Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Russia-related Wikipedia notice board/Archive02

Happy New Year!
May it be safe and rewarding and peaceful — and here is to the happiest one! - Introvert   talk  22:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

History of jewellery in Ukraine

 * Simultaneously, small colonies of north-eastern Slavs along the Volga River and its tributaries were borrowing some of the better Rus handicraft traditions. In combination with local cultural traditions as well as under the influence of Baltic people they contributed to the new culture that would later be called Russian.

I'm new on en.wikipedia.org and don't know english well. Could someone tell me is the paragraph above normal for english wikipedia or it is a propaganda?

And please tell User:Bryndza that thing in the picture on the right can not be a necklace or torc (just imagine it on your neck). It's a diadem or crown. I fail to explain it myself (maybe he just feigns incomprehension).

thanks in advance --Decemberster 15:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC) P.S. Sorry for my english


 * I tried to remove the odious passage on several occasions, but was reverted, accused of "cut & paste" moves and biting newbies and even declared a "russian nazi". After that, I don't bother to edit Ukrainian topics. Hopefully you'll be luckier.--Ghirla | talk 19:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC) P.S. Your English is OK.
 * I choose to abstain from editing this article also because firstly, I don't know much about jewelry :) - but secondly, thinking that it might be okay to let this article settle down a bit, and revisit later perhaps. The quoted phrase certainly sounds dubious and needs correction. Prankish "necklace" wear... some merry season joke? posted a note at the article's talk on this one... -  Introvert  ?@ 08:05, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I emailed the author already. I know him as a reasonable editor and I am sure this will soon be resolved. Let's just treat each other nicely except of known trolls. While at Ukrainian topics, please check Khreschatyk, a new article. Thanks, --Irpen 08:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi guys, I have answered your concerns about torc-crown in Talk:History of jewellery in Ukraine. Sorry, the pictures are not clear (they are from video. So you could not see details.--Bryndza 18:11, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It would have been better news if your answered our concern about the Russophobic passage in your article. --Ghirla | talk 17:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

