User talk:Mzajac/2004

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2004 archive of User talk:Mzajac

Succession boxes

Hi Mzajac, I have a comment about the Byzantine emperors template - I think succession boxes should be more consistent throughout the site, and the current plain HTML boxes, with three cells (predecessor/state/successor), is a better way to do it. There are many cases where the boxes can become very complicated, with more than one state and different successors in each, and only by having visible cells is it possible to make any sense out of them (see Charles of Anjou for example - but even some of the later Byzantine emperors have more complicated boxes). So, if you don't mind, can I change them all back to the earlier style? Adam Bishop 07:25, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I see your point. Let me play with the more complex succession boxes and see if I can work something out today. I'll play in my sandbox. --Michael Z.

Okay, I've done something up. I think it looks better than the original box, and will work for the complex multiple successions. The code is pretty simple, so it will be easy to make up the custom boxes where necessary. Please have a look at One more time.

—Michael Z. 17:45, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

I like "Fix It Up" and "Table With Cellspacing", if only they could be done without so much code. I see you found my attempts as well - I succeeded in separating the header cells (which is not really what I wanted to do), but I couldn't find a way to separate the other cells. As long as each name was clearly in a separate cell somehow, I think it would look fine. Also, I didn't mean to make mine so small, they just happened to show up like that because I had copied the moons of Jupiter table. If I could make it bigger, I would - I'm no HTML programmer, I just fumble around until something works :) Adam Bishop 18:20, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I like those too, but they don't work right in all browsers. Yours looks good -- see my latest notes at the bottom. I'll have to do some more work on this tomorrow. --Michael Z. 18:26, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

By the way, which Wikipedia skin do you use, and what's your web browser? I'm using Safari on Mac OS X, but I can test in just about every other browser on Mac and Windows. I use the monobook skin. At some point we'll have to test this stuff in different browsers with each of the five skins. Yeesh.

I'm using monobook with Netscape on Windows XP. Adam Bishop

Gmail Invitation

Hello. I have just received 5 more Gmail invitations. If you still want one, email me (through Wikipedia, if you'd like) your full name and email address, and I will put it through. - Mark 03:56, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Centering Text

Thanks for this. I looked through the help sections and saw information about lists, paragraphs, etc., but if my query was answered there, I missed it. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 17:13, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Women's Names

Thanks for the additions! :) I went and checked out your quicktime VR stuff, really beautiful work. Cheers. func(talk) 17:13, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nice job!

I really like your new article on the Ukrainian alphabet. Excellent work!

BCorr|Брайен 17:20, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing, and so quickly! I've been puttering on it for a while.

Russian & Ukrainian, transliteration

Original question by Michael is here.

Hi, Michael!

Sorry about the inconvenience with the apostrophe. Both systems (with an apostrophe and without) are in fact used—it is entirely possible to give both variants (see Siberia for an example). The only reason I personally prefer using no apostrophe is because most of the words of Russian origin are transliterated without it throughout Wikipedia. It is much easier to continue using no apostrophe than going through all articles and add it back. What's more, there is no loss of information—transliteration is mainly added for search engines indexing purposes, and apostrophes (especially trailing) are usually omitted when a word containing them is indexed. Whether you use "oblast" or "oblast'", it makes no difference. "Oblast", however, looks much neater than "oblast'" (but, like I said before, it can be placed with the apostrope-less variant).

As for transliterating Ukrainian, I think it would be the best if a separate article is created. Granted, much of the information would be duplicate, but it is the details where the devil is in :) The article on Russian transliteration still needs a lot of work, and adding Ukrainian to the mix would only complicate the matters to the point where no one would want to mess with it (I may be wrong, of course—some people strive on challenges of this kind).

Most of the same reasoning goes for using the " xxx in Russian" notation vs. "Russian: xxx " notation. The latter is just more commonly used across the Wikipedia. I don't think there is a policy regarding this, but for consistency sake I would suggest using notation with the colon. This would make all of the articles look similar, which is always better than using different styles in different articles. Plus, when you add transliteration to this notation, the whole structure looks more streamlined (and enables you to add a link to the transliteration article). Here is an example:

The Republic of Ingushetia (Russian: Респу́блика Ингуше́тия; English transliteration: Respublika Ingushetiya; Ingush: Гiалгiай Мохк) is a ....

