User talk:Nikola Smolenski/Archive 2

Hi Nikola, I just found out that you have used my photo to illustrate the article about the Venus Flytrap. That was a great idea and I am very happy and proud about it. Thank you very much! Valery

I'm glad you are happy :) Actually, your photo has ben used by Cordyph on Venus fly trap, I created Venus Flytrap while not knowing about that page, and later they were merged... I have just created thumbnail for the picture that fits in the infobox :) Nikola 18:56, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Talk:Djakovica2toise 18:32, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Yes, Nikola thank you for your notice about the image Image:Celje-rscd.gif. It can be deleted now, because *.png image is used instead Image:Celje-rscd.png. I've changed it to this format since *.gif(s) are not supported here any more (as far as I know). Best regards. --XJamRastafire 16:47, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Regular cyrllic I in logo

You're welcome! :-) I decided that most of the diacritics just appeared as little blurs in the logo and so we were better off without them. --Nohat

Linktrail in Russian

Dear Nikola! Thank you for your advise, however, it is not absolutely clear for me.

LanguageRu.Php contains:

"linktrail"  => "/^([a-z]+)(.*)\$/sD",

what should we do with it? Thank you! Drbug 21:20, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Change it to

"linktrail"  => "/^([a-z\x80-\xff]+)(.*)\$/sD",

:) Nikola 07:19, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You are always welcome! And thank for the linktrail, I hope Brion will apply newer LanguageRu.php soon. BTW, could you please advise how should I proceed to make changes to be effective earlier? Drbug 18:11, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I mean, how to incorporate it into the Wikipedia program code? The first time, when I translated the LanguageRu.php file, I wrote a message into the mailing list, and the translation was applied amusingly promtly. But second and third requests (when I've made some changes) to Brion worked worse. Now I've put a line into Brion's TODO list at meta. I hope it will work, but isn't there a way to apply changes without bothering Brion? It's an advice I need. Thank you in advance! :-) Drbug 18:35, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thank you, to be done! The only minor proble is to find My Big Gun :-). Drbug 18:58, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I was asking about Image :Bn matica e.gif because I was worried that its use on Wikipedia is a copyright violation. RickK 05:03, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for making the Language recognition chart! Angela 07:35, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

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Yugloslav navigation bar

I read your request of page protection at Wikipedia:Village_pump#Kosovo and Metohia. I'm not sure why no admin protected it. I personally didn't protect it because I'm not clear what those former Yugloslav nations' situation are...at all. I do remember you expressed concerns over another series of unilateral edits a while back at the Pump, and my personal feeling is that dramatic changes to controversial/sensitive topics are best discussed first (in Talk pages). Attempts to do otherwise (i.e., unilateral changes) could end up being futile (time-inefficient), as the changes will probably lead to an edit war and efforts lost. However, you must also realize that some Wikipedians believe that the spirit of Wiki is to make changes, any sort of changes, right ahead. Be bold, that is. -- I believe that was one of the two replies you got (the other being one). I agree that bold copyediting is necessary for Wiki, but dramatic alteration almost seems to be the editor's sadistic attempt to invite/instigate conflicts. Of course, the editor may just be thinking that he should take a firm stand on what he believes. Anyway, some unrelated feedbacks:

• That "Former 6 republics and 2 autonomous provinces of Yugoslavia: " link at the bottom of Serbia is badly Wikified. It should be "Former 6 republics and 2 autonomous provinces of Yugoslavia:".
• Isn't it better to link Yugoslavia as Yugoslavia or Yugoslavia? (Note the underlying pipe link)

Do you think they'd be improvements? --Menchi 14:22, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Albanian and Serbian placenames

You've removed Albanian placenames from Kosovo, Pristina and Racak incident. Please don't delete the alternative Albanian names for Kosovo and its communities - the names are internationally recognised as valid and (obviously) are used in Kosovo itself. We have a similar issue in the UK and Ireland, which is resolved in Wikipedia articles by giving both the anglicised and the Gaelic or Welsh version of placenames (see for instance Dublin (Baile Átha Cliath) or Cardiff (Caerdydd)). In the same way, both Serbian and Albanian versions of placenames should be given in articles about Kosovo localities. -- ChrisO 11:14, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

