User talk:Ymblanter/2011

Welcome!
Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

If you are interested in Russia-related topics, you may want to check out the WikiProject Russia and its task forces, the Russia Portal and the project discussion page. You might even want to add these pages to your watchlist.

Again, welcome!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 18:42 (UTC)

Здравствуйте. 78.29.68.10 (talk) 19:45, 30 May 2011 (UTC) = C'est Basile/Saratov. --Lawrentia (talk) 16:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Ilyinsko-Podomskoe
Hi. I've nominated Ilyinsko-Podomskoe, an article you worked on, for consideration to appear on the Main Page as part of Did you know. You can see the hook for the article here, where you can improve it if you see fit. User:Russavia User talk:Russavia 17:57, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it is fine.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I hope I'm not killing the mood by constantly re-tweaking your work :) Thanks for everything you've done around here so far! I sure hope there's a lot more where that came from :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 3, 2011; 18:18 (UTC)
 * No, this is actually very much appreciated, since I can then correct similar articles according to the same pattern. It would be also great if you could have a look at one of my river articles and do the same, for instance Viled River or Uftyuga River (Arkhangelsk Oblast), before I start editing other articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear it :) Of course, if anything in my corrections is unclear, I'll be happy to explain. As for the rivers, I'll take a look, but since I mainly stick with editing human geography topics, my feedback isn't going to be nearly as helpful (we don't have anyone as crazy about the rivers as I am about the divisions of Russia :)). Thanks again (and yes, the last rural settlement tweak you've made was my oversight).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 3, 2011; 18:27 (UTC)
 * Good, thanks anyway--Ymblanter (talk) 18:28, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Great to have you on board. Your quality work has been noticed and greatly appreciated. We need quality editors to help improve coverage of our district articles in particular. Look forward to seeing many more articles from you!♦ Dr. Blofeld  15:03, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Ilyinsko-Podomskoye
Materialscientist (talk) 06:03, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Vilegodsky District
Materialscientist (talk) 06:03, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Russian maps of river basins
These could be very useful Such a category would be well worth-while.Dankarl (talk) 16:07, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I have created two maps so far - the Northern Dvina and the Onega - and I will create the category once I am back from holidays in the middle of July.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

A small reward for your work...
Although I hope you will get some assistance from others. Feel free to ask for any help you need, copy-edits can always be done (I have just ce'd the Yakov Bukhvostov article for example) and for large articles there is a requests page. I am a member of the Ukraine project, though not a reader or speaker of Ukrainian, and there are probably a few people from the project who might be willing to help with certain topics.

Best wishes :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 11:03, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for Bukhvostov, I will have a look--Ymblanter (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Привет от Голдберга
Здравствуйте, гражданин Блантер. --DissidentRUS (talk) 22:05, 1 July 2011 (UTC) Yaroslav, I have advised the above user not to post on your talk page, here, if they continue to harrass by posting unwelcome messages on your talk page, shoot me off a message, and admin intervention can be sought. Hopefully this won't be necessary, and they will get the message. --Russavia Let's dialogue 17:07, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Это я атаковал РуВики вчера и позавчера )))--DissidentRUS (talk) 16:13, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * You are not welcome on this page. Please stop posting nonsense here. Also, please stop creating substandard articles. What you create is best deleted and then recreated in a reasonable form. And that you are also a vandal does not help. Be off. --Ymblanter (talk) 16:23, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Если Вы не Ярослав Блантер, гонитель свободы и сторонник цензуры, - тогда извините меня. А так - велкам или не велкам, а здесь вам не Ру ВИки и здесь вы - никто.--DissidentRUS (talk) 16:57, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Basically, the next message from this user will require admin intervention, since he is obviously harrasiing me (when I was still active in Russian Wikipedia, I banned him indefinitely for trolling accompanied by substandard contributions, and apparently he just tries to harrass me here as a kind of retribution).--Ymblanter (talk) 19:55, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Please feel free to let me know as well if you continue to be harassed here.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 12, 2011; 13:48 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I will do. I see that smth was going on here when I was on holidays.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Russavia, I have seen the request at the administrator noticeboard.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:43, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Districts
Just wanted to let you know that I have re-designed the district infobox template. It now supports separate fields for the 2010 and 2002 Censuses (just like the inhabited localities infobox). Apologies it took me so long; I didn't expect the by-district preliminary stats to be released so soon. Please let me know if you find any bugs or have any questions. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 26, 2011; 19:33 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks. Could you may be create a sample template (for instance, Kotlassky District), I would then correct the templates for the other districts I have done previously and use it in the future. There is no hurry. Thanks in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:00, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Will do. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 26, 2011; 20:15 (UTC)

