Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russian federal subjects/Temp

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Shouldn't we include major cities in the overview? The administrative division subsection does look pretty weird. Have a look at how I did it in, e.g., Sverdlovsk Oblast: apoivre 08:07, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'd still like to see major (or all) cities listed eventually, but you are right — first, Administrative Division section is probably not a very good place for such a list, and second, compiling such a list is in no way a priority. Please share your ideas here.

Also, if you want changes to the Demographics section, please also make appropriate changes in the template — we can always revert them if we decide they are nott so good or if we have a better idea.

Finally, do you know when 2002 Census data are going to be available (not just basic stuff, but complete results)? Thank you for your support!--Ezhiki 11:41, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Some data is already there. Some other stuff - the one I would like to see - is to be released in June. apoivre 06:20, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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Dear Cantus,

Russian republics are not countries, that's why they are different and that's why this project (which not only includes republics, but also krais, oblasts, autonomous districts, federal cities, and an autonomous oblast) exists in the first place. You sure would not insist on formatting US states or French departements using the countries template, would you? Subdivisions of most countries have their own guidelines and are formatted accordingly. This one is not an exception. Let us please discuss necessary changes before going on a revert jihad again, OK? I know the changes are necessary because being the only contributor does not automatically make me right and adds bias to the project, but I really would appreciate if you suggest them first and then we discuss them. If you don't want to do that and you don't want any discussion, then you are not going to be very useful to the project.

And please do not refer to the "guidelines" which you yourself have just put in the project without even asking. I've put too much time into this project to think I deserve at least an honest discussion. If you are here just to annoy me, that's fine, but that is really not nice of you. If you are not going to spend any time on this project other than making petty changes to prove your ego, then please leave. I do not want stupid revert wars again.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 05:16, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

My only problem with this template are the NAMES IN CAPITAL LETTERS. That is completely unnecessary, IMHO. The other thing I would change is, instead of '''Cyrillic Name'''<br />'''English Translation''', I'd use '''Cyrillic Name'''<br />'''English Transliteration''', which is the way countries are handled. All other regions/states/countries are in this way, why should Russian republics be any different? --Cantus 05:59, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Formatting of the introduction and the info box header

Thanks for finally agreeing to discuss this. This is very appreciated, and I am not being ironic at all, honestly. Here's a list of my reasons, with the explanations. Could you please review them one by one and comment them here?

[edit] Capital letters

• Capital letters. They seemed like a good idea at the time, but now you are the third person that does not like them. Previous discussion about this is here. The brief summary of the discussion: if you want lowercase letters, I do not mind, but please go to the project's status page and change them to lowercase in all articles that are listed under the "Done" and "In Progress" sections. If/when it's done, I promise I am going to use lowercase in new edits :)
  • Using ALL CAPITALS besides being ugly, it is not the standard way used across wikipedia. --Cantus 00:32, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
    • Wanna change it yourself, or do you want me to do it?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Translit

• Translit. Honestly, I missed the need for translit altogether when making the original template. Recently I added it in a separate sentence, so the intro would look like this (I use Ingushetia here just as an example):

  The Republic of Ingushetia (Russian: Респу́блика Ингуше́тия; Ingush: Гiалгiай Мохк) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). The direct transliteration of the republic's name is Respublika Ingushetiya.

  • The word transliteration is too long and makes article less fluid to read. If you really want to add that link, I suggest shortening the word to tr. or something like that. Using a whole new sentence for a transliteration is even worse. --Cantus 00:32, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
    • "tr." kind of does not make a lot of sense. Someone once tried to abbreviate "Russian:" to "ru:", and the majority of people did not like it (unfortunately, I do not remember which article that was in). "Translit." instead of "tr." may be a bit better, but I still don't understand what's wrong with the whole word, even though it's a long one. Names of some languages can also be quite long—should they also be abbreviated? What about other long words? Or should only the ones that are also links be abbreviated? Anyway, having a separate sentence for transliteration makes the content in parentheses a lot cleaner. If you leave it as is (even when replacing "transliteration" with "tr." or even removing that reference altogether), you'll be stuck with a pretty long italics line (the actual transliteration), and if we choose to transliterate all languages, it's going to look uglier still. Maybe putting this out for a vote would be the least painful way to figure out which way is the best, because each variant has its merits and downsides. What do you think?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)
      • I much prefer having the whole transliteration word there in the parethesis, than a whole new sentence for a transliteration. --Cantus 20:00, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)
        • I've been trying to think it over again yesterday, and here's another idea. The whole "parentheses" thing works pretty darn well when there is not too much information to place there (so, having just a Russian version and a transliteration, or a Russian and a local version there looks pretty neat). Once we begin putting all kinds of things there, it starts to get ugly (with Kabardino-Balkaria, for example, we'd have to give a Russian name, its transliteration, a Kabardian name, and a Balkar name; adding transliteration for those two languages makes it more overloaded still). So, maybe it would be the best to leave just one sentence in the introduction for definition purposes (e.g., "Ingushetia (Russian: Ингуше́тия) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic)."), and move the original names and their transliteration out of parentheses into a separate block. That block can be placed either under a separate heading in the article (which would also make a perfect place for alternative/obsolete names) or on separate lines in the info box. Other solutions are also possible. In the result, the intro will look very neat and naming/transliteration information would still be available. How's that, what'd you think?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 13:43, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

• The info box header has the name of the republic in English on the first line, its name in Russian on the second line, and in local official language(s) (if any) on the third and following lines.

