Fun Fact: According to Wikidata, this is the year of 2004 (Q2014)
DevelopmentWord from John
To give this section some life, since the development team had their holidays last week meaning nothing really got done (let them have one week off at least), I'll say a few words. 2014 is a new year and thus a new start, over the last year Wikidata celebrated its first birthday which brought reflection over what Wikidata had accomplish. Therefore I want to use the start of 2014 to reflect what Wikidata can do. For my personal over view see this page. For the summary, while it is meant to be a weekly simple update, I feel this can be used a lot more effective to put across not only what happened on Wikidata but things about Wikidata on other wikis, I am hoping to start a section over this within the next few weeks. If you have any suggestions for the summary, feel free to drop me a message at meta or Wikidata. Thanks.
"Reference Information ###" is merely an abbreviated title of a perfectly valid source, whose full details are given in the Sources section (same goes for Law #679-KZ). It is regrettable that the document has such an incomprehensible and generic-sounding name, but that's what it is and can't be helped.
As far as dates go, the choice of the date format is dictated not by the format the host country uses (or we'd be using yyyymmdd in every article about Japan), but in accordance with the WP:DATERET guideline. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 7, 2014; 16:55 (UTC)
P.S. I've changed the ref to "Registry of the Administrative-Territorial Units of Krasnodar Krai", which is the same document but will hopefully prevent others from thinking it's just gibberish :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 7, 2014; 16:58 (UTC)
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I'm sorry, but I have no idea. I did a quick search in hopes of finding anything that would at least point you in the right direction, but all results seem to deal either with unaccompanied minors who are citizens of Russia or with foreign citizens who are out of age. I'm not seeing anything specifically dealing with foreign unaccompanied minors. In any case, if curiosity is not the only reason you are seeking an answer to this, it would be best to consult a legal professional.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 10, 2014; 15:11 (UTC)
Thanks for the notice. I saw that thread but did not participate as I have no opinion on the matter being discussed. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 23, 2014; 13:08 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #94
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Bugzilla:57754 Die if wbeditentity tries to clear from an old revision id
Bugzilla:55795 Add API option to show snaks in a list rather than grouped by property
Refactor of ChangeOp remove functionality
Continued to move parsing and validating of values from the frontend into the backend to improve performance and make the non-JS user interface more useful
Finished the Wikidata build script (We use it to pull together code from various git repositories into a single one for deployment)
The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Russia for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 17:07, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Что касается ссылок, то не бывает, наверное, таких ссылок, которые бы не вызвали интерес хоть у кого-нибудь, и ваши в этом отношении не исключение. Тем не менее, поскольку все возможные ссылки включать в статьи непрактично, в английской википедии существуют guidelines касательно того, что включать желательно, что можно, а что не стоит. Ваши ссылки, во-первых, попадают под WP:LINKFARM, а во-вторых под пункт 15 WP:ELNO. Ссылки на общие карты и так доступны через сервис координат, а слишком специфичные вещи как местонахождение почтового отделения или дороги вокруг города полезны только тогда, когда они помогают иллюстрировать материал, уже включенный в статью. В данном случае ничего подобного места быть не имеет, поэтому ссылки я и удалил. Если вы с моей оценкой не согласны, всегда можно запросить третье мнение тут.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 27, 2014; 16:21 (UTC)
Здравствуйте, на этой карте используются названия фигурирующие среди местного населения (такие как: районы: поле чудес, страна дураков, собачье, низ, третий) естейственно в официальных источниках они скорее в большинстве своём потеряются в истории. Потом "по мнению краеведов", "возможно было название образовано из..."
Переводчиком Гугл, перевод получился не "очень". Permanent73 (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2014 (UTC)p.s А кладбище уже сейчас хотели стереть с лица земли и застроить какими то комерчискими постройками, а это запрещено законом.[reply]
Дело в том, что для таких вещей как местные названия, карты (и в особенности google maps с метками, да ещё и с кривым машинным переводом) не являются надёжными источниками информации. Для этого нужны книги (те же краеведы этим разве не занимаются?), газеты (пусть даже и местные), и т.д. и т.п. Вот при наличии таких источников информацию можно будет вставить уже и в текст статьи — тогда и ссылка на карту будет полезной, как иллюстрирующая концепции, описанные в тексте. А сама по себе ссылка на карту, без источников, ценность представляет довольно малую, и попадает всё под те же WP:LINKFARM и WP:ELNO. Я понимаю, что ваши намерения самые благородные, но по правилам такие ссылки в статьях не приветствуются.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 31, 2014; 17:58 (UTC)
Это лучше чем ничего, но поскольку сайт неофициальный (и не попадающий под определение надёжного источника информации по многим другим причинам), то и пользоваться им в качестве источника не рекомендуется. Это практически как из блога эту информацию выдернуть... неужели в библиотеке в краеведческом отделе ничего подходящего нет? Или хотя бы в местной газете...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 5, 2014; 20:02 (UTC)
Тоже не совсем то. Источник должен показать, что такая-то и такая-то территория среди местного населения называется так-то и так-то. Простое упоминание мимоходом названия для этого не годится; надо чтобы хотя бы в скобках было пояснение, что это за "Поле чудес" и где оно находится... Мы же в статьях не местный фольклор собираем, а информацию, подкреплённую источниками по теме.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 5, 2014; 20:52 (UTC)
Если вы мне напишете по-русски (тут или на странице обсуждения статьи), я вам переведу. Вам-то лучше знать, что вы хотите сказать :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2014; 14:24 (UTC)
Do we have a template that would be appropriate for this article? I noticed that (at least some of) districts of Moscow have no templates, but I guess there we can use usual templates for administrative districts.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, we don't. But you can probably torture {{Infobox settlement}} into getting the result you want, as long as you keep it basic. Let me know if that doesn't work for you; we'll figure something else out. It should be possible to tweak {{Infobox Russian district}} so it works for both administrative and city districts.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 27, 2014; 21:36 (UTC)
Wow that turned out butt-ugly :( If you don't mind, can you give me a day or two to play with the regular district template to see if I can make it work for city districts as well? Also, are the parameters you inserted all that you wanted that box to cover, or was there something you couldn't fit?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 28, 2014; 12:58 (UTC)
Sure, our deadline seems to be in two weeks, with the beginning of the Olympics. Fitting Commonscat in would certainly be nice; may be some more administrative/municipal info, but this I am not sure about, and I would like to keep the option for the website and area open, even if we do not have these data now. The coordinates can disappear from the template, one line on the top of the article is more than enough. Nothing else I immediately have off the top of my head. Thanks in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:08, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'll work on this today. Municipal information does not need to be included, since city districts are normally a part of an administrative-territorial divisions framework (or simply territorial divisions). The rest, I'll try to fit as much as possible of, unless it's clearly not pertinent.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 28, 2014; 14:22 (UTC)
Mishae, frankly, I am not such a good vandal watcher. I raise a flag every now and then. It does not seem that his actions are destructive, although are weird. It seems that he is correcting some code syntax to keep consistency. Did I miss anything? Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, he put spaces after every carriage and that's his edits. He also substitutes RU and UK icons with (Russian and Ukrainian) which makes difficult to see which site is English and which isn't. According to WP:DEST his edits are considered to be unproductive and in some cases harmful since because of his mania to put spaces he sometimes deletes titles. More, he even substitutes cite news with Citation which makes no sense. Since I don't have revering tool I was forced manually to cite references as well as add those icons back in the Euromaidan article. I could have done more ref citations if not for this guy.--Mishae (talk) 02:57, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mishae, let's address it with administrators for consideration. The articles are too big to track after all the changes and codes. Your concerns are valid and need to be addressed by somebody with bigger authority to prevent possible roll backs in future. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 03:13, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I already let user @Kudpung: know, but I think he will be too busy to reply. See, on one hand he had a good edit such trans_title= for foreign articles but on the other hand he doesn't need to move the carriages back and forward and substitute already good text with something less appealing.--Mishae (talk) 03:19, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, guess what? I went to ANI, the admin told me to post it to AVI (Also he mentioned that some of the IPs were from Brazil). I posted it to AVI and they removed my comment (twice) at the end saying that it doesn't belong to ANI! I thought that Wikipedia have measures against disruptive editing???!!! Like, do anybody at ANI consider the seriousness of this or its O.K. now to do edits like this without any consequence what so ever. Furthermore, a guy here mentioned about a destructive edit and at the same time says "I fixed it now, but it doesn't warrant a block" and sends a ref to a minor edit. This is ridiculous because I wasted posting those comments till 1 fucking am, trying to convince the admins (which I shouldn't even call them that anymore) to take action. And what's worse, it continues!--Mishae (talk) 20:23, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I understand how frustrating this kind of editing can be (and oh boy am I not a fan of those unnecessary, annoying spaces), but the folks at ANI/AVI were right about it not being a blockable offense. Disagreement over formatting styles is not really considered "disruption", at least not on the grand scale of things. What falls under the definition of disruption is usually vandalism, edits against clear consensus, etc. Here, it's borderline at best. There are parts of his edits which warrant a revert (like wikifying years or replacing language icons), but most of them do not really qualify. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 30, 2014; 15:37 (UTC)
Ezh, this is not about formatting its about how 4 anonymous editors go in and edit against consensus. Have you seen their talkpages? No? Let me show you: User talk:200.219.132.104. I even asked him a question regarding his edits. Nothing. And considering that he edits since May 2013, he should know better already. We are making Bold edits, not ref details. An editor with more then a 6 months of experience should add references besides just going and do little ref details. By the way Messerschmitt Me 262 is in need of references, not ref details!--Mishae (talk) 22:20, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's one way of looking at it... But don't forget, we are all volunteers here. If you, me, or a random anonymous editor do not want to/cannot/have no expertise to add new references, no force in the world can make them. If a random anon has time/willingness to go around and format the references, bringing them to some common denominator, that's their business—neither you nor me can tell them they should go do something more productive. As long as these edits do not go against some pre-established consensus (which doesn't seem to be the case here), there is technically no disruption. Annoying these edits are, perhaps, but definitely not disruptive. Likewise, there can be dozens of valid reasons for an anon not to answer messages. Perhaps their IP rotates and they don't get to see the messages. Perhaps they can't figure out what the talk page is. Perhaps they are a minor whose parents allow them editing, but not communicating with strangers on Wikipedia. If their IP rotates, productive edits may end up bundled with vandalism by someone who used this same IP in the past. If there is a history of destructive (and I mean destructive, not merely annoying) edits across several IPs, that's one thing, but if all the anon is doing is formatting the references, with his or her edits getting added to histories of past vandalism from those same IPs, that's quite another. Such anons do get blocked left and right for annoyance alone or simply because nobody took care to sort out the contributions, but that's really not the right thing to do.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 31, 2014; 14:29 (UTC)
Lets say, I don't have anything against anonymous users. I seen plenty of anonyms adding quite a good amount of references, free images, sometimes not free licensed ones. All good. I don't mind the editor doing those reference details as long as he will add something besides it. I do understand that everyone here is volunteer and everyone is trying to do their best, and that they might be minors and all that. Personally, I sorted out through contributions right before I filed a complaint. And I didn't looked into 3 and said "O.K. time for a block", no. I patiently waited for next day to see a reply. He continued to edit from the same IP. So I thought something wrong. Sure, it wasn't vandalism, but the annoyance and disruptive editing its over 100% was. So, if you enjoy doing reverts of such edits, enjoy it, but I think Wikipedia is about building an encyclopedia and there is a ton of articles that need references, pictures, and other far more important stuff then over 10 edits of formatting per page. Like, personally, if I do formatting, I either do it in one edit or maximum three, but not more then that. So, its not formatting that bothers me, is the amount of edits per page due to formatting. Like, compare my edit of Pope Pius V to his edit of the same page. One the positive note, user talk:200.219.132.104 got blocked for the period of 36 hours which should expire tomorrow. Later on I will look and see where it will go from there. Another thing to mention; Again, I have nothing against anonymous users, but if they want to do a test edit (and that's what it looks like to me), we have a {{Sandbox}} about which he was reminded numerous of times in previous and current IP address. That means, that he just ignorant of our policy, otherwise he would have clicked on {{Help me}} or a bot talkpage.--Mishae (talk) 21:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ёжичке
Ёжичка, а вы не могли бы пойти сюда и справить там в рамочке 12 июля 1783 года на правильную дату открытия Мариинки: 14 октября (2 октября ст.ст.) 1860 года. Им там абсолютно все равно, а я не могу на это спокойно смотреть. А исправить тоже не могу, потому что я там уже доисправлялась и пострадала за правду, которая, как всегда, никому не нужна. Спасибо. Lawrentia (talk) 20:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. Только там ещё ниже в тексте написано, что 12 июля вышел Указ об утверждении театрального комитета, а собственно театр был открыт 5 октября (стиль не указан). Там тоже исправить? И источника у вас случайно нет, чтобы заодно указать?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 31, 2014; 21:07 (UTC)
Поставил пока 5 октября со ссылкой на сайт; пишите, если это не учитывает какие-нибудь нюансы. Но я уже раньше понедельника вряд ли появлюсь. Удачных вам выходных!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 31, 2014; 21:20 (UTC)
Там надо поменять год: 1860. Мариинский театр открылся в 1860 году. А указ 1753 года сюда не имеет никакого отношения, это открытие русского театра – как искусства. Появилась труппа, т.е. сборище артистов разных жанров и направленностей. А уже потом к императорской труппе строили театры, где артисты зарабатывали своими умениями.
Ёжичка, а вы не могли бы еще исправить вот это. Про балерину Марину Семенову, надо удалить (урождённая Шелоу́мова). Откуда они это взяли, почему? Шелоумов – фамилия ее отчима, но он появился в семье после ее рождения. Она к этому времени уже родилась как Семенова. И была Семеновой всю жизнь. Даже первым браком вышла замуж за однофамильца. Второй брак был гражданским, зарегистрировать не успели, мужа расстреляли. Тогда это было дело житейское. Правда, дамочка не очень горевала. Но при всех случаях она была урожденная Семенова. Кроме вас исправить некому. Меня не пускают, Ярослав как нормальный человек бежал оттуда следом за мной. Остальным – до фонаря. Lawrentia (talk) 15:51, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Вообще, конечно, парой исправлений ничего не решишь. Там надо ставить вопрос серьезно, закрывать сайт, привлекать специалистов для проверки статей, а уж потом открывать заново. Их лживые статьи копируются по всему интернету, и уже найти правду не представляется возможным, неспециалисту не разобраться. Бардак полнейший, особенно в балетной тематике. А как вам вот эта статья: Балет Мариинского театра. Вся статья – перечень избранных балетных постановок и имен. По какому принципу подобранных – неясно. Причем обратите внимание: первая половина – это перечисление балетов, поставленных не в Мариинском театре – и еще до постройки Мариинского театра (до 1860 г.), и вообще в других театрах. А статья называется Балет Мариинского театра. Первый балетный спектакль в Мариинском театре появился в 1870 году – Мариус Петипа перенес туда свой самый первый балет «Брак во времена регентства» (A Marriage During the Regency), при этом балеты продолжались и в других театрах императорской труппы. О чем в статье вообще ничего нет. Ни исторических фактов, ни этапов развития, ни отличия от московского балета или европейского балета. Это вообще не статья. Я не знаю, что это такое. И подобного полно. Ладно бы, если бы они болтались сами по себе, но ведь статьи копируются, на них ссылаются. И – никому нет дела. Одна я такая дура. Lawrentia (talk) 15:51, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Что касается Мариинского театра, на 1860 г. я поменять не могу, поскольку на его собственном официальном сайте написано, что Мариинский театр "ведёт родословную" от указа 1753 г. Может это и неправильно, но мы ведь при написании статей руководствуемся не собственными знаниями, а источниками, а источник в данном случае совсем недвусмыселен. И к тому же как я в этом не разбираюсь, поменять на 1860 г., не подкрепив это никакими другими источниками, мне будет жутко некомфортабельно... По той же причине не могу ничего внятного сказать насчёт списков балетов. Плохо быть неграмотным :)
То, что Мариинка "ведёт родословную" от указа 1753 г. – правильно, но значит совсем другое. Марринский театр был построен как императорский театр для труппы императорского театра и принадлежал императорской казне. Вся императорская труппа "ведёт родословную" от указа 1753 г. – в том числе Мариинский театр, Александринский театр, Большой Каменный театр, Михайловский театр и т.д. Но все эти театры были построены в разное время. Мариинский театр был построен в 1860 году на месте сгоревшего Театра-Цирка, построенного в 1849 году и сгоревшего через десять лет в 1859 году и тоже "ведшего родословную" от указа 1753 г., поскольку принадлежал императорской труппе, т.е. материально существовал за счет императорской государственной казны, и весь доход шел туда же.
По поводу того, чтобы нести в статью всё написанное и напечатанное – я, конечно, не могу спорить с одним из опытнейших администраторов – может, так и надо по правилам, но мне кажется, что это не совсем правильное правило. Мало ли кто что напишет. И в так называемых источниках могут быть ошибки случайные и специальные. От случайных ошибок никто не застрахован, а уж специальные – да из конкуренции, из зависти, из ненависти можно такое написать, такое напридумать – и что, нести это все в вики-статьи?! Только Большая Советская Энциклопедия в этом отношении чего стоит. Там делали специальные "ошибки" - для поднятия духа русского народа. В результате приписали часть постановок Мариуса Петипа другому балетмейстеру – Льву Ивановичу Иванову, который тоже был талантливым (он придумал Танец маленьких лебедей из Лебединого озера), но зачем ему приписывать чужое. А про архитектора Карла России там сказано, что он родился в Петербурге, хотя на самом деле приехал ребенком в Россию с родителями – матерью и отчимом, его отчим выдающийся балетмейстер Шарль Ле Пик, был приглашен возглавить императорский балет. А то, что написано про дочь Мариуса Петипа Марию Мариусовну Петипа – так это лечь не встать: что она уехала в эмиграцию кутить на пенсионные деньги, которые ей специально в Париж переводила новая советская власть. Это при том, что все пенсии были отменены, в стране не было денег. И я плохо себе представляю, как можно кутить на пенсию, на пенсию не очень-то раскутишься. А если прибавить к этому возраст – Марии Мариусовне было 70 лет. Я, правда, не могу сказать на собственном опыте, как чувствуют себя в эти годы, но у меня есть опыт окружащей жизни, и я плохо представляю себе бабушек, кутящих на пенсию. Они больше пьют лекарства, чем шампанское. Есть другие источники: что Марию Мариусовну хоронить было не на что – и в эти данные я верю куда больше. Но все эти тексты опубликованы. Я не думаю, что такую информацию стоит использовать. Но это мое частное мнение. А может, в Википедии действительно нужно по-другому, вот я и не умею. Lawrentia (talk) 17:13, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Лариса, вы абсолютно правы, что нести всё написанное и напечатанное в статьи надо далеко не всегда, но моя личная позиция состоит в том, что источники должны отбирать и интерпретировать люди, в тематике разбирающиеся хотя бы на любительском уровне. Пошлите меня в библиотеку в секцию балета и дайте несколько дней на написание статей по балетной тематике, так я вам такого напишу (на 100% подкреплённого источниками), что не будете знать, где смеяться, а где плакать от смеха :) А всё потому, что в балете я разбираюсь как медведь в устройстве самолётов: мёд на камбузе найду, а двигатель — нет.
