User talk:Vmenkov

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[edit] Welcome!

Hello, Vmenkov, 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 need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

If you are interested in Russia-related themes, you may want to check out the Russia Portal, particularly the Portal:Russia/New article announcements and Portal:Russia/Russia-related Wikipedia notice board. You may even want to add these boards to your watchlist.

Again, welcome!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimapia

Hi, Vmenkov! Thanks for contacting me.

Before you left your comment, I was under impression that a link to Wikimapia is available through the list of maps attached to the article (you need to click on coordinates in the upper right corner of the article to get to that list). After checking, I see that Wikimapia's link is not in that list, so I am restoring it in the external links section for the time being. Thanks for pointing it out, and please let me know if there is anything else I can do. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:15, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misc

Hi there! First of all, thanks for finally correcting the "beach settlements". I was going to replace "beach" with a more appropriate term for quite a while now, and your edit provided me with a much-needed kick in the ass :)

Second, I had to partially revert your edit to administrative divisions of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, restoring Zelyony Gorod to its previous position. The reason for that is the fact that the whole list is structured after OKATO—while updates may be late, it's preferrable to stick with available source for consistency. Furthermore, the Nizhny Novgorod City Charter, a link to which you provided, does not state that this resort settlement is under jurisdiction of Nizhegorodsky city district, but merely that it is located within its territory. Please let me know if you have further questions/comments. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually checking the map of the oblast was something I neglected to do. Didn't get away with it, did I? :) Other than that, is there is anything else left unresolved?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vmenkov:Miracle of the Moose

Please do not add nonsense to Wikipedia, as you did to Vmenkov:Miracle of the Moose. It is considered vandalism. If you would like to experiment, use the sandbox. Thank you. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 09:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reservoirs

Hi there! The reasons why I renamed the Russian reservoirs using the adjective form are these:

  1. not all reservoirs can be renamed using the noun form (e.g., Ivankovskoye Reservoir);
  2. the adjective form matches the naming scheme of Russian lakes (see Lake Beloye, Kulundinskoye Lake, etc.)

Hence, if consistency is your concern, your move did not help it. As for the use in English, both noun and adjective forms are used in English (although for Rybinskoye in particular the noun form is a lot more common). Anyway, just hoping you see my line of reasoning here.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree about the lakes (though some older English books would say "White Lake", etc), but it seems that the Russian names of pretty mich all artificial reservoirs in Russia/USSR are based on a town name, or sometimes river name. (Among them, Ivankovo Reservoir, named after the town of Ivankovo (former city) that has been amalgamated into Dubna). In the case of Ivankovo Reservoir or Zeya Reservoir, I have to agree that this form is less frequently used in English than the adjective form, but for many others the noun form prevails in Englisg. (And considering the role of Wikipedia, our usage may sometimes sway the overall balance!) As per google.com:

Ivankovo

  • about 210 for "ivankovskoye reservoir".
  • about 35 for "ivankovskoe reservoir"
  • about 13 for "ivankovsky reservoir"
  • about 139 for "ivankovo reservoir"
  • about 15 for "ivankov reservoir" (sic!)

Cheboksary

  • about 18 for "cheboksarskoye reservoir"
  • about 23 for "cheboksarskoe reservoir".
  • about 338 for "cheboksary reservoir".
  • about 2 for "cheboksar reservoir" (sic!)

Zeya

  • about 24 for "zeyskoye reservoir"
  • (none for "zeyskoe reservoir")
  • about 266 for "zeysky reservoir" // Interesting - the masculine is probably not used in Russian much, other than for district and zapovednik
  • about 87 for "zeya reservoir".
  • about 9 for "zeja reservoir".

Kremenchug / Kremenchuk

  • about 5 for "kremenchugskoe reservoir".
  • 6 for "kremenchugskoye reservoir"
  • about 372 for "kremenchug reservoir"
  • about 436 for "kremenchuk reservoir".

Even though there may be is no cleaner universal winner, the noun form just appears more esthetically pleasing to me (and easier for an English speaker/writer to use). I think it's good it is used uniformly for all Oblasts, for example, even if we don't use it for districts. Anyway, this is not issue about which I am concerned all that much, so if you want to rename things back, I won't object. From my point of view, "consistency" is more "threatened" by the fact that sometimes we only have an article about "Foo Dam", sometimes about "Foo Hydroelectric Plant", sometimes about "Foo(isky) Reservoir", and we categorize them differently too, even though in reality it is natural for an article to discuss all three related objects together. (And for the less famous objects we can't realistically hope that anyone will write more than one article anyway -- most of these hydro dams have 0 articles each, so far!). Vmenkov 19:11, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed analysis, I much appreciate it. Ivankovskoye wasn't a good example, I have to agree on that. Looking at the list of major Russian reservoirs, I also have to agree that most of them are named after the cities/towns, with a few exceptions such as Iremelskoye (named for the Iremel mountain) or Iovskoye (named for the Iova River). So, after having thinking this over, perhaps the noun form would indeed be better for the reservoirs. The fact that the noun form is very unacceptable for districts and lakes probably clouded my judgement there :)
To add insult to an injury, "Rybinsk reservoir" is the title used by Britannica, which is a pretty good indication of English usage. Congratulations, you win :) I'll revert the moves I made.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:35, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Posad

