User talk:Backspace

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Welcome!

Hello Backspace, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  Olorin28 03:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Lorrie Morgan articles

Nice work! I wish more users who do album articles would make them look like yours. - Lucky 6.9 08:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your comments!

I'm really pretty new here and am here basically to have fun with some topics of major interest, one of which is country music by female singers. Backspace 08:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I can dig it...I work for a country radio station. I kinda dig Gretchen Wilson m'self.  :) - Lucky 6.9 09:09, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Most of the album articles here (in any genre) seem to have that ugly [non-neutral point of view!] orange background color. I decided to make mine a light blue, so, for now, I guess it'll be easy to spot mine. Backspace 07:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pavlovsk

I am not sure what your point is. Perhaps it would better to say that Pavlovsk is located on the territory of Leningrad Oblast (as opposed to "in" it), because St. Petersburg itself is located on the territory of Leningrad Oblast and is its administrative center. The Gibraltar example is irrelevant because the administrative situation there is entirely different. As for Pavlovsk being under jurisdiction of St. Petersburg (not oblast), it was already mentioned before you made your edits. I don't see why it should be repeated twice in the same paragraph.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 23:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, you are not correct about the "mutually exclusive" part. The majority of the autonomous districts of Russia, for example, are administratively parts of other federal subjects, which nevetheless does not prevent them from being separate federal subjects on their own. Saint Petersburg and Moscow are quite a similar story. You are putting too much faith into Russians doing things logically—they hardly ever do :)—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 03:22, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


That list (and the List of federal subjects of Russia by area) has long been on my to-do list, but I never got to sorting it out (changing the lists is easy, but changing every article which links to it is quite tedious). Both lists indeed count the nested autonomous districts twice (once as a part of the federal subject they are a part of, and once on their own—e.g., Krasnoyarsk Krai's area/population is given including the area/population of Taymyria and Evenkia, as well as Krasnoyarsk Krai proper, but both Taymyria and Evenkia are included separately as well). The area/population of Moscow Oblast and Leningrad Oblast, however, do not include those of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Such approach is traditional in Russian political geography and statistics. The reason is purely economic—budgets of nested regions depend on the budgets of the federal subjects they are subordinated to, so all statistical parameters are bundled together, but since such nested regions enjoy some degree of autonomy (unlike raions), there is a need to track their stats separately as well. Moscow and St. Petersburg always enjoyed a special status (both in modern Russia and in the USSR), and their budgets are quite independent from those of the oblasts they govern.

While this works fine and dandy in practice, I can see how awfully confusing and illogical it may seem to a person reading the general overview without being aware of these intricacies. Explaining all this in the article on Russian subdivisions is another thing on my to-do list, but I long since stopped making promises about when I am actually going to do something, because I found myself breaking such promises all too often.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 14:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


You are quite wrong about me immediately reverting the change you want to make. I can quite accept an idea of being wrong every once in a while. Encyclopedic accuracy for me is way more important than a question of who was right and who was not. Please do not regard me as a hawk flying over the Russian geography-related articles jealously protecting them from intruders. I keep a close watch on them, true, but only to make sure that less informed editors do not make edits that may seem logical to them but are in fact contrary to the truth.

Returning to Pavlovsk—the differences in viewpoints there are so fine and under-defined, that it can be regarded as both being "in" Leningrad Oblast and being separate from it, depending on the aspect one is reviewing (administrative, economic, or geographical). It would perhaps be better to edit that particular sentence out of the article altogether and stick to purely geographic definitions of "where", not unlike it's done in the article on Ust-Izhora. The sentence about Pavlovsk being under the jurisdiction of St. Petersburg should, of course, stay.

If you are going to edit the article on area/population rankings of the federal subjects, please do not forget to update all the articles that link to it (infoboxes on most of federal subjects will have to be updated as the rankings are bound to shift).

Please do not hesitate to contact me again if you have any questions or need clarifications. I'm always glad to be of assistance. Thank you very much for your interest to this subject—due to its fairly low popularity it's not very often I get to enjoy a conversation about it with someone.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 20:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


It's a pity I wasn't able to nudge you into it :) You are always welcome to come back and join in on the fun.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 13:19, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


Oh, I don't know about you, but I have a pretty big monitor :)) As for the numbers being exact to the last person, that is, of course, silliness. They are that accurate only because the census results were reported that way. Most end users would round them, but I don't think it is acceptable to do for them in an encyclopedia.

