Talk:North Ossetia–Alania

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Old talk[edit]

I moved this page to North Ossetia because that is the name in English. The name North Ossetia-Alania is a translation of the Russian version, and it is not used in English. --Cantus 04:12, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Have you tried a Google search? Gzornenplatz 15:57, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I have.

Search: "north ossetia" -"north ossetia-alania" -wikipedia|wiki 50,300
Search: "north ossetia-alania" -wikipedia|wiki 36,500

Plus, this is the way the CIA World Factbook [1] and Britannica [2] refer to this republic. Oddly enough, Encarta uses Alania [3]. The Columbia Encyclopedia is the only one using North Ossetia-Alania [4].

If we're going to start using translations/transliterations of geographical names only, then why don't we call Russia Rossiya then?

The Wikipedia policy is to use the most common name in the English language. That is, North Ossetia.--Cantus 21:16, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

So 36,500 hits (42% of the total) means it is "not used in English"? Considering that some of the references may be historical - and in Soviet times it was indeed simply North Ossetia - the usage is rather equally divided. The thing is it was only relatively recently renamed North Ossetia-Alania, and in such cases there is always a lag until everyone uses the new name. And this is not a question of transliterations. The equivalent of Rossiya here would be Severnaya Osetiya-Alaniya, which no one wants to use as the title. Gzornenplatz 21:53, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
At this point Encarta is basically an invalid source for something like this; it's a decade obsolete. Also, in the intervening years, Britannica has switched to "North Ossetia–Alania" (unspaced en dash) [5].  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  22:58, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

2Ezhiki[edit]

About what kind of tolerance you talking about. If you revert to false and anti-ossetian information on pagese about Ossetia???

As your actions looked like common vandalism, I was talking about tolerance towards vandalism. Since you let me know that you have a problem with the way the content in the article, I apologize for misinterpreting your actions.
Here is why I still reverted your changes to this particular article:
You keep deleting the following passage:
The republic used to have a sizeable Ingush population, but most of it left for Ingushetia with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the outbreak of interethnic conflict in the region.
If you have any proof that the republic did not have a sizeable Ingush population, or that most of it did not leave with the dissolution of the USSR, please post it here. Until then, the passage should stay. Even though it's a wiki, the removal of information should be backed with facts.
The transliteration change was rolled back because English transliteration, by the very definition, uses the letters of English alphabet to render spelling of the foreign words. As letter "æ" is not present in English, it is replaced with "ae".
Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 20:42, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

1. See statistics! The republic have a sizeable RUSSIAN population - befor and after any events! In difference from neighboring republics...

2. æ - symbol from IPA(International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription systems for English. This symbol from Latin-1 Supplement range.

  1. According to the statistics, Ingush population was the third largest population group after Ossetians and Russians—how is that not "sizeable"? A large portions of Russians is to be expected for historic reasons, and Ossetians are native, which leaves Ingush people as the largest group of "non-native" population. Also, sizeable or not, you discarded the whole passage, not just this little bit of information. Please, explain further. "Correction to nowaday information" is not a good excuse, as Wikipedia is not about providing only the most recent information, but also historical facts and past conditions. Ingush migration is one of the topics that would interest readers of this article, and, unless you are willing to write a whole new article on this (or if you are aware of an existing article on this topic), there is no better place to mention it.
  2. The transliteration line you are changing is consistent for all Russian federal subjects utilizing the article format. The transliteration is not per IPA guidelines, but per English transliteration guidelines, which do not allow using letters other than those present in the English alphabet (that does not include the supplement range). If you wish to add an IPA rendition of the republic's name, feel free to do so elsewhere in the article, but please note that simply replacing "ae" with "æ" will not achieve the desired result. See International Phonetic Alphabet for details. Also of interest: Template:IPA and the list of pages that link to it (to see how it is used).
Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 21:40, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

1. Compromised some. See Demographic section. 2. OK. Transliteration and transcription not the same.

I have no problem with the new wording. If someone else does, I am sure they will comment here. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 21:19, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Project?[edit]

