User talk:Mzajac

Michael, would you as a Web expert take a look at the history of police (as well as at my contributions history)? A guy says I've ocasionally deleted the whole article. How could it happen? Earlier I've been accused in deleting the whole page after minor editing only a section of it. Was it my mistake, or should I suspect viruses, intentional interference, hackers using my log etc? Best wishes, AlexPU

Hey Alex. What changes were you trying to make in that second edit to police? Can you point out which other items in your history are suspect? (WP is quite slow right now.) There's probably a simpler explanation (browser bug, network problems?), but I can't think of any obvious cause right now.

When you edit a section, I think it actually updates the text of the whole page anyway. A couple of times I've accidentally reverted my own edits by editing different sections of one page simultaneously, in two different browser windows. I'm guessing this is similar weirdness that you're experiencing.

—Michael Z. 16:16, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

Hey Michael. On the police page, I first added internal links to MVS and militsiya, than replaced MVS with MVS (Ukraine). In both cases, I've been opening for edit the "Europe" section only. As for elder item, I can't freaking recall the page, but it was some talk regarding Russia-Ukrainian relations cause I remember the ill-famous DrBug gloatingly accusing me of vandalism. And what I clearly recollect, the circumstances were just the same: I edit the section of talkpage, then the guy comes out crying "you deleted the whole", I'm naturally denying, then DrBug links me to the history of that page. I've tried to find that contribution of mine, but ceased attempts soon. When WP is slow for you - it is expensive for me cause I'm using time-counting Dial-Up connection now : (((.

BTW, my new guess that it was my slow connection that caused the deletion. I mean I was using 4 windows simultaneously (including WP editing processes for 2 different pages) in order to save connection time. Could it be the reason? But! I thought both WP engine and browsing software are full of gizmos protecting from such effects?

Another guess that it was caused by my browser's poor compatibility with WP. You now, I did switched to Opera 7.53. I'm hoping to find a time for describing the bugs (and advantages) that I experience with it. I think Wikipedia needs a special talk/help page dealing with different browsers usage for editing. Or do we have it already? I think it would be interesting for your Web-creating practice. Pryvit, AlexPU

I use multiple windows and tabs for browsing and editing WP all the time. Just don't edit parts of the same page in two windows. You're protected against conflicts with other users, but not from yourself. Even when editing two different sections, the whole page is updated so your second save will wipe out the changes of your first.

That doesn't explain blanking a page, though. Maybe if a very long save is cancelled, or times out, then the page can register as updated before any data is sent. Police is a long page; maybe the slow connection comes into play too.

You might be able to save connect time by loading up lots of pages, clicking "edit" on some, then disconnecting before reading and editing. It should be no problem to connect again, then click "save" on pages you've edited. You would like a browser with tabs (dunno if Opera has tabs, but Firefox does).

Have a look at Wikipedia:Browser notes. I don't see anything resembling your problem there, though. Good luck, Michael Z.

BTW, I save articles to my HDD and then edit them in MS WOrd. It takes a lot of freaking time for Wikifying, but saves Dial_up money.AlexPU

Cyrillic vs. IPA; font-serving; Cyrillic fonts.

If the latin-based Slavic languages display fine without IPA, then you're absolutely right.

The problem is cyrillic, since there is very poor support for the pre-reform orthographies of Russian, Bulgarian, and (I'm a little nervous to say this) Ukrainian and Rusyn.

Basically, the yat, fita, izhitsa, and yuses are hard to find. Arial Unicode MS is awful in inclined pseudo-italic, I agree.

I wonder if a font-serving template Template:CyrFont can be concocted, perhaps in two versions, for semi-uncials and civil-script. There are some not-too-bad fonts available for non-commercial use, or indeed entirely in the public domain, that include the entire set, diactitics and all. I did not design them, but for my private use I have tuned their Unicode mappings and have even played with the OpenType composition tables. Of course, the Mac uses a slightly different format for pre-composition.

Typographically the non-commercial Irmologion font set (the site keeps moving, but it's available through google) gives really excellent semi-uncials (perfect for OCS, CS, and OESl languages). Perhaps they could be contacted for Wikipedia use.

With respect to the civil-script cyrillic, there are public-domain versions of New Standard, Academy, and Elizabeth typefaces at [1] (http://rp.ankylym.ru/zalo/|1) which possess the yat, fita, and izhitsa. They are print rather than display fonts, but a bit of hackery will give the necessary screen smoothing, I think. Unfortunately, there is no public-domain version of Literaturnaya, which was the standard cyrillic typeface for most of the twentieth century in the USSR and Bulgaria.

I possess the skills to attempt to construct such a template, that would work multi-browser, but I am leery of uploading fonts until both the licensing and technical issues are resolved. Unfortunately, my computer is not really powerful enough to run the MediaWiki software chain.

What do you think? A. Shetsen 19:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good ideas. In my opinion, the simpler solution is usually the best, especially in computing. I'd rather start with an open source font and enlist necessary help to convert it to a good Unicode font, than mess around with licensing issues. On the other hand, it can't hurt to ask if someone would release their font under GFDL.

There are some lovely non-unicode Slavistics fonts, and I've always wanted to mess around and modernize them. Sounds like you're way ahead of me, but I'm willing to learn and contribute. TTF and opentype fonts do seem to work well on Mac OS X, although I don't know anything about composition tables. The odd exception is Kirillica Nova Unicode, whose font name shows up in Chinese, but it still works. Thanks for the font link—Drevnerusskij looks like the most complete version I've seen of the old Cyrillic font that I've seen floating around, although the encoding is weird.

Template:IPA is really only needed for MSIE/Windows. Maybe the solution for Wikipedia is to add some styles in the MSIE/Windows-only style sheets (Wikipedia already has towe browser-specific style sheets, for MSIE5+ and 6), and make template:IPA and template:Cyrillic simply provide selectors. This would also let technically proficient readers use them in their own user style sheets.

 <span class="IPA"></span>

   <span class="Cyrillic"></span>

Mozilla/Win and Safari/Mac automatically substitute a different font if a character is missing. On my Mac, I've found that template:IPA makes IPA look a bit different, although all the characters still display. On the Mac, bold and italic don't get auto-generated (I guess the emphasis is on high-quality display).

Bringing italics and partial Cyrillic fonts into the mix can make things worse. On my Mac, in template:IPA, the first three fonts are skipped because one isn't installed and the others don't have italics. Gentium italic is used next, but it only has Russian characters. The rest fall back to the last resort Lucida Grande roman, I think, and I end up with a mix of italic-serif and roman-sans.

Here's a screenshot of part of Old East Slavic language in Safari. I've specified Arial (not Arial Unicode MS) as the default font in my monobook.css, because it renders nice Cyrillic italics. Characters not present in that font are displayed in a fall-back font, usually Lucida Grande. But Template:IPA overrides all that.

