User talk:Sterndmitri

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Hello, Sterndmitri! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Petrb (talk) 18:40, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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May 2014[edit]

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Eastern Slavic naming customs has been reverted.
Your edit here to Eastern Slavic naming customs was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5K4s8ll8AY#t=287;) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If the external link you inserted or changed was to a media file (e.g. a sound or video file) on an external server, then note that linking to such files may be subject to Wikipedia's copyright policy, as well as other parts of our external links guideline. If the information you linked to is indeed in violation of copyright, then such information should not be linked to. Please consider using our upload facility to upload a suitable media file, or consider linking to the original.
If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 21:14, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sterndmitri, you are invited to the Teahouse[edit]

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Hi Sterndmitri! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia.
Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors. I hope to see you there! Ushau97 (I'm a Teahouse host)

Visit the Teahouse
This message was delivered automatically by your robot friend, HostBot (talk) 16:09, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Adoption[edit]

Hi there, I'm Lixxx235. I have been a registered user since 2010 and I am currently a rollbacker and reviewer. Are you still interested in the adoption program? If so, I'd be honored to adopt you. If you would like me to adopt you, please leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks, Lixxx235Got a complaint? 20:16, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I moved your post to the bottom of the page and replied.--Charles (talk) 21:46, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Dear friends,
thank you both for your interest to my activity. I leaved extended replies on your talkpages. Dmitri

Talkback[edit]

Hello, Sterndmitri. You have new messages at Charlesdrakew's talk page.
Message added 09:18, 12 June 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Charles (talk) 09:18, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages![edit]

Hello, Sterndmitri. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by Yunshui 雲水 15:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for November 4[edit]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Sterndmitri/TheChurchOfNativity, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages St. Antony and Our Lady. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 15:32, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback[edit]

Hello, Sterndmitri. You have new messages at Iryna Harpy's talk page.
Message added 03:29, 11 November 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:29, 11 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages![edit]

Hello, Sterndmitri. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:02, 8 December 2014 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).[reply]

Responding to your Message[edit]

Hi Sterndmitri I took another quick look at your draft article. It looks much better. It's hard for me to judge too much though since I don't know what those references are, they are all in a language (Russian?) I don't understand. That's OK though. It's better to use English references as much as possible on English Wikipedia but it's not a requirement and if the only or best resources are in Russian that is acceptable. I think the article as is now still needs a lot of work but I think it might be accepted as a start class article (we also call those wp:stubs). Here are some things you should think about and possibly try to fix before submitting it:

  1. Make sure refs actually support the text. Sometimes new editors just put in references that happen to mention the subject but don't explicity support the claims in the article. So for example your first reference comes after this text: "The Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lady was the major church in the Monastery of St. Antony. Moreover, it is the oldest building in the monastery's complex: the building process got started in 1117, soon after the monastery had been established in 1106" So that reference should explicitly say things like "it is the oldest building in the Monastary" and "building began in 1117". I just mention it since I can't check those references myself.
  2. Make sure you aren't violating copyright. This is one of the things that is very different on Wikipedia than on many sites. For legal reasons we need to be a lot more careful about people just copying and pasting images and text. Here is a good overview: Wikipedia:Copyright_violations The pictures in your article for example. Did you take those or do you know who did? If so you should get them to give permission (there is a form for it) for those images to be used. The best thing is if whoever owns those pictures can donate them to the wikipedia:commons The commons is a companion site to Wikipedia and it has images that are licensed for use. It's actually fairly interesting a lot of the casual copy and pasting that goes on on sites like Facebook for example is strictly speaking illegal. Because of the way Wikipedia works (unlike Facebook no one "owns" an article or page) we can't push responsibility off on our users so we have to be a lot more careful to follow the letter of the law. This is actually fairly complicated but the basic point is make sure your text is original and written by you and make sure the images you use are from the commons or that you get permission from the owner of those images.
  3. Cleaning up the text. The text flows fairly well for a first article and especially considering you aren't a native speaker. You write better than many native speakers! It could still use some cleanup. I don't like to edit other people's work without their permission; but if you want me to take a shot at cleaning up the text let me know. I won't have time right away but could get to it some time today. If you would prefer to keep making all the changes yourself that is fine too.

Hope that helps. You can reply back here if you want; I'll wp:watch this page so I'll know if you have replied back. Good job, it looks much improved. Cheers. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:15, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two more points on your references: First, it's great that you have page numbers and things like ISBN numbers. A lot of new editors don't add that kind of detail. That kind of detail makes the refs stronger and the article more likely to be approved. Second, however it seems you really only have two references. One that is used several times and then one more. Two references, especially given that both of them are in a foreign language is not very strong. Keep in mind that wp:notability can be different for different versions of Wikipedia. It's possible that some topic is very notable in Russia but not really mentioned in the US and English press and media. It would be great if you could find some mentions of the church in sources like the NY Times, The Guardian, Time, etc. Not saying it will be rejected as is... I'm honestly not sure but it would be a lot stronger with some English language refs and more than just two refs. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:25, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, one last thing: I just did a google search and I'm now more confidant that the church is wp:notable in the Wikipedia sense for the US. Google: "church of the nativity of our lady novgorod" (note: don't include those string markers in the search) and you will see there are several references in English and from a quick look at least some of them seem like refs Wikipedia would think of as good. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:30, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]



MadScientistX11,

thank you so much for the help you have rendered!

