, he seems not be interested in Russian things anymore or as yet (only music, which was also the main concern of the Swedish user).

Keep up the good work!--Pan Gerwazy 14:12, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * All in a day's work :) I do, however, think, that the majority of the credit here belongs to the bot owner.  Thanks for the update though&mdash;this sequence of events is quite entertaining!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is more to come. Russian wiki links the Pytalovo article to a Lithuanian article on Abrene district, which looks like a translation of a former version of the Latvian one. There is also a Spanish article on "Abrene", which is fact an article on Abrene district, and seems NPOV to me. Either that bot is very good and saw it was not about the town, or it just missed out. So, there are two languages which have an article about the region, but not about the town: Lithuanian and Spanish. Not enough confusion yet? . So there are three articles in the Latvian wiki.
 * I think, basically, that the Lithuanian article should not be linked from the Russian article (it does not link TO it by the way): one is about the district, the other is about the town - just like the Spanish one is not linked to th German, Dutch, Croat ... articles about the town. I do not think you are a (regular) contributor to Ru:wiki, but would you not agree on that. I also think that Spanish "Abrene" should be renamed to "Distrito de Abrene", but changing that would mean me taking an account there as well.
 * By the way, I am almost convinced that the origin of the name "Pytalovo" is not Baltic but "mesto pytok" - with some help from the original German name: Neu-Lettgallen. I have a Russian-Dutch dictionary which translates "mesto pytok" as "Galgenveld" - or Galgen pole. Add that "Galgen" could be pronounce as "Gallen" in Lower German (see English gallows), one can imagine folk etymology at work here - certainly if there was indeed a gallows in the neighbourhood. Of course, this is OR - but a strong argument in favour of "mesto pytok" which is attested in many places. ;>) --Pan Gerwazy 16:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not knowing the languages of the articles this article is interwikilinked to, it is very hard for me to sort all this mess out. I am definitely not moving anything in Spanish Wikipedia :), so if you are reasonably sure about what the text there says you might want to go ahead and do it yourself.
 * As for the name of "Pytalovo", my 2002 toponymic dictionary says that it is "possibly derived from a personal name" ("вероятно, антропонимического происхождения"), but provides no further details, except that such derivatives are very common in Central Russia. The "mesto pytok" theory is not even mentioned, although your theory sounds quite plausible.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the Spanish one starts with the words "distrito de Abrene" - that gives the game away, of course. I have an account on Russian wiki. As for the etymology, the town's website mentions both explanations: . Proving German Neu-Letgallen was used before the Latvians named it Jaunlatgalle is not difficult. There are German genealogical records. --Pan Gerwazy 17:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, once you can source it, it stops being original research :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Lettgallen have nothing to do with Galgen. The word Lettgallen means Latgalians. Colchicum 17:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't know, sorry.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, perhaps Pan Gerwazy meant that local people had misunderstood this, but it is highly doubtful. To produce this name they had to know the original German name, German language, to possess some incredible imagination (where has neu-lett gone?) and to forget what neu and lettgallen mean. So certainly it is not a strong argument. If there were gallows, the name could well emerge without any help from Neu-Lettgallen. Colchicum 17:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * mentions Neulettgallen (on page 15). Google a bit and you will find "Neu-Lettgallen" was known before, as well. Germans and Jews formed more than 8% of the Latvian population before 1940, and many, if not most of the intellectuals were German-speaking. An abbreviation like "Gallen-pole". is typical in Low Germanic (<- this part is not OR!). I am not saying that the name is German, by the way - even with this folk etymology thing, the name is Russian. It is just an add-on.
 * I hope you know many names of places and rivers in Europe and elsewhere are the result of folk etymology? Given the choice between a literary variant like the Latvian "Land of Cockaigne" explanation or the folk etymology explanation, I would go for the folk etymology anytime. ;>) Sorry, Ezhiki, for cluttering your talk page. --Pan Gerwazy 20:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't mind one bit. This is interesting.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Russian maps
Yeah, another map! I hope to be able to do maps for all of the administrative divisions for the various oblasts, respublikas, krais, avtonomnyye okrugs, and federalnyye gorodas. Should add a lot to the articles. :) I will definitely appreciate the help with keeping the maps up to date! Rarelibra 20:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, that's absolutely swell! I can now confidently work on the Russian administrative divisions topics knowing that much-needed maps will be eventually available.  As of now, we have a (rather limited) assortment of all kinds of maps made by different people, so it's nice to finally have a uniform set in sight.
 * As for the maps being up to date, you can safely use the "administrative divisions of..." series as a reference. There weren't many changes recently, but I always keep an eye on latest developments and make corrections quite expeditiously.  If you watchlist all articles in the series, it will serve as a personal subscription to all updates you need to know :)  Of course, if anything isn't clear, just contact me.  Ahh, this is exciting!  Thanks again!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ezhiki - As I finish each Federal District (working on Central right now), I will double-check all of the subdivisions within it and then initiate the maps. For example, I just double-checked the data from Vladimir against the "Administrative divisions of..." page. Rarelibra 21:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ezhiki - I just updated the Adygea map to a test for the "look and feel" of what all the maps could look like (though Adygea will have more detail - I don't plan to do hydrology or district centers on all maps). Let me know if you like the 'new look'. Rarelibra 16:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I do in fact like it better than pastels. The map now looks more crisp.  I think it'll work for the rest of the maps very well.
 * Now, I do have some additional comments about the maps (at this rate, you are probably soon going to hate the day I left the first message on your talk page :)). First of all, you mentioned that you don't want to do hydrology and district centers on all maps.  Does that add a lot of work when you are developing the maps?  I could agree that hydrology probably only adds marginal benefits, but district centers are quite relevant.  Would you reconsider?  Second, speaking of hydrology, I have just realized that Adygea's reservoirs aren't quite right on the map.  "Tshchitskoye Reservoir" is spelled "Tshchi k skoye" (Тщикское) and, what's more important, it is actually considered to be a part of Krasnodar Reservoir.  Third, David Kernow below wondered if you'd be able to add Krasnodar and Caucasus Mountains to the map.  Krasnodar is not a part of Adygea, but it did serve as its administrative center in the past, and there are quite a few references to it in the text.  Having the mountains would also be useful.  Fourth, "Stavropol" on the map really refers to Stavropol Krai&mdash;that also needs correcting.  And finally, I wanted to clarify one more time about the cities/towns.  As the Adygea list currently stands, it only describes the administrative divisions, so one map is enough.  The updated version, however, describes both administrative and municipal units (and it is my plan to add that information for the rest of the lists in the series as well), so another map would be quite handy.  The second map would be quite similar to the first one, with the main difference being that municipal city okrugs would be shown.  Once the first map is done, producing the second to accompany it should be trivial.  What do you think?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

History of Manchuria
''Sorry for the delayed response; while I have my archived talk watchlisted, I don't check back very often. In other words, I saw your note but promptly forgot about it :)''

''Anyway, I think what you did here will indeed be of great help in organizing articles about the history of the Far East. It is a far better approach than the one I took way back in 2004, when I wrote history of Primorsky Krai, which, for the most part, has nothing to do with Primorsky Krai proper. Back then, however, there really wasn't much in the English Wikipedia on Manchuria, so Primorsky Krai history seemed to be the best place to put this information. Now, of course, Wikipedia grew and many topics which were previously not covered are there.''


 * Little Upgrade abour History of Manchuria hope that it would be helpful to you. Regards. Whlee 08:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

''By the way, would you be interested in splitting history of Primorsky Krai properly? What that article really needs is a (very) brief overview of pre-Russian history, with links to main articles, and a solid body of text on history of actual Primorsky Krai (i.e., from 1938 onward). Maybe this will finally give me a push to finish what I started in 2004 :) Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)''
 * I will most certainly help where I can, but please note that my knowledge of the history of Manchuria is rather limited and whatever I know, I know from the Russian point of view. All in all, I know something about the part of history that's related to the territory of Primorsky Krai, but very little beyond that.  Also, I cannot read any of the Asian languages.
 * That the reason why it is very intersting to get Russian point of view !Khabarovsk Krai and beyond have also their own history, they are written in Cyrillics but the problem is that words pronouciations are Tungusic but anyway i'm "confident" about Russians sources.
 * As for the Cyrillic alphabet, learning it is quite easy. I'm sure you'll be able to fluently read it after less than a week of flashcard drilling.  You won't, of course, understand much, but you'll have sufficient knowledge to figure out that "Вяземский", for example, is "Vyazemsky".  It's only 33 letters, and a good chunk of them looks the same as the letters in the Latin alphabet.  It took me about a month to learn how to read hiragana and katakana a while back; Cyrillics is easier to learn by at least a degree of magnitude.
 * Sure it would be easy to "read Cyrillics" alphabet remeber i tried to reorganize Administration divisions of Prmiorye but as you taught me on that article admnistration system was a bit different, i did not know that because of my lacking knowledge in Russian, of course, on the other hand Russian is your mother tongue, we are therefore able complementing ou skills each other along with other Wikipedian in keeping a NPOV and communicating via English too thanks too Wikipedia !
 * To summarize, here is what I can help with: 1) helping figure out Cyrillics and location of objects on the territory of Russia; and 2) administrative and maintenance tasks (moving/renaming/splitting articles). Just let me know whenever you need help with any of these.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok let's start slowly but steady and surely. Regards.Whlee 17:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, just give me a holler once you have anything you need me to look at. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * here are somme Keywords and soources for a good start along with Russian wikipedia. Regards. Whlee 18:07, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Balhae Empire/Kingdom
 * Interesting, the Russian Wikipedia uses "Пархэ" instead of "Бохай". I did not see the former used much in the books I read.
 * As for the FEGI source, that one is most certainly reliable. Do you need that translated, or just need a general idea of what it's about?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Jin Empire in Primorye (need your request)
 * I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * i mean what is written in red —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Whlee (talk • contribs) 21:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
 * Ah, gotcha. Цзинь (bottom part)=Jin, Хэйшуй (top left)=Heishui, Мохэ (top right)=Mohe.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Gagarin
Hi there, Ezhiki! GSE mentions an urban type settlement of Gagarin in Sevansky raion of Armenia. Do you know if it still exists under this name or not? I decided not to mention it in the Gagarin dabpage. KNewman 08:18, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't really keep track of this kind of changes outside Russia. As a matter of fact, I barely keep up with changes in Russia itself!  However, a quick search shows that the locality in question still existed in 1995, although its status was no longer that of an urban-type settlement.  You might have better luck asking this at the Armenian portal.  Sorry I can't be of more help!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Grozny
Can you please, as an expert with namings, have a look at the dispute.--Kuban Cossack 21:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I'm not much of an expert when it comes to non-Russian names. However, I do have a few ideas on how to settle this, but I'll need to run a few checks first.  I'll do this first thing tomorrow when I get to Wikipedia.  Meanwhile, please do not revert-war.  Both of you are now well beyond the three revert limit.  I'm not going to block either of you because you seem to have a discussion going, but don't be surprised if someone else will.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Re Template:Russian district composition
Hi Ëzhiki,
 * ''...could you take a look at the Russian district composition template? ... If you don't want to disassemble the code (which is perfectly OK, because it is kind of heavy, repetitive, and unintelligible), I would still appreciate any generic advice...

I see what you mean about the "heavy" code! – although it seems this is mostly due to the parameter names. Normally, I reckon unabbreviated (or only slightly abbreviated) names are a good idea, but perhaps Russian district composition is an exception (so long as an explanation/key is given in the documentation/code's comments). How about:

Re the template's formatting, how about removing the repeated "khutor of"/"selo of"/etc within the "Rural localities in jurisdiction" column along these lines (using Ayryumovsky as example): ...or is the order in which these places appear significant...?

Best wishes, David (talk) 23:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC) PS Spotted Rarelibra's new version of the Adygea map, which looks the best yet; I'm tempted, though, to (re)insert Krasnodar's location and rotate the map back to its previous position (or was that incorrect...?)


 * Thanks for the review, David! Just to think of it&mdash;the first time I overcome myself and start spelling out the parameter names is the time when you tell me to maybe abbreviate them :)  Ironic, huh?  That aside, abbreviating them is a reasonable proposal.  I, however, could not resist adding the template to two more articles while waiting for your reply, so in essence I created more work for myself.  Oh well...
 * Regarding condensing the rural localities by type, I don't know. The idea sounds good, but when I am trying to visualize the end result in my head, I see a very cluttered third column with repeating sets of "khutor, village, selo, khutor, village, selo" lines.  Is there perhaps a better way to say "khutor of Foo", so the output looks better and no meaning is lost?
 * As for the map, Rarelibra took care of it today. Check out the new version.  Krasnodar and Caucaus Mountains are still not in, but I asked Rarelibra to add them (see here for the discussion).  Let's see how it turns out.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Apologies for this belated reply; I suddenly realized I hadn't acknowledged the above. Re abbreviating the parameter names, well, I guess this template might be one of the "exceptions that prove the rule"; it's also more of a formatting than navigational or infobox template, so perhaps that makes using cryptic names less of a "sin"!
 * Re the rural localities' layout, I agree; perhaps a solution is to use "khutor", "village", "selo", "stanitsa" and "settlement" subcolumns (not necessarily in that order!) within the "Rural localities in jurisdication" column...? These names only then need to appear once. (In order to keep the template from becoming overly broad, I'd probably also switch to font-size 95%, possibly even 90% for the smaller types.)
 * Haven't yet revisited Rarelibra's sterling work, but will do so soon. Hope all well, David (talk) 01:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is me who never followed up. Sorry!  In any case, I kind of shelved this idea for a while, as one of the discussions I've been having prompted me to re-visit the list we are working on and, oh horrors, I found a major mistake I had made.  The problem is that all those "administrative divisions" I've nicely put in a separate column of the composition tables shouldn't really be there for the rural level, as they are no longer recognized as administrative by Adygea's laws (I carried them over from the original version of the list without even thinking ).  Well, that's my mistake, hence it's my problem, hence I fixed it.  On the other hand, however, if you could look at the composition tables in our workspace and see if there is a better way to format three-column tables (such as the one for Maykopsky District, for example), I'd appreciate it very much.  Once we figure out a new format (should that be necessary), we can revisit the composition table.
 * As for the types of rural localities being listed in separate columns, I think that's a better solution than the previous one (less clutter), but I am still not sure if that's a good thing to do. Having separate headers for villages, selos, etc. kind of emphasizes that they are (perhaps fundamentally) different, while in reality the differences pretty much boil down to terminology and historical development.  Current solution may not be the cleanest one, but it does not put any additional weight on the rural localities' types; all localities are simply listed in alphabetical order.  What do you think?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

all is good
So, everything is good between me and the other editor. Grozny is now at rest, (well, look at this depressing irony haha, úff is that even funny?). But seriously, we have made up and everything is fine, no more edit war. --Ice201 00:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Great!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Adygea
Hello, what a long time ago, ... Anyway, I have few suggestions/observations: That's pretty much :) And what did you want with Kesgailos? :) Renata 00:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Lead is crying to be longer ;)
 * Nice new map :)
 * The summary table of units of administrative division is great. Just move it to the right (just add align=right next to class="wikitable" ) so that there is no huge empty space on the right.
 * I really don't like all those intendations. I think different size headings are just fine and do job well enough.
 * I really don't like ==Rural localities== Source: [11]. You should put that [11] after sentences taken from that source (it's ok tuo cite the same source 50 times :)
 * Sources: 1897–2002: [11]  2007: [2] should be incorporated with the table (extra row at the bottom)
 * There is no need to bold things like "municipal urban okrug of the city of Maykop" or "municipal urban settlements"
 * ^ a b 2002 Russian census should have more details: where the date got published?
 * Hi, Renata! Sorry I did not promptly respond to your feedback.  I took the liberty of moving your list to the peer review page; hope it's OK with you.  I am planning to respond there soon.
 * As for Kęsgaila, what I was trying to say that Mykolas Kęsgaila (died 1476) is a horrible title for an article, but I can't move it to Mykolas Kęsgaila because it is about a different person. If you could disambiguate those two properly, that'd be great.  I'd do it myself, but I have no clue what disambiguator would work the best for these people.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Zelenograd

 * Moved to Talk:Zelenograd
 * Перенёс, ибо там всё же полезнее, ответ готовлю к воскресенью. Alex Spade 13:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Праздник

 * Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

More uluses
While I know you'll find these eventually anyways, just thought I'd let you know that I've created the articles Churapchinsky Ulus and Churapcha today mainly based on the Finnish articles, with some spicing from the Russian article for the latter. I don't have access to the Excel sheets where I'm at now, so I've left that info out but will try to add it later on if you don't do it first. Hopefully I've transliterated all the Russian names correctly; Yakutian names are a mouthful! -Yupik 11:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notice, Yupik! I'll take a look at this a bit later and edit if necessary.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tweaks. I've started wondering if the Churapcha article should actually be talking about Churapchinsky nasleg or not... The Russian is definitely talking about the village (село), but the Finnish seems to refer to both the nasleg and the selo... -Yupik 19:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I am not done yet :) As a matter of fact, I'm working on the ulus article right now.  As for the distinction between a nasleg and a village, a nasleg is actually a territory comprising several villages and territories around them.  Sometimes, however, it may be just one village and territories around it, which is precisely the case with Churapcha and Churapchinsky Nasleg.  That probably is the source of the confusion you mentioned.  The bottom line is that the area of the nasleg is always more or equal to the area(s) of the village(s) it comprises.  Hope it helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Hopefully this doesn't cause you too many problems, but I've also gone ahead and translated the Абыйский улус article from the Finnish one. Once again, it's missing anything from the 2002 census, but I can add that in later. Thanks for all the corrections to the previous ones! I hope this time I was a little more careful transliterating the Russian. -Yupik 21:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Problems? What problems?  I hope you aren't pacing yourself so I could keep up!  Don't worry, I may not review each district article immediately after you release it, but you can count on me getting to them all eventually :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Heh, no :D More like the 250 pages of Swedish and Danish I have to read is pacing me ;) -Yupik 16:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Strange question btw, but why do we only have the Russian names for the uluses and towns? Shouldn't we be adding in the Sakha names, too? I've contacted User:Kyraha, who appears to be a native speaker in the hopes that he would come back to Wikipedia, as he could probably help with this. Only time will tell :) -Yupik 07:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The only reason why we only have the Russian names is because I only know the Russian names :) If I knew Sakha, I'd most certainly add the Sakha names as well.  If you could recruit a native speaker for this task, that'd be just great; meanwhile we'll have to make do with Russian.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I know some of the names in Sakha, so I'll put those up sooner or later. And I'm sure I could find the rest of the ulus names from google. The town names would be more difficult if they differ greatly from the Russian versions :) -Yupik 16:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit to Caca
I don't understand why you have removed the most well-known definitions from this page. I think this is an overly strict interpretation of the "not" page. George100 15:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No it is not. WP:NOT is quite clear about dictionary definitions.  Furthermore, WP:MOSDAB, which is actually more applicable here, has a section explicitly advising not to include dictionary definitions on disambiguation pages.  For that, we have Wiktionary, and caca already has a link to it.  Please let me know if you have further questions.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Pionerskaya
Hi! St. Petersburg also has a Metro station with this name. Colchicum 18:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'll fix it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:Location map Russia Krasnodar Krai
as requested ;-) --Obersachse 16:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for letting know and especially for taking time to transfer it yourself!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Не за что. --Obersachse 16:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW: ru:Шаблон:НП. May be it will be useful for You when it will be ready. --Obersachse 16:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but we already have Infobox Russian city for cities/towns, and articles on smaller localities are currently so short that a similar infobox for them would be an overkill.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Я знаю. Но шаблон, созданный Каланом, более хитрый. Вводишь в качестве параметра название страны, региона и координаты и в статье появляется карта страны и субъекта (обе карты с точкой расположения нас. пункта) и заполняется графа "Координаты". Будет готово я тебя приглашаю заполнить один шаблон. Я уверен, что будешь в восторге :-) --Obersachse 17:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Самое смешное во всём это то, что позиционный шаблон Краснодарского края я хотел взять именно для этой цели (показывать в шаблоне города субъект на карте России и позиционную карту субъекта с местонахождением города). Хорошо, что сказал, а то бы мы с Каланом как два Сизифа работали над одним и тем же :)  Кстати, в нашем шаблоне города карта и графа "Координаты" уже и так генерируются автоматически по координатам-параметрам.  См., например, Kazan (с готовой картой) и Gelendzhik (с автогенерированной).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ballynahown
Hi there. I'm not sure how you managed to land in Ballynahown but I'd ask you not to revert the common style of describing distance used in Ireland related articles. The SI notation 'km' is used almost universally in Ireland articles to describe 'kilometers'. If you pursue the your interpretation of policy in the Manual of Style (dates and numbers) then you'll have to change literally thousands of Ireland articles. Regards (Sarah777 17:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC))
 * Sarah, there is very little left to "interpretation" when the policy explicitly states the following:
 * Use digits and unit symbols for values in parentheses and for measurements in tables. For example, "a pipe 100 millimetres (4 in) in diameter and 16 kilometres (10 mi) long" or "a pipe 4 inches (100 mm) in diameter and 10 miles (16 km) long". 
 * If, as you say, thousands of Ireland articles do not comply with this guideline, then yes, they all need to be changed. If you believe the policy violates the SI notation or is otherwise misleading, I would suggest you bring this to the attention of people who developed this particular WP:MOSNUM clause.  I was not involved in writing that clause; I am merely enforcing what the policy says.
 * Also note that "10km" is not how the measurements are supposed to be formatted. There must be a space between the number and the unit, preferrably non-breaking.  I corrected this, but please bear this in mind when you do edits in future.  Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:54, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, 10 km I know; typos. But I sure ain't gonna change all the rest of the articles! Also the combined use of the full word "kilometers" with decimal places used with the 'miles' unit makes articles cluttered and unreadable. Instead of:

Daft. (Sarah777 18:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC))
 * Xville is 10 km from Yville and 5 km from Zville and all three are 15 km here.
 * Xville is 10 kilometers (6.1 miles) from Yville and 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from Zville and all three are 15 kilometers (9.6 miles) from here.
 * Sarah, the template km to mi is tweakable. Feel free to read its documentation and choose how you want the output to look like.  The default output conforms with MOSNUM, but otherwise the template is very flexible.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Cool tool! I'll add both units in future - thanks. (Sarah777 18:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC))
 * Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:40, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer review
Hello, it has been a while since you posted it, but I wrote some Peer Review feedback for Administrative divisions of Adygea/archive2. Good work! --Mus Musculus (talk) 16:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Mus! I started to get worried that there would be no feedback; it's nice to finally have some comments.  I'll address some of the points you raised a bit later; please watchlist the peer review page if you want to follow the developments.  Thanks again!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Putin
Спасибо - for reverting to my edits. Mr. User talk:208.13.136.170 seems to have a grudge against Putin and Russia. Let's keep an eye on him. ;) --Zealander 00:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem. Although I should note I am not a fan of Putin either.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Me neither. :) It's the POV that drives me crazy. --Zealander 01:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary speedy delete by User:MacGyverMagic
''Seeing as subpages of Tobias Conradi have been deleted because of soapboxing issues before, I've decided to speedy delete this page. If anyone wants to help him restore non-controversial material feel free to do so. - Mgm|(talk) 12:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)''

--- no policy for this action is cited. The deletion was proposed 2007-04-17 06:39 by User:ShivaIdol.

The deletion log does not show when this deletion was carried out. 

As of now it only shows:


 * 05:22, 13 October 2006 Robth (Talk | contribs) restored "User:Tobias Conradi" (229 revisions restored: finish undeleting accidentally deleted page)
 * 05:17, 13 October 2006 Robth (Talk | contribs) restored "User:Tobias Conradi" (1 revisions restored: oops--wrong page)
 * 05:16, 13 October 2006 Robth (Talk | contribs) deleted "User:Tobias Conradi" (To undelete non-copyvio revisions)

A clique of admins tries to delete any evidence of their admin right abuses. Collections of such evidences are deleted. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Redirect
Hi! Could you please fix this nonsense? Colchicum 00:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks for catching this!  Are you still sure you don't want to try for adminship? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Moscow Oblast
It is my proposition for Moscow oblast's administrative-territorial and municipal division. If you have comments, I want make corrections before all table will be complete. All statistics for the table were prepared, I need your opinion only.

It has to be in alphabet order, you see. And transliterations would be added. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bogomolov.PL (talk • contribs).
 * Hey, wow, that's quite a bit of work you've done! This just may work.  I do, however, have a few comments:
 * While there is no set established terminology in English to refer to Russian types of localities etc., it is best to try and maintain consistency. "Work urban settlement", for example, is just "work settlement" (otherwise it can be confused with "urban settlement", which is "городское поселение"), and "dacha urban settlement" is "suburban (dacha) settlement" (with the "dacha" part being optional) for the same reason.  Of course, as long as these terms are properly introduced in the beginnig of the article (see, for example, here), it should be pretty clear to the reader which is which, but it's still preferrable to avoid confusion where possible.  Additionally, consistency is essential for overview articles.
 * I don't really think those abbreviations (AD, COJ, etc) are necessary. District lines can be introduced with "XXX District" (there is plenty of space for that), and the types of localities can be spelled out as well (e.g., work settlement of Sychyovo ).  See Giaginsky District for an example of how this looks like.  In addition, table headers will be a lot more compact.
 * A minor formatting point&mdash;the non-district administrative units could be shifted to the right a little bit, because even with different colors the hierarchy is still not immediately obvious. I also can't say I like the colors used very much, but that's a matter of personal preference, I guess, and not urgent at that.
 * I understand this is just a draft, but eventually everything in the table should be referenced. I personally found out it is easier to add references as lists are being compiled instead of trying to add them all after the list is finished.  If you haven't thought about adding references yet, please think now what the best way to accomplish it would be.  The list will have no chance of ever becoming featured if it is not properly referenced.
 * Do you have references for when each (administrative) district was established? That could be a useful additional column.
 * When you add romanized names, don't worry about wikifying them. Once the table is finished, I'll wikify them for you.  The reason for it is that all names need to be integrated into existing disambiguation scheme, and as someone who worked quite a bit in that area, I think I'll be able to accomplish it a lot quicker than anyone else.  What this basically means for you is less grunt work :)
 * All in all, great job! Another editor and me are in fact currently brainstorming various ideas for the divisions lists presentation layouts, and something similar to your table is what I was going to try out next :)  Whether it'll work for everyone or not, I don't know, but it sure won't hurt to give it a try.
 * Anyway, please don't hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can help you with. Looking forward to working with you,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Abbreviations I don't like too, so it's pretty we have the same opinion. I was afraid of table vertical size, but if you recommend me use full names, ok.
 * Establishing dates I don't have. It is possible to find something, but it will be incomplete.
 * The next step forward will be all A.-t. and munic. division maps (settlement level). It is possible, but after this table will be completed.
 * Using my (future) table will be reasonable to make short district level table. Or it is possible add district statistics into first one? I don't think so.
 * Of course we have all data to prepare in future every urban/rural settlement lokalities lists (articles?).
 * But the most important for me was table desing creation. Bogomolov.PL 13:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think table vertical size is an issue. If we don't use a table, the result will still be long due to the sheer amount of information that needs to be put in.  What's more, quite a few featured lists have very long tables, so I believe it is not a problem at all.
 * It's a pity that foundation dates are not available :( Well, I guess that can be address later; what's not there is not there...
 * Maps, those also can be addressed after the table is completed. User:Rarelibra has created overview maps for some federal subjects for this project; maybe he'll agree to make an overview map and a set of locator maps for Moscow Oblast as well.  Of course, once we have the maps, the tricky part will be to figure out where to place them.  I have that same problem with Adygea.  If you have ideas, I'll be happy to hear them out.
 * Using my (future) table will be reasonable to make short district level table. Or it is possible add district statistics into first one? I don't think so. We can always try; that's as good an idea as any.  Let's complete the main table first, though.
 * Of course we have all data to prepare in future every urban/rural settlement lokalities lists (articles?) I was leaning towards putting lists of rural localities into the articles about districts (see Giaginsky District for an example), and only indicating the number of rural localities per rural settlement (or even just the number of rural settlements and the number rural localities they include) in the overview lists such as this one.  The benefits of such approach are that the main list is not overloaded with lists of each and every village, and that double-maintenance is avoided (otherwise, every time there is a change, one would need to amend both the main list and the district article).  Cities/towns/urban-type settlements, on the other hand, can be listed in both places, as their numbers are a lot more manageable and changes do not occur as often.
 * In conclusion, before you start putting time into completing the final table, let me ask for an opinion of User:David Kernow, who's been of immense help in the past regarding these types of problems. I'm sure he'll have some valuable feedback for us to consider.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Russia
Are you a bit jealous? Do you think we can master up and improve ours to their state? I'll need your help for this one. --Kuban Cossack 16:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the way I see it, it's not the presentation that matters, but content. It's not all that difficult to overhaul our portal to make it look just as nice as the Ukrainian one, but what would the point of that be if no one wants to update it regularly?  If past activity is any indication, it's highly unlikely there'll be an influx of portal editors  just because the portal looks nice.  It's sad, but unfortunate...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well After the end of may I will have time on my hands, and people do read wikipedia, so I think it is important that we give it more attention, and there are regular users who are contributin, you, me, NVO, Irpen, Bakharev, Mikka to name a few to Russian issues. Why not, and in the end if does not work out then at least we have a more attractive one! --Kuban Cossack 17:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, in any case, I believe the Ukrainian one was based on some standard template, which was tweaked to meet the portal needs. We might just as well do the same.  Shouldn't really be too difficult.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Tobias Conradi
Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Requests for arbitration/Tobias Conradi. Please add any evidence you may wish the arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Requests for arbitration/Tobias Conradi/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Requests for arbitration/Tobias Conradi/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, --Srikeit 18:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Conversion templates--another need
Hi! Been putting down some of your templates as promised and have a new need and a suggestion:
 * 1) in to mm and mm to in, needed in Miltary articles a lot (e.g. Battle of Jutland).

