Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Estonia/Archive 1

Constitution of Estonia
I object to the choice of the source for the constitution (see Talk:Constitution of Estonia). The other source is better as to the terminology. Andres 10:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If the other source is better for terminology, it probably makes no difference - I cannot copy and paste or use identical words in any case. Additionally, the format of the constitution article will probably be changing; I'm laying out a skeleton now, and will be changing it to resemble the United States Constitution, as this is a featured article.  I will look at your source, though.  I didn't get a chance to yesterday; parts of the US lost power and I have a 100 page paper to do. Srose  (talk)  13:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Question
Does anyone know of any Estonian news sources? I have a google news alert sent to me every time they list a story on Estonia, but google is somewhat biased towards US and British news.  Srose  (talk)  14:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

www.baltictimes.com is a good source. Martintg 10:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

http://www.topix.net/world/estonia is a source, but I can't yet say how good it is. There is also http://www.estoniatimes.com/ -- the content seems to be almost the same. Eesti Elu ( http://www.eesti.ca/ ) - an Estonian newspaper in Toronto - has some pages in English.

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 17:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 20:59, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Bilateral relations discussion
I would like to invite you all to participate in a discussion at this thread regarding bilateral relations between two countries. All articles related to foreign relations between countries are now under the scope of WikiProject Foreign relations, a newly created project. We hope that the discussion will result in a more clean and organized way of explaining such relationships. Thank you.  Ed  ¿Cómo estás? 18:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Romeo
Hello, Estonia!

Why was Romeo, a disambiguation page, given one of your project templates? I've removed it, but if there's a reason for it, perhaps you could explain at the talk page? AndyJones 12:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my bad - apparently script got the wrong page. Thanks for removing it. DLX 12:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Super, thanks. AndyJones 12:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Eesti Maapäeva Nõukogu
Hi guys, it seems we have a little situation here. 'Eesti Maapäeva Nõukogu', the one that issued the Estonian Declaration of Independence on 24 February 1918 is also translated as Estonian National Council, at least thats the way it is on President of Estonia web page. http://www.president.ee/en/estonia/ will do some research to sort it out but it seems since it's on the president web page, it's official and our Swedish Estonian friends would need to come up with a new aricle on wiki, I'd suggest Estonian National Council in Sweden. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Termer (talk • contribs) 11:20, 25 June 2007

WP-EE awards for best contributors...
Since we have recently had some great contributions from some users I felt it would be great if we had a some sort of (semi)official recognition award for them. so I drew this:



Please let me know what you think... --Alexia Death 12:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I like the look of the award. Andres 10:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * So do I. How does it scale?  Typical barnstars are smaller.
 * Aga Suur Papist Kuldauraha kuluks ka ära. Tegelikult vist isegi kaks; Vesipruule leiab Wikipediast Tatikaist rohkem. Digwuren 16:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It is a svg. It scales perfectly by nature:) example: [[Image:Wp-ee-award.svg|60px]][[Image:Wp-ee-award.svg|100px]][[Image:Wp-ee-award.svg|150px]]
 * --Alexia Death 17:22, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW: Size can be made to indicate rank.


 * I like it. Tipp-topp. biggins 02:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The image looks very nice and the idea of the WPE barnstar is great. However, to avoid confusion, only one size should be used - for example, some editors with many barnstars keep them in a table, displaying only a small image and link. Most used size for barnstar images seems to be around 110x110 to 128x128. Alexia, would you design rest of the barnstar template as well?
 * And Digwuren: no. Wikipedia does not work that way.

DLX 06:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Digwurren: honey not vinegar ;)
 * DLX: I can do it if you pont my nose to the right direction in making templates... Ive never done one...--Alexia Death 10:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I've never done any as well, except minor changes - but Help:Template is what you need, I think. DLX 15:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking good! the only thought I have is regarding possible symbolism. The way Hirundo is heading down-backwards from-right-to-left direction might symbolize pessimism even though the line of action is vertically upwards, the head is directed lower and down. There is directional symbolism in every culture and in the western tradition as we read from right to left, every picture has a meaning how silhouettes are directed according to it. it might look weird though in case the head was directed up-right. But I'd play around with it and see if you could get it saying, we going forward and higher instead of back&down like the silhouette of the bird is telling me now.--Termer 16:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Is it better now?--Alexia Death 18:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * this is my template making test

moved below
 * --Alexia Death 19:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * This template making is easyer than I thought. feel free to improve ;)
 * Template:Wp-ee contrib award, heres a shortcut to the template for you.--Alexia Death 19:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wou, flying upwards looks much better then I expected. I love it! There are 2 little things that I'm not too sure of. I'd try how it looks if the wings had some air between the circle. Now they are just about touching it. Usually you'd leave some space there or vice versa, overlap the shapes I think. The distance should be perhaps similar to the white spaces between the leaves for ex of a third or 2 thirds of it. And perhaps, the flag up there, if it wasnt as wide as the circle itself maybe wouldn't feel that “heavy” up there and would make a nice offset perhaps if it was a little narrower. See if you have time to play around with those 2 things if you think it's worth it. Otherwise looking much better i think.--Termer 07:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I know I am too fond of shadows, and I am designer with bad taste, but here are my mods: :)




 * The look of the award is very good! good job! but the scales could maybe also tell what are the differences of the different sizes and why one person gets bigger size award than the other. i think it could be explained within the award. Also, i think the different sizes are good. they just need explanations. Avjoska 08:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I like the shadows on the lower part but I tend to to agree with Digwurren on the flag. Ill do something with it and lets see how that goes. --Alexia Death 21:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thats looking good indeed! maybe the swallow ended up a bit too small, I might scale it up just a bit but other than that, very nice! Shadows and highlights are also nicely added!--Termer 09:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I like the shadow effect on the round part, but it looks somehow "dirty" on the upper, flag part. Digwuren 17:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

..But then again, instead of scaling the swallow up a bit, you might choose to do something with this plain white circle now, anyway, I'm sure you know what I mean. Good Work!--Termer 09:32, 26 June 2007 (UTC) ...OK, just one more idea. What if the shadows and highlights were added horizontally to the flag part. Now the blue and white are curving separately. If horizontal then it would simplify it a bit the flag would remain more like a one shape. Anyway, just a thought...--Termer 09:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

How about this?--Alexia Death 21:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC) Hi Alexia, if it was up to me, out of the last 2 versions, I'd choose the previous one.-Termer
 * I prefer the latter one; largely due to the 'dirty look' issue I moaned about above. Digwuren 08:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello Alexia, there must be thousands of Barn-star designs, so I wouldn't agonise over the design of one award. I like them all. Martintg 23:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Alexia, once you're on it, I'd request another one from you. "Outstanding Soviet Censor Barn-star" for editors that have pushed the Soviet POV the most on articles related to the Baltic countries. I have a coupler of editors on my list already that I think have earned it big time...--Termer 08:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I know who you mean... But, alas, someone can take that the wrong way... Like as an encouragement to keep going :P...--Alexia Death 18:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

So lets declare this current form of the image final? Any suggestions for template or is it time to give it out to people?--Alexia Death 18:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

WP-EE award template discussion
Sample:


 * I think that barnstar should have a fixed width and somewhat more informative message - perhaps also separate image and text part of the barnstar? I'd like to fool around with the layout a bit tomorrow, if you don't mind? DLX 20:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * the template is yours to mess with:)--Alexia Death 10:40, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, did some changes... used (crappy) HTML, though. I am most definitely not dead set on this design, especially colors - but it does stand out better, imho. DLX 11:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. Ill take a look at it too.--Alexia Death 12:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you think of the changes?--Alexia Death 12:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks very nice, the rounding was a bit overkill - and would have been visible only on Mozilla-based browsers anyway. DLX 13:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Reviving Effort of the Month
While cleaning up the project page, I thought about Effort of the Month section. I think it would be a good idea to start doing those again - with the goal of getting one article every month to featured article status, or, if that is perhaps an overkill, at least try to get one article every month to be listed as good article. Also, perhaps we could do an "Effort of the Week" type things where we try to get newly created articles to Did you know section - and, I do think we should try to get some Estonia-related pictures to featured status as well.

Now, as for current (July 2007) candidate - Estonia in World War II by - that seems to be perhaps best candidate for WP:DYK (we have until 8th July to nominate it) and later it has a good chance for WP:GA or WP:FA. It needs cleaning up and expanding a bit (especially wikifying), but Termer has done an excellent work with it.

And as for the month of August - I noticed that we don't have an article Culture of Estonia, which, imho, is badly needed - as a sort of main article about all the stubs/articles about theaters, movies, bands etc, but also giving a historical overview of Estonian culture.

DLX 06:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Translation of vald
The Estonian vald should be translated as Municipality. Commune is not justified. Andres 21:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

If I am right then the titles and mentions should be changed. Andres 21:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not a native speaker (my grandfather is); I only speak a little Estonian, so I think I'll take you at your word. If no one has any objections, I think I'll turn all of the "communes" into "municipalities".  Srose  (talk)  13:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In fact, "vald" translates in this context as "rural municipality". There are two types of "local goverments" in Estonia: "rural municipalities" and "cities" (in the constitution translation you are using: "districts" and "towns"). However, it's seems to be more natural to use "Municipality" instead of "Rural Municipality" in the names of the rural municipalities.


 * Earlier, here in the English Wikipedia, "Parish" was used, but "parish" is the counterpart of "kihelkond", a traditional unit. "Commune" is a unit of local government in general.


