User talk:Iryna Harpy/Archive 4

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Little Russia in the constitution of the Russian Empire

What does this mean and where did you get it from? In the only document which can be practically called "the constitution" nothing is said about it.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 03:03, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Please check the linked article (Triune).

I would also appreciate it if you were to use the relevant talk page for discussions of this nature, not my personal talk page. The issue is for the public domain. If you wish to challenge me there, by all means, do so. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:44, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

A direct link to the particular article of the constitution (see above) is needed here, not to Wikipedia itself.

You personally added this passage, better to ask you directly. Here is not less public (everybody can see this discussion and participate). I only just wanted to ask you a question (see it above, you still did not answer).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware of the policy, Любослов. To be honest, I have no qualms about reverting the section. It was a slightly underhanded method by which to draw attention to the Triune Russian people article which was introduced into English Wikipedia and continues to fly under the radar. That's where, in the lead alone, assertions like, "It was the state-constitutive conception in the Russian Empire and ethnologic mainstream in Russia and most other countries before (and some time after) the Russian Revolution." are being touted.

I've attempted to tag the article for multiple problems, but the user who translated, cut and paste it into English Wikipedia sails close to the wind when it comes to edit warring and keeps undoing reasonable requests. The way I see it, as both articles are dealing with much of the same subject matter, one assertion is right and the other is wrong (or dubious at the least). I'd certainly be grateful if you took a look at the Triune Russian people article and formed an opinion on its veracity. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not interested in the mentioned article just for now, I only wanted to deal with the passage added by you. Because this seemed for me quite unusual. I thought whether you have read something and got misunderstanding of the subject, and I'd like to know what it was, or worse you invented it by yourself. Now I see it is probably the first. The problem with the passage that, as I know, the toponym(s) as well as the conception was never mentioned in any establishing documents of the Russian Empire, especially in the only document which can be called the "constitution" (though the ukaz of 1906 was not called in such a manner). I am glad that if you have not a source confirming the passage or you are not sure where you've got it, you deleted it by yourself.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:02, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

As for the article mentioned, I've read it but found nothing bad. This indeed was the default conception in ethnography and historiography before the Revolution of 1917 and the article explains it quite fairly and clearly. I personally do not understand your obvious hostility and distrust to the articles from Russian Wikipedia and to Russian(-language) sources and historiography in general. Translation of the articles from the Wikipedias in other languages is endorsed here especially in the matters poorly represented by English sources. In Russian Wikipedia in turn there are a lot of articles translated from here with English sources, no-one there is too hostile to them.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

You've misunderstood. I'm not questioning the usefulness of the translation, or its veracity: I'm questioning the fact that Shervinsky's English is not good enough to translate the article without assistance. I was actually pleased to see it as it's an excellent resource for English readers (those who don't know about Eastern Slavs or our culture) to familiarise themselves with the concept of 'Russian-ness' and, hence, the disparity between identity perception with the rise of new nation-state nationalism as opposed to how our predecessors' would have perceived themselves. Unfortunately, Shervinsky is protecting the article it as if it were his/her personal property and is not allowing for anyone else to improve on it.

For example, how does, "Являлась официальной государствообразующей концепцией Российской империи, а также основным этнологическим стандартом в России и зарубежом." translate to "It was the state-constitutive conception..."? It translates accurately as "... the official state conception ..." Where does a secular 'constitution' fit into the picture? In fact, I'm trying to clean up the article and improve on it. As it currently stands, it's a very stilted piece which needs to be clarified in order to live up to its potential.

I have no qualms about translating the relevant Ukrainian citations by translating them into English, but need Shervinsky's help with the Russian quotes (which I'd be more than happy to clean up)... But I'm not being allowed to change a word or simply mark it as needing sources to be translated into English without everything being reverted. Tags aren't being added as 'badges of shame' but as serious attempts to get the entry cleaned up! I don't want it to escalate into an edit war and I'd rather not ask for clueless outside 'mediators' to step in. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:20, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 22

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 Done Oops! Apologies. This was rectified when received 22 October 2013. (Better a belated response is better than none at all). --Iryna Harpy (talk) 02:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	Thank you, Iryna, for all your work tamping down the most egregious politically motivated edit wars on the Kievan Rus article. Paulmlieberman (talk) 13:35, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Aw, shucks. Thank you, Paul. I'm well aware of the hard work you put into Wikipedia so, coming from you, that's quite an honour. The integrity of Wikipedia's information should always be our top priority. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:08, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Здраствуйте!