Conjecture you might test the inch parameter or result and output as caliber when under an inch so will handle small arms as well. This would have some science applications as well..
 * 1) params wiki, abbr would be a bit better if weren't ifeq tested, but just boolean tests. i.e. |wiki=1.  (I'd looked at the code, and realize that may not be simple and easy. Think you maybe could use an local defined parameter where you currently branch the then-else's, and believe that would simplify some other following branching if done. In case it may help you, I've also written a template which will return 'true' if any of up to five equality test pairs are given. That may be of use to simplify certain logic. See ifequal.
 * 2) One (alas, I can't recall which!) template had given me a weird result... got a negative sign last week some time which should have been suppressed, but I can't recall the circumstance and was overly tight for time. I may have started a note to you about it on it's talk or here [on my other (office) computer, where I've a number of open browsers... this be a laptop]. Cheers, if you get some mm templates, let me know ASAP, these are great!
 * Oh, btw. Is there a reason if abbr=no or wiki=yes, the parenthesized converted value is giving abbreviated units? T'would seem to me once per article use, would want to introduce the full names, then shift to the abbreviations as a matter of consistent style. Cheers, and thanks again! // Fra nkB 17:26, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Conversion templates
Hi, Frank! Nice to hear back from you.
 * 1) Regarding the templates, it was my understanding they were to go and be replaced with CBD's Conv-dist and an array of similar, more universal templates, to follow. Unfortunately, CBD seems to have abandonded the idea (let's hope only temporarily).  Anyway, mm to in and in to mm are now available.  They are basically copypastes of "ft to m" conversion templates with minor adjustments&mdash;I did not add caliber formatting, as I don't really know what exactly should be done with numbers under one inch.  You are more than welcome to tweak the templates to suit your needs, though.  One problem I see right away is that the template is intended for use in constructs such as "xxx is so many inches (xyz mm) long", and battle of Jutland you mentioned employs constructs such as "so many inch (xyz mm) long gizmo".  The former construct shows inches in plural, while the latter needs singular.  Another parameter would certainly solve this, but perhaps you have a better idea how to handle this?

''Good point, but my first stab reaction would be to have a caliber parameter with a simple T/F test, let various #if:'s carry the plural singular issue, and ... round off and scale up to output as caliber vice inches. Like you, I think I'd have to play with it to get it straight in me head. Shrug. This will at least calculate the number on the fly and such can be hand edited in now, so good work and many thanks.''


 * 1) Ifequal got me intrigued :) Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to figure it out in detail, but I'll definitely make a point of studying it later.  I also didn't quite understand what you meant by "local defined parameter".  Could you, please, clarify?

''You can define and use a perameter within a template, say for example myperameter=. Since ifequal is designed to be tested by a simple #if: (it is an ORing of multiple #ifeq:pairs) something like can be used to set up a single local parameter which may help simplify some of the other logic if TRUE is the definition of said local parameter... After looking inside one of your templates, something suggested to me it might be simplified in such a manner. But I was rushed, and could be wrong. (My wiki time is pretty scarce this month) One place I know YOU can use the local parameter technique is to just force lowercase into a parameter in the entry flow, eliminating the same below in your flow by using the treated input instead of the direct. Not saying that's best, but if you're writing more than two if statements using such a case forced parameter, that's probably a bit more elegant, and easier to follow, I suspect.''


 * 1) That wasn't F to C, by any chance? I know there are some issues with it; I just need (again!) to find time to catch the bugs.  Hopefully, the one you noticed will surface during the testing...

''Actually, my recollection is/was that it was either that or it's compliment, but my faint attempt to backtrack and pin it down didn't turn up anything I can speak to definitively. I may have it in one of the desktop's browser's but if so, I make no promises as to how long before I get back to it... I'm out of the office most of this week unlike my normal schedule/activities. Not even getting there in the evening right now.''


 * 1) By default, the unit of measurement for the number to be converted is spelled out and for the converted number is abbreviated per WP:MOSNUM. Why that is, I don't know; I merely changed the formatting to display that way when someone else pointed me out to that MOSNUM clause.

''Yeah, they've evolved it since I last looked at it (Like THAT'S NEW!!! ) and my own preference would have been to spell out or abbreviate both, but what the heck... if I were Emperor of the Universe, we'd all be getting paid overtime for our wikiwork! Guess I'm not! (Suprise there too! lol)

Let me know if you need anything else, or if you find any issues with existing templates! Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

''Wouldn't worry too much about consolidating things into one template. CBD, like myself is no fan of throwing away useful tools, and there is much to be said for the KISS principle... the name is perfect to the task in this case, and that helps much! Do let me know if any dunderhead ever nominates one... early on too, I'll have a few choice words to say, you betchya. Some people confuse activity with action, and action with progress and making a good contribution. Once people know about yours, they'll get used. There are a whole lot of numbers out there that don't have a converted value with them, which is contrary to WP:MOSNUM. In fact, might be a good idea to list them in that section as an automatic way to be compliant. Hmmmmm! I likee! '' Thanks for the quick response. Keep up de good work! // Fra nkB 03:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Frank! I tried toying with ifequal, and the problem I immediately ran into was that in order to use it, I would have to mandate a certain order in which the parameters are listed.  That, however, is something I didn't want to do&mdash;I can't remember in which order I wrote them in the documentation myself, let alone expect users to remember it!  Currently, the only limitation is that the number being converted must be the first parameter if its name (num) is not used.  Another minor point is that all of the parameters are optional, so even with the strict order imposed I'd have to test for all possible combinations.  With that in mind, I doubt the code would be any shorter than it is now (although perhaps it would be more readable).
 * Sorry I haven't had time to revisit the caliber (and sing/pl) option for the templates. I'm planning to do that as soon as I am able.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: Tobias Conradi
Hello, since there wasn't a specific list of involved parties mentioned, I used my own discretion as a clerk to keep the statements by users who I felt were more involved in the case on the main page and moved the others to the talk page. I assure you I did not have any ulterior motives or mean any disrespect to you or any other editor by doing this. However, if you want that your statement is included on the main page, please inform me and I will do the needful. Thank you --Srikeit 04:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. I, in turn, assure you that I did not suspect any ulterior motives on your part :)  I would, however, appreciate it if my statement were included on the main page.  Thanks again!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 05:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Кольские карты
Have you seen [http:/ /www.biarmia.narod.ru/ this site] already? Beautiful! -Yupik 17:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I have not. Thanks for pointing me to it&mdash;it has a potential of being very useful in future!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Re Adygea
Hi Ёzhiki,
 * ''Sometimes I wonder if there will ever be time when we finish this list...

Well, soon, hopefully – at least, a version that's closer to an "alpha" than "beta" status! You may already have spotted my tinkering since your message; use a diff to reveal all. I've also made a couple of amendments to Rarelibra's enhanced map (about which I hope he doesn't mind).

I'd say the current version is closer to the ideal of a comfortably readable page. If for future pages a conflict between readability and information content arises, I reckon collapsing the more numerical/tabular information might be a good solution.


 * ''...could you also take a look at this proposal? ...

On first sight, it looks a little overwhelming (perhaps another case for some "collapsed" information areas...) but I'll take a closer look soon. Best wishes, David (talk) 00:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * [A] version that's closer to an "alpha" than "beta" status! Surely, you meant it the other way around? :))
 * Oops, so I do!


 * Regarding the map, I'm sure Rarelibra will do the requested corrections eventually; after all, even though all this is taking a lot longer than anticipated, we are in no particular hurry.
 * Cf here (re this, if not already seen).


 * I also have a few comments regarding the changes you've made (thanks for proofreading, by the way&mdash;my prose, unfortunately, is not at its best when I'm trying to juggle a hundred things at once):


 * 1. List of administrative, territorial, and municipal units. You are correct, it it my intent to rename the article once it's ready.  I do have my reservations regarding the term "subdivisions", however.  I generally am trying to avoid this term unless there is absolutely no other option (subdivisions of Russia being a good example).  The reason is that so far I've seen way too many complaints about it.  As you, of course, know, the principal meaning of the term, especially in the United States, is a "lot of land", or "land parcel", something, say, a townhome would be built on.  It is not really used often when referring to administrative (or other kinds of) units a country is divided into.  While in all the arguments neither side was particularly convincing, I am trying to avoid the term (or at least not to rely on it too much) just in case.  Do you think the title "administrative, territorial, and municipal divisions of Adygea" would be unacceptable (that is, besides its being quite long)?
 * I suppose (1) I'm not sure where the distinction between "administrative" and "territorial" divisions lies, at least in this article; and (2) I consider a "municipal division" to be a type of "administrative division" – whether accurately or inaccurately, I don't know – so I'm wondering whether the article's title need be any more descriptive than "Administrative divisions of Adygea"...?
 * The definitions of "administrative" and "territorial" units come from the laws, and vary from one federal subject to another. Quite often, as it is the case with Adygea, there is no strict line, and everything is bundled under one "administrative-territorial" umbrella, so while in the end we still have a list of "administrative and territorial units", it's impossible to say which is which without original research.  The municipal divisions are a different story.  If administrative and territorial units represent the framework within which the bodies of state power operate (think police, welfare, etc.), then the municipal units (which are formed on the territories of administrative-territorial units) are the framework for local self-government (think water supply, trash removal, etc.).  These two concepts are regulated by different legislative documents, but since they are very closely related, it makes sense to put them into one list.  With that in mind, the title of the article should definitely be changed (the original list did not even mention the municipal units, hence its name of "administrative divisions of...").  Does this help any?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It does – thanks – although, thinking from a worldwide perspective, I'm not sure if the article's title definitely needs changing (not that I'd oppose) as nearly if not all similar articles for other countries and their subdivisions seem to use the "Administrative divisions of X" format. (The one major exception I can recall now – which I'm glad to've done so as it's reminded me to ask you about it – is the United States, whose templates/articles seem to prefer "Political divisions of..."; my question being whether it'd be incorrect to label them "Administrative divisions..."...?)
 * Like I said before, the specifics of administrative and municipal divisions are drawn on a local level, although the general guidelines are provided by the federal laws. In case of Adygea, districts are both administrative and municipal, and rural settlements are strictly municipal (calling them "administrative" would be very wrong).  Having thought all this over, I now think that the "territorial" designation can be safely omitted from the title (most of territorial units are also administrative), so something like "administrative and municipal divisions of XXX" would probably work the best.  Bundling the administrative and municipal units together under the "political" moniker may work, but I don't think this term is being applied to smaller Russian divisions often.  So, what would you say to "administrative and municipal divisions of XXX" being used as a title?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess so; I'm certainly unsure about throwing "political" into the mix (or, per my US mention, even using it at all; in this context, it seems something of a "red herring"/"curve ball" to me!). I'm just imagining someone passing by this article (and, I'm supposing, other potentially similar articles) and thinking 'But municipal divisions are types of administrative divisions – at least, that's what Wikipedia's been telling me...' If, though, Adygea and other (Russian) areas are anomalies or exceptions that prove the rule pattern, so be it! David (talk) 06:03, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, we can always re-word the text and/or add more details if someone ever complains about that. Thanks again!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:12, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * 2. In the 1930s... a decision was made to mix Russians with the native Adyghe population. This sentence is now followed by "First, on January 10 1934, North Caucasus Krai was split...".  The fact that North Caucasus Krai was split in 1934 does not really have anything to do with the decision to mix Russians with Adyghes, yet the way one sentence flows into another implies such a connection.  Further down, Adyghe Autonomous Oblast is mentioned to become "a subdivision of... Azov-Black Sea Krai", but, again, strictly speaking it was not a subdivision.  Adyghe AO was considered to be a separate entity, yet in some aspects it was subordinated to Azov-Black Sea Krai (and later Krasnodar Krai).  The situation, while not identical, is very similar to, say, modern Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Okrug being a part of Irkutsk Oblast, yet still being a separate federal subject of Russia.  I don't want to restore my original wording, because I see that it indeed reads a bit awkwardly, but perhaps you could re-phrase this passage once more?
 * I'll take another (now fresh) look; as regards the paragraph's opening, I guess it read to me as if the reorganizations were a consequence of the decision to mix the populations. Glad this possibility has been detected!
 * ...Okay, have tried to accommodate the above in the wording; hope it now reads more satisfactorily.
 * I think it reads fine now, but I'll give it another look later.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * 3. Districts sections new formatting. Looks good, although I bet Renata, being a fan of "human-readable prose", will call it too listy :)  Also, isn't the sentence about all population numbers being per the 2002 Census redundant?  All population numbers are referenced below anyway.
 * Re being too listy, you could point (1) to its opening words – at present! – being "This is a..."; and (2) to the current encyclopedia version being a featured... (chuckle). Re the "All populations per the 2002 Russian Census" sentence, I think I was moved to add it as otherwise it's only implicit, i.e. only seen if one or other of the references is accessed. I may be missing something obvious, though, that hopefully I'll spot when I'm reading through the article again.
 * Good point! As long as this stays an FL and not an FA, I guess "being too listy" should not be a concern.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * 4. One question I was meaning to ask you for quite a while now, but kept forgetting, is about "the village (selo, aul, etc.) of Foo" construct. I've seen this alternatively worded as "village (selo, aul...) Foo" and "Foo village (selo, aul)" in some sources, but I could never find out whether such constructs were valid English.  "Village Foo" seems to be a calque from Russian (деревня Фу), and the other one just doesn't sound right, at least to my ear.  Would you, by any chance, know for sure if they are OK to use?
 * I'd say I agree, certainly re the "village Foo" construction; and also say that "the village of Foo" seems to be the correct prose form, if somewhat formal... [Testing: "Here we are in the city of Philadelphia..."; "Here we are in Philadelphia City [city?]..."]... Since, though, the article is primarily a list – a "prosed-up" list...?...! – then "Foo (village)", "Foo (selo)", etc would seem sensible... Does any of this musing help...?
 * Sorry for being dense, but no :( After reading the above, I'm still not sure which of the variants you consider acceptable.  Could you, please, clarify further?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure; sorry to've splurged rather than organize my thinking on the page screen! In a nutshell, "Foo (village)" (i.e. "Name (settlement_type)") seems optimum to me.


 * 5. As for the Moscow Oblast table above, I'll wait for your reply when you have time. Thanks again for everything!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry not to've replied more promptly! Yours, David (talk) 22:40, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * PS Re this, I'm not sure now whether you intend to use this template, but, if so, permission to "be bold" and amend the parameter names...? Shock-horror(-chuckle), David (talk) 03:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * First of all, if you are waiting on me to archive that section of your talk page, just go ahead and archive it, unless, of course, you have other reasons to keep it open. All in all, I am not yet quite sure myself where I want to go with that template and how to amend it further, but if meanwhile you'd like to amend the parameter names, I don't have any objections.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll try to update their names sooner rather than later. Yours, David (talk) 19:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * ...Have just used a few search-replace macros to perform an update, but haven't tried testing the template to see if doing so has also broken it. If/when it's used, I guess we'll find out! &nnbsp;Hope all well, David (talk) 06:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow, that shaved almost 25 Kb! I'm going to let it hang for now, but I will return to it some time in the future.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Finishing Adygea
''Hi, David! I re-read our work today and I think this is as good as it gets. Whatever other improvements we can make, they will not affect the content, and as far as the content goes I believe the list is ready for the prime-time. If, after glancing over it one more time (I made some changes today) just to make sure you won't find any (new) major flaws, I believe we can move it to the mainspace. I intend to continue working on articles about Adygea's districts, but this master list seems to be complete (and it's not like we won't be able to add to it if something new and interesting comes up). Exciting, eh? You can finally get a break from all my pestering :) Please accept my enormous gratitude for helping me out so much and for all your invaluable contributions and advice!  I could have probably done all this alone, but the result would not have been as thorough and polished.  Thank you!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Seems fine and I hope a good template for the other subjects' articles! Thanks for your thanks; I was happy to have the opportunity to contribute as we're both after quality. Anytime you want more input, just leave a note – my guess is we'll be saying hello again as I wander about the country-related articles!  Best wishes, David (talk) 21:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

New conversion templates for your review
Hi Ezhiki, I created two new conversion templates for population density base on your designs. Could you please review them at your convenience?


 * Pop density mi2 to km2
 * Pop density km2 to mi2

Thanks,&mdash;MJCdetroit 17:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks good! I looked at the code and tried various parameter combinations; everything seems to be working the way it should be.  The only question I have is regarding the formatting of the abbreviated unit.  Is "38.6 /km²" type of formatting standard?  Should it not be something like "38.6 inhab./km²" instead, do you know?  Myself, I have no idea which way is the right one, but this formatting looks a bit strange to my eye.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I know what you mean but I mostly see population density in infoboxes and for the sake of space it is always /km². Although, I was debating to make the spelled out version to be "38.6 people per square...". I probably will, but I wanted to see if there are any biology articles where this would be beneficial first. Thanks, &mdash;MJCdetroit 18:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Question: In this template: pop density km2 to mi2 which produces, where does the space after the number come from and can it be removed?&mdash;MJCdetroit 14:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I fixed both this and the reverse template. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:16, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that was fast. I asked you before experimenting (I should of experimented first). I was worried that the a space would be removed from the spelled out version, but it wasn't. In any case, looks great! I plan to replace some long #expr: coding in some infoboxes with this template; &mdash;MJCdetroit 15:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You are very welcome. Don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything else.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * While I am thinking about it, sometimes in tables the units are listed in the "heading" and the actual values are listed below without any unit symbols attached.  An example can be found here: example (I know it's not the best example, but it was the quickest found). It would be nice to have the option not to attach the units.  I could use this in Template:Infobox Weather.  Anyway, just food for thought I guess.  &mdash;MJCdetroit 16:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot stuff
Hello! I haven't been able to respond because I was away for much of today and when I got back I was unable to access Wikipedia. Anyways, I was doing the bot task as a favor to Parker007 who had a list of articles prepared for me; I assumed he knew what he was doing when he prepared the list. In any case, I will cease tagging articles with the WikiProject Computing tag until he gives me a more concise list. In the meantime, I will unblock my bot so it can remove the tags it has placed on talk pages. &mdash;Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 20:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

History of the administrative division of Russia
I see you are one to thank for starting that interesting series. Are you planning on finishing it? We don't have currently any article organizing Russian administrative division from mid-18th century till the modern times... pre-18th century would be useful, too (but lower priority, I think).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd love to get back to that project if I had my reference books back :( Glancing over my resources, I could perhaps finish the series  with what I have (mostly generalized tertiary sources), but the part dealing with the 18th and 19th centuries wouldn't be very thorough.  This all is also a matter of having time to do it&mdash;I guess I've got so involved with modern administrative, territorial, and now municipal divisions of Russia that I don't really have much time left to deal with the historical development.
 * Anyway, if you are asking because you have something that you can contribute to the series (even if that "something" isn't terribly detailed), go right ahead; don't wait on my account.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I am planning on covering the Polish administrative divisions while under Russian partitions (1795 till Duchy or Warsaw, and from 1815 till 1914 (Congress Poland), but I could really use some general framework (terms, list of provinces etc.) in Russia at that period (since a good part of what I'll be doing will be translations from Polish wikipedia, I want to know English terms before I start the translation).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe the terminology is currently more or less established; just use the terms you see in the Wikipedia articles on the topic ("governorate" for губерния, "viceroyalty" for наместничество, "province" for "провинция", "oblast" for "область", "krai" for край, and "uyezd" for уезд). I'll be following your work with great interest, so you can count on my advice when/if you need one.
 * As for the lists of provinces etc., I'm afraid I can't be of much help here. Most of what I have is in narrative form; whatever tables present in history of the administrative division of Russia were compiled based on various sources (with quite a bit of cross-checking).  I simply don't have any complete tables to share.  Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * So far with relation to Russian I have finished the Namestnik of the Kingdom of Poland article. While we have an ok stub for Namestnik, the Governor-General in Russian usage are only mentioned briefly in 'Other Western usages' section - is there something on ru wiki you could translate for a better section or stub on that?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll see what I can find and will let you know.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Request
What is the city located on the north of Kamen-Rybolov (Камень-Рыболов) in Khankaysky District (Ханкайский район) according to this map ?Regards Whlee 16:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I take it's the one immediately to the north of Kamen-Rybolov. It's not a city, it's a village (selo) of Troitskoye (Троицкое).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks i uplaoded recently artcile History of Manchuria, may be it would help you to better understand, the history of that region. Best. Whlee 18:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow, that looks like quite a bit of work! This will definitely be very useful.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 11:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I have just finished to create a timetable of the History of Manchuria. There are still cells which remained uncomplete because i am not a specialist of the history of the Tungusic peoples. The borderlines in red are NOT poltical borders :they are geographical and cultural borders. The "postulate" which helped me to achieved that painful task was : most of the civilizations have been generated on valley regions (Indus valley for India, the Huangho and Yangze plain for China the Naktong River plain for Silla, the Yalu banks for Goguryeo etc...). Hence i divided that region in 5 parts which later become roughly the 5/6 provinces of modern Manchuria Inner Mnachuria (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang) Outer Manchuria (Amur Oblast, Khabarosk Krai and Martime/ Primorye). It starts voluntarily at 300 BC with the extension of Yan Kingdom in Liaoning thanks to general Qin Kai under King Zhao (311 BC-279 BC) and at the same time the creation of Mukden/Shenyang.
 * But due to a conlifct of ideology on Template:History of Manchuria i was forced to create a new template as well. You can help me to complete that template if you want. Best. Whlee 14:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Once again&mdash;great work! One way to improve it would be citing the references you used.  As for the Russian portion of it, I am planning to go through it when I have time.  Thanks once more for the terrific job!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Dear Ezhiki, i would like to knoow whether there is an official term in Russian to qualify a region zenglobing (Amur Oblast, Jewish AO southern part of Khabarovsk Krai and Primorye) excepting Outer Manchuria (inspired on a Chinese word) and Russian Fart East (too muc big including Kamchatka etc...)) or Russian Maritime (too much narrow only Primorye)?. Assault11, is bugging me, and make no efort to contribute on the development of that template and insulting Nikolay Muravyov personally.
 * I will reformulate my request sorry... Дальний Восток/Дальнего Востока are they offcially recognized as a region englobing (Priamurye, Primorye, Sakhlin, Jewish AO and the southern part of Khabarovsk Krai)? In addition to that is it correct to say that Дальний Восток/Дальнего Востока region is included within Far Eastern Federal District
 * Question based from results obtaines by various sites. Regards..

Whlee 12:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Whlee! What you described as "zenglobing" is called "Priamurye" in Russian.  This term, however, does not refer to any particular entity, nor does it have defined borders.  It is mostly used in history and geography books to refer to the area around the Amur River.
 * As for the Russian Far East (RFE), that is a geographic term as well, not an official entity of any sort. In general, RFE is considered to include all Russian territories to the east of Siberia.  Sometimes, however, Far Eastern Federal District (an officially defined entity) is referred to as "RFE", which is probably where confusion lies.  It would not really be correct to say that Far Eastern Federal District "includes" RFE (at least not formally), as the terms apply to different concepts (the former being a modern political entity, and the latter&mdash;a geographical and historical concept).  Hope this helps.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Административное деление
Hi. :-) В рувики сейчас идёт обсуждение стандарта для статей о странах. В частности, я поднял вопрос об уместности названия раздела "Административное деление" для федеративных государств. Вы, если не ошибаюсь, когда-то уже высказывались по этому поводу, поэтому я подумал, что, может быть, вы захотите высказать своё мнение и в этой дискуссии.--Imrek 15:04, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Спасибо, обязательно посмотрю и может быть поучаствую!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

C Праздником!
Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Uni
Why did you remove this line? *Universidade Independente Lisbon, Portugal Dontrustme 16:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That was an oversight on my part, for which I apologize. I have restored that line now.  Thanks for catching this!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Tim
Hi Ezhiki,

I made one change to Tim (disambiguation) on May 3 (193.29.77.101), saying that Tim was a slang term for a Celtic Glasgow fan. You reverted that change and I want to ask why. The remark was not meant to be offensive in any way (or - is it?). I had been reading a book about football, where the term was used often, so I was searching the web to find what it meant. I did not find the meaning on Wikipedia, so when I finally found it in a slang dictionary, I added it to Wikipedia too.

My reason for asking you is therefore twofold: (1) Could we put the reference back to the page?, and (2) Is "Tim" offensive? Do you know more about the word? I would like to find out more - as I describe above.

And while you're at it - you seem to be an experienced contributor - how can I "claim" that edit as mine (sf222's)? I remember it is described somewhere but I can't find it.