Я верю каждому вашему слову о Мариинке, но я не хочу делать правки, которые не смогу потом объяснить самостоятельно. С простыми вещами, вроде логических несообразностей с "урождённой Шелоумовой", я вам могу помочь без проблем, а вот когда речь заходит об интерпретации источника (кою интерпретацию надо обосновывать другими источниками) по теме, в которой я не разбираюсь, то это совсем другое дело...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 4, 2014; 17:46 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #95
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
No biggie; I've reinstated. I imagine this kind of thing is going to happen a lot in the coming month! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 4, 2014; 20:51 (UTC)
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The structure of the administrative and municipal divisions of the Republic of Adygea(flag pictured) is established and maintained by the Republic of Adygea itself, despite the fact the republic is a federal subject of Russia. Changes of the administrative-territorial structure of the republic are authorized by the State Council. The republic's administrative divisions remain largely unchanged from the structure used during the Soviet era, with the notable exception of selsoviets—a low-level administrative unit type abolished after the new law on the administrative-territorial divisions had been adopted in May 2000. The republic is divided into seven raions and two republican urban okrugs. The system of local self-governance, which Article 12 of the Constitution of Russia guarantees, is implemented on the republic's territory in accordance with the provisions of Federal Law No. 131-FZ On the General Principles of the Organization of the Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation.
Thanks for the notice! I'll go through the whole article before the zero hour to make sure all kinks are straightened out, and in the meanwhile I've edited the blurb somewhat, to better reflect what the article says. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns—I'll be happy to help. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 6, 2014; 19:29 (UTC)
I am fresh out of wiki kittens; please accept this cake as a thank you for your support, kind words and thoughtful comments during my (now withdrawn) RfA. I am also glad to see that we are able to leave the past, well, in the past. Here's to many years of future edits for both of us! Cheers, Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here11:35, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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И, подскажи, пожалуйста, как мне поступить со статей Azerbaijan? туда пришел какой-то Kreodonta, которые устроил войну правок, не написав ни слова на странице обсуждения, хотя там идет дискуссия. Я так понимаю, о подобном поведении надо кого-то информировать? Divot (talk) 21:23, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Если вам есть, что прояснить по поводу ситуации вокруг правок в статье про Азербайджан, напишите небольшой summary в секции "Summary of dispute by Divot" (там же можно сообщить и об откатах другими пользователями). Что делать дальше будет зависить от последующего развития событий.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 12, 2014; 21:26 (UTC)
List of administrative and municipal divisions of the Republic of Adygea
Hi Ëzhiki,
It has been a long time! I think the last time we crossed paths was back in 2008 when we collaborated on some disambiguation pages involving Russian toponymy. I think you've done a great job with List of administrative and municipal divisions of the Republic of Adygea, which is why I nominated it to go up on the main page. I hope you do not mind that I have shortened the TFL blurb somewhat from your last edits; TFL blurbs are recommended to be approximately 1000 characters long, and more than 100 characters beyond that is generally considered too long. I wanted to discuss the raions with you. I noticed that you switched the terminology in both the article and the blurb back from "raion" to "administrative district", with an edit summary stating that "'raion' is a generic term; the concept is known under various specific names in different federal subjects and the term choice here matches the cited source." As far as I can tell, "administrative district" is no less generic of a term than "raion", and the section of the article to which you have linked the term is called administrative raions rather than administrative districts, so the terminology does not seem consistent across articles. Would you oppose a switch in the article's terminology from "administrative districts" to "administrative raions" if the word "administrative" was retained?
Our message notification system is letting me down again—I've only noticed your message after re-editing the blurb! Sorry about that.
I don't mind the cosmetic edits (in fact, I think the blurb could use some more), but one thing I disagree on is cutting the blurb size by blurring of the distinction between Adygea's administrative-territorial and municipal units. This sort of divide, I believe, is unique to Russia, and it is most definitely worth bringing immediate attention to, especially considering how easily it is to confuse the administrative and municipal divisions due to their borders being identical.
As for "raion" vs. "administrative district", what I meant is that we use the term "raion" to refer to a general variety of related concepts (including historical, as well modern raions—both administrative and municipal). Indeed, the article about the concept is located at raion, and rightfully so. The word itself is a loanword in English (albeit a rare one and not easily recognized as such by most readers), and it's the best choice of term when discussing the general concept in the context of Russia and former Soviet Union, both in modern and historical contexts. As we move on to more specific topics, however, we use the term "administrative district" to refer to modern administrative-territorial raions in Russia and "municipal district" to refer to modern municipal raions in Russia—a distinction which became important in the early 2000s. As we move to even more specific topics, we utilize the common English-language terms most close to the term used in that federal subject to refer to administrative raions. That's about a dozen different terms, and for many federal subjects such a term is simply "district". In Adygea, this division type is specifically identified as "administrative district", which not only sounds generic but also, confusingly, matches the term we use on a more abstract level. That, however, is the way things are.
Unlike using simply "raion", I don't see using "administrative raion" instead of "administrative district" as a very big deal. I do, however, question the helpfulness of this substitution. To a person who knows the subject well, these two terms are nearly interchangeable, but to a person unfamiliar with it, the word "raion" is mostly a scarecrow standing in the way of understanding the material. That was the whole reason why all articles about raions in Russia are called "X District" and not "X Raion": the term is neutral, easy to understand, and does not clash in meaning with the terms used to refer to other division types.
I hope I haven't bored and confused you to death by all this rambling and that I was able to at least partially address your concerns. Please let me know if you have anything further that needs to be clarified. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 14, 2014; 19:08 (UTC)
P.S. I've edited the "Russia" section in the raion article so the terminology is consistent both within the section itself and with the terminology used elsewhere in Wikipedia. Since the article's lede already mentions that "district" is a common translation of "raion", I don't think it's going to cause any confusion. I've also noticed that the example used in the municipal district subsection is obsolete and replaced it with a valid one.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 14, 2014; 19:21 (UTC)
Thank you for responding so thoroughly to my message. The final sentence you have added to the blurb does not appear in the article's lead nor anywhere else in the article that I can see. Are you able to source that information and add it to the lead? If not, I would recommend removing it from the TFL blurb. If so, something else from the TFL blurb needs to go; it is too long as it currently stands. Neelix (talk) 16:03, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, I will. I intend to go through the article early next week, before it's up on the Main Page, to straighten out any kinks I can find and I will make sure at the same time that the article and the blurb are in sync. Thank you so much for this opportunity!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 15, 2014; 17:16 (UTC)
Thanks! I would like to clarify one thing before I plunge into copyediting. This is regarding the last sentence I added (The upper-level municipal divisions of the republic are created within the borders of its administrative-territorial divisions). Does the whole blurb have to consist of the sentences found in the article's lede (used more or less verbatim), or can they be liberally paraphrased? The exact sentence I added is not in the article, but the article does explain that the borders of upper-level municipal divisions match the borders of the administrative-territorial divisions in the last paragraph of the lede (While the law does not require any connection between the system of the administrative-territorial divisions of a federal subject and its municipal structure, Adygea's administrative districts are nevertheless incorporated as the municipal districts and the republican urban okrugs are incorporated as the municipal urban okrugs).
Also, is the blurb, as it currently stands, over the limit, and if so, how much needs to be cut out of it? Thank you again.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2014; 17:13 (UTC)
A good general rule is that the blurb itself should be within 100 characters of 1000 characters. At present, it is 1256 characters long, so about 156 characters beyond the general maximum. The sentences in the blurb don't have to be phrased exactly as they are in the article, but there should be reasons for the differences in wording, and all of the information in the blurb needs to appear in the article in some way and also needs to be sourced there. Let me know when you're pleased with how it all looks! Neelix (talk) 17:26, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, this is good to know. I'll try to cut things out after I'm done with copyediting the article proper. But do you think the last sentence currently in the blurb deviates from the article unnecessarily too much?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2014; 17:37 (UTC)
P.S. I've cleaned up some kinks in the article and also cut the size of the blurb somewhat. Please let me know if it's insufficient or if you have any other concerns. Thank you ever so much for your help and guidance, too!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2014; 18:21 (UTC)
Thank you for doing that! While the stub is a little short, I think it provides an ample opportunity for future expansion should anyone become interested in doing so. I'm not the most knowledgeable person to add on this topic, but as a solution to the move problem, having this stub in place of Adyghe people would address all my concerns. Once again, I appreciate your effort in this.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 15, 2014; 17:21 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #97
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
You can now add labels in your language from within Reasonator. Technically oAuth is used. It now takes just one click to add a label in your language.
Hi Ezhiki, I've seen that you've been able to move the patronimic on the entry of Olga Ladyzhenskaya from the main entry link to a simple redirect: could you do it also for the following entries I cure? I started some of them not being aware of the guideline on patronimic.
Sure, no problem! I've moved them all. Most of them, by the way, you should have been able to move yourself—just go to the article you want to move, click on the Move tab, enter the new title, and press "Move page". Sometimes the destination is already occupied with a redirect with multiple edits (in which case you won't be able to complete the move)—if you find any like that, feel free to let me know. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 24, 2014; 14:34 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Ëzhiki, both for the help and for the page moving instructions: I thought it was necessary to have admin privileges to do that, but now I see it is simple and quick to do that. Daniele.tampieri (talk) 18:25, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You are most welcome. Admin privileges are only needed to move pages when the target has history. Moving articles to a red-link location (or over a simple redirect) does not require one to be an admin. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 25, 2014; 18:33 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #98
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Noteworthy Stuff
Wikisource will receive access to the data in Wikidata on February 25th. Planning is taking place at d:Wikidata:Wikisource.
By all means, please, do. It may be a little short, but as far as stubs go, it's pretty decent. Thanks for creating it!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 25, 2014; 14:30 (UTC)
Please do not try to impose US spellings on non-US articles. Neither India nor Russia are America and so US spellings are inappropriate. Also, in the case of Murmansk the earliest versions did not use US spelling, see 'centre' in 2003: [2]
Perhaps next time you are about to ramble about "imposing US spellings", it would be helpful if you got a cursory look at WP:AGF? Russia has no more "cultural ties" to the UK than it does to the US, so the choice of spelling is irrelevant (as is your comment about Russia "not being America") and is up to the first major contributor. And the first major contributor is defined as the author of the first non-stub version of an article (see WP:RETAIN). One can argue whether the 2003 version is a non-stub—I myself was looking at the 2004 version, which uses both spelling and where I overlooked the "centre" spelling inserted earlier—but it seems we both should have been using this version, where the stub note was explicitly removed (and which uses British spelling consistently). Now, with that settled, how about doing something useful and adding a bit of encyclopedic material to that article? I've done my part in the past, now it's your turn.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 1, 2014; 15:37 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #99
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
I notice you reverted my move of Administrative divisions of the Republic of Buryatia→Administrative divisions of Buryatia on grounds of conformity. I hadn't noticed the other titles at the time, but now that I have, they seem extremely cumbersome to use complete official names where there is no ambiguity and there is no widespread precedent for expanding the article title in a sub-article title outside of these cases and the Russian-language article doesn't do it either. I notice you conducted a move back in 2010 of this article for that reason. Any reason these articles generally should not conform to the article title? — AjaxSmack16:47, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My primary reason for reverting this particular move was that it makes no sense to pick just one article in the series and leave the rest alone, but now that you've explained that you haven't noticed the other titles, I understand why you did it.
On a larger scale, while subtopics of a larger topic often use the same convention as the main article, it's not exactly a requirement that they do so, and in this particular case (the series on administrative-territorial divisions) it makes sense to use full names of the republics because the majority of the articles in this series use full names of the federal subjects (and, more importantly, they cannot use shorter names—I think you'll see that "administrative divisions of X Oblast" and "administrative divisions of X" refer to completely different sets. Thus, having some articles under "shorter" titles and others under "longer" titles violates the Consistency criterion of WP:AT. Additionally, shorter titles are often less precise (the Precision criterion of AT), since the shorter names can often be used to refer to both the modern entities and the entities that preceded them (especially in cases where the historical entities were not republics but autonomous oblasts). Naturalness and Recognizability aspects are the same for both longer and shorter names, and the Conciseness is of course a plus on the shorter names side. That leaves +2/-1/=2 in favor of longer names.
Another point on Precision—you mentioned that there is no ambiguity with the articles in the series, but while in terms of currently existing articles that is true, overall it is not. It would be perfectly normal to have something like "administrative divisions of the Buryat ASSR", which would make "Buryatia" ambiguous; such an article will eventually have to be created, and at that point the articles with "shorter" titles in the series will have to be moved back anyway.
On the statement that longer names are more cumbersome, there are always redirects. At any rate, the titles of the articles in this series are not really natural titles, but what WP:AT refers to as "descriptive titles". And with descriptive titles, there are usually multiple ways they can be constructed (one could, for example, use longer but more precise "administrative-territorial" instead of "administrative", "administrative and municipal" can and should used when the list covers the municipal aspect as well, "list of" may or may not be chosen to be a part of the title, and so on). The main articles about federal subjects, on the other hand, use natural titles, hence they are governed a lot more by the "common use" paradigm. With descriptive titles, consistency of titles is much more important than with natural titles.
"Administrative divisions of X Oblast" uses "oblast" because omitting it would not just be ambiguous, it would be totally incorrect :) Tomsk is not the same as Tomsk Oblast, for example. This same problem exists even with some of the republics—"administrative divisions of Karelia" would be a rather meaningless title.
As for other articles ignoring the potential for confusion, it is not a good reasoning, IMO. If they started under those titles and no one bothered to move them (because, perhaps, no one is planning to write articles about the administrative divisions of historical entities), that's one thing, but when the potential for confusion exists and the articles are already titled in a way that such confusion will be prevented if more articles are created, that's quite another. I simply see no benefit in moving articles around when the titles are not natural titles to begin with.
With "Russia" vs "Russian Empire" example, the potential confusion simply cannot be resolved. For modern country, both "Russian Federation" and "Russia" are official names of equal status; what's more, "Russian Federation" is still ambiguous with "Russian SFSR". Conciseness here scores a point because Precision is violated under any arrangement. Not so with the constituent republics. Some of them do assign equal status to short and long names (Buryatia isn't one of them, by the way), but singling those out once again brings us back to violating Consistency. What exactly would moving the republic articles accomplish that cannot be accomplished by setting a network of redirects (which needs to be set up under any scenario)? Note that even among the republics short names cannot be used consistently (Karelia is not the same as the Republic of Karelia, and Sakha is a dab). Under current arrangement, readers looking for these articles under shorter titles can easily be served by redirects, while readers looking at the bigger picture will not be left wondering why some articles in the same series use longer names while others use shorter names (and, as a result, whether any of them can even be trusted at all). There is no net positive for the moves but there is a lot of potential for creating tons of mundane maintenance work just for the heck of it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2014; 18:41 (UTC)
Good points and the Karelia and Sakha examples are obvious exceptions. However, conciseness is policy (for good reason, I would argue) and long cumbersome titles are generally less helpful to readers and generally look sloppier than shorter ones all things equal. (And the present their own ambiguity issues—they imply the existence of other similar article about the same place.) Since the short titles already redirect to these articles and the main articles are at the short titles, there is no reason not to move them. If they are moved, they should all be moved to match the parent articles (i.e., except Altai, Karelia, Komi, and Sakha) and, if I propose such a group move at WP:RM, I will notify you. I am willing to do the editing cleanup. — AjaxSmack
I still fail to see how adding "Republic of..." to an already (inevitably) longish title makes in that much more cumbersome—after all, "Republic of Buryatia" is hardly in the same league as the "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations"—nor did I gain a better understanding why you believe that additional confusion introduced by violating consistency by removing this bit from a handful of titles with no distinguishable unifying pattern is a wise direction to go to, but really, I think I've already spent more time on this issue than it deserves, even as I stay as unconvinced as I was before today. Do what you think is best (I think what we should be worrying about is the fact that these articles for the most part suck ass and are out of sync with the lower-level articles, and I find it annoying that I keep getting distracted with other stuff instead of rewriting them properly). At any rate, just so you know, if after moving these articles you run out of steam half-way doing cleanup, I'll make a point to schedule trouting you on a monthly basis :) I've seen all too many such initiatives in the past where the articles being moved ended up in limbo, in a state worse both than they were before and than what the proposal intended. Please don't make this series another one of those.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2014; 19:54 (UTC)
On that note, OK. Though maybe "these articles for the most part suck ass", I thank you for your very hard work on ones like List of administrative and municipal divisions of the Republic of Adygea which I just noticed was a daily featured list (congrats). But come on, that title is close to an abomination. And I would argue that your work on the text of the article means that "List of..." should be dropped as well. A beautiful simple title like Administrative divisions of Adygea for an article that could be an FA instead of just a featured list. Think about it. — AjaxSmack20:43, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. With Adygea, however, it is still a list at its core (and not the only one among FLs to have more text than list), and the title can't be just "administrative", because this article does, unlike all other articles in the series, cover the municipal divisions as well (and municipal divisions are explicitly not administrative divisions; saying otherwise, even for the sake of simplification, would be presenting a factually incorrect statement to our readership). These two aspects get confused often enough to make it helpful to emphasize the distinction (but on the same note, perhaps simply using "divisions", as in "divisions of the Republic of Adygea", might be a viable option).
