Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latvia/Archive 4

Latvian constitutional referendum, 2008 assessment
I'd like to expand this further if anyone can help. Also can someone have a look at the assessment? Someone rated it as start class but the criteria for that says that: "An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources." The article is reliably sourced so deserves a higher rating. Valenciano (talk) 08:09, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * At the moment, it seems that I am the only active participant of the WikiProject, and it was I who assessed the article to start-class. Without having read the article in detail, yet - I would say that the references section needs a workover. Two dead links, a "black" link to a newspaper and a link to a Latvian language source most probably could be improved this much time after the election occured. Since I am not that familiar with Latvian politics, it perhaps would be better if someone else took a look at the article as well. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 10:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Riga GA/FA effort
Moving forward slowly, please see sample outlines of GA/FA city articles in talk. I'm currently working on History of Riga which will then be abridged for the History section in Riga. —V ЄСRUМВА  ♪  15:04, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Biographical information of Viktors Lorencs
Hi, everyone. Sorry, I understand that this may not be the best place for this request but I can't think of a better one at the moment. Could somebody please provide biographical details on Latvian film person Viktors Lorencs (1927-1992). Specifically, I could really use the locations of birth and death. A googling marathon found nothing good except the Russian Wikipedia page Лоренц,_Виктор which doesn't feature anything useful besides the dates. I would be really grateful if somebody with access to Latvian printed sources (an encyclopedia, for example) could help me with some data on him. Better yet -- you could start articles on him on Latvian and English-language projects!

Best,

madis from Estonia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.191.197.232 (talk) 22:11, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Terviseks, Madis! If you're watching, I'll take a look around. I'm a bit confused as I found an article from 2004 (in Latvian) which seems to quote Lorencs... a mystery is always good! V ЄСRUМВА  ♪  23:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The first theatre and actors in Latvia
What was the first theatre in Latvia 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) 10:39, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The net say the first modern theatre in the country was founded in Riga in 1782. 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) 14:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Riga Metro
I have made this page recently... Riga Metro. Any help would be appreciated. Further, it would be useful to add a link to the latvian and russian counterpart on their language wikipedias. Regards, (LAz17 (talk) 00:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)).
 * images and some info added MetroDreams (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Latvian Week in Russian Wikipedia
Hi! The Russian-language Wikipedia is holding the Latvian Week, a joint effort aiming to expand coverage of Latvian history and culture in the wiki. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Gallus Gallicus (talk) 08:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Popular pages
I have requested a list of popular pages for this project at. --Ysangkok (talk) 15:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there a page about Latvian sprats? I just had a tin of them for the first time - and they were marvelous - not too salty, lightly smoked, altogether lovely. I looked for a section about Latvian foods but did't find it.

I hope I'm not violating any Wikipedia rules here. I've never done this before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.154.118.188 (talk) 01:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)


 * See baltic sprat for information about this fish. – Maliepa (talk) 02:13, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I had no idea they're 'Baltic sprats'. Not too surprising, though, once I checked a map after reading your response, and discovered Latvia is right on the Baltic Sea. I think the tin only said they were from Latvia. It was hard for me to read the label, as most of the writing was in - I'm guessing Russian? - Cyrillic characters at any rate. I checked the Wikipaedia article on Latvia, too - what a nice place! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.154.118.188 (talk) 18:26, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Latvia Meteorite
Someone has marked the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite_in_Latvia_2009 for deletion - can you believe that? The event is a hoax, not the page its self - there is a difference! I tried to write something on the discussion page for the proposed deletion but I ended up here. So I hope you guys can stop this happening. It is still an event with cultural significance, even if no metorite fell. Read here: http://www.thelocal.se/22910/20091027/ On the other hand, the article definitely needs more material. Think about that event in US a couple of weeks ago, with a boy supposedly lifting off in a homemade aircraft, it was also a supposed hoax, but it was definitely something to document in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.67.54.99 (talk) 08:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've expanded the article and also nominated it for "Did You Know"? but it could really use a picture or two. If anyone has any free pictures of the fake meteorite crater, that would be a big improvement to the article. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 04:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Article featured today in Did You Know? Proposed deletion to inclusion on the main page in less than 2 weeks - not bad! Contains Mild Peril (talk) 20:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Latvia to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at WikiProject Latvia/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 01:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Importance assessment
I had a bit of argument with User:Philaweb about assessing importance of an article. Thought I have left the project, I have assessed several articles and have my own idea how it should be done. Philaweb suggested we work on assessment criteria to reach some consensus. The assessment scale for importance is not very clear, so there can be several ways how to interpret it, here are some: If I have understood Philaweb correctly, I can see some problems with his approach, but I will let him confirm that this is what he was thinking, before I explain my take on this Xil  (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) The scale is based on how likely the subject would be included in printed encyclopedia. I usually have interpreted this by thinking how likely it would be for the particular article to appear in encyclopedia about Latvia - a good way to determine it seems to be considering if this subject is well known and has great impact in Latvia.
 * 2) As the project covers several different categories (such as Latvian architecture, Latvian law etc.), this could also be interpreted as how important the particular article is within its category. I think I have used this approach when the importance for Latvia in general has been less obvious (I think articles on geography are one such ambiguous category)
 * 3) What Philaweb seems to be suggesting is that it should also be considered how important it is for WikiProject Latvia to develop particular article - his reason for assessing importance of article we were arguing about as high was that it was first article on international court case in scope of WikiProject Latvia

