Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Most popular pages II

We have a tool which shows us the most popular project articles available at [1]. Having looked at the report for August (so far),[2] there are some surprises as to what articles within the scope of this project are being viewed. World War II is the most popular article, which given the wide scope outside of the project is somewhat understandable. I am, however, a little bit surprised that Fedor Emelianenko is the second most popular article within the scope of this project, even more popular by almost 2 times than Russia. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can utilise the list to better the articles which appear on it? Regular collaborations or something? --Russavia ^Dialogue 03:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

From previous experiences, the participants of this WikiProject aren't big on collaborating on one thing—we are too few, and our interests are too different. Doesn't mean we can't try it again, of course, but I, for one, am skeptical.

We could, however, incorporate a "monthly improvement suggestion" list into the WikiProject's page. Something like "here's three GA-articles that could be improved to FA, three Bs that could be improved to GA-level, a few Cs easily expandable to Bs, a few Stubs that are too high in the list to remain stubs", and so on. Inclusion would be by position in previous month's results list, as well as by diversity of the topics, so anyone would have something appealing to consider working on. Just an idea, though.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:31, August 11, 2009 (UTC)

I think we could use a general to-do list, where editors could manually insert articles where they need help. Important would be to state exactly what needs to be done. ("Improve this from C to B" with no other info is useless.) They could also insert the popularity rating of the article in the list, as a form of priority measurement. Offliner (talk) 14:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/2008 genocide of Georgians in South Ossetia

In case you are interested, please participate in this AfD discusion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2008 genocide of Georgians in South Ossetia. Offliner (talk) 17:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Language question

I have a little English problem (across many articles) with the following kinds of sentences ("X made up Y% of Z"):

1. Gazprom's activities corresponded to 10% of the Russia's GDP in 2008
2. Gazprom's activities made up 10% of the Russia's GDP in 2008
3. Gazprom's activities amounted to 10% of the Russia's GDP in 2008
4. Gazprom's activities constituted 10% of the Russia's GDP in 2008
5. Gazprom's activities accounted for 10% of the Russia's GDP in 2008

First of all, are all these forms correct? Which one sounds the best? Is there a difference between these expressions? Are there even more ways to say this? Lastly, which expression would you use in this specific instance? Offliner (talk) 20:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

My read, for whatever it's worth. All are formally correct and the differences are subtle.

• 1 is not idiomatic but not strongly misleading either. Corresponded might be taken to refer to a less direct comparison than part-to-whole.

As if a unit conversion or estimation were involved, or a relation between symbol and object, or between two variables. Dankarl (talk) 22:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• 2,4,and especially 5 point the emphasis a little more strongly at Russia's economy or Gazprom's place in it.

2 and 4 are absolutely synonomyous, but 2 seems more direct. Dankarl (talk) 22:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• 3 points the emphasis a little more strongly at Gazprom.

that said, I suspect a lot of readers will think I'm splitting hairs and there is no real difference. Dankarl (talk) 22:39, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for explaining this. I will this in mind when writing articles. There are some instances (such as Republic_of_Karelia#Economy) where I have to use this kind of expression a lot, and I think it's stylistically a good idea to cycle through the list instead of using the same expression multiple times. But I will keep the subtle differences in mind as well. Offliner (talk) 23:06, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Vladivostok Air Reassesment

Hi there, I dont know if this would be the right place for article re-assesments, but Vladivostok Air's article should be re-assesed to see if it meets B-level requirements. It is currently C rated by both WP Russia and WP Airlines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.121.4.143 (talk) 19:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

WWII history

Jacurek keeps putting readding material on Stalin and a picture of the Red Army and Wehrmacht into the article for Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II. I've tried explaining the difference between the non-aggession and Nazi collaborationism, but this really looks like an unhopeful case of ownership. Since I'm not to keen on this kind of historical resistance, I thought this project might find someone with the patience to take things slow and such. PasswordUsername (talk) 21:43, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Strunkino, Archangelsk = Strunino, Vladimir Oblast?

I'm writing an article on a physicist apparently born in Strunkino, a small village apparently located in Archangelsk. There's no wikipedia article, but there is a Strunino in Vladimir Oblast. Are these two different transliteration of the same place? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Strunino

56°22′24″N 38°35′8″E Vladimir Oblast--Andrey! 06:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

59°30′6″N 32°53′31″E Novgorod Oblast--Andrey! 06:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

54°23′41″N 37°39′56″E Tula Oblast--Andrey! 06:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Strunkino

70.71307°N 55.837854°E / 70.71307; 55.837854 Archangelsk Oblast--Andrey! 07:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

47.837642°N 61.142017°E / 47.837642; 61.142017 Archangelsk Oblast--Andrey! 07:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I would very much doubt these are different transliterations (although, of course, a typo is a possibility). Neither Strunkino or Strunino are terribly unique names, though. Apart from the town in Vladimir Oblast, there are two more Struninos (both villages): one in Leningrad Oblast and another in Tula Oblast. Strunkinos exist in Arkhangelsk, Omsk, and Tyumen Oblasts. And these are just the ones that currently exist; AndreyA's coord search also found a number of villages that no longer do.

Anyway, if the source you are using says "Arkhangelsk Oblast", by all means use that—just because we don't have an article doesn't mean anything (we don't have articles on 99% of Russia's 150,000+ villages). If the source doesn't actually say that, the safest bet would be to create a set index at Strunkino and link to it; at least until more information is available. Let me know if you need help with that. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:10, August 19, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the great and detailed response! The source says quite clearly "Strunkino, Archangelsk", I was just wondering if it was a typo or an alternative spelling combined with a renaming of an Oblast. I don't really care about creating the article on Strunkino myself (I don't know a thing about it), I just want to make sure that the link will point to the correct (even if missing) page. What should the link be? Strunkino, Archangelsk, Strunkino, Arkhangelsk, Strunkino, Archangelsk Oblast, or Strunkino, Arkhangelsk Oblast? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Unless the physicist in question was born before September 23, 1937 (the date on which Arkhangelsk Oblast was established), just link to Strunkino, Arkhangelsk Oblast. If it was before that, I'll need to know his/her date of birth in order to construct the link correctly. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:41, August 19, 2009 (UTC)

I think the physicist in question is Leonid Brekhovskikh, born in 1917. The link should still be the same, albeit differently piped. Colchicum (talk) 16:00, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I just wrote a biography of Leonid Maksimovich Brekhovskikh. Another point of contention is that my source say that the two boats were the Sergei Vavilovich (I found Akademik Sergey Vavilov) and the Petr Lebedev, which I think is a different transliteration of Pyotr Lebedev (it would make a lot of sense since the guy worked at the Lebedev Physical Institute) so I mimicked the other boat and linked to the Akademik Pyotr Lebedev. The only other source I can find has the Akademik Petr Lebedev listed however. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Ditto on piping; for 1917, the link should look like this→"[[Strunkino, Arkhangelsk Oblast|Strunkino]], [[Vologda Governorate]]" (this is assuming, of course, that the modern Strunkino in Arkhangelsk Oblast is in fact the same one this physicist was born in).

Boats, can't help you with those, unfortunately, although "Petr" and "Pyotr" are definitely different transliterations of the same first name "Пётр".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:37, August 19, 2009 (UTC)

Petr and Pyotr are indeed different transliterations of the same name, and Sergey Vavilovich is certainly a typo, Russian sources call the vessels Sergey Vavilov and Pyotr Lebedev. However, if I understand the things correctly, that Sergey Vavilov was another vessel with a similar name. Akademik Sergey Vavilov was launched much later, in the late 1980s. Colchicum (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

No it sounds like the same boat. The Sergey Vavilov was launched in 1988 by the Shirshov Institute of Oceanography, where Brekhovskikh worked starting in 1980. Design could have started in the late 1970s. Anyway, at this point, it's probably best that you add the final tweaks on the article as far as Russian locations and spellings are concerned. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It is unlikely. He led expeditions aboard those vessels in 1961, 1962 and 1964. [3] Colchicum (talk) 17:15, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I checked my source and it cannot be the 1988 Sergey Vavilov. I doubt these vessels deserves articles of their own, so I'll just unlink them. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:18, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Gas field maps

Is it possible to construct a free image based on the Yamal gas field map on page 3 here? What is the best way to do this? Does someone want to make it? Offliner (talk) 14:16, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings (2nd nomination)

In case you are interested, please participate in this AfD discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings (2nd nomination) Offliner (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Nadymsky District

Could someone please create Nadymsky District? This would be useful for the Gazprom article. Offliner (talk) 07:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Enjoy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:19, August 31, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Offliner (talk) 22:26, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

August curse

Would someone support/object creation of August curse? I'm sure there are enough sources: [4]. It's a problematic topic for an article, since the "phenomenon" may be a coincidence and the article could run into WP:SYNTH problems if we are not careful, but as discussed in that Moscow News article, there may be reasons for the phenomenon. I think this should be discusses somewhere in WP, because we have articles about the events, and the curse is often discussed in the media coverage of those events. Offliner (talk) 22:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess it's better (as usual) to just do it first and ask questions later. Offliner (talk) 23:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

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

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 01:38, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The first theatre and the first actors

Hello! I am interested in theatre history, and I hope some one can answer my question. I wonder: which was the first theatre, with proffesional actors of both genders, in Russia? I am also interested in the first known actor and actress, or the most famous actor and actress of that theatre's early years. The net say the first theatre in Russia of this kind was in Moscow in 1702, and in St Petersburg in 1752. What were they called, and who were the first actor and actress there? I hope someone can answer my question. I would be gratefull if you could answer on my talk page. Regards--Aciram (talk) 09:42, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Sakhalin vs. Sakhalin Oblast

Does anyone have an idea how we should divide content between Sakhalin and Sakhalin Oblast? I think almost everything from Sakhalin could be copied over to Sakhalin Oblast as well. For example, Sakhalin Oblast has no economy info – should the economy section from Sakhalin be moved over there? In general, what info goes into Sakhalin and what into Sakhalin Oblast? Offliner (talk) 00:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Sakhalin is an island, Sakhalin Oblast is a federal subject located on the territory of that island (and also on the Kuril Islands). With that in mind, the article about the island should have detailed geographic description, information about flora/fauna/climate, as well as a brief history of settlement of the island and its discovery. Economy/infrastructure can be mentioned, but not to the extent they are now. The article about the oblast should first and foremost deal with the history of the oblast, its demographics, economy, and politics. Flora/fauna/geography/climate should also be mentioned, but should generally only briefly summarize the information from the article about the island (and include appropriate information from the articles about the Kurils, of course). If you are willing to clean up the existing mess, that'd be greatly appreciated! Let me know if there's anything I can help with. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:46, September 2, 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move: Building of Commodity-stock exchange Saint Petersburg and a housing complex Financier

There is a proposal to move Building of Commodity-stock exchange Saint Petersburg and a housing complex Financier to either 'Saint Petersburg Commodity and Stock Exchange building' or 'Saint Petersburg Financier building'. Input from editors involved in this WikiProject would be most helpful. Cnilep (talk) 19:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Soviet war in Afghanistan page..

Hi! I protected Soviet war in Afghanistan, and I'm guessing the page has been ignored a bit. Can a couple of you look at it and ensure it's in tip-top shape? For instance, the talk page could really use cleaning up. Cheers, tedder (talk) 03:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Titles of company articles

This has been puzzling me for a long time. What should company articles be called? For example, should NPO ELSIB be at

1. NPO ELSIB
2. ELSIB
3. ELSIB Research and Production Association Open Joint Stock Company
4. NPO "ELSIB" OAO

or possible something else? Of course, I will always create all those as redirects, but one of them has to be the main title. Are there any guidelines about this? I've been a bit inconsistent when creating these articles: [5]. Offliner (talk) 19:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Another example: where would you have put the article Kompozit? Kompozit, OAO Kompozit, JSC Kompozit, JSC "Kompozit" or something else? As an aside, could someone place this article in the correct "companies by industry" subcategory? I'm not sure if "manufacturing" is the most approriate one. Offliner (talk) 19:45, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I think any of these would be an OK choice. The problem is that we don't really have any Russia-specific guidelines for company names in place. If you are interested in developing a set of such guidelines (based, perhaps, on the most predominant naming pattern you can pinpoint by looking at existing articles), I'd say go right ahead. I myself would be in favor of shorter titles (ELSIB, Kompozit...), unless they are not used in English sources at all, but that's just a gut feeling; I haven't done any research to back it up. Any other opinions?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:47, September 18, 2009 (UTC)

I also think that the shortest name (ELSIB, etc.) may often be the best one, since it's simple and the company type (JSC, etc.) may change later. Offliner (talk) 19:51, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Metro stuff

Just a heads up... Perm Metro and Riga Metro are up. (LAz17 (talk) 02:31, 21 September 2009 (UTC)).

Also, check out an idea... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Rapid_transit_in_the_former_Soviet_Union#separating_the_countries (LAz17 (talk) 06:10, 24 September 2009 (UTC)).

Translation required: Решение Исполкома калужского городского Совета депутатов трудящихся

I have been working on the late Pavel Popovich's article (4th Cosmonaut in space, who died yesterday), and I have one phrase which I came across which I want to check that I have the best translation for.

He received 2 honorary citizenships of Kaluga. On the Kaluga website Ими гордится Калуга ("They Bring Pride to Kaluga"), published by the Office of the Affairs of the Mayor of Kaluga), they have the following details:

август 1962 г. — Попович Павел Романович (2 раза), летчик-космонавт СССР, Герой Советского Союза. Решение Исполкома калужского городского Совета депутатов трудящихся № 597. Решение Исполкома калужского городского Совета депутатов трудящихся № 237 от 10 апреля 1964г.

The phrase I'm unsure about is "Решение Исполкома калужского городского Совета депутатов трудящихся № xxx", which Google Translate gives as "The decision of the Board Kaluga City Council of People's Deputies number xxx".

I have used "Decision xxx of the Kaluga City Council Board of People's Deputies" - is this an OK translation, or can anyone offer a better one?

Thanks -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 17:00, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

"Decision xxx of the executive committee of Kaluga City council of workers' deputies" is probably about right, unless there's an official translation.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 17:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 18:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Abkhazia AfD

Yes, I know that Abkhazia is not Russia, it is an independent state, but it shares close ties to Russia, so I thought that some of you might be interested to see this AfD:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abkhazia–Venezuela relations

Keep in mind that there are many articles about relations with Kosovo. Examples: Estonia–Kosovo relations, Kosovo–Lithuania relations, etc.

--Tocino 21:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Vladivostok Air GA assessment

Hi there, I'd like for someone to review Vladivostok Air for GA status, Im not sure how Im supposed to do it here. Thanks.--76.121.4.143 (talk) 00:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Sofia Rotaru again

Dear all,

Certain users try to delete first info about Sofia Rotaru, then all related files to her art, some have already succeeded to delete music files of her famous songs, then one of them explicitely gave a false translation of a Russian respected press article regrding her revenues (refusing to beleive they are so high), now the same user started deleting all the images from articles related to the movies where Sofia Rotaru starred, especially during the Soviet period, movies all filmed in Russian language, such as Chervona Ruta, Soul ( for example, only this movie was viewed by 57 million viewers in former USSR), Where Has Love Gone?, Monologue of Love, and others. Those interested in reflecting this part of her art, please help to stop this or at least help to make such users discuss first their non-constructive edits. Thank you...--Rubikonchik (talk) 15:03, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The Godfather in the USSR

Hi,

Does anyone know a reliable source about distribution of films in the USSR? In particular, where can find out when was The Godfather distributed in the USSR?

See a more detailed question at Talk:Contact (animated short film).

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:40, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sofia Rotaru sang the soundtrack Speak Softly Love in Ukrainian "Skazhi Shchio Lyubishi". She also did an English version, at the same time as Dalida in French, but Sofia Rotaru's English version was censured by the Soviet administration and cannot be found anywhere today...--Rubikonchik (talk) 08:55, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I read about the 70s' Sofia Rotaru version for the first time, when i searched for info about Speak Softly Love when i wrote the article Contact (animated short film). Growing up in Moscow in the 1980's, however, i only heard this melody in Contact and when my friends sang Давай покрасим холодильник в чёрный цвет. The article about Vladimir Tarasov quoted in Contact (animated short film) says the same thing.