The "list of..." part was added a few years ago (I don't remember by whom) based on the list formatting and titling guidelines in effect at the time. I didn't find the addition useful then (and still don't), but left this issue alone as another one too minor to lose sleep over.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2014; 21:13 (UTC)
Or "Subdivisions of..." which is used in many cases but is also not without controversy according to at least one participant in a recent RM discussion. — AjaxSmack21:32, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If I remember correctly, using the term "subdivisions" for this purpose is generally frowned upon because the primary meaning of the term is a "plot of land for development" (and indeed, where I live, it's the only meaning most people know and understand; certainly not many people would call a county a "subdivision" of a state). On the other hand, the subdivisions of Russia article has been where it's at for years without complaints. Which brings me back to my original point that as far as descriptive titles go, using any reasonable variant is fine, as long as they are all consistent with one another :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 3, 2014; 21:53 (UTC)
Kostino
Ah, certainly. My mistake — when one is dealing with massive quantities of stubs produced by a sock, one doesn't always pay as close attention as one ideally should.
Thanks for the clarification. As for offering a hand, sorry, but for personal reasons I always recuse myself from anything that has to do with this particular user.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 4, 2014; 17:10 (UTC)
Hello, Ezhiki, and thank you for your contributions!
An article you worked on Otradny, Russia, appears to be directly copied from http://www.stad.com/wiki.php?search=Nechayevka. Please take a minute to make sure that the text is freely licensed and properly attributed as a reference, otherwise the article may be deleted.
Hell right this bot has made a mistake. The link is to a copy of a similar set index which was lifted from Wikipedia...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 5, 2014; 21:07 (UTC)
Subdivisions of Russia
Ezhiki, you've been extremely helpful in explaining the Subdivisions of Russia to me, if even I'm still working on understanding them. On that page I linked to in the previous sentences, whenever you get the time, I have a suggestion. Could you make it a bit more clear? What would really be great is to see a flow chart that would helpt to show how many administrative divisions (and then one for the municipal divisions) there are below the federal subject level, as that can still be a bit confusing. Horizontally, it could also show the equivalents between the administrative divisions of each federal subject, as often the only difference is what they are called from federal subject to federal subject. It'd also be great if the language was made consistent so that we know when we're talking about, say, a "settlement" in the sense of a locality and then in the sense of an legal, workable administrative division. The words "jurisdiction" and "territory" "city/town/village" should also be clearly defined and seperated out between their administrative meanings and their general meanings, too. Anyway, thanks for letting me make these suggestions, and I hope to fully understand all of this, eventually. --Criticalthinker (talk) 13:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That page has been on my to-do list for years, yet every time I take a stab at it, it feels that I'm muddying thing up instead of clarifying them, so I postpone the task only to start from scratch next time I return to it. Would you agree to become a guinea pig next time I try doing something with that page? Some help from a native English speaker who is genuinely interested in this subject (a true rarity, I should note!) would be invaluable in making that page coherent (or at least a little more coherent than it is now), and is definitely an incentive for me to try again.
One problem with writing a decent overview is that the structure and terminology of the administrative-territorial divisions are unique to each federal subject. That is true of the United States as well, but at least in the US the terminology is more or less consistent, even as local legal details differ somewhat. In Russia, it sometimes seems that every federal subject was bent on inventing at least one particularly annoying aspect which is unlike anything everyone else uses :) This is the main reason why the "Administrative divisions" section in the subdivisions of Russia article is so vague (I've just edited it a little so it is in line with the terminology used throughout the lower-level articles, but it is, of course, just a cosmetic change).
The terminology, believe it or not, is already used fairly consistently. What you believe are discrepancies are in fact for the most part federal subject-specific terms (see, for example, city of federal subject significance for a list of terms which are used in different federal subjects to refer to the concept of the "City"—as in the "City of Sochi" which we previously discussed). The situation is, of course, immensely complicated by the fact that on top of the regional differences of terminology, an additional level of diversity is introduced in translation. For each and every administrative entity which exists in Russia, no less that half a dozen English terms can be identified in reliable sources, plus there is a substantial set of terms which can be used in both specialized context and in general use (for example, the term "settlement" alone is so overloaded as to become nearly useless unless it is preceded by a qualifier and linked to an appropriate concept). I'll be more than happy to clarify anything in this area for you, however. If you are willing to help with this, my gratitude will be endless :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 6, 2014; 14:39 (UTC)
I'm about as illiterate as it comes to wiki editing, so I'd only be able to answer questions for you. But, I'd totally be willing to answer any questions you have as it relates to administrative and municipal language as it compares with the United States. BTW, I did have a question I'll ask here so as not to fill up the Sochi page with general questions about local governance and division in Russia. You remember when we were talking about city districts and how they don't technically have their own divisions? My questions, then, is can things like rural okrugs and urban-type settlements (as these terms relates to Krasnodar Krai, specifically) cross city district boundaries and geographically be located within/under the jurisdiction of more than one city district? --Criticalthinker (talk) 16:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I'd like to describe administrative and municipal divisons in the part of the country in which I live here in the United States. I'll do this, because maybe it'll help you when describing things to me as they relate to Russian subdivisons. So, here are the administrative subdivisons:
United States (county)
State of Michigan (first and highest administrative division)
County (second and intermediate administrative division)
Township (third and lowest administrative division - also a level of local government)
Now on to the municipal formations of Michigan. All of Michigans municipal formations exists administratively within county. But, municipal formations can cross county lines and exists within more than one county.
City
Township
Village
The only caveats, here, are that an incorporated village is partially subordinate to a township, meaning that village exists both administratively within a county AND township, whereas a city is only subordinate to the county(ies) its within. As an example, I live in the settlement of Lansing, which is incorporated as the City of Lansing, and it exists administratively within mostly Ingham County (with small sections of the city administratively within Eaton and Clinton counties). The settlement of Dansville, incorporated as the Village of Dansville, however, exists administratively first within Ingham Township, which then exists administratively within Ingham County. In Michigan, we do not have any condolidate city-counties (which are county-equivalents meaning they'd not be subordinate to any county and only directly to the state government). Also, there is no municipal or administrative level below that of township. So, there is no such thing as city, township or village districts.
Michigan is actually fairly complicated for administrative divisions in the United States. In most states in the south and west and even the midwest, the lowest administrative subdivison is the county level, and there is only one municipal formation, which is a "city". Hopefully, this explanation helps when you explain to me the administrative divisions and municipal formations to me in the future.
Maybe, with this run-down, you could paint for me how Sochi (as an example) would be divided, administratively, if it were in the United States. Municipally, it seems fairly clear to me that were we to place Sochi within the administrative regime of Michigan, it would be incorporated as a "City". Administratively, the City of Sochi seems as if it would be equivalent to a consolidated city-county (county equivalent), administratively only subordinate to the "State" that is Krasnodar Krai as the City of Sochi doesn administratively exist within in district. Where this starts to stretch outside of Michigan administrative regime is that there seems to be administrative divisions below the "consolidated city-county (county equivalent)" level that simply don't exists within the United States. It would seem that large "Cities" in Russia are a bit more independent and administratively "higher" than most American cities. For instance, Los Angeles is a huge city, but it is still administratively on the same level as its incorporated suburbs, as it is subordinate and administratively within Los Angeles County. It appears that large cities in Russia are mostly equal to county-equivalents here in the United States, only subordinate to the federal subjects in which they sit geographically. --Criticalthinker (talk) 16:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As much as I am fascinated by human geography, US divisions give me a headache every time I try figure out how they work in each particular state. But I guess the same is true on your end, as you are trying to figure out an equally (if not more so) esoteric system used in Russia :) Thanks for laying out the Michigan's system, however. It was both interesting and educational, and I'll try to do my best to translate Sochi's example into Michigan's terms further down this post.
As far as your help is concerned, I wasn't really asking for someone to help me write, but rather someone to use as a sounding board. The fact that you have difficulties parsing information on subdivisions of Russia speaks only of the sorry state that page is in (and does not reflect too well on myself, since it was me who wrote a good chunk of it). If I could re-write it in a way that would make it fairly easy for an interested person to learn how everything pans out, it would be of immense help to have such an interested person ready and willing to review my writing.
To answer your question (can things like rural okrugs and urban-type settlements (as these terms relates to Krasnodar Krai, specifically) cross city district boundaries and geographically be located within/under the jurisdiction of more than one city district), the answer is a definitive "no". A city district is indivisible and a part of the city proper (i.e., the city proper is composed only of the city districts and nothing else), while rural okrugs and such are a part of the "consolidated city-county", in your parlance. Rural okrugs may be subordinated either to that "consolidated city-county" or to a specific city district, but never to two different city districts simultaneously. Nor can the borders of the rural okrugs ever cross the borders of the city districts proper (and thus of the city proper).
Now, let's move Sochi to the United States :) Using your example as a template, here's what I think is a fairly accurate "translation":
United States (country)→Russia (country)
State of Michigan (first and highest administrative division)→Krasnodar Krai (a political division; not an administrative division)
County (second and intermediate administrative division)→"City of Sochi" ("consolidated city-county") On this one it is helpful to note that the "City" (an upper-level administrative division of the krai) is on the same administrative level as the krai's districts ("counties")
Township (third and lowest administrative division - also a level of local government)→no corresponding unit
No US equivalent→city districts
No US equivalent→rural and settlement okrugs
Don't know how much this actually will help you. Some of the concepts in the US and Russia seem equivalent at the first glance, but really are not proper counterparts. The whole thing when a city district has rural okrugs in its jurisdiction does not have a US (or at least a Michigan) equivalent, for example. Note also that while such an arrangement is not unusual in Russia, in absolute numbers the number of rural okrugs/etc. in jurisdiction of city districts is rather insignificant compared to the number of rural okrugs into which districts ("counties") are cleanly divided. Even in Krasnodar Krai, not every "City" ("consolidated city-county") has rural okrugs in its jurisdiction, nor is every major "city" (a populated place) even divided into city districts.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 6, 2014; 20:13 (UTC)
I think I have to disagree on one thing. There has to be an equivalent to townships, as its a divison of a higher administrative division. Townships are a second level of administrative division (after county), and the lowest (my earlier description as being the third administrative division was incorrect since you said a "State" is a political subdivision). In Krasnodar Krai, specifically, a "township" would be equivalent to whatever the divison below "City/Town (of federal subject significance)" and "Raion" is. This would mean that "township" would be equivalent to the administrative division of "Rural okrug", "Settlement okrug" and "Town (of district significance)". The only way this isn't an equivalence is if you don't count federal subjects as as "states", in which case, you'd be right to say that "township" would probably be on the same administrative level as "City/Town (of federal subject significance)" and "Raion", which would mean "rural okrugs/settlement okrugs/towns (of district significance)" wouldn't have an American equivalent, since there is no administrative layer than "township". --Criticalthinker (talk) 05:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I put "townships" as having no equivalent not because a similar concept does not exist in Russia, but because it is uncommon within the "consolidated city-county" framework and I didn't want to complicate things. Technically, I guess, you can view the settlement okrug in which Krasnaya Polyana is located (and which is in jurisdiction of Sochi's Adlersky City District) as an equivalent of a "township". And with administrative districts (~"counties") (a unit of administrative division on the same level as "consolidated city-county"), a "township" would indeed correspond to towns of district significance, urban-type settlements of district significance, and, to a lesser extent, to selsoviets (rural okrugs, etc.). Does this help?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 7, 2014; 16:11 (UTC)
Yes, that was exactly what I was getting at, that in a city of federal subject significance or more common, a district/raion, that a "township" would be equivalent to those administrative divisions ("settlement okrug, rural okrug, and town (of district significance)" in the Krasnodar Krai in particular). The only difference in the City of Sochi as opposed to your typical raion is that the settlement and rural okrug administrative division ("township") seems to be pushed one administrative division lower than it would in a raion/district, since the settlement and rural okrugs are subordinate to city districts which in turn are subordinate to the city of federal subject significance (City of Sochi). So, yes, in the particular case of the City of Sochi - or any city/town of federal subject of singificance, really - I guess there wouldn't be a "township" equivalent. This is mostly because cities/towns of federal subject singificance function more as a consolidated city-county/independent city would over here. I guess the difference is that there is no administrative division below consolidated city-county/independent city in the United States. Whereas in Russia, these consolidated city-county/independent cities can have two (or just one if you really get picky and says that city distristics aren't further administratively divided) full administrative divisions (city districts and then settlement okrugs and rural okrugs subordinate to the city districts) below this level of administration. --Criticalthinker (talk) 16:05, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, on the issue of municipal formations, a big difference I've noticed between the United States and Russia is that in Russia, municipal incorporation seems to happen more often at the raion and city/town of federal subject level of administration ("county" and "consolidated city-county" in the U.S.), whereas in the United States, municipal incorporation tends to be more at the lower administrative division of a township. In the United States, municipalities usually incorporated from former townships lands. It's fairly rare for counties (districts/raions in Russia) to be incorporated as municipalities, and consolidated city-counties and independent cities (save for Virginia, where ALL municipalities are administratively independent cities) are very rare to begin with. --Criticalthinker (talk) 16:16, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The municipal incorporation at the raion/city/town of federal subject level doesn't just happen "more often", it is actually federally mandated. The law that regulates these matters recognizes only certain types of divisions into which the communities can be incorporated: two of them—the municipal district and the urban okrug—are on the upper level, and two—the urban settlement and the rural settlement—are on the lower level (and pertain only to municipal districts). How exactly the incorporation takes place is up to the locals, but these four entity types are their only choices, and the definitions are rather strict (deviating a bit from the subject, note how this is in contrast to the administrative-territorial divisions, where both the incorporation and the division types are decided upon by the federal subject's government/legislature). Thus, any federal subject would have either municipal districts or urban okrugs at the top level of the municipal structure ladder. In practice, all federal subjects have both entities, although some (like Sverdlovsk Oblast) are heavily slanted towards urban okrugs (which I guess is similar to your Virginia example—out of Sverdlovsk Oblast's thirty administrative districts, only five are incorporated municipally as municipal districts; the rest are incorporated as urban okrugs).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 10, 2014; 13:29 (UTC)
Interesting. Now that we're talking about incorporation (municipal formations), could you perhaps explain to be the difference between urban okrugs as an incorporation and urban and rural settlements? Is the legal difference simply size, or something more than that? In the United States, there is generally only one kind of municipal formation, and that is of "city" regardless of the physical size or population of the settlement. Generally, incorporated cities cover only a small size of the total territory of the United States. Most of the United States is governed at the administrative county level. As for the differences in municipal formations in my homestate of Michigan, it is fairly complicated in that it has "city", "village", and in practice "charter township" which aren't technically a municipal incorporation but functions as one. The difference is usually size, but that's not legally mandated. There are cities smaller than villages, villages larger than cities, etc...the difference is in how the local government is structured. Other states only have "cities" but they are seperated into "classes" based on their size, but again, the only difference is how the structured. --Criticalthinker (talk) 05:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, one more question, when an Urban Okrug incorporates within part of a City/Town (of federal subject significance), does this municipal formation become independent of the surrounding City/Town, administratively? Or, is it still thought of as being "within" the City/Town, administratively? I have the same question of Municipal Districts. For instance, my city of Lansing (urban okrug) incorporated from townships (administrative rural okrugs) within Ingham County(raion), but it still exists administratively "within" Ingham County, meaning that when Ingham County elections come around they vote in the city elections as well as the county elections. So, when it's location is written out, we'd say "Lansing, Ingham County, Michigan, USA" since Lansing is "within" or has some subordination to all of those political and administrative entities. I guess what I'm asking is that when an Urban Orkrug incorporates inside the bounadaries of an administrative city/district, does it become it's own, independent administrative city/district, or is it still subordinate to (or statistically within the juridiction of) its surrounding administrative city/district? --Criticalthinker (talk) 06:51, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question, an urban (or a rural) settlement is one step below a municipal district in the municipal formations hierarchy. There exists a separation of duties and responsibilities between the higher level (municipal district) and the lower levels (the urban and rural settlement)—the municipal district, for example, is responsible for supporting the local infrastructure (such as gas and power lines) on the whole territory of the district, regardless of which urban/rural settlement's territory they pass through. In all, the issues which affect the whole district are usually the responsibility of the municipal district's government, while things which only matter locally fall under the jurisdiction of the urban/rural settlements. The budgets of the municipal districts are maintained separately from the budgets of urban/rural settlements.
An urban okrug, on the other hand, is exactly the same as an urban settlement, with the important exception that it is not incorporated within a municipal district. Because of that, the government of an urban okrug possesses both the duties and responsibilities typical of an urban settlement, but also the duties and responsibilities which a municipal district would take, were the urban okrug's territory to be incorporated within one.
In practice, things are somewhat more complicated, because the governments of the municipal districts and urban/rural settlements may operate based on power-sharing agreements, when some of the responsibilities of a municipal district may be delegated to an urban/rural settlement, and vice versa.
But in general, the urban okrug incorporation is used on territories with one large urban locality and maybe a few rural localities. In such scenarios, it would make little sense to incorporate the territory as a municipal district. If there are no rural localities, then the borders of such theoretical municipal district and the urban settlement within it would be identical (thus equating an urban okrug anyway), and if there are some rural localities, incorporating them separately as rural settlements would often result in municipalities which are not financially viable.
Hope this helps!
Regarding your other question, I would like to emphasize again that there is no legal connection between the municipal divisions and the administrative-territorial units (unless one is explicitly created due to local initiatives). The boundaries of an urban okrug and of a city/town of federal subject significance may be identical, but these still remain separate, unrelated entities within two separate, unrelated frameworks. The only time a relation between the two frameworks exists is when one is created on purpose. Note, for example, that the federal law dealing with the municipal formations does not even mention the administrative-territorial units, and while the regional laws on the administrative-territorial structure may link the administrative units to municipalities, it is frequently done only as a matter of convenience—there is no federal law requirement obliging the federal subjects to do so. Thus saying that an urban okrug is somehow a "part" of a city of federal subject significance is simply a meaningless statement. The only manner in which an urban okrug may be a "part" of a a city of federal subject significance is geographical.
