Talk:Almaty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Central Asia Almaty is part of WikiProject Central Asia, a project to improve all Central Asia-related articles. This includes but is not limited to Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Central Asian portions of Iran and Russia, region-specific topics, and anything else related to Central Asia. If you would like to help improve this and other Central Asia-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as mid-importance on the Project's importance scale.
After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's ratings summary page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses.
This article has been reviewed by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team.
Version 0.5
 This article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale. Feel free to make short comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

Where does the population info come from? Is it dated in the source? It would be nice to include the date when the population was estimated. (Alexander Konovalenko 23:37, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC))

Contents

[edit] Apple references

Translating Almaty as "appled" is regarded by many as a common misconception. The correct translation of "appled" would be "almaly", and Alma-Ata is simply Russian adaptation of Almaty which was then retranslated as "father of apples" although "ata" means "grandfather".

"Ata" means "father" too. Another meaning of this word is "forefather", for example. Geevee 16:58, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alma-Ata?

I've just reverted some major edits by User:Papa7 and an anon (who I assume is Papa7 too) which, among other things, replace all references to "Almaty" by "Alma-Ata". There was a significant amount of text added, which should probably be worked into the article, and some new images, some of which are good. But the name references alone are enough for me to revert the changes. Staecker 21:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To Mr. Staecker and anyone like-minded

I was born in Alma-ata, obtained my first professional degree in Alma-Ata, went on to obtain further accreditation in Europe and the U.S. While in the U.S. I taught, on graduate and undergraduate levels, maths, natural sciences, Economics, Management science, Accounting and Audit. In essence, I've been teaching and consulting on anything that has quantitative (mostly multi-factor) component to it.

I had a privilege of learning my Asian history first hand off two most well-known Central Asian historians (of Kazakh descent), so I think I know very-very well what I'm talking about. I am fluent in Kazakh, (in addition to good general comprehension of about 15 languages including Japanese and Chinese - I worked some time as translator between Asian and European languages for the largest translation company in Asia) - therefore again, I believe the body of knowledge I possess is very likely to dismiss your innocent guesses, or fractal knowledge of something that in fact has very-very deep roots.

As I am not located anywhere close to (what I perceive to be) your time zone, I might not have many chances to respond to your queries, but otherwise, if you have a scientific curiosity about things - you can ask for my opinion, I'll gladly share my views... Papa7 15:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding- I hope that you don't feel I was questioning your credibility. I think your knowledge will indeed contribute positively to this and other articles. I do question the nomenclature that you use. What are your views on the name of this fair city? I'm not a native, but I think it's inappropriate to call it Alma-Ata in this article. Of course you personally may call it whatever you like (I met many people in Kazakhstan who called it Alma-ata), but the official name is Almaty, isn't it? Staecker 13:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, if one undetakes a solid research into the name's ethymology, one is likely to find multiple references to the USSR's Academy of Sciences, an organisation that ceased to exist over 15 years ago, with its branches standing independently today. Russian Academy of Sciences, an institution that effectively took up most archives of the USSR's Academy of Sciences, has officially designated "Alma-Ata" as the city's name in their references. Kazakh Academy of Sciences (I mean, the current establishment, mainly consisting of people who periodically enjoy partying on occasion to award each other for no apparent reason), to the best of my knowledge, never produced any research into early establishments or anything that goes to define the correct ethymology, or otherwise prove Russian Academy's usage of the name "Alma-Ata" wrong... I therefore stand by what I find to be a well-researched and long-established tradition of scientific nomenclature to refer to the city as Alma-Ata. By the way, you will find the European Commission referring to the city name in a similar way: try, for example, this link for usage check (closer to bottom of that page)... Papa7 15:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll admit I don't know much about the scientific literature. But surely the Russians should not be the ones to define the nomenclature. I've never seen a reference to "Alma-ata" in a Kazakhstani document (from this century). Of course Almaty is a new name, and so is a departure from its direct etymology. But the Kazakhstani government officially changed it to Almaty, and so that's its name now. Certainly the article should note that the city's old name was "Alma-ata", but that's not the name anymore. Just like Aqmola is now Astana, Aktyubinsk is now Aktobe, Frunze is now Bishkek, etc. Examine if you will the links at the bottom of the page. I've looked through them and haven't seen any reference to "Alma-ata". Khabar calls it Almaty, the IOC calls it Almaty, Nazarbayev calls it Almaty. Those are pretty compelling sources. Staecker 14:20, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

