Wikipedia talk:Baltic States notice board

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Tere, labas dienas, sveiki! I would suggest replacing the geographical limitation at the outset of the page with "those people contributing articles related to the Baltic States." --Pēteris Cedriņš 00:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Of course. Much work needs to be done to get this ready. What's your ideas? Renata 01:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Marketing

Any ideas how to spread the word? Also, I suggest we keep it abc order: estonia, latvia and lithuania. Renata 02:31, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Labas dienas! I will mention this board here and there, for instance at Latvians Online. I append a link to my user page in the signature to my e-mails lately (and will link this board at my user page, too) ...but I haven't had much luck with getting people I think would make valuable contributors and good editors involved (as I'm sure everybody contributing has noticed, articles can take an awful lot of time, and participation can be intimidating). A hearty ačiū to DeirYassin for coming up with this idea for Baltic co-operation and acting upon it so quickly! --Pēteris Cedriņš 13:21, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I had posted invitements to join Wikipedia in Lithuanian history forums once, but as well did not get much luck it seems. Anyways, it is easier to help people who are already in Wikipedia to stay/contribute more than to attract completely new people I guess. So, once we decide that thing sare done with this board, we could write informative messages to tell Baltic contributors of Wikipedia about this board, using the talk pages (taht informative messages could be written in Lithuanian, Latvian and English - it seems we have no Estonians here still to write the Estonian version. As well, we could write welcome messages in Baltic langauges, which we would send (via talk page) to every new presumable Baltic member; we would encourage them to stay here, explain some things, tell to ask us in case they'd have some questions, and tell about this board too. In order not to get too much into details (if we will wait until this board will be perfect before advertising we will never start), how about setting a date for "official opening", it could be for example next Monday (13th of February). And no need to thank me, I was thinking about such board for long, but did not seen enough active contributors, as I think Renata and me would be not enough to start such a board (especially as I don't plan to spend much time on wikipedia), while 3 people might be good for start, and 4 (if User:Vecrumba will take part) will be even better. It will take some time for it to start up I believe so that many people would come, but a few enthusiasts can already make the board alive for enough time. So, the best what we can do now is to use it by reporting things and such, if other users will join and report - check the articles they report so that the board would seem useful to them. For now we are setting it up, and when it starts we will see - if we will use it, it should come up eventually. DeirYassin 14:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
People know abot wikipedia, but they are not craving to edit. Anyway beside user talk pages maybe note on articles (talk pages) about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania should be left - I think that article about ones country is one of the first things a newcomer will read. -- Xil/talk 19:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion about un-written articles is needed

I think we would benefit from such thing - there defenetely are things that deserve article, some things are already covered in other articles or there already is article named diferently so they don`t need article and proper naming in english is important, so I think that maybe this board should have section for that (or something) -- Xil/talk 19:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree -- "Articles needed"? Any other comments? --Pēteris Cedriņš 07:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Be bold :) Renata 18:04, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I was. I hope you are comfortable with result - I've seen such sections named "Requested articles" elsewhere so I picked that name -- Xil/talk 14:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Baltic Way

I was expanding the article and I came upon the image gallery of pics from early independence movement days and there is a number of pics about Baltijos apkabinimas (hugging Baltic Sea). It looks like it took place in 1989 either early spring or late fall and was not that much political (i.e. was more about ecology). But it seems somewhat similar to the Baltic Way (human chain hugging the Baltic Sea, all three states participating), so if is was before it... I could easily draw parallels. Any thoughts? Renata 17:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no Idea about this event, but it reminded me another thing - there is an event called "prayer to sea" in Latvia so I googled a bit and found out that it dates back to september 3. 1988. as that webpage I found said "live chain of people encircled largest part of Latvian coastline. Interesting that exposition at museum of popular front begins with similar large scale photograpgy". As far I know This event is still held once in a while. And in fact Latvian ecology movement in the eighties was pretty much political. Image depicting event(s) -- Xil/talk 02:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

Copyright page on photo archive of University of Latvia says that you may copy, reproduce and publish pictures found there without premision as long as you don't use them in advertising and put reference to author. Since page is in Latvian I'm not completly sure if that applays world wide, how do you think ? -- Xil/talk 03:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

"don't use them in advertising" means no commercial use. And such images are not allowed on wiki. If they said something like "use it, but just cite the source/author" - it could be used. You have to claim it under fair use if you want to use it. Sad, huh? Renata 23:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, anyway -- Xil/talk 03:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Geographical Names

I have attempted to keep the names of Lithuanian cities first English, and then Lithuanian, in the English Wikipedia. The need of some Polish editors to maintain "mental" possesion of these cities seems to be part of some relentless campaign to revert my efforts. As a compromise, I have left Polish names of towns and cities during the "occupation" of the Vilnius Region alone. My position is that the names of geographical locations in Lithuania do not have to have their "Polish" names included in the leads of articles (especially when there is a link to a Polish article). To see if there was a Quid Pro Quo attitude, I put a few Lithuanian names into Polish articles (Liublinas and Gnieznas), and the response was predictably to remove them. So what was good for the Gander was not good for the Goose. What is the consensus? Dr. Dan 02:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC) p.s. I have made the same edits to German and Russian names as well.