The manner of incorporation (whether for administrative or municipal entities) also may change unilaterally. If an administrative district, whose territory is incorporated as a municipal district, is merged into another district, it does not at all mean that the municipal districts merge as well (if they do, it is done by a separate act). The opposite of that statement is true as well. This is exactly what happened in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug a few years ago: Beringovsky Municipal District was merged into Anadyrsky Municipal District in 2008, but remained a separate administrative entity until 2011 (when Beringovsky Administrative District was explicitly merged into Anadyrsky Administrative District).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2014; 13:28 (UTC)
On your first answer to my question, I think I could count on two hands here in America where we have municipalities incorporated within the boundaries of a larger municipality and partially subordinate to it, and this is only within merged city-counties which have incorporated as cities. For instance, the City of Indianapolis and Marion County were merged in the 70's, but quite a few municipalities in the pre-merged Marion County didn't end up merging with the City of Indianapolis, so you have this strange (for America) municipal set-up where you have these tiny communities - some of which are completely and physically surrounded by Indianapolis' urban area - with their own city councils and mayors which have some degree of local control, but also are represented on the larger Indianapolis-Marion County council.
On your answer to my second questions, I'm not sure that you were as clear as I may gave liked. Again, I get the difference in framework, now, between a municipality and an administrative division. We have that here in America in that a county doesn't have any legal connection to the governing of an incorporated municipality. Where I'm a bit confused is, again, whereas an incorporated city is still statistically and legally "within" or part of a county (i.e. as an example, the Census data for Ingham County includes the population of the city of Lansing plus the rest of the county, residents of the City of Lansing are electors for the government of Ingham County, City of Lansing residents pay taxes to both the city and the county (though for difference services), etc...) is the same true in Russia? Again, I'm a resident of Lansing and Ingham County. As a city resident, I elect politicians to my local city council, but I'm also a resident of the county, so I also elect county politicians to the county council.
Take an instance of where an urban okrug does not cover the entire territory of an administrative division (or even where the boundaries are the same, it really doesn't matter), is that urban okrug considered "part of" or "within" its surrounding administrative division for the purposes of statistics, governing of certain administrative services/competencies, etc...? Are the residents of the urban okrug also residents of the City/Town that surround them, and thus elect politicians to their administrative district councils, or are they completely administratively seperate and only elect members to their urban okrug councils and such? I just want to be clear about that. For instance, if you were to name, if we're trying to locate Sochi, would we technically write out "Sochi Urban Okrug, City of Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia"? I know this would be unusual, but is this how you'd write out its location like I wrote out the City of Lansing's location? To put it in a general sense "Municipal formation, lowr administrative division, federal subject, county"?--Criticalthinker (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I'm a little fuzzy myself as to how you expect me to answer your administrative/municipal connection question, but I'm going to try.
As far as statistics go, they are often collected separately for administrative and for municipal entities (even when those are geographically identical). Take the 2010 Census, for example. If you look at the result sheets, you'll see a separate file with populations broken down by administrative districts/cities of federal subject significance and another file with populations broken down by municipal district/urban okrugs.
The services provided within each framework are also rigidly separated (constitutionally, as a matter of fact)—a service rendered as a part of federal government's responsibilities (such as police) operates within the framework of administrative divisions, regardless of how many municipal divisions that territory is divided into. Services rendered by the local governments do, of course, operate within the framework of municipal divisions, regardless of their correspondence to an administrative division.
As for spelling out the location, that's within the domain of the postal service. Since the Russian Post is a federal government-owned corporation, this means that the address system is based on the administrative divisions. If the Town of XXX is located in YYYsky (Administrative) District but is municipally a part of, say, ZZZsky Urban Okrug, the address would specify that the town is in YYYsky District. (In practice, the postal service's database is pretty screwed up and can't keep up with the changes in the administrative structure, but as outdated as it may be, it is still based on the administrative, not municipal divisions).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2014; 14:52 (UTC)
I believe we're starting to talk past each other, again. What I was wondering is that when a population figure is given for a District (raion) or City, if the figure includes the population of any municipal divisions "in/within" the geographical boundaries of the District or City? I further gave an example I thought might explain it better (residents being both residents of a municipal division AND also a resident of the administrative district or city. This was meant to get at the question of whether municipal divisions are administratively independent of the raion or city that surrounds these municipal divisions. I gave the example that I'm considered both a resident of Lansing and of the surrounding Ingham County, since the municipality is both geographically and administratively within the county/administrative district. Also, when the population of Ingham County is measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, it includes the population of the City of Lansing since Lansing is administratively within Ingham County. I was wondering if it was the same thing for Russian municipalities. --Criticalthinker (talk) 04:59, 12 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And I believe I have not emphasized enough the fact that the administrative and municipal structures are separate and unrelated :) When a population is given for a district (I assume you imply "administrative district" here), it includes the populations of the administrative divisions that district comprises (if there are no lower-level divisions, then the populations of the inhabited localities in that district are counted). Same is true for the "City" (=a city of federal subject significance): it includes the populations of the administrative divisions/inhabited localities in that City. That those same inhabited localities are also a part of a municipal framework does not play into this at all. Similarly, if a population is given for a municipal district, it includes the populations of the municipal divisions that district comprises (and if there are no lower-level divisions, then the populations of the inhabited localities in that municipal district are counted). What I'm getting at is that there is no dependency (administrative or otherwise) between, say, an administrative district and the municipal divisions geographically located on that district's territory. Those lower-level municipal divisions are dependent on the upper-level municipal division (municipal district), just as the lower-level administrative divisions are dependent on the upper-level administrative division (e.g., administrative district).
We previously moved Sochi to the United States to explain a point; now let's move Ingham County to Russia to illustrate another. Were Ingham County located in Krasnodar Krai, it would have had the status of an administrative district within the administrative framework and of a municipal district within the municipal framework (if you recall, the difference between the entities is that the former is used mostly by the federal and krai government, while the latter is used for the local self-government and by the krai government where the matters of local importance are concerned). The City of Lansing would have most likely had a status of a town of district significance within the administrative district, and of an urban settlement within the municipal district. During Census, the population of "the town of district significance of Lansing" would have been reported separately from the population of "Lansing Urban Settlement", even though they may be identical. Same would have been true for Ingham Administrative District and Ingham Municipal District. Does this help at all?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 12, 2014; 13:27 (UTC)
Yes, I believe this finally answers all of my questions. I think the source of my continued confusion was that I wasn't allowing myself to comprehend this framework of subdivisions in Russia given how incredibly redundant, it seems. To explain it back as simply as I can, it seems to me that any municipally incorporated urban settlement of any significance isn't just a municipal formation within an a larger administrative district like it would be would be in the United States. But, that most every municipal formation also has a corresponding administrative division seperate from the district/"city" level of administration simply doesn't exist here in the United States, and even stranger is that this lower level of administration can often correspond exactly to the borders on the municipal formation.
As you layed out with my hometown as an example, in the administrative framework, the urban settlement of Lansing would exists as a seperate (but subordinate) administrative division within "Ingham District", probably under the name of the "Town of Lansing". We have no real corresponding administrative divisions below this level; counties/districts are mostly it. Though, "town/township" administration below the county/district level exists, it doesn't exactly correspond to the "Town (of district signifance)". Urban settlements incorporated as municipalities, here, almost always exists without a seperate administrative division, even though we think of them as being "independent" of the county, since so few county services are administered within the municipality. It would seem that the "town/township" level would correspond, then, with the administrative division of Rural Okrugs and Urban-type Settlements. What's different is that once an administrative township (Rural Okrug/Urban-type Settlement) would incorporate as a municipality, here, it would lose whatever administrative designation it had, simply existing "within" the higher level of administration (in this case Ingham County/District).
Michigan
Ingham District (American: Ingham County)
Town of Lansing (No corresponding Michigan division)
On the municipal front of things, we'd find almost as strange the idea of every (almost every?) raion/county having a corresponding municipal district, and then being further divided into other (subordinate) municipalities. This would be a "municipality-within-a-municipality/city-within-a-city" concept for many (most?) cities in Russia. That's VERY rare, here. For instance, Ingham County wouldn't just be an administrative division, but would be an incorporated municipality, too, under the name of the "Ingham Municipal District" and the urban settlement of Lansing within it would be subordinate to this municipal district under the name "Lansing Urban Settlement".
Michigan
Ingham Municipal District (No corresponding Michigan division)
Lansing Urban Settlement (American: City of Lansing)
We like to think of municipalities as largely seperate from their counties, here, but Russia seems to seperate them to a whole other degree. So, to reiterate, on an administrative level, the concept of "town of district significance" doesn't really correspond to anything here in America, as we don't really have that administrative division at the large urban settlement level of settlement. And, on a municipal level, the "District" level of incorporation (County-level here in the U.S.) is VERY rare, and even in the case when a county is also incorporated as a municipality, it's even more rare for that consolidated city-county/independent city to further be municipally subdivided. --Criticalthinker (talk) 06:47, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I had one further question, and one that brings us back to the very first question that started all of the in the Sochi talk page. So, to see if I finally have an answer to that question, too, the term "city proper" in the Sochi discussion corresponds to all of the land and population in the administrative city districts APART/SEPERATE from those areas which have Rural Orkrug and Urban-type Settlement designation, correct? So, then it actually is an administrative measurement, as opposed to a spatial/physical "urban area" concept, which measures the physical size of a contiguous settlement regardless of administrative borders. --Criticalthinker (talk) 07:02, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
On the first part of your post, I think we finally got there. The analogies you used when explaining this back seem reasonable, and yes, Russian system is rather unique in how convoluted and seemingly redundant it is. Things have been gradually shifting towards using the municipal divisions as administrative entities in the past few years, but it is still a long way off until there will be (if there ever will be) a complete switch.
On your last question, yes, "city proper" refers to the territory included into city districts only (i.e., in cases where city districts are implemented—which is basically only the largest cities) and exclude subordinated areas (rural okrugs/urban-type settlements/etc).
Not to confuse things further, but I feel I should note that the term "city proper" (or "inhabited locality) refers technically to a territorial unit, although in many federal subjects (Krasnodar Krai included) they have a rudimentary administrative status (which exists pretty much only on paper). To explain, territorial units are not units of administration but rather can be viewed as building blocks which administrative (and municipal) divisions consist of. A "city proper" (an inhabited locality; ~a territorial unit) has neither administration nor municipal government, since government is a property that only an administrative/municipal unit encompassing that "city proper" (inhabited locality) can have. So in that regard, a "city proper" is indeed more of a spatial "urban area" concept, but note that in Russia such a territorial entity may not cross the borders of the administrative/municipal divisions. A "city proper" may only grow into the areas which are already a part of the administrative division; if it needs to grow outside, territories are first transferred and rezoned to include them within the administrative boundaries.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2014; 13:43 (UTC)
The United States has something not altogether similar, but does have the concept of territorial units, though, they are almost exclusively based around urban settlements which aren't incorporated as municipalities. They are called census-designated places (CDP).
Actually, what's more similar to territorial units in the United States are census county divisions (CCD), which are statistical divisions of counties, and as such, do not cross administrative district (county) lines. CCD's exist in 21 states which don't have second-tier administrative divisions ("towns and townships"). I think the difference, here, is that CDDs aren't necessarily for urban settlements and can include multiple towns/cities/villages in a county. --Criticalthinker (talk) 13:17, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thanks for clarifying this. I've been meaning to read on CDPs and CCDs for several years now, but could never find time!
Yes, in Russia an "inhabited locality" may not include more than one populated place; it's always one and only one (although not necessarily urban; "rural localities" are another subset of "inhabited localities"). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 18, 2014; 13:30 (UTC)
No problem. Yes, we have no exact statistical concept for single localities regardless of size. If a small, rural locality is not incorporated in the United States, there is not even a statistical measurement of it, and even larger rural localities may not meet the criteria to become a statistical CDP. The funny thing is that sometimes these rural localities are more populous than incorporated villages and some cities, which get listed on Census population lists while the rural localities' populations are only included as being part of their larger administrative unit (in Michigan, this means that their population is not listed seperately from the township in which they are located). --Criticalthinker (talk) 04:35, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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Think about coming to the Talk page of that contributor and ask him or her why they did such an edit. Don't act like you're in Russia, you're not. And it's not even a Russian Wikipedia, where admins authorize such behavior. Take a friendly advice and have yourself a nice day.24.201.209.74 (talk) 21:27, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The edit is "unexplained" when it lacks an edit summary. Yours did not have one. It is a matter of simple courtesy to write a short explanation of what your edit does before submitting it. Nor did your edit make any sense—the republic's declaration of independence is clearly driven by the local Russian population. To have a Tatar name as "native" in the infobox of a republic created by Russians under the influence of Russia is rather strange, don't you think? If Crimean Tatars issued a separate declaration, your edit would have made sense, but in that case the declared entity would likely have its own page, separate from the Russian-led initiatives. Tell me, how do you figure that an entity the creation of which is rightfully boycotted by the Crimean Tatar population gets to have Crimean Tatar as its only recognized language?.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2014; 21:36 (UTC)
The Crimean population did not boycott and "entity". If you're referencing the Medjlis, then these people were scared pulseless by the Crimean mafia, and this is not relevant to Wikipedia in any way because there is no official source of it to give. That would be right damn stupid to say that a state A has declared a state B "independent" within a state C, read what you yourself just wrote. And last but not least, Russia has definitely nothing to do with anything right now. Because Russia is Putin, and Putin went to the Paralympics in Sochi right now. He and Medvedev don't have time to take care of Crimea at the moment. Once again, those are only IMOs. 24.201.209.74 (talk) 22:00, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For a moment there I actually thought that there was some productive grain in what you were trying to say, but not after this latest rant... I'll leave it to others to revert your nonsensical edit; gotta run anyway.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2014; 22:08 (UTC)
Changed the {{property}} parser function and Lua’s mw.wikibase.entity.formatPropertyValues to only return the statements ranked as preferred or if none are available the ones ranked as normal (This will probably go live on April 25th.)
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Made diffs for time and geocoordinates more complete and prettier
Continued research for user interface redesign
Tpt worked on optionally showing links to other sister projects in the client’s sidebar (bugzilla:54374)
Wrote a fix for Wikidata changes not showing up in the client’s watchlist (bugzilla:62149)
Updated a major chunk of our inline code documentation
Continued discussing technical details about how coordinates should be stored in Wikibase
Looks like Yaroslav added a few during my weekend absence. Will that work for you, or do you need more? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 17, 2014; 13:11 (UTC)
I unfortunately could not find too much info, Tajik politicians are poorly represented in the internet, but I do not expect anyone without secial knowledge (e.g. Tajik language or access to some literature) to find much more than I did.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:46, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.
This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is "Sevastopol".
Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! --Guy Macon (talk) 02:21, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata weekly summary #102
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Where was it decided to turn Crimea into a disambiguation page, when one already existed? I participated in the move discussion, and I don't believe that was decided. Furthermore, there is now a move request to move Crimean Peninsula to Crimea. It might've been more intelligent to allow the move request to go for longer before making such a change. RGloucester — ☎13:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My move was per existing disambiguation guidelines, which do not recommend having a page at "XXX (disambiguation)" when the "XXX" title is vacant and is not a primary topic. I haven't seen a consensus that Crimean Peninsula should be the primary topic for "Crimea", nor are the pages set up the way to imply such a connection; hence the dab guidelines kick in. If you don't believe I'm interpreting the guidelines correctly, you are welcome to post an inquiry at the Disambiguation WikiProject (I won't participate, but will abide by a consensus if one is reached there); likewise, if you feel that "Crimean Peninsula" should be the primary topic for "Crimea", it might be a good idea to open another discussion. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2014; 14:00 (UTC)
That's fine. I just wanted to make sure that nothing odd was going on, as we've had a lot of problems with rogue page moves with regard to Crimea articles recently. RGloucester — ☎14:04, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I know; I've just been going through various mismatches left from such moves and was fixing double redirects and whatnot. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2014; 14:05 (UTC)
Crimea moves
Could you please procedurally self-revert your move of Crimea (disambiguation) over the redirect at Crimea? I'm a bit disappointed you used your admin bit for unilaterally making that move, when you must have known it would be at least likely to be contentious. If you look at the move proposals already under discussion at Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea (the former Talk:Crimea) you will see that a competing proposal, namely of moving the geographical peninsula article to the simple title, has been under discussion there, and I believe the distribution of opinions points clearly towards a consensus for that move. (I have procedurally closed the duplicated move discussion that was opened today at Talk:Crimean peninsula). I count 24 editors supporting that part of the proposal in the existing discussion, versus 11 opposing it. Unfortunately, people have somehow pressed ahead and implemented all sorts of things without waiting for a formal closure of that debate, but it's still on the table and I don't see why we should be rehashing the same discussion yet another time now. Fut.Perf.☼16:42, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, I also disagree with your statement that your move was dictated by common disambiguation norms. It is perfectly legitimate to treat a meaning (in this case, the geographical one) as "primary" in the sense of the DAB guidelines, even if it is not the precise title of the article in question, so that the simple title is a redirect to something different. The status quo, where "Crimea" redirected to "Crimean peninsula", was not the ideal solution according to the consensus in the move discussion, but at least it was consistent with it as a preliminary state. The current situation isn't. Fut.Perf.☼16:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As I explained in the thread above, the move I made was already for procedural reasons. I have no problem with continuing a discussion about the ultimate fate of the "Crimea" and "Crimea (disambiguation)" pages, but at the time I made the move the situation was in violation of disambiguation guidelines. While it is indeed perfectly legitimate to treat an "XXX" meaning as "primary" and to have it as a redirect to another page (while at the same time having a "XXX (disambiguation)" page) I am unable to see any consensus at this point of time that "Crimean Peninsula" is indeed the primary meaning of "Crimea". The only reason why there even was a redirect to the peninsula is because Kudzu1 (talk·contribs) created it by overriding a redirect to Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which, in turn, was the result of the previous, consensus-backed, move. There was no explanation, nor consensus quoted for that particular edit. The discussion currently ongoing at Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea may very well change the situation, but for now I see no reason why this deviation from the guideline recommendations shouldn't be fixed in the interim. I recommend you submit a review request for this move of mine if this explanation still leaves you unconvinced. Feel free to reference this section if my input is required; I really don't have much to add beyond what I've just said. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2014; 16:54 (UTC)
The question of whether the peninsula is the primary meaning or not is not something you can legitimately simply decide by administrative fiat. The status quo you found was consistent with the assumption that it is that primary topic, and, under that assumption, the status quo was perfectly consistent with technical guidelines, as you yourself admit. The existing debates may not have given you a clear idea that there was a strong consensus for making that assumption, but you can't seriously claim there was an evident consensus against it either. Seriously, did you even read the existing debate at Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea? If you did, it ought to have been obvious to you why creating the redirect as Kudzu1 did was in fact based on the current state of consensus. Under these circumstances, making the move you did was not simply technically bringing something in line with guidelines, as you claim; rather it was the unilateral implementation of your own editorial judgment. I find your use of admin tools troubling, to say the least, and would still strongly recommend you simply self-revert before this escalates further. Fut.Perf.☼17:05, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I did not decide anything by administrative fiat. There is currently no consensus (but of course feel free to correct me if I missed it—and if one exists, then there is not a need to ask me to self-revert) that "Crimea" should redirect to "Crimean Peninsula". The Crimea→Crimean Peninsula redirect was implemented by another user's bold edit (a non-administrative fiat? :)); however, it was not based on an outcome of any discussion (at least not of any discussion Kudzu mentioned in the edit summary). That same edit (as well as the Crimea→Autonomous Republic of Crimea redirect which was there before the edit) contradicted the disambiguation guidelines we already have in place, which is what my move had fixed. There was no "status quo" to speak of; the redirect hung there unnoticed for at least a day before I intervened. Fixing situations which contradict established guidelines is well within the right of any administrator.