Onega
The template is actually fine, but I misspelled the parameter name in the infobox (and it looks that you copy-pasted it to Velsk). I've fixed it; sorry for not noticing it right away!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 19, 2011; 11:59 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have seen it. I will now correct the other towns of Arkhangelsk Oblast.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:10, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Ru-wiki question
Hi, Yaroslav! I was wondering if you could point me to an appropriate policy/guideline in the Russian Wikipedia which deals with the use of non-Russian sources in ru-wiki. This isn't related to anything specific, but merely to satisfy my curiosity (and as such is not at all urgent). I for some reason am having a hard time finding anything relevant there. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 9, 2011; 16:12 (UTC)
 * ru:Википедия:Авторитетные источники. I am not sure what the current practices are but when I still was active there the really serious issues were with FA and GA: If an article uses foreign language sources, and there are clearly Russian sources, than the article would not be promoted to FA and GA. However, in my opinion, FA and GA selection process in Russian Wikipedia turned into madness already quite some time ago.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:23, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not that familiar with the state of the matters there; all I see is the end result&mdash;the articles are often fairly good, but are rarely referenced properly (regardless of the language of the sources), and, as such, are mostly unusable here. But thanks for the link; I'm not sure why I missed that section on that page. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 9, 2011; 16:29 (UTC)
 * Well, there are many substandard articles over there, take for instance ru:Кенозёрский национальный парк which is a collection of random thoughts of an editor which are POV and could not be referenced; even a translation of my article would be better that this. However, the flagged revisions generally help even though some reviewers just fall flat trying to set records and reviewing 600 articles per hour. Also, sometimes references are set in the external links rather than put as references in the text. It does help either that a number of banned vandals started to randomly insert reference requests in FAs claiming that these are unreferenced whereas typically a relevant reference would be in a neighboring paragraph. This activity, justly regarded as vandalism, does not help to enforce referencing where it is really needed. Btw from roughly 250 articles I worked on here in about half of the cases Russian counterparts contain some errors (some are serious, others are less serious and may even be typos), whereas 90% of English articles when I started to work on them were unsourced.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, our articles are nowhere near the length of the articles in ru-wiki, which explains the lack of sources somewhat. Still, I'd say most of those which are unsourced were at one time or another created by the editors who visited us from ru-wiki, bringing with them the same substandard sourcing habits they practice there :) At any rate, I'd say it's better to have a short and properly referenced article than a long unreferenced one!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 9, 2011; 16:51 (UTC)