Of course, if you have an article that proves the popularity of Rotaru's version, i'll be glad to read it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Here you go:

author: Михаил Садчиков, article title: «Романтика. Меланхолия. Ностальгия» publishing house: «Смена» place Санкт-Петербург date: 11-го декабря 1991. As you can see the official information is scarce, and the one available is only after perestroika, since it was all about censorship of the Soviet administration... Same thing applied to Deine Zärtlichkeit - the first collaboration of a Soviet superstar with a foreign ! Western ! recording firm in... 70's!!! --Rubikonchik (talk) 14:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I need a Wikilink to Кремлёвского дворца

Can anyone please help me? Russian friends have told me that in Russia there is a Wikilink to a page about the Kremlin Palace concert hall, and that the link is Кремлёвского дворца. How can I make the link work from this English Wiki? I need it for the Leonid Mikhailovich Kharitonov page. Please reply on my talk page? Thank you.--Storye book (talk) 13:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It is probably the State Kremlin Palace. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

POV pushing on energy subjects

Can someone take a look at the edits of Gazpr (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)? He redirected Europe's energy security to European dependence on Russian energy, made a tendentious unexplained edit on Nord Stream [6] and tried to portray the German foreign minister as a minion of the Kremlin [7]. Offliner (talk) 21:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

According to him, even nuclear power just "a way to reduce Europe's alarming energy dependence on Gazprom and the Kremlin". [8] Sigh... Offliner (talk) 21:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Sergei Kramarenko

Is there anyone who can look at Sergei Kramarenko and check it for WP:NPOV and factual accuracy? --Pontificalibus (talk) 14:48, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Cantonist

Why is Cantonist a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ukraine and not of WikiProject Russia? Debresser (talk) 21:20, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Due to our languid membership base, the assessments are pretty much haphazard. If you see an oversight like this in future, feel free to tag it. You don't have to actually assess an article if you don't want to, but tagging it at least will put it in the list of other unassessed articles. I have assessed this article at C for now. Thanks for bringing this to this WikiProject's attention!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:11, October 20, 2009 (UTC)

You need to learn english and spelling. What the hell is lanquid its not even a word. If you want stuff assessed you need to get cracking asap. Your just lazy and dont want to improve this project. It's what i think anyway. You need more active members. I wish I could be a kwikipedian and help and all but i have no free time because i work a lot haha.--anonimous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.114.215.165 (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh boy, I don't know what to say. You are right on both counts—we are all lazy and "lanquid" isn't a word! Now, if you excuse me, I'd better go get cracking on my "english and spelling" before I do any further kwikiediting...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:33, October 26, 2009 (UTC)

Where is everybody

I was looking at this project and i don't understand why there are so many untagged articles and no one doing a damb about fixing them? Look in Category:Unknown-importance_Russia_articles there are over 5000 unassessed articles! What kind of encyclopaedia is this??? I wish i could help myself but i am not a kwikipedian. Pleas get to work asap! Down with britanica already!--anonimous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.114.215.165 (talk) 02:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Why does not anybody reply???--anonimous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.114.215.165 (talk) 02:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I think because the most active Russian contributors (Irpen,Ghirlandajo, Kuban kazak) were forced off Wikipedia.--Dojarca (talk) 10:44, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

They should be invited back. Especially as per this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Proposed_decision#Community_encouraged In other words, their bans/warnings are going to be over-looked; the hardest part is asking them to return, after all they've been through. HistoricWarrior007 (talk) 10:33, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Photo could use better description and categories

Commons:File:Another day of Moscow (3067405533).jpg

Lovely photo, but not enough description (or categories) to make it useful. My guess is that someone on this project would know more precisely where this is and what significant buildings are in the photo. - Jmabel | Talk 19:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The tall building in the back seems to be the Moscow State University (but I could be wrong, I'm not a Muscovite). What the tall building in front is, I have no clue. Have you tried asking the uploader, by any chance?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:24, October 23, 2009 (UTC)

It was a Flickr image, so I wouldn't expect the uploader to have any particular insight. - Jmabel | Talk 01:08, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Now resolved, thanks. - 64.81.170.123 (talk) 17:15, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Soviet invasion of Poland

I have nominated Soviet invasion of Poland for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. --Labattblueboy (talk) 15:37, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Moscow taskforce

Why not make a Moscow task force? It would be a good place to organize efforts to improve articles relating to the city. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

We have fewer than a dozen truly active participants in the whole project (and I'm probably over-estimating here). Fanning out into task forces seems, well, redundant :) This isn't to say you aren't welcome to start a Moscow task force if you feel up to it, of course.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:09, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

I'll start the task force in a few days when I am done tagging stuff related to the Detroit task force. The Moscow task force will include things in Moscow proper, companies based in Moscow (such as Aeroflot and S7), thing related to Moscow, etc. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:49, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't be surprised if you'll be the only member of this task force or if it withers and dies after you lose interest. My honest recommendation would be not to waste time with establishing the task force but proceed directly to working on the actual articles. For the (low) level of its activity this WikiProject is fairly well organized as-is; what we desperately need is folks who would work on the actual content.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:03, November 4, 2009 (UTC) 22:03, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, the reason I proposed a task force in the first place is so there can be a fairly low level of activity with the task force still surviving. As Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces explains, task forces are generally associated with directly writing on articles about the subject at hand. So this would be essentially a way to organize discussions about Moscow-related topics. Also, there may be an increase of contributors interested in Russia in general at some point, so I suppose I can wait until Russavia, etc. come back. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:11, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really trying to dissuade you; I'm merely trying to paint the big picture. The primary purpose of the task forces is to split certain things into more manageable chunks. With only a handful of active editors it hardly seems necessary. We actually merged some standalone WikiProjects into this one because they did not have enough editors to support them; creating task forces seems to be the opposite direction. All in all, your call. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:34, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Merging also happened at WikiProject California - What happened is that the former standalone WikiProjects became task forces of the WikiProject California because the former WikiProjects did not have enough members - it's not necessarily the opposite direction. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

To-do list

It looks like the project doesn't really have an useful to-do list. We should create one. Editors like myself might be willing to do some tasks if they were listed somewhere. Offliner (talk) 15:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Aleksey Dymovsky

A new title in the topic "Corruption in Russia". Translation from ruwiki is needed. --Fastboy (talk) 21:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Vitali Korionov

While reading a Che Guevara biography, I found out about this Communist party official. He did hold a high position in the party, but I can't find many sources about him in English. Also I don't know how to write his name in Russian. What would be his name in Russian? Any additional help would be appreciated! WhisperToMe (talk) 21:01, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Never heard of him, but in Russian his name would be Виталий Корионов (Корёнов is also possible, although less likely).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:52, November 9, 2009 (UTC)

RT on digital TV channel 30-4

The history of RT (in Wikipedia article titled RT) does not include this development, as far as I can see. -- Fishing (Nov. 14, 2009 at 9 PM EST)for some news with my limited access to digital TV channels, I discovered the RT news on 30-4.Svato (talk) 03:14, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Renaming and raising status of "List of Journalists Killed in Russia"

A suggested renaming as "Journalists Killed in Russia" and a raising of the article's status from its now outdated list category to a genuine, properly referenced and up to date status as an article. Rating required! Voronov (talk) 03:49, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Like I said at the RM, it is still at its core a list. No matter how much good content you wrap around it, it remains a list.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:05, November 18, 2009 (UTC)

What can I do to help?

Hi, everyone! Russian wiki is quite complete, so I decided to work over english russian section. I can either translate articles from Russian into English, or provide help on the Saratov Oblast section. I live in Engels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engels_(city)

So, what can I do to help?

Venomous Serpent (talk) 04:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Russian wiki is complete? That's news! :)

Anyhoo, welcome. There is actually a lot you can help with here, but the specifics, I guess, depend on what it is you are interested in the most. If all things related to Saratov Oblast interest you, I would suggest you start with the Saratov Oblast article and expand it to a decent length. Saratov itself could use improvement, and, of course, our article about Engels is quite pathetic. Translating content is also always welcome; so if you are interested in doing that, knock yourself out—it doesn't matter where you want to start, because 98% of Russia-related stuff around here could use plenty of improvement.

If you are interested more in maintenance, there are always assessments and portal housekeeping (something that's been quite neglected so far). All in all, possibilities are limitless :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:50, November 19, 2009 (UTC)

I meant that it has enough stuff about Russia, since it is Russian Wiki. ;) So, it would be nice to have something at least like that on the English Wiki. And I don't think that I would tend to maintenance much, I'd rather spend time translating or writing or expanding... :) Кстати, почему "Ёжики", а не "Ёжик"?

Venomous Serpent (talk) 18:13, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Just went to my oblast page... It's a nightmare, that requires some translation from the Russian, imo...

Venomous Serpent (talk) 18:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

It sure would be nice. How would translating articles revolving around Saratov Oblast sound to you then? You can start from the top and then go down the food chain; there's plenty that can be translated or written from scratch. Heck, you can probably easily write a couple hundred articles about the notable people alone!

As for your second question, it's too personal, sorry :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:26, November 19, 2009 (UTC)

Indigenous peoples of Russia

It's great to have a list of known indigenous groups in Russia, but is there anyone who could create a map to show roughly where these various groups are? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.211.240.226 (talk) 03:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Is this what you mean? LokiiT (talk) 14:54, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Eurasian Land Bridge- New article

I just posted a new article on the Eurasian Land Bridge. It appears that there may be more sources of information in Russian than there is in English. Request that a link be added to the Russian equivalent Wiki article, Russian lettering be added to the intro, and, if anyone is interested, please see this section of the talk page for a list of information that the article is lacking but may be available in Russian language sources. Thanks in advance. Cla68 (talk) 12:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Cyrillic edittools

ПРИВЕТ everyone. I am currently updating some of the functions in the edit window here in Wikipedia. Below the edit window we have a list of Cyrillic characters, so it should be easier to insert them in articles. That list is currently not complete, so I would need some help from some editors than can read and write Cyrillic. See MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Cyrillic (2).

Oh, and please don't start a discussion about the edittools here on this page, instead come to that page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Resolved now.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:48, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

Train Bombings

I wonder if anyone here might be able to shed light on whether or not the two recent bombings on Russian trains might be related since my knowledge of Russian politics/current affairs is almost non existent! Cheers, HJMitchell You rang? 22:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Krais of Russia

Are all the Krais of Russia part of their respective Federal District? If so I would expect that the main category for each Krai to be part of the Federal District category. But while Category:Primorsky Krai is a subcategory of Category:Russian Far East, Category:Stavropol Krai is not a subcategory of any Federal District. Hugo999 (talk) 00:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone actually tried to make sure that articles about all federal subjects (including krais) are categorized under the appropriate federal districts categories. If you are willing to take on such a project, that'd be great. For now, we don't even the federal districts categories in place (the only one is Category:Northwestern Federal District; and Category:Russian Far East is not federal-district specific, it's a counterpart of this article).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:12, November 30, 2009 (UTC)

I think that Krais should link up to their Federal District (as should all subdivisions by administrative levels to the next level up, covering a larger area) but anm from New Zealand and don't have the knowledge to do it!! Hugo999 (talk) 13:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

That's not that hard to do, actually, no matter where you are from :) First, categories for the rest of federal districts need to be created (we only have Category:Northwestern Federal District at this point; the rest are listed in the federal districts of Russia article). Second, every federal subject article needs to be placed into an appropriate federal district category. The articles on federal districts contain lists of federal subjects in each federal district (see, for example, Far Eastern Federal District#Federal subjects). It's a boring job, but by no means hard. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:29, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

Pavel Chesnokov

Hi. I found out that the article about Chesnokov is inconsistent in the use of his name and three forms of it are used through the article. He is not included in the fairly comprehensive New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians so I could not check it with that but the Google search seems to return more results for Tschesnokoff than for Chesnokov. Does someone have (more reliable) suggestions on this? (Writing this here upon suggestion from WikiProject Classical music.) --Tomaxer (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:RUS is the guideline you need to consult. In short—the number of google hits shouldn't be used as a decisive factor, but printed works should be. Someone needs to take a look at all those references which are used to support this article and figure out which of the spellings seems to be the most common. If there is no clear winner, then the current title is fine (as per WP:RUS). If no one has means to do such a check, then the current title is also fine (also as per WP:RUS, the "default provision"). I wish I knew more about music to give a more definite answer, but hopefully this will give you a start. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 02:25, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

Further to the thoughts at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music, I think "tsch" is written as one letter in the Cyrillic. I believe it is the first letter in Tchaikovsky if that helps? --Jubilee♫clipman 02:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, "tsch" is "ч" (which is "ch"). The "tsch" variant seems to be a German transliteration, while "tch" is more typical of French. "Ch", of course, is English. But, all this is moot—someone really needs to look at printed English sources and see what they use the most (it's not uncommon for English to use German or French transliterations of Russian last names; Tchaikovsky is a good example). If printed sources have no clear preferences or if no one is able to assess them, then "Chesnokov" is the best choice; as per the guideline. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:50, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

The Important Orphans

AS I finished my work on Bronnitsy, I checked the list of stubs, start, etc. I noticed that we have somthing of a problem with the Top-importance articles. 158 of them are Starts. 12 of them are stubs. Personally, I don't think somthing with 5 sentances about somthing very important is not enough. We should make a lsit of said articles, and the 1 unasessed Top class article, and try to fix them by putting them at the top of our priorities of article expansion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Buggie111 (talk • contribs) 02:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I concur: expanding and improving the articles of the highest importance to our project should be one of our main objectives, especially if their are Stub- and Start-Class. My regards, Laurinavicius (talk) 02:50, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

This is why we have the assessment system in place—so the articles could be prioritized! Getting the project members to work on them, however, is a different matter entirely. In the past few years, this WikiProject wasn't very successful in organizing efforts—there are just too few active members, and they all seem to have interests which seldom overlap... Creating another list of to-do items isn't going to change much, I'm afraid; especially if it's going to just be a copy of the first few lines of the assessment list. What we really need is to come up with an incentive for folks to work together on things which the project identifies as most important. Any ideas in that department?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:09, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

Weel, since there are several thousand stubs, finding twelvle of them in that mass is going to be pretty impossible, like searching for a dead mouse in a haystack (better chance than the needle). We would have to list the important stubs first, and then start editing them. Buggie111 (talk) 17:29, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Missed your question. Offer them, rewards? Buggie111 (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's not impossible. The assessment table will need to be tweaked (so every number on every intersection is clickable). That's been on my to-do list for a while; I might as well move it up a bit.

As for rewards, what kind? We aren't really in a position to give out something tangible, and intangible rewards don't seem to be in much demand. On the other hand, a fun contest like this (only limited in scope to this project) could spark some enthusiasm. Would anyone out there be interested in organizing one?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:47, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

OK, updating the assessments table turned out to be easier than I thought, so I've done that (hopefully without fucking up anything else). It is my understanding it takes a while for the actual counts to propagate, but the table should return to a usable state fairly soon on its own. Hope it helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:33, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

As of today, seven out of twelve pages propagated into the category, and upon checking, I had to re-assess every single one of them (they were either not stubs or definitely not of top importance). Same needs to be done with the Start-Top category; it presently contains a bunch of Soyuz missions, which are in scope, but are hardly of Top priority, and a bunch of other stuff which hardly qualifies as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:34, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

I looked at some of the Apollo articles, and they are all Mid-Importance, so I think the Soyuz articles can take the same position. Buggie111 (talk) 22:52, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Zolotaryov umer, no delo ego zhivyot

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Siberian Wikipedia (2 nomination). - Altenmann >t 22:40, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Translation

Hello. I am looking for someone who could translate a page re an artistic movement into Russian and to upload it on Russian wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMMAGINE%26POESIA

Could you help me? Thanks a lot--Alessandroga80 (talk) 16:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Re-purposing of Russian American article

One editor is trying to re-purpose the Russian-American article so that it only discusses Americans of ethnic Russian descent and not all Americans of Russian descent. I think this re-purposing is wrong and in any case should not be done with the say so of only one editor. Please see the article's talk page. Hmains (talk) 02:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Municipality maps

In what municipality or municipalities does Domodedovo Airport lie in? Where can I find maps that can confirm which municipalities house the airport? I want this partially because I want to know which municipalities the head office of Transaero lies in. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:11, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Vladimir Petrenko (journalist)

I'm having difficulty finding sources to support this unreferenced biography of Russian journalist Vladimir Petrenko. If someone over here would like to take an interest and find sources, that would get the article off the long list of UBLPs. Thank you.--Plad2 (talk) 06:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Putinjugend at AfD

Interested project members are encouraged to voice their opinion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Putinjugend (3rd nomination). --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 19:03, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Tsarina naming

How should articles on tsarinas be titled? Comments/suggestions welcome at WT:NCROY#Tsarinas.--Kotniski (talk) 07:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Category proposal

Hello. I am a visitor to this WikiProject (Russia). I edit and write articles that are science based (astronomy, materials science, engineering type, scientific journal articles, observatories, etc., etc.) Of course as I come across these topics, Russia is also involved in these areas, along with other countries. Anyway, in area of the sciences, Russia is certainly not lacking for literature. I think a category such as "Russian scientific journals" is a good idea. In fact an even better category would be "Russian academic journals", which would include the scientific, peer reviewed journals, as well as other types of peer reviewed journals such as social sciences, law reviews, mathematics, etc. , etc. Would anyone here be interested in creating this category? Would it be worth having? ----Steve Quinn (talk) 01:26, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Transliteration issue

Please express your opinion on the proposed move borsch -> borscht here. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 22:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Mentoring / advice request

I wonder if an editor from this project/task force could offer mentoring or advice to a novice editor User:Igor Piryazev, who appears to be having problems understanding some of wikipedias core policies. He appears to be Russian, so someone fluent in that language may have more luck than the multiple editors at Talk:Battle of Kursk. He is clearly eager and determined, but this needs to be tempered with understanding of wikipedia requirements. (Hohum ^@) 21:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Song of the Year (festival)

Please help to improveRubikonchik (talk) 15:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Igor of Kiev

Can anyone help to improve the Igor of Kiev article? I think the third russian king deserve a little more information. :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Innab (talk • contribs) 17:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Lake Peipsi-Pihkva

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

Primary meaning of Don and Don River?

Could someone please comment on the primary meaning of Don and Don River on these two disambiguation pages. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 19:49, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Guberniya#WP:RM

Your help needed for two governorates, see Talk:Guberniya#WP:RM. Schwyz (talk) 11:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Country subdivisions

Made an overview table, I see Russian subdivisions are well organized, almost all article names have a uniform format. Maybe you can have a look at WT:NCGN#Country_subdivisions. Currently there is no central overview, this table could serve as one. Schwyz (talk) 21:03, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Russian Airplay Chart

There's been a bit of discussion going on here regarding the notability of this chart and whether my AFD nomination was out of line or not. I would like to see if anyone can find any third party references or anything. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 17:48, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Category:Post-Soviet Russia

I have nominated Category:Post-Soviet Russia for renaming at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_August_16#Category:Post-Soviet_Russia. Please take note of the previous discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_February_1#Category:Post-Soviet_Russia. There is also brief discussion between Ezhiki and I at User_talk:Ezhiki#Post-Soviet_Russia_category. Any interested editors are welcome to provide opinions at the CfD page, and if anyone has any ideas on how to better categorise such things, please chime in with those alternatives as there may be something that is usable which we have yet to see. --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 14:30, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Khimki Forest

Khimki Forest could go to ITN[9]. The article needs more info and pics. Offliner (talk) 18:56, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Erdinç Tekir

The page on Erdinç Tekir one of the hijackers in the Black Sea hostage crisis, hijacking of a ferryboad in which the hijackers threatened ot kill the many Russian and Turkish passengers, is currently proposed for deletion. [10] It would be useful to to have someone familial with Russian language sources.AMuseo (talk) 14:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise Flight 514

I've created the Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise Flight 514 article. Would Russian-speaking members of this WP please check the Russian language sources I have used for accuracy. Correction and expansion of the article is welcome. Mjroots (talk) 07:21, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Nizhny

As there are several places named Nizhny Something, I think we should have a disambiguation page and an explanation of what "Nizhny" means. Apokrif (talk) 16:59, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

We don't create disambiguation pages to list entries for which the disambiguation title is a part of the name (see the guideline), although I can see how an exception can be warranted for Nizhny Novgorod, which is occasionally referred to as simply "Nizhny". At any rate, I converted the Nizhny page into a set index article which now lists all places called "Nizhny" (Nizhnyaya, Nizhneye). Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 9, 2010; 18:22 (UTC)

Help with Russian music charts

There are editors inserting links to 2m-online.ru, making that claim that the charts are coming from IFPI Russia. I can't validate that claim using English searches. Can anyone with Russian skills point me at a source that validates the charts there as being any kind of official chart?—Kww(talk) 04:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise Flight 514 Afd

The Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise Flight 514 has been taken to AfD as a contested PROD. Mjroots (talk) 10:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Russia GA reassessment

An article that you have been involved in editing, Russia has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments here . If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Philipmj24 (talk) 03:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Translation

Can anyone help us to translate into Russian a page re an artistic literary movement founded in 2007 in Italy and to upload it on Russian WP ? Thanks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMMAGINE%26POESIA --Alessandroga80 (talk) 03:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Russia articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

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

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

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

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

A-class review for Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria is open

A WPMILHIST A-class nomination of Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria is open. Any interested editors are invited to participate. Any input is welcome! Constantine ✍ 11:57, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Borodino

Ok 1st I have to admit that I don't have a bit of Russian blood in my veins but for whatever reason I am the fellow that has taken on the French Invasion of Russia and the Battle of Borodino. The French Invasion of Russia is a work on progress but I've made great strides with the Battle of Borodino. I just wish I spoke Russian so I could read the Encyclopedia of Borodino 2004. That being said might I have someone run over and do a new assessment on that battle article, I'd like to get it to class A if I can.Tirronan (talk) 04:54, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Major proposed overhaul of Sea of Japan naming dispute

The article Sea of Japan naming dispute has been under full protection for about 1 month due to an edit war that occurred in August. Discussion on the talk page stalled at the end of August, and there are not many active participants on that page. Since that time, I have been working on a wholly new draft to fix, as best as I could, many of the numerous problems on the article. Since this article falls within the purview of this Wikiproject, I am inviting members to come participate in the discussion on the talk page at Sea of Japan naming dispute#Major overhaul, which explains the current articles deficiencies (poor sources, disorganized, etc.) and what I have done to fix them. In that section you will find a link to the draft version in my user space. While this article and its subject are clearly a contentious matter, I sincerely believe that we can create a useful and NPOV article about the subject through the careful involvement of more editors. Thank you for any help you can provide. Qwyrxian (talk) 10:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Unhelpful editing by Shchebetenko

Please take a look at Special:Contributions/Shchebetenko - almost all of these edits are inappropriate because they overcategorize the subject. It is unhelpful to add a more general category, where the subject is already categorized in the more specific category. Plus this is a very strange editing pattern from a new user. Should this be mass-rollback-ed? Thoughts? -- Y not? 15:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

“Urban-Type Settlements”

Ëzhiki and I have had a long discussion on my talk page about locality names and articles, regrettably without reaching agreement. I think it is time these issues are brought to the attention of the wider group.