Missing image
Font-mix.png
Image:font-mix.png

I found the Irmologion UCS fonts (http://www.mtu-net.ru/irmologion/). Very nice. Do you have any idea how they're licensed? —Michael Z. 23:34, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)

Russian (spelling) article

Please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Russian_.28usage.29_page Jayjg | (Talk)</sup> 20:59, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

country infoboxes

Hi, and thanks for your support. I fear that minds are already made up about the endgame of a brutal edit war. I view infoboxes as companion pieces to articles – an ad-bar for a right margin with relevant content. Since they don't change often (and shouldn't) they would be best moved out of the article proper. That they are right up front means that everyone has to scroll around them — hopefully without damaging them — each and every edit. On some pages, they begin on the very first line, which, from a layout point of view, socks them into the top-right corner; to good effect. But from a source point of view there they are, right in the way. The transclude mechanism reduces the in-article clutter to a single line.

There is another move afoot to move the infobox down after the opening paragraph, which I suspect is driven more by a desire to present at least some recognizable article text to a neophyte editor before they have to face an infobox. I wouldn't mind seeing most tables and other gritty stuff moved into subpages.

Anyway, thanks for your vote of support. — Davenbelle 08:35, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

Template:IPA

I was glad to have you introduce me to the template. I was excited to use it, and spent quite a bit of time adding it to one page in particular. Your recent changes have caused it to cease functioning on my computer entirely, though. I’ll give you some time to figure out how to accomplish your recent goal while still preserving its earlier usefulness; but if you cannot, we should revert your last two changes to your version before January 14. You know far more than I on this subject, so I will look forward to seeing the product of your efforts.
— Ford 22:02, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)

- - - - -

It looks fine today. I noticed that you had fixed it, as I supposed you would. I appreciate your efforts (and even your failed experiments) on this matter, because I believe they improve the encyclopedia for its users. Carry on.
— Ford 20:17, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)

But IE6 does inherit...

Sorry. The second spec of the same css attribute (font-family) seems to override the first on IE6/XP. I've got a custom font set for my #content in my monobook.css file, and after you made the change, IPA now displays in it as well. A. Shetsen 22:08, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

PS. the only thing that appears to work on IE6/XP is to put the inherit at the end on the one fontlist, which I've done at Template:IPA (not IPA fonts). Does it work on a Mac? A. Shetsen 22:25, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have done a better job testing that. No, just "inherit" doesn't work. Oh well. —Michael Z. 23:33, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)

History of the Russian language

Hey Zajac,

  Check out the distinguishing beteween Ukr. and Russ. history of languages!

. Many Russian historians of the East Slavic region equate Russia with an earlier political state called Rus' (Русь). Other scholars consider Russia to have developed later from Slavic settlements amidst the Finno-Ugric areas of the northeastern hinterlands of Rus'. Ghirlandajo 22:53, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This statement on the lamentable state of scholarship of the history of Russia and the Russian language is true. However this blatantly false equation of Russia with Rus' is a late invention. It became current in the politically Mongolian and ethnically heavily Finno-Ugric and linguistically heavily Old Slavonic newly-formed nation called "Moscow" only in the 15th century, to justify the claims of its rulers to the aristocratic title to "all of Rus'", which was, at the time, a wish, not a reality! Genyo 01:13, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "Talk:History of the Russian language"

This page was last modified 01:13, 16 Jan 2005. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).

Re: Monobook.css validation

Hi Michael, nothing of what I've changed in Monobook.css could be affecting form fields, unless there's a really weird bug in Safari (it's a usability experiment, slightly fading out inactive tabs).

I'll take a look into it, it could be recent changes to Monobook's primary CSS file is causing the problem. Hopefully it can be fixed soon, sorry for the problem in the meantime. Thanks, Tom- 20:30, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[replied at ]

Apparently fixed now, seems Safari has a nasty and very weird bug with opacity. I'll send a bug report to Apple. Tom- 23:31, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ukraine's law enforcement and military

Michael, take a look at Talk:Politics of Ukraine as well as at my edits to your HUR and SZR. Pryvit, AlexPU

Photos of revolution

Michael, I recall you once asked me if I was keeping my camera with me during the revolution. Actually, I don't have any - only considering what to buy and how to learn shooting as professional as it possible. But I just came across a photo gallery that may be interesting for you http://rupor.info/gallery.php . You may also look for pictures at http://maidan.org.ua Pryviyt, AlexPU

United States move

When you voted to support, you may not have realized that it is also being proposed to move United States (disambiguation) → United States. That is, the page United States would become a disambiguation page.

Can you please clarify at Wikipedia:Requested_moves#United_States_.26rarr.3B_United_States_of_America_.26_United_States_.28disambiguation.29_.26rarr.3B_United_States whether you are voting in favor of only one or both of the proposals? -- Curps 23:38, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Economist definition on Canada

I don't have the context. But before my edit, it ran like this.

One definition of a Canadian, offered by the Economist in 1993,
was "an American with healthcare and no guns",
though in actuality, an estimated 3,100,000 Canadians own some nine million firearms.

which is even worse, as it did not describe how can canadian had "no gun". I think it is a metaphor here.

Dawson City image

Thanks for cleaning up Image:Dawson2.jpg. It looks much better! You're a dab hand with an image editor. - Montréalais 07:54, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! I only wish I had a higher-res original to work with. —Michael Z. 2005-01-27 08:19 Z

Early Cyrillic alphabet

I've finally got around to replying to your work at Talk:Early Cyrillic alphabet again. You might wanna jump straight to the diff (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AEarly_Cyrillic_alphabet&diff=0&oldid=9858697) in order to work out what's going on.

In an unrelated note, being nosy at your sandbox made me think of my sandbox (at User:OwenBlacker/Cyrillic), which was mainly an attempt to come up with a policy that would stop people italicising Cyrillic characters and confusing readers who know Cyrillic a-little-but-not-all-that-much). Please feel free to comment on there (or whatever).

And two other things:

Happy New Year!
Поздравление на избрании Ющченко ! :o)

— OwenBlacker 14:52, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Заємно!

Your comments and changes look good. I'm trying to go on the Wikipedia wagon for a day and get some work done. Go ahead and move the table to the article.

One nitpicky thing: I wouldn't put the Unicode values (e.g., U+1FFD) in <code> tags; they are documentary only, and wouldn't be used in computer code this way (as e.g., HTML entities would: А).