Здраствуйте! Меня зовут Александр! Я администратор информационного сайта Каменца-Подольского. Я добавил ссылку на сайт поскольку он имеет англоязычную версию, и мне показалось что это может быть полезно читателям статьи поскольку из остальных ссылок только одна вела на англоязычную статью про Каменец. Однако я мог ошибаться. Если это так искренне прошу прощения)

С уважением Александр! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.190.36.56 (talk) 10:36, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Aha. Understood, Александр. Actually, the 3D 'tour' is exactly the same, but I've restored the other link which takes the reader to the English information version. I've deleted the old duplicates of the external links as duplicating sources is unnecessary. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:58, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Огромное спасибо! С уважением, Александр!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.190.36.56 (talk) 08:04, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Не за что! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:13, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Sandbox proposal for Wikipedia: Belarusian geographical names

I just read User:Iryna Harpy/sandbox#Wikipedia: Belarusian geographical names and I applaud you for undertaking this effort.
However, while I appreciate the idea of using the romanization as used by the Belarusian government as the basis, the transliteration/transcription seems to be inconsistent between the various layers of government. That is, the website of the central government uses other romanizations than the websites of the regions. For instance, the website of Gomel Region uses Yelsk and Oktiabrskiy, while the website of the central government uses Elsk and Oktyabrskii. In addition, in your sandbox I find forms that are used on neither website. You write Svietlahorsk while both the central government website and the Gomel Region website use Svetlogorsk.

If this proposal is to have any chance of being adopted, I think it should as much as possible try to use the same source for most of its transcriptions. The central government website seems the most logical choice to me.

However, unfortunately, I cannot say that I am completely satisfied with the romanizations used by that website. Here's a few reasons why:

• the transcription of iotation / palatalization is wildly inconsistent:

• in some names, iotation/palatalization is not marked: Elsk, Svetlogorsk;
• in others, iotation/palatalization is marked using the letter y: Oktyabrskii, Kostyukovka;
• in yet others, the letter i is used for the same purpose: Liozno;
• in still others, the letter j is employed: Marjina Gorka;
• sometimes, in one part of the word iotation/palatalization is marked, while it isn't in another part of the same word: Myadel (Cyrillic Мядель, pronounced mʲædʲɪlʲ).

• the ending ий is inconsistently romanized. Compare Oktyabrskii and Pervomaiskiy (as a bonus, observe that the first i in Pervomaiskiy is a transcription of й, which on the rest of the map is usually transcribed as y).

Observing these inconsistencies, I am not convinced that using these romanizations is the solution. While BGN/PCGN may not be perfect, it is at least consistent. If this, this and this are the alternatives, I think we should stick to our existing policy of using BGN/PCGN. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 12:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

This inconsistency is precisely why I needed to turn to some other involved parties for input. I've actually accumulated a far more comprehensive list of literally 6 to 7 variations on the same name from other sources, but just grabbed a few fairly randomly to present and threw Svietlahorsk in, rather than Svetlogorsk in order to elicit some responses to using 'h' which doesn't exist in the Russian language in order to ascertain whether compromise should/could be made on the fact that Belarusian does (therefore bringing the names closer to the Belarusian pronunciation).

All I can be certain of is that this is that, while I realised it was going to be a huge undertaking, I've discovered that it's a far larger undertaking than I'd envisaged. Nevertheless, I intend to persevere as it's the Belarus information that's suffering and has become incredibly disjointed and confusing for English readers interested in searching out information to follow. Back on with my thinking cap! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:48, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Reading your response, at first it seemed to me that what you were proposing to do is deciding on the preferred romanization on a per-placename basis. I.e. collecting transcriptions from several different sources and then picking the ones that you/we/the editing community deem to be a consistent set of romanizations. But on second thought, I assume that I misunderstood, because such a proposal would most likely qualify as original research. Could you explain to me exactly what it is that you are proposing to do? I may be able to help. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 14:04, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

No, you didn't misunderstand in the first instance. That's why I've called on other interested parties to participate. There are instances where there are definitely accepted English names and the existing policy is becoming more problematic due to the fact that, like it or not, both Belarusian AND Russian are both official languages and the increase in new articles has escalated recently (which is great), but has led to severely disjointed references and orphaned articles due to an inconsistency in the nomenclature. As I've been working through these bad translations, I've grown to suspect that many are simply copying the name of a location according to what they find on another page (and that's dependent on what page they land on!) or go for BGN/PCGN because they have no idea that there are recognised English names. This is where I believe multiple local names applies. Using google searches and Ngram we can establish a case by case standard which can be changed at any time if/when it can be demonstrated that another conventional name has usurped the usage in Wikipedia. This is also why I thought that a general list would give rise to discussions on demonstrable, verifiable usages in English. I know it's an arduous route to take but better now than before it's going to take years to clean up.