There is an excellent and very useful article on Urban-type settlements in Russia which clarifies the different types of localities as officially defined, and the peculiar system used.

One of these – “рабочие посёлки" - is translated in the article as “Work Settlement”. This is probably the best literal translation, and is perhaps the best to use in the technical article on official classifications, where something short is required, but it nonetheless is a poor and often misleading translation.

What Russians understand by the Russian words is something like “a place of housing, shops, and small industry not dependent on agriculture”. But English speakers understand the English words to mean something like "a camp for temporary workers, such as migrant farm workers", i.e. very different concepts come to mind, so the one is not a good translation of the other. The primary distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural is not common in English speaking countries, and it is even pretty meaningless in Britain (where nearly every village is a commuter village). Many “urban-type localities” are not at all urban in the normal understanding of English speakers, so that too is highly misleading.

Obviously we can’t use the long phrase, nor is it sensible to use the Russian without any translation, yet the poor and literal translation is not good by itself. So in most places I would advocate supplementing the literal translation with an appropriate description, and usually treat that description as the more important item.

We have also been discussing the structure of locality articles. I think that while the official classification may be important, it is not a good starting point and it should be kept brief when it appears. Instead, articles should start with a description of the place, preferably sourced. I believe this is our practice for other countries, where for example London starts with a statement that it is a “Capital City” or in an earlier version that it is a “Global City”; both statements are good descriptions, but are not the official classifications (which say that it is a “region” including three cities, with the capital buildings mostly in the City of Westminster).

In the Malakhovka, Moscow Oblast article that started this discussion, I would advocate writing “Malakhovka is a Moscow suburb with historic dachas”, citing a source for the statement, and later saying “officially classified as a “Work Settlement”, without adding “urban-type locality” or the ridiculous long footnote there now. Although suburb is rarely an official status in any country, it is well defined on our article on the subject and well understood by most.

Conclusion

I propose:

1 - In technical articles regarding official place types we use literal translations such as "Work Settlement", but explain how they can be misleading. Anywhere else we should also have a description, preferably sourced, of what the area is like. This even includes the “set index” for Russian urban localities with a particular name, where our guidelines do permit supplementary information to clarify things.

2 – The official description should be kept brief, e.g. “Work Settlement” or “Urban-type Locality”, but not both and not with a long footnote. The few who really want the technical information can look it up elsewhere.

3 – A locality article should start with a good description, and only later, perhaps much later, should the official place type be shown, with a phrase like 'Officialy classed as a Work Settlement', or at least with quotation marks, to indicate that the literal English translation is not a good indication of anything. This is better style for an encyclopaedia, where people should be able to tell from the first sentence some crucial points and whether they want to read further. It is also consistent with better Wiki articles in other regions.

What do group members think?

Thanks,

William MacDougall 09:40, 14 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cwmacdougall (talk • contribs)

We had an extensive discussion with William about this on his talk page. Not wanting to subject anyone to having to read pages and pages of arguments and counter-arguments, I'm going to do a simple recap of the counter-points I offered William. I would appreciate opinions of other members of this WikiProject on this.

• The purpose of the "literal translation", as William calls it, is to have a term which we could use within the framework of the classification of the Russian inhabited localities. We can't constantly use long descriptive terms when we need to explain, for example, what three types of urban-type settlements exist in Russia. For this purpose, the term needs to be short and technical.
• All articles on the Russian inhabited localities are structured (or strive to be structured) consistently—in the lead, we start with the classification of what a place is, what its administrative jurisdiction is, state its population, and point out its most important traits. After skimming through a couple articles, a reader would know exactly where in the article certain bits of information are located, and can easily and intuitively skip over the part which are of no interest to him/her.
• The usage of the "literal translation" is not forced down the throat of our editors and readers elsewhere in the article. While its usage may be unavoidable when discussing the history of the administrative jurisdiction of a place and in the appropriate sections of the infobox, in all other regards a descriptive approach works just fine.
• The confusion over what the term means is caused not by poor translation, but rather by the fact that the concept itself would be unfamiliar to most Western readers. This is easily remedied by linking the term to the article which appropriately explains all of the intricacies of the terminology. We don't expect to have an explanation "supplementing the literal translation with an appropriate description" in any other articles, we simply do the linking. Why should the articles on the Russian places be an exception?
• William continues to call the term "urban-type settlements" "misleading". That is not to him, or me, or to anyone else here to decide; it is merely an irrelevant personal opinion. The term exists, it is used in the same context by the academia, hence we are using it as well. It is inventing simpler and "not-so-misleading" terms to replace established terminology that is wrong.
• On the complaint that starting an article with the official designation is "not a good starting point", I not only disagree, but also point out thousands of other articles which start with just such designation. True, quite often this designation matches the laymen vernacular ("city" in something like "Foo is a city in the FarAwayLand" is both an official designation and descriptive), but that does not deteriorate the point in any way. Additionally, the geographic articles are supposed to follow the guidelines and practices adopted by the WikiProject which covers that geographic area (we do, for example, have a separate naming guideline for most countries), and starting articles this way is something WP:RUSSIA had been doing for ages. Changing this would require overhauling literally thousands of articles to conform to William's new vision, whatever it turns out to be, and I somehow doubt we are going to have volunteers for this task.
• The "ridiculous long footnote" in the Malakhovka, Moscow Oblast article is actually a reference. Should I really lecture anyone on the importance of having referenced information?
• The problem with starting that article "Malakhovka is a Moscow suburb with historic dachas" is that Malakhovka is neither in Moscow, nor is it its suburb, but rather a place that happens to be close to Moscow with Muscovites owning dachas there now and some prominent (or simply rich) Russians owning dachas there in the past. I have no problem with the "historic dachas" part—it is important, but it is already featured more than prominently in the current version, preceding even the official designation which William is so eager to remove.

On the William's proposals, I oppose #1 ("misleading" is a personal opinion; linking to an explanatory article is sufficient; we don't explain unfamiliar terms every single time we use them; set index articles were developed specifically to list the official designations of places of the same name—they have a very limited but a well-defined purpose which has nothing to do with the rest of the discussion here). I oppose #2, because the official designation exists on two levels—the place is either urban or rural, and there are multiple subcategories within both the urban and rural designation. I oppose #3 as it is not the usual approach in Wikipedia, would require an enormous amount of busywork of questionable utility, and require the readers to hunt down the bits they need all over the place, instead of finding them in a familiar location in every article.

Other memebers' thoughts would be greatly appreciated at this point.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 14, 2010; 14:21 (UTC)

Some brief responses to some of Ezhiki's points:

Many of the articles I object to do not start with the "official designation", they start with a poor translation; “рабочие посёлки" does not mean "Work Settlement". Even if it were a good idea to start with the official designation (which I doubt), we don't and probably can't.

We can't eliminate all judgement. "Urban-type" is indeed misleading for many areas classed as that. Accepting a government's misleading designations is itself a judgement. Or should we accept that North Korea is a "Democracy" without question?

Of course we should have references, but those do not need to quote at great length as the Malakhovka example does, just point people to the source.

Malakhovka is a "suburb" as defined in the Wikipedia article on the subject, and as most people understand the term: "residential communities within commuting distance of a city." That it is not in the City of Moscow is irrelevant, suburbs do not even have to be in the same country (some of Geneva's suburbs are in France).

Wikipedia practise is not consistent. Some locality articles start with the official designation, others with descriptions. I propose we adopt the later practice (remembering that in many cases the official designation is a good description), and gradually amend articles where required.

Please others in the group comment.

William MacDougall 07:43, 16 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cwmacdougall (talk • contribs)

William, the point of this very thread is not to continue the discussion between me and you—we have already done that at great length on your talk page. The point of this thread is to gather opinions of what other people think. I am going to respond to the above only for the balance sake:

1. That "work settlement" is a "poor translation" is your personal opinion which for some reason you are trying to promote. No one ever said you are not welcome to suggest an alternative translation which would work equally well for the purposes the current term is used now. Getting rid of a valid term altogether and replacing it with the poetry of "quaint little suburb in the green pastures near Moscow" is not going to solve anything; in fact, it is just such language that will make the article useless in an important aspect.
2. Government classification of the inhabited localities is hardly a "judgement" in the sense you mean it; it is primarily a starting point. The designation in question has historically been used for decades, surviving a regime change. Unlike with North Korea, there is no ulterior motive to promote any political agenda by using the term (c'mon, what exactly is the promotional benefit of "misleadingly" classifying a bunch of places as "urban"?). Also, as long as the term is referenced and it is clear where it comes from and for what purpose it is used, there is no problem with using it. That covers the "democratic" North Korea as well, by the way.
3. References are supposed to be properly formatted; see WP:CITE. It's no surprise that if a reference title is long, the footnote will be long as well. Both Russian and English have to be included because it's nearly impossible to find the source using only the English translation, and it'll be impossible to know what the source even is if only the original Russian is included.
4. Malakhovka is not a suburb "as defined in the suburb article". In that article, the specifics of what a "suburb" is are organized by country, and Russia isn't mentioned even in passing in the text. Opinions exist that the whole Moscow Oblast and even some oblasts neighboring it are "suburbs" of Moscow; it doesn't mean we have to happily go on with that point of view.
5. The "Wikipedia practise is not consistent" statement is patently wrong. Practices regarding articles on geographic locations are supposed to be consistent within the scope of each country, and within the scope of (WP:)Russia the consistency is nearing 100%. Only very general and basic principles are applied across the whole specter of the articles; and it is the area of human geography where the segregation of practices is the most pronounced. Also, the "descriptions" William alludes to are often nothing more than the official designations which just happen to match the terms used in common speech ("city", "town", "village", etc. can be both). As I have pointed out above, "amending the practice" as William suggests would require overhauling thousands of WP:Russia's articles—lots and lots of monkey-work with very questionable (if any) benefits.

—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 16, 2010; 13:44 (UTC)

Does no one else in the Russia group care how we write articles about localities? William MacDougall 14:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

This group seems to be quite dead, so you two are pretty much on your own (I just lurk here). --Illythr (talk) 15:40, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for lurking. I have raised the issue on Naming Conventions so we will see if there is interest there, while Igels quite rightly asked for another opinion which might lead to discussion on my talk page. Thanks, William MacDougall 16:09, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

After taking a look at the arguments above, I can offer the following opinion: When describing a class of similar objects, Wikipedia should stick to sources and be consistent. Because of this, Ezhiki has the advantage here, due to the townships being classified this way in the Russian legislation. While certain townships may have a different description in other sources, no single source covers them all as the Russian laws do. So I feel the best way is to stick to the official classification and link to an article about this classification (in this case, urban-type settlement) where the term can be covered in detail, thus clearing any possible confusion of those who are unfamiliar with it. The simpler description may then follow if available. This seems to be standard practice and quite consistent throughout the various administrative divisions; for example, while a U.S. state is not a state (nor are most counties still ruled by a count) in the main meaning of the term, there is no need to create an individual description for any of them - instead, there's a link to the article that explains what it is. --Illythr (talk) 18:08, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

How does "requested articles" work?

The box at the top of this page lists some "requested articles". However, if you click on "more", it shows entirely different articles. And if you follow the link further to Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Russia it again shows a different set of articles. How exactly does this system work? Where in these 3 places should new requests be nominated? How to get the nominations appear in the box on this page? Offliner (talk) 08:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

They are transcluded from Portal:Russia/Things you can do. A second set exists in Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Russia, which was supposed to be transcluded into Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Other_categorization_schemes#Russia, but isn't. So we have indeed three sets in total. :-) --Illythr (talk) 11:58, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

SPA changing nationalities to "Russian"

Someone here needs to look at the worrying edit history of Jsqqq777 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). He has been a single-purpose account who, for some time now, has been changing nationalities on biography articles from, e.g., Ukrainian or Polish to Russian. He has already been blocked for this activity, and a number of editors have approached him about the issue. He currently seems to be dismantling the categories Category:Ukrainian mathematicians and Category:Ukrainian physicists without any discussion. I would like to know if there is really consensus that anyone born in the Russian empire should be called "Russian", and that no one born in Ukraine after the 19th century Russian occupation and before the breakup of the Soviet union should be called "Ukrainian". There is a related discussion going on about this at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Vladimir_Drinfeld. I thought this project should be consulted for input before escalating this to a WP:RFCU or a WP:ANI thread, since the editing pattern seems on the surface to be disruptive. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

To me the more worrying concern is listing people as having a Ukrainian nationality who were never alive at a time when Ukraine was a nation. It seems like historical revisionism to me. For sake of argument, possibly you might say that being Ukrainian is not a matter of citizenship but of ethnicity; but if this is to be the case then we would need verifiable sourcing that the person actually was of the stated ethnicity and that their ethnicity is specifically relevant to what they are notable for, per Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. Also, your wording is rather one-sided: maybe you should instead ask, if there is really consensus that anyone born in what is now Ukraine should be called "Ukrainian". —David Eppstein (talk) 00:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

David, as you know Wikipedia also works by establishing a consensus, particularly for changes like these that affect large numbers of articles. As far as I can tell, no discussion has ever taken place whether we should be doing this until now, aside from strictly dissenting voices on the editor's talk page and elsewhere. Moreover, the editor in question appears to be perfectly willing to continue to edit war to see his own opinion prevail (case in point: [11][12][13], [14][15]), and he has already been blocked once for precisely this issue. Single-purpose accounts that make these sort of edits en masse, without discussion, and in spite of warnings and blocks, raise the red flag of fanaticism, and clearly are disruptive, and not generally tolerated under Wikipedia policy. I agree that there is a case to be made on either side of this discussion, but that is a discussion that should have taken place before this massive number of edits, not afterwards. Finally, I think our disagreement here may conceal a certain amount of agreement: I favor a case-by-case approach to editing, in which reliable sources are accurately represented. This seems to be consistent with your view as well. But this wave of editing smacks of ideology rather than careful weighing of available sources, and I think deserves scrutiny from the broader community. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:55, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I definitely agree that we should consider individual cases, based on reliable sources, rather than making these decisions en masse. Vadim G. Vizing‎ clearly should be listed as Ukrainian, for instance. He may have been educated in Siberia, but he was born in the Ukraine, struggled to return to the Ukraine, did return, spent most of his career in the Ukraine, and has continued to live there after Ukraine became a country. Mark Kac is another very questionable case, though, perhaps even more so than Drinfeld: what about him is Ukrainian? The town he was born in is now Ukrainian, but at his birth it was part of the Russian Empire and for most of the time he lived there it was Polish. He grew up as a Pole and was educated as a Pole. The fact that his birthplace is Ukrainian now is an accident of history related to the Soviet annexation in 1939 and has nothing to do with Kac, who was by then already in the US. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:34, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with both your statements (about Vadim G. Vizing‎ and Mark Kac). Note that the entry Mark Kac is protected from further editing, though.Jsqqq777 (talk) 19:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I found changing Fedor Bogatyrchuk from Ukraine to Soviet a bit disconcerting considering he was in various Ukranian nationalist organizations and sided with the Nazis against Russia. I think the model to follow is given by Colin Maclaurin which says UK citizenship and Scottish nationality in his infobox. I also had a look at William Rowan Hamilton but it doesn't give either citizenship or nationality, if it was done this way I guess UK citizen and Irish nationality would be right. According to Jsqqq777 's criteria though he shouldn't even be described as Irish since Ireland didn't exist as a separate country during his lifetime. Dmcq (talk) 07:51, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

As has been already discussed, there are no hard criteria here, only case-by-case analysis. For instance, Fedor Bogatyrchuk should indeed be listed as Ukrainian. Jsqqq777 (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I was proposing a way forward, not asking you to behave like you are an arbiter of what's okay or ignoring what I say. Dmcq (talk) 21:35, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I am behaving as a participant of the discussion, same as you. Jsqqq777 (talk) 22:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

You are an editor who was blocked and causes disruption despite warnings and needs to change their behaviour. I am pointing out a possible way of doing the job without ausing so much trouble, or are you just interested in causing disruption? Dmcq (talk) 23:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