easy now, easy... We are trying to have a scientific dialogue here, we check references and build a sequence of arguements - you're a mathematician, you should be able to share a general view that a system in stability should have a set of exogenous parameters linked together in a series of stochastic processes produce same result as any alternative system operating on a set of endogenous premises (otherwise the condition of stability, or equilibrium, will be violated *_*). I invite you to consider multiple factors, exogenous, as well as endogenous, while you attempt to revert the arguement to considering linear processes governing a unit-vector of endogenous factors.

I like your style. Staecker 15:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
So do I +_+ Papa7 15:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Kazakhstan's government consists of a single family that has never been elected, it's a group of nazis if you will, who monitor what people say and eradicate those whom they find to be dangerous. For the reason of my familiarity with the ways of ruling people in Kazakhstan, I give absolutely no regard to any output they produce. I know for a fact that at least 70% of Kazakhstan's population would pay just as much attention as I do to any output that "the family" ("the village", really) produces... So I invite you to consider alternatives before you dive into popular "Russian - non-Russian" arguement (everything being equal, that is not something a gentleman that considers himself educated should find himself diverging into) Papa7 14:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

No real arguments there, although you should be careful to use the word "nazis" around here (people won't take you seriously). I know well (though perhaps not as well as you do) that the Nazarbayev regime's claim to democratic authority is shaky at best. (I also know that it's a bit misleading for me to reference Nazarbayev and Khabar as if they constituted two independent sources.)
But I'm not sure you've really responded to my argument. If they call it Almaty, and most of the rest of the world calls it Almaty, all etymology aside, shouldn't Wikipedia call it Almaty? It is not appropriate for us to take a stand. Staecker 15:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I repeat, I do not attempt to claim a representation that is not already in use - therefore I do not propose taking a stand. The European Commission is an authoritative establishment as far as many-many-many people are concerned, Russian Academy of Sciences is something that a large population recognises as an authority - well, I, ekh, for the lack of a better metaphor, fail to comprehend, where exactly this "most of the rest of the world" really comes from? A little side note - once you start writing correct English (and stop using Kazakhstani - although I let that live somewhere in our article ^_^ ), I might just consider your linguistic standards to be something that you actually care to improve, although you might not be considering that particular development to be important enough for the purpose of explaining your thoughts (well, but since we are onto something that features elements of linguistics... I thought we'd think back on it sometime later and might find it somewhat relevant)Papa7 15:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Alright then, I bring you... the rest of the world:
This is just what I could come up with in a few minutes. I'm sure you could find lots more examples. Staecker 19:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


You are going for your unit-vector approach once again - I'll try to explain myself in your terms :

1. Completely disregard any and all prescriptions by existing KZ government, regardless of which year those are dated (see above - you'd have to show me that the government is legitimate and that people actually voted in support of that government's decisions)

2. Consider only the references that are a part of scientific research, or at least incorporate some body of independent research. (this means avoiding any statements that exist for political reasons purely)

if you ever engaged in any meaningful scientific research, you'd condole with these principlesPapa7 09:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Staecker is supposed to consider the above prior to what the official Wikipedia policy says about naming:

"Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things."

The most common name is definitely the one which is unambiguously used at the websites above, as they show a clear agreement on the name. There is no other option here because it would conflict with Wikipedia's guidelines. If you want to change it, you should change the guideline first. You must be a highly intelligent person so I'm sure you'll understand it perfectly what it means to have a guideline on something. Adam78 02:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Adam, 3 things:

1. a guideline's application is what people are usually concerned with, and not the guideline per se - I assume that being an educated person that you are, you'd have no trouble reconciling with this statement. Particular application of "most common name" portion is what we're discussing here (as it is ambiguous given the developments with re-naming / decision-makers, vs. how people actually refer to the city name)...