I also have some interesting pictures of the church being the illustrations in books (e.g. reconstructions of the original exterior etc.), and some pictures made in 19 century, but I'm not sure about the copyright, so I haven't used them.
  • About references. I'm not surprised that they look weird for you. They refer to sources in Russian, indeed. Actually, they look weird even for me: i have just used ISBN to fill the fields automatically, and that's what turned out. But I don't even know, should I change something, or not and they are fine.
I don't really think that it's possible to provide some links in English and more links in Russian. Let me clear it up a little to make it understandable. Despite of the fact that churches like that one are dated by 12th century and unique in their construction, idea of decorations etc., nobody had been cared about it here before 20th century. They seemed to percept it like something primitive and unnecessary, so they even bulldozed the frescoes made in 1125 in the end of 19 century as I wote it in the article. Some interest to it - is a quite new phenomenon. There's a great lack of literature about it even in Russian, so that's quite needless to speak about English. To be sure, I have tried to surf the internet, and to search at NYT official website, so I didn't find some articles or books in English about the Church (by the way, actually there're several churches with the same name in Novgorod).
At least, this is quite a big problem to find web sources in free access.
The first book in the list (the one with the only referring in the text to it) is issued in 1910, it is in obsolete Russian, reprinted with including into some miscellany, and the specified pages are truly dedicated to the Church and I can check it. What about the other book - i've just relied upon another text with referrences, but I cannot check.
  • About text corrections. Please, feel yourself free and don't hesitate to make improvements. At any case, we can simply discuss it, to reject the ones being not felicitous, or to rollback the page in the worst case.
The only my note about it is rather my experience than some warning: i have faced the sutuation when the corrector decided to rewrite sentences throughly, and he/she distorted the sense in fact. But I have explained him the grounds and turned the initial sentence back. You may look at that page and my explonations at its talkpage, if that's interesting for you at (Chamber of Facets).
But, again, please, don't hesitate to clean the article up in any case you recognize as substantial. If that's not a secret: where are you from, USA? :P --Sterndmitri (talk) 16:53, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the draft back to your userspace at User:Sterndmitri/Znamenie. It's not appropriate to call the article just Sterndmitri/Znamenie. Without the User: prefix, the article is classified as a mainspace article. The correct title for a mainspace article would be just Znamenie. NawlinWiki (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Second Response[edit]

This is in response to your response to me above:

  • Regarding the references: do you actually have those books and have you read them in Russian and made sure that the various pages you reference support the facts in the article? If so then no problem; btw if you have the books there should be an ISBN number somewhere on the cover page or title page of the book. If not then could you say a bit more about how you came to use those specific references?
  • Regarding editing: OK, I'll take a shot at doing some edits right now. I'll let you know when I'm done so we don't step on each other's work. I'm not planning on any major changes or anything, just some minor wordsmithing and maybe add a reference or two if I can find good English refs. I hear what you are saying about editing the content. I'll stick to just things like grammar and style. BTW, it's easy to undo an edit. Each article has a "history page" that records every edit in a way that can be undone or redone. Here is the history for your article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sterndmitri/TheChurchOfNativity&action=history

I'll leave it there for now and go do some work on your article and let you know when I'm done. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:04, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Done. I've done just a bit of editing and added one English language reference. I'll hand it back to you now. Let me know if you have further questions. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 21:13, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]


MadScientistX11,

thank you so much! I've checked your corrections - everything is perfect, I have no objections. Articles seem to be my biggest problem.

About the books: there were 2 Russian books specified in the list of references. I've got an electronic version of the first mentioned book, I haven't actually read it thoroughly, I have just skimmed over it and checked pages.

If I understand correctly your question, its gist was that if the specified pages "114 - 712" do really describe that the monastery was established in 1106. Well, the pages 114 - 712 just reflect the section in the book, dedicated to the monastery. But the particular fact is at page 122: after your remark I've checked and made a necessary correction. I don't have the other mentioned book, I haven't ever read it and can't judge personally. I have just relied upon my sources which cite this book. These sources point at pages in that book that I have specified.

I am not sure if we understand each other fully about ISBN. I know ISBNs of all the mentioned books. I just meant that I used ISBNs to form references automatically. There's the device in Wikipedia: you just fill ISBN, push the button, and Wikidedia fills fields like "Title", "Author", "Issuer" etc. automatically. I used it, that's all i meant.