As (hopefully) yourself, I am interested in correct and verifiable statements in Wikipedia. Perhaps if you formulate your proposed way explicitly, it would be easier to discuss it.Jsqqq777 (talk) 23:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

If there is some possible problems I think the model to follow is given by Colin Maclaurin which says UK citizenship and Scottish nationality in his infobox. That has chopped out some extra statements from what I said above, is it explicit enough for you now? Dmcq (talk) 23:54, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for chopping out extra statements -- yes, it is explicit enough for me. I think it would be untenable to have a unified model (hard rule) for all the cases, so it'd more productive to examine each case on its own merits.Jsqqq777 (talk) 23:59, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Well lets try a simple case then. Ff you came across Colin Maclaurin and he just had nationality Scottish would you think it was right to remove the Scottish and replace it with UK or British? Dmcq (talk) 10:01, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

No, I would not.Jsqqq777 (talk) 16:07, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I think that should about cover all the people who one might consider Ukranian, mainly in that they spoke Ukranian as their main language I would guess. Dmcq (talk) 17:27, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

If a person indeed (verifiably) uses/used Ukrainian as his/her main language, I personally would not have any problems in labeling him/her Ukrainian. Obviously, that's just my opinion.Jsqqq777 (talk) 18:58, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Russia

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as the banner of this project is on the article talk page. I have found a number of concerns which you can see at Talk:Russia/GA2. I have de-listed the article but it can be re-nominated at WP:GAN when these concerns are addressed.. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:38, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Kengir uprising FAR

I have nominated Kengir uprising for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. JJ98 (Talk) 06:31, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Council of People's Commissars and Council of Ministers of the USSR are the same

Harrypotter, a well-established user says the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Ministers were to different articles, therefor the commissariats and ministries should have their own respective articles. This is false, the Soviet law says the Council of People's Commissars was "transformed", but never say they dissolved the Council of People's Commissars and created a new executive branch, known as the Council of Ministers of the USSR. It says transformed, and it says that for a reason. When the law says it was transformed, and modern scholars say renamed, the people's commissariats and the ministry should have one article, not two. Second, sources are already scarce, and the duty and responsibilities, organisation and the structure of the People's Commissariats and Soviet ministries remained fundamentally unchanged in their 70 years of existence. The only major changes came under Mikhail Gorbachev, but by that time the organisation was known as the Ministry, and not People's Commissariat. I want to reach an agreement with fellow wikiproject participants to stop Harrypotter from creating articles, with text copied from the Ministry article, and create a nearly identical page for the commissariats. Can somebody help me with this? --TIAYN (talk) 16:26, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

More eyes needed at 2010 Chechen Parliament attack

More eyes needed at 2010 Chechen Parliament attack. A misguided editor inserted heaps of Kavkazcenter material in the article, etc. Offliner (talk) 17:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Death anomalies

Hi, We have a number of anomalies where people are dead on RU wiki but not here on EN wiki. In some cases it would really help if a Russian speaker could check Russian language sources for the individuals concerned. Would anyone here be willing to lend a hand? Incidentally if any of you are active on RU wiki, it would be nice to get them to request an anomaly report at meta:Death_anomalies_table as there are bound to be some articles on RU wiki which still have people as living when on another language we have them as dead. ϢereSpielChequers 16:24, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Some of the anomalies seem to be due to different approaches. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi's article, for example, says that he potentially may still be alive, while the Russian wiki simply lists him as dead. With Brothers Hildebrandt, one of the brothers died in 2006, which is why the Russian Wikipedia lists the article in its "Died in 2006" category; the English Wikipedia mentions one of the brothers' death but assigns the article to no such category. I suspect a lot of discrepancies are going to be of this nature. Any suggestions what to do when the discrepancy is not obvious?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 22, 2010; 16:39 (UTC)

Hi Ezhiki, the report isn't ideal for dealing with articles about two people rather than one, especially if one is dead and the other isn't. Where we have one article describing someone as missing presumed dead and the other as missing then we also get anomalies, though sometimes they can be fixed by adding some sourced info to one or other article. We have several anomalies against FR wiki re early twentieth century sportspeople about whom nothing is known since they were in their twenties. The French assume someone who would be in their nineties is dead and we assume they are alive unless they'd be the oldest person recorded. But I was hoping for help on ones like Richard Goldstone (ru:Умершие в 1938 году) who looks to me like a category error on RU wiki. Valeri Dikaryov (ru:Умершие в 2001 году), Valeri Kravchenko (ru:Умершие в 1995 году), Vasili Postnov (ru:Умершие в 2009 году), Vladimir Ulanov (ru:Умершие в 2000 году) and Zakaria Mohieddin (ru:Умершие в 2009 году / uk:Померли 2009) Most of whom probably are dead but we may need Russian sources to confirm it. Regards ϢereSpielChequers 17:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

OK then. I have fixed Goldstone (his dob was recorded in the dod field of the infobox, which generates the dob/dod categories using those fields). I'll go through the rest of people in your list as well, but the problem is that the Russian Wikipedia is notorious for not citing its sources (Dikaryov is one example). Many articles would have the death date, but no source, which makes the whole endeavor mostly moot. My recommendation would be to leave just those articles for which the dod is sourced, and seek sources for other discrepancies elsewhere.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 22, 2010; 19:11 (UTC)

Thanks Ezhik, as I said we've done 90% of these and the ones left are often the most difficult. If the Russian article has a sourced death date then usually someone has tried to understand it with Google translate. But I'm hoping that as well as fixing anomalies like Goldstone, this project might have people with access to Russian language sources which I'm hoping the RU wiki articles had used even if they didn't cite them. ϢereSpielChequers 20:46, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

FV Athena

I've created the FV Athena article. Are the linked pages from this website relevant to the history of this ship, which appears to have suffered its third fire today. Text is all in Russian, so it's a bit beyond me and Google translate. Mjroots (talk) 11:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:21, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (National Research University)

Perhaps some of you would be able to help at Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (National Research University) where there is a dispute about wikilinking of dates, inclusion or exclusion from categories, the name of the university and how it is expressed, and other matters. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Some same problems have appeared in some other articles about Russian universities (see Special:Contributions/Ksaine). Alex Spade (talk) 09:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Alex Spade let me understand, what we discussing here? My contributions or the real questions/problems at the page? Rewrite please your comment/message or delete it: for example give more specific wikilinks you interested in. Thank You. Any Your contributions without answer to this message - and I'll delete it myself or talk admins about deletion. --Ksaine (user talk · user contributions) 14:41, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest, you actions in the articles about Russian universities (renanimg / categorisation / wikilinks / external links (quantity/quality) / acronyms / commons links) must be reviewed by WikiProject Russia editors. Alex Spade (talk) 09:04, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Praskovya Ivanovskaya

The article Praskovya Ivanovskaya has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references found a few minor mentions of the subject in published (gBooks) works, also a Russian language artice is not found using the given spelling "Прасковья Ивановская". Fails WP:N and WP:V

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:09, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

ru:Национальный исследовательский ядерный университет «МИФИ» → ru:Московский инженерно-физический институт (Национальный исследовательский ядерный университет)

Please, somebody rename this article as it done in Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (National Research Nuclear University). First naming is brend or “also known as”. The both names are official and shown at official website (in Russian) official website. See, the name «Московский инженерно-физический институт (Национальный исследовательский ядерный университет)» uses here: first top line: «Устав государственного образовательного учреждения высшего профессионального образования «„Московский инженерно-физический институт (Национальный исследовательский ядерный университет)“»
The problem is one: I'm block at Russian Wikipedia and can't change it myself.
Thank You. --Ksaine (user talk · user contributions) 17:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

• Have you seen changes to University charter from May 12, 2009? Alex Spade (talk) 09:09, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
• At any rate, English Wikipedia is not a good place to request making changes in ru_wiki. Russian Wikipedia is not in scope of this WikiProject. You should wait for your block to expire and then request changes in an appropriate venue there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 15, 2010; 14:59 (UTC)

Replacing Russian nationality with location or company link

As I've explained here, I think we should replace "X is a Russian company/product/technology" with "X is a company based in Moscow, Russia" or "X is a technology developed by Y (+company wikilink)". This would bring Russian articles in line with American ones. In American products, like Boeing 737, the nationality is not mentioned in the lead, so why should it be mentioned in articles about Russian products? I think this is a bias that should be fixed. Offliner (talk) 14:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Will somebody pls look at Kalduny

I'm danish, writing on danish wikipedia and are participating in the Danish variant of WikiProject Lithuania, and wants to translate the artickle about Kalduny. But .... I am sorry to say, this artickle is of so low quality that I will have to rewrite it totally! Pls. look at my critic on the talkpage! PerV (talk) 12:32, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Help regarding Kamo

I am trying to determine whether Kamo was actually buried in Lenin Square. I thought someone related to this project could find a source to support this assertion. Any help would be most appreciated. Remember (talk) 15:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this helps (do an inline search for the paragraph containing "1903"), but that's all I could find after a quick search.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 2, 2010; 17:57 (UTC)

That was very helpful (once I used google translate). Turns out he is buried in Puskin square and not Lenin Square. Interesting. Remember (talk) 18:32, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

It's actually not translated "Pushikin Square", but rather "Pushkin Park", or public garden... And the Lenin Square article mentions a bust to Pushkin in the vicinity of Kamo's grave, so perhaps that's nearby? Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 2, 2010; 19:12 (UTC)

Could someone help, please?

I've written an article on Ozerov's 1970 movie Liberation (Osvobozhdenie). Would someone care to review it further (many of the sources are in Russian)? Many thanks. Bahavd Gita (talk) 20:40, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Removing the Cyrillic version of names from the lede of Russian biography pages

It has long been standard practice to give the Cyrillic version of Russian names in the first sentence of Wikipedia biographical articles. Some editors have recently moved to change this and put the Cyrillic in a footnote instead. They already have altered Sergei Rachmaninoff, Leo Tolstoy and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky accordingly. Since this has the potential to affect thousands of articles I thought it would be better to get wider input from editors most involved in these pages. There is currently a discussion of the issue at Talk:Sergei Rachmaninoff. Cheers. --Folantin (talk) 13:56, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

SORT

SORT has been requested to be renamed Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, see Talk:SORT

65.95.13.158 (talk) 10:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

possible hoax?

Ayaks "a hypersonic aircraft program started in the Soviet Union and currently under development in the Russian Federation". Is this credible? Sources are in Russian, so we need either a Russian speaker or someone with some technical knowledge. It may be elements of hyperbole added to something true.--Scott Mac 20:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The book "Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems: Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration" is available on Google books. It has some info about the project beginning from page 185. Nanobear (talk) 21:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Need a translation of a copyright notice

Resolved

Hey, would any who speaks Russian be so kind to comment on this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Copyright_problems#Rybachy_Peninsula. I think the google translate version of the copyright notice is pretty much on the spot, but some confirmation would be nice. Yoenit (talk) 18:52, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Ezhiki Yoenit (talk) 19:50, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Johannes Rech

I am working on an article on a Danish painter, Johannes Rach who worked a few years (1747-50) at the court in Saint Petersburg before continuing to the Netherlands. I would like to identify some of his work in Russia to illustrate that part of his career so I would very much appreciate it if someone could tell me where to look. Any other info on his time in Russia would also be of interest of course.Ramblersen (talk) 08:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for input at the reference desk

There is a question waiting for an answer at the Humanities desk: "Russian Orthodox question: "first" and "second" resurrections". (For the newly created article on Nikolai Obukhov). Thanks in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 10:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

request for english translation of russian headlines

hello,

International reactions to the 2011 Egyptian protests has three (at moment) citations from russian-language sources. could someone from this project possibly assist in providing an english translation of these headlines? a simple search for "in russian" should flag them. (some other citation characteristics are missing as well. for example, in one case, i couldn't quite determine source and/or date of publication).

thanks in advance. --96.232.126.111 (talk) 01:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

•  Done GreyHood ^Talk 20:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

FL nom: List of heads of state of the Soviet Union

The List of heads of state of the Soviet Union is currently a FL nom, would any of you care to review the list? If so, thanks in advance. --TIAYN (talk) 18:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Nice list. Unfortunately I'm in no position to make a review, since my knowledge of the Soviet governmental system is not that great. GreyHood ^Talk 20:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Simon Kuznets

There is a dispute at Talk:University of Kharkiv about whether or not the noble-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets was a student of the University of Kharkiv. It would benefit from the input of knowledgeable third-parties. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 15:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Dispute over reliability of Russian language source

There is a dispute at WP:RSN#Lebedev Institute of Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FIAN) / Russian НЕТДА ("NETDA") news agency over a source that is in Russian, which non-Russian speakers may have difficulty evaluating. Delia Peabody (talk) 15:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Most popular pages

I believe a link to the most popular pages list (Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Popular pages) should be inserted to the front page of WP:RUSSIA. I've already had to look for this link several times; it's not easy to find. How can I insert it the to front page? Nanobear (talk) 16:33, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Depends on which section you want to insert it to.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 15, 2011; 16:53 (UTC)

I think the first section ("Project") is probably the best place. It already has links to the talk page and to the list of members, so a link to most popular pages would fit in well. Nanobear (talk) 17:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

That section can be changed by editing Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/leftpanel.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 15, 2011; 17:40 (UTC)

Thanks. I have inserted the link. Nanobear (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Time in Russia

Category:Time_in_Russia now has the 16 tz database zones located in Russia with stubs. They are also listed at Time in Russia.

Template:RussiaTimeZone could maybe make use of the utc offsets stored in Template:Time zone/utc offset.

DST offsets would theoretically need to be added, but since Russia stops DST, simply something like

|[[kaliningrad oblast]]=[[Kaliningrad Time|USZ1/USZ1S]] ([[UTC+2]]/+3) replace with |[[kaliningrad oblast]]=Europe/Kaliningrad can be done and the templates using Template:RussiaTimeZone be adjusted. Or a new in-between template is created to deliver content for display, i.e. one for mapping divisions to tz zones and one for display.

Additionally would be nice if more references could be added to the stubs. Time in Russia (talk) 16:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, if you are so inclined, you are welcome to amend {{RussiaTimeZone}} yourself. Just put in some if statements which would return the old values before the date on which changes take effect and the new values after that date (of course, the if statements will need to be removed after that date as they will no longer serve any purpose then, but this approach guarantees that our articles switch from displaying old information to new information smoothly and at the right moment, too).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2011; 17:06 (UTC)

Ping: Talk:Time_in_Russia#Issues_with_tz_time_zone_infos Time in Russia (talk) 12:56, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Source used at Joseph Schenck

Hi, could some of you please take a look at Talk:Joseph Schenck#Birthplace question? This .ru website was also previously used (has since been reverted) as a source for some info in Marilyn Monroe. Thanks, I would appreciate your input. Shearonink (talk) 17:38, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Task forces for the project

This is an important development and I hope that at least some active members of the project will comment on the proposals below.

Recently, we (me and Ezhiki) have set up the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force. This is WP:Task force, that is a topic-specific part of a larger WikiProject, in this case WikiProject Russia. A well-developed task force page looks like this, but of course it may have a very different decoration style and slightly different content structure. Task forces allow:

• getting together a topic-specific workgroup of people and creating better environment for joint work on the chosen subtopic of the WikiProject's scope
• accumulating and managing the joint to-do-list; this can help both the established editors and the newcomers, showing what parts of the topic are especially underdeveloped and what interesting articles could be created or improved
• subcategorising the articles of the WikiProject into broadly-defined topic sets (it's performed by adding an additional parameter to the WikiProject tag, see for example Talk:Memorial Museum of Astronautics)
• automatic creating of topic-specific lists of good/featured content and popular pages (see, for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/United States military history task force/Popular pages)

The coverage of Russian topics on Wikipedia could be greatly improved if the editors share more of their knowledge of what needs to be done. If you want to start some of these task forces right now, all you need is following:

• copy the basic structure of sections from Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force
• replace the S&T icon with a good icon representing the task force scope
• in the Scope and Goals sections, change science and technology to the task force topics
• decorate the page with images in a way you find appropriate
• write down to the to-do list whatever articles you think should be created or improved
• watch the page, occasionally attract new users for the task force, and tag the talk pages of the Russian articles you come around with WikiProject Russia tag (adding the task force parameter, for example "langlit=yes")

It won't take much time (unless you would like to create as large to-do list as I'm doing for S&T, but that's not necessarily needed, and I've been accumulating that list for over a year).

When I finish with making the to-do list for the "Science and technology in Russia task force", I'm planning to proceed to the economy task force, since I have a huge to-do list for this topic as well. And I think that eventually we should have about a dozen more task forces, covering all Russian topics. I believe that the following pages should be created for the full coverage of Russia:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Economy of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/History of Russia task force (military history included)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Military of Russia task force (military history included)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force (governmental system, state symbols and foreign relations included)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Subdivisions and settlements of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Geography and nature of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics and peoples of Russia task force (health topic included)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Religion in Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Languages and literature of Russia task force (philosophy included)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Visual arts in Russia task force (architecture, painting, sculpture, arts and crafts)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Performance arts in Russia task force (music, folk dances and ballet, theater, opera, cinema)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Mass media in Russia task force (newspapers, journalism, radio, TV, Internet)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Sports and games in Russia task force (gambling, videogames etc. included)

Scopes of task forces may partially coincide. What's really important for these scheme is to allow per topic sorting of all the articles already in the WikiProject Russia. I'm willing to enlist myself to that task (sorting and assessing WP:RUSSIA articles with the task force parameters), but before starting the work, I kindly ask other editors the following questions:

• Does the proposed scheme of task forces cover all possible Russia-related subjects and articles?
• Perhaps some of the proposed task forces should better be split, or, on the contrary, merged?
• Perhaps some names of the proposed task force should be changed to better variants?

Also, please write if you would like to sign up for some of the proposed task forces (doesn't matter how much work on the related topic you really expect to do).

And finally, I should write why it is important to create task forces now and all together, not one by one over a long period of time (waiting, for example, while there would be more users interested in each specific topic and willing to create a joint workgroup). Basically, I'm going to search through the entire set of 21,000 articles in the WikiProject Russia and tag some of them for Economy and S&T task forces, which are my prime interests. But since I'll try pedantically to take a glance at every single page in the WikiProject Russia, it would be better if ALL task forces were already created and their parameters enacted, so that I could perform the task of sorting all the articles in one go and for all topics, and no other users would have to repeat such a walkthrough every time a new specific task force is created (there is no need to waste to much man-hours that could be saved for other tasks). Also, by searching through the existing WP:RUSSIA articles and discovering important but underdeveloped pages, one could gather the material for the task forces' to-do lists.