Thanks,

Sam —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sf222 (talk • contribs) 13:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
 * Hi, Sam! I don't know whether the term is offensive, but in any case it is not why I removed it (Wikipedia is not censored).
 * The reason why I removed the entry lies within some of the Wikipedia policies and guidelines that you, as a newcomer, might not yet had a chance to encounter. First of all, Tim (disambiguation) is a disambiguation page, which means that it is first and foremost a page designed to provide navigational assistance to readers.  If you think of disambiguation pages as of collection of redirects, you'd be pretty close to understanding what these pages are for.  As far as disambiguation pages go, we have a guideline governing what kind of information they should contain and in what manner that information should be presented.  You can find that guideline here.  The bottom line is that the disambiguation entries should not be created too loosely, unless there is a very, very good reason to do so.  With Celtic, if "Tim" were the team's alternative name, that'd be a reason good enough for inclusion, but even then the entry should have been kept as short as possible (something like "Tim, alternative name for Celtic F.C.").
 * Another guideline applicable in this case is WP:NOT, specifically its Wikipedia is not a dictionary clause. While the guideline mostly applies to standalone articles, it's a good fit for disambiguation pages as well.  What that guideline says is that an article (or a disambiguation page entry) should generally not be created if it only consists of a dictionary definition.
 * I hope this makes sense. If you have any further questions regarding this, please do not hesitate to let me know.  I hope this does not discourage you from further editing&mdash;there are so many policies and guidelines in Wikipedia now that it is highly unreasonable to expect new editors to learn them all at once!
 * In conclusion, to answer your question regarding attribution of your IP edits to your account, I'm afraid this cannot be done. In the past, we had a change attribution procedure, but it no longer is active.  I can only suggest that you link to your IP edits (like this) on your user page if you feel it is important for other editors to know what they are.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Ezhiki,
 * thanks, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the exhausting answer.
 * Sam
 * No problem. You are welcome to contact me in future if you have any similar questions, by the way.  I'm always happy to help new editors :)  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: Melnikov
Hello! First of all, Melnikovo should certainly be a redirect; other places with that name are obviously not worthy of an article. As for Melnikov, I realize now that this is not part of WP:SU and am not sure why it was on that list (mostly Central European surnames, not Russian ones). I was going to argue with you about why it should still be a redirect but now see that you reverted your edit. I will talk to User:Logical2u about it instead. Thanks :). shoeofdeath 20:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello. Please note that geographic locations are all "worthy" of articles as notability criteria do not apply to them (only verifiability criteria do).  Case in point: just take a look at any of the US states categories&mdash;entries for places with populations of less than one hundred are abundant.  I doubt many of those locations would be "worthy" of articles by your measure; yet no one proposes to delete them.  Other countries are no different.  With Russia, I can see how the dab pages like Melnikovo may seem useless to an uninvolved person, but they are in fact extremely helpful for collecting the backlinks and structuring articles on administrative and territorial divisions.  Replacing it or similar mini-dabs with redirects is very disruptive to projects such as this one and ultimately creates lots of unnecessary cleanup work for editors and confusion for readers.  I would much appreciate if you re-reverted your change.
 * As for Melnikov, after reviewing the details I completely agree with Logical2u. The page definitely needs cleanup, but I don't believe that replacing it with a single redir is justified.  Feel free to argue with me as well if you wish :)  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Alright, I'll go with you on the location article. As for the surname page, it has been there for nearly a year and there is still only one person with that surname. If any of the other people on that list had an article (or if someone was going to create an article on one of them) I would agree that there needed to be a dab page. If every person that was only slightly notable had a redlink on Wikipedia than there would be millions of such pages referring to people without a Wikipedia page. In this case I really think it should be redirect because the architect is very well-known and the other things on the list are either named after him or are not notable enough to have an actual page. shoeofdeath 21:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for going along with the location article. You should probably know that I am perfectly capable of fully unbundling that "other localities" line, as well as of writing a stub on each and every one of those localities.  However, since there are close to 100,000 locations in Russia, I cannot do them all at once, especially if they are not structured and ordered first (which is exactly what those sub-dabs help accomplish).  Thank you for understanding.
 * I don't normally work with bios, but I do occasionally help with dabs such as Melnikov. Speaking from my experience, I cannot agree that those red links are useless.  The same way a multitude of red links to Russian locations helps organize the workflow (and ultimately reach the goal of full geographic coverage of Russia faster), these last name dabs help other people with their projects.  With Russia, three things are important to remember.  First of all, there are not that many Russian editors here in the English wiki.  Every little bit of pre-organization helps them save time and work on content rather than on maintenance.  Second, even notable Russian people might not get very many google hits, but that does not make them any less notable.  We are here to write the best and the most complete encyclopedia, not to promote systemic bias (which is bad enough as it is).  Cleaning up red links to "unnotable" people from the dab pages wholesale is the easiest solution, but it does not mean it's the best one.  Why not check who exactly added those red links to seemingly unnotable people and contact those editors for explanations why they did it?  That's a lot more work, but it's in line with WP:AGF, it furthers the Wikipedia goal of completeness, and, heck, it may even be enough of a nudge for those editors to create missing articles.  Third, the situation with the Russian names is complicated because, as you probably know, Russian is written in Cyrillic alphabet, so for the purposes of the English Wikipedia all names must be romanized first.  Unfortunately, quite a few incompatible romanization systems exist for that purpose, and an encyclopedia, being a structured compendum, would work best if only one is adopted.  We do have a romanization guideline, but we cannot possibly expect new editors to know that it exists or what it is.  If a new editor wanted to write an article on, say, Vitaly Melnikov, s/he could click on a red link on the dab page and create that article under a proper spelling, instead of using "Vitalij Mel'nikov", "Vitaliy Melnikov", or "Vitali Mel'nikov" (all of which are technically correct but not compliant with the Wikipedia romanization guidelines).  In the end, this also helps reduce maintenance strain on those few editors who work on Russian topics.  You wouldn't believe how much time and effort these simple dabs save editors in the end, and since they don't do readers any harm, why dispose of such a useful tool?
 * I hope you find this convincing. If not, I'll be happy to further explain any parts you find unclear.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:12, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I am certainly not claiming to be an expert on Russian romanization and you clearly know much more about the subject of Russian surnames than me. I have, however, worked on a huge number of surname pages (mostly Central European ones per WP:SU, but recently others) and must insist that vast lists of people who might someday have a Wikipedia article cannot be just be left there (see here). This has nothing to do with the fact that this surname happens to be Russian. Please understand that if lists like this were allowed to exist than every surname dab page would become filled with hundreds of redlinked names.
 * That being said, I have searched hard and found a few other people with this name and created a new dab page for them (as well as Melnikov distance, which needs work). I am still very opposed to including the other redlinks, though, and in general feel that dab pages have way too many redlinks. I hope the new page will be more to your liking. shoeofdeath 23:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks much for cleaning this up. The resulting dab is probably what would have left anyway after cleanup/research, although I can most certainly add a dozen of other redlinked Melnikovs who have articles in Russian encyclopedias :)  That, indeed, was my point all along&mdash;quite a few dabs on Russian last names (Melnikov excluded) currently contain plenty of red links, but the majority of them come from Soviet and Russian encyclopedias.  Having articles about those people is essential, but it may take a while due to the small number of editors working on the topic, which is why I am usually so resistant to cleaning dabs by removing red links from them wholesale.  In any case, thanks again for your help.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Re Miscellania
Hi Ëzhiki,


 * ''...Just to let you know, I moved our worksheet to administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea. Finally!
 * Don't drink too much vodka!
 * Too... late... :)


 * ''...regarding Administrative divisions of the Russian federal subjects&mdash;do you know why there is a space in front of "Adygea"?

I don't see any space here (Firefox v2 on PC; unless I'm looking in the wrong place) but have tweaked the template's formatting code in case this solves it (and as it makes the code and template a little easier to read anyway). Any difference at your end...? Yours, David (talk) 17:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup, that fixed it. Must be an IE perk, as usual.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Maslov DAB question
I was surprised to find the article about the race car driver under Viktor Maslov name as I always associated the name with Viktor Alexandrovich Maslov the head coach of Dinamo Kiev who led the team to several victories in the Soviet championship in 1960s. I admit I may be biased here. So, anyway, the question is how to best handle the dab between them. Several solutions are obvious but I am not sure which one is best. Can you handle it? --Irpen 08:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Of course, disambiguation should be done by patronymic whenever possible, but for cases when patronymic is hard to find disambiguation by occupation will suffice.  Anyway, I moved the racer to Viktor Maslov (racer) and redirected Viktor Maslov to Maslov disambiguation page, to which I added a few more Viktors, including the Dynamo head coach.  All we need now is an article about him :)
 * Let me know if you need anything else or if you have questions. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Federal subjects of Russia
''Hi there! I've just noticed that you tagged the "Mergers" section of this article as in need of updating. Could you, please, clarify, what exactly is missing? From what I see, the section is reasonably complete (I might have missed some recent developments, though). Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It just reads to me as though everything is still in the future; there's no information on the results of the referenda and the statement "plans exist" seems to indicate that the mergers haven't taken place (although some already have). I'd have edited it myself but I don't know the intricacies of Russian federal politics at all, and I don't want to create mistaken information. --Stlemur 14:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll try to update it when I have time. Just wanted to make sure nothing really-really important is missing.  Thanks much.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:23, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

On related issue and since this is the subject of your specialty. We have a guberniya article but the articles devoted to particular guberniyas are called Governorates (Taurida Governorate, etc.) I am not saying one of the two is preferable but some consistency would help. Addtionally, we often consider Namestnichestvo to be viceroyalty but namestnichestvo was a unit of the Guberniya's level and in some of the reforsm the namestnichestva were renamed to Governoarates. On top of that, there was an additional historic unit in Russia's subdivisions that I think is called in English General Governorship (note the redlink.) I found this all out trying to seek the info for the Little Russian Governorate] and [[Little Russian General Governorship (which were not the same.) I googled around but the info on this all is rather contradictory. Maybe you have time and interest to sort some of this out. Cheers, --Irpen 16:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I sure have a lot of interest in sorting this out (it is somewhat of a mess, as you rightfully noted), but unfortunately what I don't have is the time. As far as guberniya goes, the article was left at this title as "guberniya" is a loanword, but since it is not really well-known to Anglophones, a well-fitting translation ("Governorate") was used to title the articles on actual guberniyas.  All those articles are supposed to have a link to "guberniya" somewhere in the lead, so it is absolutely clear to readers that both terms refer to the same thing.  I am not saying this is the best way to handle the situation, but so far it has worked reasonably well.  It's fairly easy to fix, though&mdash;we can just redirect "guberniya" to governorate, where it would be included as a section, or split existing governorate into governorate (Arab countries), governorate (Russia) (to which "guberniya" would redirect), and governorate (Germany) (or whatever a better term for this one would be).
 * As for "namestnichestvo", fixing that requires research and time committment which I currently cannot afford. Sorry!  Note, however, that even when "namestnichestvo" is pretty much the same as "guberniya", it is a different term, so it would not be incorrect to translate is as "viceroyalty" instead of "governorate".
 * Finally, "General Governorship" (генерал-губернаторство) was a unit that comprised several governorates and/or oblasts.  I am, however, not sure what you mean by Little Russia Governorate and Little Russia Governorship General being different&mdash;I don't recall hearing the latter name (but I could just be a bit rusty on that topic :)).
 * Sorry for not being of more help.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Translation teams/ru
Привет! Запишешься в Translation teams/ru ? --Kaganer 16:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Записаться-то я могу, но только скорее всего буду в буквальном смысле одним из "добровольцев, который может не быть активен в любое время". Запишусь пока в потенциальные.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming scheme for Clodts
I am have put most of the prominent Russian Clodts into Clodt von Jürgensburg article. This is a German-Russian family that in each generation became less German and more Russian. We need patronymics to separate between members. Some were bearing the von Jürgensburg some did not. What scheme is better: Mikhail Konstantinovich Clodt or Michail Konstantinovich Clodt or Mikhail Konstantinovich Clodt von Jürgensburg or Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt or ... ? Should we use the uniform scheme for all of them or we should investigate which one used the von part, etc.? Should Peter Karlovich as probably the most prominent of them go without the patronimic? Alex Bakharev 14:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Alex! All these individuals should most certainly be listed under the names they were using.  Since Clodt von Jürgensburg is technically not a disambiguation page but a page about a family, using a uniform scheme is not that important; what's important is that we list people under correct names.  With that in mind, patronymic should only be a part of the title for those people who used the same first/last names.  Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Primorsky Krai
OK. But I added back ", Primorsky Krai" to Chuguyevsky District. :) No problems... But why did you deleted in template bottom part about history, sport, and other? --Paukrus 21:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm sorry, but I had to move it back again :) Here is why.  The district of Kharkiv Oblast is called "Чугуевский" in Russian, so, naturally, in the Russian Wikipedia you would have a disambiguation page titled ru:Чугуевский район.  However, the Ukrainian name of the district is "Чугуївський", which, according to WP:UKR, is romanized "Chuhuivskyi".  So, while in Russian the names are identical, the romanized names are not.  However, since the commonly used names are identical (Russian is widely spoken in Ukraine, as you undoubtedly know), having a disambiguation page is still necessary to avoid confusion for those unaware of finer points of romanization.  So, I moved the disambiguation page to Chuguyevsky District (disambiguation) (correcting the spelling of the Ukrainian district on the way), moved the article about the Russian district back to Chuguyevsky District (since it's a unique English name), and added For at its top, directing readers to Chuhuivskyi Raion if information about the Ukrainian district is what they are seeking.  Ultimately, when "Chuhuivskyi Raion" is created, a similar For notice should be added at its top, directing readers to the article about the Russian district.  Finally, according to established naming practices, articles on Russian districts are titled "Districts" (e.g., "Chuguyevsky District"), but the Ukrainian districts are titled "Raions" (e.g., "Chuhuivskyi Raion").  I know it's silly, but that's what lack of coordination brought upon us :)  Now it would be too much work to either change all Russian districts to "raions" or to change all Ukrainian raions to "districts", so the status quo stays what it is.
 * I hope I didn't confuse you to death with this explanation! Feel free to ask me if anything is unclear.
 * Now, as for the bottom portion of the template, I did not delete it, but merely commented it out. The only valid blue link in that section was administrative divisions, which covered most of the rest of the template (so I moved it to the header).  History of Primorsky Krai is not even about Primorsky Krai, but about the history of the territory predating it (this was one of the very very first articles I created in 2004 when I had no clue how Wikipedia is supposed to work), and the rest of the links were just red.  If you are planning to write any of those articles soon, feel free to restore the section in the template, otherwise I just don't see the need for more red links.
 * Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanx for detailed clarifying. Sorry for you arreter time. :) But the liquidation red links in Russian region's templates is job of near future. Cependant I think needs do similar templates for every Russian federal subject. :) --Paukrus 21:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Liquidation of red links is something I am all for :) It's just that people tend to complain when oversized and mostly redlinked templates are added to small stubs.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:55, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Rivers
Hello friend! Long time haven't heard from you. Everything's alright? I just wanna ask you if you are in favour of splitting category:Rivers of Russia by subsequent Oblasts, Republics etc. What do you think? - Darwinek 10:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Darwinek! I am doing fine; thanks for asking.  Just don't have as much time on my hands as I used to, but that, too, shall pass :)  Hope you are doing well yourself.
 * As for the rivers, of course I have no objections to categorizing them by federal subject. I'd do it myself, but I have my hands full with just the inhabited localities, so if you want to help with the rivers, that'd be great.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:23, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I am doing fine. Exams almost over, just a few to go. :) I will split some, glad to do that. :) - Darwinek 15:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Good luck with the remaining exams! (Shouldn't you be reading up instead of categorizing rivers, by the way? :)))).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's right, I should. :)) Wikipedia is kind of relax among all these exams. - Darwinek 15:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Siberia (disambiguation)
Hi, Ежики. Please, take a look at Siberia (disambiguation). The troll came again. Beatle Fab Four 05:58, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks like JHunterJ is handling this fine so far. I have this dab watchlisted and will intervene if necessary.  Thanks for the pointer.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for quick responce and support. Cheers, Beatle Fab Four

Hi, could you please take a look? WP:AN/I I added my view.

Best, Beatle Fab Four 13:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I must say I mostly concur with the decision to block him. Everyone is entitled to having a point of view, but trying to impose it on others through disruptive behavior is absolutely unacceptable.  That said, indefinite block was probably too harsh.  M.V.E.i. is welcome to challenge it by placing an unblock request on his talk page (which he can edit even while being blocked), but even if an unblock is granted and he continues to behave in the same manner, it's only a matter of time till he's blocked again.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I agree, he was too straight and sometimes rude. But I think this guy is quite innocent. His main interest in wiki is music and his contributions to such articles were quite interesting. He is just young maybe. Alex Bakharev said some words at the discussion page. Again, I don't think this case is that bad. Beatle Fab Four 12:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Primorye tango
http://personal.primorye.ru/tango/ :-) Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, what did you expect, no tango there? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Объяснения
Конечно объясните, а то всё удаляют, удаляют, я уж запутался совсем :-) IPAAT 17:45, 5 June 2007 (UTC)IPAAT
 * Причина, по которой эти изображения нельзя размещать на странице пользователя, заключается в том, что в основной массе своей они используются в Википедии под доктриной "добросовестного использования" (fair use). Это означает, грубо говоря, что использоваться они могут только для иллюстрирования топика, который на них изображён.  Так, например, Image:Kino6.jpg может использоваться в статье Andrei Rublev (film) и нигде более.  Размещение таких изображений на страницах пользователей запрещается правилами Википедии.
 * Разумеется, размещение изображений лицензированных под GFDL или находящихся в public domain разрешается. Если в Вашей галерее есть такие изображения, то их вполне можно оставить.  К изображениям же "fair use" можно просто поставить ссылку &mdash; таким образом будет понятно, что Вы хотите включить его в галерею, и никаких правил нарушено не будет.
 * Полностью с политикой Википедии по отношению к non-free изображениям можно ознакомиться тут (в русской Википедии правила очень похожи.
 * Если есть дальнейшие вопросы &mdash; спрашивайте.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:58, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Да, еще один вопрос. Ведь на обсуждаемой странице все изображения даны в столь мелком формате, что скорее больше походят на иконки, нежели на фотографии и рисунки. Не кажется ли, что "чистка" идет огульно, невзирая на конкретные обстоятельства? Заметили, что файл используется где-то еще и АВТОМАТИЧЕСКИ удаляют. Просто какой-то Большой Брат получается... А как же мне работать с "моими" изображениями в Википедии? Я же не в состоянии их все запомнить, а, порой, они мне бывают нужны. Как же мне тогда их быстро найти? Мне кажется, что все-таки должны быть какие-то разумные исключения из правил, когда пользователь своими действиями по размещению иллюстраций НИ В КОЕЙ МЕРЕ НЕ УЩЕМЛЯЕТ ПРАВООБЛАДАТЕЛЕЙ. В конце концов Авторским правом не запрещено использование материалов для ИНФОРМАЦИОННЫХ ЦЕЛЕЙ, а именно для них я и всатвил себе на страницу обсуждаемые "иконки".

Не обижайтесь, я не спорю, я действительно хочу понять, чем, кроме формального предлога, мои действия кому-то помешали. IPAAT 18:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)IPAAT
 * Я не обижаюсь, я как раз и пытаюсь объяснить :) Проблема заключается не только и не столько в том, что эти изображения кому-то мешают (не мешают) или что правообладатели терпят огромные убытки (не терпят).  Суть всего этого &mdash; в политике Википедии и в лежащей в её основе философии.  Википедия &mdash; свободная энциклопедия.  Это амбициознейший проект строительства всеобъемлющего референтного издания, построенного только из материалов, не связанных путами копирайта и прочих ограничений.  К сожалению, поскольку проблемы копирайта в нашей жизни искуственно и неестественно раздуты, то обойти их трудно, а зачастую и невозможно, особенно в таком амбициозном свободном проекте как Википедия.  Трудно не согласиться с тем, что энциклопедическую статью о, например, предмете искусства, трудно назвать полноценной, если этот предмет в ней не иллюстрируется.  К счастью, доктрина fair use позволяет такое изображение в статье использовать на вполне легальных основаниях.  Однако в духе следования философии Википедии это же изображение не может использоваться где-либо ещё (включая, разумеется, и страницы пользователей).  Как видите, всё опять сводится к философии.  Можно называть это идеализмом или идиотизмом (обе точки зрения высказывались вслух уже не раз), но это &mdash; факт, с которым надо считаться.  Поскольку существующие правила отражают консенсус большинства пользователей, считаться с ними надо всем.  Это не значит, что несогласным надо молчать в тряпочку и не высовываться (наоборот, оживлённые дискуссии на эту тему ведутся всегда, и при желании Вы всегда можете к ним присоединиться), но это и не значит также, что эти правила можно молча игнорировать и поступать по-своему.
 * В общем и целом, с Вашими аргументами абзацем выше я лично согласен. Однако, будучи администратором (т.е. лицом, которому сообщество выдало мандат доверия, как бы напыщенно это ни звучало), я вынужден поддерживать существующие правила, даже если я с ними не согласен или имею на их счёт свою точку зрения.  Поэтому хочу ещё раз попросить Вас не восстанавливать галерею в исходном виде.  Изображения, находящиеся в Википедии под свободной лицензией, Вы можете размещать у себя на странице хоть в тройном размере; никто Вам по этому поводу слова поперёк не скажет.  Non-free же изображения вполне можно заменить ссылками на них &mdash; в этом случае будут и волки целы (для информационных целей можно пользоваться и ссылками) и овцы сыты (к Вам никто придираться больше не станет) :)
 * С уважением,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Хорошо, спасибо за подробные разъяснения, я понял их суть. В таком случае, несмотря на мою "оппозиционность" в этом вопросе, я подчиняюсь мнению (правилам)большинства идеалистов :-))

Что же касается обсуждаемой страницы, то я все же восстановлю ее в том виде, в каком она была до начала "вандалистических" актов администраторов и сам устраню все противоречия. Только вот время бы на это найти :-))) Еще раз спасибо за беседу.
 * Я бы помог, но у самого со временем никак. Sorry :(—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Где я могу проголосовать, что бы Вас лишили мандата доверия? ;-)))))
 * Процедура описана тут.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

P.P.S. А не подскажите ли заодно, изображения, которые я загружаю в аглийский вариант Википедии в русском совершенно недоступны? Или я что-то не так делаю? IPAAT 19:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)IPAAT
 * Если изображения загружать в английскую Википедию (т.е., с помощью File upload wizard, доступного через меню слева), то они будут доступны только в английской Википедии. То же самое и с русской (и любой другой) Википедией.  Для того, чтобы изображение было доступно в Википедиях на всех языках, загружать его нужно через Commons (тут).  В Commons, однако, ни под каким предлогом не принимаются non-free изображения (т.е. даже для fair use загружать изображения туда нельзя).
 * С уважением,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Spasibo for taking care of that! I suspected it was a language issue. --Butseriouslyfolks 19:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * You're quite welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:27, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

How can I become an Admin?
Hello, my name is Sergei, and I just have a question for you, as you are an admin already. I am not entirely new to Wikipedia, as, before I got this account, I made a lot of contributions to Wikipedia, to articles such as Nikolai Valuev, which I practicaly rewrote, adding much new information, in particular. Now I also created an article on Ivan Poddubniy, and am not going to stop at that. In fact, I am planning to create more articles on famous Russian and Ukrainian sportsmen and athletes who are not very well know here in the West. And I am also going to look after the exsisting articles to keep them free of filth and vandalism. But to do that I need all the power of an Admin. So what do I need to do to become an Administrator here? Should I ask other Admins too? --SergeiXXX 20:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Sergei! In general, when a user is a diligent Wikipedian, someone usually notices and nominates him/her.  However, if you don't want to wait for that to happen, you can submit a self-nomination.  The page for requesting adminship is located here (there is a good explanation how to format and submit an entry there, but the bottom line is that you'll have to explain why exactly you want to be an admin and why you being an admin would be beneficial to Wikipedia, as well as to be ready to answer any questions folks might throw your way).  A voting process then commences, and if a significant majority supports you by the end of the voting period you'll be promoted.  All in all, however, the person applying for adminship have to have been with Wikipedia for a while (at least a few months); often the applicant's editcount (the number of edits they made; yours is available here) is considered in making a decision (there is no strict limit, by in practice folks with less than 2,000 edits don't really have any chance to succeed).  The reasoning behind this is that the person willing to be an admin must understand how Wikipedia works, and that understanding only comes with experience.  Thus, my recommendation for you would be to continue enjoying editing Wikipedia now and think about adminship later.  When you are ready, you'll know it :)
 * I should also mention that if fighting vandalism is the only reason why you want to become an admin, it will most likely not be viewed as a good enough reason to support you. Admins don't really have that many more powers enabling them to fight vandalism more effectively; admin powers are more helpful in doing general cleanup and maintenance.  You might want to look into using one of many automated tools, which are in fact more effective in fighting vandalism than any of the powers admins have.
 * Please let me know if you have any further questions. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Double categorization?
Hello. I am doing a project of cleaning up the Rivers of Russia category and would like to ask you a question. Which category should I use when categorizing geographical features (e.g. rivers) concerning the cases of Kamchatka and Sakhalin? Should I categorize them under "Kamchatka" or "Kamchatka Oblast" or by both? P.S. Do you plan to clean up the whole Kamchatka issue when a new Kamchatka Krai will be created soon? I am here to help you ;). - Darwinek 18:24, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Category:Kamchatka Oblast is a subcategory of Category:Kamchatka, so if you categorize rivers just under Kamchatka Oblast that should be sufficient (but of course, if a river flows elsewhere as well, then several cats will be needed). Same goes for Sakhalin (categorizing rivers once under Category:Sakhalin Oblast is enough).
 * As for the cleanup, of course, help would be welcome, but judging from what happened with Krasnoyarsk Krai, however, if you want to help, you'd better hurry, because there are going to be plenty of folks willing to beat you to it :). I only got to do some minor maintenance, because someone made appropriate changes almost overnight.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Why change the spelling?
I am curious why the name Chabno has been changed to Khabno? If you would, please respond to my message at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation/Chabno#Talk Miqrogroove 00:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I replied. If you need further clarifications, please inquire there; I have that page watchlisted now.  Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. I hope you will review this change before it is finalized.  "Romanization" would not be relevant if there were a common English spelling.  This is why it is important to look at the historical use of the name in English.  For example, my family name could be "Romanized" as Khabenskiy.  However, it has never been spelled that way in English and so it would not make a good title for an article about me.  :)
 * Miqrogroove 05:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid you somewhat misunderstand what constitutes "common English spelling". "Common English spelling" refers to large, well-known places, such as, for example, Kiev in Ukraine or Moscow and Saint Petersburg in Russia.  These names would usually be included in general dictionaries.  However, just because some little village's name was spelled in a certain way in some random immigration record, it does not mean it automatically becomes "common".  As a matter of fact, small places like that do not normally have an accepted English name; their names are romanized depending on situation and needs.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:33, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I apologize if I implied my source was "some random immigration record." I have found more than 100 instances in the database spelled "Chabno", "Chabna", and "Chabne".  These are each dated between 1903 and 1923.  Using the same search tools, I looked for "Khabno", "Khabna", and "Khabne" resulting in zero instances.  There were about a dozen instances of "Habne", but I couldn't find any spelled with K.  If you would like to review these, some of the common surnames are: Bordianski, Kaplan, Kostinsky, Kostrynska, Milman, and Primak.
 * Miqrogroove 01:16, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I in turn apologize if I somehow sounded demeaning regarding the source you provided; that was not my intent. My point was that immigration records, while undoubtedly important, are not a good source in this particular case.  What they show is that, at some point of time, a certain government agency preferred a certain spelling; it does not prove that their spelling choice was a "common English name" (only a dictionary entry or some other reference material can prove that).  Since the place in question still exists, we should be using the conventions which are in use at present time.  While, of course, there is no mandated romanization system in English-speaking countries, BGN/PCGN romanization is a de facto standard, and it is available for the Ukrainian language.  Wikipedia's WP:UKR is based upon that BGN/PCGN convention, which was chosen precisely because it is the most common.
 * That said, I don't see a reason why both "Khabno" and "Chabno" should not both be mentioned in the article's lead. The article's title, however, should not be changed as per WP:UKR.
 * Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

английские названия районов
Приветствую!