2. Do yourself a favour and run a search for "Alma-Ata" on Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, then do same for "Almaty", filter out purely political bull - and then let's try to have an intelligeble conversation about guideline interpretations

3. When you mention names of people, don't forget a nice prefix "Mr." - that will help a friendly dialogue

Cheers - Papa [Papa7]


  1. You're right in this point.
  2. If you consider all Google hits, it will inevitably include outdated results, since obviously there is no person who could update all the zillions of websites whenever a name is changed in the world. (All the websites belong to different people and organizations and everyone can only access their own. It may be sad but that's how Internet works.) But if you only consider Google hits from the last 3 months, Almaty prevails: Almaty hits (7,570,000 from my computer), Alma-Ata hits (1,190,000 from my computer).
  3. I didn't mention anyone's name, only a nickname. I am not supposed to know what his or her real name is and whether it agrees with the nickname or not. Users choose nicknames because probably that's how they want to be referred to. (Anyway, you're the first person to complain about it in the past two years since I've been here.)

Also see Wikipedia:Naming conflict#Identification of common names using external references.

Adam78 14:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


I am actually impressed to see that my editing lasted for 20 days - or, if someone reverted it back and forth, then maybe I just found some like-minded wikipedians

Anyway, I cannot monitor what's happening here because I usually end up working 14 hours a day - that is the reason why I did not post any comments recently. Well, now that it's Sunday I decided to check on what's been happening -so here we go addressing the outstanding issues *_*

1. In my previous post I invited challengers to do the following:

" Do yourself a favour and run a search for "Alma-Ata" on Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, then do same for "Almaty", filter out purely political bull - and then let's try to have an intelligeble conversation about guideline interpretations "

I found that Adam has introduced some of his own little filtering approaches. What he has done is " if you only consider Google hits from the last 3 months... "

Well when a researcher is checking up on historical data to validate a choice of a certain parameter, they are faced with a choice of a "reset period" (for example, if you try to run correlations, you'll find that in many-many instances the choice of this "rest period" is something that is very critical). But ultimately, that is up to a resercher to decide on.

If I were you, I'd have numbers instead of words - say, have a little table

       last 10 years:      last 5 yrs   3yrs   1yr   6mth    3mth

 Alma-Ata   XXXXX          XXXXX        ............

 Almaty     XXXXX-nnn      XXXX-nn      ............

then I would have a similar statistics for

WHERE the hits are coming FROM :

Asia | US | Europe | Kazakhstan+Central Asia


2. I think you just skipped on something very important -

apply a principle that any fundamental research should be bounded by:

FILTER OUT POLITICAL BULL

and when you can show that indeed, independent scientific research + common people do not use Alma-Ata, then I might say - well, let's add some more granularity to your data.

'A little advice': you should never attempt to argue about as subject you do not have a thorough and consistent knowledge of...

EDUCATE YOURSELF *_* !!!

Cheers - Papa7 08:01, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, it's not really meaningful to reach back to five or ten years since the world is constantly changing (I'm afraid it's a commonplace!…), including country and city names, and the more recent data we retrieve the more correct data we get. Remember that we are not looking for the name of the city throughout history but we look for the most current name, which is valid in April 2006. The more we go back in time, the more differences we will find from the present state – obviously. This is why I used the most up-to-date data available, that is, three month. (If I could, I would have used only the data of the most recent day, rather than the last three months, but Google doesn't allow that.)

I don't know how to "filter out political bull". But since you haven't shown how to do it, I'm not convinced you did so in supporting your own view. Adam78 08:45, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%BC%D0%B0-%D0%90%D1%82%D0%B0

[edit] Why Two Pages?

Now, I'm not an "authority" such as people here claim to be. I don't hold any PhDs, nor do I feel I posses a "body of knowledge" that "is very likely to dismiss...innocent guesses, or fractal knowledge." I have, however, spent some time in Russia and in Kazakhstan, specifically Almaty. That is the name I always hear people use - Almaty. The Russians, however, still call it Alma-Ata. For example, I was living in Nizhny Novgorod for awhile, and no one there knew what I was talking about when I said Almaty. All the people I met in Almaty, however, say Almaty. When I see the name written on signs and billboards in the city, it is also written as "Алматы" (Almaty).

From my experience, only the Russians continue the use of Alma-Ata. As another example, the train station in Moscow says Алма-Ата (Alma-Ata). However, it also says Gorki instead of Nizhny Novgorod (most everyone there says Nizhny Novgorod, or "Nizhny" for short - I can't recall actually hearing "Gorki" used beyond the train station).

Also, It's not just the Kazakh government who uses Almaty. As has been said, it's a lot of people. Many books about the region published nowadays also use Almaty (they sometimes mention "the Soviet Alma-Ata", much like Bishkek is the "Soviet Frunze".