 * So, it's my opinion that "Municipality" is better. This a translation problem for English speakers, not for Estonian speakers. In the web, there are instances of both "municipality", "rural municipality",  "commune" and "parish".  Andres 18:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Probably the variants (except for "parish", which is ambiguous between "vald" and "kihelkond") should be redirects. Andres 18:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably the best nomenclature would have it as: Valjala Rural Municipality. It's the most unambiguous way, as sometimes a rural municipality and a city have coinciding names. Andres 10:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think Shire is the correct English term for Rural Muncipality. Martintg 10:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe Avjoska is taking care of the commune-to-municipality changes. Srose (talk)  13:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it would be best to use the Estonian word "vald" untranslated? Rain74 21:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The official translation (see for example English translation of Local Government Organisation Act) is Rural Municipality. Local government in Estonia consists of Rural Municipalities and Cities. Kevin Ehaver 194.126.101.135 08:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

(Discussion moved from project page)
 * Perhaps the translator of the Local Government organisation Act had a Canadian connection, some provinces call them Rural municipality, apparently. Another online dictionary has vald<->parish, Martintg 11:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * According to my Estonian-English Dictionary by Paul F. Saagpakk:
 * vald 1.parish (= civil parish); (suure kihelkonna alajaotus) township; commune; 2. (võim) power;
 * Some say that Saagpakk's dictionary is a little outdated, but I believe other dictionaries have similar entries too. Legal definitions and common use definitions may not coincide. Martintg 02:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

"Parish" as a description of a civil administrative unit is archaic. The only correct term here is "rural municipality" because we are not dealing with a legal term as such. The term "vald" belongs to the Estonian state administration and they have decided on the English translation. For example, the only translation in English of "Eesti Päästeamet" is "Estonian Rescue Board" despite the fact that a more sensible word to replace "Board" would be "Agency" or "Authority". If the official translation used is unclear an explanatory sentence can be added but, in the case of "Rural Municipality", this is in my view not necessary. Kevin Ehaver 84.50.91.222 13:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've corresponded with an linguist based at Helsinki University and he basically confirms we must stick with the official translation regardless if the words are being used unusually in standard english. He cites a similar situation in Finnish, where the official translation of "kunta" as municipality and rural municipalities are thus officially translated as "non-urban municipalities". So what in your view be preferable as an article title: Xxxxxx Rural Municipality or Rural Municipality of Xxxxxx, or can we just name it Xxxxxx Municipality and add "Rural" as a qualifier if there is also an urban municipaility of the same name? Martintg 02:34, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Kummalisel kombel on kõik Lääne-Viru vallad commune'ideks tõlgitud. Artiklid paistavad olemas olevat ainult Kadrina Commune'i ja Tapa Commune'i jaoks.  Seda tõlketava ei paista muudes maakondades järgitavat; võimalik, et Lääne-Viru artikliseeria autor on saanud olulisi mõjutusi Rootsi administratiivjaotusest.
 * Ilmselgelt on niimoodi paha. Tuleks välja töötada üks ilus terminisüsteem ja seda konsistentselt kasutada.  Praegu paistab domineeriv 'valla' tõlge olevat rural municipality, mis on omamoodi jabur, aga võrdlemisi täpne.  Kadrina Commune ja Tapa Commune paistab olevat mõistlik ümber nimetada / mergeda Kadrina'ks ja Tapa'ks; teine on natuke problemaatilisem, kui esimene.  Edasise diskussiooni jaoks on tõenäoliselt kõige mõistlikum koht Talk:Lääne-Viru County. Digwuren 17:11, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ma olen kusakilt kuulnud ka tõlget "vald"="parish".--Staberinde 15:17, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Iseenesest pole paha, aga kas see pigem et:kihelkond ei ole?
 * Teine tore alternatiiv, aga vist mitte eriti populaarne, on townland. Digwuren 15:23, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Outside view, taken from Talk:Vaivara Commune, I hope that Martintg has not anything aganist being quoted by me:
 * I think "parish" is the correct english word for "vald", "parish" is certainly used in England and Australia in the context of a rural municipality. Martintg 05:57, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

--.Staberinde 16:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll take parish as the concensus, and will over time systematically change all the different variants accordingly. I'll keep the existing "Foovara Commune" pages as redirects. Digwuren 12:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The official translation (see for example English translation of Local Government Organisation Act) is Rural Municipality. Local government in Estonia consists of Rural Municipalities and Cities. As an Estonian Civil Servant I always used "municipality" because it is shorter, specifying "rural" where the context demanded it. Kevin Ehaver 194.126.101.134 07:49, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Moved to talk page. Martintg 02:31, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

yep, I've heard that Commune is a dirty word in Estonian that makes people's faces flashing red, so it's not such a good idea to used it.--Termer 09:15, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, on a big public map on the island of Muhu it said Muhu parish. Parish is a word that implies, that the municipal unit is formed around a church, witch may be untrue in some cases, but i believe its a better translation than anything else...--Alexia Death 20:59, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

More formal approach giving out WP-EE awards?
Ive had an idea that perhaps we should take a bit more formal approach to giving out our award. I was thinking that having an official list of people who have been awarded with it along with the reason and a formal procedure for nominating a person for an award and requiring at least two more support votes from within the project would give the award more weight and value... What do you think? --Alexia Death 21:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It's an interesting idea. I especially like that such a system, unlike the common practice of barnstars, would promote these awards as a community consensus process.  Hopefully, this would avoid award cheapening that has been somewhat of a problem with the common barnstars.
 * In interests of symmetry, I would also propose a countering process: a project member can oppose any such award, and the awarding will not be done unless there are at least twice as many supporters as there are opponents. Digwuren 21:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I would go for at least three supporters. Also, users should be listed somewhere - probably section on main project page, with name and short explanation? Sander Säde  06:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It might get long there(hopefully). I think a subpage of project page with all the nominees over time would do. That page can then be linked along with last three award recipients on the main page and also linked from the award template allowing quick reference for official status of the award.--Alexia Death 06:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As no one disagrees with these rules - perhaps it is time to write them "formally" down - barnstar template talk might be a good idea - and give Colchicum his barnstar? Sander Säde  18:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ive set up the holders page here WikiProject_Estonia%5CAward_of_the_Soaring_Swallow_holders. Now template needs to be adjusted with this link.

Notice of Estonia-related RfD
This is a courtesy notice that there is an RfD discussion going on right now; Republic of Estonia (1918-1940) currently points at History of Estonia, and is the redirect up for discussion. See the 10 July 2007 RfD page, specifically the Republic of Estonia (1918-1940) → History of Estonia section.  Big Nate 37 (T) 19:38, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

President/State Elder
According to [], it was determined in 1922 that the official translation of "Riigivanem" is "President". Therefore shouldn't we merge State Elder of Estonia into President of Estonia and have State Elder of Estonia as a redirect? Martintg 02:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Taking requests for photos of objects in Estonia
I like to take weekend car trips and have a decent camera so if you need pictures of birthplaces, buildings, natural phenomena or anything else please ask. As I'm based in southern Estonia Those requests will get filled first.--Alexia Death 12:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I added appropriate heading to the main project page. Everyone who finds some image missing could report it there. Suva 12:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Coat of arms of Tallinn
It would be great if a speaker of Estonian would translate et:Tallinna vapp into English. Based on the images I've seen, the lions (or leopards) of Tallinn seem to be crowned while the similar figures in the coat of arms of Estonia don't wear crowns. Has this distinction always existed? There is more information on http://www.tallinn.ee/est/g2673 Thanks in advance for any help. Valentinian T / C 16:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ive translated it as Coat of arms of Tallinn, but I dont know how to move the pictures...--Alexia Death 19:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Download and upload. We also need SVG version of that. The PNG version is not sufficient. Anyone up for some tracing? :) Suva 19:54, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Aren't the images already on Commons? In that case we can link directly to those images from here, but yes, SVGs would be nice. I've tried to copyedit the text, and I hope the meaning survived. :) Valentinian T / C 20:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Estonian Football
Can someone please have a look at Special:Contributions/Akqj? This new user has produced articles on a number of Estonian football teams and I have no desire to see them deleted (I'm about to decline a speedy on HK Talinna) but the articles themselves can't survive in the state they are in. Is it possible for some kind soul to help Akqj work through this? I'll also cross post this at wikiproject football. Thanks. Spartaz Humbug! 22:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the articles are actually about ice hockey, not football. I saw them and tagged them as well, however, I have no knowledge whatsoever about ice hockey, so perhaps someone more knowledgeable can assess the notability of those articles? Sander Säde  23:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Award nomination:
I would like to nominate Colchicum for the Soaring Swallow Award for his excellent work on WikiProject Estonia. Obviously, the awarding itself would be pending until the rules get worked out. This should be a case so obvious I hope finding two (and perhaps more) seconders won't be hard. Digwuren 21:30, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Supported. Sander Säde 04:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Supported :) --Alexia Death 05:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Supported E.J. 07:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Supported Suva 05:34, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

This has been delayed for almost three weeks. I'll hand the award now, on behalf of WikiProject Estonia. Digwuren 15:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It has been done: User talk:Colchicum. I tweaked the template a bit, too, to fit more information. Digwuren 15:59, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Estonian language translations
Hello WP-EE! I edit several language Wikipedia and also trade translation services on Cucumis.org, where I translate from several European languages into English, and I obtain high-quality translations by others for use on Wikipedia. Cucumis.org needs translators fluent in Estonian. Particularly Estonian -> English and English -> Estonian. (Most translators can work well in only one direction.) If you want to help us, or obtain our help, please join us here. Thanks! --Una Smith 14:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Estonian-Italian speaking users?
Hello, everybody. I'm a user from the Italian Wikipedia. I'm here to ask whether there are users who are able to speak in Estonian and Italian. If not, maybe you can still help us writing, in english, in my user page or in the deletion page of the voice Valle Kutsherla, the page we are trying to save. It's about a vallery called Kutsherla or Kucerla or... we-don't-know ^^ We can't find infos using google, maybe you could tell us something more about it. Thank you, --Ginosal 23:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Followup: I identified the valley in question as that of the river Kucherla (Кучерла, Kutšerla) in the mountains of Altai. Apparently, the confusion on Italian Wikipedia was caused by a critical source being transliterated through Estonian.  I do not know if it helped, but I suspect not, as it:Valle Kutsherla appears to be deleted. Digwuren 10:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Might be useful...
Itching for Eestimaa: Let's Change the Topic, Shall We? How to talk with Russian nationalists. Might be useful for discussions here in WP.... Sander Säde 17:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The two templates?
Hi! How are the two different templates meant to be used? The one linked to from under "Tasks", and the one described under "Templates". I wanted to label Bernhard Schmidt as part of WikiProject Estonia, and got confused. Which template to use when? Reimgild 07:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello -- you should always use WikiProject_Estonia template, the other is an old template, adding that won't include the article to WP:E article list. I changed the link under "Tasks" and also replaced the template on Bernhard Schmidt.
 * BTW, we are getting very close to 1700 articles tagged with WP:E. Sander Säde  08:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Reimgild 10:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Terminology of administrative units — suitable to discuss here?
A central, authoritative table of English terminology to use (here in Wikipedia) for administrative units of Estonia would be a useful thing.