You are quite correct about the general Russia article—there was no census in 2000; only estimates are available. As a matter of fact, the 2002 Census is the first one conducted in modern Russia; the previous one was the All-Soviet Census of 1989, and the next one is planned for 2010. The article on Russia sees quite a bit of vandalism and well-intentioned but factually incorrect edits; I would guess the "2000 Census" is one that was not caught in time (I corrected that). The population figure given by the 2002 Census was 145,513,037. If you can read Russian, perepis2002.ru is the official website of the Census with all the results you may ever be interested in. Hope this helps. Feel free to start a new section if you have additional questions, because we deviated from discussing Pavlovsk quite a bit, and people with smaller monitors are probably already reading these last comments vertically :)—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 21:13, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


That particular Excel spreadsheet is the one I am using to update population figures in Wikipedia, and yes, it's amazing how good of a job they did! As for the number discrepancies, the spreadsheet figure (145,166,731) includes only Russian permanent residents who were located on the territory of the Russian Federatin during the Census. The other number (145,513,037) also includes Russian citizens abroad (excluding yours truly and probably quite a few other people who did not bother to participate), as well as people who permanently reside outside of Russia, but at the time of the Census were located on its territory.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 21:08, 14 March 2006 (UTC)


  1. There is a note to that effect, but like I said before, the areas should really be listed separately.
  2. You are correct about Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Both the population and the area should be either included with or counted separately from those of the oblasts they govern. That will need correction. As for Chechnya and Ingushetia, there is nothing puzzling here. The border is indeed still undefined, but that refers to the exact border. It is impossible to calculate exact areas of both republics without a defined border, but counting population is fairly easy, because all of these two republics' settlements are under jurisdiction of either Chechnya or Ingushetia. If a person reports that s/he is living in a Chechen settlement, s/he is included into the Chechnya's population, if s/he is living in an Ingush settlement, then, correspondingly, s/he is included with Ingushetia's population.
  3. This is a very interesting discovery you made. All of the areas of the federal subjects came directly from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which reports the Volgograd Oblast's area to be 114,100 km². A quick search in modern sources gives the area of 113,900 km². The latter is most likely correct, although I can't tell you off the top of my head what happened to those 200 km². To say I am intrigued is an understatement. The only administrative change of that scale I am aware of is the transfer of Sokolsky District of Ivanovo Oblast to jurisdiction of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in 1994 (this transfer, by the way, is also not accounted for in the area figures in Wikipedia).—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 22:33, 14 March 2006 (UTC)


Oh, I didn't mean the population figures, I meant the areas. Sorry about the confusion.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 21:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC) And I also forgot about the fact that there were area figures available on the Census site. The 1994 transfer is most likely accounted for in #3. As for the Volgograd Oblast discrepancy, I couldn't find anything yet.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 21:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Hi, Backspace! I just wanted to thank you for updating the population/area figures for the Russian federal subjects. It's a daunting and tedious task that I've been postponing for too long, and I am so glad that you decided to finally take care of it!—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 19:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't know what to do with populations that were later than 2002 (all estimates), so generally I did not replace any numbers, but just added to them. For the areas, some are given as more precise than rounded to the nearest 100 km², so I did not replace those either. I did the populations of all of the cities over 50,000 that have articles also. I think I'll slow down now. There are just too many smaller towns. Backspace 03:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
You did the right thing—just leave the estimates be. They are good to have to show the population trends, and are, for the most part, pretty accurate (although, of course, it would be better if they were referenced as well). Again, thanks for all your hard work!—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 14:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I've fixed the problem with Salekhard. Thank you for the list, by the way. Conscious 06:26, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Administrative divisions of Moscow

Hi, Backspace! Thanks for your effort of adding population figures to the administrative units, but please do not do that in other similar articles. Population numbers should go to corresponding articles (i.e., Zelenograd population should be mentioned in Zelenograd article. When new numbers become available, it is not very likely people adding them will make an effort to also find and update all the lists where the numbers are listed, which will eventually lead to an inconsistent mess. Also, I update the Administrative divisions of xxx series with new information pretty much monthly, and having to jump around redundant information is an additional inconvenience. I am sorry, I don't want you to feel that your work is unappreciated, but I hope you understand my reasoning. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 03:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (American) country music article

Regarding the note you left on my page: do you mean that other articles no longer link to this article, since the links are to "country music" which is now a disambig page? If so, then yes, I'm aware of this problem. I started going through all the articles listed on the "links here" page, but then thought I should hold off and wait: what if someone comes along and reverts the whole shebang? I don't want to do a whole lot of work for nothing. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 02:41, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Population density

I saw your recent edits for Union City, New Jersey, Hoboken, New Jersey and Manhattan. I don't doubt their ranks as the densest cities in the US, but we don't (yet) have a source to support these statements. For Hoboken, the source compares it to Union City, but doesn't prove that it's second densest. Alansohn 07:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nunavut/NWT

Just wanted to stop by and thank you for the edits and corrections that you have been making. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:30, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I was living in Scotland in the early 70s and got a job with the Hudson's Bay Company. It was a tradition that they had been doing for about 300 years. I just stayed and never left. Cheers.