BTW, you may find useful the OSCE list of Kosovo communities, giving their Serbian and Albanian names - see [1]. -- ChrisO 11:24, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Do you by any chance have a source for the origins of Serbian placenames in your articles under List of cities in Serbia and Montenegro? I can't make sense of what you've written for Djakovica: "Its name stems from word "Schoolboy's" in Serbian". Is this meant to be schoolboys (plural) or the thing belonging to the schoolboy (possessive) or something else? Some of the other stems (e.g. "putrid" for Gnjilane) also seem a bit odd. -- ChrisO 12:00, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Name of Budjanovci, where F-177 crashed, stems from "mold". I'll try to find you a source in English language; allow that it'll take several days as I'm somewhat busy at the moment; hope this is not such a big issue. Schoolboy's is possessive. Nikola 07:43, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks! -- ChrisO 10:33, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Reversion of Alija Izetbegovic

Nikola, I don't think reverting Alija Izetbegovic is the appropriate thing to do. It's wiped out a large amount of factual content and restored all the POV material that other users complained about. Could you please explain what specific aspects of my rewrite you object to? You haven't posted any explanation here and your comment that "Article was better before the rewrite" doesn't give much information on your objections. I'd be grateful if you could give some more detail on Talk:Alija Izetbegovic. -- ChrisO 17:29, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that you should go around and arbitrarily rewrite any article you want destroying everything ever written by anyone who ever worked on it. I thought you would settle with Kosovo War, but no, it seems that you are going to rewrite just about every article which is in some way connected with the history of Balkans. I actually liked some parts of your text, but this has to be stopped. Nikola 23:10, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Specific objections, please. If you believe I've got some facts wrong, please say which. I can't even begin to try to resolve your concerns if you don't say what they are. -- ChrisO 23:37, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Chris, Nikola here is a serb propagandist, of course he hates the truth. Nikola, i really don't see why you have to hate, and think you can get away with it, even on the internet. --GeneralPatton 23:59, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

GeneralPatton Nikola is trying to tell you the truth, but you don't want to listen, that's all, when you learn listen you will know what is true!!! Sasa.Stefanovic Serbian wiki user.

Cossacks

The Cossacks article was found to be most of an article which is on another web site. That appears to give 1952 as the date at which it was written, making it impossible for a Wikipedia contributor to have written it recently. That in turn led to a long discussion about when it may have been written, which copyright law applied and whether we could be sufficiently sure that it was no longer covered by copyright. You can find the discussion at the time the delete decision was made here. If you wrote it and placed it both here and at that web site it's not a copyright infringement and doesn't need to stay deleted. Jamesday 08:11, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Revision of Kosovo War

hi there as far as i know kosovar is the adjective form of kosovo, which leads me to believe "kosovar towns" is actually the correct spelling in the context given in Kosovo War... unless there's something i missed.

Drunkasian 07:23, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is :) Correct adjective form is "Kosovian", similar to "Belgrade/Belgradian" or "Canada/Canadian", though it is rarely used and oftenly just the nominative form is used (for example see this google search, it is used by CNN, BBC and other major media houses). "Kosovar" means "Resident of Kosovo" in Albanian language and the term is used for political purposes. Nikola 07:30, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

thanks for the clarification. i'll take your word for it on the subject. i was mainly referring to the dictionary definition from m-w.com and dictionary.com that lists kosovo as noun and kosovar as adj... then again word meanings change, esp. foreign place names Drunkasian 07:37, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yugoslav copyright law

from the pump

Perhaps it is stupid to ask this question here, but I don't know any better place. If the answer to my question is positive, it would then have HUGE influence with material related to Serbia and Montenegro.

Article 6 of the Copyright law of Serbia and Montenegro states that:

It is not considered an authored work:

2) official material of state organs and organs which have public function

To me, this is similar to Title 17, Section 105 in the U.S. copyright law, which says that government has no copyright protection which is why we are able to use all those nice pictures from NASA etc.

Now, my question is: is an official web page "official material" in this context? For example, official site of Belgrade is at http://www.beograd.org.yu/english/index.htm. Now, the page says 'copyright: City of Belgrade' but it is unimportant if it cannot be copyrighted by law.

If noone could come up with an answer, I will surely try to research this further. Suppose that answer is positive. What would be accepted as authoritative enough confirmation by Wikimedia foundation?

(Full law in Serbian could be found at, for example, [2].)