I'd like, of course, if some people help me with the tagging and to-do lists expanding, but what is important right now is agreement on the scheme of the future task forces division. So I'm planning to wait for your remarks, if there are any, and then start the work. GreyHood ^Talk 22:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

By the way there is one more Russia-related task force ready:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Russian and Soviet military history task force GreyHood ^Talk 15:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I really didn't want to be the first to comment, but it seems it's inevitable :) I'm really of two minds about the task forces. On one hand, considering how little interest/participation the whole of WP:RUSSIA currently attracts, I just don't see a compelling reason why it should change if all we do is add another level of organization. For me personally, for example, there is nothing to be gained by having a task force about Russian subdivisions (the area here I spend most of my time on)—my approach of organizing and planning the workflow is too chaotic and confusing to be dumped into the "to-do" section on the taskforce page, and I don't see any other benefits. On the other hand, having mulled over the taskforce approach in the past few days, I admit that I don't really see any drawbacks. We are adding some overhead, true, but after the taskforces are set up, the maintenance efforts should be minimal. And while the short-term benefits are probably also going to be minimal, in the long run the effort might just pay off in one way or another.

Regarding the proposed list of taskforces, I would prefer to see them to be slightly more generic (i.e., a Geography taskforce instead of both "Geography and nature" and "Subdivisions and settlements", or a Humanities taskforce instead of languages, literature, visual arts, performing arts, etc.), but in the end it probably does not matter much. Whatever structure is proposed, it can always be done differently, and there will always be some aspects that work marvelously and some that fail miserably. However, until we try something, we won't ever find out what works and what doesn't :)

This all said, it would be truly swell if somebody else also shared his/her thoughts on Greyhood's proposal.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 15, 2011; 18:50 (UTC)

I share your concerns about the level of participation, but it's indeed the case where we won't know anything for certain until we try. In the long run, the infrastructure of task forces will be helpful for someone anyway. I'm looking with envy at Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/List of Canadian WikiProjects, portals and main articles. Surely, now we have no resources to produce a similar well-developed structure of subprojects. However there are many things we could do in a reasonable time, especially while WP:RUSSIA has just 21,000 articles in its scope, which is relatively low number when compared with other major national WikiProjects.

Also, I think that we'll see more editors of Russian articles in the end of this year, due two the international interest produced by the legislatory and presidential elections in Russia. Even more wider interest will be produced by the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi (similar to the rise of interest in Canada due to the 2010 Winter Olympics), and I think that it could be very helpful for Russia coverage on WP if we create the task forces as well as identify and improve the most important articles by that time. GreyHood ^Talk 22:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Initially I also thought about more generic task forces, but finally I came to a conclusion that such topics as "Culture" or "Humanities" are way too generic, and there is a good chance that over half of Russia-related articles on Wikipedia fall into Culture topic (especially with sports included). So I think that such divisions as "Visual arts", "Performance arts" are more reasonable, while they are also quite generic groupings. The combination of "Subdivisions and settlements" with "Geography and nature" may indeed have some sense, but just see how the beginning list of popular pages for such a task force would look:

Russia

Moscow

Eurasia

Bear

Polar bear

Gray wolf

Siberia

Siberian Husky

Saint Petersburg

Moose

Caucasus

Tundra

North Pole

Black Sea

Beaver

Taiga

...

I've taken the settlements and geographical names from WP:RUSSIA/PP and animals from WP:CANADA/PP, since Canada has a nature similar to Russia in many ways. And I think that this shows why it is better to split "Subdivisions and settlements" (Human geography) and "Geography and nature" (Physical geography) between two separate task forces. The names of cities and oblasts would look just too alien in a mass of animal and plant names. GreyHood ^Talk 22:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I see your point about physical and political geography not mixing well, although I would think that bears, beavers, and wolves would be more "zoology" than "geography", and since zoology is a science, they should be included under "science and technology", hehe :)

Another thought is that we could, of course, spend lots of time devising the best possible taskforce structure ever, but in the end it is unlikely to matter much. What doesn't attract any attention will die a slow death on its own, and what does attract attention can be tweaked and re-tweaked as necessary by the people who actually participate. With that in mind, I would still like to propose a slightly different taskforce structure, and if there are no strong objections, we can start implementing it:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force (implemented)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Economy of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/History of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Military of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Physical geography of Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Political geography of Russia task force (includes subdivisions and inhabited localities)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Religion in Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Mass media in Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Sports and games in Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics of Russia task force (I took out "and peoples" as that's implied by "demographics" anyway)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Literature in Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Visual arts in Russia task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Performance arts in Russia task force

However, I'm still not sure where things like zoology, botany, and other non-technology sciences, as well as things like stamps, medals, and coins should go. Thoughts?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 17:13 (UTC)

Stamps, medals and coins could go to History, since philately, faleristics and numismatics are considered auxiliary sciences of history.

Zoology and botany is a more difficult case. Zoologists, botanists, scientific institutions etc. should be covered by S&T, indeed. But animals and plants of Russia should be either covered by a specific task force (Biodiversity of Russia), or united with Physical geography.

I agree with the simple name "Demographics of Russia task force", but having just "Literature of Russia task force" raises questions of what to do with the Languages of Russia. GreyHood ^Talk 17:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to mention the languages. In my mind, they got lumped together with the "non-technological" sciences such as zoology and botany. Which makes me think that we need another taskforce to fill the gap—Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Social sciences in Russia perhaps? Of course, history, a chunk of politics, geography, and demographics would also qualify for this, but maybe it's not that big of a problem? Even between the taskforces in your original proposal there is some overlap.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 18:19 (UTC)

Hm, don't think it is a good idea. Well, we have quite a big number of articles in the Category:Languages of Russia. But what else would we have in Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Social sciences in Russia non-covered by other task forces (S&T, economy, history, politics and demographics). It seems natural to join Languages and literature into one task force. We may even call it *Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Language and literature of Russia task force, with Language in singular. It's also a common practice in academic institutions to study both languages and literature together (it is the field of philology). Another option is to unite languages with demographics, but I don't think that the articles about Russian idioms would look good amid the articles on Russian demographics. GreyHood ^Talk 18:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

One more thing about geography is such topic as Russian explorers. It's one of my favourite ones. I'm not sure that explorers fit well with the name "Physical geography". Of course they could be covered by History and sometimes Military or S&T. But still it is a topic that has clear relation to Geography and it is very important topic for such a country as Russia. GreyHood ^Talk 18:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Just to summarize the problematic divisions:

Language/literature

• Option 1: Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Language and literature of Russia task force
• Option 2: Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Literature of Russia task force and Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Languages of Russia task force

Geography

• Option 1: Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Political geography of Russia task force, Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Physical geography of Russia task force, Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Biodiversity of Russia task force, with explorers in the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/History of Russia task force
• Option 2: Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Human geography of Russia task force (see Human geography for scope - this includes political and economic geography, tourism etc.), Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Physical geography and biodiversity of Russia task force and explorers in the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/History of Russia task force
• Option 3: Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Subdivisions and settlements of Russia task force and Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Geography and nature of Russia task force (the latter includes physical geography, biodiversity and explorers)

I strongly recommend to unite Language and Literature. In the case of geography I'm not sure, however, which variant is better. Maybe there are some other options? GreyHood ^Talk 18:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Hm, after some consideration I think I should propose also to split Demographics into Demographics and Ethnic cultures:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics of Russia task force (or Demographics and society): demographics, health, social issues etc.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Ethnic cultures of Russia task force (or Ethnography): national cousines, traditions, arts and crafts

These two proposals do overlap of course, but mostly in the names of ethnicities. Ethnic cultures task force also should include top language articles (without idioms and further linguistics) and folklore (but not modern literature and anecdotes). GreyHood ^Talk 19:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

If as you say we have a good number of language-related articles, perhaps it would make sense to make Languages into a separate taskforce? After all, one of the purposes of the taskforces is to work on the existing material, so if we have a lot of material in one particular category, it would make sense to have a taskforce to work with it, even if the taskforce's scope doesn't fit neatly into a would-be ideal structure?

Regarding the explorers, I actually see no problem putting them into the Physical geography bucket. After all, the explorers explore the natural features, not the administrative borders :) They could also be placed under Science.

To summarize, I'm for option 2 for lang & lit and am OK with options 1 and 2 in geography (although I think mentioning "biodiversity" in the taskforce name is redundant).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 20:13 (UTC)

Well, OK, lets split Language and Literature, and let's have Human (political) geography and Physical geography (including topography, climate, biodiversity and explorers). What do you think about splitting Demographics (or Demographics and society) and Ethnography? GreyHood ^Talk 20:29, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

About that I am indifferent. Now, how long do you want this discussion to stay up before starting to create the taskforce pages? And who'll be creating them? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 20:44 (UTC)

Well, then I hope we'll create Demographics and Ethnography as separate task forces.

The discussion has stayed here already for a week, and I think that's enough. Of course, we could personally ask some valuable contributors to add their opinions on the matter, but any issue with scope and naming may be tweaked and fixed later. If some people would arrive sometime and ask for more specific topics, I think there'll be no problem in splitting such topics from more generic task forces.

As for creating the pages, I'd prefer to use the same scheme as with S&T (and I hope Nanobear will agree with that).

• 1) You create the pages with their names, basic sections, categories and image icons. I can help finding the icons if it turns out to be difficult task.
• 2) You add new parameters to the Template:WikiProject Russia.
• 3) Then I'll add details to scope and goals of the task forces, though I hope that in the cases of Human geography and Politics you and Nanobear will do this part.
• 4) Then I'll add my own old to-do lists to the Economy, History, Physical geography, and Visual arts task forces. Nanobear adds his to-do list for Politics when it's ready, and hopefully you add something to Human geography.
• 5) Then we start assessing existing WP:RUSSIA articles with task force parameters, and if we find some important but underdeveloped articles while doing this, we just add these articles to the relevant to-do list. We may start task force assessment right after the point 2) of this plan, though I hope it won't take too much time for us to deal with the point 3).

Do you like this scheme? GreyHood ^Talk 21:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. I would leave this discussion up for a couple more days, though, in case someone takes interest in the responses added in the past few days. That is, unless you can't afford waiting a couple more days...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 21:32 (UTC)

OK, but usually you are off-wiki on weekends, and in case you'll get your well-deserved rest this weekend as well, could we please wait just until the evening of Friday at your place? GreyHood ^Talk 21:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not so much a matter of rest as it is of other responsibilities. I should be able to start this on Monday, though (unless I get buried with unexpected work, which has been known to happen). Would it work for you? If not, then I can start tomorrow or on Friday morning.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 16, 2011; 21:53 (UTC)

Friday morning is the best choice for me (hope you could create all 15 pages on that day). On weekend I'll be on-wiki and I'd like to start working on goals and scopes before the next week. Thank you in advance. It will be really great if we have all those task forces ready for assessment work. GreyHood ^Talk 22:08, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Friday it is then. In the meanwhile, could you, please, compile the final list of the taskforces today? I'm not seeing fifteen in the lists above.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2011; 16:46 (UTC)

I've placed the list at the bottom of the section. GreyHood ^Talk 17:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've made the list into a subsection (to keep it separate from the discussion) and added the names of the parameters to use with the assessment banners. You are, of course, welcome to comment on them or outright correct them; especially the one for performance arts :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 17, 2011; 17:57 (UTC)

I think the task forces are a good idea. There are lots of editors who interested only in a particular area of WP:RUSSIA. Pointing out the well-written page of a task force to these editors may well encourage them to contribute more. Currently, WP:RUSSIA is too general and too boring (in the view of these editors). Asking these editors to join WP:RUSSIA is therefore unlikely to bring positive results. During my time in Wikipedia, I have often been annoyed by the lack of a good, comprehensive Russia to-do list. While compiling an initial version of the politics task force to-do list, I already got a better idea of what should be done. I think the task forces could well encourage current editors, and even attract completely new editors to Russia-related articles. Nanobear (talk) 20:05, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The list of task forces:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and education in Russia task force [sci=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Technology and engineering in Russia task force [tech=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Economy of Russia task force [econ=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/History of Russia task force [hist=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Military of Russia task force [mil=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force [pol=]  Done
• File:RusSatDec.png Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Physical geography of Russia task force [physgeo=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Human geography of Russia task force [humgeo=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Religion in Russia task force [relig=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Mass media in Russia task force [media=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Sports and games in Russia task force [sports=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics and ethnography of Russia task force [ethno=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Language and literature of Russia task force [lit=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Visual arts in Russia task force [art=]  Done
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Performing arts in Russia task force [perform=]  Done

That's it. GreyHood ^Talk 17:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Haha, nice parameter name for performance arts, especially in the modern context. But let's respect the glorious history and change it a bit. GreyHood ^Talk 18:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, I've simplified few more parameters. GreyHood ^Talk 18:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, done. All we need now is participants :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 16:31 (UTC)

OK, a problem. It seems that the assessment banner itself can only support five taskforces, and the section with the additional hooks can accommodate ten more. This leaves the Performing arts in Russia task force unsupported. We can still have the taskforce, of course, but we'll probably have to dump the visual and performing arts into one cat.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 16:46 (UTC)

Thanks for creating the pages! I think its better to merge Languages and Literature (parameter "lit=" is good enough, but "Language" should be mentioned in the task force name), since the scope of Visual arts + Performing arts will be too huge and too mixed. Also, I've just realised that the scope of the Military task force will mostly coincide with Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Russian and Soviet military history task force, unless we reserve the new Military task force specifically for the modern military. In a different case, we could do without the military task force completely, but then we would have to support Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Russian and Soviet military history task force in the banner. What do you think? GreyHood ^Talk 17:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Good point about the military taskforce. I should be able to tweaks the banner so it points to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Russian and Soviet military history task force for mil=yes, but that's probably pointless (if we have to use mil=yes, we might as well add {{WPMILHIST}} (with Russian-task-force=yes) instead. So perhaps the easiest thing to do is to drop the Military of Russia taskforce altogether, in which case we won't need to make any changes to the rest. What do you think?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 17:09 (UTC)

Hm, if {{WPMILHIST}} with "Russian-task-force=yes" will have the same visual effect (WP:RUSSIA banner with a specific task force), that's good. If not, I'd prefer better to unite Languages and literature. GreyHood ^Talk 17:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't quite understand what you mean. Take a look at the MILHIST banner on Talk:Battle of Kursk. Does that work for you or do you still think we should merge lang & lit?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 17:32 (UTC)

Well, I see how it works now. And I think it is better to merge Language and literature and incorporate Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Russian and Soviet military history task force into the banner, for mil=yes parameter. GreyHood ^Talk 17:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, done. Hopefully I didn't screw anything up. One thing about pointing our Military taskforce to theirs is that WPMILHIST has a customized banner, which has separate categories for high-quality articles (FA, GA, etc.) but not for those from the bottom of the feeder. In our banner (which only uses standard features), we can either support the whole assessment scale (all the way down to Stubs), or not support it at all. I chose the latter—it works for us, and I don't see that it breaks anything for them (although it doesn't really help them either). Anyway, let me know if you see anything malfunctioning or odd. With jobs of this scale copy-paste errors are bound to creep in. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 18:12 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing all this. However, there is one more thing - choosing better and more Russia-specific icons for the task forces. I've used yours, which are Russia-specific, and have added some more. GreyHood ^Talk 18:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I didn't really pay much attention to the icons, grabbing the first reasonable-looking ones that I stumbled upon :) Yours above are of course better. Feel free to replace whatever icons you think could use replacing and let me know when you are done with all of them at which time I'll update icon links in the banner (the template is protected, so an admin will need to change them). Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 18, 2011; 18:31 (UTC)

Well, just in case you haven't noticed the message on your talk page: Russia-specific icons are ready by now, though of course we may always try to find and implement better ones. GreyHood ^Talk 22:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I've replaced the icons in the assessment banner. I've also changed the icon for "visual arts" to File:Solovej.jpg, because the one you had showed too many churches, which made it easy to confuse with the taskforce for religion. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 14:35 (UTC)

Fair point about the possible confusion with religion, but what's more important here is how an icon looks at smaller resolution, whether it's minimally discernable, and File:Solovej.jpg clearly fails this criterion. Actually I thought initially about usage of the Black Square, but it's too dull and too iconic. So my proposal is to use Suprematism - it has neutral message, good looks at low size, and geometric forms may be regarded as a hint to such visual arts as architecture.

Also I've found what might be slightly better icon for performing arts, File:Balalaika.svg. And the current icons for sports and history are problematic - the white backgrounds of images don't look good, and nothing Russia-specific is discernible at low resolution. While currently these icons would do, let's search for better ones.. GreyHood ^Talk 15:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I've assessed about 800 pages with task force parameters over the weekend, mostly those WP:RUSSIA articles where titles start with a number or letter 'A'. This is not the best representative sample of course, but still it was enough experience to draw some conclusions about how we should fix our task force scheme.

• We should merge Demographics and Ethnography into one task force, Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics and ethnography of Russia task force. It was my mistake when I proposed to split them. There are simply too few articles to include into the scope of standalone demographics task force, and anyway most of them are covered by Ethnography, Religion, Languages and literature. So what we have to do:

• delete Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics of Russia task force
• move Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Ethnography of Russia task force to Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Demographics and ethnography of Russia task force (just Demographics in the title won't do, since this task force will cover cousine, arts and crafts etc.)
• reassess few articles in the Category:Demographics of Russia task force articles. I think that the name of parameter could remain "ethno=" for the entire task force.

• We should split Science and technology to Science and education and Technology and engineering. Currently there are too many pages on Wikipedia which fall in the scope of the joint Science and technology workgroup. On the opposite ends of the semantic field we have such things as human sciences or primary schools, and weaponry or infrastructure. That won't compose a good and usable list of popular pages. So what we have to do:

• create Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and education in Russia task force and Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Technology and engineering in Russia task force
• split the material from current Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and education in Russia task force to the new pages
• delete Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and technology in Russia task force
• - we could use this icon for Science and education while we have no better one
• reassess the articles in the Category:Science and technology in Russia task force articles. I think we could use the parameter "sci=" for Science and education, and "tech" for "Technology and engineering". I can perform the reassessment task myself (there are about 200 pages to reassess). GreyHood ^Talk 16:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, you just keep creating work for me, don't you? :) Before I start, here are a couple other things to consider (based on what I discovered during my assessment rounds):

• There is no good fit for the law-related topics (which includes the articles about crime). Even if we split the scitech taskforce, "science and education" is still not going to be a good enough fit.
• I have no clue what broad enough taskforce articles such as Miss Russia 2009 can possibly qualify under. I've placed this one under "performing arts", but that's certainly a stretch.