OK, Dr. Dan. But it's better to write up all our arguments here or, even better, in a separate page before doing that. I understand, that all arguments are already known and it's no fun to repeat them once more elsewhere, but , i'm afraid, we need a general discussion instead of many local discussions. Having that, we'll be able just to redirect all escalations of discussions on many different pages to that page after we'll have revised Lithuania-related articles as you suggest.

The main problem is that, looking formally at single cases, inserting of Slavic variants for Lithuanian names isn't bias itself. But many users have already warned about possible political context of this action, especially when it becomes frequent. We shouldn't ignore this admonition, even if it isn't real but impressive only. I always remember some our Lithuanian users that were so affected by that impression, that couldn't contribute profitably, focusing their minds at that and ignoring many other aspects of writing in Lithuania-related articles. So, this impression of some planned political bias is real, despite it was or not a planned bias in reality.

The next problem is, that the present style to put the Slavic variants in the head section of an article is misleading. When we present any object (a city, a town, a river etc in our case) it's obviously held in the mind that we write about the current state of the object (if it has a current state at all). But all these Slavic forms are from the historical usage, that is also very hypothetic in many cases (meaning, obviously using in English. I believe, that English-speaking people really used Slavic forms for Vilnius re it was the capital, but I doubt if Slavic forms for some small villages could be found in English sources other but maps that merely repeated the official usage of their time). But using in the header section makes them to seem as if they are of the current usage. So, I think, the information about names in the past should be transferred to history sections everywhere, if such information is necessary at all. It should have an acceptable and not biased form too, i think. --Linas Lituanus 07:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Let's think about the moving the discussion to a separate page. Linas 07:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


I'd also like to say few words about the issues you did write in some different pages or articles. For example, You wander, how young Lithuanians lost their ability to communicate in Russian User talk:Lysy). But it's very simple thing. Russian had never been a native language for the majority of Lithuanians. We were taught at school to speak Russian. Since 1990 Russian language is taught in Lithuanian schools as an elective discipline and, consequently, many young people do not know Russian at all. Number of Russian lessons was also reduced after 1990 to a standard level for foreign language. It also affects quality of learning. But nothing wandering in it. I say this, because I see, how you face all these absurds about Lithuania's past, that are disseminated especially by some Poles. Spread of Lithuanian language has been well-documented at least since the 16 th century, Lithuanian language had its written grammars since the 17 th century, but one Polish user says, that common people in Lithuania (In Tauragė) spoke Belarusian. And he can write about a 16 th century lexicographer of Lithuanian language after it! It seems very strange, looking objectively. On the other hand, to strive against totalitarian nationalism isn't the objective of Wikipedia. I try not to pay much attention to what some people think about Lithuania, even if they suppose that no Lithuania exists at all. Fair attitude towards World reality is, perhaps, a personal choice of everybody. I'm Lithuanian, i know Lithuanians, many of the are quite big nationalists. But Lithuanians aren't totalitarian nationalists in any case. Nationalism almost never subdues their mental possibility to judge about something. And even this difference shows that Lithuanians are sui generis nation that is different from its neighbor nations. That's why i don't afraid the 'mental possession' as You name it. Polish thinking is sunk in the history too much. There is no much difference for our being what language did we speak or even do we speak presently. Irish people mostly communicate in English, and what from it? Every nation has more essential attributes than linguistic forms or historic legends.

But what i say doesn't mean that we shouldn't oppose bias, wherever it becomes evident in Wikipedia. So i say thanks for your sincere and courageous (isn't this word old-fashioned?) position. Thank You also for Your analyzing of this strange picture of Lithuania, made by the users i 've told above. But the reality is much essential than any pictures, despite how much they differ from their original. Number of Lithuanian users was never big, but they have put many useful information about Lithuania here. Wikipedia readers now can know at least anything about Lithuania. Let's work for increasing this amount of information. SĖKMĖS! Linas Lituanus 09:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


I'd like to use this opportunity to invite you to contribute at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) where a policy is being prepared in hope to address the multi-national naming issues that you mentioned in the beginning. --Lysytalk 20:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank You for the idea :). I am not against that, but i think, that the existing conventions are good and that no possible situations have been skipped making them. I think, they is an acceptable set of rulles with well ballanced interests of specific groups. But those, that are not ballanced yet, leak, i think, evidence, how to do it. - I have yet another idea, but i shoud wait , what Dr. Dan will answer, as it's his initiative, to discuss here about all it. Linas Lituanus 13:21, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the courtesy. I'm ready to begin the more detailed discussion. Where shall we do it? Dr. Dan 15:01, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jana Seta