Nikola 02:45, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm a newbie, but it strikes me that if there is a doubt, it is better to be safe than sorry. In other words, better to ask for permission even if the permission is not strictly needed, than to use images without permission and get in trouble later. You might want to check out the following example of a letter that was sent by a Wikipedian to a British government authority as an extra security. --Woggly 05:47, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Problem is that there is a vast amount of material that could be used, and large possibility of getting negative answers even when they should be positive (even people working in aforementioned organs might not know about this). Nikola 07:23, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Please provide a citation for George W. Bush being formally charged with a war crime. I have removed the information pending a cite. Yours, Meelar 05:57, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Kosovo and/or Metohia poll

Hi. Regarding the dispute about the name of the province in former yugoslavia, could you please not remove the poll on Talk:Kosovo and Metohia? The number of reverts alone should show that this is an important question, which, by the way, is all over wikipedia for similar problems. Check for example the Wikipedia:Naming policy poll for a number of cities, Kiev/Kyiv being the hottest dispute. Also, on the Village pump you listed Wikipedia:Naming conventions as a source, which recomends to use the most common name, not necessarily the local official name. IMHO this would be Kosovo. Others, of course, may have a different opinion, which is why there is a poll in the first place. Thanks -- Chris 73 | Talk 08:52, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

I just removed my mentioning of your name related to this topic on the WP:VP. That was probably bad etiquette on my side. My apologies -- Chris 73 | Talk 12:12, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Chris, I see that you are good-intentioned, but you have been tricked. Current name disputes are nothing like this. They revolve around which English variant of the name of a particular place (Kiev/Kyiv, Bombai/Mumbai, Mecca/Mekkah etc.) should be accepted and not about which placename should be accepted. To create a paralell with this case, it would be OK to discuss whether to name the article "Kosovo and Metohia", "Kosovo and Metohiya" or "Kosovo and Metohija". In a few cases (Sea of Korea/Japan) there is discussion about which of names should be accepted, but these are international entities, having different names in different states, which is not the case here. The fact that "Kosovo" is the most common name in English of "Косово" is correct but not quite important - the most common name of "Косово и Метохија" is "Kosovo and Metohia". I will not remove the poll again, but I have no intention of respecting it. Nikola 19:12, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, but to give you a counterexample, Germany is officially called Federal Republic of Germany, but the page is located at Germany, and is called Germany throughout the article, except for the intro and one sentence about the splitting into two germanies. Similarly, Switzerland would be Swiss Confederation, Bulgaria would be Republic of Bulgaria, etc. Pick a country, and you'll probably find an official version that differs from the common name. Besides, Kosovo and Metohia sounds to me like there are two provinces, like Texas and California. The poll also seems to be so far unanimous for Kosovo. I hope this won't turn into an edit war. -- Chris 73 | Talk 01:30, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

It's unimportant: Kosovo and Metohia is officially called "Autonomous province of Kosovo and Metohia". I hope that you realise the difference between these cases. There are more such cases: Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Trinidad and Tobago etc. They all seem like two somethings, yet their names are preserved. Voting is unanimous because I refuse to lower to Dori's level. I could easily get a few Serbian users, Russian users and few more people I know to counter it and make it indecisive at best. I don't want to do it. If someone tries to move the page (and storm over disambig which is now at Kosovo) this will turn into an edit war. Nikola 05:58, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi! Can you please translate the election notice * into Serbian and post it prominently on the Recent Changes page of the Serbian Wikipedia. Once you have done that, please let me know, and leave me a link where I can find it. Thanks. User:Danny on en.

If they have been users for more than three months, I want them to have a chance to vote. I do not want an English-language dominated election. All of the candidates are accessible, and can be asked questions about issues of concern to the Serbian Wikipedians. However, if you still think it is unnecessary, I understand. Danny 01:35, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject: cyrillics

I hope you noticed why I removed it: they sterted to diverge. A wikimessage would be good idea. Unfortunately, I am not a linguist, but I will take part within my abilities and with hope that eventually someone will fix mine. By the way, an important section IMO is "transliteration" (into English) for each letter, including standard, as well as notable exceptions. Mikkalai 02:51, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Threats

I don't like threats, so why don't you just list me now. Dori | Talk 14:47, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

Don't wage move wars

Nikola, your actions in unilaterally declaring the Kosovo poll invalid and repeatedly moving the page back to its original title are unacceptable and a violation of Wikipedia policy (see http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide:_Renaming_(moving)_pages ). You've been around for a while, so you ought to know this by now. I am entirely willing to help with re-running the poll if you substantiate your claims that it was "improper" and "not democratic", but you should not be trying to force the issue in this way. A move war is pointless and disruptive and I hope that you can appreciate that it would be better to resolve the dispute through dialogue. -- ChrisO 07:20, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