My searches have indicated that many of the references to the BGN variants only show up as mirrors and forks and Wikipedia is NOT meant to lead the way. I'm finding instance upon instance of entries like this with the Belarusian and Polish spellings of the name and a red link for Miadelsky district (Myadzyel Raion???); murdered disambiguation pages; lists which, effectively, DO represent original research (along with red links because someone has added the softening sign to Baran, rendering it Baran' without piping it - just one example).

If this doesn't demonstrate reasonable intervention for the purposes of rational development via consensus, as is allowed by Wikipedia (and as opposed to original research), I don't know what does. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:35, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this would only work if the resulting guideline works like this: "If there is an established name in English, you can find it on the list below. Use this name. If there is no established English name on this list, use the Belarusian name, romanized according to the BGN/PCGN system." This way, we make sure that at least the places without an established English name are consistently romanized. For instance, we obviously use the name Grodno, as the city has a rich history and therefore has an established name in English. It follows from WP:COMMONNAME that this name is to be used, even though it is not its Belarusian-language name. On the other hand, there are hundreds of towns in Belarus which make no appearance in English-language history books. For those, it does – in my opinion – not make sense to adopt a non-BGN/PCGN or non-Belarusian name from one of the Belarusian government's websites. For example, http://www.belarus.by/en/about-belarus/map uses the nonstandard romanization Elsk, but simply abiding by our own guidelines gives Yel’sk, which much closer reflects the pronunciation of the name. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 14:17, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

G'day! I agree with the proposal and the use of the BY govt EN map you mentioned for a naming convention. Ajh1492 (talk) 13:13, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I sincerely doubt that you do. The map you're referring to contains many Russian names. And you have already demonstrated that you only accept Belarusian names, even if the established (and official) name is Russian. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 13:23, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for taking so long to get back to you on this matter, TaalVerbeteraar. I needed to air my brain and was caught up in other Wikipedia issues. Agreed that the Wikipedia Belarus BGN/PCGN is what makes the greatest sense where there is no clear English convention. Continuing to approach the matter in the current manner is only going to encourage further disruption (as per Ajh1492's ingenuous support which will undoubtedly be retracted later on).

It occurs to me that, rather than a handful us struggling for consensus which will continue to be ridden over roughshod, I propose to submit the case to those who make the final decision on the rulings regarding the geographical policies at Wikipedia.

There is an abundance of evidence demonstrating that this system is not being implemented in the English language in anything that even approaches a consistent manner - particularly in light of the Belarusian government itself not employing its use for the English language versions of their sites - and it is not up to Wikipedia to set a precedent by writing the UNGEGN recommendation into the MoS as the definitive alternative where there is no definitive English common name. Having done so constitutes breaching the higher level policy directive of WP:NOR). This fact is easily supported by simple web searches alone. What happened to Wikipedia's being behind the ball? Aside from Collins maps (which use three variants of the name for search purposes, only one being the UNGEGN system) virtually every other instance comes back to Wikipedia and, once Wikipedia is subtracted from the search, the remaining handful have usually mirrored Wikipedia's spelling and information.

Overriding UNGEGN by alerting Wikipedia to the facts of its redundancy would mean being able to put together a list of accepted names together quickly with only a few checks on the English WP:COMMONNAME and deploying the all but hidden and forgotten BGN/PCGN for other instances. This would mean that no unnecessary, time consuming and painstaking consensus needs to be raked over the coals. Any case by case objections/renaming would be solely dependent on demonstrable changes in the English common name. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

What a great user page

I received your thanks for this edit and came over to visit your user page. I thoroughly enjoyed it and wanted to let you know. All my best, SchreiberBike talk 05:55, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Cheers. Good to make your acquaintance! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:59, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

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