Не подскажете ли, есть какие-то утверждённые правила относительно того, как должны называться статьи о районах: в формате Lenino raion, Bakhchisaray raion или Leninskiy raion, Bakhchisarayskiy raion? В основном интересует приложение этого правила к Украине. Украинские области называются Cherkasy Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, а не Cherkas'ka Oblast, Kharkivs'ka Oblast. Применим ли аналогичный подход к районам? Don Alessandro 09:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Утверждённых правил, к сожалению, нет, но в целом практика наименования районов довольно прямолинейна и однородна. В общем и целом, собственная часть наименования района транслитерируется (украинских &mdash; через WP:UKR, русских, соответственно, через WP:RUS), а слово "район" передаётся как "Raion" для украинских районов и как "District" для районов русских.  Так, например, "Обухівський район" Киевской области находится под заголовком Obukhivskyi Raion, а "Кстовский район" Нижегородской области &mdash; под заголовком Kstovsky District.  Ну и, разумеется, если существуют несколько районов с одинаковым названием, то под основным заголовком находится страница разрешения неоднозначностей, а в заголовках статей о собственно районах указывается административная единица (для Украины) или федеральный субъект (для России), в составе которых эти районы находятся (см., например, Krasnoarmeysky District).
 * Если есть ещё вопросы, пишите. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Благодарю за разъяснения! Don Alessandro 14:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Shaimiev
Привет! Предлагаю перенести статью на Shaimiev, как эта фамилия пишется в официальных источниках :) Ато это "вечернеказанское" Shaymiyev, правильно с точки зрения русской транслитерации, но абсолютно не правильно с точки зрения татарской. Предлагаю компромиссный вариант (ни так, ни так, но зато как в официальных источниках). --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 17:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * По-хорошему, надо вообще договориться раз и навсегда, как транслитерировать имена российских политиков (да и не только политиков) нерусской национальности (с русскими-то всё и так понятно). На мой взгляд, с русского языка их транслитерировать выгоднее всего: во-первых, поскольку в российской прессе федерального масштаба (которая наиболее вероятно используется зарубежными читателями, знающими русский язык) используются руссифицированные имена, то и в англоязычные публикации просачивается в основном транслитерация руссифицированных имён, а не имён языка-оригинала.  Отсюда следует, что англоязычным читателям "Shaymi(y)ev" попадётся с большей вероятностью, чем другой спеллинг (см., например, публикацию IREX, сайт Посольства США, BBC News, новостные ленты и т.д. и т.п).  Во-вторых, с точки зрения банальной поддержки порядка, одинаковая схема транслитерации для российских топиков удобна хотя бы тем, что участников, знающих русский язык в Википедии больше, нежели участников, знающих татарский, башкирский, якутский и т.д., не говоря уже о том, как именно языки эти транслитерируются.  В-третьих, как уже неоднократно упоминалось, для прочих вариантов написания всегда есть редиректы и место в начале статьи.
 * Я понимаю, что все эти аргументы частично работают и в обратную сторону, но я просто не вижу смысла менять написания заголовков в сторону обратную той, которая приносит наибольшее удобство англоязычным пользователям.
 * В общем и целом, настаивать на текущем заголовке я не хочу и не буду; если ты считаешь, что другой вариант лучше, пускай так и будет (поскольку татарского я не знаю, то вполне допускаю, что не вижу чего-то важного), но перед тем как двигать статьи, подумай, будет ли конечный результат наиболее удобен англоязычному читателю. Ну и, разумеется, не надо двигать статьи copy-paste'ом :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Hey Ezh
Have a look at this Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-06-10 Podilsko-Voskresenska Line. --Kuban Cossack 20:32, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a statement of my own. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:38, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

?
ru:User:Ushiki. Баним за провокационный ник или как? ;) — Kalan 17:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * А зачем? Вроде человек не хулиганит, а ник не так уж и похож, чтобы прямо спутать.  В общем, на ваше (рувиковых админов) усмотрение; мне всё равно.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:36, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok. В общем, я пока не подаю запросов на бан/чекъюзинг, но имею в виду. Ты, если что, тоже предупреждён. — Kalan 19:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * OK. Но я там раньше был :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:36, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Before you proceed
Before you proceed, please read Requests for comment/Eep². Uncle G 00:59, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've started the processs, here. This user clearly has no intent to moderate their behavior. IPSOS (talk) 13:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Location maps
Would you consider dual licensing your edits to location map and related template under the cc-by 2.5? This way I could use them on the english wikinews. Happy editing. Bawolff 00:33, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Certainly. I hope this does work retroactively?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Administrative division of Congress Poland
Per our old discussion, I thought you'd enjoy taking a look at this: currently it basically only a list with one map, but I hope it will eventually grow, and also be more connected with the ad. div. of Russian empire. What I am looking for now is info for the article Administrative division of Polish territories after partitions - i.e. on Polish territory that was absorbed to Russian (and other) empires after 18th century partitions, before the estabilishmen tof Duchy of Warsaw and Cogress Poland in the early 19th century. Would you have any info on that? PS. I expect Western Krai holds some answers to that...--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:56, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the pointer. I'll have a look at what I have tomorrow and will let you know if I find anything that might be of use to you.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Need a little mediation -- can you help?
Assuming Warren's good faith, he's just having troubles with understanding my reasoning. Or maybe it's just me having troubles with understanding his one. In any way, could you help as a mediator? --tyomitch 07:01, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * On June 16, I uploaded a new image at Image:Windows 3.11.PNG. I consider my image to be cleary superior to the original one for the purpose of the article section it's used in.
 * On June 17, User:Warren reverted my image giving no comments.
 * On June 18, I started discussion on his talk page requesting comments for keeping a clearly inferior image. He stated that all OS screenshots have to display the default desktop without any applications running, and in demonstration of his statement, he reverted three more screenshots I uploaded, as far back as June 14.
 * Spanning June 18 and 19, I have posted a very verbose rationale for using my image instead of the old one in the article at question, as well as demonstrated that there's no consensus for using empty desktops in OS screenshots in favor of screenshots with running applications. But he's not going to reply.
 * I am terribly sorry, Tyomitch, but I am currently swamped with stuff to do in real life and don't have time to offer my assistance as a mediator. If this can wait until next week, I'll gladly take a look at this then, but if you don't want to wait, I suggest you request assistance at MedCab; there is always a person available for informal mediation there.  Again, sorry for being of no help at all; it's just the matter of bad timing :(—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's OK, no problem. Wish you good luck in your real life! --tyomitch 05:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Any time available for mediation this week? --tyomitch 05:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably not, sorry. This is turning to be the crappiest summer I ever had: with the workload mounting I barely find time to comb through my watchlist :(  Have you tried MedCab yet?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:24, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

ISO TC 215 -> ISO/TC 215
ISO TC 215 -> ISO/TC 215 ... could you move? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * uups I mean merge :-) ... good exampl of how stadard naming is useful :-) Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:40, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:58, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

High importance fix needed
See Category_talk:Conversion_templates. TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 20:51, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. It's one mistake I keep making.  Thanks for the heads-up; I have just fixed it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:29, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you make the same fix at AcreAndHectare, which is messing up at Chicago Board of Trade Building. --TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * There is nothing wrong with this template. A break and a space were actually present in the article itself; I have just fixed that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Nautsi
Do you happen to know what the name of this village is in Russian? I tried looking for it under Науци, but everything that comes up looks like Serbian. Thanks. -Yupik 10:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, yeah, it's Наутси, not Науци. One of those cases where romanization fails to show the name unambigously.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Do you happen to know if it's still a village or if it's part of Rajakoski? The Finnish article just says it's part of Pechengsky District. -Yupik 15:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it is not included in the list of Pechengsky District's inhabited localities as of 2004 (through present), so it's definitely no longer a village. Whether it is a part of Rayakoski or not, I could not find.  Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:40, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It does, thanks. I'll be translating the page soon, so I'll make a note that it's not included on its list of inhabited localities. Thanks! :) -Yupik 18:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for comment
ru:Википедия:Заявки на статус администратора/Kalan. Отпишись там. — Kalan 16:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Хех, полезный, значит :) Не очень понял только, чего бы ты хотел от меня там услышать?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:55, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Твою версию ответа на вопрос Тассадара. Тебе наверняка лучше знать :) Да и, может, других вики-ежей знаешь. — Kalan 02:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:History of Russian Manchuria
Frankly, I don't like this. The template is sloppy and looks annoying in the articles. What is your opinion? --Ghirla-трёп- 12:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the general idea is OK, but the implementation (both content- and technical-wise) indeed leaves much to be desired. Also, the template should definitely not be present in all articles which are remotely related to the subject, but only in those listed in the template itself (again, the list in the template could use some refining).  I think Whlee is gradually moving towards understanding this, but if you want to give him a nudge, that might speed up the process a little.
 * I do have this template on my to-(re-)do list, but I don't really know when I'll get a chance to work on it. If you beat me to it, I sure ain't gonna complain :)  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

MIET
Здравствуй. Можешь разделить историю правок статьи? Т.е. дизамбиг отдельно, Manoharbhai Patel Institute of Engineering and Technology отдельно. Если не значешь как, я подскажу... Alex Spade 13:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Про Zelenograd я помню, но всё как то некогда (хочу аккуратно сформулировать, что был как можно яснее). :( Alex Spade 13:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Почему не знаю??? Сделал.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Спасибо. :-) Alex Spade 07:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Regular Spaces on Ft to m
Ezhiki,

I've noticed that you've reverted my simplification of the code on the Ft to m template. The reason being that you wanted regular (breaking) spaces. In that case I wonder whether the template Space really fits the bill. Since this template with parameter 1 just gives a non-breaking space perhaps you'll want something else. P.S. will rewite this without the example overkill. —[done] Jimp 00:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)  P.P.S. I think I've found a solution: &amp;#32;  Jɪmp 1:46 a.m. GMT 26 June 07


 * Ah, what a classy way to stick it up my ass :) Point taken.  I must admit that I used space without even looking at its code (assuming it produces regular spaces), and that the only reason why I even considered space was because I was too lazy to look up the HTML code for the regular space (which, as you correctly indicated, is &amp;#32) in the first place.  Thanks for taking care of that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thought you might appreciate that (gone now as promised). As for the fixing up of Ft to m: no problem.  It's got me thinking, though, you probably would expect a regular space ... it might be more useful. Jɪmp 15:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

speedy speedy :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Tobias_Conradi&diff=141128185&oldid=139775952


 * Already taken care of by someone else .—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:04, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
 * saw it. sorry to not say this. My apologies ;-). I just wanted to point you to something somehow funny. Sometimes I am not sure what we play here :-). Tobias Conradi (Talk) 09:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Tribes of Jharkhand - merge
duplication: Tribes of Jharkhand, Tribes of Jharkhand, India, Tribal of Jharkhand, India. I suggest to use the first name. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Could you, please, first consolidate information from all three articles into one? I don't have time to read through them all right now.  The final result doesn't have to look pretty (i.e., it may still be in need of cleanup after you are done); I just want to be sure no pieces are lost.  Once that's done, I will gladly merge the histories of all three articles.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * done. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Merged as promised.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Russian republic infoboxes
Re this revert: you're only half right; the layout actually depends on screen resolution. Namely, we have (fixed) image pixel size, and (scalable) texts. When you have relatively big resolution (like my 1280x1024, which comes down to cca. 1000x1024 with browser sidebar visible), the map remains proportionally small, but the long texts enwide the infobox. With the current version, I see the infobox occupying around 60% of available horizontal article space; with "my" version, it comes down to below 40%. I can post screenshots if you like. In any case, I think that the infobox design should be improved. Duja ► 08:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC) (please reply here).
 * Hi, Duja! Thanks for your feedback.  The effect you are describing is quite curious; I've never seen anything of the sort even though I work with odd-sized browser windows all the time.  Whatever resolution I use, all infobox text simply wraps to the next line without causing problems, never expanding the infobox past slightly over 300px (map width+borders and margins).
 * Anyway, if you could post a few screenshots, that'd be most helpful. If you could also tell me which browser you are using and point me to an infobox that looks similar but does not cause you the same kind of problems, it'd make my job fixing the issue easier, too.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You got e-mail. Duja ► 13:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ...P.S. For same reason, the language list doesn't wrap and seems to be the primary culprit. I didn't look at the template code to see if some particular CSS style causes that.Duja ► 13:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ...P.P.S. In Firefox only; IE does wrap. Duja ► 13:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll take a look later today. I don't use Firefox, though (I usually assume that if the template has no problems in Opera and IE, it should be handled properly by Firefox, but the latter seems to always have some silly problem I did not expect).  Thanks again for the heads up!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:19, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * After a bit of investigation, you turned out to be right&mdash;the problem is endemic to Firefox and is related to the CSS. The Infobox Russian federal subject utilizes "infobox geography vcard" class, which seems to be causing problems in Firefox.  You would experience a no-wrap problem with any template using this class (see, for example, Kalat District or Riau).
 * Considering all this, going around and trimming the text in the infoboxes to make them narrower is not a solution. I would suggest you bring it up with folks responsible for maintaining the classes, as I am not nearly as good with CSS to have this problem fixed myself.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * After I did that research, I realized it was a browser and/or CSS problem rather than infobox one. Thanks for the investigation. I'll go to appropriate venues (um, which? Bugzilla? WP:VPT?) Duja ► 13:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That I don't know, sorry. Bugzilla is a possibility.  If you ask around the wikiprojects relying on infoboxes with "infobox geography" class, I'm sure someone will be able to point you to the right place.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

About alleborgobot interwiki error
The problema has been fixed, thanks. --Alleborgo 09:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Melnikovo, Leningrad Oblast - interwiki
Привет, насколько я понимаю, правильнее все-таки: ru:Мельниковское сельское поселение<-->fi:Räisälä (бывшая финская волость, бывш. волость) ru:Мельниково (Ленинградская область)<-->en:Melnikovo, Leningrad Oblast (поселок, центр бывшей волости) --MaryannaNesina 20:15, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Изначально это бот (см. секцией выше) сглючил. Хозяин бота обещал всё починить.  Я просто вернул как всё было.  Насчёт финской статьи ничего не могу сказать, поскольку по-фински не говорю.  Если я чего-то неправильно откатил, то спасибо, что починили.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:50, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As to the fi-interwiki, it is not due to a bot. It has been included by me and I believe it is appropriate there. The articles are supposed to include information about the historic municipalities (parishes). We are not obliged to have one-to-one correspondence between articles in different Wikipedias. I think it would be unreasonable and not very reader-friendly to have two articles for each case. In some wikis some articles are more generic. E.g. Paolo Taviani + Vittorio Taviani => Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Maryanna, please, don't delete these interwikis. Colchicum 09:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * My impression was that there were two articles in fi_wiki: one for the settlement and the other for the municipality. Since, according to Colchicum, it's not the case, then, of course, linking the settlement article in en_wiki with the municipality in fi_wiki makes all the sense as it is a very close match.  If/when additional articles are written, the interwikies can be reviewed at that time.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Белостокская область
Could you find anything about this entity? According to pl:Obwód białostocki (Rosja) it was a guberniya but called district, created in 1807 after the Treaties of Tilsit and in 1842 merged to Grodno Governorate. I am particulary confused about the 'region not gubernya' part.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 10:36, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, this one I can help you with. "Obwód białostocki" refers to "Belostok Oblast" (Белостокская область).  In the 19th century, some of the oblasts were administrative divisions which had a status roughly equal to that of the guberniyas; i.e., they existed independently from the guberniyas, not as their parts as it used to be the case in the 18th century.  The "region not guberniya" part most likely refers to the fact that Belostok Oblast was an oblast ("region"), not a governorate.  Belostok Oblast was abolished in 1843 when it was included into Grodno Governorate.  Does this help?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, quite, I created Belostok Oblast based on pl wiki article and your information. Btw, another interesting entity: Chełm Governorate (especially motives for creation, ironic that WWI was much worse then this contingency plan foresaw). Question: would Governorate-General be the same as Governorate? Chełm Governorate was a governorate but it was also attached to Kiev General-Governorate, but I can only find info about Kiev Governorate...? Finally, I found a template on pl wiki listing governorates that got former Polish-Lithuanian lands attached to it (pl:Szablon:Zabory 1772-1807), unfortunatly all are red. Sigh :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:44, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * No, a governorate is not the same as the governorate-general. A governorate-general would comprise several governorates and would have one Governor-General overseeing the Governors (not unlike modern presidential envoys oversee the governors and presidents of federal subjects :)).  As for Chełm Governorate, I don't have anything specifically on it; sorry.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Kaz
That was originally a messy copy & paste job of moving the article. See the page history of Kazimieras G. Prapuolenis and Kaz. It was originally moved as copy & paste job. I fixed that, but the downside is that the original edits of the disambig are in a mess. I deleted Kaz and recreated with a specific reference to where I got the edits from. That should solve it I think. Garion96 (talk) 16:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is possible to collect all edits onto one page and then re-distribute them properly, separating the history of the dab page from the history of the article itself. Let me know if you can't do that; I'll tackle it later myself.  Thanks for the prompt reply!  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Never knew that, will check out how. Try something new. :) But I also think it's not really necessary (for GFDL reasons), the way it is done now it is like a split of an article. No special need to split the history for only three edits. Garion96 (talk) 16:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, if one isn't aware of previous move/change history, it is rather complicated to figure out what exactly happened. That's the only reason why I even bothered to let you know&mdash;it may work for GFDL reasons, but it's still a pain in the backend to sort out.  Since it can be fixed relatively easily, I don't see a reason why not do it :)  Anyway, let me know if you need help sorting the histories.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:30, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I can't imagine actually what's complicated about it. I just deleted the copy & paste move, did the move myself, and created Kaz a disambig and provided in the edit summary where it came from. I might play with it later to see if I can split the history, just to see how it is done. Or not if you beat me to it. Feel free. :) Garion96 (talk) 20:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't want to deprive you of this learning opportunity :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:48, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Caca
I was about to edit the Caca page to specify that it means feces in many languages, but noticed that you keep reverting it every time someone say so. I don't understand why you believe that fact shouldn't be there. -- Lyverbe 13:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course it's a fact. Note, however, that Wikipedia is not a dictionary.  Dictionary definitions belong to Wiktionary, not on Wikipedia's disambiguation pages.  Manual of style for disambiguation pages explicitly states that a Wiktionary link is sufficient and that dictionary definitions should not be included.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:48, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. I understand now.  Thanks. -- Lyverbe 16:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You are quite welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Re:welcome
Thanks for the welcome. I'll check out those links Justin 8:18 PM 2007

Question: how does everyone get their signatures like that?
 * Just type ~ (i.e., four tildes), and you'll add your default signature. If you don't like how the default signature looks like, you can always edit it in "my preferences" (located at the top of the screen next to your username and your talk page link).  Let me know if you have any other questions.  See you around!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool! Justin levy-smith 00:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Krasnaya Polyana
Hello,

I dubted before editing the article, so I had a look on Google:. There are many sites on the Internet where Красная Поляна is tranlated as Red Glade. And these bad translations led me the wrong way. Now I know a little bit more of Russian. Sorry, and thank you for your explanation. J.M.Domingo 22:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem. In general, red is indeed an overwhelmingly more common translation.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Template Russian city
The template is clearly disruptive as regards the layout of our articles. Take a look at Gelendzhik, for instance. I believe we should be removing it on sight. --Ghirla-трёп- 22:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree about Gelendzhik as it was the very first article I tried this template in, so it's there mostly as a result of testing. Feel free to move it to talk (so it could be moved back when the article grows in size).  I don't, however, agree that the template should be removed "on sight".  Infoboxes are useful in that they provide the most basic reference information about a place at a glance; often information in the infobox meets all the needs a casual reader might have.  I don't know if you noticed, but (apart from Gelendzhik) I never add this infobox to articles which already did not have some other similar infobox (often of a much inferior quality) and I would not, of course, purposefully add it to an article so short that an infobox would be much longer than the actual article.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:10, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Nina
you edited saying "dab pages are not for listing people by their first names, unless they are exclusively known by first names alone)" though i've seen otherwise: lisa chris luke stacy stacey ana patrick brett george bart roger greg craig robert robin ETC

could you not have given it a separate category instead of deleting my entries? either that or edit all the entries i've listed with "dab pages are not for listing people by their first names, unless they are exclusively known by first names alone)" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Soparu (talk • contribs).
 * As per WP:MOSDAB (namely, this clause), people should not be listed on disambiguation pages by their first and/or last names. You are, however, quite welcome to separate the name entries to Nina (given name).  Same goes for all other names in the list you provided above.  I only edited Nina because I happen to have it on my watchlist, but I assure you the rest of the names will be eventually sorted out by others in a similar fashion.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Administrative division of Polish territories after partitions
In the Russian section of this new article, I listed a list of Governorates that held former Commonwealth territory, but since I was translating it from pl wiki I am sure there are simple errors in naming (in red links) - could you look it over at correct the names, where appopriate?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:27, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Ladoga
Ezhiki, I disagree with your disagreement :) The situation is identical with Novgorod. I deliberately kept the redirect, because: a) I have no time for disambiguation each time I print "Ladoga"; b) I prepared a huge article about Staraya Ladoga which, when posted, will make the redirect even more useful. We have Template:Redirect for such cases; there is nothing wrong with using it. The disambiguation contains four items; it will inevitably grow, buring Staraya Ladoga somewhere in the middle of the list. It is often difficult for a layman to understand which settlement is normally referred to as "Ladoga" in the academic discourse. As you know, there is no instruction creep in Wikipedia, so I would prefer to keep both Ladoga and Novgorod as disambiguation pages rather than redirects. They redirect to the orginal meaning of the term, the one which gave rise to all the others (the lake was named after the town). --Ghirla-трёп- 22:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ghirla, I have to disagree with... well, you get the gist :) The thing is, I don't see the situation with Ladoga as identical to the one with Novgorod.  Of all the meanings of "Novgorod", the one referring to modern Veliky Novgorod stands out quite prominently.  It is still possible to have a dab page directly at "Novgorod", but, as you rightfully implied, it would be the case of silly consistency at the expense of convenience (of both editors and readers).  But Ladoga is different.  In this case, we have two prominent items struggling for readers' attention.  Your motivation for moving/redirecting the dab page was the number of backlinks, and "Staraya Ladoga" currently has about a hundred of them (about half of which come through "Ladoga").  But Lake Ladoga has twice as many!  If anything, it would make more sense to redirect "Ladoga" to the article about the lake rather than to "Staraya Ladoga".  There is no way to predict whether readers would be more likely to go to one article than another.  The situation is not at all unlike that around Kirov, which is a disambiguation page and not a redirect&mdash;readers are equally likely to seek information about the city as they are about the man after whom the city was named.
 * I understand your unwillingness to think of such minute details as piping the links when your mind is focused on the content and the flow of the article you are writing, but I'm afraid when it's not possible to satisfy the convenience of both editors and readers, the convenience of readers takes priority (if I were to seek information about the lake, landing on "Staraya Ladoga" after typing "Ladoga" in the search box would be mildly annoying... as would be the necessity to click away first to the dab page and only then to the destination). Knowing your dislike to mindless repetitive edits, I can offer you a compromise&mdash;we'll restore the dab page as it were (following the reasoning above), and I'll straighten the links so they point to "Staraya Ladoga" and not to the disambiguation page for you.  That is, of course, unless you have any additional counter-arguments I have not yet addressed.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:00, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a reasonable solution. If you fix the backlinks, I will take care of piping the links to Ladoga during my future edits. --Ghirla-трёп- 23:08, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed then. I'll take care of backlinks and restore the dab page some time on Monday.  In future, if you happen to encounter a similar dillema, feel free to let me know.  I don't mind doing this kind of maintenance at all.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Weight
Can you add a ton->kg conversion in Weight--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd rather make a dedicated template for this. Which ton do you need, by the way, short or long one?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I need the ton that equals 2000 lbs.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be the short ton. Could you tell me what abbreviation I should use for it?  So far three different sources I found used "sh tn", "S/T", and simply "T".  I am not sure which one is the most common.  It would help if you told me where the template is going to be used.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I have only seen the word ton used and since it is only 3 letters ton abbreviating it to two letters and a period like tn. is not done. I would suggest just specifying on the template page that this is the English ton. Then use 5 ton (xxx.xx kg) as the output, IMO.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 21:43, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Decatur City, Iowa
What do you mean by "it is no longer recognised"?Zigzig20s 18:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll be damned if I remember why I said that. I added my comment in 2004, and I am sure I had a reason then, but I have long since forgotten what it was (it's been more than three years after all).  Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:05, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well apparently American cities are often census-designated, so perhaps you meant that that was changed for gerrymandering purposes? That was the guess that I took. (And in that case I still think there should be a page on the city.) Anyway, those city pages seem desolately uncared for...Zigzig20s 20:37, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Still doesn't ring a bell... I was involved in an off-Wikipedia project dealing with Midwestern states in 2004, around the time when I first discovered Wikipedia.  There were a few things I could contribute to Wikipedia in relation to that project; things I was working on anyway.  I guess this note was one of those things, but since it was three years ago, I don't remember any of the details.  Anyway, I'll be removing this note of mine since it obviously no longer makes sense to me or to folks who see it :)  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:00, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Leroy, Iowa
Are you sure about what you said regarding this city?Zigzig20s 09:51, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Did you just delete it?Zigzig20s 11:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * What did I say about it? And no, I never deleted it.  There is no deletion log entry for this one at all, so either it never existed, or it was deleted back when deleted entries were purged regularly.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It was in the category for cities in Iowa, that's how I came across it. And a couple of hours later, no more.Zigzig20s 18:42, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, you mistyped the name :) It's called Le Roy, Iowa.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Dear God...I thought I'd gone mad :) Anyway I guess you don't remember why you typed that? Zigzig20s 18:55, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * At the risk of sounding demented and senile, I must say you guessed right :) All this was a while ago, and I lost interest in Midwestern cities long since.  You might be better off asking around Iowa Portal or some such.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:02, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Owasa, Iowa
I would suggest a redirect, as a demographics section for a neighbourhood seems a bit overkill, doesn't it?Zigzig20s 11:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the stats came from the US Census data, no? If so, the article can be left where it is as a census-designated place (providing that it is; I don't really know much about it).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You suggested a redirect on the talk page.Zigzig20s 18:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it's was over three years ago as well... From what I see, Owasa has the same ZIP code as Iowa Falls, but I don't remember why it is. If they indeed merged, I don't have a source to support this fact now.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Fyodor
thanks for tidying - I messed that up rather! Johnbod 18:19, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * No prob!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Other templates
Are you going to get a chance to convert in to cm for multidimensionality?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:20, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, the plan was to upgrade all existing templates to support ranges and dimensions, but I am rather short on time just now to tackle that. However, your inquiry helped me realize that in to cm would basically be a copypaste of ft to m where only the unit names and the conversion factor need to be replaced.  So, enjoy :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 03:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Saratov/Gelonus
Currently I adapt the german article Oblast Saratow. Long time ago you made an statement in the english Saratov article (this one). Did you remember the sources? Or could you give any sources confirming the statement/legend that Gelonus was situated in the Saratow area?--JA ALT 13:07, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, JA! As a matter of fact, it wasn't me who added this statement.  My edit (the diff you provided) was a simple matter of reverting vandalism.  I do not know what the sources are.  Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

History of Russia FAR
History of Russia has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 21:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

ru:ВП:Ф-ПРЕ
Ты при этом наверняка присутствовал, поэтому, если не трудно, пожалуйста, поделись соображениями по поводу того, что было. — Kalan 17:28, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Извини, пока не до этого. Завал...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Spelling
Hello Ezhiki! Hope your holidays are going in the right direction. Can you please look at: Talk:Beryozovsky, Kemerovo Oblast and provide more expert answer? Thank you. Have a nice and sunny day. :) - Darwinek 17:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, don't even start me on the "right direction". This is the suckiest summer I ever had, and I had some rough ones before.  Well, this, too, shall pass, however... or so I hope :)
 * Anyway, I wrote a short explanation, which would hopefully be sufficient to explain what the problem with the name is. Wish you a pleasant and relaxing summer as well; compared to mine it shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish :)  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Ft in to m and Template:height
Hi E,

Is there a way for you to tweak Template:FT in to m so that Template:Height can be deprecated? Template ft in to m meets MOSNUM requirements whereas Template:Height does not and it would be better to just have one if possible. This stems from a discussion at WP:MOSNUM to make sure that conversion templates in the Category:Conversion templates actually conform to the MOSNUM. &mdash;MJCdetroit 17:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It was my intention to deprecate height from the beginning. What I did not realize, however, was that it was designed to convert both ways (i.e., meters to feet, as well as feet to meters).  It is fairly simple to replace all existing occurences of  with ft to m, m to ft, and ft in to m (m to ft in still needs to be written), but my idea was that, in order to avoid this mundane work, it would be easier to re-write  so that it recognizes which parameters are being passed to it and calls an appropriate conversion template with those parameters.  That is not a terribly complicated task, but, unfortunately, I am unable to take care of it being short on time.  If someone wants to tackle that in my absence, it's fine; otherwise I'll do it when I am again available.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Request to move Kyiv
Hello,

I have set up a request to move the page Kiev to Kyiv.