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)

Help requested in discussion at WP:WSS/P about Latvian geography stubs
Hi -

Your input is requested for advice as to the subdivision of geography stubs in, in a discussion at WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals/2009/December. In general, a stub category will be split when there are close to 800 articles into subcategories, each of 60 or more stubs. Geography categories are always split by region (province/district/state, etc). Unfortunately, in the case of Latvia, there are 109 top-level administrative novads, so we're looking at an average of only a handful of stubs per region, so we need to know whether there can somehow be grouped into logical clumps (for example, is there a specific group of novads which together are consistently known as "Northwest Latvia"?). Any help from those who know the country would be appreciated. Grutness...wha?  00:55, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Translation cleanup at Dūda?
I figure the article Dūda (on the traditional Latvian bagpipe) could really give folks insight into Latvian folk music, however it's a pretty messy GoogleTranslation at this point. Is there anyone strong on Latvian who can help to clean it up? I'd be more than happy to help refine any of the technical bagpipe terms (stocks, chanter, blowpipe, etc) if someone can just do a basic layman's stab at it. I've also added links to sound and pic files, since it's a pretty obscure instrument and hard to find examples of. MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:07, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Parishes
The wording in some geography articles hints that someone might be assuming that parishes don't exist anymore. The parishes now are subdivisons of municipalities and most of them still exist in their previous form Xil  (talk) 01:03, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding. Denis Tarasov (talk) 13:51, 13 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) 03:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

File:Latvijas valsts karoga vimpeļa.svg
Got any use for this? User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 20:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles bot
Okip  00:42, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Votes in Latvia
I was thinking about starting this article (same in Latvian wiki), but what would be proper name for it? Should it be called simply "Votes in Latvia" or something like "Krievins" or "Kreevins"? J.K Nakkila (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Latvia/Unreferenced BLPs
For the last month, I have tried to shorten the above linked list of unreferenced BLP's down from 76 to 27, as of today. Some of the rest are harder to find, and probably needs some enhanced Google skills. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 17:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