From where have i got the information about the church. From different sources: some was from the mentioned book, some was from Russian Wikipedia, some - just from the informational desks inside the church (i have physically been inside, made photo shots of the text about the history of the church placed at informational desks and translated it into English afterwards).

I've got one more draft of an article, it is about the icon. It contains the inline citation of the ancient Novgorodian chronicle. Would it be interesting for you to look through it? One more thanks for your editing! --Sterndmitri (talk) 05:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sterndmitri Your Welcome. This is actually why I like editing Wikipedia; I always learn stuff; the church sounds quite beautiful and makes me want to visit Russia. I've always wanted to for other reasons as well; love your music; literature; etc. Anyway, back to more practical matters: the ISBN question and on the refs in general; sorry that was my mistake; I didn't understand what you meant at first. From your explanation above that sounds fine. BTW, if the article is rejected when you submit it; I think there is a decent chance it will be accepted as is but you never know -- some reviewers are very tough some not so much -- but if it is rejected drop me a message again and we can look at the feedback you get and correct accordingly. One last bit of general info: you mentioned a while back that someone edited your article previously and changed the content. Keep in mind that can and almost certainly will happen to some extent once you publish the article. That is a core idea of Wikipedia that is different than most places: no one owns the content. Just because you were the main editor once the article is live anyone can edit it. When two editors disagree they discuss things on wp:talk pages More or less the kinds of discussions you and I have been having except sometimes more contentious and it can involve more than two editors. Let me know if you need more help with this article. Regarding the other article, the draft about the Icon, I would be happy to take a look. Can you reply here and leave a link to that article? --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Znameniye[edit]

MadScientistX11,

if you will ever decide to visit Russia, you've got a guide and a personal car driver here :D And Finland is quite close to that part of Russia I am writing about, so you can visit 2 countries both. People from the West say Russia differs greatly with all they've seen before. But this is a country of contrasts, actually: it is not such a "postcard Russia" in many places, unfortunately.

About joint editing and other principles of Wikipedia - i've got a clear understanding of it. That case I told about a while back, it was a case when a corrector distorted a fact by his correction. The article was dedicated to the Chamber of Facets, the only building in gothic style in Russia. He rebuilt my sentence, and its new sense was that this is the one of building in gothic style in Russia along with other examples. The last statement is falce, i provided the broad explanation and rebuttals, you can check it here if that's interesting for you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chamber_of_Facets). In fact, the corrector's idea about gothic architecture was vague a little, and I just possessed the full (comprehensive) information, that's why.

The new article is about an icon. The icon is called "Znamenie" and drawn in 12th century. It has quite interesting background about why is it famous and glorious.

Inline citation being a translation of the Novgorodian saga dated by 14th century is what I care about most of all in this article. Originally it is in Old Russian (spoken in 14th century). Although it is not like Old English and I can get the sense in the most of cases despite of it sounds odd, it has a range of features reasonable to be taken into account (mainly, of a stylistical nature). For example, the chronicler builds his story this way: "And ... . And ... . And ... . And ... ." (probably, this is like in Bible when "Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;and Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and ... " :D ). The other examples of different features may be cited here. I tried to remain them in the translation you may see.

As I see it, it seems to be reasonable to find some optimal balance: to retain the translation close to literal, but to make it "smooth" for anglophone ears. And probably, to underline the archaic nature of the saga by using obsolete English words like "thy" istead "you" and so on. You may replace modern words with understandable and well-known obsolete English words, when it's apt there. I'm actually just not well in this layer of English lexicon, I may find some, but i'm not sure about the proper using.

I also used English grammar constructions like Past Perfect Tense to convey cause-and-motion relations between events in past in the text. In fact, there're no grammar constructions to convey it in Slavic languages; to show it you shell say it explicitely, so this is not a part of literal translation; this is my own device only to use it in English translation. Couldn't you please check it and replace with relevant constructions if necessary.

In general: please, don't hesitate to make any changes you consider as reasonable. --Sterndmitri (talk) 07:24, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterndmitri/Znamenie