—Michael Z. 2005-02-1 16:52 Z

Good luck on the wagon; I know the feeling. I put the Unicode values in code tags, just because I prefer the way they look like that, but I don't feel strongly about it, so I'm just gonna take the table as-is from the Talk: page and copy it over (and will do the same when we're done with punctuation). I'm gonna move the table over now, anyways. — OwenBlacker 00:44, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

PS: Cool signature substitution; I might nick it later… ;o)

Hm, must get to work....

Well, I don't feel that strongly about the <code> tags either, but how about using <tt> instead? It looks the same on WP, but doesn't carry the same semantic meaning: U+1FFD. Yeah, I'm an HTML geek.

You're welcome to the sig code. talk pages would be a bit less cluttered with little poodle poops instead of those big coprolites squeezed out after every sig. —Michael Z. 2005-02-3 01:12 Z

Custom timestamp in your signature

You're the first person I've noticed with a custom timestamp. How do you do that? —Mar·ka·ci 21:52, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)

The short answer is: paste in the text instead of using ~~~~. Here's what I paste in (on a single line, broken here for readability):

  ''&mdash;[[User:Mzajac |Michael]] [[User talk:Mzajac |Z.]]&nbsp;<small>
  {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY}}&nbsp;
  {{subst:CURRENTTIME}}&nbsp;Z</small>''

You can read about the variables like {{CURRENTTIME}} at meta:Variable. Subst: simply substitutes the value of the variable immediately—so you get the current time entered as text, instead of it remaining a variable that will always show the current time.

Unfortunately you can't put it into a template, because then {{CURRENTTIME}} would be updated every time someone edits an article, and {{subst:CURRENTTIME}} would be converted to the time you create the template. I found this out the hard way—there may still be one or two of my sigs around, that claim to be written very recently, indeed....

For convenience, I've added a user javascript which puts this into a text field on the page, underneath Wikipedia's edit field. I can select the text to copy and paste from there. see User:Mzajac/monobook.js for this and some other code. —Michael Z. 2005-02-2 23:05 Z

Thank you very much for the info. ^_^ I was thinking that it's also possible to change your signature in the prefs to include the timestamp. You'd only need ~~~ to sign. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the subst:VARs to work. :| [rant]Also, the day needs the leading zero when it's only one digit to conform to ISO 8601.[/rant] —Mar·ka·ci:2005-02-3 05:05 Z

Eureka! I thought I'd let you know what I discovered. :) You know that button (second-last) in the toolbar for signatures? Maybe you don't see/use it (since you can turn the toolbar off), but I've figured out a way to make that button insert your signature, custom timestamp and all. This way the signature button is actually useful! You can further play around with it to suit your needs. See my /monobook.js (I'm testing out using a template in userspace). I think this would work for you (line breaks included for readability):

 document.getElementById("toolbar").innerHTML=
 document.getElementById("toolbar").innerHTML.replace("--~~"
 + "~~","\\'\\'—[[User:Mzajac |Michael]] [[User talk:Mzajac |Z.]] <small>
 {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}-{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}-{{subst:CURRENTDAY}} 
 {{subst:CURRENTTIME}} Z</small>\\'\\'");

The escaped backslashes are there because when they are rendered in the page, they escape the apostrophes that italicize your signature. Enjoy. :> —Mar ka ci 2005-03-13 T 22:41 Z

Cool! And very simple, too. The buttons just show text in the field in my browser (Safari), but that will be convenient. I'll try it out. —Michael Z. 2005-03-14 00:28 Z

New image for Template:Ling-stub

As the creator of the new Ling-stub template, I just wanted to say thanks for creating the new image. It looks a lot better than the original, which I created. That was my first attempt at creating an icon image, and it shows :-) Szyslak 21:29, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My pleasure. I thought yours was just fine, but the PNG format works better for solid-colour images than JPEG. Cheers, Michael Z.

Template:Latin alphabet

Good fix for the font family! I now see my preferred fonts again. How did you find out about the trick to make it apply only to MSIE? User:Anárion/sig 07:44, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Woah, you spotted that quickly. It's something I figured out for Template:IPA. I found the technique described here (http://www.dithered.com/css_filters/css_only/property_space_comment.html). I'm guessing you use Mozilla.

The font-family: inherit; declaration resets the font to whatever your browser was going to use. The strategically-placed empty comment (/**/) hides that declaration from MSIE 6/Win. Every other browser can pick the right font on its own.

I suspect that this may break the font display in MSIE 5.0 or 5.5, but I'm too lazy to test it, and no one has complained yet. —Michael Z. 2005-02-7 08:01 Z

I actually use Opera Beta (Opera 8). I didn't know about this CSS bug (MSIE apparently doesn't know how to handle empty comments), looks like it can come in very handy. FWIW, MSIE 5.5 displays fine: I can't check 5.0 (don't have a machine with it). Thanks again! User:Anárion/sig 08:24, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cool, I haven't met any Opera users before, although I did licence a copy for a museum kiosk project. The comment and whitespace have to be exactly as entered for this one to work. That site has a whole catalogue of css hacks (http://www.dithered.com/css_filters/) and a compatibility table. I'd rather not use this kind of hack on WP where anyone can edit it, but so far so good. I'm trying to lobby a developer to add this stuff to the MSIE-specific style sheet, but no luck yet. —Michael Z. 2005-02-7 14:42 Z

First Nations Naming

see Talk:Nisichawayasihk_Cree_Nation for the answers to the questions you had, from my perspective. We need to bring this into a larger discussion circle. It's 1:40am, and I'm teaching in the morning. Cheers! Weaponofmassinstruction 07:39, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Prime Ministers of Ukraine

Thank you for reformating the table. It is more readable now. ISO-dating is a bit unusual, but convenience may be sacrificed for the sake of compactness. A few people were concerned that some PMs are listed twice. Currently, it's the case for Yanukovych and Azarov. Maybe, it's still better to keep them twice. Also, let me suggest a way to improve readability even more. How about alternating white and very light grey backgrounds in rows? Sashazlv 05:15, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing! I guess most people have date preferences that will reformat those dates, anyway. I've grown accustomed to using ISO dates myself, and they do work well in tables. Regarding duplications, think of it as a list of prime ministerial tenures, rather than people who have been prime minister.

I had a heck of a time getting the table rules working similarly in different browsers. MSIE/Win doesn't seem to like drawing borders on individual table rows, Safari doesn't support the rules attribute. I finally got it to look close, but not quite the same in those browsers and Firefox.

