User talk:Dwarf Kirlston/Russia Archive

[edit] Russia

[edit] Please stop formatting the Russia article

Please stop formatting the Russia article, it is already properly formatted and you are ruining and complicating the article. You also should not have "formatted" the talk page. This is never done to talk pages. It is supposed to be left in chronological order so that the latest comments and go at the bottom! Now it is confusing because people will not know when a new comment is posted, because since it is supposed to be in chronological order, they go straight to the bottom of the page to look, but now they will have to look through the whole page because you have unnecessarily "formatted" it into topics.--Miyokan 23:08, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou for posting on my talk page. I finished editing the Russia Talk Page, I did it with every intention of helping, I think it's reasonable to say that History discussions are better left together with history discussions, especially if they are on the same topic. I intended to help on the Russia article. I still hope to help. I believe I helped to better the economy section and the Education and Health section. I dislike that you reverted my edit, but I respect it, it seems you have worked very hard on the article and I do mean to help better the article.--Dwarf Kirlston 01:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I have brought this up in Village Pump link.--Dwarf Kirlston 13:12, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Russia FAC

Hi Dwarf, I have rectified some of what you thought was wrong in the article. You were right about "Geography and climate"- I removed the "climate" so it simply reads "Geography". I separated the "Education and health" and "Language and religion" sections.

• I believed Language and Religion could stay as one, as there is overlap in terms of ethnicity. But the article looks better as you did it, well done.-Dwarf Kirlston

"The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent of Eurasia. " but details on the two fathest points from each other still in Russia"

• I don't understand what you mean by this.

• the Australian Featured Article begins it's topic on Geography this way: "Australia's 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,299 sq. mi) landmass[22] is on the Indo-Australian Plate. Surrounded by the IndianN4 and Pacific oceans" - which Introduces the subject, talking about the farthest point as it is, does not. Saying that Russia is the largest country does, then going on to explain that the distance between two points is also very large and a significance of it's size.-Dwarf Kirlston

• Russia's size in mentioned in the lead ("With an area of 17,075,400 km², Russia is the largest country in the world, covering almost twice..."). I its size again in the geography section but I think it goes without saying that the distance between the two points is very large.--Miyokan 01:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

• Russia's size is mentioned in the lead. A nice way to start the geography section would be to repeat that it's the largest country in the world.

"No real mention of recent economic history including the financial crisis of 1998."-

• The financial crisis is mentioned in the sentence "Russia ended 2006 with its eighth straight year of growth, averaging 6.7% annually since the financial crisis of 1998...". Since this article is "super" article for many topics it is supposed to be summaries. Also, economics is an ever-changing topic, unlike "history", and there is no need to cover economic history in detail.

"Why is Ivan IV and not the terrible and the great and not Ivan III?"-

• Y Done

• Currently it is Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) but still not Ivan III (Ivan the Great)-Dwarf Kirlston

• Tell me specifically what you would like to see.--Miyokan 01:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
• Y Done

"The average salary has increased to $540 (about $920 PPP) per month in August 2007, from $65 per month in August 1999, at the worst of the collapse" what was the average salary in 1994 before the financial crisis? What was the size of the economy at the end of the Soviet Era?"

• I removed the "at the worst of the collapse" part that someone added. It is hard to measure Russia's GDP during/after the Soviet Union because since the Soviet Union was a planned economy, money did not have the same value as it did in other countries because the government controlled all means of production, business/industry. After the Soviet collapse Russia's shadow economy accounted for, some reports put, as much as 50% of GDP after the Soviet collapse. Also, average salary in 1998 is useful for comparison because the economy was still at the lowest/near the lowest level since the Soviet collapse.

• My point there was relating to what is growth. Russia has inherited the Soviet Economy. It is POV to determine something's worth by it's lowest price - that is why it does not make sense. Deleting that it was right after the collapse just makes it seem that it is NPOV, but doesn't make it so, it is like hiding dirt under a rug.-Dwarf Kirlston

• But that wasn't the worst of the collapse, someone just chose to add that in. Let me explain how the salary is relevant. The comparison between 1998 salaries and current salaries measures standard of living. 1998 was the period of the Russian financial crisis. Just before 1998, the Russian economy was starting to recover since the Soviet collapse but after the financial crisis of 1998, the economy collapsed yet again. The comparison shows people how far the economy has come since 1998.--Miyokan 01:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

"History NPOV: the article would be better off in this respect as only about the Federation of Russia rather than about "Russia".

• I don't understand what you mean.

• I was referring to the fact that Specialization makes for better quality - you can focus on less history, less education, less culture, less everything. Of course, another a Russia article would still have to exist so it's not really a fix. -Dwarf Kirlston

• Sorry but I don't understand this.--Miyokan 01:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

"No real mention of the effect of purges, of lowering population of Russia from the most populated european country, from 250 million, to 150 million."