For your reference, Mr. Cantus opposes this notation as being too long. I was proposing to put transliteration into a separate block (as you rightfully mentioned it is derivative information), but Cantus opposed with a promise to explain why in the future.

Bolding a non-Engilsh word (as in your "slovo" example) is something I really do not like (see similar discussion here, although it is a lot of information to read through and probably is not fun at all). While I do not claim I am the only person who is right about this (you will find that Mr. Cantus is also a huge proponent of your system), my point of view is supported by the same fact—bolding non-English words is not very common through Wikipedia and is not very consistent in regards to the articles that do not use bolding. It may not be wrong, but so far no one (Mr. Cantus included) volunteered to change all of the articles in such a way as to use the convention with bolded non-English words.

I hope I was clear in explaining my point of view. I do not see anything wrong with your system, and I sure hope you did not take my changes personally (they are not). It is just that I think utilizing already existing conventions (even when they are not outlined in policies of any kind) is always better than inventing new ones. I myself am often tempted to change particular styles and formatting, but a mere thought of the number of places the changes would need to occur is usually enough to stop such a temptation :)

In any case, feel free to drop me a note if you want to further discuss this or if you have questions and suggestions of any kind. I noticed that you are planning to work on oblasts of Ukraine—wish you the best of luck with that! As I found out with the Russian Federal Subjects WikiProject, it is much more work than I initially thought it would be. It is quite interesting, though.

Take care! --Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:37, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Subdivisions of Ukraine

Hi Alex. I noticed you're making a real article about oblasti, etc. How can I help? Building a navbox, maybe? Cheers. —Michael Z. 18:49, 2004 Sep 17 (UTC)

Yes Michael, it would be great. I really need help with navboxes and redirects. Also, I've messed a little at Cherkasy page and failed to correct :(. Would you please revert it to previous state for a while? As you've seen, I made a general article for these things (Subdivisions of Ukraine). But it's uncomplete yet without a table of comparison and translation, which is also ready but not placed cause I didn't know how to upload tables. Hope to add it soon. Thanks for your support. Best wishes, AlexPU 09:47, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Great job there on Subdivisions, Michael. AlexPU 16:08, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Michael, we got a navbox or smthng at the bottom of our oblast' pages. Looks like a table and named Regions of Ukraine. As far as I remember, you have designed or modernized (or just mentioned) it. In one hand, there are some typo mistakes there. In other hand, that thing is rather nice & useful, so we should have it (corrected and renamed) on Subdivisions main page and others too. Should I just correct typo and copy/paste it to other pages? Or is there more technology behind that thing?

Thanks for the compliment, but you and Genyo did all the real work. I just fancied up the tables and messed with some grammar.

I've fixed two spelling mistakes, changed the link in the header, and put the oblast navbox at the bottom of Subdivisions of Ukraine. Feel free to edit it if I've missed any mistakes. You can find it at Template:Administrative divisions of Ukraine. If you're worried about the table code, just edit the links or text, and leave the rest of the code alone. —Michael Z. 22:02, 2004 Oct 2 (UTC)

BTW, would you please take a look at my update on Kyiv (History after WWII)? It would be great if you improved style and grammar like you recently did at the bottom of Subdivisions. Pryvit, AlexPU 17:27, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'll have a look when I have a chance. —Michael Z.

I've given it a quick once-over; I'll have another look later. —Michael Z. 01:38, 2004 Oct 3 (UTC)

Map in Slavic languages

Thanks for your note in my talk page.. As a matter of fact, no. When I created the map (before I heard of Wikipedia), it was for my personal knowledge so I designed it in French. I never realized that uploading my map on this site would involve such changes in it, particularly since I've done it in several other languages. For a moment, I thought I made a mistake. So I appreciate your message very much. It gives the oumph! I needed to keep going. But I do agree that many comments that were made are relevent and the suggestions will help a lot. Robin des Bois ♘ ➳ ✉ 23:15, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions

I've set up WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions. I'll shortly be moving relevant discussion there, from here and elsewhere. —Michael Z. 04:26, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

Hi Mzajac, I can offer you maps of ukraine in english with highlighed oblasts such as de:Bild:Ukraine Oblast Donezk.png or de:Bild:Ukraine Oblast Donezk klein.png. --Steschke 09:44, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)

I did some work. I hope it's what you wanted. Please let me know, if you like something changed. --Steschke 23:05, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)

How do you think about leaving in Dnipro only because it's an important landmark (en?)? I will add seas, and other countries' boundary and fill again then. Actually I've only a little time problem - have to work from early morning till after midnight this week. --Steschke 07:14, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

That sounds great. There's no rush; do it when you have the time. I'll insert the maps into the infoboxes (don't know if that will be so quick anyway), and you can update them at your leisure. Thanks for the good work. —Michael Z. 23:36, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

Done. Please have a lool on the update an tell me, if you like anything changed. --Steschke 09:13, 2004 Oct 10 (UTC)

Fine. When you give me a sign, I'll create versions for all oblasts. --Steschke 21:20, 2004 Oct 11 (UTC)

Infobox in German

It's really difficult to translate the infobox to german. We miss some words in our language to find a short definition like urban-type or localities. Direct translation gives a different meaning in german. elya an me are searching for a solution. So long, I'm going to sleep now. --Steschke 22:35, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)

Two things:

I just realized that I screwed up the numbers in the infoboxes. I'll fix it tonight.
If you can figure out the translation, I have some pretty fancy search-and-replace that I can use to compile all of the infoboxes into German, without a lot of manual work. Let me know.

If it helps, here's the original Ukrainian, along with translations (I don't know whether you understand Ukrainian). Let me know if I should add any other terms here.

—Michael Z. 00:38, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

original Ukrainian	transliteration	official translation	my literal translation
Райони у містах	Raiony u mistakh	City districts	"Raions in cities"
Селища міського типу	Selyshcha mis'koho typu	Urban-type localities	"Settlements of urban character"
Сільські населені пункти	Sils'ki naseleni punkty	Villages	"Rural inhabited points"

The german solution will be a template: de:Vorlage:Oblastbox ukraine. So we have a slime code at the articles like this. If you like, you can compile the information to the template formate like shown there. The german names for the images will be the same as the english version. --Steschke 19:27, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

That looks very good; I'll try to generate code for all the German templates tonight or tomorrow. I may poach your infobox improvements and template code for the English version. Cheers, —Michael Z. 20:19, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

Thank you for your excelent and quick work. I started to insert the oblastbox to the articles. But now it gets too late to finish all of them. --Steschke 00:06, 2004 Nov 4 (UTC)

Did you find my notice about more up-to-date data for the oblasts population? --Steschke 16:36, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)

I did. Promise I'll look at it by tomorrow. Cheers, M.

As you will notice, I'm going to move the oblast maps to commons step by step and delete the images we're using now in the english and german WP. --Steschke 18:08, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

I finished the commons-thing. I did not change sone on Wikipedia:WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions/Infobox. The actual version is on the oblast-pages. Therefore I think, you should delete the samples. --Steschke 18:00, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)

Commercial links

Dear Mzajac,

1. Why have you removed external link to FREEWARE Agile BMI calclulator and commented it as removal of COMMERCIAL LINK? (in Body Mass Index article)

2. What is your definition of commercial link?

3. Are commercial links prohibited in Wikipedia? Point me.

Best regards, Vitaly Pedchenko.

Pryvit, Vitaly.

It's plain from your list of anonymous contributions that you are building a web of links to gain Google rank. So what if one of your link happens to point to yet another free BMI calculator? The reason you linked that page is because it also had links to your other commercial pages.

Your link from Favicon points to a page which just duplicates that Wikipedia article. Who's that going to fool?

Wikipedia is not for self-promotion. Put some work into a useful web site, instead of trying to game Google rank (or at least do it a bit more creatively!).

—Michael Z. 00:12, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

Pryvit, Michael,

You haven't answered my questions instead you are trying to stalk me (you edit Ukrainian category but for some unknown reason started to play the wicked game of chasing ALL CONTRIBUTIONS of particular individual).