Thank you for taking time to answer this for me.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ignatishvili

Hello. Yes i did in David Marshall Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658–1832 (1957) on page 67: Ignatishvili migration to Russia and name change to Ignatiev in St Piterburg. Regards. Ldingley 04:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing

Hi there! May I ask you what tool you are using to make edits? The reason for my asking is that many (if not all of) your edits introduce line breaks in unexpected places (example, note the line break between "of" and "Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"). It is not really harmful and has no effect on how the pages look in the end, but it is kind of annoying to subsequent editors. Could you have that fixed, please? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

These days I just use a web browser (Firefox mostly). If you think most editors really prefer long lines (one paragraph = one line) I will try to type this way. Just like I am trying right now. To be honest, though, I would think that it is long (wrapped) lines that are annoying, but I guess I am in the minority here. :-) Vmenkov 19:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, the lines wrap automatically anyway, so it's not that much of a problem. The problem with your line breaks is that the lines show up differently in different browsers and on different platforms, so when I, for example, edit your text, I usually see one full line followed by a few words on the next line, then page break, new full line and so on. Like I said, it's no big deal, but it often makes it hard to concentrate because one would have to constantly jump from the middle of one line to the beginning of another. And when I have to edit from a Pocket PC, such arrangement literally makes it impossible to do so because a good portion of the edit box is eaten by white space left after the line breaks. Thanks for understanding!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Updated DYK query On December 21, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Nanai language, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

- Thanks for this article which CaliforniaAliBaba. You've put a massive amount of work into that article in such a short time, and it sets a great example for other DYK entries. Happy editing, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

My contribution to that article was about 1-2% (copying a couple of sentences from the ru: article and correcting a couple of typos. The rest is CaliforniaAliBaba's. Vmenkov 06:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for help re Wiki Commons

Coliseum the Cat
Coliseum the Cat

Hi Vmenkov! Thanks for your excellent suggestion to upload images to Wiki Commons where they become more available to all. Unfortunately, I have not found yet how to code for an image in Wiki Commons so that it shows up in a Wikipedia article. Somehow I think I am missing something really simple. Could you please help me? Many thanks. John Hill 05:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

John, it is absolutely the same syntax: e.g. [[Image:Coliseum-the-cat-0072.jpg|thumb|right|Coliseum the Cat]] picks my image from the commons. Cheers, --Vladimir (Vmenkov 07:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Pyenzhangling

Is Pelgye Ling the same thing as Pyenzhangling? What's your source on this?—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 20:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Nat:
# Pyenzhangling is really originally mentioned on the web only twice: (1) in the description of the poster sold at multiple sites (ultimately from lonelyplanetimages.com) and in the original Wiki article Pyenzhangling Monastery, originally written in June 2006 by User:Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who also wrote the Milarepa's Cave article the same day. He was quite clear (see [1] that Milarepa's cave is 10 km north of Nyalam city, and "Pyenzhangling" is built right at the cave; "[r]estoration work within the cave and the monastery was undertaken by artists and craftsmen from Nepal ... in the 1970's". So we exactly know, geographically, where this "Pyenzhangling" is.
# "Pelgye Ling" (rarely, "Phelgye Ling") is commonly mentioned (by tour operators or tourists, sometimes also by Tibet human rights people) as located at Milarepa's Cave (destroyed in the 1960s and later rebuilt: [2]; located within 10 km from Nyalam: [3]; restored by Nepalese artisans: http://www.himalayanexpeditions.com/canHimEx/tibet/tibet_explorer.html; Phelgye Ling at Milarepa's cave, a short distance before Nyalam (when coming from the north), destroyed during the CUltural Revolution: ISBN 3770148037)
# This match of geographical location (10 km north, i.e. toward Xigaze, from Nyalam), layout (right at Milarepa's cave), and restoration history makes it difficult to believe that these are two different objects. My hypothesis is that Pyenzhangling is somewhat unorthodoxly spelled version of the Chinese name for this place or something associated with the place (the closest Pinyin phrase would be Pianzhangling, but it does not occur on the web); it was picked by one or two Western travellers (either Ernst or his source, or whoever did the poster or both independently) and so got into the wiki article.
You may want to ask User:Ernst Stavro Blofeld as to where he got the name - maybe it's based on some Chinese publication and his own way of transcribing it? Vmenkov 00:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, good points. This article really should have been deleted some time ago, since it is of no value. Since it's still tied up in AfD, I can't do anything with it right now, but I'll sort this out once that's over. I don't think there's any point in keeping the Pyenzhangling spelling at all.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 00:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Victor H. Mair