I have outlined four key reasons for doing so in the discussion section of the page.

Looking through the archives, I saw that you had contributed to this page earlier. I would like to hear what you have to say on this topic.

Thank you

Horlo 03:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)Horlo
 * Michael said it best. I completely agree with him.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Image:Information.svg
I was wondering if you have the svg file to Image:Information.svg, and if so, if you can send it to me (thesublime123@gmail.com). I'm making a similar one and want it to match this one. Thanks — Bob • (talk) • 01:08, July 31, 2007 (UTC)
 * Edit: I see it's a local copy of a commons image. Nevermind, I'll contact the author there. — Bob • (talk) • 01:14, July 31, 2007 (UTC)

Politics of Russia
Thanks for the reminder, I thought that didn't sound quite right. —Michael Z. 2007-07-31 16:28 Z 

Re: Template
Hi, Ezhiki. I don't share your concerns that my edits would open a door for all sort of stuff being inserted into the neat template. As a historian, I think it very useful to list Albazin or Okhotsk in the appropriate templates, given their huge historical importance which puts to shame modern towns of the region. I believe marking these entries with italics is sufficient to let out readers know that these are not towns any more.

The generic heading "Cities and towns in..." implies that the template lists both actual and former towns of the region, just like Category:Collection of the Hermitage includes the artworks that were sold out in the 1930s. The templates about the Far Eastern regions are by no means overpopulated. I don't propose to extend the practice to European Russian, because rather few historically important towns were demoted in this part of the country.

I anticipate your concerns that there is no consistency in this approach, but, on the other hand, there is no consistency in Wikipedia in general, so we are expected to avoid excessive formalism. --Ghirla-трёп- 18:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Consistency issues aside, I'd say we still need to at least add a footnote specifying that the entries in italics refer to places which no longer hold city/town status but are included for historical reasons. Better yet, enter them on the line of their own. I do not at all agree that the reason for italicizing is obvious; a legend of some sort should always be available to readers when special formatting is employed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Is this still needed?
First of all, that's an excellent job on the height template, it is actually more powerful now than I thought it was possible.

Height2 was never meant as more than a testbed for experimentation. Since height is now vastly improved (and in a right way at that, i.e. without introducing excessive complexity), I'd say height2 is not needed anymore and I will nominate it for deletion shortly.

As for switching away from height... Well, I actually like the template, it's just that I didn't like the way it was implemented - fortunately, that's fixed now. It boils down to this: m to ft in and ft in to m have a certain default behaviour (i.e. parameter defaults) that may or may not be suited to our use, that is, displaying human height. height is a convenient way to "override" these defaults, and that means simpler use and more consistent display. GregorB 13:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the compliments, but I did not put even a quarter of an effort I normally would into designing of this template (mainly because I just wanted to fix its major flaws so it could be usable until it's deprecated). Since you (and undoubtedly other editors) prefer to keep using it, I'd probably have to re-visit it again, unless someone else wants to do the re-design.  I see someone already complained about default precision being one instead of zero (something I hastily fixed this morning, but unfortunately the fix broke the fractions support).
 * Anyway, I'll work on the template some more. If you have any ideas you'd like to see implemented, now would be a good time to let me know.  By the way, is this template even used for anything but the conversion of human height?  If not, all those fractions and other fancy stuff would be an overkill.  Thanks for your comments!  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:11, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, apart from possible bug fixes, I only see one thing: display of height in half-inches. (That's what this experiment with height2 has been about). height can display half-inches now, but it's not the default, and perhaps it should be (applies to conversion from metric to imperial, of course). Since this would change its behavior somewhat, a wider discussion is needed. Perhaps I'll propose this on the template's talk page...
 * And that's it, more or less... As far as I can tell, height is used almost exclusively in infoboxes. Usage for things other than human height is very rare. But fractions and other bells and whistles come "for free", as I gather, and might be useful (half-inches certainly, quarter-inches perhaps, anything more would be an overkill), so I think that's OK. GregorB 15:21, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * So, what, no 1/128ths, eh? :)) On a more serious note, since the fractions handling code is borrowed from m to ft in anyway, height can either have one of the values hard-coded in (halves), or support whatever denominator people would want to use (in which case the frac parameter will be used to specify what is wanted; and it's possible to use 2 so halves are the default).  Limiting the selection to two choices (halves and quarters) would actually require quite a bit more work, so I'd rather leave the flexibility that's there for free already.
 * Anyway, I'll start working on this as soon as I find a chunk of uninterrupted time (hopefully some time this week). If you happen to think of anything useful to add along the way, don't hesitate to let me know.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. It is the default that matters the most (halves or no halves, we'll see how people react), but apart from that, I suppose there is no harm in exposing parameters from the underlying template. GregorB 15:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Administrative divisions of Russian federal subjects
A you created, Template:Administrative divisions of Russian federal subjects,  been marked for deletion as  deprecated and orphaned template. If, after 14 days, there been no objection, the template will be deleted. If you wish to object to deletion, please list your objection here and feel free to remove the  tag from the template. If you feel the deletion appropriate, no further action is necessary. Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:38, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Just making sure&mdash;you did see that it was a redirect to a template, not a template? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I saw it was a redirect, but I still count it as a template because it's in the Template namespace and it's listed here. Cheers. --MZMcBride 16:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to make sure it was not due to a bug that the redirect was listed. Since it was a mistyped name from the very start, I have just deleted it.  Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Latinized Russian
Please have a look at this. For english speakers it would be useful to read your comment as an american-russian user. Regards --Obersachse 18:40, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Another idea by Zolotaryov, eh? I'll add something later.  Thanks for the heads-up.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Re: Hidden
I left a note on User:BenB4's talk page requesting that he look at your userpage. He was the master architect behind the recent changes to Template:Hidden and MediaWiki:Common.js (the back-end). Cheers. --MZMcBride 22:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * A little testing on my part led me to see that part of the issue is unrelated to Template:Hidden, and has to do with the multiple tables being used. If you copy out the contents of just the Awards section, it works (pretty much). Something else on your userpage is interacting with the various parts and screwing up multiple things. --MZMcBride 22:55, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

It is not inconceivable that the change to Template:Hidden could have caused this, but the overwhelmingly likely reason involves incorrect syntax on the userpage which was forgiven by the quirks of the previous hidden. I'm looking. &larr;BenB4 23:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I didn't fully diagnose what was wrong, but I'm sure it was the embedded wikitable syntax. I fixed it by replacing Hidden with Hidden begin and Hidden end. Cheers. &larr;BenB4 23:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, folks, for having fixed my userpage! I much appreciate your help.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Zelenograd
Я всё о том же, о статусе города. ;-) Так как аналогичная дискуссия возникла и в ру-вики, я приглашаю вас к ней присоединиться ru:Википедия:К объединению/9 августа 2007. Alex Spade 09:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Я, вообще, по этому поводу могу много чего сказать (и я, кстати, уже разделяю вашу точку зрения по поводу того, что Зеленоград &mdash; это город), но, к сожалению, без ссылок на документы слова мои многого стоить не будут. Если найду момент в ближайшее время, то постараюсь озвучить свои мысли хотя бы в общем.  Спасибо за наводку.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

English translation of the Valuyev Circular
Hi. I stumbled through translating the Valuyev Circular into English, at Valuyev Circular. Please have a look over it if you have a bit of time. Thank you. —Michael Z. 2007-08-10 14:22 Z 
 * Sorry, Michael, I don't really have time to scrutinize the whole translation, but I did read through all of it with interest and found it to be a well-translated piece with no major flaws. Keep up the good work!  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for the look. It's a relief that I didn't make any obvious mistakes. Regards. —Michael Z. 2007-08-20 22:16 Z   —The preceding  signed but undated.

Template:Infobox Russian city2
A template you created, Template:Infobox Russian city2, has been marked for deletion as a deprecated and orphaned template. If, after 14 days, there has been no objection, the template will be deleted. If you wish to object to its deletion, please list your objection here and feel free to remove the  </tt> tag from the template. If you feel the deletion is appropriate, no further action is necessary. Thanks for your attention. --MZMcBride 18:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

To the benefit of Wiklipedia?
edits of one Wikipedian:

re-inserting unverified numbers
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ISO_639-3&diff=next&oldid=150388080

denying existence of language
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anam&diff=prev&oldid=150385139

deleting language stubs
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Anam_language
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Wapishana_language

destroying disambiguation
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Wapishana
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wapishana&diff=150418125&oldid=150384462

undo wikification
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tukums&diff=prev&oldid=149969413

delete ISO 639 redirects (Category:Redirects from ISO 639)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=ISO_639:pda
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=ISO_639:wap

deleting mentioning of argentine singer
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luj%C3%A1n_de_Cuyo&diff=next&oldid=148271607

recreate bad redirect
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tango_singer&diff=next&oldid=148272143

regards Tobias 84.190.45.233 20:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Please see the two current threads on this at AN/I. Basically, this morning I discovered that Conradi had a new ID that he had been using since before the ban, and had continued to use after he was banned. As per normal practice with banned users, I undid/deleted his edits from after the point in time of the ban. - TexasAndroid 21:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think this practice is quite abnormal. :-) 84.190.38.113 21:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * TexasAndroid, I fully understand the reasoning behind those reverts, as well as the fact that you were simply enforcing the community ban provisions. I do not, however, believe that the community ban hearing to which Tobias was subjected was fair, not in a small part because the hearing was conducted by the people who were hostile to Tobias and knew full well that I'd be interested in participating in the discussion but nevertheless never invited me (or other editors sympathetic to Tobias's case) to voice my opinion regarding the matter.  As I was pre-occupied off Wikipedia at the time of the hearing, I unfortunately missed it, which would have never happened if I received at least a courtesy note from the so-called "community" (of half a dozen people!) that banned Tobias.  Tobias might have at times been somewhat overzealous in his efforts to uncover hidden conspiracies and admin abuses, and I always took his claims with a grain of salt, but it's little things like that which make you wonder about what really is going on.  As such, Tobias is always welcome on my talk page no matter how unwelcome he is in the rest of Wikipedia.  I alone reserve the right to edit or remove his edits here.  Sincerely,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that I am conversing with Ëzhiki here, not Conradi. I will not respond to any response of his, in good part because I just do not need the headache that conversing with him usually creates.
 * I initiated the ban hearing when Conradi began IP hopping to evade his block. The Tobias Conradi2 account shows that he was already resuming normal editing via a block evasion sock puppet.  This block evasion/sock puppetry was the last straw for me.  I had been quietly watching the Conradi saga for a long time, ever since I blocked him well over a year ago for incivility reguarding diminuative nicknames that he tended to use for people, and one person in particular.  I had not been watching the saga all that closely though, and thus did not, and do not, know all the people involved in the situation.  I have no idea who would be considered "sympathetic" to Conradi, you included.  So I'm not really sure how I could have informed you.  OTOH, I did not inform any people hostile to Conradi either, unless mentioning it in the already existing WP:AN thread about his IP hopping.  I started the thread in it's proper place, and let it go.
 * At this point I'm not really certain what the appropriate action for you would be if you want to protest the ban. Possibly just opening another discussion on the Community Sanction noticeboard.  The ban was enacted by a neutral admin, based in good part on the lack of opposition.  (The only opposition presented a, IMHO, not very practical alternative, and did not respond to follow-up questions.)  If you can/do provide a good reasoned opposition, I would see no problem in re-opening the discussion.  No idea how others would react to reopening it.
 * OTOH, given Conradi's disreguard of the ban, let alone evasion of the blocks before it, I suspect you will have a tough path ahead of you. Even without the ban, Conradi was blocked for a month, and has shown little willingness to respect that block and actually stop editing.  So even if the ban is somehow lifted, unless he stops evading that one month block, it'll be hard to see him getting unblocked any time soon. - TexasAndroid 16:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I just want to clarify that none of my remarks were personal. I also must disclose that I feel deep disgust towards the whole "community ban" procedure.  In my opinion, it makes it all too easy for a bunch of editors pissed at someone (for whatever reason, valid or not) to gang up on a person and get rid of him/her.  The day when this procedure was introduced is a dark day in the history of Wikipedia indeed.  The main reason why I am not fighting that evil innovation is because I simply do not have time (and trust me, this pitiful and lame excuse does not at all make me feel better as a person).  Also, I could have explained here why Tobias behaves the way he does and why he snaps at any hint of what can possibly be perceived as "abuse", but those long explanations had already been posted, time and time again, in numerous places by various editors, without being able to shed any light into the blind eye of the community of the pissed and a-ban-will-fix-it-all-minded editors.  There were many things for which Tobias could have (and should have, and had) been blocked for various intervals of time, but there had never been a reason good enough to ban him forever.  Regards,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:57, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Logic update: There is only number 2 was banned/blocked 84.190.38.113 21:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) a person Tobias Conradi born 1975
 * 2) User:Tobias Conradi
 * 3) User:Tobias Conradi2
 * I'm sorry, but it's #1 that is banned. You, the user, are banned. It would make little sense to have a process that banned a single account but allowed the user to just create another account and continue editing.  When a User is banned, they are banned under any and all accounts they might edit from.  You are banned, Conradi.  You are no longer welcome to edit on this project, and your edits are subject to reversion on sight.  - TexasAndroid 21:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Banned user edits
I've taken the liberty of removing a thread from your talk page as it was started by a banned user. It is in the history if you care to read it. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 21:36, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Theresa does not say the truth. The thread was NOT started by a banned user. :-) How could a banned user start a thread? Tobias Conradi3 22:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your concern, Theresa, but while I understand the reasoning behind your actions, please kindly do not remove other people's comments from my talk page unless it's clear vandalism.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Leaning tower
Hi there, Ezhiki! I translated most of the article from the Itogi magazine (see footnote in the article). Their article started with:

"Есть на Урале таинственное сооружение, которое на протяжении столетий не дает покоя историкам и архитекторам. Речь идет о "падающей" Невьянской башне, возведенной в XVIII веке на деньги соратника Петра Великого - известного русского промышленника Акинфия Демидова. Изучить сооружение долгое время не представлялось возможным: в советские времена оно находилась на территории "почтового ящика", с которого лишь недавно был снят режим секретности".

Since the article was written in 2000 something, I figured that "the veil of secrecy" was lifted in the 2000s. As for my editing, you are quite right. I am now a father and don't sleep much :), so I don't really have time for Wikipedia now. I stop by occasionally, but don't and won't write much. But I'm still here! Keep up the good work! KNewman 18:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear you are still around and good luck with your fatherly duties! :) Thanks for clarifying the source, too.  I can't say it helped much, but at least it's a good starting point.  Best wishes,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:03, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Conversion templates miscellany
Hey there!

re: this edit and the new member of the family-- km3 to mi3


 * Some are missing still! (See adds at km2 to mi2 or notes in the new one)
 * Note in particular, I ran across 436,400 km²&mdash;which I moved into the ref block immediately after,  but think someone might want to check that out, see if your template can be integrated into the project, and whatever. My attitude towards wiki these days sucks,  but the use of yours at least would give those people a list of tagged articles to cross-list in the order of magnitude listing article.
 * Note the other missing cube functions and check my work too! (I think I got it right, but it's best to have a sign off, imho!)

Cheers! And a great summer too! // Fra nkB 20:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Fabartus! Pleasure to hear from you.  Km3 to mi3 looks fine to me.  The only minor thing is that I would ask the MOS folks if "cu mi" would be their preferred abbreviation for "cubic mile".  It might also be good to replace 3 with straight "³", unless you had reasons not to.
 * As for the "1 E+11 m²" format, I did not want to integrate it into the templates in order not to overload them with features that are hardly ever used (I came across that format before, but I don't see it widespread, and, frankly, I question whether it is even useful to readers at all). Every little thing added to templates increases their pre-expand size, and once the number of features reaches critical mass, that becomes an issue (witness a recently overhauled and very useful ft to m, where I literally had to fight my way through with the pre-expand sizes, which at some point reached 95 KB for straight conversions and twice that for dimensional conversions&mdash;a bit too much for a simple task of unit conversions, if you ask me).  However, if someone in future would want to add that feature to the template(s), I ain't gonna argue :)
 * The remaining cube functions should be simple enough as well. I was planning on returning to the whole set, but, unfortunately, I am still kind of short on time; plus I got distracted by the projects such as creating dec to frac and subsequent height overhaul.  Fret not, I will be back eventually :)  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As you can see here, I'm really not here much these daze!


 * As for 3 with straight "³", I don't usually bother looking for an (Java editing) insert code as they are all so hard to read if I know how to code it direct... hence didn't look. Trivial either way, imho.


 * With preexpand size as the topic, these much need converted to WP:DPP formatting which will cut that significantly... IIRC, the way the preprocessing works now, using km2 to mi2 with my expanded list of others, sucks in all of them!. Suggest one Doc page can service the whole family. See page sensing in indent family usage, and the various cat listing templates (catlist, catlst, etc. here will do!)... but testing PAGENAME in ifeq... test is way to combine and keep things straight. The Meta DPP page had some tips for such combined pages... keeping that same here proved impossible. ... that's gone too! Sigh!


 * Nice to touch base... gotta go dig in the yard. Cheers! // Fra nkB 21:29, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comments, Frank! As far as one doc page for the whole family idea goes, that, unfortunately, isn't going to work too well now.  The reason is that no matter how I tried keeping these templates consistent, some of them slowly grow features that others lack :)  Hopefully when that's done, the templates could be re-edited in a uniform fashion.  Until then, a separate doc page per template would have to suffice (yeah, I know, we don't even have that for most of the templates now).  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation
Regarding your comment in this Murali edit summary. You should review WP:DAB, especially the relevant statement: "In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to the different article pages that could use essentially the same term as their title". The dab page is not the appropriate place for redlinks, if you want to list redlinks, you should create an index page for your entries. Dreadstar †  21:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi there! My restoration of red links on that dab page was done in accordance with WP:MOSDAB, which states that "[l]inks to non-existent articles ('redlinks') may be included only when an editor is confident that an encyclopedia article could be written on the subject."  Being the person who added the red links on these two locations in the first place, I am very confident that encyclopedia articles can be written about them.  Furthermore, the links are a part of a large project dealing with Russian geographic locations.  While they are red at the moment, they produce backlinks which are heavily relied upon when sorting and categorizing the places with identical names (there are quite a few such places in Russia).  I would thus kindly ask you to re-instate the links due to them being useful.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) ∙ (yo?); 21:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'm pretty familiar with DABs, I'm part of the dab project and I've done thousands of them. If you're going to write articles, then great!  But don't add links that might have articles "someday" by "someone".  Your other interpretation of the usage of DAB redlinks is incorrect, you are confusing a DAB page with an "index" page.  Dreadstar  †  21:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Additionally, you added piped links to the dab page, which is clearly against WP:DAB. Dreadstar  †  22:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Dreadstar, I am sorry, but I find your interpretation of MOSDAB rather curious. Let me illustrate by going step by step through your edit of Murali.  I will, of course, gladly hear out any counter-arguments you might have, preferrably backed up with references to appropriate sections of DAB and MOSDAB.  I prefer dealing with straight facts instead of someone's opinion.  Hopefully, this analysis will correct either your or my misunderstanding of certain MOSDAB points.  So.
 * Before you or me started cleaning up Murali, the page contained five sections (HINDI, Cricketers, Actors, Other people, and Places), with the Actors section being the only one containing more than two items. Let's now see what you did:
 * removed "nethra" dictdef. Done in full accordance with MOSDAB, which advises to put a link to Wiktionary for any dictionary definitions.  Since Wiktionary does not contain an entry for either "murali" or "nethra", the entry was simply excluded.  No argument here.
 * removed red-linked actors from the Actors section, deleted Other people section and Places section. This, I believe, was a part of your efforts to get the dab page rid of red links in accordance to your understanding of disambiguation page guidelines.  I'll comment on this later below.
 * unpiped the remaining entries. Done in full accordance with MOSDAB; no argument.
 * At this point the page was reduced to just three sections. In my view, however, the job was still not done well.  So, what I did (and I am not looking at the red links issue yet) was to organize the page in a more logical manner, by grouping all people into the People section, all places into the Places section, and everything else into the Other section.  This way when someone writes an article on, say Vladimir Murali, mayor of one of the Russian towns, the entry would be added to the People section instead of fragmenting the dab even further and creating a Mayors section with one entry.  Why you reverted that particular improvement in organization of mine is beyond me, so I would, naturally, appreciate an explanation.  Same goes for the HINDI section&mdash;why do you think it should remain there under this loosely applicable name and in all caps?  Then, "Murali (tamil actor)" is in fact a redirect to "Murali (actor)"&mdash;something I corrected and you, again, reverted.  I can believe that a redirect for some reason unknown to me would be preferrable here, but "tamil" is simply an incorrect spelling (the word should be capitalized)!  All this, and I have not even mentioned that human names are subject to a MOSDAB section of their own (WP:MOSDAB), according to which neither of us formatted the names on the Murali disambiguation page correctly!  Per MOSDAB, "[f]or short lists of [persons who happen to have the same surname or given name], new sections of Persons with the surname Title and Persons with the given name Title can be added below the main disambiguation list".
 * Now, let's return to the issue of red links. From what I understood from your comments above, your stance on them is simple: no red links at all are allowed on disambiguation pages and if such links are needed, then a set index article should be created.  To back that up, you quoted the WP:DAB provision, which states that "...disambiguations are paths leading to the different article pages that could use essentially the same term as their title" (underlining is mine).  That's correct, of course, but I am afraid you are taking this too literally.  That particular sentence describes the general intent and purpose of disambiguation pages but it does not cover exceptions, yet alone explicitly prohibits red links altogether.  Suffice it to say, if red links were indeed prohibited from disambiguation pages, then this section of MOSDAB would have not even existed!  Note that the section in question deals directly with disambiguation pages, and with disambiguation pages alone (the section is, after all, located in the disambiguation pages manual of style, in the section dealing with individual entries of disambiguation pages, in the subsection dealing with specific entries types of disambiguation pages); it does not even mention set index articles, which are only mentioned several sections below... in the Exceptions section.  In other words, just like the Redlinks sections says, redlinks are absolutely fine on disambiguation pages as long as an article will be written on the subject.  On my part, I assure you that I would never add a red link to a disambiguation page just to have it sit there.  All of the placenames added by me are there for a reason and I fully intend to write articles on each and every one of them (unless, of course, someone beats me to it).  Note, however, that with 160,000+ places in Russia and very few people working on the topic, it takes time to get to some of the entries.  They are still immensely useful in that they help organize the project workflow and avoid unnecessary cleanup and maintenance later.
 * In addition, you do not seem to have read (not carefully, anyway) even the section on set index articles itself. What you are suggesting is that since the entries I added belong to one category (places), then a separate set index article should be created (something along the lines of "Places called Murali" or somesuch, I assume).  While it might be a possible solution in theory, there are numerous problems with Murali in particular:
 * there are only two entries, so, if nothing else, creating a separate index article for them is just silly;
 * I am not aware of any other cases where places with identical names are grouped into a set index article (if you can enlighten me on this point, by all means do so). In fact, the mere existence of geodis tag suggests that places are a part of disambiguation structure;
 * creating a set index article in this case violates the provision of MOSDAB#Set index articles stating that "...the set index article exception was designed to be narrow: for pages that contains links to articles about different topics, please follow this style guide for disambiguation pages " (underlining is mine). Murali is a page about different topics&mdash;it covers people, places, and one other concept, so it must follow the MOSDAB, which, again, returns us to that style guide's "Redlinks" section.  No matter how you look at it, red links are fine.
 * Finally, regarding your note that I "added piped links to the dab page, which is clearly against WP:DAB". I assume you refer to the Republic of Tatarstan part (which, at any rate, is one piped link, not links).  If you kindly take time to familiarize yourself with WP:MOSDAB, you'd see that the "do not pipe the name" rule only refers to the links of "articles being listed".  Were I to use something like Murali, that would have been incorrect.  What I did, however, was to pipe one blue link in the definition.  Why?  You probably do not know, but Russia is divided into several types of federal subjects, which include republics, oblasts, krais, and a few other types.  The names of all federal subjects usually contain the qualifier of what type that subject is (e.g., Primorsky Krai is a krai), but republics officially have a long name and a short name.  In case with Tatarstan, "Tatarstan" is the short name, while the "Republic of Tatarstan" is the full name.  When it comes to disambiguation pages, it is not uncommon when a place called "XXX" exists in several federal subjects (say, in Tatarstan and in Primorsky Krai).  So, in such cases republics are usually listed by their long names for consistency purposes (because doing otherwise would be a bit confusing for an uninformed reader&mdash;if "Primorsky Krai" is a krai, then what is  "Tatarstan"?).  Granted, it makes very little difference on the Murali page because both entries are for Tatarstan, but it is often rather important in other cases.  In my view, this is a great example of WP:MOSDAB, although whether the rule is even broken in this case is a subject of interpretation.
 * I think this about covers it. I apologize if my comments sounded a bit harsh: my intent is to either have you review your practices (since I see so much wrong with them) or to have my understanding of the rules corrected.  Either outcome furthers the improvement of Wikipedia, so there can be no losers :)  Please take your time when composing your response.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your long, very detailed and kindly phrased response; I'll have to set aside some time to review it in detail, but from what my brief scan of the post's contents revealed, there are some elements I agree with and some that I don't. I'm always eager to learn new things about Wikipedia policies and guidelines.  I must disagree with the edit you performed the links under 'places' contain multiple wikilinks (the the second entry contains two different redlinked entries in addition to the piped third link - that's three in one entry, which stretches the exceptions to WP:DAB quite a bit, IMHO.)  Taking into consideration that problematic link, the one above it adds to the overall disconnect between the guideline and the implementation on that DAB page.  Perhaps you pointed this out in your post, but I'll need some time to go through it in detail.  Not to be rude, but mostly to be funny, if you had put as much effort into writing the articles behind those redlinks, our discussion about that particular page would be moot.  Although I do appreciate and recognize your magnificent effort to educate me.  I really do appreciate that!  Personally, I don't believe dab pages should contain redlinks for anything except for articles being currently written, but naturally, I will abide by consensus on that issue.  I won't continue contesting your additions of redlinks to the Murali dab page, and have taken it off my watchlist.  Dreadstar  †  16:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem, take all the time you need. There was, however, no need to abandon Murali completely&mdash;it was not my intention to scare you off with a page-long discussions of disambiguation practices :)  And you are, of course, completely correct about me putting this much effort into my response.  From my prior experience, however, I found that editors who have an opinion about how exactly dab pages should be formatted (sometimes correct, sometimes not) are best dealt with as soon as problems start to arise.  I could have, of course, simply written two marginal sub-stubs on both locations and closed the issue, but that would not have resolved anything if you continued with the rest of the dab pages in the same manner.  As I said above, there are 160,000 inhabited localities in Russia, quite a bit with identical names, and while I never add entries to dab pages unless I need them for cross-linking and/or reference somewhere else, there are still quite a few that are added.  I much prefer to work systematically, and having write mini-stubs just to put a fire on a particular dab page is very distracting and reduces the efficiency of the workflow.  So, instead of writing mini-stubs (which I sincerely hate) to plug a hole, I prefer discussions of policies and guidelines in general.  It does save time in the long run, even if I have to spend an hour to write a response such as one above :)
 * Now, to address your concern regarding the number of links in the Places section which I re-added. The first one (Murali in Arsky District) is formatted in full accordance with MOSDAB (the main entry is red, so one blue link is added in the description).  The second one (Murali in Kaybitsky District) is indeed in violation, but I did format it that way on purpose, not because of my unfamiliarity with the basic MOSDAB principles.  The reasons for that seemingly strange approach are logic and logistics.  Since the first entry links to the district, it is logical that the second entry should link to the district as well.  However, since the district article does not yet exist, the MOSDAB requirement stating that every dab entry must have one blue link is not fulfilled.  So, the next item in the hierarchy (the Republic of Tatarstan) is wikilinked.  From the logistics point of view, it is easier to redlink the district and bluelink the republic, instead of just bluelinking the republic and unlinking the district.  When the article about the district is written, it would be so much easier for me or for cleanup patrol to spot two blue links in the definition and remove the extra one as opposed to noticing that the district should have been linked to instead of the republic.  I believe this convenience is something that can be justified by the "break rules" clause of MOSDAB, but I certainly would not press this point too hard if someone took offense with this practice of mine.  This, as opposed to removing red links altogether, is not a big deal at all.  If you feel I pushed the dab conventions too far with this, feel free to unlink the district.
 * Anyway, I'll stop here for now. As a sign of good faith on my part, I will not edit Murali until I hear your response and we have a chance to come to mutual understanding.  My intention is not to push my point of view regarding a particular disambiguation practice (no matter how right I feel I am) on you or anyone else, or to drive people away from the dab pages I work with (I don't own them), but to discuss it with disagreeing parties and hopefully come to a solution which suits both sides, hopefully learning something new in the process.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:57, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Support
Hope i could get your support here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:WW2InfoBox#The_new_image