Everyone can contribute to Wikipedia. For example I'm in Logo Design for 5 years and you have deleted my logo design links with just couple of second of viewing it (as log shows). It's pure deface and stalking NOT contribution.

Naykrashchi pobazhannya z Kyeva, Vitaly.

Talk:translation

I'm hoping that we can begin to work out the problems on Talk:Translation. I'm trying to mediate; please leave your comments in the new topic on the talk page. Thanks, Whosyourjudas (talk) 02:45, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Townlet (p.g.t.)

[moved discussion to Talk:Townlet (p.g.t.) —Michael Z. 16:10, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)]

Ukrainian elections

Hi Michael. I suddenly recalled that I'm a political analyst and we have some tough elections down here :). Could we start a quick special project about that? Namely, I think we should place respesctive info on WIkipedia's main page until November 21 (when the second round will be held) with few appropriate internal links, may be a short overview. I don't think there's much work on it. I'll shape two candidates' pages and links (with NPOV of course), thinking of overview. What I'm asking you for, is to make sure that we are in the list of main events for that date. Also, proof-reading help would be great. Unfortunately, my professional activities are poorely connected with my English :(( So I'm affraid of some dummy errors in political and especially legal terms. Наперед дякую, привіт AlexPU

Michael, there's already an overview page on those elections - downloaded it (and all related) for shaping. Anyway, would you please "watch" my editing of these pages for possibble copy-edit? And still, do you think that overview page will be linked to the main page automatically? Or is it up to moderators? You know, our president has said that Ukrainian elections is the second (to Iraq war) most-important event on the globe . And, as a professional, I fully agree with that old a**hole! AlexPU

Sounds good, Alex. I don't know much of anything about Ukrainian politics, but I was nervously watching the results on Sunday. I'll find all of this stuff and figure out how to put notes in all the right places on WP; probably do it later tonight or tomorrow morning. Below are some relevant WP links. Let's discuss this further at talk:Ukrainian presidential election, 2004 —Michael Z. 17:38, 2004 Nov 6 (UTC)

Some actual information --Steschke 22:01, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Hi Michael. I'm temporarily out of Wiki contributing due to our revolution and lack of free Internet at our office :)) Can I count on you in editing Ukrainian presidential elections? Particularly, there are some NPOV problems there regarding legal position of Yanukovych side. Use Ukrains'ka pravda - I think it's possible to extract pure facts from there. Trymaysia, AlexPU

Hi Michael, there are some new images of the election stored in commons. --Steschke 15:24, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

I've got a deadline this week, so I have to spend more time in the office. I'll try to have a look at the article and images tonight or tomorrow. I hope you keep your camera with you, Alex. Vsioho naikrashchoho, Michael Z..

==Did you know==

Thanks for your interest in updating the Did You Know section. However, the article you added ([[Acrophony) does not conform to the guidelines there. the section is for new articles only (new being a maximum of 72 hours old). If you feel other articles need of attention then give a look at: Wikipedia:Fact of the Day or put {{FOTD}} on your talk page and spread the word about it. Thanks for your time. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 08:51, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Zaporozhye

[discussion moved to talk:Zaporizhzhia]

Cyrillic letters

Hi Michael, could you save the images of the letters at commons:? That way we can use them in de: also. --Steschke 07:31, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)

I'll try to do it this weekend. I'm also planning to do a set of letter images for a table at Early Cyrillic alphabet, in capitals only. Maybe next weekend. —Michael Z. 16:59, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)

And, maybe, Glagolitic alphabet letters too? ;) Калі маеце вольны час. --rydel 18:39, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sure, but that might be a few weeks off. I'll have to investigate the available fonts, etc. There already seems to be a set of decent images in the table at Glagolitic alphabet, although it looks like they have a pixel or two cut off of the right edge.

I don't know much about глаголиця. Does it require images of the round or square style, or both? Are there some articles in other language wikis that I should look at? —Michael Z. 23:46, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)

OK! I wanted the images for the Belarusian version. In the end, I just took one image and numbered the letters. That is much faster. I have to confess I didn't feel like uploading 40 images. (Btw, so the new trend is to use commons for uploading images?) --rydel 19:18, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That looks good, Rydel. I'll get around to separate letters some time, and make sure I include what's necessary for Belarusian.