White/grey backgrounds might be better. Have a look at Romanization of Ukrainian#Table of romanization systems for an example. —Michael Z. 2005-02-10 14:29 Z

Yuliya

That’ll work. Actually, my original was “whose deputy as prime minister she was”, which is what I meant to restore. I did not catch the change in time to revert it, and the new language was just too conversational for an encyclopedia. Your version will do until someone comes along and changes the whole thing again.
— Ford 01:49, 2005 Feb 12 (UTC)

USSR military equipment

Since you seem to be interested in military equipment and I'm guessing you're from the Ukraine where a lot of the Soviet stuff was designed/built (not to mention being a part of the USSR) perhaps you'd like to help me improve the articles on surface-to-air missiles of the USSR and Russia. A few already existed when I arrived here a few months ago (I think SA-1, SA-2, SA-7, SA-14 and Igla). Most of them are OK. I added all the rest up to SA-19. I'm quite happy with some but overall, many still need fleshing out and they all need to become more consistent in terms of layout, information, etc. Well, I'll probably eventually manage it myself so don't worry too much, but the task of creating so many missing small articles, linking everything properly, etc. is daunting. Thanks. Nvinen 13:14, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Easy does it. I'm no specialist in the AA missiles, but add those to my watch list and contribute however I can. Good work.

I'm interested in articles concerning Ukraine, but I've never been there yet. Cheers, Michael Z.

Khotyn uprising (1919)

I think you should be interested to take a look at the Khotyn article, which is repeatedly flooded by Romanian nationalism. If you have any facts on the Khotyn uprising, please help to make the article better. Ghirlandajo 06:55, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vote on Talk:Gdansk/Vote

Hi. Since you have edited on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/Names issues, I would invite you to vote on Talk:Gdansk/Vote to settle the multi-year dozens-of-pages dispute about the naming of Gdansk/Danzig and other locations. The vote has two parts, one with questions when to use Gdansk/Danzig, and a second part affecting articles related to locations with Polish/German history in general. An enforcement is also voted on. The vote has a total of 10 questions to vote on, and ends in two weeks on Friday, March 4 0:00. Thank you -- Chris 73 Talk 07:13, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Kill the Britannica!

Michael, would you please somehow retire Kremenchug as obsolete? (I added the useful part of it to Kremenchuk) I'm afraid redirects are above my knowledge yet. AlexPU

Done. Making redirects is simple: just delete all the text and put a link in the form #REDIRECT [[Target article]] in its place. Michael Z.

Thanks for help. I thought there were some server problems particularly with redirects when I was trying to redirect Obolon. Pryvit, AlexPU

We need statistics

Michael, please take a look at the statistics issue at Talk:Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Your opinion as a Web-designer could benefit the subject a lot. Feel free to move the discussion anywhere useful. Best wishes, AlexPU

P.S. Thanks for support on Category:Kyiv city.

Kamyaniets Podilskiy

Hi Michael. Would you please take a look at Kamyaniets Podilskiy and make a decision on its name spelling (and the page name)?. I think it should be a transliteration of Ukrainian (not Polish or Russian) name. But I'm not sure on:

dash between two words (what are the English Wiki rules on it?)
transliteration of Ukrainian apostrophe

Pryvit, AlexPU

Yushchenko Photos

Hi, I put new official photos to Viktor Yushchenko article (I marked them as PD since they were explicitly made available for download by his site). It seems that now the article is overloaded with photos. However, I wouldn't risk throwing any of them out.

Could you, please, have a look at the current article layout, especially, how the photos in the Inaguration section are organized?

Best regards, Sashazlv 06:59, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You know, it doesn't look overloaded to me. I would consider dropping the first one, since it looks like a montage made for marketing purposes (pre-orange revolution photo of Yushchenko superimposed over the crowd), and not a documentary photo. Many world leaders' articles have their state official portrait as the leading photo, but I couldn't find one on the official government site. The Our Ukraine portrait is nice, but looks a little dated. —Michael Z. 2005-03-4 15:44 Z

Off-line Wikiediting

Hi Michael. I need your professional Web-designing/PC gizmo advice. As I told you, I edit Wiki pages off-line as a whole using text editor (because changing particular paragraphs on-line is too Dial-Up-time-consuming). For that editing, I import HTM pages in my MS Word (no matter how: by clipboard or through opening). By doing that, I lose even those Wikilinks which I don't intend to change. So I'm forced to restore all the links manually, and this is freaking exhausting!!! I especially hate the Ukrainian language, necessary on the top of every bloody page.

So do I have any chance to automate the process? MS Word macro's? Replacement lists? And what about that "Wiki software" mentioned on some pages? Could it help? Thanks in advance. Pryvit, AlexPU

Click "edit this page" while you are still online, and copy the wiki-text into MS Word. I know it can be time-consuming to wait for the wiki's response sometimes, but that way you won't lose any links (including piped links), formatting, table code, manually-entered HTML code, HTML entities, etc.

I think the wiki software that's referred to is the actual Wikimedia server. Some people run their own WP-like projects, or run copies of the server to test and develop new features of the software.

One could make a macro or program to convert the body of a page to wikitext, but I don't know of any such software. Still, it wouldn't be 100% reliable. —Michael Z. 2005-03-9 15:50 Z

Ukrain city maps

Hi Michael, I invite you to find out the best basic ukrain map to show the position of cities. We discuss here --ST ○ 16:50, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)

Kiev talk page too long

Michael, the Talk:Kiev page became too long (over 100kb) and most of it is discussion on Kiev vs Kyiv topic. Since the issue seems settled, can this be archived to make the page smaller and more convenient to use on still ongoing disputes? I am writing you simply because I don't know how to do it. If you can easily do it and have time to do it, I suggest to create an archive devoted to Kiev vs Kyiv dispute with a link at Talk:Kiev page and move most of the stuff there. I don't think anyone would object to this change. TIA. Irpen 20:37, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Will do. —Michael Z. 2005-03-15 22:19 Z

A note on the Dnieper article

I am writing you here, rather than farther overload the talk:Dnieper page by our discussion. You may notice, I added a European Geography stub note to the article because Dnieper needs much more to be said. Maybe you are aware of a better stub category. I found it difficult to navigate Wikipedia in search of a best stub category. As to the name dispute, I agree with you that this is a minor issue. My preference of the word "river" next to the Dnieper is a weak one and based on my impression of what is used in English media which may be erroneous. Wikipeadia needs a cleanup of the names that are by far more obviously incorrect an deliberately introduced by ideologues of all colors against the accepted naming rules. Cheers, Irpen 22:54, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

Russian Soviet on WW2 tanks/equipment

Please be very careful in changing this from russian to soviet !
The germans used always "russisch" (russian) for captured russian/soviet equipment hence the (r) designation. From today's point of view soviet may be correct but from historical point of view it's wrong. --Denniss 08:55, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)

Thanks for the note; I suspected that may be the case. I was careful to be specific and consistent on my recent spree of correcting, and avoided changing historic citations where Russian might have been used in this sense. Sorry if I made any mistakes on this account. Always feel free to correct my mistakes when you see them. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-03-20 00:13 Z

closed cities

Articles used in the "Did you know sections are required to be non-stubby. Could you please expand this article so I can feature it? Mgm|^(talk) 09:14, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I'm tapped on the subject, but I've left a request on the Russian wikipedians' notice board. Stay tuned... —Michael Z. 2005-03-21 15:48 Z