Hi there. I'm just wondering whether the creation of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ossetia, Portal:Ossetia, and Template:Ossetia-geo-stub has ever been proposed or disucssed. I think User:Zandweb's unilateral decisions don't particularly meet Wikipedia's guidlines. Kober 05:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's the problem about such a portal? Would you like to see separate portals for the North and South Ossetia? Or would you like to see none? - Slavik IVANOV 21:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have no problem with the portal, but it needs to be first proposed, then discussed and finally created. Please consult WP:P. --Kober 04:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the link. Still I can't find there any claim like that. See WP:P#How_to_create_a_portal and Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions. Seems like everybody may create new portals to make "useful entry-points to Wikipedia content". - Respectfully, Slavik IVANOV
Well... the portal guidelines seem to have been drastically changed since I last checked them in July 2006 when I went through a series of procedures to gain an approval for Portal:Georgia. Regards, Kober 20:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute tag[edit]

please see File talk:Alania 10 12.png. --KoberTalk 04:44, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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External links modified[edit]

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External links modified[edit]

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Requested move 9 March 2019[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved (closed by non-admin page mover) SITH (talk) 14:02, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]



MOS:DASH, WP:CONSISTENCY, WP:CONCISE. Several of these are reversals of undiscussed moves to spacing of the en dash, and the rest are correction of hyphen to en dash, and/or shortening of over-long names. En dashes, not hyphens, are used in the compound names of merged polities (hyphens are used in those named after two people/things without any kind of merger; e.g. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was not a merger of "Wilkes, Penn." and "Barre, Penn." – no such places existed, and the singular town was named in honor of two people with no actual connection to the place). The en dashes are not spaced just because one of the names is two-word. Someone has been confusing our treatment of complex dates, at MOS:DATE (e.g. "28 January – 2 February 2018") with non-date cases; this spacing is not to be found at MOS:DASH for non-dates (see examples there, e.g. "Minneapolis–Saint Paul", and "Seifert–van Kampen theorem"). Next, we do not need "Republic of" in the names of any of these, since there's no ambiguity to resolve, and the North Ossetia–Alania main article isn't titled that way.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  12:37, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PS: If you want to make a "well, Russia uses a hyphen" argument, let me stop you right there. See WP:OFFICIALNAME. WP isn't dictated to by officialese, especially transliterated officialese by non-native English speakers. We're not even dictated to by American and British journalism that substitutes hyphens for all en dashes in everything out of expediency. We have our own style guide, so apply it. If someone wants to change the style guide to use a spaced en dash between elements when one or more of them has its own space in it, then take that up at WT:MOS as a proposal; we don't change WP:P&G by engaging in WP:FAITACCOMPLI moves against what the P&G say.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  12:37, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PPS: To the extent we might care, Encyclopædia Britannica uses "North Ossetia–Alania" (unspaced en dash). A decade-old presentation of Columbia Encyclopedia content at Bartleby.com in 2008 [6] was using an unspaced hyphen, but also was not using Unicode at all (e.g., it was using inline GIFs for IPA symbols, and did not provide the Cyrillic by any means), so it cannot be taken as legitimate on the question.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  23:07, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support—I consulted the retired WPian User:Noetica, who is an international expert in these things. He replied: "SMcCandlish is right. Support him, I say." So I shall. Oh, and on the Russian usage: Russians create translated articles on en.WP with space em dashes as interruptors (mainly in lists). It's clearly standard Russian usage, but I wish they wouldn't do it here: we then have to run scripts over these articles. Tony (talk) 02:08, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – the unspaced en dash, and without Republic, seems like the best consistent answer here, and returns the first article to its long-stable title. Dicklyon (talk) 03:56, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (with a counter-proposal) – North Ossetia – Alania is a somewhat special case: it's not a merged polity, and neither it is any of the other cases you mentioned, SMcCandlish – but it is rather two alternative names for the same entity combined into an official name. I can't quite think of many non-Russian entities with similar construction within their official names (but I can think of a few Russian ones: e.g. Sakha/Yakutiya). The other names that come to mind are Vatican/Holy See, Myanmar/Burma, etc. So naturally, in English we would actually use a slash ("/") for such entities: "North Ossetia/Alania"; or possibly even a spaced slash: "North Ossetia / Alania". Compare with e.g. Timor Leste / East Timor: you wouldn't write "Timor Leste–East Timor" as its meaning would be different!
I think the controversy about NO/A arises mostly from the Russian use of an em-dash in the official name, so there's naturally a bias in favor of using some kind of a dash (hyphen included) to represent what is semantically a very different usage pattern of dashes/hyphens in Russian language. Again, I think that naturally, based on the semantics of the name, we should be using a slash there – but I'm not sure where the scope of the Manual-of-Style application ends, and where OR begins: I say this because a lot of English-language sources misleadingly (and mistakenly) just copy the Russian use of a dash to create a variation of "North Ossetia-Alania" instead of "North Ossetia/Alania" (ignoring the fact it's an em-dash – as the distinction between various dashes/hyphens is lost on most authors/journalists – and ignoring the meaning/semantics of this em-dash in the official Russian name of NO/A, which is quite different from the dash usage in English names).
This is why at some point I proposed naming such entities with "spaced en-dashes", although now I see that using "slashes" or "spaced slashes" may be more appropriate. cherkash (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's an interesting argument, but "Russia uses some kind of dash" isn't any kind of reason for "insert spaces around the dash here". It's simply not compliant with our style guide, or any English style guide, so there is no defensible rationale for it. There's only one reason to put spaces around an en dash used as a mid-phrase divider on WP, and that is in complex numeric and date constructions, per MOS:NUM. (En dashes used as separators of clauses also take spaces, but that's incidental.)  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  08:43, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish: I think you misunderstood my argument. I didn't base my argument on the Russian usage alone, but rather on the thoughtless copying of the dash into multiple English sources. So as I argued above, the most logical separator here would be a slash. An unspaced dash would not cut it – there's simply no case for an unspaced en-dash that fits the bill in this particular instance. cherkash (talk) 02:00, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do any sources anywhere use a slash for this? Language is often not "logical"; for WP purposes, it needs to be consistent more than it needs to perfectly fit someone's idealized semantics. People will "style-warrior" half to death when there's an inconsistency, but are much less apt to do so, and to just accept a decision as arbitrary, if it's consistent but not entirely perfect from an analytical point of view.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  15:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the removal of "Republic of". Agnostic on the dash. —  AjaxSmack  02:07, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Time zone[edit]