Some time ago, I made quite many changes — corrections, I thought — from "Commune" to "Parish", according to the mentioned consensus on Talk:Municipalities of Estonia. Today, when doing a few more such changes, I happened to look at Talk:Municipalities of Estonia again, and found that the consensus was lately disputed (by two anonymous users, but referring to an authoritative body). The main problem raised there was that "Parish" might be more useful for kihelkond, and that vald would then need some other translation, perhaps "Municipality", which would be in line with using e.g. Sollentuna Municipality for what in Swedish is called Sollentuna kommun (where Commune would actually also sound natural). At about the same time, I found another pretty large set of articles — Category:Villages in Estonia — where the word "Commune" is used frequently. Before going on with correcting them, I would like to feel assured that Parish is the consensus. I have not really found any discussion leading up to the consensus, but only the mention of "consensus" on Talk:Municipalities of Estonia.

Perhaps here — the Talk page of WikiProject Estonia — would be a good place to discuss not only "Parish", but all administrative units at once? Then this would be the place to refer to (from other talk pages, and in edit comments later on). Or would this discussion be too big to keep at one place? Subdiscussions on different terms could well arise and be quite long. However, to keep at least the results of the discussions here (or somewhere), as a central table of terms, would be useful.

Let's perhaps first meta-discuss the topic here in this section — i.e. let's discuss here whether it is suitable to discuss the terminology of all administrative units here. If the answer seems to become "yes", then the actual discussion could be under a new header, for example simply "Terminology of administrative units". Reimgild 06:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Some pages that relate to this discussion:
 * Municipalities of Estonia
 * Populated places in Estonia
 * Counties of Estonia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reimgild (talk • contribs) 07:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * While "kihelkond" is the translation for "parish", so is "vald"
 * Another online dictionary has vald<->parish, Martintg 11:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * According to my Estonian-English Dictionary by Paul F. Saagpakk:
 * vald 1.parish (= civil parish); (suure kihelkonna alajaotus) township; commune; 2. (võim) power;
 * Martintg 10:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Laulev revolutsioon
Laulev revolutsioon on ühest küljest Eesti ajaloo seisukohalt väga oluline sündmus, teisest küljest multidistsiplinaarne ja sadu, kui mitte tuhandeid artikleid hõlmav ning kolmandast küljest puudutab ka teisi Balti riike. Kas nende kriteeriumite põhjal on mõistlik eraldi WikiProjekt sisse seada? Digwuren 14:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Project tags on categories
See all WP:E articles. We have quite a lot of categories tagged with WP:E tag (easy to see, as thanks to the script they have redlink talk pages), but I am unsure if these should be included to project or not. Any ideas, comments or suggestions? Sander Säde 11:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Resolved by tagging them as Category-Class Estonia articles. -- Sander Säde  08:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Question
An editor posed a question at Talk:Long_and_short_scales about your country's choice of numbering systems. Thoughts? MrZaius talk  11:59, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Answered the question in the article.H2ppyme 20:00, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Award nomination:
I am hereby nominating Termer for the Soaring Swallow Award for his excellent work on WikiProject Estonia. Digwuren 14:49, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Supported His always sourced contributions sorely need recognition.--Alexia Death the Grey 15:38, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Support to be honest, he is one of the few editors in wikipedia who really cares about sources. Suva 10:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Support, he deserves recognition for his excellent efforts. Martintg 12:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Support per above. More than month has passed, isn't it high time someone presented the award? Oth 11:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Awarded the barnstar, apparently it was just forgotten due to the ArbCom mess. Sorry! -- Sander Säde  06:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Narova
Is there such a people? Thanks--victor falk 23:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Bloomfield articles and the Signpost
Per SEWilco's prompting on my talk page, I thought I'd note here, for the benefit of those who may not be aware of it, that the Wikipedia Signpost has been tipped about a number of recent and ongoing AfD debates regarding Estonia-related articles created by Bloomfield and his sockpuppets. It's possible that something on the subject might appear in an upcoming issue of the Signpost. If you have some information that you feel might be useful to the Signpost editors, you can mention it on the page linked to above. (Disclaimer: I'm not in any way connected with the Signpost, and in fact I'm only tangentially involved in the whole issue here.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Vanatühi
There's an ongoing discussion on the deletion of the Vabatühi article, and your input would be of value. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 11:48, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Estonia
Hi everyone, just to let you know I've been working on the Estonian Portal and introduced lots of new sections. Hopefully this will draw in editors to the WikiProject and showcase off some of the good work being done by its members. If anyone has any suggestions for the selected article, selected picture or selected biography'' then feel free to bring it up on the relevant section of the portal. Many thanks, Sea serpent 85 16:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

House of Representatives of Ethnic Minorities of Estonia
Hey, there seems to be some sort of group named like that which makes strong claims and publishes long essays in russian language media. What is the legal status of this organisation? I can't find any references on it in business registers or even a decent homepage. How can "House of Representatives" be not registered anywhere, who does it actually represent that way? Either way RJ CG seems to know a lot about it. Maybe he can answer the question. Suva Чего? 10:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Flag of Governorate of Estonia ??
I have noticed that recently the flag was removed from the article Governorate of Estonia with the summary A bogus flag?. Still the flag is present on both Commons commons:Image:Eestimaa värvid.svg and Estonian wiki et:Pilt:Eestimaa värvid.svg. I was not able to find references to that flag outside the wiki space. AFAIK governorates of Russian Empire did not have official flags.

Can somebody research the topic. If it is a hoax the images should be deleted from commons and et-wiki. If the image is historical it probably desrves a few words in the Governorate of Estonia article (even if not the official flag of the governorate) Alex Bakharev (talk) 10:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Resurrected articles
Estonia 1990-1991, Soviet Republic of Soldiers and Fortress-Builders of Nargen -- weren't these deleted some time ago? First one created originally by Petri Krohn or both? Oth (talk) 19:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. I placed a speedy delete template for the first article, it is a recreation of the one deleted in Articles_for_deletion/Republic_of_Estonia_%281990-1991%29 and redirected the second to Naissaar, per Articles for deletion/Soviet Republic of Naissaar Martintg (talk) 20:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Draft Guidelines for Lists of companies by country - Feedback Requested
Within WikiProject Companies I am trying to establish guidelines for all Lists of companies by country, the implementation of which would hopefully ensure a minimum quality standard and level of consistency across all of these related but currently disparate articles. The ultimate goal is the improvement of these articles to Featured List status. As a WikiProject that currently has one of these lists within your scope, I would really appreciate your feedback! You can find the draft guidelines here. Thanks for your help as we look to build consensus and improve Wikipedia! - Richc80 (talk) 21:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

GO Rail
I've just created an article for this company, which runs sleeper trains between Estonia and Russia. I'm quite a new member, and this is my biggest contribution so far, so if anyone wants to have a look and maybe improve it please do!!

Don't ask me why I chose this subject... I've been to Estonia last month and was browsing just now, bored on a quiet day at work, and this redlink grabbed me. I can't read Estonian myself, so I'm sure you guys can add more, but I hope it's useful so far. I've posted this to WP:RR too. — FIRE!  in a crowded theatre...  16:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Interested in Estonia
I'm not from Estonia, but I have recently developed an interest in Estonia, particularly medicinal plants. Flora of Estonia category is very useful. 141.156.189.143 (talk) 15:48, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Tõnu Trubetsky
You will probably be interested in this mass AfD. This is a deep-rooted self-promotion by user:Bloomfield. I am sure more of his Estonian band & film articles are out there. Renata (talk) 14:41, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Please pay attention to the articles Tõnu Trubetsky and Vennaskond. They need due references, or else they could be deleted. Andres (talk) 05:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  21:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 2525 articles are assigned to this project, of which 318, or 12.6%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Soviet and post-Soviet films task force
Just thought that the community would like to know that WikiProject Films has a established a Soviet and post-Soviet cinema task force. Interested editors are encouraged to join onboard! Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 21:45, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Baltic cinema task force
Editors interested in a suggested Baltic cinema task force can sign up here. General comments are also requested. Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 02:18, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Tallinn Conservatory
Hello all I am a member of the opera wikiproject and I was wondering if any of you would be interested in creating a page on the Tallinn Conservatory. The school has produced many famous musicians and composers over the years. Most of the important Estonian composers came out of the school. I can't find any references in English to the history of the conservatory so I thought I would bring it here. Perhaps some of you have access to sources in other languages and would be willing to create the article. Thank you.Nrswanson (talk) 17:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I updated the Tallinn Conservatory with a redirect.--Termer (talk) 18:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Estonia
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Workers sport organisation?
Anyone got a clue what is the name of the Estonian organisation mentioned on http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2001/JSH2801/JSH2801d.pdf, page 24? --Soman (talk) 18:46, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about Holocaust
Our agreement is that Holocaust scholars are speaking about "only" 6 Holocaust Extermination camps (stupid definition but ....). Our disagreement is about creation of sub section other extermination camps. With knowledge that there has been many others extermination camps and sites (I know 7 of them) question is: Will we create subsection in The Holocaust template for this camps ? Can you please hear your comments about this question in section Non involved users because maybe even Estonia will have place in rewriten template (events in 1941)?--Rjecina (talk) 15:34, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Help request: 101 Estonia articles needing geographical coordinates
Based on a search of Wikipedia's articles related to Estonia, I've found some articles that I believe are about places in Estonia, and could usefully have geographical coordinates added.