Is this notable? Should this be translated/transwikied? Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jana Seta. Kusma (討論) 00:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soviet Image tags

My dear Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues, as you might be aware there are thousands of images on wikipedia published in the USSR and because of an action of one person now their future status is under question. Please read this RfC and help to endorse it. --Kuban Cossack 12:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Translation request for Nevėžis River

Would somebody beso kind as to give English title for the quoted Lituanian sources? I also suspect "Nevėžis" might be a meaningful word, if that is the case, could the English meaning be added?. Circeus 02:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I'll translate sources, but Nevėžis is not a meaningful word. I will explain in the article. Renata

[edit] Sockpuppet (internet) and "Voting"

I am outraged by the sockpuppetry and its concurrent voting, that has affected many subjects that would be of interest to people concerned with issues dealing with the Baltic States. Recently it has been confirmed that the user:Logologist has "rigged " votes concerning the Jogaila vs. Wladyslaw Jagiello naming debate. The administrator user:Mackensen, has verified this to be the case, and there is no doubt whatsoever, in regards to it. It seems that user:KonradWallenrod, user:Mattergy, user:Anatopism, and some others, are all concocted Sockpuppets. There is an ongoing further investigation as to what's, what, and who else has been involved. Anyone with information or the computer skills to look at this by reading edits and histories to expose this, please contact me by email or on my talk page. Dr. Dan 02:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Standard naming scheme

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Regional notice boards#A uniform naming scheme. Zocky | picture popups 00:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help with translations

I'm currently working on a script intended to create short articles on political parties on a variety of wikipedias simultaneously. However, in order for the technique to work I need help with translations to various languages. If you know any of the languages listed at User:Soman/Lang-Help , then please help by filling in the blanks. Baltic languages includes Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. Thanks, --Soman 12:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

The DYK section featured on the main page is always looking for interesting new and recently expanded stubs from different parts of the world. Please make a suggestion.--Peta 01:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Memel / Memel (disambiguation)

There has been an ongoing discussion about what "Memel" should be. Some users prefer that "Memel" be a disambiguation page describing the different meanings of the word. Other users (including myself) prefer that "Memel" redirect to "Klaipėda", which would then use Template:Redirect as a disclaimer for "Memel (disambiguation)". Currently, "Memel" redirects to "Memel (disambiguation)", which goes against Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). There are discussions at Talk:Klaipėda#Memel town? and Talk:Memel (disambiguation). Further input would be helpful. Olessi 22:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:AlexNewArtBot - New Article Bot

Hi, I am in the trial runs of the User:AlexNewArtBot (see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/AlexNewArtBot). The bot analyzes the new articles for a day and puts suspected Baltic-related articles into User:AlexNewArtBot/BalticSearchResult, the articles are suppose to be manually put into the portal page and/or removed if irrelevant.

The list of rules are in User:AlexNewArtBot/Baltic the first pattern between the slashes on each line is the pattern that should be present in the article to trigger the rule (note the case insensitive match. The other patterns on the same line are suppose to inhibit the rule. E.g. for the Russian board /florida/ inhibits /petersburg/ rule as the article is most probably about the American city. If you are reasonably familiar with the regular expressions and know what you are doing, you can edit the rules straight away, but better ask me. In the Russian board I had to remove some rules: e.g. there are a lot of non-Russians named Vladimir and Chita, so I had to remove the names of the cities or have to much false positive. If you are interested why an article went to the list there is log on the User:AlexNewArtBot/BalticLog explaining the rule that sent an article to the searchresults (if the log is cleared try to look into the history of the log).

That is all. Any suggestions are welcome. Alex Bakharev 10:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need images of Latvian Monument of Freedom

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could supply free images of Monument of Freedom to ilustrate certaint topics - namely I would like to ilustrate section political issues of article Freedom Monument (Riga) with approporite picture - that means that I need picture depicting some political event related to the monument (e.g. some anti-soviet protests in 80s took place there), also images like in this page [1] (i.e. details of the monument, monument during restoration and the somewhat famous path of flowers) would be nice ---- Xil/talk 15:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitration information (on top of the page)

Isn't that thing over allready ? I think that section could be deleted---- Xil/talk 02:13, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization

As of late I have been categorizing biographical articles by historical states or regions; see Category:People from former German states, for example. To avoid the situation of having pre-20th century individuals in Category:People from Latvia, I created Category:People from Livonia and Category:People from Courland. They are currently general categories, but I could eventually see them subdivided further, as Livonia's borders have changed throughout history. Since Estonia did not became an independent state until the 20th century either, would there be any opposition to a Category:People from Estland? Olessi (talk) 21:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Estland is not the historical English term for that historical northern Estonian province, Esthonia is, as a check on the 1911 edition of Britannica reveals [2]. Just another thought: while it is no issue for people who were born and died or spent most of their lives in Livonia/Esthonia, what about people born, say, 1912, they would have spent most of their lives in modern Latvia/Estonia as citizens of that country, would they be correctly categorised? Martintg (talk) 15:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
"Esthonia" does seem to have been used more commonly than "Estland" in English, but "Estland" has certainly been used in English as well.[3] However, I would have no objection to moving the category to Category:People from Esthonia, with a description at the top of the category. If we want to get rather technical, we could categorize by governorate (Daugavpils was in the Vitebsk G, for instance, not Livonia/Riga).
Regarding the WWI-era biographies, it seems like a judgment call to me. When individuals have been born within 10 years of an entity's dissolution, I usually have not categorized them within that entity. I'm more familiar with Category:German people by state, where individuals have been categorized by city and historical state when possible, so as to avoid having excessive numbers of articles in a single category. Someone born in Cologne in 1958 could certainly be included within Category:People from North Rhine-Westphalia, but that was rarely the case when I started to categorize by location. Speaking personally, I would find it overkill to have every Latvian citizen in; although not conclusive, that they are connected with the state in one form or another is already inferred by Category:Latvian people by occupation. The historical categories adds a bit of flavor and context to articles, and the historical categories are subcategories of the modern categories as well. Olessi (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
A similar google book search of "Esthonia" [4] gets 3 times as many hits and most of the books are contemporary to the period. Your suggestion about categorising by governorate is a good one. Also since categorisation is by birth place, perhaps [[People born in the Esthonian governorate]], [[People born in the Livonian governorate]] and [[People born in the Vitebsk governorate]]? Martintg (talk) 22:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I recognized that Esthonia has been used more; I was merely stating that "Estland" is still an accepted designation in English. I have no objections to categorizing by administrative unit; the standard phrasing seems to be "People from", not "People born in" or "Natives of" (see [5]). For the pre-Imperial Russia era, bios could be grouped by the Livonian Confederation, Swedish Livonia, Inflanty, etc. Also, categorization is usually, but not always, by birthplace; Johann Patkul should certainly be categorized under Livonia, but he was not born there. Olessi (talk) 22:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. Looking at the books written before 1925, it seems that these regions were referred to as simply Esthonia or Livonia, rather than "Governorate of Esthonia" or "Governorate of Livonia". [[People from the Governorate of Esthonia]], [[People from the Governorate of Livonia]] is rather a mouthful, [[People from Esthonia]], [[People from Livonia]] seems more reasonable. Martintg (talk) 01:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I would not be adverse to categorizing by historical entity- governorates, Inflanty, Swedish Livonia (I started Category:People from Swedish Pomerania a little while back), etc. From my experience, "government" seems to be used a heck of a lot more than "governorate"- see Government of Livonia, for instance. Talk:Guberniya has more info... Olessi (talk) 03:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kristers Sergis

I have recently writen a couple of articles about sidecarcross and noticed there is no wikipedia article on Kristers Sergis at all, despite him being a five times world champion from Latvia. Biographical stuff on him on the internet seems rare, especially in English. His own webside is in Latvian and Russian only. Does anyone from this project plan to write about him in the near future? If not, could someone speaking Latvian maybe drop me a little bit of biographical stuff on him on my talk page? Birthdate, birthplace and a bit of background would help me a lot! Thanks for any help, much appreciated, greetings,EA210269 (talk) 02:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I have decided to write the article after all but his personal biography still has holes. Any one with a bit of proper background information could add a lot to the quality of the article!EA210269 (talk) 10:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

I should like to inform the honourable editors of the Baltic States notice board that I am seriously considering moving Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a featured article, in order to replace the hyphen in this state's name with an en dash. If you wish to comment, please do so in the relevant thread here. I have also notified the Poland-related notice board. Waltham, The Duke of 23:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] An Invitation from the Philippine Wikipedia Community

Hello folks,

The Philippine Wikipedia Community will be holding its 1st Meet-up in Cebu City (the fourth one in the Philippines) on June 23-24, 2008. This coincides with the first Philippine Open Source Summit also to be held in Cebu, and which the Philippine Wikipedia Community is a Implementing Partner in. We invite you to join us in this event. If you are in the IT or IT-enabled services industry, this would be a great opportunity to network with leaders from the 4th best outsourcing city in the world. This is also a good excuse to visit our beautiful beaches :)

If you're interested in joining the Wikipedia meet-up, please join our discussion. To register for the Open Source Summit, please contact CEDF-IT. If you would like some assistance with local accomodations, you may email User:Bentong Isles.

The Philippine Wikipedia Community
WP:PINOY