New pest: Russian trolls?
As if there were not enough nuisance involved in fighting the Big Three - Bonaparte, AndriyK, Molobo - there seems to evolve a new breed of Russian trolls, as represented by User:Nixer and User:Tt1. Once the community looked forward to a week of easy editing, when Nixer got blocked for another seven days, there appears Tt1, who shares with his more experienced counterpart a passion for military ranks and insignia. His self-imposed mission is to spawn stubs with the same content: "A slew of further awards, records, movie roles, and growth of popularity followed, most notably the title of People's Artist of the USSR, the highest honour that could be bestowed to a cinema artist, awarded to her". This phrase was pillaged by him from the article on Alla Pugacheva. His quest started with Valentina Leonteva, which I attempted to bring to normalcy, and continued with Klara Luchko, Lyudmila Gurchenko, Margarita Nazarova, and Ekaterina Zelyonaya. It doesn't matter to him that the last two were merely Народная артистка РСФСР. His IP 81.218.194.152 launched a silly revert war over Заслуженная артистка РСФСР Lidiya Ruslanova, neglecting the links provided by me to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. I don't want to be blocked for silly revert warring, so I let someone less irascible to speak to this guy. Sorry for my tone, I just have no patience with him. --Ghirla | talk 17:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ghirlandajo, Tt1 is a newbee, do not bite him. abakharev 23:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Please see User_talk:Encyclopedist. --DmitryKo 02:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:lang-ru
Template lang-ru leaves the text roman, like this йцукен, while most of other similar templates make the text italic, like qwerty or qwerty. In the result the Russian names look weird in the list of other language names. Is it OK if I will change the lang-ru template? Or is there special reasons not to italize Russian names? abakharev 10:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I would oppose. I remember seeing a request somewhere to unitalicize Cyrillic text because many Cyr. letters change their shape. Humus sapiens 12:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I would also oppose. I've seen similar complains about italics Cyrillic letters more than once.&mdash;Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 14:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I would support. I never use the template, it's easier for me to enter Cyrillic letters and to italicize them. There is some glitch with the template, see the articles where it is featured. Hopefully someone will be able to fix it. --Ghirla | talk 15:08, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Never mind, the problem was with Template:langWithName and I fixed it myself. --Ghirla | talk 15:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Regarding this glitch, I didn't check this discussion until right now but I did check/fix two of those glitches introduced into the lang templates earlier today, lang-ru and lang-be (sorry was my anon edit on lang-ru - I was having huge troubles in logging in, or doing anything at all and of course was able to log right in after the first save finally went through.) The question I have though, what's the point in adding interwikies to those templates?  Is it a good/bad idea, anyone can help clarify? So may be the fix should have been more radical :) and the i-wikies should be deleted altogether just like User:Ghirlandajo fixed the Template:langWithName.  -  Introvert  ?@ 21:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I would also support, everyone italises the letters nonetheless with or without the use of the template, so the fact that the template does not italise the text only overcomplicates the matter, not to say creates more confusion. MureninC 15:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that quotations in italics instead of regular style would look more in line with other foreign-lang quotations. I too saw the prior discussion. And I am wondering whether the distortion is a general issue with Cyrillic letters, or maybe it is only demonstrating itself in a particular font face -- and if the latter, then in which one? Is it Arial-Cyr? or if it is something exotic, then maybe it'd be OK. -  Introvert  ?@ 21:45, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It happens with quite a few fonts, including the most common ones and, more important, those set as defaults in Wikipedia skins. E.g.: т&rarr;т; г&rarr;г, д&rarr;д;.  It's very confusing for those who only know Cyrillic block letters.&mdash;Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 22:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Right... I see and I've just tried a few different ones myself... I agree it is confusing.  Let's stay with regular style then. Thank you! -  Introvert  ?@ 22:11, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Sergei Lavrov
the articel does not fit with bio at Information and press department -- 172.208.228.121 02:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I have edited it slightly trying to make it in line with the source abakharev 07:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Image:Slavs.jpg
Hi, just wondering if by any chance anyone here recognize this image and could tell where it came from? It is used in the Slavic peoples article, but no one seems to know where it came from, and therefore it's copyright status is dodgy. The uploader thinks it's from the cover of some book, but doesn't know what book (he found it in a public FTP archive). --Sherool (talk) 22:27, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I was adding a comment below and coun dot help but notice this one. Allow me to point out that the image is misleading. The picture shows "Northern Slavs", rather than Slavs in general. Southern Slavs look quite different. Mukadderat 19:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We have arrived to the racist notion of who should be considered a "pure" Slav and who is a half-blood. --Ghirla | talk 09:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * there is no speech about halfbloods here. Northern Slavs do differ from Southern Slavs in terms of stereotypes. Are you saying that this picture is a good representation of a "typical" Bulgarian? `'mikka (t) 17:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Russian bell ringing
I was making a small edit in Campanology article and I think it misses something. It seems to me that Russsian bell ringing tradition differs from the two described in "Campanology": Carillon ringing and Change ringing. If I am right, then I hope to have a pleasure to see a new article. Mukadderat 19:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes/Political Parties
I'd like to bring to the attention that now there are some cool userboxes with Russian political parties, see Userboxes/Political Parties. Enjoy! Cheers, MureninC 16:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC).
 * Great selection I'd say. You may also want to check this out before considering placing one on your userpage: Wikipedia talk:Proposed policy on userboxes.&mdash;Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 17:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * What matters is that they exist now and are available. :-) Chëërs, MureninC 18:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Second Battle of Zürich
The article traditionally featured the following sentence: "Betrayed by the Austrians but still undefeated, Suvorov heroically retreated across the Alps, performing a military feat unheard of since the time of Hannibal." Claiming this was an "unsourced POV pushing", User:Pecher repeatedly deleted it. Please comment on the issue. --Ghirla | talk 15:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:DYK archive on this board
Maybe it is better to have the archive of the Russia-related WP:DYK question in a separate file? It grows very fast and soon would be comparable with the rest of the notice board? abakharev 23:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