Commons lets different language Wikipedias share files; I uploaded the letters there at Steschke's request, for use in the German-language WP. Commons has more stringent licensing requirements: files must be freely licensed; fair use isn't good enough. —Michael Z. 20:53, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

Done, viewable at commons:Cyrillic alphabet. —Michael Z. 06:08, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

Excellent work. Thank you, Michael. --Steschke 07:51, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

Wow! Amazing work with Template:Cyrillic alphabet navbox and so on. Thank you! :o) — OwenBlacker 13:08, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Owen. Nice to be appreciated. Cheers. —Michael Z. 15:37, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

I think Ц ц is missing. --rydel 19:23, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added it to commons and requested deletion. —Michael Z. 19:41, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

You've marked them for deletion, but they still have articles linking to them. Unless the wiki software knows to automatically look at commons, I'm reluctant to delete them, as it seems it would create broken image links on a lot of pages. Niteowlneils 18:05, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident that that's how it works, so it will be fine to delete them from en.wikipedia.org. Have a look at A (Cyrillic) and Be (Cyrillic), where someone has already deleted the images; the image still appears in the navbox, and when you click the image you get a "non-existent" article with the image showing through from commons. Pretty cool. Thanks, Nite. —Michael Z. 18:26, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

I've just noticed in Windows Character Map, that Qoppa is apparently a distinct (archæic) letter in the Early Cyrillic alphabet as well as in Greek. I can't see it in any reference to the Glagolitic alphabet — I assume it would only really have been used in Old Church Slavonic for transliterating Greek —, but it's at Unicode codepoints U+480 (majuscule: Ҁ) and U+481 (miniscule: ҁ). It appears to exist in the font Bukvica, would you be able to make an image for it, like the other images you've created, and I'll see if I can make a stub page for it… :o) — OwenBlacker 01:06, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Done: Image:Cyrillic letter Koppa.png. Now is that service, or what? If you have a chance, please suggest some improvement to my proposed table in talk:early Cyrillic alphabet. Cheers. —Michael Z. 02:57, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)

Excellent, that was far quicker than I expected! I'll do the Qoppa article later today, if I get a chance (or possibly over the weekend), but I've just spent most of my-waking-day-so-far contributing to Talk:Early Cyrillic alphabet for you; made a load of edits, done the IPA bits and so on.

Whilst my annotations (after the table) describe all my comments and changes, you might want to diff my non-minor edits with their previous edits to see the significant changes I've made; I deliberately tried to avoid doing little things in significant edits, if you see what I mean, so you should safely be able to ignore my minor edits.

The rows/cells where I'd set the fonts to Unicode (before setting the whole table to be) are where my browser (IE6 on WinXP) had problems with characters — usually the diacritics or the IPA didn't show up; the nasalisation symbols work fine in Windows XP's version of Arial.

One thing I forgot to mention was that I think it might be more useful to have your Cyrillic alphabet images in the second column of the table than to rely on people having Unicode fonts installed to be able to see them themselves.

Also, you might find some of the references I put into my blurb (the numbered links) of interest.

Think that's it for now, so I'm off to that supermarket! :o) — OwenBlacker 16:44, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

References

Hello again, Thank you for the map references. Actually, the Ethnologue was already in my favorites. It's been quite reliable for me in the past. I think that for now, I will leave the new map as it is for a while. It is not "perfect" but I think it is more than acceptable. I've posted it in many other languages so if I have to change something, it will need to be important so I'll wait to have enough to do on it before I alter it again. And I truly appreciated your support on that matter. Robin des Bois ♘ ➳ ✉ 18:52, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fake image boxes

[Discussion moved to talk:Titlo —Michael Z. 22:08, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)]