and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World_War_II#The_new_image

Because i belive that you will agree with me that having the Normandi battle picture in the size of two, and not having a picture of the Stalingrad battle in a world war two image is absurd. M.V.E.i. 11:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Lovozero
Yehp, I noticed that it wasn't too suitable. I meant to ask you last night before I turned off the computer though if it would be a good idea to create some sort of shorter template for these types of villages as there seems to be a number of coats for them and maps would be good to add, too, if possible. -Yupik 12:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * This was actually discussed before, and the consensus was that having such an infobox at this point would be premature. There are not that many articles about Russian rural localities yet, and those which exist are so short that any kind of infobox would easily overwhelm them.  A map and a coat of arms can always be added to the articles directly, and considering the recent improvement of the coordinates service (have you tried clicking on that globe next to the coordinates of any place yet? :)) even having a map is no longer that important.  Let me know if this does not answer your question.  Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Redirect of Talk:Moskovskaya
Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Talk:Moskovskaya, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Talk:Moskovskaya is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1). To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Talk:Moskovskaya, please affix the template to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. CSDWarnBot 15:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The page was tagged correctly and is now deleted.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Featured list removal
So, it's all my fault now? :P Left my comments on talk, but I have to say that article is cursed :) Renata 17:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, who else can I blame? :) Regarding your comment, though: I think folks are not advocating to remove all the narrative from the list but rather outsource it to other places (to which links will be provided from within the list).  So, if the difference between rural settlements and rural locilities puzzles you, you'd still be able to find the information you need by following the links.  Anyway, I, for one, think keeping the narrative in is a good idea (a remarkable change in my position from back when you suggested more narrative in the first place, I know :)), not in a small part because there are currently no good places to outsource it to (I'd have to write a dozen new articles first, which I am planning to do eventually, but just not now).  In any case, thanks for your comment!  If you could keep an eye on the discussion until it closes, I'd much appreciate it.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:59, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Petrozavodsk -article
Hey there :) I added a infobox to Petrozavodsk -article a long time ago. sorry if i am stupid, but not sure who deleted it. i'm sure the article will be better with infobox. don't you agree? Ilyushka88 18:43, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I re-instated it. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Move
Hi! A link to "History of the adiministrative division of Russia" somewhere in Wikipedia appeared misleading to me (I expected to find something more recent there by default), and I was planning to start a separate article about the Soviet subdivisions at some point, as this would be a vast topic and I am not very interested in the 19th century to make the story continuous, but if you think that all such information should be there, feel free to rename the article back. Are you going to expand it further?

BTW, I have a problem with the 2002 census. If I try to calculate the population on the territory of Vyborgsky District, Priozersky District, Vsevolozhsky District, Kurortny District (including all the settlements subordinate directly to the oblast), do I have to add the population of Vyborg, Vsevolozhsk, Priozersk, Sertolovo etc. to them?Colchicum 18:39, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was planning to expand that article, but as of now I am still in the "planning to" phase, unfortunately... How about organizing these articles by centuries?  What I mean is that we'll have one umbrella article ("History of administrative divisions of Russia") providing a brief summary covering all history (from the 17th century, or even earlier if anyone has the data, through present), which would link to a set of "Administrative divisions of Russia in ## century" articles, which, in turn, would link to composition lists for the periods of stability (1710–1713, for example).  This way readers could drill down to the amount of detail they need, instead of being overwhelmed by a one huge article covering the 17th through 21st centuries containing a multitude of links to year-specific lists.
 * As for the 2002 Census, the populations of cities and towns under jurisdiction of federal subjects are never included into the totals of the administrative districts, but the populations of towns under jurisdiction of these districts are included (so, for example, the population count of Vyborgsky District would not include Vyborg itself, because it is an oblast-level town, but it would include Kamennogorsk, Primorsk, Svetogorsk, and Vysotsk, because these are the district-level towns). If you need to know which city/town is on which level, you can use administrative divisions of Leningrad Oblast.  Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Cherepovets
I actually like the result. Thanks. --Ghirla-трёп- 06:17, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You're welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Kozhuun
Sorry about misinterwiked kozhuun. Should be correct now, please check it. Regards, ABX 15:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It is now. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Zelenograd
Вот какой ответ я получил при обращении в нашу префектуру (13.08.2007 Потапов Дмитрий Александрович, рег. No: ГК-529/7):
 * Географический и административный статус Зеленограда определяется Законом города Москвы от 5 июля 1995 года № 13-47 «о территориальном делении города Москвы». В соответствии с этим законом географический статус Зеленограда определен следующим образом - это город Зеленоград, входящий в состав территории города Москвы. По этому же Закону с точки зрения административного деления г. Москвы и осуществления управленческих функций на его территории – Зеленоград это один из десяти административных округов г. Москвы. Поэтому понятия «город Зеленоград» и «Зеленоградский административный округ» тождественные и, соответственно, никаких юридических связей между этими понятиями не существует.

Насколько я понимаю такой ответ (с дополнительной информацией): Зеленоград - это город Зеленогарад территориально, но ЗеоАО - административно. Поэтому вопрос: Alex Spade 13:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * (а) - на что-же ориентироваться в первую очередь при названии статьи,
 * (б) как это ситуацию лучше описать, в русской версии я написал так: Зеленоград — город в России,... Административно, вместе с подчинёнными ему населёнными пунктами..., входит в состав города Москвы как Зеленоградский административный округ (ЗелАО).
 * Спасибо, что держите в курсе дела. С учётом текста приведённого закона, полагаю, можно утверждать что Зеленоград является городом в составе города Москвы (который, помимо Зеленограда, включает в себя также ряд посёлков и деревень, а также территорию собственно  Москвы).  Статью при этом можно оставить под заголовком "Зеленоград" (поскольку он не является неправильным, но является наиболее распространённым), а подробно ситуацию можно объяснить как в вашем пункте (б).  "ЗелАО" при этом будет редиректом.  Такое решение, во всяком случае, выглядит наиболее логично для английской Википедии (с учётом существующих policies and guidelines).  Будет на этом считать вопрос закрытым?  Или в русской Википедии у кого-то ещё есть вопросы?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Name of the article
Hi, we thought of you in a discussion about the best name of the article Makhmut Gareev (how I created it) or Makhmut Gareyev (where Untifler moved it). Could you take a look at User talk:Untifler and comment there? Thx, --Irpen 01:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I replied at User talk:Untifler. Thanks for asking!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Discussion
A discussion is held in the Axis powers of World War II article talk page. I oppose USSR being in the Controversial cases of relations with the Axis section, while some others support it being in the section. Feel free to state your personal opinion here. M.V.E.i. 18:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Cm to in
Ezhiki,

Create cm to ft in instead, yep, that's more logical. The thought had passed through my head but how do you view the relative merits of the proliferation of single-purpose templates verses the increasing of the flexibility of a multi-purpose one, like Convert? undefined undefined does everything that those templates do (except deal with both feet & inches, but that could ... and should ... be fixed). Of course, this is a case where we can have our cake & eat it too but is it optimal to have one big template which does it all and have a bunch of little ones which do their little bit? Too late at night for such questions, I'm catching some "shut-eye" ... if, in the meantime some well-meaning soul reverts me and creates the said alternative template, I'm not about to kick up a stink (such a soul might want to look at Breaux Greer‎ & Asafa Powell). See ya round. Jɪmp 18:28, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, your question about Convert is the very same one I was asking when I started creating single-purpose templates and suddenly discovered someone else had already attempted to create a universal one. As it turned out, some folks dislike undefined undefined, so I was assured single-purpose templates would find their audience.  In the end, it is a matter of taste and preference&mdash;if someone likes undefined undefined , they should by all means continue using it.  Same goes for single-purpose conversion templates folks.  And as long as we have these two camps of users, it makes all the sense to keep single-purpose templates what they are&mdash;as specialized as possible.  How that affects the big picture, however, I don't know, I'm just a humble tool-maker :)
 * In addition to this, my point of view is that while both undefined undefined and single-purpose templates (in their simplest form) basically do the same job, the latter have a vast potential for growth. Take a look at ft to m, for example.  I don't doubt undefined undefined can be enhanced to include all the same features, but in the end it will make this (at this point rather robust) template unwieldy and overbloated, which is hardly a positive outcome.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. Speaking of Breaux Greer‎ & Asafa Powell, may I suggest Height and Weight (the latter, however, first needs to be upgraded in the image of )?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:59, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Weather
Any thoughts about Weather Infobox? Do you like it? --Ghirla-трёп- 22:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the general idea is good (temperature information is encyclopedic and useful), but I, too, don't care much about this particular implementation. Peacock colors aside, the template is so wide (regardless of whether it is hidden by default) that it would more often than not clash with infoboxes and images.  In Irkutsk in particular, there is no way to fix this situation unless the "Geography and climate" section is expanded (more than twice) or moved down (which isn't desirable either), or if the infobox is removed.  I don't really know if there is a good solution.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Is there somewhere in the WP:RUSSIA or anywhere else that gives instruction as to the structure of an article about a Russian city? The reason I ask is because WP:CITY used to have an article structure where the geography and/or climate section was much lower in the article. History was always the first section after the introduction. WP:CITY'S article structure somehow morphed into the US and UK article structures.  In anycase, in the example given of Irkutsk and in one that I found &mdash;Kaliningrad, it seems odd to have the geography section before the history section.  In the Kaliningrad article, I took the liberty of moving the geography section to the third section and it looks much better.&mdash;MJCdetroit 18:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No, we don't have such guidelines (something that needs to be fixed, I guess, since, as you rightfully pointed, WP:CITY is becoming increasingly unsuitable for non-US/UK cities). In my personal opinion, however, it seems more logical to put the geography (but not necessarily climate) section earlier in the article.  An article about the place should first establish what the place is (in the lead), where it is located (geography), and only then what its history is, followed by everything else (economy, demographics, etc.).
 * Anyway, in the absence of guidelines, I don't mind moving the Geography section in Irkutsk for now, since it'll at least help get rid of the template jam, but I think Ghirla's point was more generic than that&mdash;moving sections around may not always be a possible solution. If an article has an infobox and an abundance of pictures, the weather infobox is very likely to cause disruption somewhere.  Perhaps if it could be modified so its maximum width is equal to the page width minus the width of a standard infobox minus some padding, that would take care of the problem?  That'll probably mean decreasing the font size, but in the end the template might turn out looking better than it does now.  Of course, until it's tried, it is hard to tell for sure.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You do bring up a good point that the geography and the climate do not always have to be "lumped" together. Separate if needed.
 * If you feel that the WP:CITY is becoming unsuitable for non-US/UK commonwealth cities, please bring this up at WP:CITY, so that it can be corrected. Please try to give examples of what you mean as well.  WP:CITY is supposed to be the main project for all settlements and any suggestions that you would have to improve it, I would support.  CHeers, MJCdetroit 19:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd love to bring it up, but I have to budget my Wikipedia time recently, and most of the days I barely manage to comb through my watchlist. I'll certainly put this on my to-do list, but with the latter already approaching six pages, I may not get to it for quite a while.  Sorry!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It is strange, because with my Firefox the template doesn't clash with anything, and its width is fairly decent even with the 800 by 600 resolution. I can never be sure as to another browser or font size, but I thought that with this potential problem is solved. At any rate, Template talk:Infobox Weather is a better place to ask questions about the layout. Colchicum 20:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, moves the template down until both margins are clear. In case of Irkutsk, the weather infobox is moved down to where the city infobox ends.  Still, removing here does not solve the problem&mdash;as the weather infobox would overlap the city infobox, it is moved down to the area of clear margins anyway, thus creating a large amount of white space.  The problem exists in both IE and Opera; I did not check how it is in Firefox.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't know, I would worry about an overlap, but this problem doesn't seem too serious and requiring urgent intervention. We had better ask for a solution at the template talk page. Colchicum 21:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Invitation to a discussion on the Russians talk page
Hello. I started a discussion on the Russians article talk page. Due to the fact that people as i see havent visited it for a long time, every opinion is important and will get attention. The discussion is important for the article. You can find the discussion here:-) Thank you. M.V.E.i. 17:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Birobidzhan Jewish National University/Temp
Hello Ezhiki. I was wondering if you would have any comments on, or additional edits to Birobidzhan Jewish National University/Temp. Thanks and take care. Culturalrevival 15:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I'd say it's on a shorter side, but perfectly acceptable for a stub. You might want to add the name in Russian and Yiddish/Hebrew and possibly collect all the external links in the "External links" section, but other than that it seems to be OK.  Are you planning on expanding it?  Either way, keep up the good work!  If you have any questions you think I can answer, I'd be happy to help.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Kuban Cossacks discussion
There's an argument in the Kuban Cossacks article talk page. Feel free to state your opinion here. M.V.E.i. 19:13, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, from what I see, this argument is just a load of original research, personal beliefs, and opinionated finger-pointing. What you need first and foremost is references, otherwise this argument is rather empty and pointless.  As the subject, unfortunately, lies beyond my area of expertise, I cannot add any useful comments or to steer the discussion to the right direction.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:35, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, thanks anyway :-) M.V.E.i. 22:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

DRV note
An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Calques from German. Since you are involved in the similar Category:Russian loanwords, you might want to participate in the deletion review. -- Jreferee    t / c  02:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

ft2 to m2
Ezhiki,

I didn't realise I was making the template eight times it's orignial size. I'll look into how I can trim that down. I would, however, like to keep those features I'd added. Perhaps if reduced versions of ordomag, rnd & were used this would help (we probably don't need ranges in the order of 10±60). There may be other ways to optimise the code I'm overlooking, any ideas? By the way how do you check a template's pre-expand size?


 * Jɪmp 21:33, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there is a better way to check a template's pre-expand size, but I usually just hit "Random page" and edit whatever comes up by blanking the contents and replacing them with one instance of the template being checked. Then I hit "show preview" and look at the html code of the page; the pre-expand size is there in the comments block (just do an inline search for "pre-expand").
 * As for trimming down the template, one way to do it effectively is to make sure that irrelevant parts of the conditionals being tested are not expanded. I had a problem with pre-expand size when working on ft to m, and I found this piece of advice very helpful.  That's how ' s pre-expand problem was solved without having to sacrifice any features (great job on ft2 to m2's feature set, by the way!  It's great to see you started solving the significant figures problem&mdash;the feature has been requested on numerous occasions before).  I wish I had time to offer more substantial help with this, but I've been quite short on time during the last several months.  Anyway, let me know if there is anything I can help with, but otherwise I trust you'll manage just fine :) Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the hints. I'll see what can be done.  I do still have a question, though.  Where do you find the html code of a page? Jɪmp 03:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, it's a browser feature, not Wikipedia's :) In IE/Opera, select View&rarr;Source.  It's a similar arrangement in Firefox or any other browser.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

lets not start an editwar because of this population numbers
First I thought the uncited population claim from 1989 isn't notable. After you reverted me I looked for a reference and found one wich covers both(2002 and 1989). Now you changed it again and I had to revert you. Why ? :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stan En (talk • contribs) 23:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, c'mon, be positive :) It's not an edit war, it's an improvement process. I do, however, admit that I forgot that the particular spreadsheet being referenced also contains the 1989 data (because the original data sheets in Russian I am used to working with only contain the 2002 data), so you were correct to move the reference back.  As for the 1989 Census being "unnotable", that is absolutely not the case.  The 1989 Census was the last one done in the Soviet Union, and, coupled with the 2002 Census (which was the first one conducted in the Russian Federation after the break-up of the USSR), it provides a very good picture of the population trends over this important period in history.  It is citable, too; I just did not have access to my bookmarks at the time I made the edit.  If you need the 1989 Census numbers referenced elsewhere, let me know.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * yes, you are right and it is indeed notable. -- Stan <tt>talk</tt> 13:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Your excellent conversion templates
In brief -- can use another two:

ref: Infobox Luxembourg commune and it's subtemplates

See this and prior two edits and this discussion under '3'...

Infobox Luxembourg commune) and municipalities called communes (several hundred articles in the aggregate) all of which use the same template set. I installed conversions in all the other subtemplates yesterday, and they're apparently acceptable to the template originator, (topic points 1 and 2 of that same talk), with a little difference of opinion on the legend display (colors listed)--which is obviously NBD.
 * 1) With your familiarity with 'comma' behavior and your own templates, could you find the time to come up with a new pair that will do per capita numbers versus area... the tricky part would be the display output string as the areas are in the denominator, not the numerator.
 * 2) Something like Percap per km2 to mi2 and Percap/(mi2 to km2) [or 'Pop/(km2 to mi2)' perhaps?] or whatever names makes best sense to you for a name.
 * 3) The Template:Luxembourg_commune_density is a sub-template of Luxembourg (city) type articles (
 * 1) Inasmuch as all municipality, district, sub-national unit articles ususally have population data, having a syntax identical, similarly named pair of conversion templates for such compliant with MOS is something that would be quite useful.

Also, as I recall the internal workings of these, please opine on whether this following concept (new idea!) would work on the whole set... adding an new parameter 'WA' which if defined (TRUE) evaluates the same as pipe wiki=yes and pipe abbr=yes ... which seems the most common modes in my sprinkling these around. The benefit would be less clutter within the line where used... and is essentially a typing aid, so a time saver for editors.

Cheers and thanks! // Fra nkB 17:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Frank! Are pop density km2 to mi2 and pop density mi2 to km2 something that could be adopted for your needs fairly easily?  I wasn't the one who wrote them, but they provide all the same usual capabilities other single-purpose conversion templates do.
 * As for the WA parameter, adding it would not be terribly difficult (albeit tedious), but I am not really sure if it'd be worth it. In a situation like yours, I would normally just copy "wiki=yes, abbr=yes" to clipboard and paste it when typing :)  I just don't think that increasing pre-expand size (however slightly) of a heavily-used template is justified if one only wants to save a few keystrokes.  Decluttering, on the other hand, is a valid point, but "WA", unlike "wiki=yes, abbr=yes" is not really intuitive and may put editors not yet familiar with the template off.  What do you think?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Alas, my clipboard is usually holding (likely {{km2 to mi| ) at the time of use for other conversion needs in said changes... usually when an article needs one, needs more than one! The two cited, are just what's needed though. Don't be so concerned about a few dozens of bytes for preprocessor expansion... a 2 MEG ceiling is A LOT of headroom! There aren't more than a dozen or so calls to any one of these per article&mdash;usually only a handful. 12 X 256 (hypothetical extra bytes) is still only .003 MEG. Thanks, but the time and ease savings seem good thoughts to me. Cheers! // Fra nkB 18:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Normally, I wouldn't have anything against pushing the pre-expand size a little for convenience sake, but these templates seem to be used more and more in all kinds of places. Multiply a few bytes by a thousand calls, and the problem becomes a lot more pronounced (maybe not for you and me, but definitely for Wikipedia's servers).  Plus, while a 2 meg ceiling is a lot of headroom, when a page is close to that ceiling, even I on my super-fast connection can feel how much more slowly it loads.  Check out Mikhail Gorbachev, for example.  The pre-expand is "only" 379K, but you can already feel the lag (especially at times when Wikipedia server's are strained).  Imagine how it is to folks sitting on measly 384K DSL connections!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ahhhhh--- consider: First of all, pages are cached AGGRESSIVELY, which means loading issues you are describing is acting for such displays because it takes a while to process and transfer the lot of bytes involved (Per Brion Vibber) ...

Secondly, the server loading when composting (Preprocessing) the page occurs but once per page, and that's when the 2 MEG applies, and that ceiling is solely for the templates, ...

there is another HUGE ceiling for the rest of the page content (other stream data-- i.e. the 'free text' if you will, the templates are expanded into)...

Data streams are further cached along all the intermediate internet paths to your IP, and so telephone and DSL connections will likely not even see a lag (they're just too slow overall, and such are smoothed out) at all so I would suspect a different 'issue'&mdash;like the number and aggregate sizes of its images for the effect I understand you to be describing&mdash;so far as I know, large high density images are scaled within our local processor [and in turn affected by the settings we all have in 'User preferences for thumbs sizing' or the override size (px) given in an pages image wikilink...

Leaving as the killer server loading problem when a template is widely used and included in many articles as being updating pages that directly use such a tool in the update que. When and if a template is used in hundreds of pages, AGGRESSIVE CACHING means each of those pages needs updated when a portion of them (such as a template making up or affecting one part of same) is updated. THAT is the only sort of effect I've seen that actually slows down the system (and only for a time--the que is processed pretty quickly at a pretty high priority). Templates, especially those which invoke a variety of other templates in a chain, can cause that sort of effect when they affect a lot of pages and one of the lower ones down is changed. Such templates are usually protected now adays, and should be. But that sort of one time update change loading effect does not mean they should not be maintained or improved--only that such improvements should be done carefully and smartly by someone aware of loading issues (Admins).