Interview with Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Ymblanter, How are you? My name is Matthew Roth and I'm a Storyteller working on the 2011 fundraiser with the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco. In past years, we've relied on Jimbo to carry the bulk of the fundraising weight and he's done very well helping us hit our yearly funding targets. This year, however, we're broadening the scope and reach of the fundraiser by incorporating more voices and different people on the funding banners and appeals that will start running full-time on November 7th. We're testing new messages and finding some really great results with editors and staff members of the Foundation. You can see the current progress of the tests here. I'm curious if you would want to participate in an interview with me as part of this process? The interviews usually last 60 minutes and involve a number of questions about your personal editing experiences, as well as general questions about Wikipedia and its impact in the world. Please let me know by emailing mroth (at) wikimedia.org. Thanks! Matthew (WMF) 22:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Having my name on the fundraiser would contradict to the policies of my employer.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Office Hours
Hey Ymblanter. Brandon Harris, Howie Fung, Fabrice Florin and I will be holding a second Office Hours session on IRC in #wikimedia-office on Thursday, 3 November at 24:00 UTC. This unusually late time is aimed at permitting East Coast editors, who would normally be at work, to attend. We will be discussing the new Article Feedback Tool designs; if you have any questions about Office Hours, or how to get on IRC, feel free to leave me a message on my talkpage. I hope to see you there; thank you for your suggestions about comparing to other wikis :). They're being taken into account. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I am in Europe. I hope this upcoming log will be published as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It will be - want me to drop you a note when it's up? And yeah, I'm in Europe too. Thankfully I enjoy this job enough not to hate the sleep schedule disruption :P. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Well, last time you posted it on foundation-l - this time it will be equally fine with me. Participating on a working day for me just would not work out - I need to be in the office on Friday at 8:30.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, new logs are here too :). New plans call for future sessions to be held on Friday evenings; would that work better? We'll be alternating timezones; one week for europeans, one week for americans, one week for europeans...and so on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Txs--Ymblanter (talk) 08:13, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:Russia in the Signpost
Hi, Yaroslav. Presumably you've already seen this invitation; may I ask you to consider answering a question or two as well? You are one of the more active project participants at the time, after all :) I'm planning to answer some questions myself as well. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 15:16 (UTC)
 * That's fine, but you understand I have no idea of some of the issues, like for instance assessment (sometimes I see quite similar articles assessed differently), or GA/FAs. I obviously only can address the issues I am involved with. What should be the best way to organize/coordinate the response?--Ymblanter (talk) 15:47, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It is my understanding that the interviewer is OK with different people answering some or all of the questions. I'm sure all of the responses won't make it into the Signpost, but the more they have to choose from, the better. Obviously, if you can't/don't want to answer a certain question, feel free to skip it. Even if you only answer one, it's still better than nothing. I don't know yet how many people are going to participate, and while I myself am planning to try giving an answer to every question there, it's a holiday week here in the US, so I might not make it if they need this in time for the next issue, say. So, whatever you feel comfortable with tackling, it would be greatly appreciated! I'll post something on the project's talk page in case there are some lurkers who might be interested, but I wanted to check with those who've been sent an invitation first.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 15:56 (UTC)
 * Good, will do tonight (in two-three hours).--Ymblanter (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks a bunch!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 21, 2011; 16:37 (UTC)

Извинения
В прошлом я устроил на вас персональные атаки и писал гадости. Засим извиняюсь. Мне не следовало так поступать и я обычно так не поступаю. Голдберг.--94.228.193.11 (talk) 22:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Russia task forces
Hello! I suggest you to sign up for some of the WikiProject Russia task forces. I believe you might be particularly interested in the Human geography of Russia and Physical geography of Russia. Judging by your non-geographic contributions, you might also like to join the Demographics and ethnography of Russia, Religion in Russia and Visual arts in Russia. The full list of task forces may be found on the main page of WikiProject Russia, top right corner, or in the Template:WikiProject Russia/Navbox.

You know, we need more participants, a "critical mass", to start delegating some tasks or sharing them between editors. You are a great contributor, and your work on the regions of Russian North is very important, so I hope you join the project formally. Grey Hood  Talk  01:30, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the invitation and for the high opinion on my contribution here. I am following the talk page of the project, and I will now also start following the task forces pages, but as a matter of principle I do not want to join wikiprojects and task forces formally. There are several good reasons for this, which go back to my past activities in Russian Wikipedia, and the main reason is that I want to remain formally independent and not to be associated with any projects (the exceptions are WMF and elected posts/bodies, none of them apply here). My strategy for the time being is also to stay above 98% contribution share in the article space, though this is difficult and probably will need to be abandoned in the future.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Since at some point the planned activities will start, I guess it is clear from my contribution what I am doing: With a few exceptions, I move geographically along Russia administrative division, taking/creating articles on human geography, natural geography, history, and very occasionally arts and biographies and bringing them to the start level. If an article exists, is already at the start level and is not crap, I usually just give it a bye, may be doing minor copyediting or adding some info, but not rewriting the structure. I have finished Arkhangelsk Oblast, Vologda Oblast must be ready in mid-December, then the next one will be Novgorod Oblast. For the time being, I will continue with this activity.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, most likely this activity will continue to take much of my time.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That's OK. I need to ask you you still: would you mind an honorary membership? (see here for example)
 * I would prefer to be not listed on the pages and do some useful work (which can well be planned on the task force pages) than to be listed and do nothing. So please do not add me.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:43, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, as you wish. Grey Hood   Talk  15:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * When you proceed to Leningrad Oblast, Saint Petersburg and Oryol Oblast, please notify me, I have connections there and may procure some photos and help with some articles.
 * Sure, thanks. I am a bit hesitant to proceed with Leningrad Oblast, since it can easily keep me busy for a year, but at some point I will need to do it anyway.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:43, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This is interesting. So, there will be a similar one-month initiative in 2012 as well? Grey Hood   Talk  09:49, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There will be WLM2012 September next year, most likely worldwide. The exact list of participating countries might be known late (in 2011, it was not certain whether Russia and Hungary would be able to participate until mid-September), but I normally expect that Russia will participate, and the monuments of all country will be eligible. How exactly and in what form it will participate will be determined by WM-Russia, with whom I have ... hmm ... strained relations to put it mildly, but I am involved in the preparation of lists of monuments, which is a precondition for the participation.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:43, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. I traveled in early September and was busy at work then, so I missed the WLM2011. Will watch for the next edition. Grey Hood   Talk  15:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