Brutopian

Hi, I've checked the examples of the Brutopian language. The Cyrillic characters are indeed really cyrillic. The words "СТОЙ! НА АБОРДАЖ" are shouted from a Brutopian frigate. The other example of Brutopian, in Roman characters, is spoken by a Brutopian spy in a hotel room: "Chlobrom groushta pognonski chposki". It appears to me that the first example is Russian, and the second Brutopian (i.e. fake language), perhaps you can verify that?--Mixcoatl 22:24, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it's something like "Stop! To the boarding", or "Board the ship" in Russian (I think "abordage" is a French loan word, but Google finds lots of examples of it on Russian websites). I don't recognize any words in the second, but I don't really know Russian. Now you've got me wanting to see if I can find my old Scrooge McDuck comics! —Michael Z. 00:28, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

Redirect you edited at "Kolomya"

Hi, you created a redirect from Kolomya to Kolomyia, but there is currently no article at Kolomyia. (As far as I can tell, there was never an article at that name.) Wikipedia policy is to get rid of redirects to non-existent pages, and someone listed Kolomya on WP:RfD If you want the redirect to stay, you will need to create something at Kolomyia (even a stub will do), or else the redirect will go away. If you do create the target, you don't have to do anything on WP:RfD (we'll eventually notice the target is there), but if you do, just delete the entry for Kolomya. Thanks! Noel (talk) 21:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PS: I don't usually check other User_talk: pages (so that I don't have to monitor a whole long list of User_Talk: pages - one for each person with whom I am having a "conversation"), so please leave any messages for me on my talk page (above); if you leave a message for me here I probably will not see it. I know not everyone uses this style (they would rather keep all the text of a thread in one place), but I simply can't monitor all the User_talk: pages I leave messages on. Thanks!

The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Cassette Scandal

Hi Michael. I've just submitted a "Cassette Scandal" article. Could we someway put it into some WP lists of internationally important historical events? Or some selected anniversaries? Don't take me for a vainglorious writer :) cause that scandal was really a turning point for the history of the whole region. Moreover, for now we can't estimate its whole importance since nobody completely knows what Mel'nychenko recorded about foreign issues. And your edits to that page would also be great. Pryvit,AlexPU

Good work, Alex. I'll do a copy-edit and find some places to link to this tomorrow morning. Cheers, Michael Z. 16:51, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC).

Thanks for help, Michael. BTW, what else do you think could I apply for DYK section? May be a paradox of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 accident - money payed, apologies given, but guilt not admitted? Or is it too compromising for Ukraine? Regarding this article, we could make a decision before bringing it to suggestion page. Ще раз дякуюAlexPU

Yay, two Ukrainian articles on the front page! DYK is only for brand new articles, less than 72 hours old. Other opportunities are Featured Article, which seems to be for very long detailed articles, and Selected Anniversaries, which we should keep an eye out for. Would you add some dates to List_of_holidays_by_country#Ukraine? I found a page with some Ukrainian holidays, but I'd rather trust your judgment. I'll go by your list and add them to the relevant date pages on WP.

Do most people in Kyiv celebrate Christmas on December 25 or January 7? I'm fortunate to be able to attend two Christmas dinners over here, with my girlfriend's family and mine. —Michael Z. 18:30, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Ah, now I see. It's a pity, cause we mostly work on existing pages. What about brand new sections? I'll look for dates.

Regarding your question. There are two growing groups that selebrate Dec 25: Greek-Catholics (namely Galychians, who consist a significant part of Kyivites) and "advanced" youth encouraged by fashionable clubs. Such clubs cultivate a Western lifestyle (Irish pubs, Xmas and Halloween so forth). Some people selebrate twice. My family is Orthodox, so we ignore the Dec one.AlexPU

At first look,Bogdana list seems OK. I'll check it thoroughly at home.AlexPU

Hi Michael. Would you take a look here Talk:UBK to continue our cooperation on DYK section?

As for holidays, I'm writing them.

And a little irrelevant question. As far as I understood from your talk, you're following Ukrainian events regularly. May I ask what sources (particularly, Web-sources like E-newspapers) do you use? It's interesting for me as a journalist.