AFD: Riga Salsa Festival
Vote or rescue: Articles for deletion/Riga Salsa Festival. East of Borschov (talk) 13:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons
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 Latvia/Unreferenced BLPs. As of May 17 you only have approximately 20 articles to be referenced. 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) 17:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Ugis Praulins - article in need of translated sources and TLC
We have a new article about a latvian composer that could use some help in translating sources to ensue the article can survive any questions about its Notability. Thanks! Active Banana (talk) 03:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Anyone for a featured article?
Does anyone want to collaborate on some article to bring it to FA? There is only one now (FM), which is sad. I looked at the Riga FAC push, but that is a very large topic, and would need all the sub-topics sorted first. So I was thinking of something smaller/manageable, like a smaller city, major structure, some individual, or event? Does anyone want to group up for better motivation/effort? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 21:54, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The main issue I see with this is that it is hard to find extensive information on anythig online and without good sources we can't do anything. If you could sort out mess in Riga it would be good to go too, but I figure you are not sure from which end to start either. There is a good number of Awards, decorations and vexillology FAs, which would indicate that these are easy to make. Perhaps some historical article too. You could check out the articles assesed as top and high in importance. If you decide on something leave me a message on my talk at lv.wiki, I'll try to help you out if the topic will be something I'm interested in Xil  (talk) 12:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm off to Riga in a couple days, so I'll have access to all the local bibliography, which passes much better for FAs than online stuff. Riga is a mess indeed, and would need sub-articles sorted before the main article can be polished. That is a serious workload that I don't have motivation/patience for. I don't mind going for a smaller topic though, if I know there is enough material to work with. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 13:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * How about Madona? It ranks as number 16 on WikiProject Latvia/Popular pages. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 13:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You're sure it is from acctual need not from people viewing disambigs for Madonna ? As far as FA goes I've remember considering Brothers' Cemetery (Riga) (too much conflicting information), the flag or coat of arms (but wasn't sure if I could get iformation similar to what simmilar FAs got), some other symolic stuff could e considered e.g Daugava or Order of the Three Stars... Well, Rīga has a bonus of being FA on some other Wikipedias (so we can atleast take it as example for structure), if interested I could try to recruit some help from lv.wiki, there's atleast one person who regulary contributes to Riga related articles and seems to know English well enough too Xil  (talk) 13:52, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * "You're sure it is from actual need not from people viewing disambigs for Madonna?" — *ha ha* I find it funny too, but did you visit the article to see what mess it is in? Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 13:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hehe, Madona &mdash; awesome. It's a mess, I'm not not sure why translation work would be done with live edits. Anyhow, the problem of choosing a history-related subject is all the controversy just a few editors can stir up, which is really not something anyone wants to deal with. That's why I suggested structure/body of water/body of land/city or similar. My personal favourite is currently Saulkrasti. It would also be cool to write up about a river or lake, but I fear nothing except Daugava/Gauja has enough notable coverage. If all fails, I can always expand Š. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 14:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * With history I would consider pre-WWII articles. Daugava or Gauja would be fine, probaly Lake Burtnieks or other large and mythic lakes also have good sources (for starters lakes have ezeri.lv database) I must say that of cities I favour Riga for such colaboration - it is the most important city, one of most popular articles too, has allready been subject to such proposals (so people allready have idea what to do), besides I tried to sort it out once and it really isn't job for one person.
 * The text on Madona originaly was commented out, someone unhid it recently, otherwise it is your avarage article on Latvian city, I may have pissed off half of comunity on lv.wiki by tagging the same articles there for being big fat listcruft yesterday, therefore I must say they are mess everywhere and I don't really support translating them from Latvian either Xil  (talk) 14:38, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Possibly one of the many depressing historical events. I noticed recently for example that Rumbula massacre is quite detailed and well sourced yet bizarrely is only classed as start class. There's probably others along those lines which are of greater interest to a wider audience than (no offence to it) a large village like Madona. Valenciano (talk) 17:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not really into WWII, it has proven to be highly controversial, besides that article is quite good already, probably should be peer reviewed first Xil  (talk) 17:28, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Well then what shall we do ? Xil (talk) 11:35, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm going to choose a city, like Saulkrasti or some notable structure. I don't like history (read: controversial) topics. Riga, Latvia, and such are all too broad. Daugava, Gauja, or some lake also seem OK. Do you have any proposals for a larger group collaboration? I wouldn't wish to start something that even a group wouldn't be able to finish. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 11:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I left a note to person who appears to be main author of Rumbula massacre, let's see what happens, but despite anything WP:OWN says I think we will do more harm than good in article which is allready being worked on by someone else. I like Riga despite the mess - there is plenty information availale and it is on of the most viewed articles. Daugava also is OK with me Xil  (talk) 12:32, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Since Riga is my passion of heart, it is obviously going to be that article for me. But, I think your choice of Saulkrasti is good also, so if you go ahead, I will help you as much as I can, perhaps assist on the history parts. When it comes to Rumbula massacre, I am certainly out. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 12:36, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As for notable structures - I'm happy with that, I find it would be easier to wrap my mind around such topic and I allready have some expieriece with that, but I dunno what's important enough to go for it - Riga Castle, Rundāle Palace or some church ? Xil  (talk) 12:37, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is possible to boost Riga Cathedral quite a lot, and I would be able to contribute as well. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 12:45, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Also St. Peter's Church, Riga has some information and structure allready. There is a slight problem with Doms that is has three diffrent names, has been subject to some controversies and the last time I heard it is closed to visitors or something (I suppose we will want good interiour shots ?). And in any case I'll try to recruit the guy who wrote FA on Riga at lv.wiki (sorry, but this seems to be going nowhere, i still am into doing a structure, if we can agree upon one)  Xil  (talk) 13:16, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A structure on Riga? Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 15:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Acctualy I think the current one is thorough as far as major sections go, some amends in content and susections should be made. Also I figure I will write new section cityscape and I like lv.wiki's section on fauna (in fact there should be enough meaterials to add something on geology and flora as well, so we could do nature section) and probably we still should have short section on adinistrative divison Xil  (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The most important is prose and content, and - that we don't work on the same piece ;o). When we have got that we can always decide on structure. The current structure is good for starters — we can always expand later. Sounds good what you have picked, looking forward to see the result. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 16:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Rumbula massacre may need some work.
 * There are no contemporary photographs that survive.
 * A map would be helpful, as this event occurs not just at Rumbula, but in the Moscow Suburb and all along the highway to the forest. Also, one important survivor, Max Kaufmann, went all the way down to Salaspils trying to track the destination of the marching columns, so the map should go a bit furtther than just the forest itself.
 * The basic English source is the work by Ezergailis, who has the advantage of speaking Latvian. I think it would be fair to say that while he certainly covered the German side, his work was focused on the Latvian role, for example, that of the Arajs Commando, in the Rumbula event as well as the Liepaja, Jelgava and other massacres.
 * There is a new source available in English translation by Angrick and Klein (previously only available in German) which covers the event through extensive review of the trial records developed in the 1960s in West Germany. While Ezergailis did review the trial records, from what I have seen on-line though Google Books, it looks like Angrick and Klein have done a more thorough job.Mtsmallwood (talk) 15:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I will (personally) work on Saulkrasti after all. I will have access to some good material, including old copies of significant articles from local newspaper. I can probably get my hands on some books from local library. Besides, I will be able to take some good photos, like the local Estrade. Anyone want to join for this? I think Philaweb wanted to chip in. I am out on historic topics, such as the Rumbula, I just can't make myself work on tedious history ever since school. I may post some stuff for Riga-related articles if I come across any. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Count me in on Saulkrasti. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 06:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Article structure - Riga
Did a little browsing for some ideas on how others have solved the challenge of creating some sort of guidelines and conventions as to the structure of an article about a city - this is what I initially found: WikiProject Cities#Article guidelines and conventions, and I find the structure guideline on Canadian communities to be short and sweet for starters. I do not have the time today for further contributions to the Riga article, but do have a look and let me know what you think. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 17:45, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The approach to large articles should be bottom-up; that is polishing the sub-articles first and then making Riga a perfect overview of the topics. In principle, every section of Riga should have enough material for a separate article. Recent example is separated administrative divisions, which can be expanded greatly with stuff about each one, but the main Riga article should only provide a broad overview about earliest regions, development, culture, whatever. I think it is best that efforts are directed at individual sections one at a time. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 06:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comments about Rīga. I think it must be featured article. And I plan to make article about Liepāja featured too. I will finish Liepāja soon. You must rewrite Rīga article completely and don't remove panarama picture of the city center. Denis Tarasov (talk)