In short: when there is a clear consensus to redirect "Crimea" to "Crimean Peninsula", it should definitely be used to revert my move (and in such case there is no need to even notify me). Until that happens, there is no reason to treat "Crimean Peninsula" as the primary meaning of "Crimea", and we should continue upholding other applicable guidelines. That a debate is currently ongoing at Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea (yes, I've seen/read it) is not a justification to revert until it is closed and a clear consensus is demonstrated that "Crimea" should redirect to "Crimean Peninsula". Lack of consensus against an idea is not a justification to ignore other applicable guidelines. As an admin, you should be well aware of that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2014; 17:26 (UTC)
Your position is untenable. Your repeated claim that the status quo was technically against an existing guideline is false. As you yourself admit, the status quo was perfectly adequate, given the assumption that the peninsula is the primary topic, which was obviously the assumption Kudzu1 based their edits on. The only possible argument against this status quo is therefore not that a disambiguation guideline was violated, but that in fact the peninsule is not the primary topic – an opinion that you have yourself gone on record endorsing [3]. This, however, is a matter of editorial opinon (i.e. your editorial opinion), not a matter of administrative rule application. Either you are an uninvolved administrator, acting on your conclusions about the existence or non-existence of consensus at the move request – but in that case you ought to have formally closed that move request before acting, and you clearly can't do so since you have gone on record as involved with your own editorial opinion on exactly the same matter. Or you were acting simply in your capacity as an editor (and I won't be nitpicky about holding the fact against you that you technically used your admin bit), but in that case you will have no objections against me reverting your move – equally just as an editorial action, and without incurring a charge of wheel-warring. Which I will do in a short time, unless I hear a very good explanation of you why despite your !vote you are not "WP:INVOLVED" here. Fut.Perf.☼18:37, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
An "assumption" is not the same as an "established consensus" or "established guideline". If there is indeed a consensus to override a guideline (and it's not merely a local consensus), it's one thing. When all you have to go on is "assumptions", that's quite another. Acting on such "assumptions" is the very definition of "editorial opinion".
You are right that my personal, non-admin, "editorial opinion" is that it is preferable for "Crimea" to be a disambiguation page, but let's also have on record that it is not why I moved the page. I'm perfectly capable of divorcing my personal opinions from my administrative duties, thank you very much. The situation this morning did in fact violate the disambiguation guidelines (and despite your incessant repetition that it didn't, I'm yet to hear from you a single reason why). My move was to fix the situation. I did wait for some reasonable amount of time for others to intervene and fix it, but that did not happen. As of today, there is no basis either in policy or in established consensus for "Crimea" to redirect to "Crimean Peninsula" or anywhere else. Also as of today, there is a basis in policy (albeit not in consensus) for "Crimea" to be a disambiguation page. Policy trumps the lack of consensus (either way). I do understand that when the discussion at Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea is closed, it may be used to overturn my move if there is a consensus to support such an action.
This said, I do strongly suggest that it would not be you who reverts my move before the discussion at Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea runs out, and I do strongly suggest that it would not be you who closes that discussion when time comes. The bullying and accusations you've been throwing at me for the past couple of hours are truly mind-boggling, coming from an admin who is supposedly well-versed in policy and matters of conduct for whom I actually had some respect before today. You are accusing me of bias with nothing to support your position but an empty rhetoric and a complete lack of AGF, and I do find that unsettling and disappointing at the same time. I am, frankly, inclined to think that it is you who is trying to sneakily push your own "editorial opinion" here (even as it is clearly at the expense of an established guideline), but that would be stooping to your level, which I refuse to do. Furthermore, I do not understand why my policy-backed move (meant to be nothing more than an interim solution) is a problem, seeing how it will be either confirmed or overturned in the next few days anyway, nor do I understand why you are unable to wait that short amount of time and prefer to waste both of our time with this thread instead. If this issue itches you so, do what a respectful admin would do in such a situation and find a neutral third party to review this dispute.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2014; 19:14 (UTC)
Reduced page load time significantly once again. Page load time was cut to roughly 2/3. For now we’re happy with the resulting page load times. We’ll start concentrating on other areas of the user interface now.
Fixed faulty selection handling when adding a property using the keyboard (bugzilla:62868)
Worked on fixing issues with handling of spaces in quantities (bugzilla:62567)
Fixed miscount of Wikidata changes on the client watchlist (bugzilla:45812)
Wrote new browser tests for special pages using the Cucumber and Selenium frameworks
Improved error formatting, localisation and handling. We will work on error message wording next to make them more understandable.
Worked on the code which propagates page moves from the clients into Wikidata as a preparation for allowing page deletions to appear on Wikidata
Made the Wikibase extension work with the new “Compact language links” Beta feature and a bit more independent from the UniversalLanguageSelector in general
The student team working on the entity suggester has finished the first version of it. The code is being reviewed now and is hopefully ready for deployment soon. Once it is deployed it will show you what new properties you could add to an item.
Hi! Just a quick update that while JSTOR and The Wikipedia Library discuss expanding the partnership, they've gone ahead and extended the pilot access again, until May 31st. Thanks, JSTOR!
It would be really helpful for growing the program if you would fill out this short survey about your usage and experience with JSTOR:
No, there isn't one. There are only four okrugs in Russia anyway (unless you include Moscow's administrative okrugs, but there is still only another dozen of those), so having a dedicated infobox seemed an overkill. You could try and adopt {{Infobox Settlement}} for these, although it may be hard to make head or tails of that particular mess of an infobox. Feel free to contact me if you think I can help. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 3, 2014; 12:57 (UTC)
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My gut feeling was to use "the chair of a Senate department", but according to Pushkarev's dictionary of Russian historical terms, it should be "the president of a Senate department".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 8, 2014; 11:56 (UTC)
Thanks. How would you translate первоприсутствующий Московской сенатской конторы? Would it be President of the Moscow Senatorical Office? Never heard of that dictionary; would you mind giving a link or present me the Russian title of it? Regards.--Tomcat(7)12:24, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have a paper copy (and the book is actually in English): Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, compiled by Sergei G. Pushkarev, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1970. It lists transliterated Russian terms and their definitions/short descriptions. A very nice companion when working on anything related to the Russian Empire, and it doesn't seem to be terribly rare (there are at least two libraries near where I live that own a copy, and I don't exactly live in a metropolis).
Руководители флота России и председательствующий в Совете Министров
Could you translate Руководители флота России and председательствующий в Совете Министров (if there is a председатель and Kokovtsov being one time a председательствующий)? Regarding the first: I translated as "Captain of the Russian fleet". Regards.--Tomcat(7)11:04, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The first one would be "the Commanders of the Russian Navy" (or "Fleet"). I don't believe "captain" is a good choice for this. For the other one, any reason why straightforward "Chairman of the Council of Ministers" can't do the job?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2014; 13:16 (UTC)
Kokovsky was председательствующий from 3 to 9 September 1911 and Председатель from 9 to 30 January 1914. At the moment, председатель is chairman, but what would be председательствующий? See [5]; his name is written in italics and he is not numbered. I could not find many sources regarding that short period as председательствующий; perhaps it can be skipped? --Tomcat(7)15:22, 14 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see. I need to brush up on that period, but from what I see, he was fulfilling the role after Stolypin's assassination and then formally appointed on September 9, correct? That would make him an Acting Chairman.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2014; 16:19 (UTC)
Stolypin died on 5 September, but Kokovtsov was председательствующий already on 2 September (appointed the next day), so not sure what you mean. Правительственный вѣстникъ № 190 from 3 September 1911 would be a useful resource; if you have it or your library please let me know.--Tomcat(7)10:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another Russian source request!!
Hate to bother you with this immediately after the above, but are you aware of any reliable Russian internet sources on the Soviet Interior Troops? I can do all the transl but need really to have the sources found for me. History, organisation, etc. Buckshot06(talk)07:13, 14 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No bother at all, although I doubt I can be of much help. I have next to nothing on military subjects in my library, but a quick search turned up this book, which seems a decent starting point (with some part freely available online). I'd recommend you post this inquiry at WT:RUSSIA; perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I am will be able to help.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2014; 13:28 (UTC)
В первых числах October 1943 units of the corps, форсировав Днепр, захватывают и удерживают плацдарм на западном берегу реки. С 6.3.1944 г. части корпуса, участвуя в Odessa Offensive, прорывают немецкую оборону на западном берегу реки Игулец и продвигаются вперед. Овладев с ходу нас.п. Лозоватка, корпус после незначительной перегруппировки, начинает преследовать врага. 16.3.1944 г. корпус сдерживает контратакующие удары противника, который силами в 35-40 таnks с несколькими пехотными батальонами попытались оттеснить наши части от реки Ингул и удержать переправы в районе Софиевки. 22 марта части корпуса выходят к реке Южный Буг. В ночь на 27 March (two divisions of the) корпуса, переправившись через Южный Буг, под мощным огнем противника продвинулись вперед и овладели крупным нас.п. Акмечеть. On 1.4.1944, частям корпуса в составе 37th Army удалось овладеть нас.п. Стрюково, Шварцево, Корнеевка и захватить переправу через р. Тилигул. 5 апреля дивизии корпуса ведут бой за ст. Мигаево. 11.4.1944 г. корпус, которому для усиления передавалась из резерва 15th Guards Rifle Division при поддержке 23rd Tank Corps освобождает Tiraspol, с ходу форсирует Днестр и врывается в Варницу.
Most of it I can do with Google Translate, but some things, including especially how to translate the 'нас.п.' before some placenames, stump me. Cheers and very many thanks, Buckshot06(talk)07:35, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is too much of a military-specific vocabulary, so that I a hesitant to translate the whole fragment, but 'нас.п.' meand localities, and р. means the river.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:05, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do you still need help with this? Sorry for not replying right away—I've just came back from vacation. It might take me a few days to settle back into my usual routine, but I can give this passage a shot if you still need it translated. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 24, 2014; 18:53 (UTC)
In the beginning of October 1943, after having conducted a forced crossing of the Dnieper River, the units of the corps captured and retained a beachhead on its western bank. On March 6, 1944, as a part of the Odessa Offensive, parts of the corps breached the German defenses on the western bank of the Igulets River (I believe it's a typo; it's likely they mean the Ingulets River) and moved forward. Having stormed the inhabited locality of Lozovatka and after slight regrouping, the corps began the pursuit of the enemy. On March 16, 1944, the corps deterred the counterattacks by the enemy, who was attempting to force back our units from the Ingul River and to hold the river crossings near Sofiyevka with 35–40 tanks and several infantry battalions. On March 22, the units of the corps reached the Southern Bug River. On the night of March 27, (two divisions of) the corps, having crossed the Southern Bug, moved forward under the enemy's heavy fire and captured the large inhabited locality of Akmechet. On April 1, 1944, parts of the corps, acting as a part of the 37th Army, captured the inhabited localities of Stryukovo, Shvartsevo, Korneyevka, and the Tiligul River crossing. On April 5, the divisions of the corps fought a battle for the station of Migayevo. On April 11, 1944, the corps, having been reinforced from the reserve with the 15th Guards Rifle Division and with the support of the 23rd Tank Corps, liberated Tiraspol, forced the Dniester River, and stormed into Varnitsa.
As I am having an exceptional situation, is there any possibility that I can contact you outside the Wikipedia? I believe I need a private conversation. Besides, I do not know if it is proper to ask, but would you please take a look at my contributions (including those in talk pages) and let me know if there is anything that seems wrong to you? I have not made many contributions so far and would really appreciate that if you have time to check.Listofpeople (talk) 17:17, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If this is related to a Wikipedia issue, you can contact me right here, on my talk page. If this is not a Wikipedia issue, then no, I am not willing to discuss it. If this is one of the rare Wikipedia issues which shouldn't be discussed in public, you would normally be able to reach me via wikimail, although at present, for reasons which will take too long to explain, I have no means to access my email account to which wikimail is linked, and won't be able to read any mail for another two weeks at least. If it can't wait this long, I would recommend you reach out to another person.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 28, 2014; 13:36 (UTC)
Правьте свои страницы
ДО каких пор подлые белгородцы будут править Воронежские страницы, у себя правьте и нелезьте со своим ядом к нам, иначе все ваши страницы будут активно нами правиться — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liallis (talk • contribs) 12:31, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying this is a picture of Belgorod and not Voronezh? If so, why is it linked from a bunch of Voronezh articles on other Wikipedias? If so, why do you simply move it around in the Voronezh article and not simply remove it? And why are you not using an edit summary to explain your edits? I've restored the picture in its place once again. Please use the article's talk page if you have concerns about it, but these silent reverts gotta stop.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 1, 2014; 13:14 (UTC)
So why are you moving it from the infobox? The infobox should show the city, whenever possible, not its individual landmarks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 1, 2014; 13:29 (UTC)
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You have taken out the Patrick White statement about Cranz in the above article. It is extremely seldom that an author of that caliber does mention such a little godforsaken place in his memoirs. You seem to think that the world is only interested in administration. Well, I do not think it is and a few others seem to think along the same lines. Would you please be so kind and put it back in again? Herbertkarl (talk) 13:30, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. Truth be told, I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "world only being interested in administration" or what relevance this has as far as White's statement is concerned. But the whole entry dealing with White seems excessive, because the "notable people" section is supposed to be listing people with strong ties to a place, not occasional visitors who happen to be famous and deign to write a few lines about it in their memoirs. Plenty of famous people visited plenty of obscure places, and some of them even mentioned those places in their works, which, however, does not mean we should be collecting all such cursory mentions in this encyclopedia. You should also notice that even with this being my opinion, I did not remove the White entry completely, but merely shortened it. Having two quotes about the same place by a person who had a momentary fascination with it and had otherwise no strong ties to it seems to be really excessive. It is your right to disagree, of course, in which case I suggest you open a discussion on the article's talk page. If you or "a few others" can demonstrate that the quote is actually relevant in context of Cranz/Zelenogradsk (and not merely in context of Patrick White, who has his own article), you'll not only demonstrate a consensus for restoring the quote, but have my full support for reinstating it as well. As things stand now, the quote is merely a distraction from the subject at hand (the subject being the town) and falls under trivia of less useful sort. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 14, 2014; 14:05 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #110
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Looking for a cool university project with impact? We have some of them around Wikidata - not just for computer science students. Get in touch with Lydia.
Had a lot to think about and recap from the Zürich Hackathon, e.g. things regarding search, suggestions as well as the user interface redesign
Started doing mockups of the new user interface (Nothing to show yet, sorry!)
Setup an autogenerating code documentation instance on labs at wbdoc.wmflabs.org. Hint: Submitting patches that make the inline code documentation even better is a good starting point to get involved in coding
Worked on new datatype monolingual text (basically a string with an associated language)
Reworked a hell lot of “change operations” code that’s responsible for each and every edit as well as validating user input and API requests, for example denying empty descriptions and finding and blocking unnecessary duplications
Checked all the new Beta features that the teams in San Francisco are developing and made sure they work with Wikidata
Our efforts to make Wikidata faster broke some gadgets so we helped fixing them. Sorry for the breakage!
Dug into odd display bugs with the MonoBook skin and attempted to fix them (bugzilla:64741)
More testing on simple queries
Tpt worked on making inter-project links in the sidebar a beta-feature
I figured the Karlivka/Karlovka alternatives were based on a Ukrainian/Russian distinction. However, the BBC report I provided in the article shows the town sign as "Karlovka" in English, despite also saying Карлівка in Ukrainian. See [6]. Thoughts? I don't want to be part of some nationalistic campaign on either side, I just believed there should be an article on this populated village where people were killing each other earlier today.--Milowent • hasspoken17:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No worries, differences between Russian and Ukrainian spellings are a source of much confusion, especially among those who know neither of these two languages :) Sloviansk is probably the best example of that—I've seen no less than six different spellings in various news reports! All in all, for lesser known populated places Wikipedia uses country-specific naming conventions, and specifically for Ukraine that convention is WP:UKR. It's only the place names which are firmly established in English that are the exception to that rule (think Kiev, Moscow, etc), while obscure place names are normally transliterated. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 23, 2014; 17:36 (UTC)
Editors may now include their ORCID identifiers (and others, such as VIAF) on their user pages, using the Authority control template. You can register for an ORCID at http://orcid.org
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. SAMI talk16:39, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't normally remove CSD tags from pages I created (nor am I supposed to), but this one is completely out of whack. CSD G6 applies only to disambiguation pages; this one is a set index.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 28, 2014; 16:43 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
I just clicked on your signatures to reply you, which opened your user page. I was surprised to see you being an administrator and impressed by your attitude and behaviour. I offer another apology for the nuisance. Hopefully you will accept. SAMI talk17:15, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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Two quick things: firstly, thanks for following me around the past few months and correcting the many little errors I have put into my Sakha village stubs. I have tried to pick them up as I see them and incorporatwe your changes into future articles. Secondly, are you aware of a similar registry to this for either Magadan Oblast or Kamchatka? It's a pretty useful check list to ensure that all settlements get captured and I can tie it back to the district infobox. I have tried looking through the official sites, but find them very confusing as they mainly seem to be half built and I am not sure if I am missing something! Thanks in advance. Fenix down (talk) 16:29, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No problem on the first one. Just so you know, I don't really follow you around, I just pick a couple at random every day and fix whatever little things need fixing. While I'm not generally very happy that we are getting so many stubs before first putting the proper linking/disambiguation/third-tier divisions infrastructure in place (a complication you have undoubtedly discovered yourself, when various articles need to be moved around and renamed), and while am I especially unhappy that they are for the Sakha Republic (which, of all federal subjects, has the most spelling and other discrepancies and the most potential for future complications), I do nevertheless appreciate you putting so much time and effort into making things right and ensuring that everything is interconnected properly. Thank you for that.