The page has now been protected, so if you want to resolve the name issue you'll have to do it through dialogue. See you on Talk:Kosovo after your exam (and good luck, btw!). -- ChrisO 07:24, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Reverting Kosovo

Hi Nicola. Thanks for your message. I think I may have reverted more than necessary in this [3] revert. My aim was to revert the "Kosovo and Metohia" and the disambiguity links in the first two changed paragraphs in the Difference between revisions. About your points:

• "Serbia" and "Serbia proper": I don't know much about which version is the correct one. I also can't say if one or both are offensive to some people/groups. Either version is fine by me. A compromise could be to write that its called "Serbia" by GroupA and "Serbia proper" by GroupB.
• "Metohia" and "Metohija", and "Kosovo proper": The first two names look the same to me, and I would believe that they are pronounced similarly. The previous edit seemed to contain more information, but - as you suspected - I do not know much about Serbia. BTW, is it possible that "Kosovo Proper" may be offensive to some similar to "Serbia proper"? Actually, your approach of listing both names seems to be better here.
• "Kosovo is an autonomous province": This point is not entirely clear to me. From what I remember from the news is -and I might be quite wrong- that there was/is a lot of violence between Serbs and Albanians, and either one wants the province, but without the other ethnicity. As a result, Kosovo seems to be a very independent province of Serbia at best, and more under UN control than Serbian control. But then, I don't know much about it.

I wouldn't object a change of the points you mentioned, simply because I don't know which one is the better way. In case of doubt, I usually prefer to include both versions. My concern is that the article and its references are called "Kosovo". I know you don't like that - and you don't have to - but it seems to be the majority view based on a vote, which I consider done properly, similar to other votes on Wikipedia. It was announced on the Village Pump, so it got proper exposure, and there was ample discussion of the points in the Kosovo talk page (with most Pro-K&M points coming from you). Excluding the vote of User:Kosovar, who has only two edits beside Talk page edits, there are still 9 people for Kosovo, and no votes against. I hope you will respect the majority view, even if you strongly disagree. As for me, I will continue to support the majority view of Kosovo. If the majority would change its view, then I would have no problems with naming the province any name the majority prefers.

Back to your edits: because of the multiple move of the page back and forth, the page is now protected, and I am not allowed to make edits. You could request unprotection on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, maybe with a statement that you wont move the page. Anyway, thanks for not requesting de-adminship for Dori, and for having a civil tone in the discussions. (other users sometimes turn to profanity quickly if people don't agree with them). Best regards, -- Chris 73 | Talk 01:16, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi Nicola. Regarding the revert: Either way is fine by me (although I reserve the right to change my opinion in the future). Thanks for not going into detail about why and what, I wouldn't really know enough about the details to decide between e.g. "Metohia" and "Metohija". About the vote: I read your statement on User talk:ChrisO before I wrote my answer from 01:17, 14 May 2004, and still think the vote was proper. Even if it would have been an invalid vote, a result of 10:0 is pretty strong, and a new vote would probably give similar results. Nevertheless, feel free to start a new discussion or vote on the talk page, but based on the information from you and others on Talk:Kosovo I will continue to support the name Kosovo. BTW, I agree with you that Kosovar has not enough edits. I think Kosovar should have at least 10 article edits to have a valid vote. Best regards, -- Chris 73 | Talk 12:26, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Nicola, i do not object the comments you listed above about the page Kosovo. But i DO object against you linking everything to Kosovo and Metohija! I believe the vote is valid, and the province is called Kosovo in english. If you want to argue about a possible difference between Kosovo as a province of serbia, and Kosovo as a region, then you can add a page Kosovo (Region), but the serbian province is Kosovo, and I will continue to fix links from Kosovo and Metohija to Kosovo. Unfortunately, this means a lot of reverts of your reverts. Please accept the majority view. -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:42, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Rather than you and Chris 73 getting into a revert war, could you first look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kosovo#Suggested_guidelines_on_usage and give some feedback? Thanks in advance. -- ChrisO 10:49, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Again, I consider the vote valid. I also believe that any other vote here on Wikipedia about this question will yield similar results. Do you want to tell all the people that voted that their opinion did not matter? In any case, the vote is the best thing we have until another vote comes along. If there is a vote about United States and USA, I would also follow the majority vote. The vote was about what to call the province, and it was decided for Kosovo. Hence it should be called Kosovo throughout Wikipedia with few exceptions (e.g. Political divisions of Serbia and Montenegro, or Project Rastko). You can start a new vote if you want to talk about it on Talk:Kosovo, and if you get the majority for your opinion, then I am all for it. Until then, please don?t call people anti-serb, name calling never helps. It is unfortunate that we have this argument, because except for your pushing of Kosovo and Metohia I had a good impression of you. -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:04, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

No problem. I am busy now, but I can start fixing links later today. Will take me some time, though, and there are always more redirects than time. -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:24, 17 May 2004 (UTC) -- Also: Kosovo War: I didn't notice that that was a direct quote using Metohija. Sorry for my revert there.