So has any work been commenced yet? Riga and Rumbula M. are both quiet at the moment. Has anyone else thought of a good article for future FA candidacy? Just, please, no depressing history :) I'm willing to help out in one way or another if someone wishes to start work on an article or two. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:41, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Since I found that my sources don`t mach to Philaweb`s more recently pulished source (we had a discussion about some architect), I later started doubting accuracy of what I`ve got and decided that the article might be better of without errors I could accidently introduce. I guess we could as well wait until something just comes to us Xil  (talk) 19:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Free pictures from Saeima
FYI The Saeima has an account on Flickr, it appears that many of the images are liensed under CC-BY-SA Xil  (talk) 16:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Quite a scoop and many photos of good quality. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 17:47, 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 Latvia is a Central/Northern European state rather than a Soviet satellite, please assist in rewording/correcting the article lead and body. Gregorik (talk) 06:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Why ? The article allready calls this definition out dated and mentions that Latvia is otherwise considered to be in Northen Europe. This seems like canvassing Xil  (talk) 16:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Whatever the concerns, I'm sure this wasn't canvassing. WikiProject is probably the best place to bring such matters up. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:28, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * This would be concern for WikiProjects with broader coverage (all I can think of are allready listed in discussion of that article). Asking on national project and the wording of request seems more like an attempt to attract people who dearly hate Soviet Union Xil  (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Xil, canvassing means sending message to individual wikipedians, not wikiproject pages. I was not being disruptive. Please stop criticizing if you don't feel like contributing to the article. Gregorik (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I would feel like it, if there indeed was a problem. I did check it out, also noted that you`ve been reverting a lot and have`t tried to ask for help on WikiProjects, which just made me question your intent more. I merely figured that anyone`s time would be better spent dealing with real issues, instead of trying to pretend that Soviet Union has had no influence on anything Xil  (talk) 19:16, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Latvia 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 Latvia articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) 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 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Elina Ringa
Could anyone help improve this new article a little? Thanks,  Chzz  ► 10:12, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

People, addition information needed with references! Please, upgrade our article! Thanks, Sandis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.115.118.71 (talk) 16:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Diplomatic coverage
Mārtiņš Lācis, the Latvian ambassador to Ireland, is proposed for deletion (or merging). Anyone who can help either establishing notability or with a merge would be welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 16:00, 19 October 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) 20:25, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Additional opinions requested - Baron Munchhausen
Additional opinions would be appreciated at Talk:Baron M%C3%BCnchhausen. Thanks. Doniago (talk) 16:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

new page
Here, Go Blonde Festival, please help improve it. (LAz17 (talk) 20:41, 28 May 2011 (UTC)).