The articles in question are listed in Category:Estonia articles missing geocoordinate data. At the time of writing, some examples included:
 * 1) Haanja Parish
 * 2) Hullo
 * 3) Kasari River
 * 4) Luke Manor
 * 5) Monument of Lihula
 * 6) Raudsild (Tartu)
 * 7) Sakala County

...and there are many more, as well. At the time of posting this notice, there were 101 articles in this category needing geographical coordinates.

Why add coordinates?
By adding coordinates, a Wikipedia reader can easily view the location on a street map, nautical chart, topographic map, by satellite photo, realtime weather map, and in many other ways. Coordinate data makes an article eventually appear in various services such as Google Maps' Wikipedia overlay, Google Earth, and Wikipedia's own internal map service. Coordinate data also helps readers looking for geographically-based data, such as locations near a reference point, or related information.

How can I do it?
The articles are all marked with coord missing tags, which need to be replaced with coord tags that contain the location's latitude/longitude coordinates; or you might be able to add coordinates to an existing infobox. You can find out how to do this at the Geocoding how-to for WikiProject members. Please let me know if this is useful, or if you have any questions! -- The Anome (talk) 11:45, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Estonian wiki transwiki
Hi. I've created Category:Estonian articles needing translation with the aim of transferring some of the more notable Estonian articles into English. Please help create missing articles from Estonian wiki and help translate them into English. If you know any articles which require Estonian translation or who want to help create articles to be translated please use a tag at the top of the article. It is part of a drive to dramatically improve inter wiki content. Thankyou. Count Blofeld   12:33, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sure you and AlbertHerring meant well while creating the stubs and the category for English Wikipedia. Just that, perhaps it's just me but few names seem notable on the list. In any case I think there would be much higher priorities,  there are much more notable Estonian articles that would need to be created, for example even August Weizenberg, the founder of professional Estonian sculpting is still missing. There is a book published by Kevin O'Connor, a North American specialist on Estonian and Baltic cultures and histories Culture and Customs of the Baltic States ISBN 0313331251 , the book can be useful for anybody who's interested in the subject and wants to determine who and what would be notable for WP purposes from those tiny countries.--Termer (talk) 04:52, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've updated the most notable names on the list with sources printed in English. I think that WP:RS should be still the general foundation for WP:Notability instead of getting anything translated straight from Estonian Wikipedia.--Termer (talk) 09:15, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Oil shale in Estonia
I hope that after some additional work, the Oil shale in Estonia article would be ready for the GA nomination. Any assistance to improve this article is welcome. Beagel (talk) 16:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul Kogerman
For the main page DYK, the Paul Kogerman article needs a reference about his deportation to the prison camp in Sverdlovsk Oblast in 1941 (please see discussion here. Thank you for your help. Beagel (talk) 18:34, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Lasva Parish
Anyone up to translating this so it can be deleted from WP:PNT? I'd greatly appreciate any help you can provide. Suur tänu! -Yupik (talk) 02:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually I ended up commenting out the Estonian in this article, but it's still there awaiting translation, it's just not visible any longer. So the request still stands, but it's not as urgent any more :) Tänan! -Yupik (talk) 02:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Vormsi enn - could somebody with Estonian language skills take a look at this article
Could you confirm notability in Estonia, possibly adding references. Please reply at the talk page there. Power.corrupts (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Parishes
It seems that parish is used for 'vald'. Then how are we going to translate 'kihelkond'? Andres (talk) 07:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

In English vald rarely gets translated as parish.

according to Estonia and the Estonians By Toivo U. Raun ISBN 0817928529 it says
 * (kihelkond) -parish, (Kirchspiel, prikhod)
 * (vald) -township, rural township (Gemeinde, volost)

Historical Dictionary of Estonia By Toivo Miljan
 * (kihelkond) -parish
 * (vald) - equivalent to the Scandinavian commune or the North American township, the basic unit of local government

--Termer (talk) 14:48, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * My proposal is rural municipality and Municipality (in names) for vald and parish for kihelkond.


 * In Estonia, both municipality and parish are used in English for vald. In any case we need disambiguating and redirects but we'll be in trouble with kihelkond if we don't reserve parish for it. Andres (talk) 11:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * When translating Estonian vald into Finnish, it is translated as kunta, which is then in English municipality. Right now parish and municipality seem to be being randomly assigned, so some consensus on this is going to have to be reached, preferably soon. -Yupik (talk) 02:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Why do we Wikipedia writers not talk to professionals about these things? (E.g. geographers and historians?). A lot is going lost here. Municipality is such an all-encompassing and ugly expression, it is as though we were using a meat cleaver. In my youth, and I go back a few years, "municipality" smacked of urban things, of cities. Vald is fairly new, kihelkond is very old and has loads of ancient meaning and additional context. In any event, a township seems closer to a kihelkond than what is being offered here. While I bring no solutions, there are many old words in other languages referring to not just local government but local affiliations such as "shire" in the UK and "gau" in the Germanic areas. Before one locks in some sort of rush-rush and ugly modern phrase that doesn't take everything into account, one should consult with the experts. By the way, parish has been used a lot to mean "vald". To simply resort to "municipality" for a rural area seems to me like a forced solution that doesn't take into account all historical complexities. Possibly this - to drop everything and to adopt "muncipalities" for country administrative areas - might be a ham-fisted solution that would meet the approval of the bad guys in Pink Floyd's "The Wall".

--Sean Maleter (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

PS: The current counties in Estonia more or less (very roughly) correspond to the ancient states or tribal areas of Estonia (such as Ugandi). Instead of speaking of bland municipalities, one could let this remain in force as a concept, because "county" in tandem with "parish" helps people not familiar with Estonia get a feel for size and also for hierarchical relations. There were less "kihelkonds" in the old days (some forty or fifty) compared to the "valds" of recent history (several hundred), but other than villages and other really grass-roots groupings of families/extended families, both the kihelkond and the vald have been the really local level at which people gathered on the commons. Consequently, there is no reason one shouldn't call call both the vald and the kihelkond a parish, as smaller than, and more local-level than the county.

County and parish give useful information. County: smaller that the country. Parish: many in a county.

Kihel is an old word meaning to bind or to control. The original "kihelkonnad" of the ancient Estonians had to do first with blood ties and also with the need to mutually defend the territory. These kihelkonnad had a leader.

The word "kihel" supposedly comes from the German "geisel" or hostage, and has to do with hostage-taking in a "guarantor of taxes to be paid" sense. As living collateral, if you will. To take and exchange hostages was a common form of medieval personal surety. One person wouild be deprived of liberty by a second person in order to guarantee an undertaking by a third person (usually meaning nobility, that is to say the local heavies). Such "hostage bindings" appear in the early medieval sources in the context of relations between political entities. This was something more than a simple means for securing agreements. Grants of hostages might have involved individuals who went beyond the original arrangement of creditor–debtor–hostage. Eventually they would come to transcend their immediate guaranteeing function, to also serve symbolic and political ends. There are many known examples of this from France and Italy and other parts of Europe. This can be seen in a whole series of contexts: military, legal, and also social as well as political relations.

--Sean Maleter (talk) 16:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

PPS: rather than the Toivo Raun version - "kirchspiel" - try instead: "kihelkond" with the word "kihel" coming from "geisel" = hostage from the Middle High German - "gîsel", lat. obses.

Vald - this adminstrative structure still exists now. Kihelkond is sadly no longer in use. Parish could really be used for both, with an explanation where necessary, which won't be too often. Municipality and rural municipality are not only sterile and can cause confusion (urban or rural?), parish always being rural. Municipality besides being boring contain less useful information than the word parish, in several respects.