It seems we are approaching a possible solution. With every new reversal ping pong between us there are less reversals, so we might eventually find common ground (hopefully). I think in my last edits I just replaced a modern mentioning in the historic "Kosovo from 1455 to 1912" section. Would be good if we could finish this without killing each other. I am still a bit irked by the location of Demographic history of Kosovo and Metohija, since the main page is at Kosovo, but I'll have to think if this is worth the effort in reverting. BTW. i haven't changed the Mekka and Kiev pages yet, I was busy with the requested pictures page. -- Chris 73 | Talk 08:20, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, it seems we are not approaching a solution as i though in the previous edit. The List of geographical pairs linked to Kosovo and Metohia, which is a redirect for Kosovo. I merely replaced the link from *[[Kosovo and Metohia|Kosovo & Metohia]] to *[[Kosovo|Kosovo & Metohia]] . The displayed text has not changed, nor has the page the link finally ends (i.e. Kosovo), it merely does not go through a redirect. Regarding Kosovo (province) and Kosovo (region): Where on Talk:Kosovo does it say that they differ? I found only "We are NOT dealing with different geographic borders for the territory, and different political (administrative) borders". BTW, i consider the vote valid, and also applicable to most articles related to the province in Wikipedia. -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:39, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

To solve this problem, shall we organize a vote about when to use Kosovo and when Kosovo and Metohija? You make proposal A and list your arguments for it, I make proposal B and list the arguments for it, we discuss about it, and then have a proper vote. Just an idea. -- Chris 73 | Talk 09:01, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure. Was there ever a vote on such an issue? Nikola 10:52, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

What would you suggest to solve our differences? -- Chris 73 | Talk 11:01, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

First and foremost, I would suggest to wait a day or two and see if there are any comments on them. Nikola 11:12, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. I will be away from home and offline from Saturday till Wednesday, so I suggest we wait till wednesday. I will refrain from reverting till then, and hope you do, too. I also added a brief note on Wikipedia: Requests for page protection and Wikipedia:Requests for review of administrative actions, hope this is OK with you -- Chris 73 | Talk 11:38, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

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Kosovo and Metohia

In List of geographical pairs, since "Kosovo and Metohia" is not an article but a redirect to Kosovo, why are you changing the link part to "Kosovo and Metohia". The disadvantage of this is an extra database call while viewing the page. What are the advantages if any ? Jay 14:15, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

A Solution for Kosovo?

First of all, naming this province is difficult, since there are a lot of different names in use. K&M is probably disliked by Albanians, (Republic of ) Kosova is probably equally disliked by Serbs. This brings up a whole new can of worms about who the province belongs to. Legally, its Serbia. Practically, its independent under UN control. Only future will tell where the place ends up. Meanwhile, the rest of the world seems to be using the name Kosovo . (for google counts etc. see Talk:Kosovo). This also seems to be a logical compromise to me, being somewhere between Kosova and K&M. Note for clarification: when I refer to Kosovo, I mean the entire region, not the smaller part within the region I think you call Kosovo.
On Wikipedia, there seems to be consensus to use the most common English name for places, but I am sure there are also lots of exceptions. Based on the vote on Talk:Kosovo, it seems a majority of the Wikipedians prefer to use Kosovo, and I think this preference is not limited to the location of the article alone. For me, Wikipedia majority is what counts. Ask yourself, if there would be a vote about the name usage, what would you expect the answer to be? Of course, there are valid exceptions for using K&M, for example List of geographical pairs, Political divisions of Serbia and Montenegro, or Project Rastko to name a few. And, it should definitely be listed at the top of Kosovo. A mentioning of both names as suggested by ChrisO or similar is also possible in many cases.
Ok, your turn. Why do you think these articles should link to Kosovo and Metohija and not to Kosovo? -- Chris 73 | Talk 05:48, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
(Note: Please answer underneath of my answer, and do not write your answer/rebuttal within the lines of my text. This makes it very difficult for me to answer your answer, and very hard to read for everybody else. Thanks. BTW, did you like the fireman?)