History of Latvia
Currently the article is replete with unqualified and unsourced nationalist claims, e.g., "The post war Soviet occupation implemented repression and genocide against the Latvians of different ethnic nationalities". Please review and help to bring the article to normalcy. --Ghirla | talk 10:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya
The heir of Kersnovskaya, User:Chapkovski gave me permissions to download a few drawings of her for the wiki. I have downloaded quite a few actually, see commons:Category:Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya. The drawings may be useful not only for the Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya article but for many others, especially Gulag-related. Please note that the explicit attribution of the works to Kersnovskaya is required and the courtesy note to Kersnovskaya Foundation is very desirable. abakharev 02:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Be careful about this -- anything you upload must be of a license appropriate for wikipedia (and cannot be explicitly and solely for Wikipedia -- they will be passed on to all our (possibly commercial) mirrors, etc. --Improv 13:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I know. I have an e-mail exchange with the heir (Igor Chapman) and he expicitely agreed on the CC-BY-2.5 license. I can publish the emails, if needed abakharev 01:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Stavropol
Could someone take a look at the external links section of Stavropol? Anons have been adding to that section in edit patterns that suggest the links may not be appropriate, but my Russian isn't quite up to task to let me determine that. I have been keeping an eye on a number of India-related articles that have similar edit patterns, and have seen people add links to personal blogs, restaurants, and particular travel agencies, all of which I zapped. --Improv 13:49, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Image:TallinnKirche.jpg
Estonian editors remove the image from Tallinn. There is an interesting discussion on Talk:Tallinn. --Ghirla | talk 15:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Category:Cities and towns in Russia (redux)
I believe the category has grown too large and stopped being informative, so it's time to split it into subcats. I propose to take subcats of Category:Towns in Germany as a model. We may split the category into Category:Cities and towns in Central Russia, Category:Cities and towns in South Russia, Category:Cities and towns in the Volga Region, Category:Cities and towns in the Urals, Category:Cities and towns in Siberia, and Category:Cities and towns in the Russian Far East. Let me know what you think. --Ghirla | talk 10:02, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe use the seven administrative okrugs of Russia? (To my shame I do not know which oblast belongs to which okrug but it can esaily be found). )Or the subjects of the federation: Cities in Saint Petersburg Oblsat? Cities in Chechnya, etc. Although 100 subcats seems like an overkill. abakharev 11:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe we'd better stick to federal districts, though I merged North-West and Central Russia in my proposal, as I see no signal difference between these core parts of the country. We should understand that Russia is not an average country with several dozen towns. We have thousands of them, so subcats are sorely needed to make the categorization serve the purpose it was intended for. --Ghirla | talk 15:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd rather have them subcatted by federal subjects instead of federal districts, because the latter will eventually be filled up as well (especialy the Central Federal District cat, which seems to have the most towns). But I don't have strong objections either way.&mdash;Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 15:19, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Sarikamish
User:Altau is engaged in revert warring on Battle of Sarikamish. A third opinion is welcome. --Ghirla | talk 14:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Grunwald
There is some strange revert war/discussion with some anons/new users, concerning Lithuanian/Belorussian names and such. Perpahs some of you'd be more qualified ot deal with this?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:50, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Russian image copyrights
From the image copyright tags discussion, linked above:
 * I have placed both PD-USSR and Sovietpd on TfD. Please see there for pointers to the relevant discussions. Lupo 10:33, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

--132.72.45.64 14:07, 13 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Let's try to avoid discussions spread out over a multitude of pages: comments at the TfD, please. You'll find pointers to previous discussions on these two image tags there, too. Lupo 16:29, 13 February 2006 (UTC) (Note: I also de-transcluded the tags in the copy-paste job by the anon above.)

Aleksey or Alexey? Aleksander or Alexander?
Carlossuarez46 asks a very good question and I do not know what to answer.

Transferred from my talk page:

Thanks again for your comment on the talk page. Two questions I have, maybe there is consensus among Russian editors: 1. transliteration of names: should we use the "usual" English style (e.g., "Alexei" over "Alexey"; "Alexander" over "Aleksandr") or use the opposite. Usually, I will not change these from whatever exists, even if most of the source material in English language differs from the article title. However, if I find a Russian government site that has a transliteration, I will assume that it is somehow "official" and change the article's title. 2. an interesting coincidence on Alexander Tkachyov politician versus Alexandr Tkachyov gymnast -- in Russian, the first names are identical, so I am somewhat unhappy leaving them different in English. However, either patronymics or job descriptions would need to be added to one or both, so I have left them with a disambig header for someone better (you?) to solve this. I have also had a difficult time finding source material in English for some of the governors of less well visited regions, but I am trying to put in a one-liner to get the subject some humanity, rather than just a resumé. Carlossuarez46 22:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I am affraid there is no consensus on the matter I am aware of. The general rule is that if a person is reasonably notable in English world (hundreds of google hits ot more than 10 google books, etc.) and there is clearly a most common spelling of the name, then WP:IAR and use the most common spelling. If it is not the case then use a rule, but I am not aware what the rule is. abakharev 22:39, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
 * You are correct, there is neither consensus nor regulations. DmitryKo is currently working on a proposal to that effect, which is located here.  I expect it will eventually merge with the WP:CYR initiative.  At this time, just use common sense or just follow what Alex recommended above.  I myself prefer the x-versions unless there is a very strong reason to use "ks" or something else, but that's just me.  Don't trust Russian sources too much either&mdash;most of the Russians who need to convert a Russian name into English are clueless themselves.&mdash;Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 23:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The main reason I defer to Russian government sites is that sometimes I can imagine that the politician or his/her PR folks have a preference that makes its way into the official website. As for Pravda or other non-official sources, they are sometimes not consistent. Carlossuarez46 23:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Nah, you are giving them too much credit. Most of the time the way they spell a politician's name on his website in English only depends on that politician translator's preferences :)  If the person is relatively unknown to the English-speaking audience, then for our purposes it's pretty safe to write his name in whatever way it is more convenient, especially if you need it for dab purposes.  Anglicized names usually work just fine.&mdash;Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 23:34, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Article improvement drive
How about to make "Salo"  a featured article? Не слабо? mikka (t) 07:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * On the same note, I am turning Putin's favorite song into an FA. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 08:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Imamate, Dagestan
Thank you for addressing my curiosity request with campanology. Recently I came across anothe topic related to Russia. When I was cleaning the disambig page Imamate, looked into a small Imamate, Dagestan stub and expanded it a little from my poor knowledge. I think you may want to improve it further. Mukadderat 11:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Prokhorovka
Please review Battle of Prokhorovka; I combined this piece of anti-Soviet propaganda from two places in wikipedia. mikka (t) 00:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Women in Russian/Soviet military history
Our colleague Durova came up with a suggestion: "If my understanding is correct, the Soviet Union had more female combatants in World War II than any other other major participant. If you're willing to handle the bulk of the research I can supplement a little and copyedit on whatever aspect of the subject strikes your fancy". As I have little expertise in Soviet history, I ask those who take interest in the Soviet period to colloborate with Durova on this worthwhile subject. Thanks, Ghirla -трёп- 13:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Image:Flag of Russia.svg
As of now, I ask that anyone who wishes to use the Russian flag on WP (or any other language) to please use this flag drawing, since the other flag drawings have been obsoleted by me and my bot. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 03:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Template talk:Campaignbox Axis-Soviet War
Please take a look at this discussion. Currently, we have only one campaignbox for the Great Patriotic War which onviously cannot include hundreds or probably even thousands of offensive and defensive operations that the greatest war in history comprised. Recently, a Romanian editor started an article about a minor action which is not mentioned even in the most circumstantial accounts of the war. He included it in the battebox where it is present on the par with the Battle of Stalingrad and the Siege of Leningrad. More recently still, a Spanish editor wrote an article about even lesser engagement, also won by the Axis, which he included in the battlebox next to Kursk, Berlin, etc. Therefore, I suggest that the campaignbox should contain the most important battles only, while minor engagements should be referenced in regional campaignboxes. I would welcome comments. --Ghirla -трёп- 09:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