P.S. Since I didn't get which of two dinners is held in your family, I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas starting from 25 of December: ) Веселих Свят! AlexPU

I get a smattering of news from all over. I usually listen to the radio at work in the morning (CBC 1), I'll check the Wikipedia main page for breaking events, and read the local paper a few times a week (their crappy web site is only available by paid subscription). When something significant interests me, I'll do a search on news.google.ca, and sometimes look at CBC television news at night. I concentrate on the Canadian sources to get the local perspective, and I trust the Guardian and BBC for solid international coverage, but it's nice to see what's being written all over the world.

I'll have a look at UBK tomorrow. I have to try to concentrate on finishing some work today. I'll be celebrating with friend this weekend, and with my family in January. Thanks for the kind wishes. —Michael Z.

Petliura and the Ukrainians

Hi there! I have lots of good friends in Ukraine (mostly in Kyiv) and every time we meet we learn something new about our societies. Last time I met with them we had quite a decent discussion on recent history (which, as you probably know, is still not the most safe topic for a friendly chat between Poles and Ukrainians, whatever their background is). Much to my surprise, the discussion stayed civilised and I must admit that I learnt a lot. What struck me the most however, was that my good friends Vika, Lena and Siergiey knew absolutely nothing about Semen Petliura. The only bell that rang for them was zradnyk - traitor.

While I understand that Soviet propaganda (and educational system, not much difference here I presume) had no warm feelings towards him, I still don't have a clue as to what is the current view on him and his political aspirations. Is he still considered a traitor and if so, then why? Or is he totally forgotten? I'd be very glad if you could shed some light on the topic. I ask out of sheer curiosity, this has nothing to do with any article. Halibu tt 00:15, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid my history knowledge is not much better than your friends'; I just remember that Petliura was leader of one of the brief independent Ukrainian governments of the period. But my parents are from Halychyna, and I've never heard the negative associations. I was quite surprised at how he was portrayed in Dovzhenko's film Arsenal, when I saw it last year—prowling the book stores while the city was ready to go down in flames (apparently there's some truth in that). My brother the historian will be visiting in a couple of weeks; I'll open a bottle of horilka and get the real dirt from him.

This whole period of Ukrainian history is represented by only a few short paragraphs in WP. I'm going to have to do some reading and start to fill in the blanks.

Regards, Michael Z.

Thanks. BTW, be sure to let me know when you start, I'll be happy to help. I did some papers on Polish-Ukrainian relations in 19th and 20th centuries back in the school days and I still have some books at hand. Halibu tt 09:15, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

I'll try to do some reading during the holidays, but it may be a few weeks before I get down to any writing. I'll keep in touch. —Michael Z.

Ukraine/The Ukraine

Hi Mzajac - any reason for the delete of "The" before Ukraine in the proposed change for the geography category? The country's usually known as The Ukraine, isn't it? Certainly it is here in New Zealand, and I thought it was worldwide (it even means "The edge" IIRC). Is this not standard practice worldwide? Grutness|^hello? 23:56, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Grutness.

"The Ukraine" was a historic region bordering the centre of Kievan Rus' (I've always thought it similar to the English word marches). When Muscovy gained dominion and built the Russian Empire from much of Rus', the inhabitants of the region, having relatively little of their own statehood for several hundred years, came to be called "Little Russians". The English usage is rooted in this period; the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica still refers to the "Little Russian dialect" and barely mentions the word "Ukraine" at all (see my user page).

Since Ukrainians are now seen to have a well-established ethnic, linguistic, and national identity, "Ukraine" is properly used for the country. Most English-language news organizations have this usage in their style manual, but lapses aren't uncommon. Ukrainians consider "The Ukraine" to be a paternalistic remnant of Imperial or Soviet domination.

—Michael Z. 01:46, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)

OK - my mistake. I suppose it would be like talking about "The Kiribati" (from the colonial "The Gilberts") - only a lot bigger! "Ukraine" it is. Grutness|^hello?

No sweat. It's an issue that most English-speakers have never encountered. There's a significant Ukrainian diaspora where I live, so many people are more cognizant of it, but it's still not uncommon to hear "the Ukraine". —Michael Z.