Should {{las|Mikhail Gorbachev}} be a page you check immediately after changing template XYZ, to see the effect of changes in template XYZ,  you may well be seeing a lag because as a page it's somewhere down in the que and the system now has a bit set saying it needs recomposted. But that kind of lag is distinct and different than one slowing the whole system down... and may well slow up the re-caching of all pages affected (because your attempt to view it THEN AND THERE is ahead of the normal page updating cycle), or perhaps, make you wait while the scheduling executive software kernal catches up with your request for the (changing/changed/about to change/change needed) page, as it were. No way around THAT, but perhaps to delay accessing your test check for a few minutes (i.e. go off and take a whizz, kiss the wife, spank the baby, kick the cat, sit on the dog, or take a nap! <g>)

For what it's worth, my access to that page took over 8 seconds to load, and my change just now, about the same. By comparison, {{las|Ronald Reagan}} took over twenty seconds to appear. Mikhail is doing okay!!! (I wish him well! <g>)

In any event, I doubt such an expansion will be a 'delay generator' of any significance compared to some of the more involved widely used and exotic templates like Infoboxes. Cheers! // Fra nkB 22:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Frank, this was most enlightening :) The very last point, however, still stands&mdash;you are saying that infoboxes are more widely used and exotic, but in reality the infoboxes tend to rely on conversion templates more and more often!  Fully MOSNUM-compliant infoboxes would have not one but several conversion templates transcluded, so every bit of improvement brought to conversion templates would help somewhere in the processes you described.
 * Truth to be told, after giving more thought to a WA parameter, I like it even less. Surely, it'd help you save keystrokes, but it will do so once, while the added pre-expand size would be affecting (however slightly) everything for the lifetime of the template.  Plus, you may need WA today, but it is no guarantee that someone would not want to widely deploy a conversion template with wiki off, abbr on, and precision of 1.  What are we to do then, add a WnAP1 parameter?  The situation is not at all theoretical&mdash;at one time I had to put a bunch of instances of one conversion template with one set of parameters, and another bunch with an opposite set of parameters.  After I was done, I had no need for both combinations for quite a while.  See what I mean?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Truth to be told, after giving more thought to a WA parameter, I like it even less. Surely, it'd help you save keystrokes, but it will do so once, while the added pre-expand size would be affecting (however slightly) everything for the lifetime of the template.  Plus, you may need WA today, but it is no guarantee that someone would not want to widely deploy a conversion template with wiki off, abbr on, and precision of 1.  What are we to do then, add a WnAP1 parameter?  The situation is not at all theoretical&mdash;at one time I had to put a bunch of instances of one conversion template with one set of parameters, and another bunch with an opposite set of parameters.  After I was done, I had no need for both combinations for quite a while.  See what I mean?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No worries mate. I already figured the issue was dead, as old Ben says: "A man convinced against his will, is unconvinced still." There is after all the unconventional (but functional) option of using {{tlx|km to mi|wiki=yes|abbr=yes| as the cut buffer contents and pasting THAT... with due observance of the proper number in the proper place, natch. For my part, if you want to shave bytes, kill the need to spell out 'yes' and just test for any true value so  {{km to mi|wiki=1|abbr=2|### or  {{tlx|km to mi|wiki=x|abbr=@|###}} etc. all work instead. Such would save a few bytes and typing, I'd guess. But if the concept doesn't float your boat, don't! No problem. I'm admittedly lazy! <G> // Fra nkB  15:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, you should probably know that I created the conversion templates after only reading through the template documentation for about an hour or so, so I realize that there may be quite a few more bytes to shave in the code as it currently stands :) Now, I only wish I had time to re-visit the templates and optimize them using the practices folks were so helpful to point out to me since then...
 * By the way, did you take a look at the pop density templates? Will the concept work for your purposes?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

re: By the way, did you take a look at the pop density templates? Will the concept work for your purposes?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)


 * My bad... I'd answered that those looked perfect, but apparently refactored (edit goof) that answer right out of the discussion. Sorry. Those are "just what the doctor ordered", which is the same phrase I seem to have lost in the bit bucket! Cheers! // Fra nkB 16:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Regions-Ulus
Посмотрите. Вы ОКАТО больше верите здесь XLS-Перечень кодов ОКАТО, действующих с 1 января 2006 года (16.03.2007 )] --213.148.170.162 18:42, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ну, во-первых, зачем посылать меня на производные сайты, когда можно посмотреть оригинал. А во-вторых, как следует из того, что я только что написал на Talk:Aldansky Ulus, дело не в ОКАТО, а в законах Республики Саха, которые термины "улус" и "район" используют pretty much как попало вообще, и в применении к Алданскому улусу/району в частности.  И делают они это в полном соответствии с процитированным вами законом РС "Об административно-территориальном устройстве Республики Саха (Якутия)".  Из чего следует, что разницы, как мы назовём статью тут, нет никакой.  Термин "улус" используется, чтобы все статьи назывались по одной схеме, только и всего.
 * P.S. Вы бы, может быть, представились? Судя по ремарке об ОКАТО мы с вами уже раньше что-то обсуждали?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * К названию статьи в en:Wiki претензий нет, кроме может одной, указан герб муниципального образования "Алданский район", просто по русски принято называть часть улусов (районов) Якутии (причём это закреплено в муниципальных законах) либо районами либо улусами, а для некоторых из них это равнозначно (вот такое странное явление). В en-Wiki я не регистрировался в ru-Wiki ru:Участник:Ss_novgorod —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.148.170.162 (talk) 19:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * В английской вике статьи создаются об административных районах; муниципальные же должны упоминаться в тексте (см., например, Giaginsky District). Насчёт герба подмечено верно; надо будет, наверное, немного подправить инфобокс, чтобы было понятно, что герб является символом муниципального, а не административного образования.  Статистика по адм. и мун. образованиям в инфобоксе уже и так разделена (опять же, см. Гиагинский район Адыгеи для иллюстрации), просто для Алданского района муниципальная секция не заполнена.
 * Что касается названия, то обзор ситуации следующий: к административным улусам (районам) могут с равным правом применяться и термин "улус", и термин "район". К муниципальным же районам термин "улус" не применяется никогда (поскольку это противоречило бы федеральному закону №131-ФЗ); однако термин может служить составной частью собственного названия муниципального района.  Так, предмет нашей дискуссии (административная единица) может упоминаться либо как "Алданский улус", либо как "Алданский район" (собственное название &mdash; "Алданский").  Муниципальная единица упоминается только как "муниципальный район" и имеет собственное название "Алданский район" (т.е. полностью: муниципальный район "Алданский район", муниципальный район "Амгинский улус (район)", муниципальный район "Кобяйский улус" и т.д. согласно закону от 30 ноября 2004 года 172-З №351-III "Об установлении границ и о наделении статусом муниципального района муниципальных образований Республики Саха (Якутия)").
 * Ничего не упустил? Всё логично и верно?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Да наверное так всё логично, просто в ru-Wiki аноним внёс правки в статью называвшиюся в то время Алданский улус Якутии, попытался разобраться - действительно он прав, а вопрос действительно видимо важный [cм. например Улус переименовали в район через суд]--213.148.170.162 20:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Понятно. Спасибо за ссылку, довольно интересно.  Не похоже только, чтобы эта инициатива с 2003 года куда-либо продвинулась.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Если смотреть периодически на сайт правительства Якутии, тот там заметны перемены в части конкретизации, что улус а что район. Видно, что то там меняется последнее время... Ну всё наверное...--213.148.170.162 20:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * За сайтами, вообще, следить очень часто бесполезно, поскольку на сайтах обычно творится бардак. Гораздо надёжнее следить за изменениями в законодательстве (которое, помимо всего прочего, всегда можно процитировать как надёжный источник).  За последние же несколько месяцев в законодательстве РС(Я) по поводу терминологии ничего не менялось.  Вам сообщить если появится что-либо интересное?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:37, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Novopetrovsk
Ezhiki, can you look into the article? Should we make a Disambig out of it? Alex Bakharev 06:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Alex! Don't worry, when your bot catches a geo-article, it gets on my to-do list automatically, and this particular one I am hoping to sort out today, as it is a complete mess.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 11:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

As i understood you are Russian so...
Could you please help with the Russian martial arts thing?

I will tell you the problems:

1. Russian martial arts article needs referencing, and i couldn't find thise.

2. There are articles about martial arts in Russian that need to be translated to English. After translated to English, they also need to be referenced and expanded (the demends on the English Wikipedia are higher). Those articles are:, ,.

If you can't do that, then please leave that messege to someone who can help here. Thank you. PocketMoon 17:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, PocketMoon! Although I am indeed a Russian, I, unfortunately, don't know much about Russian martial arts nor, frankly, am I much interested in this topic.  You might have better luck if you post at Portal:Russia/Russia-related Wikipedia notice board; at least more people will see your request for assistance.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Haven't known about that thing. PocketMoon 18:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Request for article assistance
User:Nightstallion told me you may be able to help.

is poorly sourced, and the term has very few Google hits, most of which appear to be either highly partisan or not English. I suspect this is a notable term in Georgia, but am unsure whether it has any currency in English, and what, if anything, to do about the article. Please see if anything occurs to you. Thanks, Cruftbane 20:18, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I am not an expert on the history of Georgia/Dagestan, and the term "Lekianoba" is completely unfamiliar to me. Why not ask the person who created the article?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

FL Main page proposal
You either nominated a WP:FLC or closed such a nomination this year. As such, you are the type of editor whose opinion I am soliciting. We now have over 400 featured lists and seem to be promoting in excess of 30 per month of late (41 in August and 42 in September). When Today's featured article (TFA) started (2004-02-22), they only had about 200 featured articles and were barely promoting 20 new ones per month. I think the quality of featured lists is at least as good as the quality of featured articles was when they started appearing on the main page. Thus, I am ready to open debate on a proposal to institute a List of the Day on the main page with nominations starting November 1 2007, voting starting December 1 2007 and main page appearances starting January 1 2008. For brevity, the proposal page does not discuss the details of eventual main page content, but since the work has already been done, you should consider this proposal assuming the eventual main page will resemble either an excerpted list format or an abbreviated text format. The proposal page does not debate whether starting with weekly list main page entries would be better than daily entries. However, I suspect persons in favor of weekly lists are really voicing opinions against lists on the main page since neither TFA nor Picture of the day started as weekly endeavors, to the best of my knowledge. Right now debate seems to be among support for the current selective democratic/consensus based proposal, a selective dictatorial approach like that used at WP:TFA or a non-selective first in line/calendar approach like that used at WP:POTD. See the List of the Day proposal and comment at WP:LOTDP and its talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Fyodor
I gave it a little scrubbing. If there are any more entries added where Fyodor is just a first name, then they should be moved to Fyodor (give name), leaving the tsars there, as people who simply share a first name do not belong on a dab page. Any other questions, let me know. Happy editing! Chris the speller 23:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks Chris! I suspected this is how it should have been done, but I had my doubts on a few points.  Your example was most helpful in clearing them up.  I am, however, curious why you decided to leave this guy first in the list?  Surely he can't be the most well-known Fyodor there's even been?  Also, at what point would you say the list of people with the first name of Fyodor would become too long to be left with the rest of the dab?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:48, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Не за што. The hacker is apparently best known as just "Fyodor", while many readers will type "Fyodor I" or "Fyodor II" to find a tsar, I'm thinking, so of the hits on this page, a higher percentage might be looking for the hacker. Besides, the natural article title for the hacker would be just "Fyodor" if there were no tsars, and the natural article title for the tsars would be "Fyodor I" and so on, so the hacker has a stronger claim for this page. As for the threshold of entries for just a first name (or last name), another editor mentioned 5 to 10 on the talk page for MoS:DP back in the spring, and that's where I usually draw the line (with a lower threshold if there is a load of onomastic drivel, too, — more incentive to clean up the dab page). Hope this helps. Chris the speller 15:14, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Flag of Tuva
Checked the source, and the correct dates are: The flag was adopted on the 17th and blessed by the Dalai Lama on the 20th. My memory was playing tricks on me. Sorry. Erudil 15:31, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Nikolay Semyonov
He published nearly all his scientific papers in english journals under the name Semenov, even the noble Prize was given to Semenev not Semyonov. It is clear that the transciption chnged several times and is different in every language, but the name with which he is known in Science might be usefull!--Stone 15:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. If you could list a few of his works where this spelling is used on the talk page, that'd be enough to justify inclusion of the "Semenov" spelling in the lead.  The only reason why I reverted your addition was because we generally try to stick to WP:RUS unless there are good reasons not to.  Publishing works in English under a different spelling is most certainly one of such reasons.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:17, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The lead is not really the best place, but I found no better. I have a biography of him and I will add a little like to all the previous nobel laureats.--134.76.234.75 16:23, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is a good place. Alternative spellings are usually listed together with the title as long, of course, as there is a reasonable number of them.  One alternative spelling should be no problem at all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * By the way, maybe it is worth modifying WP:RUS. If a person's name is spelled consistently across his/her own English-language publications (or other publications by him/her using Latin script), we should certainly adopt it (well, actually it would be just a clarified criterion of conventionality). Colchicum 14:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I am actually working on a re-defined criterion of conventionality that should cover your suggestion and take care of a few other problem issues with human names. I am, unfortunately, very tight on free time, so I don't know when I am going to finish the proposal, but I am certainly planning to present it for community review/vote after I am done.  If you wish to start the process yourself, I see no reason why not.  The way "conventional use" is currently defined by WP:RUS has been unacceptable for quite a while now.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Tersk
Say, for some reason, I am having a heckuva time actually LOCATING the Tersk Stud. All my sources either say something vague like "Caucasus Mountains" or something. (Couldn't care less about the Tersk horse, personally, but they breed other stuff there too) Can you pinpoint its location in terms of some known city? I'd like to create a small article about it, but am finding some substantial holes amongst assorted horse breeding sources. Thanks. Montanabw (talk) 16:29, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I have no idea, which is why I left that particular entry alone, but a quick search of Russian sources returns Tersky Horse Breeding Plant #169 in the settlement of Novotersk, Mineralovodsky District, Stavropol Krai. Many other links I found point to the same place (here is even a picture of the place).  Does that help?  I can do a more thorough search if this is not sufficient; just let me know what kind of additional information you are looking for.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Ртищево (Rtishchevo)
Можете ли Вы помочь со статьёй о Ртищево в Английской Википедии? Сводная таблица численности населения была составлена мной по данным из разных источников. Я не знаю, как их указать в АнглоВике. Вот эти источники: Спасибо Sdobnikov A. 13:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Народная энциклопедия "Мой город"
 * Народное хозяйство Саратовской области за 50 лет Советской власти: статистический сборник. — Саратов: Саратовское отделения изд-ва «Статистика», 1967
 * Шишмарёв Н. А. Город Ртищево. — Саратов: Приволж. кн. изд-во, 1986. — (Города Саратовской области)
 * Хорошо, добавлю. Только укажите, пожалуйста, из каких конкретно источников были взяты данные за каждый год (сайт-то я проверю, а вот двух других книг у меня нет).  Спасибо!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * 1875, 1897 и 1912 - Шишмарёв Н. А.
 * 1917, 1923, 1939 - Народное хозяйство
 * 1936, 1940, 1942 - Архив Ртищевского горрайисполкома
 * остальные даты с сайта Sdobnikov A. 18:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I don't know anything about Rtishchevo, but in general it is not a good idea to rely on different sources for different years, because they can define the borders of the town in a number of different ways and have different criteria (e.g. w.r.t. temporary residents). If I created such a table in such a way e.g. for Saint Petersburg, it would be a total mess. If every row is referenced, it is more or less ok, but it is still better to find a single source. Colchicum 19:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The fact that we don't have a single source is exactly why I asked Andrey to map each population figure back to its source. I assure you, if I myself had access to a single source, we would not be having this discussion :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Colchicum, a single unique source does not exist. I live in Rtishchevo and I co-operate with the Rtishchevsky museum, therefore I know.
 * Ezhiki, спасибо :) Sdobnikov A. 21:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem; come back any time :).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * OK :) Интересно бы узнать источники о ртищевской военной базе, что в 6 км от города. Такую информацию я встретил только в Английской Википедии. Sdobnikov A. 21:50, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Это, однако, не ко мне; это к автору статьи об этой авиабазе.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Russia FAC
Russia is currently a featured article candidate. Please feel free to leave comments here.--Miyokan 01:39, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Vladimir Putin
Unfortunately, you restored that article to banned Marktwain's version. Have a good look at the first change that he made and you will see why I did not have to look at the talk page and the contribution list (which also has Warren Univerity on it!!!) of that anonymous IP to know that it was him:. So, what to do now? I hope that putting a warning on his talk page will be enough to tell admins to keep an eye on him... --Paul Pieniezny 23:34, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Paul, in general, you should not revert edits from a particular account until that account is positively identified as a sockpuppet of a banned user and is actually blocked. As far as this particular revert goes, however, I do agree that the passage you removed does not belong in the article as it is rather POVish and unsourced.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:46, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Come on, it must be him. Mark Twain has a history of copy pasting irrelevant things and working on old versions. This time he copy pasted the weeks old note number 100. He did not protest when I called it block evasion on his talk page. As for the text itself, which he has been trying to include for months, apart from the fact that it is unsourced, I mainly object to the horrible OR "illegal in the West".--Paul Pieniezny 15:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Даты "основания" республик
Привет!!! Я хочу вернуться к одному вопросу, очень смутному но от того не менее важному. К тому, какой датой считать established республики России.

Сейчас там везде стоят даты примерно начала 1920-х годов. Как для Татарстана, Башкирии, Чувашии, которые действительно были республиками практически с самого начала (а кое-какие и до), так и для Адыгеи, Карачаево-Черкесии, т.п что основывались как автономные области.

Я вот что думаю. По сути АССР и АО это были другими едницами нежели современные республики, которые не автономные, не советские и не социалистические (ведь ты же не считаешь Карельскую АССР и Карело-Финскую ССР одним и тем же). Тем более по АССР отдельные статьи существуют, хотя пока они и в зародыше, но будут развиваится в конексте истории региона. Поэтому в статьях наверное нужно убрать дату основания АССР, АО и т.п. Но вот какую дату ставить? Декларации о суверенитете явно не подходят... Дата подписания федерального договора? Тоже не всё так просто... В идеале надо считать датой основания изменение статуса с АО или АССР на просто "Республика". Можно указать даты провозглашения суверенитета (ведь на начало девяностых ресбулики с точки зрения своих ещё советских конституций были в большей степени "государствоподобными образованиями" чем "регионами России"), дату подписания федерального договора....

Да, наверное было бы неплохо внести некоторое изменение в шаблон региона: есть же в шаблонах государств "флажок" предшествующих для этой единицы территриальных единиц. Это было бы не плохо для шаблона регионов, а потом может добавим и в шаблон для АССР, АО, губерний и т.п.

В общем, как ты на это смотришь?--Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 14:48, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * С теми образованиями, которые были основаны как республики в составе РСФСР, проблем быть не должно. Тот факт, что они более не "советские" и не "социалистические" довольно вторичен; автономность у них осталась несмотря на то, что термин "автономная" в названиях более не фигурирует.  Я вообще склоняюсь к тому, что отдельные статьи об АССР нам не нужны и что вся информация, которая в имеющихся статьях присутствует, может без проблем быть перенесена в основные статьи о современных республиках.  Датой основания республик при этом, как очевидно, будет указана дата основания АССР.
 * Насчёт же тех образований, которые изначально были АО и получили статус республики позднее, то тут дело другое. Так как автономный округ/область и (АСС)Р понятия неэквивалентные, то и статьи о них можно иметь раздельные, и даты основания привязывать к моменту изменения статуса, как ты и предложил.
 * Что касается флажков в шаблонах федеральных субъектов, то я, в принципе, не против. Просто с учётом того, что бо&#769;льшая часть статей об административных единицах предшествующих современным федеральным субъектам у нас отсутствует, особого смысла внедрять эту фичу я не вижу.  У нас и в имеющихся-то полях в шаблонах федеральных субъектов полно красных ссылок; зачем плодить ещё?
 * Какие мысли будут по этому поводу?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Governorate Infobox
Привет! сделал табличку по губерниям, встаил. на Kazan governorate, Baku Governorate. Но когда зашёл на Ревельскую и Рижскую, понял что "эвентов" в губерниях не хватает ещё сильнее чем в областях. Но пока ты не добавишь "эвенты" в современные субъекты - в губернии добавлять не буду - хочу единообразия. :) --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ ( see also: ә? Ә!) 22:38, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * По-моему, однако, ты поторопился :) Для губерний структуру инфобокса надо хорошо продумать; инфобокс субъекта Федерации с ним не очень совместим и заменив пару-тройку полей хорошего результата не получить.  Самая главная проблема в том, что для субъектов приемлемо показывать наиболее свежие данные, а с губерниями это не всегда пройдёт (советские губернии и губернии Российской Империи отличались по атрибутам довольно сильно).  И уж тем более не стоит вставлять недоиспечённые шаблоны в статьи &mdash; только лишняя работа на будущее их все поправлять...  На лету исправления вносить очень неудобно, знаю из горького опыта :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Militsiya
Please check Talk:Militsiya Dzole 02:37, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I supplied my comment on that page. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Yiddishkeit (TV Show)‎
Ezhiki, do you know of any additional resources to find out more info on the TV show Yiddishkeit (TV Show)‎. Thank you, I am having trouble finding sources. Thanks and take good care. Culturalrevival 01:03, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I've never even heard of this show before.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Russia FAC
Hi Ezhiki, how do you feel the article looks now? I tried to address your concerns - what would you need to see changed to get your support?--Miyokan 08:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

LOTD proposal
You either voted on the original list of the day proposal or the revised version. A more modest experimental proposal is now at issue at WP:LOTDP. Feel free to voice your opinion.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:51, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Keep vs speedy keep
Should Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Today's featured list be Speedy.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. I amended my vote.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:26, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Ostafievo-wikipedia-Ezhiki.JPG
Thank you for uploading Image:Ostafievo-wikipedia-Ezhiki.JPG. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. Jusjih 02:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * As I no longer need this demonstration, I have deleted it myself.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

OhanaUnited's RfA
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:lightgreen; border-width:1px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks"> Thanks for voting at my RfA. Unfortunately, the result stands at 51 support, 21 oppose and 7 neutral which means that I did not succeed. As many expressed their appreciation of my works in featured portals during my RfA, I will fill up the vacuum position of director in featured portal candidates to maintain the standards of featured contents in addition to my active role in Good articles. Have a great day. <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 03:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Fixing dab links
I noticed this edit. Most of the links to Vladimir Komarov should be pointing at Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov. I've fixed the link on one article here, but there are still over 50 links at Special:Whatlinkshere/Vladimir Komarov that need disambiguating. Can you help fix this? Carcharoth 02:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I must have forgotten to straighten out the links after that edit :( Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  The links have now been fixed.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Featured List of the Day Experiment
There have been a series of proposals to initiate a Featured List of the Day on the main page. Numerous proposals have been put forth. After the third one failed, I audited all WP:FL's in order to begin an experiment in my own user space that will hopefully get it going. Today, it commences at WP:LOTD. Afterwards I created my experimental page, a new proposal was set forth to do a featured list that is strikingly similar to my own which is to do a user page experimental featured list, but no format has been confirmed and mechanism set in place. I continue to be willing to do the experiment myself and with this posting it commences. Please submit any list that you would like to have considered for list of the day in the month of January 2008 by the end of this month to WP:LOTD and its subpages. You may submit multiple lists for consideration.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:LOTD) 01:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:MINOR and WP:OBVIOUS
Hello,


 * Please remember to mark your edits as minor if (and only if) they genuinely are minor edits (see Minor edit). Marking a major change as a minor one (and vice versa) is considered poor etiquette. The rule of thumb is that only an edit that consists solely of spelling corrections, formatting changes, or rearranging of text without modifying content should be flagged as a 'minor edit.'   (diff)


 * Please also have a look at Guide to writing better articles, especially the section #State the obvious, in order to avoid edits like this, which I fixed. Thank you. &mdash; Komusou talk @ 05:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I would like to point out that it is generally considered very rude to utilize generic newbie-oriented templates when bringing something to the attention of established editors. Regarding the edit in question, an average reader may, of course, not know the precise location of Omsk Oblast, but considering that the article is titled "2007 Siberian orange snow" and that "Omsk Oblast" is a blue link which can be followed to get more information, specifying "Siberia" in the lead is indeed redundant.  What's more, if you take time to actually read the Siberia article, you will see that the definition of this general area is too vague and broad to be of much help to an average reader.
 * I will appreciate it if you kindly reverted your most recent edit, but, of course, I am not going to waste any more of my time on this if you choose not to do so, as the issue is rather minor. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:44, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Sochi
The population of Sochi in its administrative boundaries by Census,2002 is 397.103 inhabitants. See Census results in Russian on Official site http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/html/TOM_01_04_3.htm. ,—Yufereff; 09:22, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Yufereff! Thank you for your concern, but note that the 397,103 figure refers not to Sochi proper, but to the city of Sochi with the inhabited localities under the city's administrative jurisdiction.  The population of Sochi proper is 328,809, which is what should be reported in the infobox (all other cities' infoboxes are populated that way; Sochi should be no different).  I also restored the 1989 Census figure, which is important for evaluating the most recent population trends and is reported for all other Russian cities as well.  Please do not remove this number.  Finally, the 329,481 figure was removed because the urban population of the Sochi area is, according to the very site you cited, 332,778; I am not sure where you got 329,481 from.  I have restored the correct version again.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * OK. But are you sure that 336.514 is only urban population? Where you got this data from? It was total population of the city in 1989 up to 397.103 in 2002. By the way do you ever interest, that Sochi's urban population for 4 years (from 2002 to 2006) up from 328.809 to 329.481 - for the last 20 years it never fall down. This figure was got from postcensus Russian statistics in paper,—Yufereff; 09:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, 336,514 was urban population only. Sochi proper (i.e., the city itself, without any inhabited localities which are under its jurisdiction but are not a part of the city itself) comprised four city districts in 1989: Adlersky, Khostinsky, Lazarevsky, and Tsentralny.  If you add up the populations of each of those city districts as reported by the 1989 Census, you'll get 336,514&mdash;same number reported for the city as a whole.  The breakdown is available here (copy of the official results of the 1989 Census).  As such, the 336,514 figure of the 1989 Census directly corresponds to the 328,809 figure of the 2002 Census, which includes population of the same four city districts.  The 332,728 figure of 2002 refers to the population of Sochi proper plus the population of urban localities under jurisdiction of the city (which is the urban-type settlement of Krasnaya Polyana (332,728=328,809+3,969), and the 397,103 figure refers to the population of Sochi proper plus the population of all localities (i.e., urban and rural) under jurisdiction of Sochi (397,103=328,809+3,969+64,325).  So, the bottom line is that while the population of Sochi and the inhabited localities under its jurisdiction did indeed go up between the Censuses, the population of Sochi proper went down from 336,514 to 332,728.  Since the Sochi article is about the city proper, and not about every inhabited locality in its vicinity, we report only the population numbers for the city proper.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Official thanks, slightly delayed due to post-RfA crash (who knew?)
<div style="padding: 5px; style="background-color: #32005B;" border-style: solid; border-width: 3px; border-color: "000000"; font-size: 100%; "> <div style="margin-top: 3px; padding-top: 9px; padding-bottom: 9px; padding-left: 9px; padding-right: 9px; width: 300px; float: center;"> <font color="E4D5E8"><font face="Georgia">Tapadh Leibh (Thank You)... <font color="E4D5E8"><font face="Georgia"> ...for helping me navigate the waters of my surprisingly peaceful <font color="E0CCDB"> RFA, which closed successfully with 85 supports, 1 oppose, and 0 neutral.

I would particularly like to thank <font color="E0CCDB">Acalamari and <font color="E0CCDB">Alison, my nominators, and everyone who watched the page and ran the tally.

If you hate RfA thankspam, please forgive me, Ezhiki. I promise I won't block you in retaliation for deleting it ;-)

If there is anything I can do to be of service in the future, please feel free to contact me.

And forgive me if I need a <font color="E0CCDB">Wikibreak now and then (like now. I'm exhausted!). You wouldn’t want to see me <font color="E0CCDB">climbing the Reichstag, now would you?

Off to flail around with my new mop! (what?!) <font face="comic sans ms"><font color="E4D5E8">Kathryn NicDhàna </b> <font color="E4D5E8">♫ <font color="FCD73F">♦ <font color="E4D5E8">♫ 

<font color="#000000"> This RfA thanks inspired by Neranei's, which was inspired by VanTucky's which was in turn inspired by LaraLove's which was inspired by The Random Editor's, which was inspired by Phaedriel's original thanks.