As for using the scientific/scholarly-approved approach for naming, Wikipedia doesn't do that (as mentioned above). See, the "scientific" or "academic" method for writing the offical name of the country - Қазақстан - is actually Qazaqstan (the letter Қ being offically transliterated as Q in English). There area few academic books do that (look at works from Indiana University, for example), but outside of these small circles, people by and large write Kazakhstan with a "K" - including Wikipedia. If people say we should use "Alma-Ata" because it's the correct name as dictated by academics, why no Qazaqstan?

Anyway, my point is that I found it surprising there are two different articles (Almaty and Alma-Ata). I think there should only be one, since regardless of the name it is still the same place. All the pictures and information should be seen together, on one page. They should be merged.

Oh, one more thing. I just went to Google and looked up "Алматы" (Almaty) - 4,270,000 hits. I then looked up "Алма–Ата" (Alma-Ata) - only 1,160,000. Otebig 5:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. And thanks for the note that there's an article at Alma-Ata. About a month ago, when this whole naming business started, Papa tried to split the articles. I'd noticed it and reverted at Alma-ata, but I guess Alma-Ata slipped through the cracks. Thanks- Staecker 12:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


Well, my friend, seems you're capable of writing in Cyrrilic - one gets to wonder if you can actually read Cyrrilic well enough :

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%BC%D0%B0-%D0%90%D1%82%D0%B0

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.121.95.98 (talk • contribs) 13:46, 17 May 2006.

As it appears from the above, that will be a clear exception, which proves the rule. Adam78 13:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Religions

In Alma-Ata are living some Seventh-Day-Adventists:

  • But are they celebrate the worship in the Synagogue or have they an own house?
  • Perhaps many members of them are Germans? Simon MAYER

[edit] ancient city of Almaty and church

The first lines of text are incorrect and need some additional info Encyclopædia Britannica says: ” The modern city was founded in 1854, when the Russians established a military fortification on the site of the ancient city of Almaty, destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century.”


I replaced the picture of church, because of almost 70% of Muslims

[edit] Alma-Ata? what is it? maybe ALMATY?!

Who decided to place this name "alma-ata"? One Russian who speaks 15 languages ( ! and ??? ) include Kazakh and for instance Japanese? Who graduated at all thinkable universities around the world? God give me power…to believe in it.

Officially it should be Almaty, no Russian-style variants here that’s means post red and tsarist nostalgia feelings no more no less, all the rest of it the imitation of pseudo academic research. Russians annoy all post Ex USSR republics with these imperial and uppish approaches.

For example Estonian capital Tallinn Russians write in a Russian style – “Tallin” in both variants English and Russian. By that violates the English onomastic rules! And I can give many examples when Russians try to imposing their customs rest. Also we see the same here.

I would like to follow you by this official document to be sure writing the Geo names in ENGLISH http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/kazakhst.pdf

Please who responsible to edit, remove the link “http://en.wikipedia.org/alma-ata”


[edit] Temporarity of names?

1.

"History A troop of Siberian Cossacks from Omsk founded the fort Zailiysky in 1854 at the foot of the Tian Shan mountain range, and renamed it one year later to Vernyj, a name that remained until 1921."

Hello, I'd like to know/ask, what the origin of the data/info is (or why it should be real), that says, that "Zailiysky" (/"Zailijskij" in new-ISO-9) was renamed one year after (would mean 1855) it was founded (1854)? Does any "big name"-encyclopdia-book-series say it, or what?

I don't have many knowledge in this part, but I found no other info (in the web), that says the same. I always only found the info that the city we're talking about has been founded in 1854 under the name of "Zailiysky", and - the next chronological info - from 1867 till 1921 named "Vernyj".

So how long was the name "Zailiysky", and how long was the name "Vernyj"?:

1854-1855: "Zailiysky" & 1855-1921: "Vernyj"

                      or

1854-1867: "Zailiysky" & 1867-1921: "Vernyj"

                      ?