I am glad that Kosovo is not insulting to Serbs. One problem less. Regarding autonomous vs. independent: According to my dictionary they are synonyms. Either usage is fine by me, and I don't know if there are any legal differences. I unfortunately disagree with "Kosovo and Metohija" being unambiguous. I know more about it now, but when I first heard Kosovo and Metohija, I got confused because I knew only a place called Kosovo, had never heard of Metohija, and was wondering what other region Metohija was. To English speakers, Kosovo is a clear reference to the region, as Kosovo is used almost exclusively in the English language to refer to both the region and the province. A possible compromise would be to say e.g. Prizren is in Kosovo, which is legally the Serbian province Kosovo and Metohija, but practically an autonomous region under UN control. It is a long phrase, but it contains both the information you want and the English reference to Kosovo. Would this be acceptable to you? I also think that K&M needs to be mentioned only once per article, and later use the short form Kosovo. About the province Abvgd: The parliament of Serbia can name it anything they want, and it will be properly mentioned at the top of the Kosovo article. But as long as the place is better known as Kosovo, then it should be called Kosovo within Wikipedia. The statement that "Prizren is in Abvgd" would be more confusing than helpful, I think. Also another minor point, I don't see the need to link to a redirect [[Kosovo and Metohija]], if [[Kosovo|Kosovo and Metohija]] achieves the same results, as for example on List of geographical pairs.

Could you consider discussing this problem on Talk:Kosovo, so others can participate in the discussion? I know you didn't like some of the discussions there, but I think my talk page is the wrong place to sort this out. I will post a copy of my suggestions on Talk:Kosovo

Glad you liked the fireman. A photo of you with an axe is fine, as long as it is only a photo, and not the real thing ;-) -- Chris 73 | Talk 01:19, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

New Kosovo map

That's a nice illustrative map you've just added to the Kosovo article. What did you use to plot it? -- ChrisO 15:38, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Europe#Poll: Which items should be listed?

I am confused by your vote to oppose the CoE flag, although voted for all CoE members. Could you please explain here? Thank you, Pædia 03:45, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

You gave me a lot of trouble when not signing with a link to your user page :) I haven't voted for these countries because they are in CoE but because I think that each country that is even partially geographically in Europe should be included. I voted against the flag because I live in a country which is its member but I don't feel it as my flag and because I don't think that CoE is too important organisation anyway. Nikola 05:31, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining so promptly. After I posted my comment, I realised why you voted the way you did. Cheers, Pædia 12:53, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

Yugoslavia disambiguation

In the case of Orthodox Celts, it wasn't necessary to include SFRY because the band didn't even exist during the time that SFRY existed. Detailed contemplations on exactly how large Sava centar is (it's probably larger than many other halls outside of SFRY) can be left for its page, it doesn't have to be on every band's article, that would be a bit silly :)

In the case of multiethnic society, the paragraph was noting successful examples -- SFRY can be seen as successful for most of its time, but KoY can't because during most of its time it was SNAFU in the regard of being a decent multiethnic society. The dictatorship was triggered by the fact the leaders of two main groups of ethnicities couldn't agree on a working government for several years.

I think that there was one more link there that said simply "destroyed multiethnic societies" and I would normally leave that ambiguous, but I didn't because the Special:Whatlinkshere output for Yugoslavia is too large already and any borderline cases that aren't completely necessary end up cluttering the view and cause re-checking already checked pages later. There was around three hundred of them when we started... :/

--Shallot 12:05, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good point. --Shallot 10:25, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Cyrillic

Why are you changing Cyrillic to cyrillic? RickK 05:45, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)

Cyrillic is the correct usage. RickK 06:04, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)

I know what the Cyrillic alphabet is. I see no reason why you felt the need to add that table to my Talk page. However, especially since the name comes from Saint Cyril, it should be upper case. Where is it ever lower case? RickK 06:34, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)

srbo, srbo, pojasni mi ovo

Kako izgleda kosovo kad srbi prođu kroz njega, mislim da je vrijeme da se napravi jedan dobar članak o velikosrbskim zločinima u 90tima... [4]. BTW ove slike su sad dokazni materijal u Haagu. Što ti misliš. --GeneralPatton 05:49, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ethnic cleansing

"A euphemism is a word (or phrase) which people use in place of terms which are more disagreeable or offensive to themselves and/or to their audience."