Romanization
What rules do we follow for romanization of Latvian words/names? Is there already one or would it be possible to draft a simple Romanization chart, such as Romanization of Russian. In essense, what to do with all the "ā", "š", "ķ", etc. letters. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * It is common practice here on Wikipedia only to transliterate languages that are not based on scripts in the latin alphabet. Or in other words – we keep the diacritics. What you probably are really asking about is what the naming convention says – it says to use WP:ENGLISH. Problems arrises though when a person lived and was active during the Latvian SSR-period, then names were not taken directly from the Latvian language into English, but were transliterated from the Russian language into English, since Russian was the official language of those days. Much of this transliteration can still be found in English sources, and according to WP:ENGLISH, is the proper usage since that is what readers can relate to throughout the anglosphere. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 15:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, this is about prose, not article name. So, if I need to specify a Latvian name with diacritics, I would simply write it as is? So "The architect was Jānis Kalniņš." instead of "The architect was Janis Kalninsh (Jānis Kalniņš)."? What about institution or location names and such? Do they also just get written as is without fear of someone misreading them? By the way, none of the names have common English names or even any English sources at all. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, even if only prose, one must consider that a notable person could get an article on Wikipedia over time. I would say – yes; "The architect was Jānis Kalniņš", as long as there is no overwhelming usage in English that tells us otherwise. The same goes for institutions, in Latvian, unless there is trivial usage of translations, i.e. Latvian Ministry of this and that etc. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 17:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Alright, thanks. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Diacritics RfC
Discussion is underway regarding the use of diacritics in proper nouns from languages such as Latvian. Comments are welcome at Naming conventions (use English)/Diacritics RfC. Prolog (talk) 19:26, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Latvijas Balzams and Riga Black Balsam
I would like to ask if I could edit the existing information about Latvijas balzams. I could add to RBB page sections Legends, Manufacture& Packaging and expand the History section. Also the info about the Latvijas balzams should be edited, because they key people and the owner of LB has changed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KBLB (talk • contribs) 07:11, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * You don't need permission to edit any of the pages. As long as you follow policies/guidelines, most importantly WP:V and WP:OR, it's fine. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * As long as you do not violate WP:COPYVIO by copying and pasting entire sections of their website, then I agree. Lettonica (talk) 13:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Rogatywka military cap
Can anyone identify the rogatywka as also being of the same design as the military caps of the Latvian armed forces? Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 18:41, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I for one have never seen anything like it, maybe you mean inter war period unifrorms. Here are various pics of current uniforms. In addition I came by a rather short exchange of opinions in a forum on uniforms honour guard wears having Polish caps, so in case that is what you mean here's a bunch of staff batalion soldiers with tops of their hats visible. Xil  (talk) 01:03, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your answer. Well, I was asking generally speaking, since I have no clue. The latter uniform cap is what I was referring to. Does it have a specific name in Latvian? Is it different from the interwar period type? Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 17:00, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not that I know of maybe in military slang, but the NBS site above refers to it as parade uniform's cap. The honour guard is performed by štāba batajons, if you look up pictures you'll find pics of both modern and interwar soldiers, it looks to me that the uniform is the same. However during the interwar period they wore helmets while performing duties of honour guard Xil  (talk) 21:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Article request for Latvian Wikipedia
Hi, guys! For those of you who edit the Latvian Wikipedia, the editors have stated that they discourage article requests in most instances: lv:Vikipēdija:Tulkošanas vadlīnijas says: But I have a case for a particular topic. Latvia used to be an observer state of the Interstate Aviation Committee of the CIS, so there should be a sufficient interest from people who speak the Latvian language. Therefore I decided that I am going to seek a user who knows Latvian and ask him or her if he or she is interested in writing a Latvian language article on this subject.
 * "Begging other users to translate for you is also strongly discouraged as this is likely to result in creating of stub on topic that is of no interest to target audience of Latvian Wikipedia, as such will never be improved and would never have been created, if it wasn't for the request."

So with that in mind, is anyone here interested in writing a Latvian language article on the IAC?

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 02:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Another question: When did Latvia stop being an observer state to the IAC? I asked, because somebody from the Romanian Wikipedia (Moldova speaks Romanian and one of the IAC member state is Moldova) found info about Moldova attempting to secede from the IAC.
 * WhisperToMe (talk) 01:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I took a quick look around for Starptautiskās aviācijas komiteja (SAK), nothing that mentioned Latvia looking to leave, of course, that could just mean I didn't find it. Perhaps our local Latvian editors have heard something. P ЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 04:27, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The reason why I suspect that they left is because the IAC/MAK site used to say that Latvia and Estonia were observer states, but it doesn't say that anymore.
 * Old: http://web.archive.org/web/20010809100851/http://www.mak.ru/make/index.htm
 * New: http://www.mak.ru/english/english.html
 * WhisperToMe (talk) 05:05, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Importance rankings.
I was surprised to see Richard Wagner listed as a top importance Latvia article. I know he did work in Riga early in his career, but surely his two years there are of only minor significance to the topic of Latvia as a whole? I wonder what other articles have also been misassessed.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:59, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems like assigning high according to the "bet you didn't know this famous XYZ was associated with Latvia" criterion. I'd expect something similar regarding Latvian colonies in the Caribbean and on the Gold Coast in Africa, Latvia being the primary shipbuilder for the British navy, etc. There's an ambivalent relationship between the Latvians and 700 years of German hegemony. P ЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 03:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I decide to remove your project tag from the article talk page. I thought he might have finished one of his early operas in Riga but he didnt. He was just a jobbing theatrical conductor there who ended up owing lots of people money, but that doesn't distinguish Riga from umpteen other places. If someone disagrees don't expect an answer from me here. I only got reminded of this because the project is still on my watchlist. I'm about to clear it now.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

RFC ar Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)
There has been a brewing issue at WP:RM over WP:HOCKEY recommendations and how they should be applied over WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE. Basically the hockey recommendation is that Diacritics shall be applied to all player pages, where appropriate as for the languages of the nationalities of the players in question. This is in fact a mandate that does not allow consideration of any other policy on naming. I think we need to resolve the issue of which naming convention we use for ice hockey players. Is it the one for the names of everyone else based on existing policy and guidelines, or do we have a blanket exception for one project? Please go to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English) per Vegaswikian (talk) 00:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Mass page move request
A mass nomination to move articles about sportsmen based on diacritics in their name has been filed at Talk:Dominik_Halmosi -- Ohconfucius  ¡digame! 04:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month
Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Latvia will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in Latvia'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) 21:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Wanted Pages
Seems to me that people simply adding to a manual list in alphabetical order would be much more useful. The automated list is generating far too many article titles completely related to Latvia or even that part of the planet. P ЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 16:15, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Some input needed
This supposed Latvian cake seems fishy Xil  (talk) 03:49, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think this dessert is uniquely Latvian, but I have sampled it as part of a Latvian meal. It may have originally been introduced as an element of Russian tea culture. – Maliepa (talk) 17:56, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that given lack of sources other than recipes and blogs, I've nominated the article for deletion. Xil  (talk) 14:35, 12 July 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 16:31, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Latvian words
Hi! I'm currently trying to improve the coverage of Latvian words at the English Wiktionary. One thing that is frequently missing is an audio pronunciation file. So I'm here asking if there are any native speakers of Latvian here who would be willing to record sound files and upload them to Commons for me to link to the appropriate Latvian entries at Wiktionary. here is a list of the words we're currently looking for pronunciation files of. If someone here is interested in helping, all you have to do is choose one (two, three,...) of these words, record yourself pronouncing it naturally, save the file in .ogg format (programs like Audacity can do that; if you can't, let me know, and I can convert your file format -- .wav, .mp3 -- to .ogg), and then upload it to Commons (here) with a filename in the format "Lv-xxx.ogg", where xxx is the word you pronounced, correctly written in Latvian spelling, taking care to place this file in the commons:Category:Latvian pronunciation, where you'll see a number of files uploaded by other people.