--Sean Maleter (talk) 17:09, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Publishing House ERSEN
Hi, this looks like a very good Estonian company with a poor article, it is up for deletion, the website is more or less written in the Estonian language, it needs attention from a native speaker. --Mr Accountable (talk) 06:06, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Name question
Hi guys, I was wondering if a person born in Estonian SSR (more in general, I'd like to know in Baltic SSRs) was born in Estonian customs (Latin script, without Patronymic) or in Russian customs (Cyrillic script, with Patronymic). I think it's a very interesting issue about Soviet culture and how Soviet Union delt with minorities and local languages, but I can't find infos anywhere. Thank you! --necronudist (talk) 12:09, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, as I have heard quite a lot about this from my parents, I can answer you. First, officially, the passports were both in Estonian (yes, still Latin script) and Russian (Estonian in Estonian SSR only of course), and both had the father's name in there. In Russian, it was more logically constructed, but since it wasn't an Estonian custom, it only said "His son" (e.g. "Tõnu's son"). Estonian names sometimes made it difficult to pronounce them correctly in Russian, for example "forname, Tõnuyevich, surname", but the estonian Õ was actually then Russian Ы. Same went with umlauts, don't know about Ü or Ö, but Ä was replaced with Я, which spells like "Ya", instead of German-like Æ. This means that both my parents' names had a stupid spelling, instead of "Mänd" there was "Myand" and instead of "Määrits" there was "Myayarits". That's how thingse were...H2ppyme (talk) 16:37, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you H2ppyme, but I asked about births not passports... Well, I don't know if it was the same! :-) So at those times people born with both Russian and Estonian names... You say passports were both in Estonian and Russian, so it was something like "Name: Mänd / Мянд", etc... Have I understood well? :-) --necronudist (talk) 17:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, they were the same names, Estonian names, but with sometimes strange transliteration. And I think it depended on the local SSR, not on nationality. This means Russians born in the Estonian SSR could have had an Estonian transliteration in the passport as well. On the other hand, I believe Estonians throughout the USSR propably had an Estonian name in their passport too, but I might be wrong. But this was all the official stuff, in reality, only people with really pro-russian/soviet views used paternal names in Estonia, and as it is today in Estonia, I believe it used to be quite the same - Russians are called by their actual name(s), not by their paternal names. And yes, you understood the passport name correctly, though I am not sure which language came first...H2ppyme (talk) 18:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your explanation H2ppyme! If birth docs were in Estonian+Russian, that's why I don't see any nowadays-Estonian born in Estonian SSR with name in Russian pattern (Russian given name + Patronymic + Surname). The only exception I can remember is footballer Valery Karpin, but maybe it's just because he chose Russian nationality after Soviet Union collapse. --necronudist (talk) 18:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, that's not a main reason why you don't see any nowadays-Estonian born in Estonian SSR with name in Russian pattern. In western countries the Soviet birth certificates given to Estonian citizens were invalid anyway. Since Estonia was occupied by Soviet Union, see Occupation of Baltic states, and western democracies didn't recognize the occupation de jure, after Estonia regained it's independence, the pre occupation citizenship law was restored and the only legal birth certificates for Estonian citizens were ones issued by the republic of Estonia.--Termer (talk) 19:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course de jure non-recognition means Soviet passports didn't mean anything to Estonians, since they, legally, still were Estonian citizens. But the question here was more about the "official" Soviet era customs. About Valeri Karpin: I believe that he only has Patronymic in Russian texts, officially when he had Russian/Soviet passport. But since some of his ancestors were Estonians, he was eligible for Estonian citizenship. There was a fuss about it some time ago that Estonia doesn't allow Patronymics for ethnic Russians either, so he had to shorten his name too. H2ppyme (talk) 19:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The use of patronyms during the Soviet era following the Russian tradition was common in official Soviet documents only, meaning birth certificates, internal passports that were bilingual. However, passports issued by the Soviets for international travel were in Russian and English, and those followed international standards, meaning used given name(s) and surname only, not patronyms.--Termer (talk) 20:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand... it's a quite complicate issue for me! However, I just liked to know if, keeping the example, Valery Karpin was born Valeri Karpin or Валерий Георгиевич Карпин. As far as I've understood he was born both, something like Valeri Karpin / Валерий Карпин + son of Georg or something like. Sorry if I didn't explain well... --necronudist (talk) 20:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not complicated really. Russians traditionally use their patronyms as a middle name. So in Russian it would be Валерий Георгиевич Карпин. In English (also in Estonian) however patronyms are not used, so in English and in Estonian it would be Valeri Karpin.--Termer (talk) 20:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, but he was born in Estonian or in Russian...or in both customs? --necronudist (talk) 20:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I try to explain better: I've asked the same question in WP:LITHUANIA and answered that fields were in both languages ("name", "surname", etc...), but they were filled only in Lithuanian. So, for example, Benjaminas Zelkevičius was born this way, and Беньяминас Викторович Зелькявичус is only a Russian adaptation... --necronudist (talk) 20:46, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So basically you're asking if the family considers themselves ethnic Russians or Estonians? I don't know. Other than that, I have no idea how someone could be born in 'both customs' unless it's a mixed Estonian-Russian marriage.--Termer (talk) 20:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I'm asking if SSRs officers filled birth docs in Russian (the Soviet Union official language) or in local language (Estonian/Latvian/Lithuanian). --necronudist (talk) 20:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Like I already said, all Soviet official documents issued in Baltic Soviet Republics were bilingual, in Russian and local languages. However, all birth certificates issued by Soviet authorities to citizens of Estonia etc. have been considered invalid.--Termer (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Benjaminas Zelkevičius was not born in Soviet Union but in Reichskommissariat Ostland, see the birth date February 6, 1944, so his birth certificate most likely was also in German. That's why in this case Беньяминас Викторович Зелькявичус is only a Russian adaptation.--Termer (talk) 20:54, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ups... you're right, Zelkevičius is not a good example. However, it was intended to stand for "person born in Lithuanian SSR". So, the answer to my question is that Valery Karpin was born both Valeri Karpin and Валерий Карпин (bilingual docs without patronymic as per H2ppyme very first answer). In every case... I think it would be a great addition to Names in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and CIS countries. Oh, and thank you for your answers guys... I didn't mean to bring it so long... --necronudist (talk) 21:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Violations of policies in the article about Hannes Vanaküla
I put the article to the WP:BLPN but as all the sources are in Estonian I got an suggestion to come here. The shorter description about the problem is on the WP:BLPN under the section of Hannes Vanaküla

And my more detailed description about the violations of policies in the article is situated here on the talk page of the article Hannes Vanaküla under the section Violations of Policies. WorldReporter (talk) 02:48, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Anna Levandi
There is a dispute concerning the name of Anna Levandi. Anonymous user continues to remove her current name as also category Estonian sportspeople (she was Soviet figure skater, but at the same time she is Estonian coach), and reinserting incorrect information about her husband Allar Levandi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.190.192.206 (talk) 06:28, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for a 200-WikiProject contest
A proposal has been posted for a contest between all 200 country WikiProjects. We're looking for judges, coordinators, ideas, and feedback.

The Transhumanist 00:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Untagged Estonia-related articles
I remembered that I have a tool to check for untagged Estonia articles and run it - and boy, do we have a lot of untagged articles! Way more then I can easily check - close to 600 - so I am going to copy the list here and ask for your help. If possible, please tag these articles with and assess their notability. If article is not about a notable subject, there is no point to keep it in the Wikipedia just because it is related to Estonia. Great many of the articles aren't really about Estonia, just have Estonia-related categories.

If you tag an article, please remove it from the list. I'll try to convert the tool into a web-based utility and make it available for everybody (although it needs to be run only every other week or so).