Surely Ethnic Cleansing meets this criteria? Mark Richards 06:54, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re. your entry on current events

I notice there's no article on the Vienna Museum of Military History. And no Austrian museums at all on List of museums. Could be a project for you ;o) --bodnotbod 07:33, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)

Sremska Mitrovica

Ne razumem se bas u copyright ali zar dokumenti nisu public domain ako se nigde ne naglasi da su copyrighted? Mislim lepo sam potpisao ljude i dao source informacije, mogu da napisem ponovo nesto slicno, ali mislim da nisam prekrsio pravila. Molim odgovor.

poz utvara

Shkodër

Might I ask why you changed my links to Shkodër back to Skadar without any comments no less? Are you going to dispute even this name? What's your reasoning (if you have any)? Dori | Talk 18:55, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)

Yes that name might be more appropriate in that context, which is why I didn't replace what shows, but just the link to avoid the redirect. Dori | Talk 12:55, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

Ustase

The protection of this particular version of the page is not meant to express support or endorsement; users may want to review the discussion page for this article or compare different versions from the page history.

See also: m:The Wrong Version

That's entirely up to you. You could take it to talk. If you feel that you can't resolve things there, you could ask for mediation. Or if all else fails, you could ask for arbitration. Ambivalenthysteria 07:48, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Menstrual cycle

You also wrote "Matruing folicle". Nikola 08:07, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That should have been corrected on the last upload. Look at the image directly, and try CTRL-Reload. -- Chris 73 | Talk 08:12, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Gorani pages

I have undone your redirect as I felt it had become more ambigous. The dialect of Gorani people from Kosovo is in English also be called Gorani.

Names in English, please

Please kindly remember that this is English Wikipedia. Names of royal persons in articles should be in English form. This is particularly because true royals are known in first names and there is a long historical practice to translate their names. Using names in original language implie somewhat that the person in question was not true royal, only some local manor lord or like. 213.243.157.114 15:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

As (some answer) to your question:

Petar is always "Peter", thus: Peter I of Montenegro, Peter II of Montenegro. Nikola is always "Nicholas", this Nicholas I of Montenegro. Mihail is always "Michael". These are common names. Names that are used by kings of other countries, too.

Milica has no established Anglicized name form (as far as I am aware), thus "Milica" should be acceptable in English.

Danilo is more properly "Daniel I (or II) of Montenegro", but Daniel is so rare in royalties that it could be acceptable to leave it as "Danilo I (or II) of Montenegro".

About lesser members of Montenegrin princely families: If someone is soinsignificant as not to translate the name in an Anglicized form, the person in question is probably also too insignificant to be included in an Encyclopedia. Thus, recommendable is to try to anglicize all, of whom to write here... 213.243.157.114 16:26, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

pravopis

Pazi oko nekih izmena. Npr. imena geografskih pojmova. Uvek se i prvi i drugi naziv pisu velikim. Pogledao sam u pravopisu i pise se Obala Slonovace a ne Obala slonovace.

[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 19:13, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Nomination

I have nominated you for an admin. I am looking forward for you to accept it. [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 15:08, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Treba da prihvatis kandidaturu. Takodje da pokusas da pozoves prijatelje sa wikipedie da glasaju za tebe s obzirom da ima sve vise glasova protiv. [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 09:26, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Letters sandbox.

Thank you for letting me know about your development! It looks good, although I see two small problems: The letters are cut off at top and bottom, and the standard Wiki-font (Arial? Helvetica?) doesn't contain the missing letters.

Here's my solution for the second problem. I'm working on a Windows computer, so I'm not sure which fonts should be put in for MacOS, Unix, etc., but they can be added to the styles list:

Искони бѣ слово

The op code is:

 <font style="font-family:Arial Unicode MS,Palatino Linotype">&#1123;</font>

One thing I'm wondering about: what is the native encoding for the English Wikipedia? If it is not UTF-8 (as the German one switched to recently), what is it? 68.148.211.161 18:42, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC) Damn! I forgot to log in again! User: A. Shetsen.

Hi Nikola. I just found your Cyrillic sandbox. Wow, you've done a lot of work. I'm hoping to establish some consensus on format & content of the Cyrillic letter articles, at Talk:Cyrillic alphabet#Direction. Please add your comments.

Shetsen, the English Wikipedia uses ISO-8859-1, but there are rumoured plans to switch to UTF-8. I can't wait.