Thanks in advance! --Pereru (talk) 20:36, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Accuracy of Latvian mythology is disputed due to lack of sources
Hello, WikiProject Latvia!

I have been working on clearing articles out of the Wikipedia backlog and noticed that since August 2007, Latvian mythology has been tagged as factually disputed and in need of an expert's attention. I have left messages on the user pages of a number of the editors involved in the discussion and have come to this WikiProject to appeal to you for input into the discussion. I'm not knowledgable enough on the topic of Latvian mythology to make any substantial edits to the article, but you might be able to help. There is a discussion of the issue at Talk:Latvian_mythology. The most important task is to add sources to Latvian mythology. The article is currently entirely unsourced, so the factual disputes are practically impossible to resolve until some reliable sources are added. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Matt (talk) 23:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Category:Imperial Russian people

 * There is a proposal at CfD to merge Category:Imperial Russian people by occupation into Category:Russian people by occupation. This concenrs the way we categorize 19th-century Latvians.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:11, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Question
Is there a Latvia WP MOS? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Obviously not :) In ictu oculi (talk) 04:57, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Ērģeļu klintīm
In the English version of this article, Ērģeļu klintīm should be translated as Organ Cliff, not Eagle Cliff. 83.59.144.205 (talk) 10:18, 17 August 2013 (UTC)Nicolas Mertens83.59.144.205 (talk) 10:18, 17 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)

Flag: Carmine-red not maroon
See Talk:Flag of Latvia for discussion. --Bejnar (talk) 20:25, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Mayakovsky (ship)
Can anyone expand/reference this interesting new article? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Pride 2014
You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride 2014, a campaign to create and improve LGBT-related content at Wikipedia and its sister projects. The campaign will take place throughout the month of June, culminating with a multinational edit-a-thon on June 21. Meetups are being held in some cities, or you can participate remotely. All constructive edits are welcome in order to contribute to Wikipedia's mission of providing quality, accurate information. Articles within Category:LGBT in Europe may be of particular interest. You can also upload LGBT-related images by participating in Wikimedia Commons' LGBT-related photo challenge. You are encouraged to share the results of your work here. Happy editing! -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 18:45, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Ilgvars Zalans
Dear Latvia experts: Is this old AfC submission about a notable topic, and should it be kept and improved instead of being deleted as a stale draft? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 21:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I think this could be on the border of notability. Maybe could give some input here (i'm not the expert of Latvian art). -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 12:32, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Whoa, I am not an expert of Latvian art either! I know some people who I think know Latvian art scene well and they said they don't know who he is, but judging by web search results he has gotten some attention in media. Aren't there art specific notability guidelines? Xil  (talk) 18:44, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * At least you know somebody who is :) -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 09:01, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I have delayed its deletion for six months. Maybe someone will take an interest.  Thanks for your responses.  &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 03:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Shoshana Rudiakov (3rd nomination)
If anyone could look at Articles for deletion/Shoshana Rudiakov (3rd nomination), I'd be grateful. It's an article on a Latvian which has been tagged for notability for over 7 years. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 10:45, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Coming Soon (Latvian band) listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Coming Soon (Latvian band) to be moved to Coming Soon (band). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:03, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