Aleksandr Petrovich Karpinsky
I agree that the article on Karpinsky needs expanding, but when do you change an article from Stub status to Start status? When an article has references, more than just a lead paragraph, and a good, appropriate image, I personally feel that it is nor longer a stub. How about you, what criteria do you use? --Bejnar (talk) 18:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I was not the one who categorized this article as a stub; I merely moved the stub notice further down without giving it much thought. Looking at the article a bit closer, I agree that it may or may not be categorized as a stub depending on the criteria one is using.  I have no strong opinion about this particular article (in my view, it is in the gray area between stub and start), so if you feel that the stub notice should be removed, go right ahead; I sure ain't gonna be complaining about that :)  You may also want to review the WP:STUB guideline, which is vague but occasionally helpful.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Gubkin
My apologies. Thanks for calling that table to my attention. Both of my English language sources (both pre-WWII) spelled it "Goubkin". I will fix my edits. --Bejnar (talk) 21:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Much appreciated.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly article, because I don't have a verifiable Cyrillic copy, I had to use the Russian Wikipedia, so I'm not a 100% sure that Pyotr Inokhodtsev, I. N. Smirnov and N. D. Pilchikov are correct. They do match that Cyrillic with values from the romanization table complete with the omitted ь.  Although Smirnov is hard to goof up (maybe with a double ff).  Should Pyotr Inokhodtsev be Pyotr Inokhodtsev or is he well enough known in English to be Peter Inokhodtsev? I did find him listed as Peter Inokhodtsev, but left it Pyotr.  I deleted Pyotr Inokhodtsev's patronymic, but I don't know if Smirnov was Ivan or Ilya, so I left him as I. N. Smirnov. This is really just an informative note. No, I don't need a response or for you necessarily to do anything. Thanks again for helping to bring me up to snuff. I tend to depend upon my references too much. --Bejnar (talk) 22:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update. By the way, if you are planning to work on Russia-related articles in the future, you might find this proposal to be of interest, as it directly deals with the kind of the questions you raised above.  It is still in the voting phase, but by the looks of it it will pass.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

MK-61 calculator artice
Great that you wrote osmething in it. I had such a calculator in Odessa, Ukraine. I left it there, but later on I found an excellent simulator of MK61 GK tramrunner (talk) 01:54, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Feel free to contact me by ICQ: 355-867-868, or by an email tramrunner229ATyahooDOTcom
 * I didn't really add much to the article, but yes, I have sentimental feelings about that calculator, too :) By the way, if the MK-61 emulator is available online, could you add a link to it to the article?  I think the article will benefit from it.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:07, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

MK-61 emulator link
the program itself the page with a description here you can get it.

Do you live in the USA? Where? WE can speak over the ICQ GK tramrunner (talk) 17:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I live in Brookly, NY
 * Hi, GK! Thanks for the links, I'm sure I'm going to give the emulator a try this weekend!  Ahh, the memories! :)
 * I do live in the U.S. (Midwest), but being rather paranoid about privacy I prefer not to disclose where exactly. Nothing personal; I hope you understand!  Same goes for ICQ communications.  However, if you need to ask me anything that's not suitable to be asked here on my talk page (perhaps because it is not really Wikipedia-related), you are more than welcome to email me.  You didn't happen to be a member of клуб электронных игр for MK-61 & 52 in the beginning of the 1990s by any chance?  The club was run by mail by some guy in Samara (I forgot his name, unfortunately), who published a newsletter and helped folks connect to exchange various MK-61 programs.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Advisor.js
Hi Ëzhiki, I'll probably have some spare time on Sunday, so I'm gonna add your proposals then. What did you mean by "convert unicode entities"? Is it to change escapes to real unicode characters or vice versa?

Btw, I see you're doing edits in the Russian Wikipedia, so you might be interested the following experiment: to avoid switching between Cyrillic and Latin when writing such links, I thought it would be nice to somehow "map" шш and щщ to and  respectively. Do you think it would be useful for many contributors? --Cameltrader (talk) 16:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for considering my request! What I meant by "converting Unicode entities" is to change escapes to the actual characters (so "&#769 ;" would become  ́, for example).
 * As for usefulness of mapping шш and щщ to and , I honestly don't know what to tell you.  I myself am so used to constant switching between three different keyboard layouts all the time that I do not find having to switch layouts to enter  and  a bother at all.  Nor do I contribute to the Russian Wikipedia much, really; I am mostly active here.  Folks used to mostly typing in Russian might find the feature useful, but you'd probably be better off asking them; they may have very well already implemented something similar.
 * Again, thanks for your consideration! The more I use the script, the more I like it.  The only serious bug I've found so far is that the script should not be fixing mdashes and ndashes in image names, because it breaks the links, but I've only run into this once.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I had realized that and fixed it in my next edit, but forgot to adjust the example in the description and the rule which converts space-hyphen-space to nbsp-mdash-space.
 * Thanks for the improvements you suggested. If you can think of other useful stuff which can be sketched in a few lines of JavaScript, I can find some spare hours in the weekends :) --Cameltrader 19:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and about the IE issue of not selecting relevant text when you click on a "suggestion" — I am simply not able to test (and debug) with Explorer now. I guess its possibly a not-too-complex-to-fix focus misuse of mine.  I've seen that a long time ago: the text is actually selected but the textarea is not focused, and if you press tab several times, it looks fine.  Perhaps I should drop support for it in the future and only code for Gecko...  but unfortunately, MS still has the higher ground in the browser wars.  Anyway. --Cameltrader 19:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a pity you don't have means to fix the IE problem. I, unfortunately, am stuck with this abomination at work, so being able to select relevant text would have been handy.  Oh well, it's nothing a "show changes" button wouldn't be able to handle :)  If you ever get a chance to test the script in IE, I'd most certainly appreciate it, but otherwise it's no big deal.
 * By the way, I see that you have not yet fixed the dash problem inside the image tags. If you get a chance to work on those, please also exclude the interwikies (I've just applied the scipt to the Moscow page, and it tried to fix a dash inside the gl: interwiki link).  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Anton Golovaty
Hi, can please see the discussion on that article, and I could use your professional feedback on my arguments. --Kuban Cossack 13:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I supplied my comments on the article's talk page. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Naval ranks and insignia of the Russian Federation
Привет! Поставь пожалуйста защиту на эту статью, а то заколебал один израильский деятель с вымышленным званием адмирал флота Российской Федерации.--Torin-ru (talk) 14:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Done.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

C to K
What's the point of having an "alternative" to that produces the exact same output (and, for that matter, isn't even used)? Mackensen (talk) 17:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Mackensen! C to K is a part of the set of "x to y" conversion templates, which are maintained as an alternative to Convert.  The main reason for that is the preference of some editors (who, apparently, are too lazy to type in the whole "convert" syntax and prefer "x to y" instead :)), as well as maintaining a healthy competition in hopes to foster innovation (a plan which so far has worked splendidly).  The set was developed when Convert was still in its infancy and originally provided features pretty much identical to what Convert offers now.  However, these individual templates are ultimately capable of much more than straight "convert" (see ft to m for an example), and I am planning to expand their feature sets in the near future, making them even more streamlined that the current version of "Convert".  While you are quite correct about "C to K" not presently being used anywhere, it is only because it does not do anything beyond what "Convert" is capable of.  Once its feature base is expanded, that may very well change (or not :)).  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian
Здравствуйте Ezhiki

По поводу страниц в Википедии - Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian  Мне не хватит знаний английского языка, что бы объяснить смысл ниже написанного по английски. Если хотите, и можете дописать, подправьте некоторые места. По современным нормам в именах Сергей, Андрей, Алексей передаётся на конце английское " i " хотя раньше по правилам писалось "у". Но сейчас убрана часть лингвистической нагрузки на английскую "у". Это современные нормы, хотя я сам пишу Sergey, многолетняя привычка ещё со школы. Но сейчас надо писать Sergei, так и пишут большинство авторов в Википедии.

И ещё русские окончания "ия". Россия, футбольный клуб Алания, женское имя Юлия. пишутся Russia, Alania, Yulia. Пишется "ia", если смотреть выставленные правила то должно писаться окончание "iya". В Интернете на футбольных сайтах в половине случаев так и написано Alaniya. Это не правильно, а в правилах ничего нет.

И ещё там приведены какие то примеры, совершенно не из современной жизни. Как пример первая строчка - кто или что такое Аник ??. Неужели нет нормальных современных русских имён. Также в некоторых местах лучше бы добавить некоторые примеры русских отчеств. В Википедии много ошибок в отчествах, на иностранных сайтах в статьях о русских людях

Всё подробно расписано в книге - Имена собственные - теория и практика межъязыковой передачи  как анонс напишу что данный издание рекомендовано учебно-методическим объединением по образованию в области лингвистики Министерством образования РФ в качестве учебного пособия для студентов и аспиранов лингвистических вузов и факультетов иностранных языков. По сути дела это учебник, в котором написано одно, а у вас в Википедии другое (устаревшие нормы) Gavrilov Sergey (talk) 15:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Здравствуйте, Сергей! Спасибо за наводку на книгу, только мне, проживая в США, приобрести её несколько затруднительно.  В любом случае, буду иметь в виду, звучит очень интересно.
 * Что касается собственно романизации, то вам должно быть интересно также узнать, что к данному guideline'у в данный конкретный момент рассматривается дополнение как раз в части имён собственных (см. тут). После принятия этого дополнения (против которого за время рассмотрения пока не было ни одного голоса "против") правила романизации русских имён собственных в английской Википедии приобретут столь необходимую им гибкость.  Правила "по умолчанию", однако, останутся неизменными.  Позвольте мне объяснить, почему.
 * В первую очередь позвольте напомнить, что мы находимся в английской версии Википедии. Это означает, что несмотря на всю свою универсальность, эта версия энциклопедии направлена в первую очередь на англоязычную аудиторию и должна использовать конвенции этой аудитории знакомые и привычные.  Даже несмотря на то, что WP:RUS покрывает темы, связанные с Россией (и, естественно, русским языком), мы должны по возможности предпочитать инструменты перевода/передачи русских терминов, используемые англоязычными специалистами.  Одним из таких инструментов является BGN/PCGN &mdash; система романизации языков (включая русский) под нужды англоязычной аудитории.  А наш WP:RUS, в частности, на 98% повторяет конвенции BGN/PCGN.  Я не пытаюсь умалить возможные плюсы похожих систем разработанных в России (хотя сто́ит заметить, что тот же ГОСТ, например, для наших нужд подходит очень плохо), но правда жизни заключается в том, что повсеместного распространения в зарубежной литературе они не получили, в отличие от того же BGN/PCGN.  А поскольку целевой аудиторией английской Википедии являются не "студенты и аспиранты лингвистических вузов и факультетов иностранных языков", а живые люди :), это обязательно нужно принимать во внимание при выборе системы романизации.  Только потому, что российские специалисты обновили правила или разработали систему, которая на порядок лучше существующей, не означает, что мы должны автоматически на эту систему переходить.  Вот когда/если эта система начнёт интенсивно применяться в текстах, написанных авторами из США/Великобритании/Австралии/прочих англоязычных стран, вот тогда и нам надо будет задуматься о том, есть ли смысл менять устоявшиеся (или, как вы выразились, "устаревшие") правила.
 * Что касается примеров, используемых в WP:RUS в данный момент, то никто вам не будет препятствовать, если вы их замените на более иллюстративные :) Тот же "Аник", например, это самая высокая гора в Приморском крае &mdash; пример валидный, но, соглашусь, не самый удачный.  Примеры эти я писал довольно давно по принципу "что в голову придёт" и для другой цели; обновить бо́льшую их часть сейчас было бы вполне уместно.
 * В общем, надеюсь на ваши вопросы я ответил. Если что-то упустил, пишите; с удовольствием отвечу.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Decade links and HTML entities
Thanks for your suggestions. I added them to the script. --Cameltrader (talk) 20:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: Population decline in Susumansky District
Hello, do you know of a citable source for the reason for the population decline? I would like to add this information to the article. Please reply on the article talk page and let me know on my talk page. Thanks, JERRY talk contribs 01:25, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Replied at Talk:Susumansky District.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:01, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It has been a pleasure working with you on this article. I hope to see you around again in the future.  Cheers, JERRY talk contribs 00:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If you continue working on Russia-related topics, I guarantee we'll bump into one another again :) It's been a pleasure working with you, too.  If you ever have a question you feel I'd be able to answer, don't hesitate to let me know.  Take care,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Flag of Kamchatka Krai
No offense has been taken. I will remove the text regarding the present day use of the flag. However, I believe that the article may simply be left as it is, at least until further discussion about merging the article is concluded. The thing is that I do not know Russian, as I am only working on the flags of the Federal Subjects of Russia simply because the topic has been mostly ignored in the English wiki. Of course, if you would like to help out on expanding the articles that I have created so far, be my guest! I would greatly appreciate any assistance. I have a gallery of these articles at my user home page. American Imperialist (talk) 19:29, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I doubt I am going to be of much help as far as creating content about the flags goes (although I can certainly help you out with determining their status, which is especially important for the post-merger federal subjects). I do, however, want to make an observation about the way the articles you have created are titled&mdash;you seem to be using short names of the federal subjects, but you are not always doing it correctly.  For example, "Flag of Koryak" should in fact be "Flag of Koryakia" (if you use the short name) or, better yet, "Flag of Koryak Autonomous Okrug" (full name, which pairs nicely with the title of the main article&mdash;Koryak Autonomous Okrug).  Same goes for "Flag of Kamchatka"&mdash;Kamchatka is first and foremost a geographical entity (a peninsula), which does not have its own flag.  "Flag of Kamchatka Krai" would be the correct name for the article about the flag of Kamchatka Krai, and "Flag of Kamchatka Oblast"&mdash;for the article about Kamchatka Oblast.  You can find the full names (and short names, if any) in the articles about those federal subjects, and the list of the federal subjects is, of course, available through federal subjects of Russia.  It may not be that big of a deal while you are writing articles about the republics, but you'll have to agree that there is huge difference between, say, "Flag of Belgorod" and "Flag of Belgorod Oblast"!
 * Anyway, if you need help with moving the articles, don't hesitate to let me know&mdash;I'd be happy to help. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I will make sure that all of this is done. It may take some time, however, but I will make it my number one priority.  Thanks for your help fellow comrade! American Imperialist (talk) 19:56, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Anytime :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:57, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Krapivin
Hi,

Is your nickname related to a book by Vladislav Krapivin? (Застава на Якорном поле) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it's not related, although I read this book as a child.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Russians page being constantly vandalized
Please read this and take part in the argument. No Free Nickname Left (talk) 19:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

My bot
What did you block my bot for? I stopped it running three days ago, and it won't be run again because another user convinced me it was a bad idea. It hasn't edited for three days and there was no threat of anything happening. Please unblock it, it was in trial at the time and I'm not going to get it approved but I might want it for another task at another time--Phoenix-wiki talk · contribs 17:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Blocking was just an emergency precaution in case the bot started to run again. It is now unblocked.  Thanks for your prompt reply.  If you plan to continue running the bot for this task in future, please let me know&mdash;I may be able to provide a few pointers so this disaster does not happen again (did you know that there are close to 200,000 inhabited localities in Russia?  Boy am I glad your bot only created a few dozen stubs :))  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Singular
Can you do anything to In to mm so that something an inch or less reads in the singular? I am trying to clean up Crown Fountain.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 20:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I guess it may just need a singular parameter because I rearranged it so the .5 inches and .25 inces are appropriate. I still need 1 inch though.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 20:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I can do it, but not quickly, sorry. However, judging from what's in the text, in to cm, which does support singular, should work just fine.  Is this something you'd be willing to consider?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I will probably be able to use this other template.  I will get back to you if there is a problem.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 21:17, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Census templates
May I suggest two templates which would work like this:

,

Firstly because I think we should separate Soviet and Russian census which will be used in different places, secondly I think we should use four digit years.

Another issue you might want to think about is this: there are two logical ways that these templates might be extended (apart from { {Az-census}} etc}}



i.e. bringing in other sources of population count, or bringing in other factors from the census.

Let me know your thoughts. Rich Farmbrough, 12:32 19 December 2007 (GMT).
 * Rich, I am not really sure that it is time to think that far down the road—the template's capabilities can certainly be extended later, but at this point it is hard to say what kind of extensions may be useful or necessary (I also didn't quite understand your example with the area parameter—could you, please, clarify?). At the same time, there are hundreds of stubs and articles about Russian places that exist now, all of which desperately need their population figures to be referenced (which is the primary goal of the ru-census template).
 * I do, however, agree, that it makes sense to separate the censuses, and not just the Russian/Soviet ones, but all of them. What this means is that we'll have one template for each census (2002, 1989, 1979, etc.), which could be called separately if necessary, but we could also implement a wrapper template which would call those subtemplates based on the submitted parameters.  So, for example, the ru-census template in its current form would be re-written to call ru-census2002 and su-census1989.  That way, once we have a good source for, say, 1979 Census, the su-census1979 could be created and ru-census amended to accept new "p1979" parameter, thus minimizing changes down the road.  Also, as you suggested above, another set of parameters can be added to distinguish between the censuses (which would have references) and the population estimates (which may or may not have them).  What do you think about this approach?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Name/dab separation
I commented and removed the merge tags. Happy editing! Chris the speller (talk) 20:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I appreciate your assistance.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas


Hi Ezhiki! I wish you a Merry Christmas and all the best in the new year. I know you do not celebrate Christmas but I just wanted to wish you. - Darwinek (talk) 12:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Have a great holiday season yourself :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Siberia/Chita linkspam
THought you would like to see this:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ALegionarius&diff=179670348&oldid=179418693--Legionarius (talk) 03:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note, Legionarius. I will make a point to reply in detail after the holidays.  In a nutshell, I aagree with your response, although considering that there are currently hardly any external links on the Chita page, I don't see any harm in leaving this particular link there.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 07:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Enjoy your holidays! I think that 1 or 10,000 links do not make a difference, as long as they conform to guidelines. --Legionarius (talk) 07:50, 23 December 2007 (UTC) Spazeeba! Enjoy your holidays.--Legionarius (talk) 21:50, 24 December 2007 (UTC) --
 * Privet Ezhiki, Hi Legionarius.... Thanks for your considered responses. I appreciate why my link was removed from the Siberia page but, regarding the 'Chita, Russia' page would disagree that my site does not meet the condition "sites that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article". Surely many Wikipedia users visit the Chita page in order to seek information about the city: I would argue that my book provides this in abundance, arguably beyond what a 'Featured article' may be able to encompass. I appreciate the work you both do and remain a huge fan of Wikipedia. Of course, I would like to see the link restored for personal reasons but I also strongly believe that the quantity and quality of information I placed into my book- ie virtually everything I had gleaned about Chita whilst living there for sixteen months- is a resource which would be appreciated by Wikipedia users and, I hope, encourage people to develop a more accurate view of Siberian life and perhaps even a desire to visit Chita.--SiberianSpireite
 * Like I said, I myself am extremely liberal about external links. For me, as long as they are not clearly spam, are on topic, and are not overly broad or too narrow in scope, I just let them be.  I, however, also realize that it is not the approach taken by most other editors, who take cleaning up the external links more seriously than I do, which is why I rarely get myself involved in discussions on this subject.  If you want to contest the removal of your link, you will probably be better off by talking primarily with Legionarius.  If you need an outside opinion, you can also post a review request on WP:AN to get opinions of other administrators.  I doubt they will be much different from Legionarius', but you are sure free to try this option.  Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

My response in Adygea
Please see my response in Adygea article. Korky Day (talk) 09:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I replied there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy New Year

 * Thanks! Hope you have a great New Year yourself!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

What I found
I am sorry if I messed up your plans by my cleaning spree. Having several versions of the same image in a category at the commons makes me a little not sane though. I think that I made about 30 of them myself though before I looked to see what was already there. Your versions were almost exactly like mine, which is kind of weird because the only blank that I could find was pink and not gray. I think I started by putting a gray version at commons:Category:Maps of Russia. Out of the four different versions that existed for a while there, yours were named the best for what the commons would like, so I began the task of asking that my SVG be deleted. This is the point where I determined to go ahead and clean all of the duplicates out. The 'reward' was in reloading the category page at the commons and seeing only one well named image like it there. It would have been a greater rewarding feeling if each of the category did not also contain 4 of those pink png as well -- but it is insane to think that one human being could find all occurances of those and go through the process that I did with your SVG. I mention that now because if you are a teacher and I destroyed next semesters project, finding and taking care of the duplicate png there is an even better assignment, in my humble opinion.

There were some 'problem pages' here. I guess they are historical now (most of them) but they should have updated articles as well, shouldn't they? Here are the articles that you did not have SVG generated for or if you did, I could not find them (and actually, I could by looking at your upload history) but I am not going to. If you can image this, I am about done right now with maps of Russia, no matter how beautiful they are. Here is the problem list:
 * Tajmyr and Taymyr Autonomous Okrug
 * Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
 * Kamchatka_Oblast there is a Image:RussiaKamchatka2007-01.svg for it but it would be nice if they were all named similarly.
 * Komi-Permyak Okrug
 * Evenk Autonomous Okrug
 * Koryak Okrug
 * Sakha Republic

and not an image problem but a template problem I could not fix:
 * Kamchatka Krai

50 states and their politics sends me into a boredom I cannot endure sometimes. This tour of Russia was amazing to me with that in mind. -- carol 13:21, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, Carol! No, you did not mess up any of my plans; in fact, I am glad I won't have to do the tedious task of updating all the maps myself!  I do, however, feel a bit uneasy about the fact that the new maps were added to articles before the changes they show went into effect&mdash;this is one of those case when it is better to add the maps a little later than in advance.  Anyway, what's done is done; I just want to ask you not to do it in advance when the next update comes (which will occur on March 1, 2008, when Agin-Buryat Autonomous Okrug will be merged into Chita Oblast).
 * Now, as for your other questions and concerns: first, I believe that it is a Commons policy to keep both svg and png versions of the same file. I don't frequent the Commons too often, and I don't have a good grasp of that project's policies and procedures, but I am sure there is a perfectly good reason behind this particular approach (svg images, after all, are still not all that widely supported, and the Commons images are intended for use not only by the Wikipedias, but for any other imaginable purposes).


 * Yes, it is commons policy to keep both of the images -- please don't ask me to cite where it is policy at, I remember it because it makes sense. I do not believe it is commons policy to keep four versions of the same png.  The png differ in file size but not in image area size.  Getting rid of the larger file sized pngs makes sense due to the format.  -- Carol 08:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Second, I do not believe that adding these maps to the Commons category:Maps of Russia is a good idea. Adding just the most recent maps to that category would leave readers believing that no additional maps are available and would require recategorizing the whole set every time there is a change (such as the 3/1/8 one I mentioned above), and listing all of the maps in that cat makes having the Category:Maps of Russian federal subjects pretty much pointless.  In my opinion, Category:Maps of Russia should only contain the maps of, well, Russia, and not of its constituent parts.  What do you think?


 * Maps of Russia is an almost upperlevel directory. Those areas at the commons get full very quickly.  There are 70+ SVG in the bunch that I just went through?  If I had scripted the generation of the SVG that I had made (and I can now, I think)  and the other two sets that I tagged for deletion -- if they had all been complete sets, that would have been more than 210 images in that one Category.  My goal is not necessarilly the commons goal, but my goal is to make the category look nice.  Your SVG now have a home in SVG Maps of Russia.  The map that I generated for the page I was originally researching the information for (a range map for where one species of a plant can be found -- one of more than 800 species although that list is getting shorter and shorter and shorter), I don't think it belongs in this category.  It is not generic enough.  A set of maps of the political areas with the individual areas each highlighted in their own map is generic enough.  Does that make sense to you?  The more simple the expectations are of categorizing images, the easier it is for me to just work that way.


 * I have an observation of the making of those sets that is somewhat similar to the ease of working together that I am trying to achieve by keeping things as simple and commonsense as possible. It was one of those nice things, when I first started looking into the fact that I was duplicating the work of others, either in the history of one of the pink blank maps or somewhere -- I read that they were using pink  because that was all that was the only available blank png -- was that you, btw?  I felt like I was doing this great thing by making a gray SVG.  So when I saw that everyone else who had either started to do the same great thing that I started had used the same colors that I did -- putting the images into the right categories should be so uniform, where it makes so much sense that everyone does it either because they know or accidentally like I did.  My logic was good for picking the colors.


 * Here is my question about what you are doing. Do the political borders change that much?  New versions can be uploaded with the same name and there is that date area in the information template which can be updated.  They keep the old versions forever, you just need to click on the date in the upload history to see the old version.  I laugh a little now as I write this because it is like building skyscrappers (only the direction is more like down than up) or playing tetris.  It makes it so easy to actually use the information, since everything is available on the image page.  So when one of the areas gets swallowed up by another, the image with that name stays there and the image page should say what date that region became a part of the other region and a wikilink to the map that swallowed it there in the information template.  Then, no more uploads of that image.  Carol


 * Anyway, I don't generally do much cleanup on Commons (mainly due to a lack of time), so as long as the maps can be found, I'm cool :)


 * Some seem to think that the Commons is a dumping ground. Others seem to think it is perhaps the finest collection of images that are available.  I would not have liked it so much if it had not been a little of both.  Carol


 * Finally, regarding the federal subjects you listed which do not have svg maps. Most of them, as you correctly noted, are historical (although I am not sure why you included the Sakha Republic&mdash;its map is available under Image:Russia - Sakha Republic (2008-01).svg), but you are probably right&mdash;they should have svg versions if only for presentation consistency.  I'll try to put aside some time (probably well into New Year) to generate them, but if you want to do it yourself, I sure won't object :)


 * Hmm, I was either tired or there really is something different about the way it is in the list or names. It is somewhat of a blur now and the word is tedious and not attempted -- with that one exception.  The commons photographers need to decide if they are in Europe or if they are in South America if I am following their photography correctly.  I have bigger problems with the thing that got me looking at your maps in the first place. Carol 08:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, could you clarify what you mean by "template problem" in Kamchatka Krai? I don't see any apparent problems in that article.


 * Obviously, that is either the wrong article or I was wrong. Since I remember failing to fix it, I am going to just forget it now.  I worked out what might have been happening though, if you should find an article with a broken info box.  I was going to check the template to see if the area formula was using the convert template and dividing by zero.  There are definitely two things that I cannot fix.  Something that isn't broken and something that I can't find and don't want to look for. Carol


 * Again, thanks for your help with this cleanup project! It is much appreciated.  Have a great New Year!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:51, 30 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Almost everyone learns by doing, I am convinced of this. If everyone would also clean up the spew from their beginning to learn, things  and brains would be better.  The dark side of my experience is that I really have a strong feeling that I am looking at the incredible mess that my web projects simple tools made.  The feeling is more like the Michigander "OH   MY   GOD" from the nineties and not the Moon Unit Zappa "ohmygahodd" from the eighties and that there are not actual real words to express those feelings without sound, intonation and cadence to assist.


 * Also, I had a carrot cake break and tried to wish the existence of the Dersu Uzala DVD. Did you ever see that movie?  It was one of my favorites about the Russian surveyors of Siberia.  Dersu was the name of the native that they would not have survived without the help of.  Carrot cake is actually part of my memory of seeing movies in that cinema.  Angel Hall, University of Michigan (and wow, their wiki web page is very very 'brandie' -- my University's web page just has that phallic art problem from the 1800s.).  I threw up once while attending a movie there -- it might not have been while seeing Dersu Uzala -- but I can't remember the other movies at the moment, partly because that one was so good.  It seems weird that a large and respectable university like that would have problems with a manufacturer of soda.  It reads like a comic book, maybe Elite and Vulnerable.  They should maybe change their story in that wiki article. -- carol 08:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)