Spelling info in articles

I've read your comments about spelling information in articles. I think they would be useful for copy-editors. See my user page and my comment on the MoS talk page. SpNeo 03:15, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[replied at User talk:SpNeo —MZ]

Tank, Tank R and D etc

I agree that there should be linkages from the tank article to articles on automatic defence systems, with a short phrase to establish the context of the link. And I also agree that there is a lot of work to be done on tank related articles. In fact I am sometimes depressed at the amount still to be done for the tank history article or articles, since I sometimes have the impression the best solution would be to divide it in three articles: 1-Before WWII, 2-WWII, 3- After WWII. The section I removed completely from the main tank article dealt only with power plants and made no reference to any other article in Wikipedia, or any book or web page. It offered no explanation, no facts, just suppositions that fuel cells and electric drives might be the way to go in the future. Why not suppose nuclear propelled tanks might be the way to go then? I know that given a few days in a public library I could actually find some 1950s and 1960s articles suggesting this. But would this be useful to understanding the modern tank? I do not see how. On the other hand I did move to a newly created Wikipedia article (the link is in the "see also" section at the bottom) a rather good, well structured section on current tank armour R and D because it seemed to me that it had the potential to become a good encyclopedic article, standing by itself once sections on non-armour R and D have been added, and at the same time this move helps reduce the size of a tank article focused on present day tanks instead of past or future ones. Ah, yes my studies of the T-10 (and other soviet machines)is a bit too old (around 20 years ago) for me to make good contributions to its article. My memory fails me. --AlainV 07:51, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Signature

I like the date format of your signature e.g. 2005-03-26 22:47 Z - how do you achieve this. Saw this no where else. thx and best regards Tobias Conradi 22:35, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See heading #15 on this page: User talk:Mzajac#Custom_timestamp_in_your_signature. Only problem is that the first nine days of the month are displayed with only one digit; but I've chosen to live with it. —Michael Z. 2005-03-28 07:22 Z

Hi Michael, time to say thank you for your signature-explanation. With the redirect thing I meant if one visits Regions of France and actually gets the content from Région in France later if one see the link Région in France this will not be marked as read, because the browser never has requested this page. Tobias Conradi 06:06, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

withdrew move request for Regions of France (how I call it) ;-) this is not an Aprils joke Tobias Conradi 08:23, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know has been updated

and a fact from the article closed cities, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you have another interesting fact to submit, then please suggest it at the section's talk page.

Did you know has been updated

and a fact from the article Hull-down position, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you have another interesting fact to submit, then please suggest it at the section's talk page.

Did you know has been updated

and a fact from the article T-10, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you have another interesting fact to submit, then please suggest it at the section's talk page.

Woohoo! —Michael Z. 2005-03-29 06:11 Z

Comprise and compose

I should read closely. My apologies.

No need to apologize. It's an easy mistake to make, or perhaps not even strictly a mistake any more, because people are always saying that something "is comprised of blah...". —Michael Z. 2005-03-29 22:30 Z

I only thought that "to comprise" in the active form...but no, of course no. "Is comprised of" is just the inversion of "to comprise". Unless, of course, you count "comprised" for an adjective instead of for a participle...--141.150.75.12 02:18, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Correct:

A tree comprises roots, a trunk, and branches, and
roots, a trunk, and branches compose a tree. Therefore also:
a tree is composed of roots, a trunk, and branches.

Incorrect, but you hear it all the time:

~~A tree is comprised of roots, a trunk, and branches.~~

—Michael Z. 2005-03-30 04:23 Z

superscripts

Hi - Thanks for the response on superscripts at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Have you seen my comment on your response? I don't mean to be a pest about it, but I'm pretty sure Meta:Help:Special characters#Unsafe characters is correct about superscript 2 and superscript 3 not being safe, and I'm pretty sure the issue is Mac-Roman (used on pre-OS X Macs, which I think are quite common in many US schools). I don't have extremely ready access to a pre-OS X Mac, so I haven't seen the problem with my own eyes. Are you absolutely sure it isn't a problem? Thanks. -- Rick Block 15:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Should we try moving some UA city articles?

Hi Michael. Since no one expressed any objection either at Talk:Dnipropetrovsk page (after I moved the article) nor at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions, shouldn't we request these page to be moved as we discussed? The suggestion was to move these two articles first :

Kharkov -> Kharkiv
Luhans'k -> Luhansk

Regards, Irpen 14:45, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good; I'll reply to your last at at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions. Will you file them at proposed moves, or shall I? —Michael Z. 2005-04-6 18:38 Z

I just filed them and hope I did everything right. Left a template at Kharkov and Luhans'k talk pages and a note at Wikipedia:Requested moves. Irpen 20:35, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think we should follow up on this trend and request a move from Ivano-Frankivs'k to Ivano-Frankivsk to reverse the current redirect. Same with Dniprodzerzhyns'k. If you agree, you can just go ahead and post a request or I can do it. Or we could just move it by cut and paste. Talk pages of these articles are empty anyway. Since both transliterations are unquestionably Ukrainian, there should not be any sensitive controversies like Donets'k/Donetsk and Kharkiv/Kharkov. Cheers, Irpen 21:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'll get this one. [Our campaign of conquest continues; mua ha ha!] —Michael Z. 2005-04-11 21:16 Z

Oblasts of Ukraine

Hi, Michael! I was wondering if there is any specific reason why Ukrainian oblasts should be placed under the article titles matching their romanized Ukrainian names. Is there an important issue I am not seeing that would prevent moving them from current names (such as Kharkivs'ka oblast') to cleaner names (such as Kharkiv oblast)? (Incidentally, this particular article uses the name that does not match the title.) The adjective forms (Kharkivs'ka, L'vivs'ka, etc.) can always be mentioned in the article, but the actual article title would be much more reader-friendly. This is how the article on Russian oblasts are done, anyway, and it seems to work very well. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:49, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for noticing. Irpen' and I are just looking at some of these naming issues, starting with a few cities. We thought we'd introduce the changes gradually, and see if there is resistance. Kharkov → Kharkiv just passed the censors, so we're off to a good start. Main discussion has been at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions. —Michael Z. 2005-04-14 03:18 Z

I guess I don't quite understand what you mean by "resistance" (you don't mean Ukrainian nationalists who would resist this change because Russian subdivisions use it?→just kidding :)), but I see that you are way ahead of me on the Ukrainian subdivisions Wikiproject talk page.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 15:55, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Style manual

Re: your edit today of Wikipedia:Manual of Style where you say It doesn't say anything about only proper nouns...