Thanks for the offer, I may take you up on that some day! Regarding the Znamenie article, I think there is an issue we need to fix. This isn't a big deal but it gets into things that are just a bit technical. Whenever you have a huge database you have the problem of homonyms: words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. So for example in Wikipedia we have a "Manual of style" that defines the conventions for editing wikipedia. But we also have an article called "Manual of style" that is about the concept of style manuals. We need to distinguish between the two. The way we do this (and btw this is done in lots of computer languages as well) is with the concept of a "namespace". Anytime you see a prefix such as "wp:" before a name like this: wp:Manual of style that means you are going to a different namespace than the main namespace. In this case wp is short for the wikipedia namespace. So the article about Manual of style as a general concept is in the Main namespace (no prefix required, it's the default) but the article about the Wikipedia MOS has a "wp:" to distinguish it. All user pages are meant to be in the user namespace, so prefaced with "user:". So note the previous article we were working on had the name: User:Sterndmitri/TheChurchOfNativity. This is important because things in the "User:" namespace signify things that aren't part of the actual encyclopedia yet and don't have the same kind of scrutiny or expectations for quality. Somehow the Znamenie article you are working on is in the Main namespace. I noticed that an admin moved the page so I'm not sure why it's set up without the "user:" preface. Sorry if this is confusing I know it's very detailed. FYI, here is the question I left for the admin: User_talk:NawlinWiki#Question_about_New_User.27s_page I also noticed that your wp:sandbox didn't seem to be set up. The sandbox is a default page every user has. It's meant to be where we do the majority of our development work. You can create additional user pages if you want but it's a good idea to re-use the sandbox as much as possible. That's why it's called "sandbox" it's meant to be something that is never permanent, you put content in there to work on and then you move the content to the main namespace when you are ready. I've copied the Znamenie article to your sandbox: User:Sterndmitri/sandbox If you look at your user interface there should be a link at the top of your screen that says "Sandbox". If you click there it should (assuming I did everything right) lead to the same page as that last link. My suggestion is we work on that and delete the other file (just blank it) but we'll see what the admin says, I may be the one confused here. If this is all just too much tech detail and is confusing don't worry about it; once we get the reply from the Admin I can handle any cleanup that is needed. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 17:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanted to let you know since I haven't heard back from the admin yet I'm going to do a little work on the second article. I think I'm correct about the namespace stuff so I'm going to work on the version I put in your sandbox. I'm not going to do much, just as before a bit of editing for tense and other minor grammatical stuff and perhaps add a reference if I can. I'll drop you another message here when I'm done. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, there is a new development: I did some minor editing on the article and then decided to look for some more references and one of the first things that came up in my search on Google was an existing Wikipedia article: Our_Lady_of_the_Sign_(Novgorod) Unless I'm mistaken, this is about the same topic. So if that is the case we definitely shouldn't try to publish the draft as a new article. When there is an existing article on a topic the thing to do is to merge the new info into the existing article. That is what I think should be done. I'm going to stop for now and wait to hear back from the admin and what you think about merging the draft into the existing article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merger and all other stuff[edit]

MadScientistX11, i'm not against being taken up on that someday.

Thanks for your extended explanation about namespaces, i'm actually a programmer - consultant in some particular narrow applying sphere, programming there is very special, but i think i've got the idea about namespaces and its realization in programming languages, just didn't think that makes some sense in Wikipedia too. So, you kindly provided an exhausting explanation, and I think I understand.

If i understand correctly, the only problem I see is that sandbox is probably presumed to contain an article for current editing, but we know that it takes some time for an article to be accepted. This fact seems to be a hindrance for starting a new article in a sandbox, if the previous one is still proceeded. But i'm sure that's not a problem to move it to corresponding namespace in my userspace, or do something else, if this problem will ever occur.

About the duplicating article. So... Your suggestion regarding the merger seems to be the most reasonable. The issue being the most topical for me is actually about how to merge it. I just ran through that article, it seems to provide the same basic facts as mine one does, but in some "narrowed" (undetailed) form, and without citing the only source that casts some light on this event for the history (the saga). And some contradition between the facts arises, don't you think:

  • that article says the icon was displayed to Novgorodians, the chronicle says it was displayed to the adversaries;
  • that article says it had been dwelling in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, but the icon had never been kept in this cathedral until in 1992 when they brought it there from the musem.
  • Cathedral of St. Sophia is called there as "the cathedral of Holy Wisdom", but this is doubtful as it's rather the literal translation from Greek, than a real name;
  • the caption below the picture calls the icon as "The Icon of the Mother of God of the Sign", No doubt, in Russian it is simply called as "Znamenie", so variations are evedently to occur while translating into English, but I don't really think the suggested variant is widely supported in English. "Our Lady of the Sign" seems to be the best known, not "The Mother ... " and all that kind of stuff.

In my opinion, it may be reasonable to come down in favour of the inline citation while chosing between 2 opposite variants of stating facts, and to make some remark about it at the talkpage.

I like the reserences in that article. I like that they are and different from mine, this extends the jointed list :D

I just studied your corrections in the page's history, i've noted my mistakes in the main text, but haven't noted any in the quotation. I just had a thought that if I did my favourite mistakes with articles and tenses in the main text, i seem to do the same in the quotation, and that's not a part of my "literal translation" :D So, if you've already looked throught the quotation and find some necessity and desire to perform thim, please, don't hesitate.

The technical note. I think it would be felicitous there to cite the original text in Old Russian for the quotation. In Russian Wikipedia I've seen several times the further technical device: the quote is cited in a frame like mine one, but it has some button "to show the original text (<language>)" which performs the corresponding fuction. But I haven't found some examples in English Wikipedia to copypaste the necessary piece of code, and Russian codes do not work in Englsh Wikipedia. But I'll ask people in TeaHouse to send me some example right there, and I think i'm capable to overcome this little difficulty without bothering you this time :D I'll share the result.