So the russian wikipedia-article says:

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%BC%D0%B0-%D0%90%D1%82%D0%B0 :

"Алма-Ата́ (В позднее Средневековье — Алмату, 1854 — заложено на месте казахского поселения Алматы военное укрепление Заилийское, затем Верное, 1867 — Алматинское, 1867—1921 — Верный, с 1921 — Алма-Ата, с 1993 в связи с переименованием в официальном употреблении государственными органами Казахстана на русском и казахском языках — Алматы́) — крупнейший город и бывшая столица Казахстана, расположенный у подножия гор Заилийского Алатау. «Алма-Ата» происходит от казахских слов «алма» (яблоко) и «ата» (дед, но в данном контексте - отец) и в переводе означает «Отец Яблок»."

(In latin letters via new-ISO-9:)

"Alma-Atá (V pozdnee Srednevekov'e — Almatu, 1854 — založeno na meste kazahskogo poseleniâ Almaty voennoe ukreplenie Zailijskoe, zatem Vernoe, 1867 — Almatinskoe, 1867—1921 — Vernyj, s 1921 — Alma-Ata, s 1993 v svâzi s pereimenovaniem v oficial'nom upotreblenii gosudarstvennymi organami Kazahstana na russkom i kazahskom âzykah — Almatý) — krupnejšij gorod i byvšaâ stolica Kazahstana, raspoložennyj u podnožiâ gor Zailijskogo Alatau."


As I must say my russian language skills are even much more less than my english ones (sorry), maybe one of you could evaluate, this says that it was named Vernyj since 1867 (and not since 1855, one year after its founding), right (If it is, what is the origin/basic data for this? From what is it cited?)

I thought about the thing, that probably at the place - we're actually talking about - itself, a kind of historical museum, archive, etc. would , or should, know best about its own history, but as I saw, the kazakhian wikipedia-site is nothing but a stub, which is very sad, because of, I mean - where talking about the history and culture about the city, which was for long time the capital of this country and still is the heart of it till today.


2.

I read on the web (I forgot, where) the information that says, that, before the developing city we're talking about, was founded in the 19th century, there has been at the same place, where today the city temporarely named "Zailiysky"/"Vernyj"/"Alma-Ata"/"Almaty" is located, yet a city existed, and that in the 13th century mongolians/mongolish vandals "destroyed the ancient city of Almaty" (completely).

So - as I know, that this city wouldn't be identical with the city we're talking about - , but what was the name of this "ancient city of Almaty"? (Or does this sentence-construction in english mean, too, that the city - which was at the same place, where later the today called Almaty was founded - was named "Almaty", too??? (I do not believe; or would there be an regional-background-link being the ethymological basic for the same name of two in the end different things at the same place?))


3.

As I said, I don't have many knowledge in this field, but let me say at the end maybe a "moderate" explaining-try to the controversial between papa7 and the others here: I can underdstand both points of view; for me it seems a little bit the central argumentations-base is about quantity (for me it seems like that):

- papa7 says, that, only, because (a few) people say/said (now) "B" to a thing, which is/was called by many people (still) "A" - the "A" doesn't become a "B". - the others say, that, only, because (a few) people say/said (in the past) "A" to a thing, which is called today more or less more rather or is known as "B" - that's no reason not to hold on to the "old" name.

So, there is argumented with quantity about the question asking "when is a thing 'old'/'past'/'gone' - when is a thing 'new'/'up-to-date'/'actual'?"

Other problem: Who decides - meaning: who has the legality, or, more important: the legitimacy - which name does a thing have/get? The "official" people (whether they could be the minority) - or the "inofficial" people (which could be the majority)? If a judge pledge a human being for "guilty" - when, in fact, he/she is not - is he/she then "guilty"? Officially yes, inofficially no. What is "officially", what is "inofficially"? For exmaple, Christoph Columbus thought about he has reached India when he has reached in fact America - so he called the native Americans like the people living in India; this is wrong, but still until today in many languanges the term for the native Americans has the ethymological basic in the term for the people living in India. Other example: if I would invent/create a new thing, which has never existed before, and maybe I think it is a "ABC" - but when all the other people in the world see my "ABC"-thing - they call it "XYZ" - what IS it? (/What is, when there are only two people in the world, and they sey a new thing at the same time, and both say at the same time: "Oh, a ABC!"/"Oh, a XYZ!" - what IS it?)

That leads to the finishing problem: that would turn into a philosophical discussion, as it is a philosophical problem, and wikipedia is not the platform to do that, that's for sure, and I think that's common sense.