New stub templates
Wikiproject Stub sorting has created new stub templates to be used instead of Russia-geo-stub where possible: Each of these templates adds stubs to one of the subcategories of Category:Russia geography stubs.
 * Centre-Russia-geo-stub or Center-Russia-geo-stub for the Central Federal District (a rename has been proposed)
 * South-Russia-geo-stub for the Southern Federal District
 * Northwest-Russia-geo-stub for the Northwestern Federal District
 * FarEast-Russia-geo-stub for the Far Eastern Federal District
 * Siberia-geo-stub for the Siberian Federal District
 * Volga-geo-stub for the Volga Federal District

In addition, the temlpate Urals-geo-stub may be used for the Urals Federal District, but it adds articles to the Category:Russia geography stubs. The corresponding subcategory has not been created for now due to insufficient number of stubs.

All existing stubs have been marked with these templates where possible. Conscious 09:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Napoleon's invasion of Russia
In case someone wants to comment. --Ghirla -трёп- 08:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Pestering
User:Piotrus set out on a new a new campaign - requesting references for every sentence on Russian history, no matter whether taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress Country Studies, or belonging to common knowledge. I believe his aim is to make other editors entertain him with endless discussions, instead of creating new articles and stuff. A classic sample of his edits: deletion of wikilinks, duplication of images, requests for references to every phrase of a EB1911 text. Please voice your opinions on Talk:Kievan Rus, Talk:Muscovy, or Talk:Nicholas Repnin. --Ghirla -трёп- 15:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Bezprizornyi
This article is up for Prod. 5 hours left. Does anybody want to object to prod and turn this into an article? I am sure we have what to say on orphan-ness in Russia, past and present. Unfortunately, I have no time to do this myself. - the.crazy.russian   (T)   (C)   (E)  14:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * R.I.P. lol - the.crazy.russian   (T)   (C)   (E)  02:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Alexei Romanov
While making a missing redirect from Alexei Romanov I was surprized to find the target  would be Alexis I of Russia. In view of raging nationalisms of personal names all over wikipedia: Poles, Persians/Iranians, Turks, etc., I find it amusing to see this non-Russian name of a Tsar. How about renaming? `' mikka (t) 16:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * "Alexis Romanov" is one of those "hsitorical" spellings that are so deeply embedded in the language that they become almost impossible to uproot. At print.google.com, "Alexis Romanov" wins by a landslide. Ahasuerus 23:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Scorpion (computer)
Please confirm that Scorpion (computer) is a "very widespread" computer in Russia. the article triggerred my bullshit detector. `'mikka (t) 22:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Google on Скорпион+Z80 gives 170 hits, most of these are on some modification of this computer. It looks like it was popular in the earlier 2000s abakharev 23:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)