Ideas?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 16:28 (UTC)

Well, the first problem can be solved either by renaming "Politics of Russia" into "Politics and law of Russia", or simply by including law into Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Politics of Russia task force#Scope. The second problem is more complex but also can be solved by inclusion of beauty contests into Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Performing arts in Russia task force#Scope. Beauty contests is a very specific topic, while its supertopic is Entertainment, which is too broad, so we can do nothing about that. There is no point in creating specific task force for beauty contests and no point in renaming Performing arts into Performing arts and entertainment. So we have to stitch them to Performing arts, and that's all. The same way as fashion goes to visual arts. GreyHood ^Talk 16:45, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I've merged the demo and ethno taskforces. "Politics of Russia" should work OK for the law; I've added a note to the Scope section to that effect. I don't think renaming is really necessary. And as for the scitech taskforce, would you mind creating the two new pages and post a note here when you are done? I'm not comfortable splitting that large to-do list myself. Once the subpages are ready, I'll tweak the banner, delete the old taskforce page, and you can start fixing the assessments. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 17:01 (UTC)

OK, soon I'll do it. Thanks for fixing Demographics and Ethnography. GreyHood ^Talk 17:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

And by the by, why is "sports" marked as "not done"?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 17:01 (UTC)

Because I think the icon for sports could be better. The background should be made transparent, or a different better icon used (the similar case with history). Also, have you noticed the new proposed icon for visual arts? It really looks better at smaller size than the current one. GreyHood ^Talk 17:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

By the way, animation falls both in the scope of Visual arts and Performing arts. GreyHood ^Talk 17:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Funny you picked Malevich. I was half-seriously contemplating to use this :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 17:18 (UTC)

When there was a discussion on WP:ITN/C of whether to post a recent discovery of a nearby black hole to Wikipedia:In the news section of the Main Page, some guys proposed to illustrate the news with the Black Square. Malevich is famous! %) GreyHood ^Talk 17:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

As for sports, we could just place this standard icon over the Russian flag and call it done. I don't have access to any graphical tools at the moment, though. Do you?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 17:37 (UTC)

Nice idea! But I'll try to use File:Sports and games.png () in order to reflect the Games component as well. GreyHood ^Talk 18:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, what do you think about usage of some other icon instead of balalaika: or or . Russian ballet is iconic, and the icons hint simultaneously to dance, music and stage, while balalaika only to music. GreyHood ^Talk 18:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

As long as won't have to change them again later, they all look fine :) As for the ballet icons, I like the first and the third one (the second one is a bit too small methinks).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 18:32 (UTC)

I'll see if I can fix the background of the first icon. Meanwhile, the icon for sports is ready: . GreyHood ^Talk 18:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I've created the pages, Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Science and education in Russia task force and Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Technology and engineering in Russia task force. GreyHood ^Talk 20:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Done and done. Let me know when you empty the Category:Science and technology in Russia task force articles so it can be deleted. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 21:08 (UTC)

After making more assessment job, I think, afterall, balalaika is not that bad; and let's use Russia's coat of arms for history while we have nothing better. GreyHood ^Talk 00:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, I've found a slightly better icon for economy. GreyHood ^Talk 01:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Btw, which task force covers Environmental issues in Russia? I've put in it technology and engineering for now. Nanobear (talk) 15:12, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, it falls into the cross-intersection of several task forces: Physical geography, Politics and Economy (Technology also might be used here). The article needs much balancing, by the way. Too many improbable figures, that need certain clarification at least (such as 40% air pollution and 50-75% water pollution - that's with the largest territory and water reserves!; likely the first figure is limited to the cities), and too strong reliance on information coming from the involved environment organisations. GreyHood ^Talk 15:27, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

4 different task forces? That could be a record :) I don't much expertise or time to read sources and to find and fix issues in the article. Perhaps User:Slon02 would do it himself if we point out some issues on the talk page. Nanobear (talk) 16:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Just look at the Talk:Mikhail Lomonosov, for example :) I don't remember if I've assessed something with 7 task forces, but there was a number of cases with 5 or 6. And this seems reasonable - the more attention an article will get, the better. GreyHood ^Talk 17:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

As for the Environment article, I'll try to edit it later and fix some issues. There is a good collection of environment-related statistics on Rosstat, which I belive should be used in this article, [16]. GreyHood ^Talk 17:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Ivan Dumbadze

Maybe someone can help with the POV, OR and factual accuracy issues in the Ivan Dumbadze article. See Talk:Ivan Dumbadze. Attention from more editors is needed. --DonaldDuck (talk) 17:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Regional statistics

There are several interesting regional statistics here: [17][18]. Currently, we have 3 statistics articles: List of Russian federal subjects by HDI, Federal subjects of Russia by Unemployment Rate and List of Russian federal subjects by GRP. Should we create more? At least the average income and agricultural output would be very interesting. Does copyright policy allow us to publish these stats on WP? Is it better to make a separate article for each stat, or group all stats together? Or is it best to just insert the stats separately in each regional article? Nanobear (talk) 22:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it is better to have separate lists. In the past I have created such general statistics collections as Oil by country or Natural gas by country, but they are rather difficult to mantain and update (even the automated processing of data is complicated by the fact that sources change their format from time to time; and dependence on the same sources is not good). However, if comparison of various statistical parameters makes sense, you may try to create a general article with a table, after having created several list articles. As for the copyright, I don't think there should be any problem. Rosstat data is widely used throughout Wikipedia, and so far I haven't seen complaints about that. GreyHood ^Talk 22:37, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I concur on the copyright—raw data can't be copyrighted, and as long as you don't lift their formatting verbatim, it's fine. As for creating more lists, I think that before it happens, the three we already have should be cleaned up. Also, it would probably be prudent to think about how we are going to keep them updated later on and plan accordingly.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 8, 2011; 14:28 (UTC)

I'm planning to write a set of Perl scripts for converting the data to wikitable format. I think it's probably best for the scripts not to add to List of Russian federal subjects by GRP but to create a new table from scratch. The unit should probably be changed from million rubles to billion rubles (6731188.9 million is hard to read; 6,731.2 billion is better; plus, the newer stats at [19] use billions). The entity names should be converted (for example, "Region" -> "Oblast" and "Republic of Tatarstan" -> "Tatarstan"; like in the current list.). Nanobear (talk) 22:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that'll work. Having a script to quickly update the lists as new data become available would be great. One note on the names of the republics, though—you might want to use the forms specified in this template, because the republics listed under their short forms (i.e., Tatarstan) will eventually be moved to the long form ("Republic of Tatarstan"). I have so far moved about half of the articles about the republics and am planning to take care of the other half soon. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 9, 2011; 15:30 (UTC)

Don't forget to add flag templates to the script. GreyHood ^Talk 18:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Russian translation

Would a Russian speaker be able to confirm whether the following is an accurate translation?

Original: На состоявшемся полтора года назад в Секции общественных наук Российской Академии торжественном заседании, посвящённом юбилею С.М.Меньшикова, присутствовали съехавшиеся с разных концов земного шара представительные делегации из-за рубежа. Одну из них возглавлял выдающийся американский учёный и общественный деятель Линдон Ларуш. Именно он долгие годы не только яростно боролся против пагубного курса Вашингтона, но и бессчётное число раз предупреждал об опасных структурных изменениях и тенденциях в капитализме, грозящих всему миру финансовой катастрофой. Ларуш предлагал официальным властям США альтернативный план действий по предупреждению бедствия. Его не послушали, и случилось то, что случилось.

Translation: A year and a half ago the Social Sciences Section of the Russian Academy celebrated the birthday of S. M. Menshikov, an event that was attended by international delegations from all over the world. One of them was headed by the prominent American scholar and social activist Lyndon LaRouche. It was he who for many years not only furiously opposed the pernicious course set in Washington, but warned countless times about dangerous structural changes and trends in capitalism, which threaten the world with financial catastrophe. LaRouche proposed that the official U.S. authorities follow an alternative plan of action to prevent disaster. He was not listened to, and what happened, happened.

The source is http://gazeta-slovo.ru/content/view/711/47/ – I understand Слово is run by ru:Виктор Линник, a former Pravda reporter and US correspondent, and the author, Георгий ЦАГОЛОВ, is a fairly well-known Russian economist (cited here for example). Any further background on the publication, its editor and its author would be a bonus. :) Thanks, --JN466 18:59, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

The second question could be restated: Is Слово a reliable source for information on American politicians and economists? Where does it sit on the political spectrum, and is it connected to any political party or movement?   Will Beback  talk  23:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Third, is the article more like an opinion column or more like a straight news story?   Will Beback  talk  23:49, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard of this paper before, so I'll leave Will's question to others to answer. As for the translation, it is correct. Whether it's suitable for use as a source, I don't know.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 14, 2011; 15:36 (UTC)

Also never heard of the paper before, but it seems a reliable source. There is a citation with approval of the paper from Sergey Mironov, the head of A Just Russia party and Federation Council of Russia. GreyHood ^Talk 19:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Spasiba. --JN466 12:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Greater Coat of Arms of the Russian Empire 1882-1917 (mass replacement)

On these two pages, published a letter from the Chief Heraldry Master of Russia. It is dated 2006. http://www.rus-deco.com/vp/JS-Lib/CustomerSites/Common/view_larger.htm?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rus-deco.com%2F510_500_csupload_20087015.jpg%3Fu%3D553230982

http://www.rus-deco.com/vp/JS-Lib/CustomerSites/Common/view_larger.htm?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rus-deco.com%2F514_500_csupload_20087025.jpg%3Fu%3D3016084680

At the present moment is initiated his replacement to this picture without a single mistake and the author's portrayal: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Russian_Empire_1700x1767_pix_Igor_Barbe_2006.jpg Earlier, the authors insisted on the presence of yellow in the figure dies with his name. For VIKI author has made an exception. However, the file with a yellow bg can remain - it has more resolution. References to it are optional for connoisseurs. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_coat_of_arms_of_the_Russian_empire_IGOR_BARBE_1500x1650jpg.jpg All files are located here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Greater_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Russian_Empire

THNKS!

Barbe Igor (talk) 09:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for input at the language desk

Greetings! I have asked a question about Russian at the language desk, here, but haven't received the kind of answer I am seeking yet. If any native or near-native speaker feels like pitching in there, I'd be very grateful. Thanks in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 22:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I left a short comment there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 28, 2011; 13:47 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! (Also for this. I will continue asking for help here :-) ---Sluzzelin talk 05:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

You are most welcome :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 29, 2011; 13:32 (UTC)

Alexander Gradsky article

Greetings. I have recently expanded the article Alexander Gradsky and nominated it for Did You Know?. Unfortunately I have been relying largely on Google Translate for translated titles, mostly in the Discography section, so I'd be grateful if someone who speaks Russian could have a look over it and make any necessary corrections. There is one title which Google translates as "Antiperestroechny Blues", but "antiperestroechny" isn't a word in English. Is it related to the word perestroika? Any other improvements or suggestions for improvements to the article are, of course, also very welcome. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 14:51, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not going to claim that I have cleaned this up to perfection, but I did make a few changes, and hopefully they are an improvement. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 31, 2011; 15:16 (UTC)

Спасибо. That was quick! The discography section is looking better now. I hope you don't mind my querying your good work, but the title "Золотое Старье" which Google translated as "Old Gold" and you translated as "Gold Junk" - are you sure about that one? "Old Gold" is a phrase often used to refer to old songs regarded as classics, and sounds to me a much more likely title for a CD. Thanks again for your speedy response and helpfulness. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 12:35, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome. I've never heard the phrase "old gold" in the sense you are describing, so you may be right. "Gold Junk" (or "Golden Junk", rather), however, is more true to the literal meaning, because the word "старьё" has a demeaning ring to it (="junk"; probably used here ironically). The word "старина" would have been more in line with the meaning of "old gold". All in all, I'm afraid I've just stepped out of my comfort zone with this :) It doesn't help that Gradsky was a persona non grata in the household I grew up in. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 1, 2011; 13:10 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Maybe "old gold" (or the more common phrase "golden oldies") is a British thing. I've never heard the phrase "gold junk" or "golden junk" in English, but I suppose it does make sense, as in something whose value has been unrecognised, maybe similar in meaning to "hidden gems" or something like that. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 02:46, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Police articles

After the recent Russian police reform, we now have 3 articles discussing the police:

• Militsiya
• Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia)
• Police of the Russian Federation.

It would be nice if we could find a clear division of responsibility - what goes in which article. At least I think militsiya should be transformed into a historical article (i.e. change "is" to "was", etc.) Some of the information could also be moved to Police of the Russian Federation, if it's still current. I think Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia) is a pretty poor article (why does over 80% of it discuss pre-1990 history if the ministry was founded in 1990?). Also, is it really intelligent for Police of the Russian Federation to discuss the Czar-era police? I would appreciate any opinions on how to develop these law enforcement articles. Nanobear (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Translation help

I've been translating an article about a Russian personage from the Polish wiki to English and have become stumped by a word. According to the nice folks over at WP:POLAND, the Polish term "Korpus Paziów" refers to a Russian institution, most probably a military academy. (I believe the original term in Russian is "Пажеский корпус", but I could be completely wrong about that.) The current biography I've been working on is Seraphim Chichagov (Serafin (Cziczagow) on Polish wiki; Серафим (Чичагов) on Russian wiki), and he was at one point a military officer, so it being a military academy would make sense.

So the question -- is "military academy" an adequate translation? Is there a better way to translate it? (eg. does it refer to a specific military academy, or a generic military academy?)

Thanks -- Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 06:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The best way to refer to it would be by linking to the existing article :) And yes, it's a specific establishment. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 11, 2011; 13:35 (UTC)

Ha! Excellent, thanks. The problem was no one I talked to knew it was the Page Corps. Thanks for your help. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 20:43, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Old style / new style in Russia at the end of the c19th

Dear Wikiproject Russians - I'm dealing with an article whose subject spans the end of the c19th in Russia through to the post-revolutionary period in the Soviet Union, which makes use of the OldStyleDate template, in order to give dates in both date-formats. I see from Old Style and New Style dates that the difference between the two changes for dates in each century, with a 12-day difference in the 19th and a 13-day difference in the 20th. Could somebody please clarify: what is the day difference in the year 1900? For 1899, it is 12 days, while for 1901 it is 13 days. The article isn't clear (the table giving the differences shows 1800-1900: 12 and 1900-2000: 13). Many thanks for your assistance. DionysosProteus (talk) 21:05, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

The difference is twelve days for Julian dates prior to March 1, 1900 (Gregorian March 14), and thirteen days for Julian dates on or after March 1, 1900.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 13, 2011; 13:34 (UTC)

Many thanks. DionysosProteus (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

When did the Soviet Union start?

I see the category head Category:Soviet Union has the Soviet Union starting in 1917 ie after the October Revolution. But Category:Years in the Soviet Union only starts in 1922, which apparently was a legal milestone of some sort. The Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia refers to the formation of the Soviet Union in 1922, leaving previous years eg 1920 as Category:1920 in Russia. The Russian Civil War was a sort of inter-regnum period, with the article saying that it continued into 1923, although Soviet history calls it 1917-1921.

Also the category Category:Russian people of World War II as a subcategory of Category:Soviet people of World War II seems odd; as it is not apparently meant just for the people of the Russian part of the USSR; Kliment Voroshilov from what is now the Ukraine is in both categories. Should the category be abolished, and members included in the “Soviet people … “ category? Hugo999 (talk) 01:43, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The Soviet Union was officially created on December 30, 1922. The confusion is often due to the fact that the adjective "Soviet" refers not only to "something pertaining to the Soviet Union proper", but also to "something pertaining to a soviet". These soviets appeared in 1917; well before the Soviet Union was formed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 19, 2011; 19:22 (UTC)

The progression is

1. Bolshevik Russia, coming out of the revolution;
2. Soviet Russia, which (by its reckoning) in 1919 included Soviet Turkestan and Soviet Latvia;
3. Soviet Union, per the above, founded December 30, 1922.

A "soviet" is a form of local council signifying the passing of authority to the people. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 21:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Hello Wikiproject Russians. I've noticed that a few Russia-related articles have been moved lately, adjusting the transliteration of Russian names into their most common form in English. Is it Aleksandr or Alexander? (Pushkin, Afinogenov). Evgeny or Yevgeny? I understand that some transliterations are non-standard in relation to the name in general, but standard for that particular individual (Chekhov/Tchaikovsky). However, I'd like to propose that the project put together a set of project-specific guidelines that specify the way a name should generally be transliterated (and perhaps a list of exceptions based on most common usage as an appendix?) that would appear linked on the main project page. New article writers can then refer to your guidelines when naming their articles. For myself, I have no preference for any particular form. I'd just like some stability, so links don't need to be changed everytime someone decides to implement their preferred form. Apologies if this is old hat and long since agreed upon here. DionysosProteus (talk) 19:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

We already have a guideline regarding this; please see WP:RUS. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 19, 2011; 19:11 (UTC)

Yes, I see. It should appear on the project page, no? And it doesn't really solve the problem: I'm proposing a list of first names and their regular/most common transliteration. The 'let's rely on the sources' situation appears to be part of the problem, not the solution (given that sources so often don't agree). Is there not a British library/Library of Congress standard that we could defer to? DionysosProteus (talk) 19:17, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Linking it from the project page is a good idea (I was for some reason sure it is already mentioned, but apparently not). Preparing a list of recommended spellings of first names, on the other hand, is not. As you can see from WP:RUS#People, the emphasis is made first and foremost on what the English sources use, which in practice means that the same first (or even last) name can be transliterated in many different ways (with the ALA/LC system being just one of many). Any list of recommendations you compile would thus be original research and redundant to the default romanization rules anyway.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 19, 2011; 19:30 (UTC)

Yes, I suspected it would be difficult. So, the solution that you're suggesting for those pages that I've seen move around lately is to initiate a discussion on the talk page that sets the "standard" for that article? Oh, and while I think of it, I'm assuming that there is a project guideline too about disambiguating names, which I gather is usually done with the full name, rather than (profession). That would also be a useful thing to reach via the main project page. DionysosProteus (talk) 19:34, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

That's one way of going about it. I usually just look at the sources already in the article, and make a decision based on those (which, of course, doesn't mean the article can't be moved again later as more sources come to light). And in those cases when sources disagree on the spelling, WP:RUS says that the variant closest to the default romanization should be used (so, for example, if the choice is between "Yevgeny" and "Evgeny", we go with "Yevgeny").