[edit] Kentucky Bend map

Hi, I found your note about the map on Kentucky Bend and corrected the map. However, the image itself was at Commons, not Wikipedia, so it would have been better (and I would have found the note sooner!) if you left your message at Commons:Image talk:Kentucky Bend.png instead of here at Wikipedia's Image talk:Kentucky Bend.png. In general, you can tell if an image is at Commons by two things: (1) the word "image" on the image tab is red instead of blue, and (2) there is a template saying "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there is shown below." If you click on the words "description page there" it will take you to the Commons description page, from where you can click on "discussion" and leave a comment. Thanks! Angr 11:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi nice Alaska stubs but remember to categorize see Hawkins Island (Alaska) now. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 09:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Angr: Nice to see that somebody around here has interest in obscure geography besides me. Backspace 17:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reservations

Thanks for your many contributions to articles about reservations. They really help. Cheers, -Will Beback 04:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Census Bureau Area Figures

Hi Backspace, so you added the area reference to the Marquesas Keys article, after figuring out that the Marquesas Keys consist of Blocks 3042 and 3043, Census Tract 9725, Monroe County, Florida. Would you please tell me how you figured that out? I for example would like to figure out what blocks and in what census tract are the Farallon Islands in San Francisco County, California, and where I can download the corresponding Census Burea area figures page.--Ratzer 19:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External l

Hey, this is highly interesting. I find the geographic areas, but I still have trouble to download that table that has the area figures (I get all kinds of other tables). You were right with the Farallon Islands. And, I found the Dry Tortugas (although not immediately), they are in the same block group as the Marquesas Keys. When you display the map of block 3995, which seems to be the water area of the national park, you can identify the following blocks (if you have an appropriate map beside you):
  • 3044 East Key
  • 3045 Middle Key
  • 3046 Hospital Key
  • 3047 Garden Key, Bush Key, Long Key, and obviously also Bird Key (which is submerged since 1935!)
  • 3048 Loggerhead Key
  • 3994 and 3996: (obviously) Territorial Waters outside of National Park
I have contributed a lot to the Dry Tortugas article, and I find this also interesting.--Greetings, Ratzer 18:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
When you have made your geographic choices, either through the map or through the lists from the other tabs, click on Next at the bottom. You will then get a screen with three tabs. Under Show All Tables. I usually will pick P1. Total Population for just basic population figures, and possibly P3. Race to break down by that category, just to keep things simple, but you can pick whatever category you're interested in or is relevant, realizing that this may involve a lot of numbers which you may not really be interested in. Then click Add for each one. When you are done, click Show Result at the bottom. On the next screen click Options > Show Geographic Identifiers. This will give you a table with all the relevant geographical area figures. If you want to download the data that's on the screen you can then click Print/Download > Download. This will result in a small window asking you how you want this data downloaded. I usually pick the zipped Excel file (third from bottom) because I want my data in spreadsheet format, but you can pick any of the other format choices you want, even unzipped if the table is short enough (There is a maximum length for unzipped, but I don't know what it is.) Pick OK and your file will come to you to wherever your incoming files are defaulted to. That's it. Again, good luck! Backspace 22:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
This is great! Thanks for all your helpful explanations. This is a wealth of data hidden on these pages!--Ratzer 19:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kalispel Tribe

The unpopulated land in Airway Heights of which you speak is not empty as it contains the Northern Quest Casino. As far as the area information of the land along the Pend Oreille River, I'm fairly sure that the area data is incorrect. I'll check it out. Patris Magnus 23:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I should have been more specific when I said "unpopulated," because specifically I meant that there was no permanent resident population on that territory as of the 2000 census. (I believe that the Census Bureau defines this as people who normally sleep there at night.) This of course does not mean that there is never any population on that land, just that no one had his permanent residence (home) there at that time. There is much industrial land in the United States where there is no official resident population, i.e., no one resides there permanently, yet there is a large daytime work population. As far as the area numbers, I have documented them in the References section, and they are official numbers from the Census Bureau, which means that they were accurate (officially) as of the 2000 census. Whether they are accurate today is something I'm not prepared to answer, since I have no later data than what I specifically mentioned. Backspace 00:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
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