As always, my biggest thanks.Sterndmitri (talk) 11:11, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Glad you are a programmer, that makes it easier. First, back to the namespace the main issue is trying to maintain a distinction between content that is actually published, i.e. meant to be informative and accurate, vs. stuff that is work in progress. Things in the user namespace are indexed differently by Google and other search engines. We don't want people to stumble over work in progress when they search for stuff and think it's meant to be published Wikipedia content. Second, regarding the quote: I wasn't sure if that was meant to be literal or who did the translation so I didn't want to touch it on my first pass. I'll take another shot at it this morning and drop another message when I'm done. Finally, yes merging the new info into the existing article is definitely the right thing to do IMO. I'm almost certain that if you tried to publish a new article on the topic it would be declined since there is an existing article. The issues you raised are all things that could be discussed on the talk page of the existing article or you can just be what people here call wp:bold and directly replace the existing content of that article with text that you have now in your sandbox. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:05, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Making minor edits to the quoted text now. Just wanted to explain I changed the name of the archbishop to John. In English Joan is always a woman's name so when I read about Saint Joan that "he" did something it jumps out as odd. I double checked to make sure that the archbishop was a man. I know the actual name is something like Ionne but in the Wikipedia article about the bishop they call him John so that is what I recommend we stick with. Of course as with any of my edits feel free to change back. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:21, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I've finished my edits to the quote. BTW, I just got a message that your sand box was patrolled by someone. If you got the same message don't worry, it's just a routine check done from time to time to make sure that users aren't using Wikipedia for non encyclopedic uses such as to support their business or wp:original research. Let me know what you want to do next. My recommendation would be you take a shot at merging the new content into that article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:42, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]



MadScientistX11, regarding the quotation:

  • i've brought the original text in Old East Slavic below the quote;
  • you made a correction, a new sentence is "And they brought the icon into the walls of the burg...". Is it clear for anglophone readers, that they climbed on the burg's wall and displayed the icon to adversaries from the top of the wall with "into"? Maybe "onto"?;
  • After your correction a sentence in the final part was formulated like that: "That's how Suzdalian was...". I brought it back to the form "That's how Suzdalians were...", as "Suzdalians" are ment to be "the citizen of Suzdal" (plural) here;
  • the translation was my own, nothing widely recognized as ethalon or something like this, so it was a proper decision to correct it, I meant it to be close to literal (by myself);
  • just checked once more to what you told me about John the Archbishop, so his name as it is mentioned in the original text is "Ivan". How do you think, maybe it would be interesting for a reader to cite the original variant, or they'll hardly understand this point?
  • above i suggested you to replace some modern English words with some archaic ones (like "thy" instead "you") to convey to English readers that special feeling when you read it. Do you think that's a bad idea, or there is no opportunity to do this? I think i'm close to fall in love with the English translation, if we'd perform it :D

Regarding the merger: do you cosider a variant with replacing the existing text there with ours one under the reasons stated by myself a while back? Regarding namespaces in Wikipedia and all that kind of stuff as well as about the patrol - i got it. Thank you! Sterndmitri (talk) 18:48, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]



All your corrections of my corrections make sense. I agree "on to" makes more sense, I misunderstood that part. Also, agree that Ilya is better than John, I just checked that article quickly the first time and I saw "John" as the nickname in quotes and used that but I agree with you Ilya is better, that's not too hard for anglo ears, Ilya isn't a common man's name but it is recognized as a man's name which is what counts. As to replacing with archaic words: I see the point as well. English readers are most familiar with the King John version of the bible so they tend to think of texts like that as using archaic language. Do you want to do that or do you want me to take a shot? Keep in mind we may need to have these discussions again once you start merging what is in your sandbox with the existing article.
I think your other question was: could we just take all the text in the sandbox and paste it in over the existing article? Yes, that can be done. Doing that is more likely to cause controversy. In general I try to make changes to an existing article in smaller steps, rather than just pasting in a new version change things one section at a time and preserve as much of the existing text and structure as possible. Also, I always try to preserve any references that are already there unless of course the reference is not an appropriate one. I haven't really compared the two articles yet. I'll do that and leave another message with any ideas. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Additional Questions: New Section[edit]

MadScientistX11, About the archbishop. Not Ilya, Ivan. Let me explain. I'm not sure how about the Western christianity, but here they must change their names after a tonsure: it symbolizes that their worldly life takes over, and they start a new life dedicated to the Jesus, and all this sort of things. So, he was born as Ivan, but after the tonsure he changed his name and chose Ilya. Ilya and Ivan are different names with no common origins. Ivan is a variant of John, Johanne (f), Johan in German etc. Ilya is a variant of Elias (not sure that name is diffused broadly in the West; in king James version it seems to be Elijah). In the saga he seems to be called with his né "Ivan". So in our article we can call him John, or to retain the original varian from the chronicle as Ivan. So how do you think, do anglophone readers likely to understand the fact that this is a literal conveying of his name, or that's better to call him John there?