Hi, caught your edit in Cedar Revolution and followed it to your talk page. I'm now aware that "the Ukraine" is outdated. Thanks for the education. Kaisershatner 20:27, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Always glad to share my views. There was bit more discussion on the subject at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/resolved#Category:World Heritage Sites in the Ukraine. Highlights:

I had honestly never heard "Ukraine" used without being "The Ukraine", but looking at Style Guides (Economist, Guardian, Times), I gather it's now considered archæic. My bad. Though I certainly wouldn't have considered it to be belittling Ukrainians.

Do not use the definite article before Krajina, Lebanon, Piedmont, Punjab, Sudan, Transkei, Ukraine. (Economist Style Guide)

I'd use The Lebanon and The Sudan, as well. Consider me corrected! — OwenBlacker 15:03, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

It's used all the time, and I'm sure it's practically never intended to belittle. But the "the" is glaringly self-evident to Ukrainian and Russian speakers, since neither language has a definite article at all. Whether true or not, it seems that whoever established that conventional translation would have done so purposefully.

Thanks for the style guide links. —Michael Z. 2005-02-20 17:23 Z

Also Talk:Ukraine#The_Ukraine. —Michael Z. 2005-03-13 21:07 Z

Another question that came up elsewhere:

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

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 21:20 Z

En: Old Ruthenian vs Old Russian

Hello Michael, our specialist, Tilman wrote something that might interest you. --Steschke 13:54, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)

For my own reference, here's the Google translation. English Wikipedia's article is Rusyn language. —Michael Z.

That is indeed a difficult chapter. In principle it concerns that the Ukrainian minorities in the Vojvodina, in which Karpato Ukraine were never included correctly and in the Slowakei a writing language Ukrainian into the efforts for development and to it were inclined to develop a their own. Thus there were in the Karpato Ukraine already in 19. Century of beginnings for an own writing language, in the Vojvodina since 1904. After the Karpato Ukraine was fallen to the Soviet Union, these attempts were suppressed, likewise in the Slowakei, where they lived however after 1989. Today there are two writing languages, which call themselves both Russinisch, first of all one since 1996 codified writing language of the Russinen in the Slowakei, with further supporters in Poland, Hungary and the Karpato Ukraine, furthermore the batschka russinische language in the Vojvodina, which deviate certainly still much more strongly from the Ukrainian one. Both do not have a particularly large spreading and of the Ukraine are recognized, their existence cannot however one however badly deny. I have both the article slawische languages and to the Ukrainian one, so that on the one hand the existence of these writing languages on Ukrainian basis admits becomes, one however on the other hand also see accordingly worked on that they do not stand on a stage with the Ukrainian standardsprache (as well as the Russian one and the Byelorussian one). Greeting -- Tilman? 14:17, 27 December 2004 (CET)

Join RWNB!

Hello, Mzajac! I thought you might be interested in the Russian wikipedians' notice board. Come check it out! We could use more help! KNewman 19:51, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

Map in Slavic languages

(section moved 28 Dec) Thanks for your note in my talk page.. As a matter of fact, no. When I created the map (before I heard of Wikipedia), it was for my personal knowledge so I designed it in French. I never realized that uploading my map on this site would involve such changes in it, particularly since I've done it in several other languages. For a moment, I thought I made a mistake. So I appreciate your message very much. It gives the oumph! I needed to keep going. But I do agree that many comments that were made are relevent and the suggestions will help a lot. Robin des Bois ♘ ➳ ✉ 23:15, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hello again Michael. I just got your last messages in my discussion page. Sorry if I'm a bit late. Once again, your references are very interesting and will prove quite useful, when the time comes. For the moment, I'll leave the map as it is. First, I think I met most requests people expressed. Second, adding more details, to include the dialects for example, would clutter the map and I prefer to include a new map in the articles relating to those dialects. Since I have template map without any colors and any caption, it should be easy enough. Thanks very much for your interest in my contributions. I might ask for your help when I get to work on new maps. Robin des Bois ♘ ➳ ✉ 00:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Don't think I was asking you to add all that information to the existing map! Just thought I'd pass on some resources that you might find interesting, and maybe even useful.

One more map that's remarkable in the way it represents information about rural/urban proportions of Russian-speakers in Ukraine is on p. 522 of Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: a History. 1988, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-5808-6

Do let me know if I can help. Cheers. —Michael Z.