• Purges are mentioned - "At the end of 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purges, a massive series of political repressions. Millions of people whom Stalin and local authorities suspected of being a threat to their power were executed or exiled to Gulag labor camps in remote areas of Siberia or Central Asia. A number of ethnic groups in Russia and other republics were also forcibly resettled during Stalin's rule."
• Adding anymore information about the purges would be excessive as this is supposed to be a summary. More detailed discussion should be left to the main article (Great purge). Also, Russia itself never had a population of 250 million. Where did you get this information from? Russia still is the most populous european country.

• I read it somewhere... I will try to find out why I thought purges had killed at least 60 million people.-Dwarf Kirlston

"Especially in Culture where six images are bunched up together in the English version and it is divided into sections in the portuguese."

• This seems to be down to your preference. The reason its set out like that is because the individual culture parts (literature, ballet, cinema, etc) do not have enough text to justify their own headings, while adding more text text would be too excessive. Australia (a featured article) has the same layout for its 'Culture' section.--Miyokan 07:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

• In the FA "Australia" the topic Culture has two images compared to six!. The culture of Australia is much less notable than the culture of Russia. In any case, the current article has an image which speaks of the architecture and never speaks of Russian architecture. In the Russia article the Culture Topic speaks of Russian Literature, Russian Ballet, Russian Folk, Russian Film, Russian Cuisine, the images are not set up so that they are beside what they talk about -Dwarf Kirlston

• Russian culture is too large to fit even in a summary all in this article. I chose to add the most well known Russian culture (literature, music, ballet, cinema, cuisine) and add links to the others. If we added information about architecture then we'd have to add information opera, theatre, humour, etc. I don't think it matters that theres a picture of the architectural aspect of Russia culture but no mention of it in the text, as theres a link to Russian architecture.--Miyokan 01:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

As Alex Bakharev said, there is always some trade off between the size of the article and the breadth of the illustrated topics, between size and the depth of explanation of controversies. --Miyokan 06:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I like that we are having a dialogue and cooperating. I'm sorry that my formatting in Talk was terrible. I am very impressed by your diligence.--Dwarf Kirlston 16:12, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GDP statistics

Here is the information you requested

Source (US Library of Congress) [1]

"According to official Russian data, in 1994 the national gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) was 604 trillion rubles (about US$207 billion according to the 1994 exchange rate), or about 4 percent of the United States GDP for that year. But this figure underestimates the size of the Russian economy. Adjusted by a purchasing-power parity formula to account for the lower cost of living in Russia, the 1994 Russian GDP was about US$678 billion, making the Russian economy approximately 10 percent of the United States economy. In 1994 the adjusted Russian GDP was US$4,573 per capita, approximately 19 percent of that of the United States. A second important measurement factor is the extremely active so-called shadow economy, which yields no taxes or government statistics but which a 1996 government report quantified as accounting for about 50 percent of the economy and 40 percent of its cash turnover."

There is no need to add any of this information to the Russia article, it belongs in the "Historical background" section of the Economy of Russia article (and it's already there at the bottom), the economy section is large enough as it is. Please contact me before you change anything there.--Miyokan 03:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Russia FAC

"While in the industrialised nations of the West, motion pictures had first been accepted as a form of cheap recreation and leisure for the working class" POV and bloat, the article can do without, should do without in order for succinctness yet it is there.

• Reply It's not POV, that is exactly what Encyclopedia Britannica says [2]. Make sure you have a good understanding of a topic before saying something is "POV".--Miyokan 15:05, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

• I think you just implied I should censor myself. I hardly think that is being very polite. I understand Russia is important to you, but I would please ask you to refrain from such comments.--Dwarf Kirlston 19:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I wonder how to make this collapsible.

[edit] Russia FAC

I think I addressed your grievances with Russia article, which seemed to stem solely from the culture section. I completely removed the unnecessary cuisine information, reduced the overcrowded 7 images down to a sensible 3, reorganised the images so that they are organised next to their respective topics.--Miyokan 09:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

My grievances with the Russia article? I do not think it is FA status. I don't think that's quite a grievance. And I focused on the culture section because it was significant, and because Featured Articles are supposed to be outstanding.

A single error is enough to not deserve FAC status

Do you believe the Russia article is outstanding? It's pretty good, it's very nice, I think you've done a great job improving it. But it's not definitely not outstanding (so far)(in my opinion) and it's pretty far away (so far)(in my opinion) but it seems to be getting there (so far)(in my opinion) but not in the short run(so far)(in my opinion).

I don't think deleting the cuisine section was the answer. I thought I had made it clear that I wanted it to talk about Russian architecture, and that I preferred the version of cuisine in culture of russia which is concise and focuses on notability--Dwarf Kirlston 13:31, 8 November 2007 (UTC)