I created a new section, that one was getting pretty big. I'm putting my responses inline this time and I'll italicise them. I actually just started this but now I have to go do something so I'll come back but I'm going to leave this new section for when I come back. Will add answers soon, in an hour or so. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:14, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm back. Regarding the name: so this is getting into detailed issues that frankly I'm not qualified to give an opinion on. For the most part the articles I edit are about computer science or philosophy questions. I'm not disputing what you said at all just being honest that I don't think I know enough about the topic to comment either way. In this case you are the subject matter expert not me. What I would recommend, other things being equal, is that we stick with the standard that is in the existing article: Ilya_(Archbishop_of_Novgorod) In that article they use Ilya which is what I would recommend sticking with unless you think there is a very strong argument the other way. Keep in mind that when you add the new content to that article there is a good chance someone will notice and might object so you need to be able to defend any changes with strong arguments. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

About the archaic language. Please, couldn't you take a shot yourself, as i'm not well in that layer of English lexicon and hardly capable to perform this, if that is convenient for you. I am not familiar with king James' bible (i have read some parts, but it wasn't in a thorough way) and know a couple of these archaic-sounding biblical English words only).

I'll take a look at it but as I think about it; sorry this may contradict what I said earlier, I think it may make more sense to stick with the modern English. I've heard people argue both ways on this: on the one hand for English speakers the older English standards are what they associate with the Bible because of King James. On the other hand there really is no good reason to use archaic language and you can make a case that it makes the text harder for modern readers to understand. What worries me though is that I don't know all the rules about when to use "thou" or "thy", etc. I mean I think I could figure it out but I'm not sure and I would rather not risk making a mistake. I'll take another look though. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

About the merger with an entire replacement, using our text. It seem to cause debates indeed, but our text contradicts with that article in a fundamental way, so we shall chose what variant to retain. In our case, all the facts are stated in the inline quotation. That's why our variant may be considered as a more desirable one.

Absolutely. If there are things in the current article you think are wrong and we have the better info and the refs to back it up we absolutely should replace the info in the current article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation. The news. I've checked Wikipedia (Russian and English variants), so the things seem to be confused to high extension. There're unproper relations between the articles about Znamenie, Our Lady of the Sign as a type of icons, Orans style in iconography. The subjects of the mentioned articles seem to be vague and converge too much even within the same language version of Wikipedia. There's a problem with cross-lingual linkings between the articles as well. As I see it, some work in this direction should be performed as well, I'll do it. Sterndmitri (talk) 20:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great. One thing Wikipedia doesn't do a great job at is maintaining consistency. This is almost by design I think. The philosophy here is it's better to encourage a lot of people to add stuff even if that means that we will at times have articles that overlap or are downright contradictory to each other. But that doesn't mean consistency isn't important. It is and when we have articles that overlap or contradict that is something that needs to be addressed. That goes for articles within the same language version and across versions. That kind of work IMO is some of the hardest but most important to do so I'm glad you are going to look at it. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MadScientistX11, one small remark. I turned back to the sentense "That's how Suzdalians were defeated" again. I have compared it with the original text once more, and found that the chronicler formulates it literally as "that's now Suzdalian honour and glory gone" (he rather emphasizes their staining (wronging), than the fact that they were defeated as such), so I decided to retain it in the translation. Made a few other small changes as well. Have a great weekend! --Sterndmitri (talk) 10:44, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]


MadScientistX11, i added the picture showing the place where the icon was reportedly displayed to the adversaries, and made some other small changes.

Stepping aside from the article and sorting out the details of English semantics: just read once more your phrase "I may take you up on that some day" and my reply, so if that means taking me at word, I am not against indeed, and if that means "hiring" in this context, i think there's no need to do this, as i will be glad to show all i write about just like that and for free :) --Sterndmitri (talk) 15:04, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. thanks. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I took another look at the text in the blue section. I think it makes sense to leave it as is. I don't feel confidant enough that I understand the conventions for using old English so I'm afraid I might create something that would be wrong. Also, I think even if I was 100% confidant of my knowledge of old English there is a good argument to sticking with modern English anyway. So that is my recommendation. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:43, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think the next step is going to be merging the new content in with the existing article. The first thing to do in these cases is to always check on the talk page of the article first, to see if there are any issues there. I looked and the one issue that is there is actually about the name. I'll just leave a link to the talk page so you can read it: Talk:Ilya_(Archbishop_of_Novgorod) My advise would be that I make the first few changes to the existing article. If you feel comfortable and want to do it that is great but I'm assuming you might like my help at least to get started which is also fine. I definitely think we should do the changes a bit at a time. Even if you think most of the current article is wrong, I think it's better to change it a little at a time rather than paste in the whole new article. If we paste a new article and someone objects we look silly and it's hard to have discussions about a whole bunch of changes made at once. This way we can focus on specific changes which are easier to explain and defend. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:59, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I just realized I was a little confused in that previous post. I forgot the article we are going to merge with is this one: Our_Lady_of_the_Sign_(Novgorod) not the one whose talk page I linked to in the previous comment. The talk page for this article is currently empty. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:53, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Now that I'm looking at the right article (ever watch The Simpsons? this is where I would say D'Oh!) I think merging the two is going to be a lot easier than I thought. The current article has almost no structure and essentially most of what we have can just be pasted right in. Sorry if it seemed confusing I was making such a big deal out of it, I wasn't paying attention and I got it into my head that the other article was the one to merge with. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Finishing touches[edit]