With disambigs, no, we don't have a guideline as to the choice of a disambiguator (spelling, however, is always supposed to be in line with the default romanization rules, regardless of what spelling the entries on the disambig page use). We used to disambiguate strictly by patronymic, but that was strongly disliked by the editors who prefer using profession instead (even though the latter is not necessarily always an easy choice itself; cf. "sportsman", "footballer", "soccer player", etc.). So, it's really a mess right now—some are disambiguated by patronymic while others by profession. I personally just use the method which prevails on the corresponding disambig page.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 19, 2011; 19:44 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Will you be able to add the naming article to the project page...? not really sure where it ought to go. DionysosProteus (talk) 19:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not really sure myself. I'll add it to the navbox for now. If anyone has any suggestions, please comment. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 19, 2011; 20:01 (UTC)

Katyn massacre at Featured Article review

Katyn massacre is undergoing a featured article review process here: Wikipedia:Featured article review/Katyn_massacre/archive1 Fifelfoo (talk) 05:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Copyright concerns related to your project

This notice is to advise interested editors that a Contributor copyright investigation has been opened which may impact this project. Such investigations are launched when contributors have been found to have placed copyrighted content on Wikipedia on multiple occasions. It may result in the deletion of images or text and possibly articles in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. The specific investigation which may impact this project is located here.

All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to CCI clean up. There are instructions for participating on that page. Additional information may be requested from the user who placed this notice, at the process board talkpage, or from an active CCI clerk. Thank you. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Russia-related AFD needs comments

Please see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jeffrey_Nyquist. It's been there for days but still no one has commented. Nanobear (talk) 13:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Popigai , Popigay, Popigai, Krasnoyarsk Krai and Popigai (disambiguation)

Someone familiar with Russian placenames might like to look at this lot and tidy them up! (I just found Popigai while stub-sorting, but it got worse the more I looked at it). Thanks. PamD (talk) 13:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've cleaned it up. Thanks for catching it!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 7, 2011; 15:04 (UTC)

Flag of Imperial Russia

Hi everyone,

As you may be aware, the flag of the Russian Empire seems to be changed perdiodically between the white-blue-red tricolor and the Romanov tricolor. I reverted just such an edit only moments ago. From what I can tell, there's been plenty of discussion regarding this matter on the article's talk page, but I'm not sure that anything has been resolved. That bothers me, and I wasn't really sure if I had any good reason to revert that other fellow's edit. So I'm bringing the issue up here with the hope that we can finally, officially, resolve the matter. Now, the two arguments seem to be that either (a) the Romanov flag should be used since it was the flag of the longest ruling dynasty, or (b) the last flag used by the state, in this case the white-blue-red tricolor, should be used in the infobox. The latter seems like a good, unambiguous policy to follow throughout Wikipedia, and therefore makes more sense to me. What are your opinions? --76.121.180.74 (talk) 00:21, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Livonian War

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

Proposed deletion of Vijay Maheshwari

The article Vijay Maheshwari has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Long-term unreferenced biography of a living person. No reliable sources found. Appears to have written only one article/restauarant review for eXile magazine.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. CharlieDelta (talk) 11:22, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Infobox SSR

Template:Infobox SSR has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. --ddima.talk 17:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

About the Soviet Russia article

It's obviously a stub.

When I wanted the information I wanted, I had to look for the Soviet Union. Could you all fix that up? I assumed they were both the same thing. I don't get why you don't redirect the article to the better one.

Could you fix that up, please?

--75.74.142.9 (talk) 18:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I am not quite sure what it is you want us to fix—could you, please, clarify? One thing for sure, "Soviet Russia" is not the same thing as the "Soviet Union", even though the former was occasionally used to refer to the latter. Soviet Russia pre-dated the Soviet Union and later became a part of it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 18:35 (UTC)

Cleanup needed

Noticed several google-translated articles that require serious cleanup. --DonaldDuck (talk) 08:09, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• Anna Ivanovna Abrikosov
• Varvara Golovina
• Vladimir Zabugin
• Michael Lunin

Priorities in to-do-lists

The task force to-do-lists are very useful, but they have already grown to the point where it's difficult see which tasks are really urgent and which are less important. We should have at least some kind of priority ranking system. Currently, when I look at the task force pages, I have no way to determine which task is the most important and which ones are the most urgent. Since most editors have very limited amount of time available for Wikipedia, it's important to offer them tools for focusing and prioritising. Perhaps a five- or three-star ranking system could be useful. My original idea was this, but it may be too difficult and tedious for most editors to use. Nanobear (talk) 14:03, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if we could commission a bot to add the importance rating to whatever articles are on the to-do list. That should be a good starting point without manual maintenance overhead.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 11, 2011; 14:24 (UTC)

I've tried to add more important tasks in bold. Unfortunately, there are too much underdeveloped Russia-related articles.. I'll see what can be done to make the priorities more clear. At least, after the lists were sorted into sections, the priorities in specific subtopics can be seen better. GreyHood ^Talk 14:00, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Info template for Russian districts?

Is there a template appropriate for articles on Russian districts, like this one?--Ymblanter (talk) 07:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yup, it's {{Infobox Russian district}}. Please let me know if you are planning on adding it on mass scale, though, because it needs a few tweaks which I'd rather complete beforehand. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 25, 2011; 13:19 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, I am not a bot, and I will only add it to the articles which are more than a stub, but yes, I am planning to add it eventually to a big number of articles + to create a number of new articles. I will wait till the template has been fixed, please let me know when it is ready for deploying.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

If you are going to go about it slowly, then please just go ahead with what you are planning to do. It may take me a better part of the week before I get to implementing the planned updates; there's no reason to hold you up unless you are planning to add a bunch of infoboxes in a short period of time. By the way, welcome to our little WikiProject, and thanks for lending a hand! Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 25, 2011; 16:46 (UTC)

A-Class reviews

I'd like to create an A-class review system for our Wikiproject. I believe a wp:russia A-class article should be substantially better than a B-class article, but it should still be allowed to be substantially worse than a good article. WP:MILHIST has set their A-class criteria pretty high (almost close to FA level), and it's better if we not duplicate them, since their requirements are too demanding. Because we have few active members, and because I would likely be the only editor doing the A-class reviews, I think we should allow article authors to review their articles themselves, provided they give a clear argument (a good checklist or prose review) for their decision to pass or fail. That would make the process lightweight and result in more reviews.

The main purpose of the A-class review system would be to

1. Get our B-class articles improved faster (editors who can make B-class articles better but who are not able to get them to GA level will be motivated)
2. Reward article editors for their work (if an article passed formal A-class review, that's a much stronger merit than passing vaguely defined B-class criteria)
3. Provide a measurement of article quality in wp:russia (easier to set project goals, like "we should have 100 A-class articles by 1.1.2012"; more realistic target than number of GA)

I'm not sure when exactly I will start working on this, but it's good to hear some opinions at this point. Nanobear (talk) 10:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the main reason why we don't have A-Class reviews is because we don't have anybody to do these reviews. Since the A-Class criteria are project-specific, it is expected that it is mostly the project's participants who do the actual reviewing. And with only about half a dozen people active in this WikiProject at any given time, that's not nearly enough to do any meaningful reviewing. We might implement A-Class anyway and adopt some lax reviewing procedures, but then there would be no guarantee that our A-Class articles are really any better than GAs or even Bs, which would render the whole effort pointless.

Also, it's not just WP:MILHIST who set the A-Class criteria higher than GAs; it's actually the assumption built into the overall quality scale. To me personally, placing As between FAs and GAs doesn't make much sense (placing it between Bs and GAs seems much more reasonable), but that's the way it currently is.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 14:22 (UTC)

That's strange. Perhaps we could invent some other name than "A class", like "B+", so that no one can complain. Nanobear (talk) 19:53, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

We can, but that'd be a bitch to implement. The metatemplate on which the WikiProject banners are built accepts only the classes from the standard scale, and the stats-gathering bots would be quite confounded to meet something like "B+", too :) It's all just too tightly integrated for this kind of innovation.

What we can do, though, it to implement the reviews for the B-Class instead. Currently, however, we don't even have volunteers to take care of the B-Class checklists, which is why I was so skeptical about A-Class reviews.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 13, 2011; 20:26 (UTC)

My main concern is the gap between B-class articles and GAs. Perhaps we could just implement the "B+"-system without touching the templates. Like by inserting all passed articles in a special category Category:WikiProject Russia B+ class articles (for administrative purposes) and creating some kind of award for the article authors (to get the motivation bonus)? Nanobear (talk) 20:31, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Let me think about it. The cat can be created quite easily, but I'm not entirely sure how we would incorporate the B+ counts into our stats table without having to re-write that table. In the meanwhile, do you have a list of B+ criteria in mind?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 13, 2011; 20:52 (UTC)

Russian maps of river basins

Is there any way maps like this can be translated (there are more, if there is interest I can create a Commons category for them)?--Ymblanter (talk) 10:39, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a graphics expert, but since this is a vector file, shouldn't it be possible (and easy) to simply remove the Russian labels and put in the English ones instead?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 14:24 (UTC)

Thanks, it seems to work: File:Severnaya Dvina eng.svg--Ymblanter (talk) 18:20, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Yay :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2011; 18:38 (UTC)

Military history of Imperial Russia

I've been developing an improved version of the article in my sandbox. It's quite a task—39 kb and I'm still on Peter!—but I think it's coming along well so far; what do you guys think? Between vacation and other plans, this one might very well take me all summer! ResMar 02:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a wonderful start with much potential. I, for one, am looking forward to reading the whole thing when it's done. Thanks, and have a great summer *wink-wink*!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 16, 2011; 16:47 (UTC)

Cool work! You might make Russian military under Peter I a separate article, and you certainly will have to do so if you intend to write a similar detailed accounts for other periods in Russian military history - that would be too big an article! GreyHood ^Talk 17:14, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I am wondering how to organize it. Perhaps it would be best as a series of articles:

• Military history of Imperial Russia, 1672-1796 - Peter through Catherine; nothing spectacular on the in-between, but Catherine warred just as much as Peter did, so this would come out to be about 90k, I guess? Pages 44-89 in Stone.
• Military history of Imperial Russia, 1796-1855 - Napoleonic through Crimean War. 90-125 in Stone.
• Military history of Imperial Russia, 1855-1906 - Miliutin's reforms, Russo-Turkish War, Russo-Japanese War. Stone 126-154.
• Military history of Imperial Russia, 1906-1917 - World War I, October Revolution. Stone 155-175.

Maybe I should use smaller steps? I'm not sure of the ratio of article size to article number. Of course that might just be my greed for more green plus marks =). ResMar 22:51, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I've just noticed your answer. Wouldn't say that there was nothing spectacular between Peter I and Catherine II: there were Russo-Swedish War (1741-1743) and Seven Years' War.. oh, I see you already wrote about those events. I think that the proposed divisions are good enough, though depending the resulting volume of material, there could be some sense in merging the last two divisions into one period (1855-1917). GreyHood ^Talk 21:15, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

RusAir Flight 9605

Yesterday's crash of RusAir Flight 9605 claimed the life of FIFA referee Vladimir Pettai. It may also have claimed the life of footballer Ivan Saenko (source: comment at Aviation Herald), but that is currently unconfirmed. All three articles fall under this WP, with the footballers needing expansion most. Mjroots (talk) 15:02, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Malaya Sadovaya street

• Приглашаю участников проекта ознакомиться с двумя небольшими новыми статьями, посвященными картинам русских художников Александра Семёнова и Николая Тимкова: Malaya Sadovaya street (painting) и Russian Winter. Hoarfrost (painting) и высказать здесь и здесь своё мнение по поводу целесообразности их удаления. Как я вижу, среди инициаторов удаления нет занимающихся русским искусством или хотя бы элементарно знающих язык. Статьи являются переводом статей, существующих в русском разделе Википедии: Малая Садовая (картина А. М. Семёнова) и Русская зима. Иней (картина Н. Тимкова) С Уважением, Leningradartist (talk) 20:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

RIA Novosti images

RIA Novosti has released 100 images so far under CC-BY-SA as per this. Information is available at commons:Commons:RIA_Novosti and the images so far uploaded can be found at commons:Category:Images_from_RIA_Novosti. Requests for uploading of other images from the RIAN archive can be made here. --Russavia ^{Let's dialogue} 08:22, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a bunch of photos produced by war-time Soviet propaganda. Why did not he change Russian copyright laws instead? Biophys (talk) 13:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

He's in process. Yesterday was a meeting on the implementation of order of the president, but I do not know yet how it's over. Lvova Anastasiya (talk) 23:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Dear Stasya, I hope you'll inform us here in case there are any definite improvements with the freedom of panorama and other copyright issues. GreyHood ^Talk 23:42, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok :) It will be some meetings before a decision; the next'll be on Thuesday. You may find the materials about situation here and here (the last one was made by order of the Ministry of Justice). Lvova Anastasiya (talk) 18:21, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Help in request making is needed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight#RIA Novosti photos. GreyHood ^Talk 14:05, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

International Space Station

I have nominated International Space Station for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Penyulap _talk 14:34, 28 June 2011 (UTC) Please understand, this is about an effort to improve the article, and get some new blood and new ideas into this article. Penyulap _talk 15:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Calling to arms

Ever heard of the Pugachev's Cobra? Ever heard of a Sukhoi, or a MiG? Ever heard of "Foxbats", "Flankers", "Fulcrums", or Fullback"? Do you know what they are? Do you know what the Soviet aerospace industry is like? Do you know who the Americans really fear? Do you know how much headache it caused to the West? Do you know how much attention the fighters are getting? If the answer is NO, then there are clearly some catching up to do. During the next few days, I'll be working on the MiG-29K, Su-34, Su-35 and Su-37. I want to bring them all up to the same standard as the Su-33. If you want to participate, please come along and help out. Don't be hesitant. Give the Soviet aerospace industry the recognition it really deserves. Sp33dyphil ^{"Ad astra"} 11:45, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Nice motivational speech o_O ResMar 20:28, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

2010 census

The final count of the 2010 census seems to be out at their website, which means it would be good (i) to create a template similar to what exists for 2002 and 1989; (ii) to replace in the locality/district/oblast templates where appropriate 2002 with 2010; (iii) in the text of these articles replace the 2010 estimate with 2010 results. Since I am doing the Arkhangelsk Oblast now anyway, I will do the districts/towns/urban-type settlements/district centers of the oblast once someone creates the template. The next one, I estimate it in about a month, will be the Vologda Oblast, where I volunteer to do the same. Other federal subjects may need attention.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:11, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought the final results won't be available until late 2013? At any rate, I don't see them posted on their website; could you please link to what you've found? All I see is the preliminary results which are already in the articles. Also, we actually do already have the 2010 Census template in place (Template:ru-census2010), which is currently used to source the preliminary results I've just linked to. When the final results are available, we'll need to go through all the articles which transclude that template, update the numbers where necessary, and then tweak the template so it no longer says "preliminary".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 14:43 (UTC)

P.S. I've just noticed that this is new and needs to be processed, but those are still preliminary results, not final. I'll help processing the data, if you want.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 14:47 (UTC)

Right, this is actually what I had in mind (this is new and different from what is positioned as preliminary count. My understanding is that the count of districts/urban settlements is final but they still will be counting until 2012 all rural localities. I agree though that we should wait till an official announcement has been made, and at this point we only need to process the available data. Is there any autometed way to do it (e.g. using a bot which can take it from the excel file to any place where there is a 2010 census template)?--Ymblanter (talk) 14:57, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I wish... Since the file is in Russian and our article titles are romanized (and many of them are disambiguated), that's not something easy to program. I'd say it'll have to be a manual job, unless someone knows a brilliant way to quickly take care of this with automated tools.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 15:04 (UTC)

Even better than letting a bot put the data into the articles would be to have the data in a template and let the infoboxes load the data from there. So one has better control over vandals and in 2020 the update is much faster. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 16:21, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Could you pls have a look: Here I cite the same source twice (in the template and in the 1st par), getting, not surprisingly, two different results. I believe the template should be fixed, but do not want to change a template with so many inclusions. Thx in advance.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The pop_latest field in the infobox is reserved for the most recent estimate. Census data go into the pop_2002census and pop_2010census fields. Here's the fix (I've also changed the number to 39,629, because that's what the 2010 Census sheet reports; 42,460 was a RosStat 2010 estimate).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 17:40 (UTC)

Now I am lost. This and this (last line) documents clearly give different numbers. Which one should I use? Also, you have changed one number and left another one intact, was this intentional? Now we have two different numbers referenced by the same source.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:48, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, that was not intentional, that was an oversight which I have fixed. In general, we prefer using the census numbers. As more recent estimates become available, they should go into the pop_latest field, which would be in addition to the census numbers. Since for Koryazhma both the census results and the estimate are for 2010, we go with the census (there's no point in reporting two numbers for the same year). Once the RosStat releases the 2011 estimates, we'll add them to the pop_latest field, and once the 2010 census final results are available, we'll remove the 2002 census line. Makes sense?

As for the discrepancy between the sources, the RosStat annual estimates are obtained using the methods different from what the census uses. It is interesting to see that for Koryazhma the figures are so different, but there's nothing we can do about that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 18:33 (UTC)

Ok, that is clear. Thanks again.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:55, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Census data in separate templates

Referring to the above section "2010 census": Would be nice to have the data in a separate template. The infoboxes would only need to store an identifier, and then can collect data from central templates. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 18:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

You mean the same way we do it with the time zones? It's a good idea and theoretically is possible, but since this dataset is so much larger, we'll either end up with one huge template (which will probably blow all the template limits) or with a bunch of tiny templates which will need to be watched in addition to the articles. I'm not sure how to get around that or if this can be balanced some other way. Any ideas?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 18:46 (UTC)

Still to large on federal subject level? And then it would be important to know the federal subject, but at lest the current should be in the infobox already. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:07, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't realize you are talking only about the federal subjects; I thought you want to do the whole thing :) It makes much more sense then. If it's only going to be the federal subjects, then we can do it using one data template, same way we handle the time zones. Wanna give it a try? I've already updated this list.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 19:48 (UTC)

No, I meant the whole thing and splitting on federal subject level. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:57, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, OK. My gut feeling tells me the result will still be too heavy, but probably functional. It's hard to tell for sure without doing a test case or two. I can add this to my to-do list, or, if you want, you can try it on your own (I can help with questions or lists but am unlikely to have time for the actual coding/testing in the nearest future). If you decide to try, I would recommend to start with something like Altai Krai (which has sixty districts) or Moscow Oblast (which has a great number of major cities/towns and urban-type settlements). If those two cases work out OK, everything else should, too.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 20:27 (UTC)

Forgot one thing—before anything is done, we need to decide how to deal with the places for which there are no census data. The 2002 Census list, for example, included only the inhabited localities with the population of over 3,000 or with the status of district administrative center, and such places comprise less than 10% of all inhabited localities. Calling huge templates which return results less than 10% of the time is probably not a good thing :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 20:33 (UTC)

Census latest

To have a field "pop_latest" is not as clever as it could be, since with the next update one has to copy data around. Better

• pop1=40000
• pop1_date=2000
• pop1_ref=...