English exonyms for place names
English_exonyms. Can someone check this please. See also article Talk. Many thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone with this project have any issues with this edit? Thanks. Dohn joe (talk) 19:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * English removes diacritics for many words, how is it even exonym? Xil  (talk) 10:50, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Latvianised names
In Latvia, foreign names are generally "Latvianised", their spelling altered and the endings -s (masculine) or -a (feminine) added to conform to the rules of Latvian grammar (not sure of the exact "rules"). This has sometimes caused offence, e.g. the German woman who objected to her surname "Mentzen" being recorded as "Mencena". In the case of ethnic Germans, Russians, Jews etc who were Latvian citizens, is it appropriate to use the native form of their name, or should the Latvianised form be used? What if they have been widely reported in foreign media using the native form of their name? MaxBrowne (talk) 09:39, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * AFAIK Wikipedia rules are to use most common form. Foreign press usually use the official names anyway, though, since you are concerned with Germans you probably are wondering about interwar period when it seems most people (Latvians included) translated their names to foreign languages and the use of Latvian language was less standardized. Also Mentzen/Mencena wasn't German, but a Latvian and despite her taking offense that is not uncommon Latvian surname Xil  (talk) 15:44, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Political party riddle
I'm currently creating articles on political parties in Latvia during the interwar period. My source states that the Kristigie zemnieki un katoli party (which ran in the 1928 and 1931 elections) also contested elections in 1920, 1922 and 1925, but they don't know under what name. I would guess that this was Latgales Kristīgo zemnieku savienība in 1920 and 1922, and then Katolu un kristigo zemnieku partijas in 1925. I have zero knowledge of Latvian, so I was wondering whether anyone could possibly help. Many thanks, Number   5  7  20:27, 10 February 2014 (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 ) 05:13, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Languages in censuses and Race and ethnicity in censuses
Pleas add information about this country to this articles.--Kaiyr (talk) 07:38, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Soprano Sonora Vaice
Hi all, I recently created an article on the opera La divisione del mondo and came across Latvian soprano Sonora Vaice of the Latvian National Opera in the process. I think wikipedia would benefit from an article on this talented singer. Best.4meter4 (talk) 02:15, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Ventas Rumba - rather waterfall and not rapid
Current name of article Venta Rapid is misleading. Although Ventas Rumba is low waterfall, it is waterfall and not rapid, because here the stream has vertical drop. Rapids are somewhat steeper sections of rivers, but not steeper than 15 - 25 degrees (as far as I remember from my geomorphology lessons). Daarznieks (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Mārcis Zembergs
Articles for deletion/Mārcis Zembergs Joeykai (talk) 03:08, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Help with an editor?
Hi! I need someone who can speak Latvian. Recently I restored a draft article for and the article has some issues with tone and grammar, which I think is likely due to a language barrier. They do seem to have a good working knowledge of English, but they would greatly benefit from having a fluent or native speaker that could come in and help with explaining anything that might seem confusing. It'd also likely help with source searching, given that they're writing about a Latvian school and sourcing for this will likely be in Latvian. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  09:27, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

The 10,000 Challenge
Hi, I've proposed an idea based on The 10,000 Challenge for a long term goal to include your country and Scandinavia/northern Europe in combined challenge target. At present I don't know whether to make it a smaller target like 1000 for each country individually. If active editors here are interested in seeing mass improvements for their country please comment in the discussion at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Intertranswiki. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld  16:48, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Olga Jegunova
More sourcing in Latvian, if available, would be appreciated. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:20, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Occupation
Hi, I wonder if anyone here could help me with a question. I recently referred to the Latvian SSR as the Soviet occupation of Latvia, and someone asked me if there is any Wikipedia consensus about this. Does anyone know? It must have been discussed... Thanks Yakikaki (talk) 17:55, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not really a Wikipedia consensus question, it's about State continuity of the Baltic states, which is a real world legal concept, and the main controversy seems to be that Russia disagrees with such interpretation Xil  (talk) 06:07, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the reply! Yakikaki (talk) 09:36, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Upcoming "420 collaboration"

 * The official Collab has ended, but we could really use a Latvian speaker to help translate lv:Marihuāna. They have a huge section of Latvian history that we lack here at English Wikipedia. Anyone up to translate? Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 00:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Or as a compromise: if I do a GoogleTranslate to a Draft article (not publishing it yet), and manually clean it up to smooth English, could someone bilingual take a look at it to make sure no facts went wrong? Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 00:24, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Collab draft now posted at User:Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney/Cannabis in Latvia expansion draft; getting help from a Latvian Wikipedia editor, but I welcome further participation. Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 18:32, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
Greetings Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:


 * Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, — Delivered: 18:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Category:Recipients of the Commemorative Medal for Advancing Latvia's Membership to NATO has been nominated for discussion
Category:Recipients of the Commemorative Medal for Advancing Latvia's Membership to NATO, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you.RevelationDirect (talk) 03:24, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
 * The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
 * The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
 * The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to for his original, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:15, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Project shortcuts
I recommend the project leaders include, WP:LVA as a shortcut. It is currently unoccupied and is a shorter addition to WP:LATVIA. It is also one of the countries international country code abbreviations (as I am confident you all already know of course). I would make a case for WP:LV as well; it is occupied but a replacement to that destination may be possible. Cheers! Savvyjack23 (talk) 19:51, 27 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Upon request, if needed I would be glad to share some knowledge I have acquired over the years in regards to your project. You can find me over at WP:HAITI, which has undergone a complete revamp since 2014. Savvyjack23 (talk) 19:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Focus on Latvia at Women in Red
In May 2018, in conjunction with m:Wikimedia CEE Spring 2018/Article Lists, Women in Red is focusing on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We hope there will be contributions on Latvian women.