With Kamchatka and Magadan, they do have registries of their own: Kamchatka's administrative-territorial registry is in Law #46 of April 29, 2008, most recently amended in July 2013, and Magadan's administrative-territorial registry is in Resolution #305-pa of April 11, 2013, most recently amended in August 2013. Kamchatka's municipal registries are all district-specific, while Magadan has two separate municipal registries covering different district sets. Magadan's administrative-territorial registry is kind of similar to Sakha's, while Kamchatka's is very basic (just a listing of locality names and jurisdictions). I'm sure both can be found online with due diligence, but they indeed don't seem to be available on the official websites. The copies I'm using are all Word files from Consultant Plus (a Russian legal assistance system); I'll be happy to share them if you think you'll find them useful. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 2, 2014; 17:05 (UTC)
Oh I wasn't insinuating that you were stalking me! It's certainly been very helpful. It would be really useful if you could could share the Kamchatka and Magadan ones with me, and also Nenets if you have them. If I have a complete list in one place then I should be able to get any relevant disambiguation pages andl inking done first of all. One of the problems in using the online Sakha registry is with it being split by district I often didn't notice that there was a need for disambiguation until after I had created an article. Fenix down (talk) 15:09, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I was just hoping that my little edits didn't feel like stalking to you :) Glad if I could help.
As for the registries, if you send me a wikimail, I can email them to you later this week. It's just that when I mentioned necessary infrastructure, I didn't mean just disambiguation pages and linking. At some point, the selsoviet/rural settlement dab/set/hat/linking web will need to be created as well, which means that creating more and more stubs right now will create more and more maintenance for later on. On top of that, I did tell you that we have a capability to create all 150,000+ stubs on Russian rural localities (with most of the links being proper disambiguated from the start) virtually overnight? Doing so would result in a consistent set of articles where little follow-up edits like those I'm making now won't be necessary. The only reason why it's not being done is because there is a lot of preliminary testing to be done (one wouldn't want to dump 150,000 stubs without first making sure they are all 100% correct, and of course approval needs to first be in place for such a mass endeavor), and because the web covering districts/cities of federal subject significance/towns of district significance/urban-type settlements of district significance needs to be created first (a job which I estimate is about half-done now). I feel very uneasy saying all this because it feels like I'm discouraging people from editing, but to me it just doesn't seem right to spend time on mass-creating and supporting stubs manually when time could be spent on polishing test cases and then creating stubs which would require minimal maintenance and would be immediately ready for proper expansion (providing there are volunteers to do that job). Already I'm finding it easier to write code which, once provided with the locality ID as an identifier, creates stubs like Khatystyr from scratch and simply overrides your manually created stubs—this way all inconsistencies are caught automatically and can be seen by using "show preview", but of course this does not help prevent future maintenance because not all preliminary work has been completed and thus cannot be automated at this point. What are your thoughts on this? I know my pace is too slow for some to bear, and it is nice to have something in place instead of nothing, but the extent of future maintenance positively make me cringe. If you have ideas on how to reconcile these two approaches (do preparations and wait for quite a while and then do everything in one fell swoop vs. doing everything with what we have now at a brisk pace and then doing nothing but maintenance for quite a while), I would certainly appreciate if you could share them. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 4, 2014; 16:00 (UTC)
I remember you saying quite a while ago that the dream was to have all of these automatically created. If I understand the two approaches, do you mean either wait until the tool is ready without creating any new articles and then have them all done uniformly or create manually for now maintaining where necessary? Personally, I am not sure I want to wait. I am quite happy to continue creating the stubs as it is something I find quite interesting strangely! Maybe it would help if you could provide a template to prevent some of the little errors creeping in. I certainly don't have any problem with automated versions being created in place of my manual versions at some later point. Fenix down (talk) 16:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The last thing I want to do is to discourage anyone from creating anything! But there is a difference between creating a stub (or a dozen) when one (or a dozen) are needed to ensure other things make sense or to fill gaps which absolutely need filling, and between taking a list of localities and starting to mass-create stubs in alphabetical or whatever other order just for the heck of it. What I am trying to explain is that the very stubs you are creating now can be created automatically (and in their present form, they can be created almost exactly like that right now), so it kinda sorta means that the time you spend on creating them is the time wasted. Sure, you are having fun in the process, and sure, it's great to have something in place sooner rather than later, but on the other hand, the maintenance overhead increases with each stub (and it's not like WP:RUSSIA is teeming with volunteers to clean up or update anything after it's created) and each and every of those stubs will eventually need to be revisited to manually or semi-manually add parts which are not yet automated (but will at some point be). It is an order of magnitude harder to update an existing substub than to create one from scratch using an automated tool. Look at it from my point of view—I can send you the registries, provide help to get you started, and have you stubbing happily away, or I can spend a couple days tweaking the scripts and, with one press of a button, produce 180 rural locality stubs for Kamchatka, Magadan, and Nenets AO, all ready for pasting and, unless I screw something up, not requiring the little follow-up edits I'm doing to the Sakha stubs. Now, it is definitely not my or anyone else's place to tell you what to edit, but frankly, I was much happier when you were doing Chukotka's articles—that's the kind of stuff that adds real value to the encyclopedia and which cannot be replaced by a computer script. At any rate, whatever your final decision might be, I want to emphasize that you'll always have my help when you need it. Just ask. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 4, 2014; 17:25 (UTC)
Aaah! I completely misunderstood you. I thought when you were talking about a script that could generate the stubs that this was an aspiration that would be done at some point in the future, I didn't realise that it was well under way. When I said I enjoyed writing the stubs, I meant that I enjoyed seeing the articles in place as opposed to not being there as there seemed to be no interest from anyone to create them. If you could get the script up and running to create stubs that could then be populated with more detailed "interesting" content then that would be great as I would have something to start working on. When do you think it will be possible to get it working? Is this something you would need help with? From what you are saying it seems like the script would churn out a basic article which would need to be manually input to WP. If this is the case, I would be happy to help with the work load idf there is a manual element to it. I would still like the registries though if possible for information. Fenix down (talk) 09:44, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the script at this point is both an aspiration and something well under way. The biggest thing missing right now is a capability to properly link to urban-type settlements of district significance and selsoviets from the appropriate places in the stub (and while it seems like a trivial omission, adding this information to existing stubs separately would be a monumental effort). Coordinates for most places are also missing (I only have ~16% in the database, although my elves are working on improving that). And references are only semi-automated (i.e., a set of proper references needs to be supplied for each federal subject, and often district, separately for each set of localities). The addition of postal codes will remain a manual task for the time being—I have no desire to duplicate the work of the Russian postal service by keeping track of how postal codes change :) Having links to the official websites in the database would be a very good feature, but it's one I can't afford to implement at the moment, so it remains manual as well. Flags/coats can be supplied via Wikidata (the same way Commons link is populated now), although those need to always be verified (and changes made to Wikidata entries when errors are found—occasionally there would be district symbols there instead of towns', or vice versa). And of course, there will always be opportunities for minor manual add-ons, such as finding and adding a picture for the infobox or adding little useful bits like the distance from the administrative center.
As far as the timeline for when everything will be finished (to the point where a bot request can be submitted), I'm afraid it's still not very soon. I have a day job and a life, too :) But come to think of it, there are a few things you could help with, providing, of course, that it's something you'd be willing to do and hopefully have fun with. There is not going to be much stubbing involved, but there will be a lot of work with disambiguation/set indices (very similar to the occasional dab/set work you had to do when you were discovering duplicate names for the Sakha localities). If it's something that interests you, I can describe the task in more detail and provide the data support you'll need to accomplish it. One thing I can promise—it's going to be mindless grunt work :) If it's not something you see yourself doing, that's fine, too.
As for the registries, like I said before, please send me a wikimail and I'll send you the Word documents. Might take me a few days to reply (a long story why), but you'll have them. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 5, 2014; 13:50 (UTC)
More than happy to help out with disambs and indices, it really bugs me when they are not done and links point to unrelated articles. Please let me know how I can help. Fenix down (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Here's the gist of it. Yaroslav asked me a while ago to give him a list of all urban-type settlements, so missing articles can be created (and his articles are really nice (example), and even his stubs go way beyond barebone carcasses my script would ever be able to produce). I started to create a list and then realized that not only there are going to be a lot of red links, but that a good chunk of them is not linking properly. Currently, links to the majority of existing urban-type settlements are included in the lists on administrative-territorial divisions; problem is, those lists were created years ago, so most of them simply link to the locality name. When an article already exists and the name is unique, this is of course correct, but some are linking to dabs/sets, and others are linking to a redlinked location where a dab/set should exist.
This is where your help would be handy. I can produce a list of links to articles on all urban-type settlements. The database is currently capable of constructing such links in accordance with the rules in the WP:NC:CITY#Russia guideline and most of the articles will eventually need to be at those titles. What the database can't possibly catch is conflicts outlined under bullets 2 and 3 of that guideline, and even under bullet one the results could be simplified or edited for better clarity—that's always an editorial decision. So, each entry needs to be reviewed, backlinks corrected, disambiguation and/or set index pages created where necessary, and pages may occasionally need to be moved.
Here's an example (but bear in mind that there will be many other cases where a completely different set of actions will need to be taken). In Belgorod Oblast, there is the work settlement of Pyatnitskoye in Volokonsky District. The administrative divisions of Belgorod Oblast list links to it directly→Pyatnitskoye. Since there are other localities in Russia by this name, the link should really be to Pyatnitskoye, Belgorod Oblast (and that's the link which the list I'll provide you with will contain). So, all applicable articles linking to "Pyatnitskoye" (only one in this case) will need to be amended, Pyatnitskoye itself will need to become a redirect to Pyatnitsky (because we always collect masculine, feminine, and neuter forms on the masculine form page), Pyatnitsky page itself (which currently a surname list) will need to be moved to Pyatnitsky (surname), and a disambiguation page needs to be created at Pyatnitsky, which will include a link to the surname page, a link to the urban-type settlement, and links to anything else called "Pyatnitsky"/"Pyatnitskaya"/"Pyatnitskoye" if you feel to search around and find any such entities (quite often it would make sense to include a line about the corresponding municipal urban settlement—Pyatnitskoye Urban Settlement in this case—and a redirect at Pyatnitskoye Urban Settlement would be created to Pyatnitskoye, Belgorod Oblast when the latter is not a red link). Sometimes hatting will suffice, sometimes not. Judging by how you handled similar Sakha cases, I believe you know the drill.
All in all, as you can see, it can get very confusing and complicated quickly. If you are willing to take on this task, I guarantee you a barnstar and a massive headache :) There are a total of ~1,300 entries to comb through, so you are unlikely to run out of things to do any time soon, and I know that occasionally sidetracking to find other entries to include on a particular dab page can be an enjoyable and educational experience. Is this something you'll find interesting? I realize this is a lot to ask, so please don't hesitate to say "no" if you don't feel this is going to be any fun at all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 5, 2014; 16:35 (UTC)
Sound fine to me, I understand what is needed, so if you want to send me through the list I will get started as soon as I can. Will want to get comfortable with the list, but probably best if I do one or two and then let you look at them to make sure there are no major errors or misunderstandings as I can foresee quite a lot of duplication in this work. sounds fine to me to get it done though, I hate it when I see a blue link to something interesting only to find that it doesn't point to the right place. Fenix down (talk) 13:30, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wonderful! I still need to prettify the list a little but will send it together with the registries. Expect it this weekend or early next week. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 6, 2014; 14:33 (UTC)
Wow, I'm drawing a complete blank on this one! There are a few sources in Russian that mention him (as "Мэрион Геринг"), but none qualify as reliable, I'm afraid, and the "Мэрион" spelling is definitely an Americanized variant (if that indeed is his birth name, it would be spelled "Марион", although that still sounds strange as a name of a Russian person). Do you have any information in English about his early years, before coming to America? Even a non-reliable source might help locating something in Russian, because his name alone clearly isn't enough... Sorry to be so useless...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 9, 2014; 16:05 (UTC)
More cleanup for the coming switch to WikibaseDataModel 1.0.
Icinga Dispatch Lag monitoring scripts, including IRC notifier bot, have been tested and are ready for Ops implementation. This should give us quicker notifications in case the notifications to Wikipedia and co about changes on Wikidata are slow again.
GenderCounter uses Wikidata to provide an accurate service with distinguishing male and female names
ca.wikipedia found a nice way to use Wikidata. They're comparing their living people to Wikidata to see if any of them have a date of death there. They're then put into a category for review: ca:Categoria:Persones vives a revisar
Continued working on full redirect support for items. It touches a surprising big chunk of the code base.
Continued working on the QueryEngine code base and it’s data type support.
Fixed and updated the most recent implementation of the property and item selector widget, e.g. a MonoBook specific bug.
Pushed along reviews and deployment of the entity suggester code that will make suggestions for new properties to be added to items. Our hope is to have it through performance review for the next deployment.
Hey everyone, it's rare these small sections come along but there is a bit of interesting news to get across which one line under 'noteworthy stuff' won't be the best for. For the next 6 summaries, they will be translatable at Wikidata. This is an interesting idea which was first proposed on the delivery page and on Wikidata-l by Base. This is purely a trial and if you all want the summaries to remain translatable, please participate! You can view the first translated summary (hopefully) here! Also sorry for this one being late :)
Yup, that's the one! The ru-wiki version can be found at ru:Сергино (Ханты-Мансийский автономный округ) (and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly notable about this place). By the by, I've started inserting the coordinates onto the Russian localities set indices, like so. Should make identifying a particular place easier, methinks. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 23, 2014; 12:52 (UTC)
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. � (talk) 21:14, 26 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This couldn't have waited a day or two for me to create stubs on the two rivers I mentioned in the inline comments, could it?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 26, 2014; 21:19 (UTC)
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I am sorry you have to face this unpleasantness. If there's any way I can help, please let me know, but remember that I know next to nothing about the subject in dispute nor about the user you have this dispute with. All I can do is to attest to your good character, but over the years I've learned that in this kind of matters such testaments aren't usually of much help. I do certainly hope that the incident won't lead to you quitting—after all, there are thousands of other articles you can be working on without any stress! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 27, 2014; 12:27 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #115
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
I'm not sure I understand what the question is? But if you are asking why I moved the article back, it's because the reason provided for the first move is not true. Hardly any articles in Category:Meteorite falls include a year. If that should be rectified, please feel free to submit a move request, listing all articles which need renaming. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 4, 2014; 23:48 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification :) I've left the person who moved the article a message; hopefully he'll be able to clarify his reasoning for the moves. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 4, 2014; 23:57 (UTC)
The former has recently been rewritten and the latter has become an article. Could you rate them considering that they are an interest of WikiProject Russia? Khazar (talk) 02:22, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata weekly summary #116
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
As part of the Outreach Program for Women d:User:User:Thepwnco is continuing improving all help pages to help new users understand Wikidata better. At the same time w:User:Discoveranjali is helping with social media outreach and creating presentations workshops about Wikidata.
More work on redirects. They are taking shape. Done with much of the groundwork. We've seen the first one! :D
Continued work on user interface redesign mockups
Monolingual text datatype is also taking shape but needs more user interface love to make it intuitive.
Investigated making Wikidata.org its own client so you can for example get access to better Lua functions for access to an item's label on a discussion page. Outcome: Should be possible but needs some more work.
Hey Hedgehog, it has been some time since I have interacted with you on Wikipedia (maybe 2 years or more) and I was wondering whether you have done any GA reviews in the past? I am working on something, which shall remain top secret for the foreseeable future, which when completed I would like to get it up to FA standard as soon as I can. Hence, when completed it will need to go through a GA review first. Is a GA review something you might be able to do? Cheers, 121.99.186.83 (talk) 12:00, 12 July 2014 (UTC) P.S. Please reply here so I can track any reply via "my account" :)[reply]
Not sure why all the secrecy, but the answer to your question is a resounding "it depends" :) Depends on the subject of that article, that is. If it's something I am typically working on (Russian geography and adjacent subject areas), then I'll be happy to do a GA review. If it's something highly politicized, then the answer is "no". If it's something in between... well, there's a chance. Feel free to send me a wikimail if keeping this top secret is a high priority; I will then be able to answer definitively :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 14, 2014; 13:34 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #117
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Two new GuidedTours (aka interactive tutorials) have been released—we now have one on editing items and one on editing statements! Both tours are available from the Wikidata:Tours portal and feedback can be left on the talk page at Wikidata_talk:Tours. The work was a combined effort of User:Bene* and Outreach Program for Women intern User:Thepwnco.
We passed another milestone \o/ 10 million items now have an "instance of" or "subclass of" statement making it easy to tell what the item is about.
Bene* worked with the dev team this week. He pushed forward support for storing badges (eg featured article) on Wikidata and implemented the first two guided tours.
CTRL+ click and middle click on a search result in the entity selector now opens the result in a new tab.
Further progress on redirects
Fixed a number of annoyances with the entity selector
Continued work on mockups for new user interface
Investigated what issues come up if we make wikidata.org its own client. Things look good so we will probably enable it soonish. This will mean you can link Wikidata pages in items and access the data in them on other pages on Wikidata.
Hi, can you add the Russian name (pictured here) and also see what's wrong with the infobox? Can you or Ym find anything more in Russian? Also can you add an infobox to my Sergino article which Ym has done a good job adding to!♦ Dr. Blofeld15:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is the infobox supposed to be nested, or are there supposed to be three separate infoboxes in that article? The fix will depend on the answer, or, if you can point me to another article with a similar infobox arrangement, I can use it as an example to fix this one. Russian name, that one I've just added.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 14, 2014; 16:08 (UTC)
Try MV Lingediep. Yeah they use a cluster infobox thing which really looks technically strange and easily creates problems at times.