BUT, what makes me being thinking, too, that this article here should named "Almaty" (are not the wikipedia-rules) - but is the special fact, that it could be clearly pointed out (if it would be necessary, but probably is not, because common sense), that this article (or generally at all articles about cities, etc.) is named "Almaty", because the city officially is given the name of "Almaty" (or in case of other cities generally the official name) (an indice for official name would be the nameplate-signs at the motorways). The question, what the "inofficial"/"real"/"cultural"/etc. name of city/place is, is another theme, because, if I'm one in the milliards of the people of the world, and for me the thing - which has somebody constructed originally having "ABC" in mind - only is known as "XYZ" - I couldn't find it in for example the book-form of the best lexica in the world - because the thing I look for in fact exists, but there exists in fact no thing with the name I am looking for. So it would be principially right, that a wrong search would not lead to a correct end - but principially it would not be correct or OK, because it could be, that the one, who is doing the wrong search isn't guilty/responsible for doing the search wrong, because maybe any onther people had told him wrong.

In this case there is another thing, which is evident: cities, states, territories, names, etc. are - in fact - not real; they are a virtual construct of our brain: for example, if at the same time all or many people of a state think (and say and act like that), that the state is not right, not "real" for them in their opinion - the state begins to exists not anymore longer (but nearly always is replaced by a new state or - if not - : civil war) - whole thing often known as "revolution".

So why should an "official" thing like a city not be listed under its "official" name - which is "given by its own nature"?

So, finally I think, it really doesn't care, if the city we're talking about here, here is named (officially) as "Alma-Ata" or "Almaty" - as said, if I would (have the legimacy to) decide, I would name this article "Almaty", too - but if it would be the case, that I hold for this city I doesn't know just another name in my own heart, the whole world, universe, and wikipedia with its galactic renomee could say that it is called "Almaty" - it would really really really doesn't matter for me - because: just what is quantity? - No real thing;: Because of quantity is maybe important for virtual, but not really for real,: quantity isn't important. Thats's why good art is (called) "timeless", and/but not "countable".

So if the city's name we're talking about for papa7 is "Alma-Ata", and for wikipedia(-rules) is "Almaty" - where's the problem? - There's no one, if no one will get to do be on the missionary-thing-trip - which isn't correct, for sure.

I can't believe that a multiple-title-honored, cosmopolitan doctor speaking 15 languages wouldn't have the self-confidence and trust in his own mind for not doing care about it, if wikipedia (which is for real virtual, and really consisting of (other) people's opinions) not says so, like he thinks (I think wikipedia is wrong in many, many ways, but, whatever, it really doesn't matter for me, I don't care, there are infinite more important things).


[edit] Unofficial population estimate

I removed the following text:

" (unofficial sources claim 2,500,900 and 13% correspondingly[1]) "

1. I'm "unofficial". Can I make a guess too? I choose, let's see, how about, 1,226,000. And let's say, as of 2005. 2. The newspaper cites a previous estimate of 1.31 million in Soviet and post-Soviet times. 1.31 million is pretty close to 1.226 million and considering a lot of Russians, Germans, and other Europeans left in the 1990s, and that the federal government and most federal agencies left in the late 1990s and early 2000s (yes, some institutes and agencies remain), it's not unreasonable to think that the population declined somewhat. Maybe it only declined slightly in the city proper (which is what we're talking about here) and increased slightly outside the city. There are A LOT of new houses in the foothills being constructed or that were recently constructed. 3. Newspapers are generally not a reliable source of information for census estimates, at least not as reliable as a government census bureau. I wouldn't use a U.S. newspaper for a population estimate that differed from the government estimate, and I certainly would not do it with a Kazakh newspaper. Many news articles there are written more like an editorial than an objective news article. While this IWPR article isn't too bad, there are still hints of this. 4. Whoever added 2,500,900 just made it up. It's nowhere in the article. Ufwuct (talk) 16:00, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

While points 1, 2, and 4 are absolutely correct, you're on shaky ground with point 3 given that the existing population figure given (1,226,000) is also drawn from a newspaper (well, an "internet newspaper", to use its self-described function). On the face of it, I don't see that gazeta.kz is any more useful than iwpr.net, so if "newspapers are bad" is the rationale there should not be any population stat on this article until a direct link to something more official can be found. Agreed? - Hux (talk) 00:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)