 * -- Sander Säde  17:48, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Military flags of Estonia &#124; List of football clubs in Estonia &#124; List of Ambassadors of Estonia to Russia &#124; Erika Eleniak &#124; Vladimir Padwa &#124; Samuel H. Shapiro &#124; Benno Schotz &#124; Aleksandr Puštov &#124; Sergei Zamorski &#124; Mari Aakre &#124; Toomas Altnurme &#124; Irina Baleva &#124; Lea-Tuti Livšits &#124; Rauno Thomas Moss &#124; Rudolf Pangsepp &#124; Kaljo Põllu &#124; Andrus Rõuk &#124; Izold Pustylnik &#124; Ksenija Balta &#124; Ain Evard &#124; Anna Iljuštšenko &#124; Märt Israel &#124; Marek Kaleta &#124; Kaie Kand &#124; Tatyana Kivimyagi &#124; Mihkel Kukk &#124; Kaire Leibak &#124; Marek Niit &#124; Mikk Pahapill &#124; Taavi Peetre &#124; Andres Raja &#124; Remigija Nazarovienė &#124; Kristo Aab &#124; Vallo Allingu &#124; Gregor Arbet &#124; Marek Doronin &#124; Kristjan Kangur &#124; Rait Keerles &#124; Tarmo Kikerpill &#124; Walenty Kłyszejko &#124; Valmo Kriisa &#124; Gert Kullamäe &#124; Tanel Kurbas &#124; Aivar Kuusmaa &#124; Tonno Lepmets &#124; Silver Leppik &#124; Jaak Lipso &#124; Kristjan Makke &#124; Tanel Sokk &#124; Sten-Timmu Sokk &#124; Janar Talts &#124; Aleksei Tammiste &#124; Tanel Tein &#124; Joosep Toome &#124; Siim-Sander Vene &#124; Martin Viiask &#124; Indrek Visnapuu &#124; Jaan Eilart &#124; Paul Kogerman &#124; A. Feinstein (chess player) &#124; Valentina Golubenko &#124; R.K. Kieseritzky &#124; Arne Els &#124; Eugen Kapp &#124; Cyrillus Kreek &#124; Eino Tamberg &#124; Veronika Portsmuth &#124; New York Estonian House &#124; Grete Treier &#124; Simmu Tiik &#124; Argo Arbeiter &#124; Sergei Hohlov-Simson &#124; Risto Kallaste &#124; Toomas Kallaste &#124; Meelis Lindmaa &#124; Maksim Paponov &#124; Mikk Reintam &#124; Alexey Solovey &#124; Kare Kauks &#124; Kristine Muldma &#124; Sandra Nurmsalu &#124; Luisa Värk &#124; Kaire Vilgats &#124; Oxana Ermakova &#124; Svetlana Tširkova-Lozovaja &#124; Johanna Allik &#124; Dmitri Antoni &#124; Alexei Kozlov (figure skater) &#124; Dmitri Kurakin &#124; Liina-Grete Lilender &#124; Caitlin Mallory &#124; Valdis Mintals &#124; Anna Mosenkova &#124; Ekaterina Nekrassova &#124; Viktoria Shklover &#124; Evgeni Striganov &#124; Sergei Sychyov &#124; Marina Timofeieva &#124; Märt Avandi &#124; Vahur Afanasjev &#124; The Heart of the Bear &#124; &quot;Hukkunud Alpinisti&quot; hotell &#124; When Life Departs &#124; Toivo Aare &#124; Allan Alaküla &#124; Maire Aunaste &#124; Mihkel Martna &#124; Sulev Oll &#124; Ylle Rajasaar &#124; Martti Soosaar &#124; Lilli Suburg &#124; Indrek Tarand &#124; Kalmer Tennosaar &#124; Mart Ummelas &#124; Institute of the Estonian Language &#124; Aleksandr Dulichenko &#124; Tartu University Press &#124; Glasperlenspiel Music Festival &#124; Orient, the Festival of Eastern Music &#124; Inferno (band) &#124; Whispering Forest &#124; Rolf Roosalu &#124; Taimo Toomast &#124; Priidu Aavik &#124; Natalja Abramova &#124; Christian Ackermann &#124; Arnold Akberg &#124; Efraim Allsalu &#124; Anžela Beljakova &#124; Natalie Mei &#124; Richard Sagrits &#124; Ülo Sooster &#124; Teodor Ussisoo &#124; Helge Uuetoa &#124; Aleksander Uurits &#124; Peter August, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck &#124; Astra Randkivi &#124; Lea Armväärt &#124; Toomas Frey &#124; Aino Kalda &#124; Leiti Kannukene &#124; Andres Koppel &#124; Toomas Kukk &#124; Ülle Kukk &#124; Tiiu Kull &#124; Vilma Kuusk &#124; Liivia Laasimer &#124; Malle Leht &#124; Teodor Lippmaa &#124; Aime Mäemets &#124; Ann Marvet &#124; Viktor Masing &#124; Jaan Port &#124; Reet Priiman &#124; Haide-Ene Rebassoo &#124; Mari Reitalu &#124; Bernhard Saarsoo &#124; Hans Trass &#124; Albert Üksip &#124; August Vaga &#124; Gustav Vilbaste &#124; Werner Zoege von Manteuffel &#124; Jaan Kundla &#124; Karel Rüütli &#124; Sten Pentus &#124; Urmo Aava &#124; Estonian Record Productions &#124; Raul Arnemann &#124; Tõnu Endrekson &#124; Leonid Gulov &#124; Andrei Jämsä &#124; Igor Kuzmin &#124; Allar Raja &#124; Gustav von Ewers &#124; G-Enka &#124; 4B (song) &#124; Ainult sina võid mu maailma muuta &#124; Ära oota koidikuni &#124; Ingli puudutus &#124; Kaitseta &#124; Kristallkülmas öös &#124; Kui kuningas nutab &#124; Lõbus maja &#124; Meeletu maailm &#124; Muinasjutu mets &#124; Pilveräbalad &#124; Torm (song) &#124; Eduard Pütsep &#124; Tanel Leok &#124; Hanno Selg &#124; Triin Aljand &#124; Üllar Kerde &#124; Jaan Kikkas &#124; Martin Liivamägi &#124; Viljar Loor &#124; Aleksandrs Abramenko &#124; Paulo Alberto &#124; Irfan Ametov &#124; Alan Arruda &#124; Diego Balbinot &#124; Vasyl Baranov &#124; Richard Barnwell &#124; Dmytro Boiko (footballer) &#124; Algimantas Briaunis &#124; Vitoldas Čepauskas &#124; Viktors Dobrecovs &#124; Dona (footballer) &#124; Marius Dovydėnas &#124; Vitor Fernandez Raposo &#124; Ray Fränkel &#124; Vladislavs Gabovs &#124; Marcelo Gomes Inocencio &#124; Gvidas Grigas &#124; Tor Henning Hamre &#124; Hudson (footballer) &#124; Jasse Jalonen &#124; Jonatan Johansson (footballer) &#124; Egidijus Juška &#124; Artem Konovalov &#124; Otar Korghalidze &#124; Oleg Kovalenko &#124; Andris Kuvšinovs &#124; Vilius Lapeikis &#124; Glen Atle Larsen &#124; Murilo Maccari &#124; Filips Mihalovskis &#124; Oleksandr Miroshnychenko &#124; Serhiy N. Morozov &#124; Aleksey Naumov &#124; Felipe Nunes &#124; Janne Oinas &#124; Viktoras Olšanskis &#124; Vadimas Petrenko &#124; Marcio Pimentel &#124; Vitaly Polyansky &#124; Tomas Ražanauskas &#124; Darius Regelskis &#124; Tomas Rimas &#124; Aleksejs Semjonovs &#124; Jevgeni Shapovalov &#124; Tomas Sirevičius &#124; Modestas Stonys &#124; Zaur Tagizade &#124; Antons Trifonovs &#124; Sergei Ussoltsev &#124; Raimondas Vainoras &#124; Salvador Vasquez &#124; Vahe Yaghmuryan &#124; Ričardas Zdančius &#124; Aleksandr Dubõkin &#124; Rene Kaas &#124; Kert Kütt &#124; Martin Maasing &#124; Valdemaras Martinkenas &#124; Priit Reiska &#124; Jaanus Sirel &#124; Stanislav Kitto &#124; Daniil Ratnikov &#124; Sergei Starovoitov &#124; Rauno Alliku &#124; Mihhail Kazak &#124; Ranet Lepik &#124; Igor Prins &#124; Lauri Senješ &#124; Bank Vole &#124; Brandt's Bat &#124; Common Shrew &#124; Common Vole &#124; Eurasian Pygmy Shrew &#124; Eurasian Water Shrew &#124; European Beaver &#124; European Mole &#124; European Water Vole &#124; Field Vole &#124; Harvest Mouse &#124; Hazel Dormouse &#124; Lesser Noctule &#124; Mountain Hare &#124; Nathusius's Pipistrelle &#124; Parti-coloured bat &#124; West European Hedgehog &#124; Whiskered bat &#124; Wood mouse &#124; MS Baltic Princess &#124; MS Baltic Queen &#124; Baltic-Soviet relations &#124; Estonian Auxiliary Police &#124; Estonian partisans &#124; Ingvar &#124; Polish–Swedish War (1600–1611) &#124; Principality of Pskov &#124; Soviet Estonia &#124; Vyachko of Koknese &#124; Meistriliiga (ice hockey) &#124; Risto Kägo &#124; Kristofer Kask &#124; Tõnis Kaukvere &#124; Rait Kuusk &#124; Ranner Pakk &#124; Martin Tšegodajev &#124; Janar Tükk &#124; Indrek Siska &#124; Edwin Stüf &#124; Rasmus Tomson &#124; Vladislav Tšurilkin &#124; Vladislav Tšurilikin &#124; Jesper Veber &#124; Finnish language &#124; Estonian Punk Song Festival &#124; 3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade &#124; Estonian Regiment &quot;Reval&quot; &#124; The Holocaust in Estonia &#124; CCDCOE &#124; Estonian Afghanistan Contingent &#124; Estonian Army (1922) &#124; Estonian Iraqi Contingent &#124; Estonian Kosovo Contingent &#124; Keskpolügoon &#124; Klooga training area &#124; Männiku training area &#124; Nursipalu training area &#124; Salk &#124; Sirgala training area &#124; Suurtükiväegrupp &#124; Tsiatsungõlmaa training area &#124; Narva College of the University of Tartu &#124; Estonia national under-21 football team &#124; Cornflower &#124; Hammer and sickle &#124; Lion &#124; Red star &#124; Estonian Air Force 1st Class Service Cross &#124; Estonian Air Force 2nd Class Service Cross &#124; Estonian Air Force 3rd Class Service Cross &#124; Eesti Skeptik &#124; MTÜ Eesti Skeptik &#124; Alexander Gorchakov &#124; Bernd von Freytag-Loringhoven &#124; Alexander Vostokov &#124; Richard Otto Zöpffel &#124; Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert von Berg &#124; Werner Bergengruen &#124; Ernst von Bergmann &#124; Isaiah Berlin &#124; Piers Bohl &#124; Eugen Bostroem &#124; Simon Brainin &#124; Emil Bretschneider &#124; Johann Christoph Brotze &#124; Balthasar von Campenhausen &#124; Georg Caspari &#124; Catherine I of Russia &#124; Indra Devi &#124; Ernst Magnus Dönhoff &#124; Aleksandr Drevin &#124; Mordehai Dubin &#124; Sergei Eisenstein &#124; Carl Erdmann &#124; Eduard Erdmann &#124; Johann Eduard Erdmann &#124; Heinz Erhardt &#124; Jürgen von Farensbach &#124; Grzegorz Fitelberg &#124; Julius Otto Grimm &#124; Jazeps Grosvalds &#124; Philippe Halsman &#124; Adolf von Harnack &#124; Nicolai Hartmann &#124; Erich von Holst &#124; George Hoyningen-Huene &#124; Herman Jadlowker &#124; Mstislav Keldysh &#124; Hermann Graf Keyserling &#124; Abraham Isaac Kook &#124; Erhard Kroeger &#124; Baroness Barbara von Krüdener &#124; Eber Landau &#124; Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon &#124; Robert Eberhard Launitz &#124; Edward Leedskalnin &#124; Nechama Leibowitz &#124; Yeshayahu Leibowitz &#124; Marija Leiko &#124; Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz &#124; Jānis Liepiņš &#124; Dorothea Lieven &#124; Wolfgang Lüth &#124; David Magarshack &#124; Magnus von Behm &#124; Tadeusz Manteuffel &#124; Lya Mara &#124; Hermanis Matisons &#124; Pavel Medem &#124; Leo Michelson &#124; Evgenii Miller &#124; Vera Mukhina &#124; Aron Nimzowitsch &#124; Alexander von Oettingen &#124; Wolfgang Ostwald &#124; Bengt Oxenstierna (1591-1643) &#124; Johann Patkul &#124; Otto Arnold von Paykull &#124; Władysław Raginis &#124; Rose of Turaida &#124; Baruch Leib Rosowsky &#124; Solomon Rosowsky &#124; Mark Rothko &#124; Ludwig Maximilian Erwin von Scheubner-Richter &#124; Marie Seebach &#124; Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt &#124; Pēteris Stučka &#124; Janis Tilbergs &#124; Yury Tynyanov &#124; Konrad Ubans &#124; Eduards Veidenbaums &#124; Paul Walden &#124; Friedrich Zander &#124; Walter Zapp &#124; Alexander Ritter &#124; Jacob Sievers &#124; Anton Aristov &#124; Alexey Belov &#124; Artjom Dmitrijev &#124; Andrus Kivirähk &#124; Sergei Lepmets &#124; Fabian Gottlieb von Osten-Sacken &#124; Gabriel Gustafsson Oxenstierna &#124; Pavel Schilling &#124; Roman Ungern von Sternberg &#124; Melissa F. Wells &#124; Justus Heinrich Wigand &#124; Carl Gustav Axel Harnack &#124; Ivan O'Konnel-Bronin &#124; Gerhard von Tiesenhausen &#124; Urmas Kirs &#124; Paul von Rennenkampf &#124; Ernest Stackelberg &#124; Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg &#124; Fabian Steinheil &#124; Julian Arahanga &#124; Lachlan Murdoch &#124; Erik Paartalu &#124; Anna Torv &#124; Estonian Citizen Committees &#124; Swedish People's League in the Baltic Sea Provinces &#124; List of Chairmen of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic &#124; List of Chairmen of the Estonian Provincial Assembly &#124; President-Regent &#124; Jindrich Matyas Thurn &#124; Oil Shale (journal) &#124; Space science in Estonia &#124; Bungsberg (ship) &#124; ETV Live &#124; Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina &#124; Evacuation of Finnish Karelia &#124; Finnish Democratic Republic &#124; Hungarian Revolution of 1956 &#124; Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran &#124; Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic &#124; Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic &#124; Northern Group of Forces &#124; Occupation of Latvia by Soviet Union 1944-1945 &#124; Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) &#124; Soviet invasion of Poland &#124; Soviet occupation of Hungary &#124; Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 &#124; Soviet occupation of Romania &#124; Soviet occupation zone &#124; Trial of the Sixteen &#124; Uprising of 1953 in East Germany &#124; Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia &#124; ALFA &#124; Filip Hammar &#124; Johan Liiva &#124; Svante Pääbo &#124; Ebba Witt-Brattström &#124; Tallinn Christmas Market &#124; Viasat Sport Baltic &#124; Ingli puudutus (album) &#124; TheGoodTourist &#124; 3803 KM &#124; Võru County Vocational Training Centre &#124; August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein &#124; Juliusz Bursche &#124; Hermann Johansen &#124; Woldemar Kernig &#124; Alexander von Middendorff Oswald Schmiedeberg &#124; Leopold von Schrenck &#124;