The time zone is wrong, even the reference for the time zone explicitly says that North Ossetia-Alania is located in UTC+3 (Moscow Time), not UTC+4 (MSK+1). Though I can't seem to find the time zone in the infobox, therefore I can't correct the information. Could any more skilled and experienced user edit it, please? Ondrusj (talk) 19:35, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Same goes for Vladikavkaz. Let's be honest, it's been years since I left Wiki editing and apparently I have no idea how templates and especially infoboxes work these days, can anyone please edit it on there too? Ondrusj (talk) 19:39, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 07:20, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

religions[edit]

the % for religion do not add up. Even with the 15% allowed for Moslem, this adds up to 111%, let alone the estimated 24% Moslem

01:14, 21 January 2020 (UTC)~ Noel Ellis — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noel Ellis (talkcontribs)

Title[edit]

It seems that North Ossetia (which redirects here) would be the WP:COMMONNAME. For example on Google Books I get about 4,000 results for North Ossetia–Alania and about 40,000 for North Ossetia (though this could also include results referring to the ASSR). Therefore I am wondering if there is any good reason to move the article (following a RM). Mellk (talk) 19:22, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Location on the map[edit]

A mistake was made within the borders of the Russian Federation. Crimea is not a territory of the Russian Federation. On March 27, 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine. 100 out of 193 UN member countries voted for the document, 11 voted against, 58 abstained. any change in the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea or the city of Sevastopol”. On July 2, 2014, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly supported a draft resolution condemning the actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. 92 out of 323 delegates voted in favor of the relevant decision, 30 voted against, 27 abstained. during the voting, an amendment was adopted condemning the “occupation of the territory of Ukraine”, which, however, does not directly refer to Crimea. In the Declaration of Helsinki adopted on 9 July 2015, the OSCE PA condemned the “continued occupation of the Crimean peninsula by the Russian Federation”. Yeva000 (talk) 15:45, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this comment, it should be actioned upon as soon as possible, as this mistakes on the map legitimates the terror and genocide Russia is currently conducting on Ukrainian territories. 89.72.44.235 (talk) 20:05, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]