OK, fixed. As for more information, there are some stats on the MSCO's website. They are in English, so I'll just leave you with the link :) I'll post here if I find anything else.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 14, 2014; 16:33 (UTC)
I've started creating a few villages for Shakh, I have a feleing though I've got some of the foreign titles mixed up, thus the wrong data for a given village, can you check so far and correct the interlinks if appropriate?♦ Dr. Blofeld10:34, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not easily, sorry. As you know, the data I have is on Russia only, so anything for Ukraine or other countries would have to be done manually. I can tell you right away that there are no populated places in Russia called "Polyove". "Polyove" itself corresponds to "Polevoye" (Polevoy, Polevaya) in Russian, and that one is a common toponym. I've created Polevoy, Russia to list all places in Russia, and Polevoy is now a dab that mentions Polyove (although as more articles about places with this name are created, Polyove (or, more likely, its masculine form) will need to become a separate dab). Hope this helps you any!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 25, 2014; 13:48 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #118
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Mr. Watson states he editing at a very reduced rate but I posted there because he has had much involvement with ☭Irongron☭ and his many socks and many ban evasions. I posted on your page because you have had some dealings with his highly likely newest sock. Your time and consideration of the case I layed out on James B. Watson's talk page would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. 208.54.35.169 (talk) 00:31, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there! I previously blocked Иронгрон for disruption, not for socking. Sockpuppet investigations can only be properly handled by Checkusers, which I am not. You may request checkuser help at WP:SPI. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 22, 2014; 00:54 (UTC)
Thanks. I have knowledge of Checkuser but have no experience with the process. I spent much time on this already. I will wait for Watson's response before investing so much time trying to learn that process. 208.54.35.169 (talk) 01:05, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Please fill out your JSTOR email
As one of the original 100 JSTOR account recipients, please fill out the very short email form you received just recently in order to renew your access. Even though you signed up before with WMF, we need you to sign up again with The Wikipedia Library for privacy reasons and because your prior access expired on July 15th. We do not have your email addresses now; we just used the Special:EmailUser feature, so if you didn't receive an email just contact me directly at jorlowitzgmail.com. Thanks, and we're working as quickly as possible to get you your new access! Jake (Ocaasi) 19:48, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Baron Ungern and his descendant Sergey Bulichyov
Hello. You suggested me create topic on your page. Exists the only one reason - why Bulichyov became "fake". This user (was admin of Wikipedia RU) quarreled with the webmaster of the archive. Former admin even suggested create whole article about Bulichyov (English text via bot of Google):
"Although you have expressed reluctance to participate in the war of edits, you actually took part in it. This information has been removed completely legitimate, because descendant completely insignificant for the description of the Baron. If Boulichev, Sergey significant independently and not parasitically - create an article about it, and hence deliver a brief reference in one sentence. · Carn 10:43, 28 December 2011 (UTC)"
But personal relations became trouble after this (descendant became fake by the will of Carn and his Russian "friends"). Now, after these my explanations, I will put link to the Flickr in the article about the baron Ungern. English Wikipedia has the independent jurisdiction (by the way: and do not need listen Russian admins, which hate Bulichyov long time ago because of Carn).
Приветствую, Ёжики! Вчера на английском писал, но явно не помогло. Суть: Когда вебмастер архива поссорился с админом русской Википедии, предложившим создать целую статью о Сергее Булычёве в период нормальных отношений, то Булычёв стал "фэйком". Прошу Вас, как администратора английской Википедии, не давать творить вандилизм кому-угодно в статье о бароне (против его потомка Булычёва). Спасибо! - 37.144.105.26 (talk) 11:24, 25 July 2014 (UTC).[reply]
Здравствуйте! Спасибо за объяснение, но поймите, что такие вещи в сферу интересов энциклопедии не входят. Википедия содержит статьи, основанные на авторитетных источниках, коими свидетельства очевидцев, другие вики, фотографии на фликере и прочие подобные вещи не являются. Вот если ситуация с Булычёвым будет рассмотрена в книгах, газетах/журналах, или передачу о нём снимут, вот тогда можно будет не только добавить секцию в статью о бароне, но и написать о нём отдельную статью. А так можно с таким же успехом пойти в библиотеку и во все книги, в которых есть информация об Унгерне-Штернберге, понавставлять листочков с фотографиями и абзацем текста о Булычёве. Понимаете, как это абсурдно выглядит?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 25, 2014; 13:25 (UTC)
Спасибо, что уважили ответом на сообщение! Дело в том, что раздел о Булычёве уже был в русской Википедии, в статье о бароне (интересный кусочек на основе материалов из архива). Когда Вы видели отрицательную позицию "английского" учёного Ярослава Блантера, она связана с той сварой, которую затеял Карн. Ведь материал в русской статье одобрил не кто иной, как "русский" учёный Ярослав Блантер, скоро он ушёл в другой языковой раздел. Размазали по стене Блантера в первую очередь (откатив его учёное одобрение). Сейчас ему ничего не остаётся, как пачкать Булычёва вместе с остальными (так сложилась ситуация: но объективной она была лишь тогда, когда он беспристрастно одобрил). Я предлагаю тот кусочек из русской статьи перевести на английский язык и поместить не дурацкую ссылку в статью, а интересный для аудитории кусок информации (потомок барона - релевантно для энциклопедии). На Фликр подчёркнуто, что архив ненастоящий в силу того, что это связано с некими спецслужбами, которые рассекречивали информацию о бароне через какие-то непонятные простому человеку схемы. Как Вы на это смотрите - разместить материал (можно подчеркнуть, что инфо может быть не полностью настоящим, так как архив не полностью настоящий, нам не может быть всё известно: это страховка, что никто не обвинит Википедию в профанизме)? А ссылку на Фликр ставили здесь для того, чтобы убрать то впечатление, что потомка не уважают (но его продолжают мазать дальше, к великому сожалению, не давая очистить репутацию через одобрение правки). - 95.27.126.116 (talk) 18:19, 25 July 2014 (UTC). - 95.27.126.116 (talk) 18:22, 25 July 2014 (UTC).[reply]
Информация о потомке барона является релевантной для энциклопедии тогда и только тогда, когда имеются авторитетные источники, подкрепляющие эту информацию (критерии "авторитетности" для целей английской Википедии см. здесь). Если таких источников нет, то и информации этой в энциклопедии не место. Как только такие источники появятся, приходите обратно, вам помогут. Интерпретация же методов наполнения некоего архива и принятие решения о том, настоящий он или нет делом энциклопедии не является. Материалы архива, о которым вы говорите, никогда не были опубликованы третьей стороной, известной своей репутацией по проверке фактов, соответственно в качестве источника они использоваться не могут, и вопрос о том, настоящий ли это архив или нет автоматически переходит в категорию Википедию не интересующих теоретических вопросов.
Если вашей задачей является восстановление репутации потомка барона, наймите публициста и юриста. Википедия для этой цели ну совершенно неподходящее место.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 25, 2014; 18:32 (UTC)
Да нет, это очень даже стандартная ситуация. Нет авторитетных источников — нет и статьи (или упоминания в другой статье). Если вам для того, чтобы прийти к определённому выводу, надо начинать комбинировать авторитетные источники и другую информацию, это называется не здравый смысл, а синтез. Синтез правилами Википедии не разрешается.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 25, 2014; 20:32 (UTC)
Почему нет инфо где-то ещё: потому что русская Википедия смещала правило про живущих ныне людей с грязью. Люди не верят, когда такое. А король-то голый (когда его смешали с грязью). И это была месть Блантеру: он ушёл из русской Википедии, так как не считает её достойной и не уважает Владимира Медейко младшего за его бестолковость. 95.29.136.31 (talk) 20:40, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Информация из русской (как, впрочем, и любой другой, включая английскую) Википедии авторитетным источником не является. В качестве источников могут быть использованы только материалы, соответствующие критериям, описанных в WP:RS. А что там в русской Википедии были за разборки, мне, извините, совершенно неинтересно. С Ярославом, в частности, мы в английской Википедии сотрудничаем уже который год, и более продуктивного и активного участника, работающего с материалами о России, найти здесь будет затруднительно. С Владимиром мне давно и долго общаться не приходилось, но и о нём я ничего плохого сказать тоже не могу.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 25, 2014; 20:52 (UTC)
Я про иную суть. Не являться авторитетной Википедия может сколько-угодно. Дело не в этом: редакторы всяких журналов видят "голового короля" и не станут связываться с ним. В поиске Википедия всегда первая (где мешают с грязью человека Сергей Булычёв, например). Зачем кто-то будет писать про того, кого сделали посмешищем через Википедию. Которую копируют сотни сайтов (даже не вики-сайты). Не является авторитетным источником (фикция, когда лишь Википедия думает иное, как и маленький ряд других людей, или организаций). И моё личное мнение, оговорки внизу любой страницы Википедии - ущерб самой Википедии ("мы не ручаемся, вы можете покалечить себя и так далее"). В то же время, в нормальных статьях Википедия расхваливает себя (это не оговорки внизу страницы мелким шрифтом). Кстати, русская Википедия допрыгалась: её хотят заменить на государственную библиотеку и идёт подготовка (если гос-во не блефует). Россия считает, что юзеры Википедии - законченные профаны в области геополитики. Это про русскую в частности. Но если забанят русскую, Яндекс не станет искать любую. Как и любой поисковик в юрисдикции РФ. Наверно блефуют (ведь реагируют на любую забастовку Википедии, опасаясь попасть в нехороший рейтинг на предмет цензуры, в глазах мирового сообщества). 95.29.136.31 (talk) 22:04, 25 July 2014 (UTC).[reply]
A side comment
It may look absurd to you, but may be not to everybody. Some people would love to rewrite history, and some in power have been doing so for quite some time. You may be young to remember, but it was done exactly so with Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and exactly in libraries: pages removed, pages inserted... -No.Altenmann >t14:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The GSE alterations were indeed before my time, but here I was referring more to private individuals editing library books, not to the state initiatives. With how things are going in Russia now, however, this kind of "grassroot" activities may soon leave the realm of absurd and become a reality as well...
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Oh but it is. "Surname" is Commonwealth English, "last name" is AmEng. ENGVAR is a guideline; the titling schema for surname articles is not. While this issue is something I can see getting a free ride under "ignore all rules", I am not willing to let it go without an RM (which you are welcome to file).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 15, 2014; 16:10 (UTC)
Finished a large number of new features and got them ready for roll-out. More in this email.
Wikibase made a big step forward to finally switch to DataModel 1.0.
Improved support for entity IDs bigger than 2 billion (32 bit integer).
We had to adapt Wikibase to some major changes (more major than usual, partly caused by discussions at Wikimania) in MediaWiki core: The default Vector skin became it’s own component and the ResourceLoader got some small but important updates.
Continued work on refactoring code of the user interface to make it ready for new design
Wrote a script to get number of users having wikidata in their recent changes/watchlist from the database
First of all, the above is the correct transliteration name spelling of the town from Russian (because it is Донецк and not Донэцк in Russian). Second, that article doesn't belong to you, and you're not on Russian Wikipedia, so PLEASE DO A FAVOR and write WHY you revert changes. Omitting doing so might be considered "biased page protection" and sanctioned by blocks (keep that in mind). And third, I'm proposing to rename that article appropriately (Donyetsk, Russia, or simply Donyetsk for that matter), but don't know how yet and am too busy to do it right now. I'm just letting you know. If you don't reply to this within 24 hours I'm reverting your edits. Good day, 24.201.216.214 (talk) 02:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, what's up with the attitude? If you don't know why or how things are done, ask around, don't yell at people. Doesn't make you look good at all. Secondly, are you sure you know what you are even talking about? Out of a dozen or so systems of romanization of Russian, not a single one uses "ye" to represent Russian "е" (except for the two which use "ye" in the beginning of words and after vowels or a soft/hard sign—not the case here). Surely you didn't confuse transliteration with transcription here, eh? And the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian, which, by the way, was developed by Anglophones for Anglophones, with Russians having nothing to do with it, is the guideline which Wikipedia uses. Nor is "Donyetsk" even used in the English-language literature that much (do check google books; the difference is quite overwhelmingly in favor of "Donetsk"). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 20, 2014; 02:54 (UTC)
My attitude is fine until I see a know-it-all who comes and reverts edits made by IP addresses only because they are IP addresses and he is THE user. Whatever you just wrote makes sense, however I don't understand why you couldn't add a simple "a/p romanization of Russian names it is Donetsk" remark in your revert, for example. You, as any experienced user, should know how FRUSTRATING it is to see edits get reverted for no apparent reason (since none is provided). Sorry if I sounded mean but really, this is very very rude. I've seen it a lot on Russian Wikipedia and let's please not copy the same behavior here. Now, regarding the facts you state... I think the big difference here is that the city of Donetsk exists in Ukraine and is of course one major example of how to write the name in Latin characters (since this city is much bigger known than the small eponymous town). However I constantly stumble across multiple internet debates where the same news reporters who use "Sloviansk" and "Shakhtyorsk" where "y"s are very defined use the "Donetsk" spelling and actually pronounce it as "Донэтск". This is not correct. Ukrainian pronunciation does not apply to Russian towns and cities, so I think the difference must be made. And sure, I agree that there are cases in which the Russian "ye" is almost entirely forgotten in favor of "e" sound, however those aren't as flagrant as two distinct cities located some 50 miles from one another, that would and are prone to constant confusion, especially when a Russian name is read like an Ukrainian one. 24.201.216.214 (talk) 06:15, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For the time being, the names of Ukrainian localities are transliterated according to WP:UKR, not WP:RUS. The exceptions are those which have established English names not corresponding to WP:UKR (the only two such cities I recollect are Kiev and Odessa). However, Donetsk is the same in both established transliterations.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:34, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to rename just one article the talk page of that article would be an appropriate place. If you want to propose a policy / established practice change which would affect all or many articles on Ukrainian localities, opening a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukraine would be a good starting place.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:25, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
One could argue that being a know-it-all is a plus for a Wikipedia editor! But to answer your question (and I mean no disrespect), the reason I reverted you without an explanation is because, well, your edit looked like an illiterate rambling at best and a moderately annoying vandalism at worst. You do see how adding something that is not a valid transliteration (at least not one produced by any major system of transliteration of Russian) but rather a simplistic transcription of how Anglophones typically mangle the name of this town, and then declaring it the "correct" one (with no attempt of providing any proof whatever) may look to an editor who's routinely dealing with this kind of crap? Thousands upon thousands of such edits are made to Wikipedia every day and the vast majority of them are reverted on the spot. That said, I assure you that any editor (anonymous or not) receiving this kind of treatment in this kind of a situation would be getting an explanation from me if they return. This is what I am doing right here, right now. If you found my original revert rude, I apologize. But from where I am standing, it did fall under the category of "edits where the reason for a revert is absolutely clear". The article has been at this title since its creation in 2005 and is read on average by 100+ people every day. Did you think that if there really were an error in something as prominent as the title, you would be the first one to notice it?
My thoughts exactly. This website is useless. Good think I got my own Wiki where I can write anything I want the way I want it and nobody comes to revert seconds to hours of work. Have fun. 24.201.216.214 (talk) 21:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
On the second part of your explanation, you once again are mixing up transliteration (conversion of a text from one script to another) and transcription (representation of pronunciation in written form). For the purpose of Wikipedia's article titles, names originally in Russian (or in any other language using non-Latin alphabet) are never transcribed; they are transliterated (well, romanized, actually). Pronunciation may be given in the first line (usually using the IPA alphabet), but is never a factor for choosing a title. Nor is how the romanized name may be pronounced ever a factor. We are converting one script to another here using a specific set of established rules, that's all. And in case you were wondering, this is not a Wikipedia-specific quirk. The BGN/PCGN system is the one most commonly used in English. You will not find any reputable maps, for example, which would show this town as "Donyetsk", and the number of books using this spelling is literally dwarfed by the number of books using "Donetsk".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 20, 2014; 14:04 (UTC)
Yeah, I got that too. It's the Russian system. They're too lazy to change it. It's always like this in Russia, something works, something half-works. Irritating but fine, I'm done with this mess anyway. 24.201.216.214 (talk) 21:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hiding one's lack of knowledge and understanding behind indignation and then heading for an exit? Nothing changes on this Earth...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 21, 2014; 11:54 (UTC)
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It will be possible to show the badges like "Featured Article" stored on Wikidata in the sidebar of the clients (Wikipedia, Wikisource, ...) starting Tuesday. Wikipedia will follow on Thursday.
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Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Egvekinot, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Geologichesky. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
My thinking was, Gorbachev should really be Gorbachyov, but you never see it spelled that way. Anyhow it'll distinguish him from the Alexander Kiselev who teaches math at the University of Wisconisn. WQUlrich (talk) 19:54, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what is is that I did "fast" you are asking about? Could you clarify, please?
As for Gorbachev, his last name is spelled that way in Wikipedia because that's how it is predominantly spelled in English. Spellings most commonly used in reliable English sources are the ones we should be using, but for more obscure cases or when spellings are all over the place (like Mr. Kiselyov here) we simply use our default romanization guidelines.
As for other people by the same name, the Kiselyov page listed none, and, per our policies and guidelines, we should not be concerned about confusion when titles are not ambiguous within Wikipedia. If the CEO of Svyazinvest or the math teacher get their own articles, then further edits/moves will need to be performed (and maybe this one would ultimately have to be moved to Alexander Alexandrovich Kiselyov or Alexander Kiselyov (painter)), but until then there is nothing to worry about.