Need an Estonian speaker
Could someone halfway fluent in Estonian drop a friendly note? He (making an assumption, from the pages he put up) has made a couple of nonsense pages in Estonian here (ie claiming to be married to Jessica Alba). Normal teenage stuff -- my only concern is that if he doesn't speak English, the warnings he's received haven't gotten through. Thanks much!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  16:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

A simple question
Do you guys use the redirect class when assessing article quality? I ask specifically because of Estonian surname, if it helps. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The first theatre and actors in Estonia
What was the first theatre in Estonia with professional actors of both genders? Who is counted as the first professional actor and actress respectively? Thank you in advance for those who can answer! --Aciram (talk) 10:34, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The net say the first modern theatre in the country was founded in 1809. What was it called? And who were the first actors and actresses there? I am very interested in theatre history. I would be grateful if anyone could reply on my talkpage. Regards--Aciram (talk) 14:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Eesti mõttelugu
This article has just been PRODded for lack of evidence of notability - if anyone thinks the article is worth saving, now is the time.HeartofaDog (talk) 13:14, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I think there is no point to keep it. The notability of the series is questionable even in Estonian context - if someone disagrees and wants to expand/recreate it, then let it be so. -- Sander Säde 13:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion of Communist genocide as a high importance article?
Someone has tagged Communist genocide as high importance to WikiProject Estonia. There are two main problems with this: I'm really not sure it's high importance. There are other articles which cover Estonia under Soviet rule.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:56, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's an article that hasn't survived AfDs, so much as crawled through them with no consensus. Those arguing for deletion variously see it as POV, content forking, OR or all three at once. In particular, the term genocide is seen as problematic. In other words, it's a bit odd that an article whose existence is disputed (and not by apologists) be treated as so important.
 * The page is about to be retitled "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes" (unless something very weird happens at the last minute in the discussion), probably with a focus on the mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s, the PRC in the cultural revolution and the Khmer Rouge, as that's where the RS making claims for a link between commnist ideology and large scale killings focusses. There isn't the RS that I'm aware of that makes a link between Soviet brutalities in Estonia and communist ideology per se - rather than simple imperialist/colonialist aggression. (Similarly, the brutal takeover of Tibet is a separate issue, as that is clearly a nationalist action rather than a communist one.)


 * The way I see it 'high importance' by the WikiProject Estonia is well justified. After all, what's defined as the Communist/Soviet genocide in Estonia was not a simple imperialist/colonialist aggression but the Soviet brutalities in Estonia have been linked to the communist ideology per se. Or another way to put it, nobody in Estonia has blamed the suggested Russians/Russian imperialist/colonialist aggression for the Soviet atrocities but exclusively the Communist regime + the ideology in the Soviet Union and its Communist collaborators in Estonia. FFI please see Arnold_Meri and/or . In case the article gets renamed "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes" and as a result its going to exclude the related facts currently under the discussion, that's not a problem. An appropriate new article can be made in the future instead. In either way the article would have high importance for WikiProject Estonia.--Termer (talk) 05:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

PS. not related really but the brutal takeover of Tibet is a separate issue, as that is clearly a nationalist action rather than a communist one is an opinion. At the time when the destruction of Tibetan culture that's based on Buddhism is justified by the Communist ideology.--Termer (talk) 05:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * You're talking about Soviet brutalities in Estonia. The yearbook article that you yourself cite does not seek to say that the repressions were the product of communist ideology. To treat "Communist" and "Soviet" as identical is simply wrong. It's like calling Operation Condor a capitalist genocide. No matter what point of view you want to get across, we have to stick with RS analyses.
 * Your reference to Tibet I think shows that you have not grasped what most editors on the talkpage have been trying to communicate to you. No one is disputing that bad things happened under communist regimes. What is at dispute is whether those bad things happened because of the ideology of the regime. Under a communist system, everything is officially justified according to ideology - bunkum, of course, just as all sorts of US shenanigans in South America aren't anything to do with protecting a free way of life, or British actions in Africa and "civilising" people. It's just ironic that you choose to believe the communists on that particular point. While the attempted destruction of Tibetan Buddhism is one thing which might be connectable to the ideology, the actual invasion itself is clearly based on Chinese nationalism.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:49, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

There is no point in questioning my intelligence by claiming what I have not grasped. I'm well aware and see it all the time happening, the attempts to unlink the Communist regimes from the Communist ideology. It's nothing more or less than trying to sell a story of "the Communist regimes were not run by 'true Communists and their ideology". Bard my ignorance but the Communist regimes=ideology was well defined already by George Orwell's Animal Farm, and in case you do have something new on the subject since the book was published, please do not hesitate to educate me.--Termer (talk) 06:06, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not questioning your intelligence (just your understanding of what other editors are trying to explain), but you are certainly claiming I'm doing this for POV reasons. I'm not; you have consistently failed to provide RS sourcing for your interpretation that actions by communist governments are always founded in communist ideology. George Orwell was writing a novel, which is not RS for history or political science. In any case, the book is about how unchecked power corrupts, not about how communism itself necessitates mass murder (note that it's when the animals become like capitalist humans that they become oppressive). You should read it some time ;-). Orwell, a democratic socialist was explicit that he saw totalitarianism as the problem, whether it came from communism or fascism, which he tended to see as two sides of the same coin.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I think I finally got it! You don't question my intelligence, you just explain me that Orwell is not a WP:RS and say that I should read it some time. Thanks!--Termer (talk) 06:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, you did request educating. Thankfully, not re-educating. That wouldn't be WP:civil ;-).VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:49, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * As I assessed the importance of the article as high, I explained some of my reasoning here. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk • contribs) 11:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Mari Aakre
Could someone who knows Estonian, please comment on Articles for deletion/Mari Aakre? Voceditenore (talk) 12:45, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Article expansion
I was doing some recent BLP clean-up and came across the Endel Taniloo article. As it stands it is just a single sentence, however the Estonian Wikipedia article has much more content as well as a useable image. Is there any chance that one of the Estonian project members could translate some of the info over to the English wiki article? --Jezebel's Ponyo shhh 16:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

XA-180 (EST) and other Estonian military vehicles
Why is there a separate page for every type armored vehicle used in Kaitsevägi (Template:Armoured personnel carriers of Estonia)? None of these APC's are Estonian made, only used in Estonia and already have articles about them. I don't think there should be a separate articles to describe them. --Kyng (talk) 11:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, this is an unnecessary duplication and splitting of content. The mentioned articles should be merged and deleted. —Quibik (talk) 14:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Eesti
The Estonian Chapter of Wikimedia is underway. See et:Vikipeedia:MTÜ Wikimedia Eesti. Wikipedists from Estonia are invited. Andres (talk) 07:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Ödenpäh, Rappin and Wrangelshof
Does anyone know the current names of Livonian Ödenpäh, Rappin and Wrangelshof? Please either contact me on my talk or disambiguate in the landowner section of the Carl Gustav Wrangel article. Thank you Skäpperöd (talk) 17:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Please monitor Estonia-related articles more carefully
As some of the WikiProject Estonia members are forced to stay away from Eastern European topics for a while, please step up your watchfulness. There is a lot of vandalism - and even worse, targeted attempts to falsify Estonia-related articles. You can easily monitor all WikiProject Estonia articles using this small script (requires Twinkle as well, enable it from your preferences → Gadgets). Ask help here or on my talk page, if you have any questions or problems. -- Sander Säde 08:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Update: Twinkle no longer needed and public watchlist is located at WikiProject Estonia/publicwatchlist. -- Sander Säde 09:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