Hey man. I must've been reverting some spammer from a different IP, and then I somehow found that article. I have no problem if you restore the links. It would only be an issue if you added the links across 10+ pages. Khoikhoi 08:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Muslim Rebellion

I noticed that you were the biggest editor in the article, Muslim Rebellion, so I thought i should tell you my plans about that page, which I also discussed in the article's talk page. Because the term Muslim rebellion is too general and the fact that there have been many Muslim rebellions in history , I was thinking of redirecting this page to an article with another name, like "Dungan Revolt" or "Hui Minorities' War".Editingman 23:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I wish I had finished that article... I had gone about half way summarizing the story of the war (based mostly on Lipman's and Kim Hodong's books), but had way to many other things to do, and have never had a chance to come back and finish. Anyhow, I will be only glad to see the title changed to something more specific. But please try to choose a term that's already used in modern literature in English.

  • "Dungan Revolt" (or, with more old-fashioned writers, "Tungan Revolt") seems to have both been well-established (20 hits in Google Books for each version - not a mean feat for a region about which Anglosphere knows little); but it has somewhat outdated ring to it.
  • Lipman discusses Chinese names for the rebellion (pp 117-118), but I am not sure what name he prefers in English.
  • Others just have translated a common Chinese title, viz. "Muslim Rebellion in Shaanxi and Gansu"; it's good, but it would be too narrow if the WIkipedia article is to also cover the related events in Xinjiang.
  • There is nothing wrong per se with "Hui Minorities' War", but it sounds somewhat un-English to me (as if it was coined by a Beijing writer), and Google does not show it used much outside of Wikipedia and its clones.
  • Maybe "Muslim Rebellion in China"? But there have been more than one too...

So make your choice, but wisely; I most likely won't object. Vmenkov 00:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey Vmenkov!! I am trying to list the Muslim rebellion in China as genocide in the article Genocides in history and bring some attention to it. However, in the Talk page it is threatened to be deleted, unless I bring a source showing that the Qing government had intentions of eliminating the Muslim population in part or whole. Can you show me where you got the lines in the “course of the rebellion” section of the article ,“His diplomatic skills are evidenced by the success he managed achieved in preserving his community: while Zuo Zongtang pacified other areas by moving the Muslims elsewhere (in the spirit of the 洗回 (xi Hui), "washing off the Muslims" approach that had been long advocated by some officials), in Hezhou it were the non-Muslims whom Zuo relocated out of the area.” You said that you were really busy so I would highly appreciate if you could do me this favor whenever you get the time, unless you also of the opinion that this was not genocide.Editingman 23:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Editigman, the two main modern sources in English are both quoted in the article, viz the books by N. Lipman and Kim Hodong. Both are reasonably ¨NPOV¨, as they say on Wikipedia, i.e. pay at least some attention to killings on all sides. The 洗回 quote is from Lipman. I suggest you get the actual book - it is available via interlibrary loan or on Amazon.com (searchable text too), and see the context there, as to who said and wrote what, in order to be able to support whatever position you take in talk pages, especially on politically sensitive topics. User:Vmenkov, 2007-Jun-20.

[edit] Smith Cove

Could you take a look at Talk:Smith Cove (Washington)? I have an image of the cove that I think is better than the one you added to the article, but I don't want to preempt you unilaterally if you think yours is better. - Jmabel | Talk 18:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Slavyanka

Hi there! Regarding this—if you happen to know the modern name of the place in Azerbaijan, could you move what you added there? Disambiguation information belongs on disambiguation pages, not in unrelated articles. At the very least please move the passage you added to Slavyanka. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. Vmenkov (talk)
Thanks, but sorry, I had to fix it further. It is generally discouraged to put disambiguation information in the body of the article; an "other uses" notice at the top of an article usually suffices. I removed the dab passage from Slavyanka, Primorsky Krai and re-worded Slavyanka somewhat. By the way, if you would like me to list other Slavyankas on the dab page, just let me know. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 03:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
"I had to fix it further..." - No problem. "if you would like me to list other Slavyankas on the dab page, just let me know." - Sure, why not? You probably have a current OKATO directory handy, or even better, that multi-volume German publication that lists every village there has ever been in Russia - while Wikipedia readers who may be interested in places like this for genealogical etc. reasons don't. So it would be helpful for them. Vmenkov (talk) 23:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I do have full OKATO alright, plus a good portion of the list of villages that did not make it to OKATO (although, unfortunately, I do not have a 100% complete list). You got me intrigued with that multi-volume German publication, though—would you happen to remember its title? I've never heard of anything of the sort and would very much like to investigate this further.
I'll list the Slavyankas I know of tomorrow. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 00:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It took me a bit of an effort, but I have found the 12-volume gazetteer in the catalog of a library where I saw it ( http://catalog.lib.washington.edu/ ). Here it is.