MadScientistX11,

Obsolete English. I haven't actually forsaken my hope to convey the aura of an old chronicle you feel while you read the original text, and to bring it with my translation to anglophone readers, so i decided to study king James version fragmentarily. In fact, it doesn't differ so much from modern English excepting the particular words; its not the same with that chronicle which differs greatly from the modern Russian (virtually, it is written in different language - Old East Slavic).

That what you wrote about keeping the translation understandable makes sense as well. So, I decided to dilute the translation with a couple of obsolete words and figures, and make some ultimate corrections to minimize the divergence with the original figures and to raise the preciseness. All this doesn't seem to harm the clearness.

Names of the Archbishop. These comments in the article about him you payed attention to, their author expresses his/her opinion that Russian names should stay Russian, and I decided to hearken it applying to the conditions of a translation which is meant to be close to literal.

In geneneral, if my opinion matters. She/he says that "John of Novgorod" is an inappropriate as it diverges with the original variant strongly. The original varian is "Ioann", and this is a bookish and official variant, but nobody here used to use it in daily life. He seems to be called as simply Ivan. And this is obvious not to translate names in the present days, but it was a quite diffused practice to translate them before. So, as for me all that depends on if there any established variant, because they used to translate anglophone names into Russian too: William the Conqueror is "Wilhelm" in Russian, queen Elizabeth is "Yelizaveta", king Charles is "Karl", king James is "Jakov" etc., and someone in Russia will hardly match the original (real) variants and historical figures already. As the result, i leaved this comment at the talkpage about the archbishop, and made no changes there.

The existing article. After all the comments from both sides about that article were made, I think it is evedentially now to be entirely replaced with our variant because of many reasons. The only thing I find reasonable to preserve are references (they are different from ours).

Bottom line. I think the work now is about some finishing touches:

  • if that is comfortable for you, couldn't you please check my translation the last time after my implementations of obsolete words etc. and to make any changes you consider as sound;
  • let's ultimately say to the existing variant like Cartman uses to: "Screw you guys!", and replace it with our improved variant. Who will do it: you or me? I don't care at all, so you may do it yourself if you want right after your final corrections. Or it can be fulfilled by myself: absolutely as you like. --Sterndmitri (talk) 11:53, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Everything you said above sounds right. The one thing I would caution you about is if you do get push back from another editor remember to not take it personally and be willing to make compromises. It can be frustrating working with other editors sometime, especially at first, or at least it was for me since I think I'm always right about everything ;-) It's always been my goal to help you get to the point where you can work on your own and I think you are pretty much there now which is great. As long as you are comfortable pasting your content into the existing article then absolutely you should do it. I'll take one more quick look at it and then leave another comment here when I'm done. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 13:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I took a look and made just a couple of very minor last touch up edits. I think you should take it from here. Go ahead and merge the new content in. As you said make sure at a minimum to keep the existing references in the current article. Of course if you have further questions or need more help just drop me a message. BTW, if you leave me a message make sure to ping me like this: "{{ping|MadScientistX11}}" or leave the message on my talk page. Going forward I'm not going to be watching your talk page any more since you will continue to get notifications about your work and messages from other editors here. It's been fun and interesting! --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:08, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Teahouse[edit]

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Happy New Year Sterndmitri![edit]

Happy New Year!

Sterndmitri,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:00, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Your submission at Articles for creation: TheChurchOfNativity has been accepted[edit]

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Onel5969 (talk) 15:11, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One more article[edit]

@MadScientistX11: hello MadScientist!