Yes it does. It uses the phrase "title terms," which IMHO is too easy to overlook (I missed it, on first reading, and so did you, apparently), so I said "proper nouns". The idea, I believe, is to dissuade people from throwing in native spellings in parentheses for every Romanized or Anglicized loan word. Please consider reverting or rephrasing your edit. Thanks! — mjb 16:03, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, I did not overlook that it says "English title terms with foreign origin can encode the native spelling and put it in parentheses.". Interpreting this as meaning "native spellings in non-Latin scripts may be included in parentheses, but only for proper nouns." is quite a stretch.

Title terms doesn't mean proper nouns (e.g., the titles of the articles horse or umbrella).
It doesn't say that anything else should not be italicized or put in parentheses, as your interpretation implies. X can be Y does not mean Y, but only for X.
It's obviously a writing style suggestion, not a rule of English orthography nor Wikipedia policy.

—Michael Z. 2005-04-14 16:13 Z

Point taken re: proper nouns not necessarily being the same as titles, although I wouldn't say it's "quite" a stretch. However, while your deductions about X and Y are accurate (to the extent that the guideline is not merely a suggestion), I don't agree with your implicit conclusion that the guideline has no intent to curb excessive use of native spellings.

There was a great debate about this topic last year, when an overzealous high school student began peppering numerous Japan and Japanese-language related articles with multiple kanji and kana spellings in parentheses. He did this for practically every non-English term, which irritated a lot of people because it was distracting, seemed to serve no purpose, and made the articles a pain to read. IIRC, at the time, the people who were attempting to give the guy the smackdown had no relevant guidelines to point him to, so much 'discussion' ensued and specific guidelines for Japan-related articles precipitated in order to prevent such things from happening in the future. It seems reasonable to assume that the guidelines I attempted to paraphrase derive from this debate.

Anyway, my point is, the way you have left things, it now implies that it is always OK to use native spellings in parentheses for any foreign word, willy-nilly. I am pretty certain that's not ideal. — mjb 19:13, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your version adds a proscription against showing native spelling for non-proper nouns. You say that you are restating another convention, but you are actually making new policy. —Michael Z. 2005-04-14 19:26 Z

Signatures

How do you get a signature like yours without typing in ''~~~ <small>~~~~~</small>'' each time? Brian j d | Why restrict HTML? | 05:24, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

See #Custom timestamp in your signature, above. I paste or drag the whole thing into the edit field. —Michael Z. 2005-04-17 07:19 Z

Ukrainian language zealously attacked by vandals

Hi Michael, I just noticed you made some edits to Ukrainian language page. If you look at its history and talk pages, you will see that it's being attacked with zeal from several IP addresses located in Ukraine by someone, who seems to have an oversimplified understanding of what means to be a "patriot". I tried to respond at the talk page and asked those individuals to stop but they seem unconvinced and persisted with blanking the section they didn't like as well as posted a rude remark at my talk page. I am in kind of doubt on what to do. This clearly qualifies as vandalism, if you ask me, but since their purpose is to push their POV rather than vandalism per se, I am not sure this is considered vandalism by WP policy. Also, I am not sure whether the IP address can be reported to "Vandalism in progress". Several of the addresses seem to be dial-up IPs. Of course it would not hurt to improve the article further but it does not seem too bad as of now and I am not sure it would have helped. What are your thoughts? Cheers, Irpen 17:00, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

I've been following this (twice I've had edit conflicts because you just beat me to un-blanking the section). I think it's best to give him/her the benefit of the doubt, and consider this to be an inexperienced Wikipedian rather than a vandal out to make Wikipedia worse. Patience usually seems to be the way to deal with a situation like this, although there have definitely been other times when I didn't have nearly enough of it. I'll leave a note on their last user page, and see if I can encourage more constructive behaviour. —Michael Z. 2005-05-10 17:13 Z

Yes, you are right, I think, that it is better to wait more. Maybe we'll end up getting another contributor. I just lost my temper a bit, probably, because the anon was rather rude and ignored my polite attempts to talk. While I was busy unblanking the section several times, I had actually a chance to read the article in full. I think it is still rather raw, but it shows that there is much work already in it. I might start making changes to it more actively. As always, I won't mind changes and copyedits over my edits, of course. I had much work to do lately, so I didn't do much of what I was planning. Cheers, Irpen 03:37, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Zaporizhzhia

Michael, I moved the Z. articles around a little bit because the city is what the user is most likely looking for when entering the term in the search box. Right now Zaporizhzhya will bring the city article (former [[Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine]], instead of disambig article, and the disambig article that was sitting at [[Zaporizhzhia]] is moved to Zaporizhzhia (disambiguation). This seem non-controversial enough so that I just did it without proposing it first. I hope no one will mind that.

On the other note, isn't it time by now to move the UA oblasts articles in accordance with Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ukrainian_subdivisions#Proposed_renaming. There were no responses, so I would say let's just go ahead and propose the moves. If anyone has objections, the listing at proposed move page will bring the issue to prominence. Irpen 21:56, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

The Zaporizhzhia move sounds good to me. Whenever it seems sensible, just be bold. If someone unexpectedly disagrees, then at least the discussion will begin with your point-of-view as the starting point. (I suppose you've already learned that, in dealings with me :-). )

Regarding oblasti, since there hasn't been any response, let's just move all the articles we can, then propose moves for any that are stalled for technical reasons. I have no idea how many will work. First I'll post a note at the proposed renaming discussion, so we can agree on the four unsettled oblasti.

By the way, I haven't snubbed you about the Ukrainian article you referred me to. It's just that it's a bit of work for me to read so much modern Ukrainian all at once, so I haven't got around to it yet (my Ukrainian vocabulary is strongest at the dinner table). Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-05-11 22:47 Z

Чернобыль/Чорнобиль

Hi Michael, in the deWP we splitted the article about the Chernobyl accident and satteled the article about the city to the ukrainian Chornobyl de:Tschornobyl instead of the rushian Chernobyl. The accident kept the russian name. - Just to inform you about our ideas. So long --ST ○ 23:08, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

Thank you Sven. But I think this was discussed on the Chornobyl page, and the consensus was to go with the popularly-known name. I don't feel the fighting spirit right now, but maybe sooner or later... —Michael Z. 2005-05-16 20:54 Z

;-) --ST ○ 19:02, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

Novorossiya and other terms for historic areas

Maybe we should mention also this term along with Bukovyna/Bukovina among historical areas (see my note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions)? "Novorossiya" is less used since after the 1917 revolution, but sometimes I saw it even in modern days. On another point re your copyedit, I thought that while one should just say Ukraine or Russia without "the", using of "the" is appropriate when saying "in the southern Ukraine" or "in the southern Russia". I am not a native speaker, so I just would like to know for the future usage. Cheers, Irpen 18:06, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