And then for the next one

• pop2=39000
• pop2_date=2010
• pop2_ref=...

Software can sort out what actually is latest by comparing the popX_date fields. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 18:27, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The purpose of the pop_latest field is to report the most recent estimate available and the purpose of the census field is to report the most recent census data available. Normally the template would only have one line for the most recent census and another for the most recent estimate. Right now the situation is somewhat complicated, since the most recent estimate available is for the same year as the most recent census, and the most recent census data are still preliminary, which means that having the 2002 numbers is still important.

Cramming various historical estimates into the infobox is of course possible, but that's not what the infobox is for. The infobox's purpose is to give a brief overview of the most important stats. Having most recent census and estimate figures is important, but presenting the whole history of the population trends is of much less importance. More detailed population trends should be presented in the "Demographics" section, where a dedicated template can be used if necessary.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 18:43 (UTC)

Understood. Withdrawing. Thanks. So having the field was more clever than I could imagine it could be ;-) Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Novaya Zemlya and Solovetsky District

Now I am finalizing my work on Arkhangelsk Oblast articles (about two more weeks needed), and I have run into a point which I do not undertand. Municipally, the law lists 19 districts and 7 urban okrugs (Arkhangelsk, Koryazhma, Kotlas, Mirny, Novaya Zemlya, Novodvinsk, and Severodvinsk). Administratively, the OKATO classification lists 20 districts (the extra one is Solovetsky District), Novaya Zemlya territory subordinate to the oblast, and 6 towns of the oblast significance (Arkhangelsk, Koryazhma, Kotlas, Onega, Novodvinsk, and Severodvinsk). Mirny is the town of the federal significance. Our page Administrative divisions of Arkhangelsk Oblast lists Solovetsky district, as well as Franz Joseph Land (which are municipally both part of the Primorsky District), and does not list Novaya Zemlya at all, like if it does not exist. The template {{Arkhangelsk Oblast}} lists Solovetsky District but does not list Novaya Zemlya. (It also lists Naryan Mar, but this is ok as soon as Nenets AO is part of Arkhangelsk Oblast). Then I have the following questions,

• Should we remove the Solovetsky District from the template and the administrative division page (it was merged into Primorsky District in 2006)? Or does it still exist administratively? Note that there is currently no page on the district anyway, it is redirected to Solovetsky Islands. If there should be a page, I will create the page.
• Should we add Novaya Zemlya to the template and the page? To which place? It is not a city and not a district. Should it be a separate line in the template?
• In the intro on the districts of Arkhangels Oblast I write smth like "XXX District is one of the YY districts of Arkhangelsk Oblast" (one can check, I have these intros for all districts but Onezhsky, which I will do in several days). Is YY=19 (if we do not count Solovetsky District not Novaya Zemlya), YY=21 (if we count both), or YY=20 (if we only count one of them)?
• Should it be a page on the urban okrug of Novaya Zemlya, or are we just fine with the redirect to the archipelago page?
• Additionally, I may have created some mess with municipal vs administrative in the templates in the articles on Vychegodsky and Kotlas, I would appreciate somebody having a look.

Thanks in advance,--Ymblanter (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

The municipal and administrative divisions of the federal subjects are not required by law to match, even though they mostly do, because it's convenient. Arkhangelsk Oblast in particular is one federal subject where the differences are very noticeable and present on the higher levels of the hierarchy. Another problem is that the OKATO is very inaccurate when it comes to Arkhangelsk Oblast; in no small part because Arkhangelsk Oblast is one of the few federal subjects which does not yet have an official registry of the administrative-territorial divisions, so OKATO uses outdated data (the registry is planned to be released around 2012 or 2013; I don't quite remember the date but can check). Our "administrative divisions of Arkhangelsk Oblast" page, however, is only sourced to OKATO, and badly needs to be updated (I myself was waiting for the release of the registry, but the upper divisions can be updated now based just on the law on the administrative-territorial division). So, while municipally there are indeed nineteen districts and seven urban okrugs, administratively there are in fact twenty-one district, seven cities/towns of oblast significance, and two island territories. Here are the main differences between the two aspects:

• Novaya Zemlya Administrative District is municipally incorporated as Novaya Zemlya Urban Okrug;
• Solovetsky Administrative District was never merged; it is municipally incorporated as Solovetskoye Rural Settlement of Primorsky Municipal District, but retains its administrative district status nevertheless;
• Onega is administratively incorporated as a town of oblast significance, but municipally it is organized as Onezhskoye Urban Settlement of Onezhsky Municipal District;
• Franz-Joseph Land and Victoria Island are considered to be island territories administratively; they are not a part of any other administrative-territorial entity. "Island territories" is a concept unique to Arkhangelsk Oblast. Municipally, they are a part of Primorsky Municipal District (organized as inter-settlement territories; i.e., they are not a part of any lower-level municipal division).
• The rest of the administrative districts match the municipal districts, and the rest of the cities/towns of oblast significance match the urban okrugs.

As far as organizing the information, our articles follow the following chain: physical geography entity, administrative-territorial entity, municipal entity. What this means is that the article about the physical geography entity (when applicable) is created first, and that the article about an administrative division takes priority over the article about a municipal division. For example, Novaya Zemlya is an article about the physical geography entity (archipelago), which should mention the fact that it is administratively organized as a district (the statement about the island territory currently there is outdated), and should mention that it is municipally organized as an urban okrug. The articles about the island territory and the urban okrug can be created, too, once there is enough information to warrant splitting that information out. With Solovki, again, we have an article about the islands, to which "Solovetsky District" is a redirect and where the rural settlement status should be mentioned. If there is enough to say about the district which pertains to the administrative concept but not to the islands, then yes, of course the article should be created under "Solovetsky District". Same goes for "Solovetskoye Rural Settlement"—if enough can be said about this municipal division which doesn't really belong in the administrative district article, then it can be created, too.

With the intros, the articles about the administrative districts should say "one of twenty-one" (and the municipal incorporation status and details would follow later). The articles about the municipal districts should not be created when the municipal districts match the administrative districts; the municipal aspect information goes into the article about the administrative district, which is always primary.

Does this help? I think I've given enough information to answer all your questions, but if I missed anything, it'll be my pleasure to follow-up. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 8, 2011; 15:02 (UTC)

Yes, this definitely helps, thanks. I will try to sort all this mess out.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:32, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

IrAero Flight 103

Many English language sources are reporting that 12 people were injured in the accident that befell IrAero Flight 103. However, Rostransnadzor appears to be saying 12 killed. Can I please have some confirmation that this is the case? Mjroots (talk) 12:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The Rostransnadzor link says nobody was killed. Perhaps there was a mistake and they fixed it. GreyHood ^Talk 12:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

"На борту находились 36 человек, в том числе трое детей. В результате авиационного события пострадали 12 человек, погибших нет. Воздушное судно получило значительные повреждения." ==> (raw Google translate) On board were 36 people, including three children. As a result, aviation event affected 12 people who died there. The aircraft received substantial damage. Mjroots (talk) 12:37, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

No, Google just translates incorrectly. The correct translation is that 12 (out of 36) were injured, nobody was killed. It might be also some confusion with the recent air crash in Magadan Oblast, where indeed 12 people died (everybody on board).--Ymblanter (talk) 13:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Russian Foursquare merge

The articles Russian foursquare and Russian Foursquare should be merged (either way), and could do with some editing as well. Hugo999 (talk) 05:18, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Open page move discussions

• (Discuss) –Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia → Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna
• (Discuss) – Nagatinsky zaton District → Nagatinsky Zaton District Kauffner (talk) 14:05, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Question about Moscow districts

The Korean Air CIS office is at Bolshoy Gnezdnykovsky Pereulok D1/2, Moscow, Russia What part of Moscow is this in? Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 18:19, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

• Pretty much in the center, inside the Boulevard Ring: 55°45'42" N, 37° 36' 17" E.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:35, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Yup, that's in Tverskoy District.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 30, 2011; 18:47 (UTC)
    • Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 01:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Now, would it be alright if I learned the districts for the following too:

• Aeroflot HQ: 10, Arbat street, 119002 Moscow
  • Arbat District
• All Nippon Airways Moscow Sales Office: World Trade Center (WTC) Room 606, Mezhdunarodnaya-2 Building, 12 Krasnopresnenskaya Nab, 123610, Moscow, Russia
  • Presnensky District
• Interstate Aviation Committee HQ: 119017, Moscow, Russia Bolshaya Ordynka str. 22/2/1
  • Yakimanka District
• Ilyushin HQ: 45 "G" Leningradsky Avenue, Moscow, 125190, Russian Federation
  • Aeroport District
• Irkut HQ: bldg. 1, 68, Leningradsky prospect, Moscow, 125315, Russia
  • Aeroport District
• Mikoyan HQ: 125284, Russian Federation, Moscow, 1-st Botkinsky drive, 7
  • Begovoy District
• S7 Airlines Moscow office: Russia 109012 Moscow 8/2, Novaya Square, Floors 4, 6
  • Tverskoy District
• Sukhoi HQ: 23B, Polikarpov str., Moscow, 125284, Russia, p/b 604
  • Begovoy District
• Tupolev HQ: Russia, Moscow, Academician Tupolev Embankment 17
  • Basmanny District
• United Aircraft Corporation HQ: Ulansky side-street, bld.1, 22 Moscow 101000, Russia
  • Krasnoselsky District
• Yakovlev HQ: 125315 Russia, Moscow, Leningradskiy prospect, 68
  • Aeroport District
• Sheremetyevo Airport (Nordwind Airlines HQ is located here)
  • Molzhaninovsky District

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 01:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I've added the districts to the list above.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 31, 2011; 13:28 (UTC)

Thank you very much! It was especially helpful regarding the Northern Administrative Okrug since that one has many aviation related businesses, and it is explicitly stated as having them by the official English page WhisperToMe (talk) 16:28, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Any time.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 31, 2011; 16:40 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Polish–Soviet War for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 03:19, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Barma - Regalia of the Russian tsars

Can anyone help out with some specialist knowledge? I've been doing some cleanup on Regalia of the Russian tsars and come across the heading 'Barmas of Old Ryazan'. Barma isn't a word in the OED, nor in Britannica, nor in a specialised art dictionary I've consulted. WP:RU has an corresponding article ru:Бармы which Google translates (my Russian is rudimentary) as 'barma' or 'barmah' = 'shoulder mantle', which fits the description, but the pictures in the article show jewellery rather than a mantle (perhaps the jewellery was sewn onto the mantle?) And is this word singular or plural? It seems to be always used in the plural even when referring to just one item. Is there an English equivalent word? Also, Google is unable to translate "дробница" in:

Бармы из круглых металлических щитков-дробниц, скреплённых шнурами и украшенных драгоценными камнями и эмалями, появились в Визант, где входили в парадную одежду императов.

Online dictionaries suggest that this is a misspelling for гробница (tomb, sepulchre) but that doesn't make much sense in the context, as far as I can tell. Any suggestions? Colonies Chris (talk) 13:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

ru:Бармы is plural, and yes, it denotes the jewelery sewn onto the mantle. The jewelry is composed of small metal discs/shields called "дробница". I think that ru:Бармы could be worn both sewn onto the mantle or without it. GreyHood ^Talk 14:17, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I have never heard of such words before, even so I am a native russian speaker. Words "barma" or "дробница" are not used in modern Russian language and I never seen them in the common history books. Please do not invent new words in our language. Russians mostly use word "бусы" for the beads, no matter what is the beads made of. Word "дробница" would be rather associated with lead shot ball, since "дробь" means "lead shot". I think the author simply spelled in Russian letters some byzantine word (in the sentence quoted above), since he talked about decorations of the byzantine emperors. Innab (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

ru:Бармы, ru:Дробница. GreyHood ^Talk 08:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Alexander Misharin

The aricle is under hard long-time COI attack, that poured here from Russian Wikipedia. Needs mediation, can someone help please? --ssr (talk) 07:00, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

More district questions (Moscow and St. Petersburg)

Hi! Which Moscow district is this located in?

• Sevastopolsky prospekt, 28/1, Moscow, Russia 117209 (Aero Rent head office)

And which St. Petersburg district are these located in?

• Nevsky pr., 61 (Rossiya headquarters)
• 18/4 Pilotov str., St.Petersburg, 196210, Russia (former Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise headquarters)

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 16:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Aero Rent is in Cheryomushki District. Rossiya is in Vladimirsky Municipal Okrug of Tsentralny District, and Pulkovo Aviation's headquarters are in Moskovsky District.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 9, 2011; 17:28 (UTC)

Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 20:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Moon landing

This redirect is up for discussion. Please see WP:RFD#Wikipedia:Moon landing. Simply south...... creating lakes for 5 years 20:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Gazprom HQ

This is in Moscow:

• Location:

16 Nametkina St., Moscow, Russian Federation

Which district is it in? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 00:59, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Cheryomushki District. Are you going to request many more? :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 13:43 (UTC)

Not at the moment, Ezhiki - They come by when I encounter them. Currently I'm focusing on Hong Kong, so I may not get to more Russian stuff till later. Thank you so much for your help :) WhisperToMe (talk) 21:27, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

No problem; it's just easier for me to look them up in batches than one by one. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 21:33 (UTC)

WP:COI on Alexander Misharin

Hello! I'm an editor who spends a lot of time at WP:COIN and would like to request the help of anyone who is able to read Russian. Recently, this case has been brought to WP:COIN regarding a user who claims to be the secretary (translation of "секретарь" on Google Translate) of Alexander Misharin. A controversy has been brought over from ru.wp regarding the content of the subject's article, which appears to be highly referenced, but is being whitewashed by user:Ssr who claims that the content is not true. If you speak Russian, can you assist the COI case by reading through the references and letting us know how reliable they are? If Ssr's goals are not contrary to WP's, there doesn't appear to be a COI. If they're whitewashing bad press from the article, we'll take immediate action but that's all hinging on references that I can't read as someone who doesn't know Russian. OlYeller^Talktome 17:07, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The first paragraph ("Misharin regularly pushes for a project of high-speed train line...") is sourced to a railway fans website, which, in turn, attributes its article to 66.ru—a regional online publication which bids itself as a "modern portal of Yekaterinburg". Another source (RBC) is a well-known and reputable media company. The trainclub article, however, does not say that Misharin "regularly pushes for a high-speed train project"; it merely states that building such a road is one of the goals the governor aims to achieve. The RBC reference confirms the costs of the project given in our article (although it converts euros to dollars); however, the sentence starting with "due to vast distances..." is written with an obvious negative POV. The RBC article simply states the costs but does not draw any conclusions as to whether the costs are too high or whether air travel should be a more economical way to solve the transportation problem (indeed, it says that a trip in a high-speed train would take ~7 hours as opposed to ~30 hours in a regular train; an obvious contrast to the high-speed train vs. air travel comparison ssr removed). The last 66.ru ref in that paragraph says that the costs of the project are too high to expect it completed any time before 2020, but does label Misharin as an overspender or somesuch. All in all, I'd say that while the facts in this paragraph are right, there is an obvious spin to make the governor look as an opportunistic schemer; a spin which is present in none of the cited sources. I'd say it is a BLP problem, although not one a good re-write wouldn't fix.

Did my best to address the issue. Now 12 sources, changed tone, checked for citedness of claims. Please tell if not good enough. Gritzko (talk) 17:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Please do'nt add content to tha article any more, see Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Alexander_Misharin for details. --ssr (talk) 04:44, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

That is the complaint I filed. What's wrong with it? I see absolutely no reason to stop editing. Albeit, I've done everything I was going to do. And please stop blanking the section, I will undo that anyway. Gritzko (talk) 07:05, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The second paragraph ("In July 2010...") is sourced to Kommersant—a reputable Russian business newspaper—as well as to RBC. The billboard campaign is the subject of the article in Kommersant, but it is mainly about the controversy regarding the funding for the campaign itself. There is a short note about the opposition parties commenting that the United Russia party could not have allocated 1.3 billion roubles for roads construction because that's the money of the taxpayers, not the party's own funds, but that's just usual politicking (the text on the billboard says the money was "attracted", not "paid" by the party). The RBC article is about the government of Russia allocating money for roads construction, and is not related to Misharin in any way. The two sentences in the second paragraph thus amount to little more than original research and a coatrack.

Removed Gritzko (talk) 04:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The third paragraph (Misharin ran a campaign for cancellation of city mayor elections...) is unreferenced, and that, coupled with its accusative tone makes it a ripe candidate for removal as a BLP violation.

I added a nice ref to a Kommersant article. If you need more, I may find more. Gritzko (talk) 04:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I did not research the rest of the paragraphs with the similar level of detail, but a cursory glance confirms the same pattern as in the first three. The sources themselves are mostly of adequate quality, but are either used in a way to present the information in a negative light or are synthesized, producing an outcome neither source would independently confirm otherwise.

That is a matter of wording. I did my best to follow original wordings closely. If not OK please tell. Gritzko (talk) 04:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

That said, I do not believe there is no place for a "controversy" section in that article at all. While ssr's removal of the section seems to be more or less in line with our BLP guidelines, I do have my doubts he has the interests of Wikipedia above his job duties. When properly re-written and sourced, a "controversy" section would be a good addition to the article; but in the state ssr removed it, it is indeed mostly (but not completely) a BLP violation. This section should be written by someone who is capable of writing it from a neutral standpoint, and sadly I don't think either Gritzko or ssr qualify. Until a person willing to do that job appears, I would recommend the complete removal of that section.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 18:22 (UTC)

This is a great write-up. It's very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to address this issue. OlYeller^Talktome 20:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Glad to be of service. Best of luck with the case.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2011; 20:08 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, but I don't think such a third person would ever appear (requirements: acceptable level of English, familiarity with the rules of Wikipedia, knowledge of the topic, sufficient motivation). Hence, let's try to improve the text we have. Gritzko (talk) 04:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)