  • The Republic of Ingushetia→this is according to the guidelines on how the article should start. The subject is in bold. I assume no discussion is needed here.
  • (Russian: Респу́блика Ингуше́тия→the name of the federal subject is given in Russian first, because it is the official language of all subjects of the Russian Federation. The accents are a convenient way to show how the word is correctly pronounced. Unfortunately, these same accents prevent the text from being properly indexed by the search engines. Also, you insist that the Russian name is in bold. May I ask what the reason for that is?
  • There is no transliteration after the Russian version because, while it would be convenient with just one language, it gets terribly confusing when one or several names in other languages follow. You once mentioned that it is pretty clear that the text in italics following the original text is a transliteration, but in this case transliteration will be followed by the name of the republic in the Ingush language, and I (and I suppose you, too) have no idea how that language should be transliterated. If we put transliterated version right after the Russian name, especialy without even mentioning that it is a transliteration, the whole content in parenthesis is going to look like a mess. This is the main reason why I put the transliteration out of the parenthesis as a separate sentence.
    • I happen to know how to transliterate Ingush. --Cantus 00:32, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
      • Do you also happen to know how to transliterate Kabardian? Balkar? Tatar? Nenets? Karelian? Chechen? Ossetin? The point is, if we start transliterating languages other than Russian, we'd better take care of all of them, not just some. In any case, for those languages transliteration system of which you know, why wouldn't you write corresponding articles and link to them from the related articles? That'd be a great addition.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)
      • I'd also still like to know your answer to the question of what your reason for having the Russian name (in parenthesis) in bold is?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)
        • The original name is as important as the name in English. --Cantus 20:00, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)
          • For reference purposes, yes, it is just as important. The practice, however, is to emphasize the English names (since this is an English wiki). So, for Bashkortostan, for example, both Bashkortostan and Bashkiria should be in bold, but not "Башкортостан" and "Башкирия". Emphasizing non-English text greatly confuses readers who don't know and often can't even read Russian. In any case, if Russian name is emphasized, then why not the local name as well?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 13:43, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

• • Ingush: Гiалгiай Мохк)→obviously a good piece of reference material; should be in the article.
  • The direct transliteration of the republic's name is Respublika Ingushetiya→ this is in a separate sentence for the reasons outlined above. Can you please tell me why you do not want a link to the transliteration article?
  • Info box header, line 1 (English)→bold, probably lowercase (see above discussion). English version, of course, should be in line 1 since this is an English wiki. Probably not much to discuss here.
  • Info box header, line 2 (Russian)→bold, probably lowercase, unaccented. The name is unaccented so the search engines can find it if necessary (as opposed to the accented version in the intro).
  • Info box header, line 3 and below (name in local language, in this case Ingush)→appartenly, you do not want it to be there, and want to replace it with the transliterated version instead. I am quite interested to know why (apart from the fact that subdivisions of other countries are handled like that). My reasoning is that transliteration is mentioned in the articles only because it helps locate the article through the search engines (just like an unaccented Russian version does); I don't really believe that a transliterated version of the name is of such great encyclopaedic value as to be emphasized in bold in the info box header for all the world to see. This is my only reason, and if it does not make sense to you, I am sure curious to know why. Maybe this case is an exception to following the examples of other articles, which have translit in the info box headers (can you also provide examples of such articles, please? Maybe we can ask the participants of those projects why they wanted to have translit so prominently displayed, what do you think?)
    • If you are going to take the trouble to add the original name in the original language, in a Wikipedia which uses a different alphabet (Roman, for us), then you should also take the trouble to explain to people what the foreign alphabet is saying. It's the least you can do for users. --Cantus 00:32, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
      • Well, whether you put the transliteration in the parentheses right after the Russian version (your proposal) or put it in a separate sentence (mine), you've already told the user what those funny Cyrillic letters are. Why emphasize it again so prominently in the info box header? Having English/Russian/local names there is far more useful than having a derivative (note the emphasis) piece of info (such as transliteration), because it provides essential and original information at a glance for those who don't want to read every detail in the article and want just the basic information, wouldn't you agree?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I hope that we will have an interesting (and, unlike in previous cases, fruitful) argument about these issues. I will refrain from editing any of the articles covered by the project until we come to a consensus here (although adding raw content without going into formatting issues should probably be fine), and I would sure appreciate if you could do the same. It would save us both a lot of nerves.

And, oh, thank you for your interest in the project. I never realized it was going to be so much work when I started it, and having an extra hand should surely speed it up!--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 17:24, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

I suggest:

двсдвсдвдсвсдв

transliteration_here

<big> tags would probably work fine. As for the content of the header, see above.

I don't have a lot of time to be argumentative. --Cantus 00:32, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

I don't want to sound like your mother, but why would you even choose to participate in a project for which you do not even have time to provide arguments? It is kind of irritating to see that you can take your time for going through your edits, which you believe to be "superior", almost every day and revert the changes you don't like, but you cannot find time to at least provide any arguments. There are plenty of ways to make useful contributions to Wiki on a limited time budget (adding raw content with minor regards to fine intricacies of consistent formatting is one of them), maybe you'd want to consider that option instead. I know that I'll do exactly that once I can't spend as much time here as I currently do.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Calm down please. I didn't have a lot of time when I made those replies. Maybe you would prefer to wait a couple of weeks when I do have more time so I can give you a more through response? Be happy with what you get. Don't be so demanding. --Cantus 20:00, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, no pressure. I just didn't get that you hadn't had time at that moment. I can easily wait a couple of weeks, if that's the amount of time you need to provide thorough answers. I'd rather have an in-depth discussion with you later, than random responses now. Not a problem at all. Thanks.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 13:43, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)