More terms for historic areas came to me as I thought more about it: Polissya and Podillya. I think Polissya is north-central Ukraine, perhaps Zhytomyr Oblast and part of Kiev and Chenihiv oblasti. Can't seem to remember where exactly in the Western Ukraine Podillya is. The piece of poetry from high school time "Kraso Ukrayiny - Podillya" (or was it Podollya?) comes to mind, but I am not even sure now who is the author. Maybe Lesya Ukrainka. These are the memories from long time ago :). Irpen 18:30, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Yup, that was her and she said Podollya and not Podillya. Surprisingly, I remembered this through all this years. "КРАСО УКРАЇНИ, ПОДОЛЛЯ!" at Moshkow library (http://lib.ru/SU/UKRAINA/UKRA_NKA/poetry.txt). Cheers, Irpen 06:51, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

It looks like Regions of Ukraine could use a bit of a make-over. I'm glad we never got around to deleting that article.

Regarding the article "the", it seems to me that it should be used when the subject is another noun, as in "the southern part of Ukraine", "the south of Russia", or "the Ukrainian south", but not when the subject is the proper name, as in "in southern-most Ukraine". I've also seen a case where the proper name is used as an adjective, or part of an adjectival phrase, so the article is applied to a different noun: "A previously-scheduled EU-Russia summit in The Hague is overshadowed by the Ukraine presidential election crisis." —Michael Z. 2005-05-16 21:00 Z

Little Russia article

Hi Michael, for obvious reasons I just changed the Little Russia article from being a "#redirect [[Ukraine]]" to an article about the term. It needs expansion and may need a copyedit. Besides, I thought you might want to wikilink to it the 1911 EB material from your user page (of course as long as you want to keep this material there). I wikilinked other WP articles but, obviously, I won't edit your own user page, so I thought, I let you know here. Cheers, Irpen 19:50, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I will link that, although it's time for me to put something else on my user page. Regards. —Michael Z. 2005-05-22 22:56 Z

Ukrainian portal for WP

Hi Michael, I helped Zscout370 a little bit with maintenance of the Russian Wikiportal he recently created. Browsing around I saw once more how little Ukraine is covered in WP compared to other countries and histories. Of course Russia is much bigger and much more in the news but still, the coverage of Ukrainian topics in WP needs to be expanded dramatically. Based on RU portal I created a draft version of Ukrainian portal at my user space. Please check it out at User:Irpen/uawp. Please do whatever you like with sections, layout, content, etc. In a couple of days I would like to have it exposed to the community, by moving it to Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Ukraine and placing it into a couple major UA articles, like Ukraine, Ukrainian language, etc, similarly to what was done with Russia article. Hopefully, it will bring more exposure and editors to Ukrainian topics. In the meanwhile, please play with it in your free time.

On another note, I had some discussions with other editors where an extra opinion might help. The first one on talk:Lviv page about the necessity of "Famous Leopolitans" section, the second one at Talk:Sikorsky_Aircraft_Corporation about whether it is correct to call Sikorsky "Ukrainian born". (I was amused to be accused of "Russian Imperialism" for the latter one, and it is even more amazingly by Mikkalai, whom I respect a lot. Perhaps he was annoyed by another disagreement we had recently). Anyway, if you have an opinion on these two issues and feel like expressing it at these talk pages, please do so. Of course you don't have to, if you are not sure about those issues or don't want to interfere. I am much more interested to bring life to Ukrainian portal. Also, I placed a link there to a warning for editors to be a little timid while still being bold in view of recent cases of, probably good willing, bud a little short-tempered novice editors who roamed in Ukrainian language, Ukraine and Kiev articles with changes of terminology that stirred up the hornet's nest. So I would be grateful for your contribution to the portal, if you have time. Thanks! Irpen 20:48, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Wow, nice work! I'll get in there, but possibly not until Monday. I spent far too much of the day rehabilitating Regions of Ukraine, which probably direly needs your attention—please have a look. —Michael Z. 2005-05-27 22:31 Z

Portal

I think we really need to fix the portal skeleton. Have you ever used it on a new portal page? What happened to the old one that was used for United States portal and European Union portal? Why does this look different? - 68.23.96.151 21:39, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I just worked on my first portal a couple of days ago (it's the proposed Ukrainian portal, currently at User:Irpen/uawp), so I don't know much about the skeleton. I un-fixed the vertical size of the boxes in the current one. Also made a couple of other changes for the Ukraine version, based on the code in the Quebec portal:

put the edit links into the box headers
made the box headers <h2> HTML elements, instead of just generic <DIV>s.

It seems okay to me. I could add these changes into the skeleton, if you think that would be an improvement. The only drawback is that the edit links are hard to read if the box headers have a dark background. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-05-30 14:39 Z

Michael, I just noticed that there are two mirrors of the portal draft: User:Mzajac/WPUK and User:Irpen/uawp. For some reason, they lay out at my destop differently. The one in my user space has "edit" buttons inside windows messed up. Also, I recently updated one of the portal subpages, and the update made it to mirrors not simultaneously, but with at least several minutes difference. I am not complaining, I just want to let you know about this. maybe you will find this info useful. I don't have experience with web-design. So I figured I tell an expert. Cheers, -Irpen 01:41, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

The copy in my user space was just a temporary copy while I was making major changes to the template, the main one in your space has changed since then.

Thanks for the report about the messed up edit links; I'm guessing you're using Internet Explorer on Windows. I'll have to do a bit more testing and tweak the style sheet. Perhaps it's not 100% ready to go into the public space yet.

I think the changes showing up at different times must be database lag. I don't know the details, but it may have something to do with page caching, or different Wikipedia servers updating their copies of the database at different times. I've experienced delays like that of up to a minute, or so. —Michael Z. 2005-06-9 14:56 Z

Treaty of Hadiach

Tnx for the translation, I compiled an article at Treaty of Hadiach, perhaps you could go over it, fix some red links and such. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 11:58, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Great work! I did a quick copy edit, but it didn't need very much, and looks like very good coverage of this event to me. I suggest you submit it as a suggested article to Wikipedia:Did you know (at Template talk:Did you know). Getting listed on the home page is a good way to attract more editors. —Michael Z. 2005-06-6 16:15 Z

White Russia

With all due respect, I think your latest rewrite of White Russia made it more confusing than it already was, admittedly. The main point there is that "Rus'" != "Russia". The point must be made clear. In your wording it a sort of gets lots. I think that paragraph really needs some work. --rydel 00:26, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It needs more of a rewrite than an edit. I think I understand the gist, so I'll give it another shot today. —Michael Z. 2005-06-8 15:26 Z