As far as being "rude" goes, I'm not sure what you mean either. The move I performed was per WP:BOLD/WP:BRD; if there are any consequent disagreements or questions, they can (and should) be discussed, which is exactly what we are doing here. If I'm overlooking something else, by all means please let me know. But whatever happens, I do appreciate you creating this article! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 25, 2014; 20:19 (UTC)
P.S. Upon further review, it seems that I missed the incoming links. With that in mind, I moved your article once again (sorry!), this time to Alexander Kiselyov (painter), and turned Alexander Kiselyov into a disambiguation page. If you have any concerns about this, by all means please let me know. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 25, 2014; 20:33 (UTC)
I ran out of computer time and had to move to another library. It always happens at the most inopportune moments. Well, it was fast! Literally two seconds after I posted the article, it had been moved. That doesn't seem possible unless you're a bot. And, sorry, I did get a bit miffed at you (well, more than a bit) because I think you should have warned me that it was coming. Anyway, thank you for the autopatrol status (although I'm not quite sure what that means...I'll look it up) and thank you for the follow-up edits! I apologize for any, um, negative thoughts I may have had. WQUlrich (talk) 22:12, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No hard feelings! And no, I'm not a bot. In fact, in ten years of editing Wikipedia, I made exactly one edit with the help of automated tools :) (I think it was when I was trying out AWB and hated it). The quickness in this case is simply due to a coincidence. Your edit to Kiselyov (a page which I have watchlisted because I edited in in the past and because I occasionally work on pages about last names) popped up just when I refreshed my watchlist, and since problems with (y)e/yo in transliteration are very common, I immediately processed the entry. Since there was nothing really that you did wrong (one can't be expected to be aware of all policies/guidelines/traditions/established practices Wikipedia has, and this one was pretty obscure), and since I process tons of these on a routine basis (and, perhaps wrongly, think of these edits as self-explanatory), I did not think a notice would be necessary. Well, looks like I was wrong, so I, in turn, apologize for, ahem, invoking the negative thoughts. I see how they may have not been entirely undeserved :)
Once again, thank you for creating the article. If there ever is anything I can help with in the future, please don't hesitate to drop me a note. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 25, 2014; 22:27 (UTC)
Здравствуйте, уважаемый Ёжик! Пишу вам в надежде на вашу помощь. Я английский знаю довольно посредственно, и если понять смысл написанного ещё могу, то написать что-то толковое на инглише мне сложно. Но я тут столкнулась с полной несправедливостью, и считаю, что что-то нужно сделать! В статье, посвященной Тарасу Бульбе, есть соверщенно бредовый отрывок про различия между версиями: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Bulba То есть кто-то из украинцев очевидно решил внести свидимую глупую выдумку в качестве основной версии, и не где-нибудь, а аж в английской Википедии. На самом деле Гоголь, конечно, отредактировал версию повести не потому, что клятые москали его принудили, а из-за того, что у него самого, наконец, сформировалось цельное мировоззрение во время длительного проживания в великорусских землях. Вот в этой статье приводится подробный анализ: http://www.mineralov.su/taras.htm
Могу я рассчитывать на вашу помощь в наведении справедливости? :) Если вы согласны, я могу сама составить текст, который вы переведете и вставите в статью вместо существующей ахинеи. Ну либо может вы сами что-то поменяете. Алессия (talk) 23:40, 27 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Здравствуйте, Алессия! К сожалению, не уверен, что могу вам помочь, поскольку стараюсь воздерживаться от наведения какой-либо справедливости в статьях, по теме которых я практически ничего не знаю. Могу только сказать, что любой текст, не подкреплёный источниками, вы можете смело удалять (объяснив причину удаления в edit summary). А если у вас есть источники, опровергающие удаляемый текст, и вы можете этот текст заменить, то это тем более допустимо.
Если текст, который вы хотите вставить, не очень длинный (два-три абзаца, например), могу его вам перевести, но только вставляйте, пожалуйста, под своей учётной записью.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 29, 2014; 15:36 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #126
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
With the deployment next Tuesday you will be able to edit all sitelinks at once as well as all fields of the "in other languages" box. This is an intermediate step towards the new user interface and will evolve further over the next weeks. You can see what is coming on Tuesday now already on test.wikidata.org.
WikiProject Names aims to improve name related data on Wikidata. Initial focus is on first names (given names). Half of items for first names still need cleaning up, but 15% of items for persons already have a given name defined.
Worked on supporting statements on properties in WikibaseDataModelSerialization (bugzilla:66425)
Fixed broken xml api output (bugzilla:70531), as well as some inconsistencies in the xml format and added tests that should help avoid future breakage in the xml format
Finished performance improvements for badges
Worked on entity usage tracking
Pietro from the EAGLE project came to visit us, one of the first 3rd party users of Wikibase. See http://www.eagle-network.eu
Added a hook point to allow 3rd party users (like the EAGLE project) of Wikibase to control what goes into the search index
Started work on a widget that lets you edit badges right in the item instead of going to the special page
It's great to see the restriction for buildings removed from Russian FoP law! I've been waiting for this one for years. Unfortunately, Lvova who I first heard mention the possible change, is no longer around. Anyways, I spent the past 5 hours or so restoring images. They can be seen in my Commons conribs. I did about 100 restorations, but there are several hundred more to do. After that, I'll be looking for articles to put them in here. I thought I'd make sure you knew, so that these get back into articles quicker if you've got time. If there's anyone else you can think of who would be interested in helping to find homes for these images, or anywhere to announce this here, that would be great too. I'm going to help only with this until all the restorable images are back with us, so you can show people that contribs link if you get a chance. Anything in there with {{FoP-Russia}} next to it is a restored image. I've done some 2014 Sochi stadium images, Moscow University, Ostankino Tower, the Whitehouse in Moscow, Lenin's Tomb, etc. INeverCry03:38, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is a great news indeed. You may want to post this at WT:RUSSIA as well. While there are never many people there, you never know who's going to be active at any given moment. @Ymblanter: may be willing to help with this as well (I'm sure he's already aware of this change, but pinging just in case). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 1, 2014; 12:53 (UTC)
So far I've undeleted about 350/400 images, but I just found another 100 that still need to be restored, and there may be more. After that, I'll be around trying to get these images back into articles here, and on other wikis. The place to find them on Commons is Russian FOP cases/undeleted in case you have time to work with a few images or to post about it here. I'm headed to bed myself. INeverCry04:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Want to be kept up-to-date on structured data on Commons? There is now a new newsletter you can subscribe to.
Interested in some statistics about the data on Wikidata? Check Wikidata Stats every now and then. (Thanks Magnus for moving it to the new dump format.)
Spent the week with the WMF multimedia team and volunteers to get more clarity about structured data on Commons. We'll be asking for feedback on a lot of stuff over the next weeks. The main info hub is taking shape at Commons:Structured data.
More fixes for the switch to HHVM
Looked into possible performance improvements. Some of them will be taken into the next sprint.
Battled a handful of nasty issues on the live-site
Could you indicate a good example of the scheme used in other articles for the divisions of districts in the USSR/Russia? --Bejnar (talk) 15:54, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The best approximation we have so far is what's used in the Giaginsky District and Lensky District, Sakha Republic articles, but even those are far from ideal (for one, they only cover the municipal aspect and gloss over the administrative aspect completely). At any rate, they are just attempts to try out various layouts to be used for future automation; to see what's working and what isn't.
Ideally, in the long run, these sections are to contain lists of inhabited localities, as well as their administrative and municipal jurisdictions, but for that to happen, we first need to establish a web of the low-level administrative (selsoviets) and municipal (rural settlements) divisions. And for that to happen, towns of district significance and urban-type settlements of district significance, as well as their municipal equivalents (urban settlements) need to be taken care of first. The towns part in nearly done and the urban-type settlements are next; then the selsoviets, and then creating the lists of localities will be a cinch. Creating those lists now is akin to putting a cart ahead of the horse. WikiProject Russia has twenty million things one can help with (here's a listing for just one of the project's dozen taskforces), but creating these lists is simply not one of them. Indeed, creating them now will actually add burden to the project instead of lightening it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 13, 2014; 13:34 (UTC)
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OK, this looks like it might be an ugly one. There are two other Orshas outside of Tver Oblast (in the Mari El Republic and in Pskov Oblast), so the "Tver Oblast" disambiguator is necessary, plus there is another Orsha (a selo) in Kalininsky District, about 15 km south of the urban-type settlement (it is near the confluence of the Orsha and the Volga, so we are probably thinking about the same place). Per the naming scheme used for the Russian localities, the urban-type settlement would be under "Orsha (urban-type settlement), Tver Oblast", and the selo would be under "Orsha (rural locality), Tver Oblast". Or, the urban-type settlement can remain under "Orsha, Tver Oblast", but then the hatnote would have to mention there is another Orsha in Tver Oblast; in addition to linking to a set index. I'd go with the first variant for consistency and because neither place is exactly high-profile, but I'd like to hear your opinion about this first.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 28, 2014; 13:49 (UTC)
"Kirillov (town)" is fine because there are no other localities by this name, either in Russia or in other countries (at least none we have articles on). The locality specifier like "(town)" is only used to disambiguate a place from other entities by the same name. When other places exist, a different type of disambiguator is used. If Orsha were the only one in Russia, it'd be titled "Orsha, Russia" (to distinguish it from the one in Belarus), but since it's not, the federal subject disambiguator ("Tver Oblast") is needed. And since, unfortunately, Orsha still remains ambiguous at both the oblast and district levels, since using the third-level division disambiguator would look especially awful ("Orsha, Orsha Urban Settlement, Kalininsky District, Tver Oblast"), and since appending the locality type effectively resolves the ambiguity (and makes specifying the district part unnecessary), we end up with "Orsha (urban-type settlement), Tver Oblast" (which pairs it up nicely with "Orsha (rural locality), Tver Oblast").
Needless to say, all this dancing is only necessary if one is to follow WP:NC:CITY#Russia to the letter. Exceptions, however, can and are being made left and right when it makes sense. It is simply that in my head (since I'm so used to thinking in the WP:NC:CITY#Russia's terms), something like "Orsha (urban-type settlement)" is a sign that the name is unique both inside Russia and outside it, and that other concepts known as "Orsha" exist. Neither statement is correct (unless you count the urban settlement (a municipal formation), which at any rate is going to be a redirect to the urban-type settlement article), and explaining that would take a rather long hatnote, which is why I'm not comfortable with that option.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 28, 2014; 14:16 (UTC)
Oh, that one wasn't so bad. Myself, I'm actually running behind on my quota of silly ANIs for the year. But thanks for the support anyway! Hope you are doing well yourself.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 4, 2014; 12:54 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #131
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Events/Blogs/Press
Wikidata turned 2 on Wednesday! Have a look at the notes from the community and development team and add your note. Also don't forget to check out all the cool presents (a painting, speed improvements, a huge load of unconnected articles that you can help connect via the Wikidata Game, WikidataLDF, a recent changes visualisation)!
Continued work on LabelLookup and related code to further improve performance
Made it possible to show references in statements on property pages. (Remaining bugs before roll-out are issues with adding/editing/removing statements on property pages.)
Further improvements to sitelink editing (The edit toolbar now floats so it doesn't scroll out of the page on a long list of sitelinks. An empty row for adding a new sitelink is shown by default when editing to make this faster and take less scrolling.)
Further adapting of simple query code so we can get it to review at the Foundation again.
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WRT Maryina roshcha and similar. Well, I completely disagree with your position. I have read Talk:Nagatinsky Zaton District, and haven't seen any valid argument on your side for keeping them in lower case. Most of the discussion there concerns the way these titles are spelt in Russian; I have nothing to add to that. To be honest, I have no idea whatsoever how they should be spelt in Russian – that is, I understand that e. g. Площадь Революции has upper-case Р because it's the Revolution, but with others, apparently it has to be decided on a case by case basis. (For the reference, I'm fully aware of the warfare at ru.wp concerning ru:Охотный Ряд (станция метро), ru:Улица академика Янгеля (станция метро) vs. ru:Улица Академика Янгеля (Москва) vs. Улица Академика Королёва (станция монорельса) etc.) However, all that is pretty irrelevant here. You made one good point in that discussion, about the phrase [i]f there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on). However, that phrase refers only to those languages that use Latin alphabet. For such languages, it is the usual practice of modern English to retain all the titles as they are in their native language, preserving diacritical marks, capitalisation and so on. That's why we have Berlin Hauptbahnhof, Brasília, La Vie en rose etc. For languages spelt natively in other scripts that Latin, incl. Russian, names are first transliterated, and then treated as English names, with all rules of English applicable to them. That is, in Russian e. g. Нагатинский затон is treated as a name, without any район attached to it, and customary Russian punctuation allows it to be either capitalised or not, with different implications for either option. In English, however, various determiners are usually treated as a part of the name – actually, as the principal part of the name, with the other part, e. g. Kuntsevo, playing rather a more adjectival function. Together, they form a single object, unlike it would be in Russian в районе Кунцево. And this complex name – once again, in English – is capitalised as all names in English language are, with every word starting with an upper-case letter. This is not a Wikipedia practice or something; just a customary punctuation rule of English language. Or, to put it the other way, with loosing Russian letters, a name also looses Russian punctuation.
So, to sum up, the first sentence (and better also the infobox) of an article on e. g. Maryina Roshcha District should of course, without any doubt include the native, Russian form of the name, Марьина роща – again, I have no position on what the correct spelling would be in each case – but the article title and all instances of this name in the article body should follow the English punctuation rules, without paying any respect to the way it is spelt in Russian. YLSS (talk) 23:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct to say that for the purpose of the English Wikipedia, it doesn't matter how it should be spelled in Russian. All that matters is how it is spelled in Russian, because that spelling is what's used as a source to produce a romanized variant. If the Russian text is capitalized, the romanization is capitalized. If the Russian text is not capitalized, the romanization is not capitalized. It's that simple. There is no romanization system in existence (and certainly not one Wikipedia uses, or the system which Wikipedia's guideline is based on) that calls for changing capitalization, as your belief seems to be.
The word "District" is capitalized not because it's a part of the name, but precisely because it isn't. "District" in "Maryina roshcha District" is a translation, a qualifier determining the entity's type. Those are normally capitalized in the English Wikipedia and there is no reason why an exception would be needed here. Yet the "roscha" part is a part of the proper name, and proper names are romanized, with the final romanization always retaining the capitalization (well, if one is striving to be accurate, anyway). If there were a conventional English name for that entity, we'd use it, but there are no conventional English names with obscure Russian administrative entities, there are only romanizations.
I understand this is all very confusing once you start thinking about it, and I feel I am partly to blame for not being able to explain it convincingly in the Nagatinsky zaton's case. All I'm asking that you put a preconceived notion of "English always capitalizes proper name" aside and try follow the reasoning for why that's not necessarily the case when one deals with a romanization and not with a conventional name. Frankly, I don't really care that much what the title ends up to be, but it amuses me to no end when people simply dismiss a valid reason without giving it a proper thought; just because it "feels wrong". Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 18, 2014; 00:17 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #134
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Hi Ezhiki, I noticed you did some copy ed on this article and in doing so all of the references in the culture section appear to have been removed although the essence of the section remains the same. Was this intentional? The references were ones I thought were reliable (the Petit Futé book and another website). Just wondered whether this was an error? Fenix down (talk) 22:46, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Fenix! I did remove the Red Cross link, since it was dead and I was unable to find a suitable replacement (I guess I could have marked it as "dead link", too, but I'm not sure that would have done any good). There was, of course, no reason to remove the information, since obviously at some point it was properly sourced. As for the Petit Futé book removal, that is indeed an accident—I was re-arranging and re-formatting the refs, and I must have copy-pasted something else while the book information was in the clipboard. I'll have that fixed shortly; thanks for catching this snafu!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 26, 2014; 14:29 (UTC)
No problem, saw a big section of unreferenced text in a Chukotka article and thought it unlike me not to have referenced it. I'll have a look at the red cross link as some of the pages are on the wayback machine, but only some. Fenix down (talk) 18:09, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If I would have replaced {{SIA|populated places in Russia}} with {{disambiguation}} would it then have become a disambiguation page? – JBarta (talk) 14:40, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. It would then have to be deleted. One of the links does not satisfy WP:DABRL and there are too many blue links per line—the page would have simply failed the MOSDAB requirements. Set indices can be referenced and expanded; dabs cannot. Disambiguation pages simply list links to facilitate navigation; set indices contain actual enyclopedic content and aide navigation. Here is an example of what a relatively well-developed set index (on Russian inhabited localities) looks like; the Bichura set is light years behind it (and has fewer entries), but it, too, can contain all the same kinds of information.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 3, 2014; 14:59 (UTC)
You realize that after having been a Wikipedian for almost eleven years, I probably already know everything about various citation styles used around here, right? :) The choice is very much conscious. As a community service, please let me remind you that as long as a style is being used consistently, no particular citation method is preferred, and one shouldn't try to "improve" a style which is internally consistent. I have no problem with your edit above, but I don't agree it's an improvement either (although I do agree that improvements could have been made). What I am especially disappointed about is that of all the real problems with the Aviv page, you chose to fix a non-problem which I introduced.
Anyway, I didn't mean to read you a lecture, so I'm sorry if this came out harsher than intended. I'm still in the process of waking up here :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 5, 2014; 13:19 (UTC)
For one, I'd split the name part into a separate article. As for the remains, it's totally unclear what the page is supposed to be about. It looks like a disambiguation page, but is not. It also kind of looks like a list, but probably isn't one either. Then there are WP:DICTDEFs, which might be OK if they were sourced, but the only source is the Bible (which is the primary source at best and an unacceptable source at worst). The Tel Aviv bit seems to be rather tangential. I honestly wish I could offer you some constructive criticism regarding this page, but unfortunately the subject is outside of my scope of competence. As a reader (i.e., not as an editor), I can tell that the page needs a clearly defined purpose, first and foremost. It is very hard to follow and it is lacking a unifying theme. Perhaps remaking it into a proper disambiguation page would be the best, but like I said, I don't know nearly enough about this subject to proffer useful advice. I only stumbled upon this page because I was looking for a place to insert information about the Russian name and did not feel comfortable splitting the name portion on my own. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 8, 2014; 17:26 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #136
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Work is ongoing for a bot job to tag thousands of objects in OpenStreetMap with the equivalent Wikidata ID
Resolver finds Wikidata items for a given identifier (VIAF, GND, IMDB, ...)
English-Wikipedia now has a template, RedQ, which puts a Wikidata link next to red links for subjects which have no Wikipedia article in any language, This should prevent duplicate Wikidata items from being created when an article is written, and assist Wikipedia editors to find relevant facts and sources. Please copy it to other-language Wikipedias.
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
Closed/checked even more ‘testme’ bugs on Phabricator
Wikidata Query has gotten a number of stability fixes. To increase availability and performance we now have multiple instances of it with a load balancer in front of it.
The data for the entity suggester has been updated. Suggestions when adding new statements should be even better now.
Hi, maybe you are not aware of this recent silliness: WP:Articles for deletion/Ruscism. Maybe you would care to comment? There's a lot of ignorance on display there, such as this is "a Russian term about Russia", and an editor believing other editors when they claim that "it is not a Ukrainian nationalist statement per se". – Herzen (talk) 17:06, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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