Wiki4MediaFreedom
Hi. If you have time, please take a look on meta at this page m:Wiki4MediaFreedom contest. It's an event organized by Rossella Vignola (OBC), there is a list of articles to improve also on English wikipedia.--Alexmar983 (talk) 20:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

RfC on election/referendum naming format
An RfC on moving the year from the end to the start of article titles (e.g. South African general election, 2019 to 2019 South African general election) has been reopened for further comment, including on whether a bot could be used move the articles if it closed in favour of the change: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation). Cheers, Number   5  7  15:37, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Does the Latvian Orthodox Autonomous Church exist?
Hello,

An article about a Latvian Orthodox Autonomous Church was created on 17 January. I have serious doubts (A) that this organization exists and (B) that it is worth an article on Wikipedia. You are invited to join the discussion: Talk:Latvian Orthodox Autonomous Church Place Clichy (talk) 16:12, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Minor mistake
Hello there,

I am just a reader who has found a mistake in one of Wikipedia articles. I believe there are more knowledgeable people than me here, so you would correct the mistake in a professional way.

When you look up for Madona town in English version of Wikipedia and scroll down to population section, you can see such sentence "When it comes to age distribution of the Madona inhabitants, the majority group consisting of 50,925 people are registered as "labour-capable"".

The number does not make any sense, as Madona is populated just by 9.3K people. Certainly this is a mistake.

Hope this gets fixed soon.

Kind regards, Roland. RolandLV (talk) 11:21, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool
Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Names of Latvian counties and districts
I made a unified standard for numerous pre-existing articles on Latvian Counties (Courland), Kreis'es (Livonia) and Uyezds (Latgale) renaming them all to the Latvian term apriņķis (= Kreis). This term was used in Latvian language since the 19ht century till 1949, when was replaced by the new term rajons (= rayon, райо́н).--Pirags (talk) 17:08, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Displaying Russian names as footnotes in former Soviet Union locations?
Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Soviet_Union for a discussion on whether the Russian names should be put in footnotes in articles about former Soviet Union locations (which existed at the time of the Soviet Union)

(I am aware this country was in the Soviet Union for a shorter period than most, only from World War II to the 1990s) WhisperToMe (talk) 08:33, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Helēna Faulbaums
In 1936 the Helēna Faulbaums sank off Belnahua with the loss of 15 lives. I have been improving this island article and there is an apparent discrepancy between the sources.

According to a spokesperson for the Luing History Group only Captain Cughauss's body was repatriated and the other 14 sailors were interred on nearby Luing.

However, earlier this year this was added: "Seven of the perished were later buried in Cullipool cemetery on Luing, but the captain of the ship Nikolajs Cughauss and others were buried in Latvia."

Lacking a command of (what I assume to be) Latvian I am hoping you can confirm that this the latter article definitely refers to other repatriations. (The title hints at this but it's not explicit). Ben  Mac  Dui  09:41, 13 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Now kindly dealt with by User:Ivario. Ben   Mac  Dui  11:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Latvian translation question at the Reference Desk
Hello, wondering if anyone would be interested in helping at Reference_desk/Language where a user has asked for help translating a poem from Latvian to English. Many thanks,70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems to have been answered and moved to archives. Ivario (talk) 12:24, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

2021 IIHF World Championship
Good day

I have been attempting to add content to articles related to the 2021 IIHF World Championship in ice hockey, scheduled to partly take place in Minsk this year. As you may be aware of this is a highly controversial issue and touches upon the legitimacy of Lukashenka. So far I have met rather staunch resistance and accusations of not being neutral in my approach.

What I would like to achieve for:


 * IIHF: there be a brief summary of the controversy surrounding the Championships with reference to the earlier 2014 championships under Controversy. This is an accepted way of describing controversies, which this is.
 * 2021 IIHF World Championship: a detailed discussion of the various actors at play, these include politicians, international organisations and large companies (event sponsors)
 * Rene Fasel: president of IIHF who is doing things in a very bumbling sort of way and seems to want to have his cake and eat it too (here is an interview where he goes into detail)

I would recommed you review the talk pages of those articles to see the slow progress being made. In particular I think that the 2021 IIHF World Championship has gained political significance which in a sense makes it not only a sports event, but a political prize. If it is held in Minsk then Lukashenka scores a point. If not his opponents do. Why else all the fuss? Jabbi (talk) 12:04, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Rename articles about uezds for consistency
I’m proposing renaming every article in the form of, for example, Akhtyrka Uyezd → Akhtyrka Uezd, to match the spelling of the renamed main article Uezd. Please discuss at talk:Uezd. —Michael Z. 22:16, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

AfD
Hi. Please see Articles for deletion/Arnolds Krūkliņš. Thanks.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 13:15, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion about a merger Soviet re-occupation of Latvia in 1944 into Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1944)
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1944), which is about articles that are within the scope of this WikiProject. --Heanor (talk) 13:56, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources
I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like and turns it into something like
 * John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.
 * John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from cite web, cite journal and doi.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Women in Red focus on the Baltic states
Contributors to this project may be interested to see that in July 2022, Women in Red is focusing on the Baltic States.--Ipigott (talk) 08:49, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a class parameter to WikiProject banner shell, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to WikiProject banner shell, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass WPBannerMeta a new custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Request translations from Latvian Wikipedia
The following article could be translate here for averyone who have interests, and able to speak Latvian: -- Great Brightstar (talk) 09:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * lv:Latvijas pagastu karogi
 * lv:Latvijas novadu karogi
 * lv:Latvijas pilsētu karogi

Latvian masked processions
Plz see Talk:Latvian masked processions. Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 19:10, 20 April 2023 (UTC)