 "Russisches geographisches Namenbuch"  /
 Begründet von Max Vasmer. Bearb. von Ingrid Coper [et al.] 
 Hrsg. von Max Vasmer und Herbert Bräuer. 
 Publication Info:      Wiesbaden : O. Harrassowitz, 1964-[i.e. 1962-64]-1981, additional volumes 1988, 1989

I also added info on it to the article on Max Vasmer. Vmenkov (talk) 01:41, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! It is certainly not as up-to-date as I hoped, but it seems to be an invaluable source of historical information. Now I need to figure out how to get my paws on it :) Much appreciated!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 01:50, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for catching this. My bad. I keep forgetting that Canada sticks to that weird comma convention along with the US :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CfD nomination of Category:Canadians of Doukhobor descent

I have nominated Category:Canadians of Doukhobor descent (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) for merging into Category:Canadians of Russian descent (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs). Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. LeSnail (talk) 23:18, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Veregin

Thanks for your work on Veregin. Could you expand Ivan Nikolayevich Durnovo? Thanks and keep up the good work ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ Talk? 16:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure. Vmenkov (talk) 08:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thats great thanks! I've been suggesting that the creator of the Kyrgyzstan villages uses a link to maplandia to confirm its location -this is what I have been doing. He doesn't seem one for talking unfortunately though. I don't think though that the districts of Kyrgzstan have been started yet it is only the large provinces. Is there a way you could red link them in the provincial pages in english ready for starting? I've also been making some flickr agreements to improve our images of these places. I love central asia and russia! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 13:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The biggest obstacle towards expanding these stubs is access to the knowledge in english. It would be remarkable if you could expand a few of them . I'll be also looking to increase coverage of turkmenistan, tajikistan, uzbekistan, kazakhstan, armenia and georgia ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 13:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Districts of Kyrgyzstan

I've created pages for the raions. Perhaps you could help expand them by translating info from the various official sites etc? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 13:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

v • d • e
Flag of Kyrgyzstan Districts (Raions) of Kyrgyzstan
Capital: Bishkek (also a raion)
Batken Province
Raions of Kyrgyzstan
Chuy Province
Issyk Kul Province
Jalal-Abad Province
Naryn Province
Osh Province
Talas Province
Blofeld, this indeed is a useful undertaking - at least, more useful than creating hundreds of orphan pages for (occasionally misplaed and non-existent villages). I am mostly off-line these days, but will do a few edits some day when I have a chance. Vmenkov (talk) 01:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Little context in Category:People from Kyrgyzstan

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Category:People from Kyrgyzstan, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Category:People from Kyrgyzstan is very short providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles.

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[edit] Image copyright problem with Image:С0169-Macarius-Moose.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:С0169-Macarius-Moose.JPG. You've indicated that the image is being used under a claim of fair use, but you have not provided an adequate explanation for why it meets Wikipedia's requirements for such images. In particular, for each page the image is used on, the image must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

F.U.R. provided. Vmenkov (talk) 06:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Tramfan

Very nice that there are Russian WIKIpedians in USA. Feel free to contact me using my WIKIpage. GK tramrunner (talk) 22:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fairly common fairly white snails

Hi again, and thanks for your notes. I was away on vacation for 3 weeks until yesterday, so I just got to read what you wrote to me now. I have taken a quick look at your images, thanks, they are nice! I will see if I can work with them in some way. As for the climbing thing, I have only seen that in a few species, ones which are very tolerant of dry conditions, and I don't know what causes that behavior. As far as I know it is not discussed anywhere in the literature, at least not that I am familiar with. Best to you, 24.215.244.17 (talk) 20:58, 4 May 2008 (UTC) Ooops, sorry I was not logged in. Here is my name! Invertzoo (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. If I had to guess about that climbing behavior, I would say that snail species that are very drought-tolerant perhaps use it as a way to stay away from some predators while they are inactive/aestivating. I have in the past seen dry-land snails that climbed high weeds in much the same way. I am assuming that the snails that are high up are safe from ground-based predators such as carnivorous beetles. You would think that being on fence posts does rather expose them to birds though! Invertzoo (talk) 11:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)