It has been a while after our last contact occured, but I made up a new article in my sandbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sterndmitri/sandbox). You said I can appeal to you in case of necessity, so couldn't you please check my broken English in this article, if you want? Whatever your answer will be, thank you! ;) 13:46, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: DesyatinnyMonastery has been accepted[edit]

DesyatinnyMonastery, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

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MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:57, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Desyatinny Monastery[edit]

Hi Sterndmitri, see you just came online. Yes, I spent quite some time this morning going through your long article for copy editing. I see from your user page you have come to the EN wiki to try to improve your English -- so I suggest you spend some of your time on looking through the copy edits I made this morning. One of the problems with the article is the overall length which is partly a result of repetition. I would suggest that in future you try to keep to the basic facts without introducing possible interpretations, etc. Most readers simply don't have the time to go through all the possible theories and just want to have an overview -- which after all is the purpose of the encyclopaedia. Something between the Russian wiki article and your own version would probably be a good solution. I actually gave up editing your text about two thirds of the way through but could get back to it if you think it would be useful. I'm a bit worried that you call the place a monastery. In English, such institutions for women (nuns) are called convents but in Russian you seem to use the same term for both men and women. Anyway, it's good to see you are adding useful content to the EN Wikipedia. Keep up the good work and let me know if you need any help.--Ipigott (talk) 14:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipigott: Hello, I am really glad to get some feedback from you! I am analyzing your corrections now, and they are very useful - no doubt.
What do you mean by my own interpretations, I think i relied upon the facts heavily, and, moreover, proved all the facts with links. Couldn't you please give me some examples - i can provide some explanation then.
I think this is quite disputable what you wrote about the article's length: i am firmly sure that providing some more deep knowledge about any subject here in Wikipedia is not a disadvantage, and it doesn't make an article worse for sure. That's truth that the most of the readers just wants to get an idea. A summary is meant to be placed in the beginning in these purposes (the text above contents) as well as an informational box. Those who are interested in a subject are assumed to continue their reading below. The information is structurized into sections to let one study a particular aspect he/she is preoccupied with. So, I think that I provided a proper summary and a proper information box to enter the ropes, and i am deeply convinced that those who want to know more should not suffer, do you know what I mean.
You know better how does it called in English, so we can call it "convent". I was just guided by the idea that in Russian the name sounds like "Desyatinny monastyr", so the word "monastery" will be the most close to the original variant. And I am not sure about Americans: do they call it "convent" too? But we can use "convent", please, consider what is appropriate as a native speaker of English. I can even make the corrections myself, if you'd tell me what is better! :)
Please, continue your copy editing!
This is very nice to read at your userpage, that you live in Denmark and interested in Sweden - I have Swedish roots ;) --Sterndmitri (talk) 15:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Ipigott: By the way! If the article is too long, we may split it into subarticles, and to retain in the general article just brief summaries with links at main articles! This is quite a common practice here in these cases. How do you think? --Sterndmitri (talk) 16:14, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations. I am sorry I was too busy to help.Charles (talk) 22:49, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Charesdlrakew: Charles, that's not a problem. Thank you so much for your attention! --Sterndmitri (talk) 14:55, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry I did not get back to you earlier on this. Somehow I did not pick up your ping. As for your interpretations, there are a number of passages which seem to rely on your own understanding of history as they are not backed by citations. For example: "The monastery was founded in the capital of the Novgorod Republic, the most economically, politically and socially developed of these. There are written sources in the Novgorod chronicles, inventory acts and other documents, which give an idea of the early history of the monastery. It can therefore be asserted that the monastery was not substantially developed from the time when its main church of stone was built in 1397 until the end of Swedish occupation of Novgorod in 1617." There are several instances where you write "It is assumed that..." again without citations. As for length, I noticed that there was quite a bit of repetition. For example, the section "Monastery complex" begins with quite a long explanation of what we have already read. The same is true of the section on the church. Personally, I think presentations of this type are usually more effective if some of the unessential details are either summarized or simply removed. For instance the passage: "The decision to build walls of brick in the 19th century has some quite curious background. In the 19th century Novgorod became a provincial city with the monastery on the outskirts. It was usual to observe some cattle crazing near the holy place, or drunken workers singing songs while the sisters were in prayer. Abbess Lyudmila applied to the city hall regarding any walls of brick to be constructed around the monastery in order to, as she formulated it, literally, “different blasphemies not to occur almost near the holy gates”, but the application was rejected as it was assessed as "contradicting to the highly signed [architectural] plan of Novgorod".[56] Nevertheless, the positive decision was finally taken, and the process of construction was started in 1814." could perhaps be replaced by something like: "As Novgorod expanded, in 1814 the wooden fencing was replaced with brick walls to protect the monastery from increasingly busy surroundings." When I have time, I'll try to continue post-editing the rest of the article but I'm tied up with other things at the moment. Keep in touch.--Ipigott (talk) 10:55, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Peryn has been accepted[edit]

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Fiddle Faddle 12:19, 23 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages![edit]

Hello, Sterndmitri. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by Fiddle Faddle 08:45, 27 April 2015 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).[reply]
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Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki[edit]

Hi. As I know you regularly translate articles from Russian wiki/write articles, I wondered if I could interest you in joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki. You can use the Russian workspace pages to organize missing articles and work towards them etc. For instance you could list missing articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/Russian/Buildings and map out what is missing still. If interested, please add your name to the list on the wikiproject talk page with a tick as instructed and add your name to Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/Russian, and when I update I'll add you to the main page.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:53, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open![edit]

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