History of the administrative division of Russia
Thanks for taking care of the merger proposal there. Since it was you who took the action, could you please also close the merger discussion on the talk page? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 28, 2011; 15:08 (UTC)

Кирилловский район
Могу предоставить ряд источников, в том числе библиографических редкостей. --Wolkodlak (talk) 09:52, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Спасибо, но я не совсем понимаю, что с ними делать. Статья, на мой взгляд, сейчас необходимую минимальную содержит, если дополнять дальше, надо писать ХС, а это не моя специальность.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:34, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Revolution square
Generally Revolution square in English news coverage of the event. Yes, an article would be helpful. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:26, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I already started, now I am adding the info, and we can already make redirects.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:31, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Anadyr
Thanks for taking care of Anadyr. I'm away from most of my sources today, but I will reference the second part of that sentence tomorrow(-ish) (Chukotka AO recently published a registry of the administrative-territorial units, which explicitly states that Anadyr is not a part of Anadyrsky District). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 13, 2011; 15:08 (UTC) As for the infobox, I'll take care of it later this week. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 13, 2011; 15:20 (UTC)
 * Is OKATO not good enough? Anyway, I think the infobox of the article badly needs to be updated, then all references will go there.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:14, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I try to avoid using OKATO whenever possible. The local legislative acts are always more up-to-date and more accurate than OKATO, which often retains information that's been outdated for years or does not update it properly. OKATO remains the best source for some federal subjects which don't have detailed laws and registries on the administrative-territorial divisions (Arkhangelsk Oblast is one example, although they are in the process of adopting such registries), but in most cases (Chukotka included), the local laws are the way to go.
 * Good. I used OKATO for urban localities in Vologda Oblast (not for districts). By the end of the week, I expect to finish all of them (I still have one district, four localities, and then for another week I will be finishing the articles related to Vologda Oblast but not to localities). I think at some point you will walk through them correcting things, then OKATO links will be a point of attention. The next one, which I hope to begin by the end of the month, will be Novgorod Oblast, and I will need your help to check one of the districts (I will probably begin with Pestovsky District, but this is unlikely to occur until at least the middle of the next week). Also I hope at some moment you will find time to do the same for administrative division of Arkhangelsk and Vologda Oblasts the same you have done for Murmansk Oblast. This is not urgent in any way, but I am done with these articles (except for a piece of info for Vologda, to be added this week). --Ymblanter (talk) 15:29, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as Vologda Oblast goes, OKATO is fairly accurate, so it's OK, but yes, I do have plans to eventually replace all OKATO references with the local legislature (and that goes especially for the "administrative divisions of..." series, most of articles in which which use nothing but OKATO). If you have any questions as you go, by all means don't hesitate to ask me; I'll be happy to help where I can. Also, I am planning to review both Arkhangelsk and Vologda Oblast, although I am hesitant to say when exactly it will happen. And thanks (again) for working on those, by the way&mdash;having you on board cuts my estimated time to complete the work I plan to complete in half, so it's merely thirty-five years now instead of seventy :)))—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 13, 2011; 15:39 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks--Ymblanter (talk) 15:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)