ETV tütarlastekoor
ETV tütarlastekoor There are Inconsistency in the article: 1th is not the truth. It may be 1st or 4th, 5th ... It is possible that the number is wrong or the “th” is wrong. I do not now what of that is wrong or true. Please check it. --Diwas (talk) 12:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It is indeed 1st. Fixed it and added a reference. Lipik (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles bot
Okip  01:02, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Jaak Urmet
The biographical article of Estonian writer Jaak Urmet lacks sources and, as it stands, may fail WP:GNG. He's been categorised as an Estonian children's writer, but I can't find any evidence easily to support this (or the text in the article) and wondered whether someone over here could help.--Plad2 (talk) 06:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Update. The Estonian Literary Magazine interview link provided on the page does provide some support but it's not really enough.--Plad2 (talk) 06:27, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Stub templates
Maybe stub templates on the Project page should be updated, because on Category:Estonia stubs, there are lots of other templates too. Some other updates should be done also on the Project page, like requests. Pelmeen10 (talk) 14:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Photos required from Estonia
I am currently working on many various articles for which I require photos from around the world. I am currently requiring photos from Estonia for these articles, and I was hoping that this message would reach a photographer who can take the photos for me. The photos I currently require are listed at User:Russavia/Required_photos. If any photographers can assist with this, I would be most appreciative. Please leave any comments or questions for me on my talk page at User_talk:Russavia as I am unlikely to read replies. Thanks in advance for any assistance which can be provided. Cheers, --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 01:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons update
The WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (UBLPs) aims to reduce the number of unreferenced biographical articles to under 30,000 by June 1, primarily by enabling WikiProjects to easily identify UBLP articles in their project's scope. There were over 52,000 unreferenced BLPs in January 2010 and this has been reduced to 32,665 as of May 16. A bot is now running daily to compile a list of all articles that are in both Category:All unreferenced BLPs and have been tagged by a WikiProject. Note that the bot does NOT place unreferenced tags or assign articles to projects - this has been done by others previously - it just compiles a list.

Your Project's list can be found at WikiProject Estonia/Unreferenced BLPs. As of May 17 you have approximately 88 articles to be referenced, a 5.4% reduction from last week. The list of all other WikiProject UBLPs can be found at WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at WT:URBLP or at my talk page. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 18:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia Eesti
Täna, 25. juulil, kell 17 toimub Tallinnas Kreutzwaldi 4 üliõpilaskondade liidu ruumes MTÜ Wikimedia Eesti asutamiskoosolek. Vaata et:Vikipeedia:Üldine arutelu. Andres (talk) 07:28, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Lake Peipsi-Pihkva
has been recently moved to Lake Peipus. Please express your opinion here. Materialscientist (talk) 07:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Kalev Ots and Ahti Mänd
Nominated for deletion: Articles for deletion/Kalev Ots (2nd nomination). K731 (talk) 16:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Assistance needed with Eastern Europe
The Eastern Europe article is fraught with errors, mislabels and slanted facts as if much of it was written by ultraconservatives during the Cold War from an ethnocentric position. If you agree with that Estonia is a Central/Northern European state rather than a Soviet satellite, please assist in rewording/correcting the article lead and body. Gregorik (talk) 06:17, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Narva Power Plants
There is a discussion about splitting the Narva Power Plants article. Your comments are appreciated. Beagel (talk) 07:38, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect maps in Wiki Media related to Estonia(ns)
There's a lot of them, like these :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Early_Rus.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Khazarfall1.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Varangian_routes.png

ignoring the common accepted historic knowledge and seeding misinformation.

Someone with the knowledge about the mechanics of wiki should look in to it for damage repairs.

--62.65.192.84 (talk) 05:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

bump --62.65.192.85 (talk) 14:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, these maps need to be updated. You say there is a lot of them, could you assist by providing a full list. --Martin (talk) 18:22, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Estonia articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Estonia articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing
I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:17, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Navy of Estonia
Navy of Estonia has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.45.209 (talk) 13:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Photo request
For those of you in Tallinn, would anyone mind photographing the following? Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 13:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Estonian Air head office - Lennujaama tee 13 11101 Tallinn

I think we should remove old requests (those with existing images). Pelmeen10 (talk) 22:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

To do list
I thought to do list is important, so I made Template:Estonia To-do. You can change it if you don't like it. Pelmeen10 (talk) 22:26, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge WikiProject Estonian towns?
We have a similar WikiProject, WikiProject Estonian towns, which is inactive. But I think we should make it a WP Estonia's taskforce. What do you think? Pelmeen10 (talk) 11:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea to me. --Martin (talk) 18:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Terminological question re boroughs
What is a borough (alev) in Estonia: How is it defined? How is it to be understood? Are they small towns (if so, what distinguishes boroughs from towns: population, ratable population, administration...?), or administrative divisions of cities, or something else entirely? Thanks. —Felix the Cassowary 12:07, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Livonian War
The previous A class review was inconclusive, and suffered from a lack of input. I really hope to get the article to A class soon, and therefore if you'd like to comment on the current review (here) then please do so. The A class criteria, of which there are only five, can be found here. Even if you only look at one aspect, that would be great. Thanks, Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:24, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Biographies of torupill (Estonian bagpipe) players
There's only so much info scanned and online so far, but it was enough to get a few bio stubs going for players of the torupill.


 * Aleksander Maaker: the last traditional player, hailing from the island of Hiiumaa
 * Olev Roomet: a Soviet Estonian choir member who took up the pipes before Maaker died. My impression from other articles is that he was basically directed to by some folk organisation in the USSR to keep the tradition alive, presumably in that rather stilted formulaic style the Soviets applied to a lot of folk music.
 * Ants Taul: took up the pipes in the 1970s and became the primary maker and player. Father of current torupill maker and player (as I understand, the most prominent one) Anders Taul. Anders has a great torupill website here: http://www.pillimeister.torupillitalu.ee/indexeng.php

If anyone has their hands on any additional resources that may be used to expand these, I would greatly appreciate the support. I have a few folks to email, including Anders Taul, so hope to get some more news clippings, yet-unscanned reference books, and maybe photos. MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Diacritics RfC
Discussion is underway regarding the use of diacritics in proper nouns from languages such as Estonian. Comments are welcome at Naming conventions (use English)/Diacritics RfC. Prolog (talk) 19:24, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Estonia as place of birth in infoboxes
I want to invite all interested editors to express their view at a discussion taking place here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies. Best regards, FkpCascais (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month
Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Estonia will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in Estonia's history, society and culture. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 21:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Should the kannel (Estonian lap-harp) be spliced off of kantele (Finnish equivalent)?
If anyone wants to weigh in, we could use some opinions at Talk:Kantele as to whether these two instruments are substantively the same, or whether kannel should have its own article like the Latvian kokle and Lithuanian kankles. Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

New article: Rural parliament
I have started a new article which deals with the Estonian rural parliament, among others. Please review, contribute and expand. Additional quality refs highly welcome. --Mais oui! (talk) 04:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

New article: Kannel (instrument)
Just letting folks know I put up a new article on the Estonian kannel! MatthewVanitas (talk) 03:02, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Effort to reach consensus on Manual of Style concerning Baltic states-related articles
Hello, Just want to let you know, that an active discussion on how to reach consensus on a formalised Manual of Style concerning Baltic states-related articles is going on here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Baltic states-related articles. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 16:28, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Category:Imperial Russian people by occupation
There is currently a discussion about possibly merging Category:Imperial Russian people by occupation to Category:Russian people by occupation. The person who made this porposal also wants to eliminate Category:Imperial Russian people and evidently make it also part of Category:Russian people. This would seem to have to effect of classifying Category:People from the Governorate of Estonia and Category:People from the Governorate of Livonia as Russian people. This conflating of past and present nationalities would seem to be relevant to the classification of many people connected with Estonia over the years. Your participation in the dissscusion especially to address the issue of how the Russian Empire is a distinct entity from modern Russia would be helpful.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Anti-fascism
Looking for help to remove propaganda at Anti-fascism. User332572385 (talk) 07:01, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Estonian Wikipedia
Please see Help desk (version of 17:29, 29 May 2013). —Wavelength (talk) 17:49, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Sven Sester and other members of Estonia's parliament
Another editor has created an article on Sven Sester. It might be worthwhile for someone to create stubs on all current and past members of Estonia's parliament using the parliament's site and the electoral commission's site as references. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 20:16, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Estonian dialects
has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Baltic states
has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 10:48, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Baltic Assembly
has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 15:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Template:Coastal batteries of Estonia
Hello. I wanted to let you know that I have nominated this template for deletion. De728631 (talk) 02:39, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Reassessment request
Could I have Supreme Court of Estonia reassessed, please? KKalve (talk) 19:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Popular pages tool update
As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at ~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

If you have any questions, want to report any bugs, or there are any features you would like to see that aren't currently available on the Toolserver tools, see the updated FAQ or contact me on my talk page. Mr.Z-bot (talk) (for Mr.Z-man ) 05:04, 23 February 2014 (UTC)