—Michael Z. 17:12, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Avala

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Avala is open. Place evidence at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Avala/Evidence. --mav 09:43, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nikola, I answered your call for translation on the above page. --romanm (talk) 20:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

writers v novelists

Hi Nikola,

I wouldn't normally have got involved with the categorising of writers, but as I was scanning through some random pages I noticed that Mesa Selimovic had not been categorised. When I read through some of the talk pages relating to literature and writers it appears that the concensus has been to sub-categorise writers by genre and as someone had made a start in sub-categorising Category:Novelists into Category:Novelists by nationality I thought I should continue this with Selimovic. It does look like there is quite a bit of confusion relating to the literaure categories though so I would suggest some more discussions need to take place on the talk pages. As it not really a subject I feel I am knowledgeable enough in I will leave it for someone such as yourself who obviously takes more of an interest in this field. Apologies it's taken me a couple of days to reply but I managed to break my ankle on Saturday so have had to rest it for a day or two.Scraggy4 13:05, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Poslao sam ti email preko wikipedije. Sa ovoga koji sam ja ove prijavio na tvoj. [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 19:11, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

UNMIK

Nikola, your claim that the list of the UNMIK pillars are "propaganda and add nothing to readers' knowledge about UNMIK" is ridiculous. If you have a look at the UNMIK website, you'll see that the pillars are absolutely central to UNMIK's organisation - each pillar is in fact a sub-organisation of UNMIK with its own head. See http://www.unmikonline.org/structure.htm for details.

Also, your commentary - "It is generally considered that UNMIK failed in all of these tasks." - is both POV and far too vague. Who considers this to be the case? How has UNMIK failed? Where and when? You don't answer these questions. There's certainly room for an overview of UNMIK's activities and success (or lack of it). If you want to provide some detail, go for it, but your one-liner provides neither detail nor a NPOV. -- ChrisO 00:10, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Serbian cities

I noticed that many of the city stubs you created have:

Data taken from "The World Gazetteer" (http://www.world-gazetteer.com )

I assume that this refers to latitude, longitude, and population data. However, all these pieces of information aren't particularly special to the World Gazetteer so there isn't much reason for us to acknowledge them everywhere, maybe just in List of cities in Serbia and Montenegro or its talk page?

Also, these stubs all qualify for {{geo-stub}} (instead of just stub). And the backlink to the list of cities is probably needless, or should be replaced with a template if there aren't too many. --Joy [shallot] 12:17, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's better to have a more specific stub notice (geo-stub) simply because then other edits interested in geography might notice them sooner (and fix them). The backlink should ideally be replaced with something like Category:Cities in Serbia and Montenegro, that seems logical and the general trend on Wikipedia as of late. --Joy [shallot] 17:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've now removed all extra WG notices and added geo-stubs where necessary. --Joy [shallot] 13:40, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Branislav Nušić

Nikola,

I have just noticed that you had removed things about Nusic's born name (Akibijad Nusa) and his fathers name. Actually, this was documented in the author's biography of "Pripovetke", Branislav Nusic. Published by: Stamparija "Mlada Srbija", 1928. Srpska knjizevna zadruga, knjiga 206.

Branislav Nusic did actually legally change his name (it was not only a pseudonim), so thus the confussion. If you revert it to the previous version, I will make sure to clarify it. Or let me know if I should take care of everything. There is reference to this issue in every major biography of Branislav Nusic. By origin, Nusic is cincar (I am not sure about the word in english), thus the last name Nusa.

Thank you for looking into this --Dejan Cabrilo 18:34, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

balkan bacchanalia :)

There's now a meta:South Slavic NPOV page. You may have heard this from Miloš on sr: already, but nevertheless. --Joy [shallot] 12:43, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Image tagging

Hi, those are simple modifications to do. I'll add them at the next run (when the database backup is available fro download). Alfio 12:42, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Flags of non-sovereign nations

Considering the fact that Montenegro and the Bosniaks can be classified as nations, and there are those who like to believe they are, and the fact that the areas in question are not fully sovereign in the sense of being a separate independent state, I'm restoring them again. I consider the other cases to be likely to be similar. You may not like the situation, but the page does point out the area is controversial. zoney ♣ talk 15:06, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nikola Tesla

(William M. Connolley 20:40, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)) There is an enormous overlap between Nikola Tesla and Biography of Nikola Tesla. Looking at the latters talk, this would be because you copied a chunk of the NT article into the biog article but never removed the corresponding text from NT. This needs to be fixed. I would prefer to delete the biog article, because stripping out the biog stuff from the main article will leave it very hollow.