WP:Point and 3 RR rule

Hi Michael, Do you know whether 3 RR applies for reverting the editor whose action exactly fall into WP:Point. Please look at User_talk:Space_Cadet#Kiev, User_talk:Nohat#Kiev and recent edits to talk:Kiev page to see what I mean. Regards, -Irpen 04:32, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Well, the only exception to the 3rr rule seems to be vandalism. Under the principle of giving the benefit of the doubt, I'd say we have to assume that Space Cadet really thinks he's improving the article (but of course, it's your call). Looks like you have several other Wikipedians who agree with you (me included), so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. —Michael Z. 2005-06-10 13:41 Z

Again on K..v article :)

Michael, I just noticed you copyedit Piotrus' intro to the article. I have recently commented on it and proposed some minor changes. Could you please look at Talk:Kiev#Historical_Summary_in_the_lead and comment if you'd like? Thanks! -Irpen 21:36, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Gogol

Michael, there was an interesting discussion recently at talk:Nikolai Gogol. Please look at it as well as at the Gogol's article recent history. I would be interested in your opinion. Thanks! -Irpen 00:20, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

More on Portal

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Ukraine/Ukraine-related Wikipedia notice board. I will write to Zscout370 to reuqest help with scrambled edit buttons at the portal. Once it's done, let's go live. Regards, --Irpen 03:57, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

the Ukraine

I noticed you deleted the article "the" form the phrase "in the Ukraine" on the Bela Kun page. Why? "In the Ukraine" is standard English (at least British English) usage. Like "in the Netherlands", "in the UK" etc. A Google search gives you 350.000 instances of "in the Ukraine" vs 1.390.000 of "in Ukraine". So it is about 1 to 4, which means that these two formulations are in free variation, although the one without "the" is more frequent. Cf. "in Spain" (7.270.000) vs "in the Spain" (15.000, and mostly in constructions like in the Spain not under Franco domination): "in the Spain" is clearly a grammatical error. What I want to say is that "in the Ukraine" (and "the Ukraine" - 796.000 hits) is perfectly correct, so there is no need to change it. I know some people feel "Ukraine" is somehow more elegant the "the Ukraine" but I cannot see why. I mean, if "the UK" is OK for the Brits, the Dutch are fine with "the Netherlands", what's wrong with "the Ukraine" for Ukrainians? To me, it even sounds more elegant.

This question has come up before. The short answer is that although you often still hear "the Ukraine," and occasionally see it in print, it is incorrect usage today, and is contrary to English-language publishers' style guides. There's a more detailed explanation in my talk archive (User_talk:Mzajac/2004#Ukraine/The Ukraine), and at Talk:Ukraine#The Ukraine. It is also mentioned in the article at Ukraine#Name. —Michael Z. 2005-06-17 14:45 Z

All right, the style guides sort of convinced me. But off the record, I think it is a huge misunderstanding that the "the" is somehow belittling or has anything to do with the statehood or non-statehood of Ukraine. I mean, if you consider German, where countries normally do not take an article, you have some exceptions, like "die Schweiz"=Switzerland. And the Swiss are completely happy with it, and don't feel belittled. So to me, this "the-deletion" seems to be an example of mistaken political correctness, but since it has gained ground already, there is really no use fighting it in Wikipedia.

Just another small remark about the Bela Kun article: in 1919, Ukraine did not have stathood (internationally recognized), so maybe "the Ukraine" would be more appropriate in this historical context.--Tamas 07:33, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that the use of an article is necessarily a belittling practice. There's nothing wrong with the Netherlands or the United Kingdom, although I believe there's an etymological history which puts the articles in those names. In the case of Ukraine, though, it's simply incorrect today, and there is a political history which determines the character of this usage. The Ukraine comes from the same context as Little Russia, the impression that the land is simply a territory of "one, indivisible Russia", and having no national identity of its own. Neither Ukrainian nor Russian have a definite article "the", so in English translation this is a self-consciously applied device, rather than an artifact of the name's etymology.

Regarding the use of the Ukraine when speaking about a particular period, it's not that the name of the land underwent a name change from the Ukraine to Ukraine, either during independence of the Ukrainian National Republic, the establishment of the Ukrainian SSR, or at Ukrainian independence in 1991. It has been Ukrayina (Україна) throughout this time. Our language for referring to the land of Ukraine, in any period or under any government, is what has changed. Using the Ukraine when referring to it in an older period of history would be a bit like writing about Chaucer in ye Middel Englishe. —Michael Z. 2005-06-20 16:47 Z

OK, I see your point, but how can you prove that the English added the "the" in order to express that the territory in question is part of "one, indivisible Russia" as you put it? Maybe they added it for some other reason. Language can be so illogical at times. And actually, I can tell you, before reading your arguments I never felt "the Ukraine" to be a belittling form. And I guess most native speakers do not feel so either. But anyway, the bottom line is you have some valid arguments on your side, and if you feel "Ukraine" is more justified than so be it.--Tamas 07:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can't prove it, and I can't think of any historians that have written about it, and I so I'm not writing my explanation into any WP articles as encyclopedic truth. I am merely speculating that Imperial Russian representatives and translators would naturally refer to the territory of Little Russia or "the Ukraine" this way when dealing with the West, not as active propaganda, but merely as a result of their world view. On my user page you can read my rambling essay about the 1911 Britannica's picture of Ukraine, which would probably have adopted their nomenclature from some travelogues concerning "Russia" and some translations of Russian academic publications. Again, I don't think the English who adopted the terminology in the 18th or 19th century meant to belittle the Ukrainians in the least, but we have a very different historical perspective.

Of course these are all my explanations of the view of this terminology. As you pointed out before, one merely has to accept that modern style guides exclusively use "Ukraine" and not "the Ukraine". —Michael Z. 2005-06-21 18:48 Z

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:36, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. It would certainly come in handy. —Michael Z. 2005-06-21 19:25 Z

1939 massacre

Hi. Thanks for working on the blind musicians article. I just wanted to check to see where you got the 1933 date for the Stalin massacre. The book I have by Natalie Kononenko lists 1939 as the date in several places; and from the way it's integrated into her discussion, I don't think it's a typo. Since hers seems to be the authoritative text, I kind of doubt that she would have gotten such an important point wrong, though anything's possible, I guess.... Anyway, it would be easier to evaluate if we knew the source for your info. Thanks again! NoahB 17:27, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Looks like I'm mistaken. All I can find at the moment is in Subtelny's Ukraine: A History, p. 419. He's writing about the 1932-33 repressions, including "Several hundred kobzari (wandering bards) were invited to a congress, arrested, and reportedly shot." But I see that the section deals with some events from 1931 right through '39. —Michael Z. 2005-06-22 19:38 Z

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