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If you'd like to get even more involved in Wikipedia, such as voting on featured articles or collaboration of the week and much more, you can always visit the community portal. Again, welcome! Johnleemk | Talk 10:55, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi and welcome to WP! It's not clear if you accidently or deliberately deleted the interior view from Hermitage Museum, but if the former, you should be more careful and perhaps edit in smaller increments, and if the latter, it's very bad form to delete other people's work without asking first on the talk page. Stan 14:18, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

When you add categories to people articles, please use format:

[[Category:XXX|Last name, First name]]

Otherwise they are grouped by the first name, which is incorrect. --Gene s 13:16, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hello, Ghirlandajo! Though you might be interested in the Russian wikipedians' notice board. Come check it out! KNewman 19:27, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Quite a coup! Congratulations! --Wetman 17:40, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks!! See also Rostov and Uglich. I hope to post articles on all the Golden Ring towns shortly. --Ghirlandajo 20:42, 19 Dec 2004

Hi, I just came across this image:Lidia matisse.jpg. I am not familiar with Soviet Union's laws, but I know Matisse lived mainly in France, and his works could be protected by French copyright law in France and other Berne Convention parties. Do you happen to know where the work is first published? Tomos 12:02, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I cannot be sure where the portrait was published, so I changed {sovietpd} to {PD-old-50}. In my jurisdiction (I live in Russia) Matisse's work passed to the public domain on the 50th anniversary of his death. --Ghirlandajo 13:54, 20 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Hi. Thank you for your reply. I came up with another question. It seems that under many copyright laws, author's life + 50 years is calculated in a little tricky way: counting starts from the beginning of the next year of the author's death, and last until 50 year passes. It is, in other words, treat as if the author died at the last second of the last day of a year. Berne Convention's article 7-(5) has that provision, and that is reflected in many copyright laws, I think. In that case, the copyright protection last until the end of 2004. It may be wise to wait just about 10 days to attach that {PD-old-50} tag.

In case you don't mind reading the legal text, the Berne Convention article 7 is here: [1] Tomos 04:42, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please do not revert this article again today. You are at least close to breaking the 3RR and may be blocked if you continue.-gadfium 19:03, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hello. Please provide an edit summary. Thanks and happy edits. Hyacinth 02:38, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the great old picture additions to the article - wonderful! Leonard G. 00:32, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

your "russophobic hysteria"

What are your objectives at Wikipedia? Are you contributing knowledge or infiltrating Russian imperial propaganda? Try to stay more polite and avoid such statements. --rydel 11:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't mind if you correct my language/grammer, or if you move various article parts to better articles. However, simply reverting/deleting changes because *you* think they are not pretty is not a creative action. Wiki goal is not to be a beautiful novel, but an encyclopedia. Nice language is nice, but it is the information part that is essential. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:45, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

FYI, I support changes you made to Polish king template. Adding info is good. Removing info is bad. About Wladyslaw - obviously he didn't rule for long, or actually not at all, but he was crowned, wasn't he? You should expand on this - or why is it wrong - instead of deleting stuff, which leads to revert war and banning ppl from editing. We don't want that, do we? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:59, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus, firstly Wladyslaw wasn't so much as generally accepted as a Russian tsar, let alone crowned. He was a Russian tsar in a sense that Edward III was the king of France. Secondly, the article on him contains a ridiculous statement that he ruled Russia for quarter a century (1610-35). You may check it out yourself. Ghirlandajo 17:11, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe your listing of Emax as a vandal is improper. He is really not a vandal but rather someone who pushes his own agenda. That's different from vandalism. You may want to take a look at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution for gudance on how to deal with such problems. If he is really violating the WP:3RR, he will likely loose the case. --Gene s 08:24, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would agree here that the dispute you have with Emax is not an appropriate one for VIP. Disagreements over content are not vandalism. I am not defending Emax here; I live about as far away from the Polish/Russian border as is possible, and I have no view on the dispute. Follow the dispute resolution procedures.-gadfium 09:16, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I would like to list User:Emax on Wikipedia:Requests for comment for his refusal to use talk pages, generally uncooperative behavior, and personal attacks. I need a second contributor for that. Please contact me if you would like to do that. --Gene s 09:23, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My dear Ghirlandajo, feel free to add new comments to my talk page, I'd be more than happy to reply. However, please refrain yourself from blanking it in any way. Such a move could be considered an act of vandalism by some and will definitely not help your case - whatever it is. Halibutt 10:36, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Muscovy#Time of Trouble section split to a new article. --Gene s 08:56, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ghirlandajo,

I've just closed the Featured Pictures nomination for Prokudin-Gorskii's Black Sea in 1915. The concensus was a bit borderline, so I defaulted to not promoting — which is a bit disappointing.

I rather thought the concerns over a slightly sloping horizon were somewhat besides the point. However, since I got the impression that most of the support votes were positive due to its being interesting early colour photography, whilst most of the oppose votes were worried about the horizon, I was wondering whether there was a different Prokudin-Gorskii colour photograph that could be nominated (preferably one with strong colours but no obvious horizon... :) -- Solipsist 12:09, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can you tell me for which Russian places we should use this category? Does it depend on population? If so - tell me border between towns and cities, because in Russia cites and towns are not divided. Thank you. MaxiMaxiMax 07:14, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC) <...>

If you don't answer I will have to revert your category changes, sorry. MaxiMaxiMax 09:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You would return Gzhel and Ust-Izhora in the same category with Moscow and St Petersburg? Good luck to you! I don't think that such changes are good for the Wiki, however. There is so much more important things you can do. I trasfer this discussion from my page to RWNB talk page. Ghirlandajo 09:29, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I hope it will help. MaxiMaxiMax 09:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Um, in the article itself, as well as on your user page, you used the 's' form of the first name (which gets google hits), but the article is titled with a 'z' (which gets zero hits). Is there any particular reason the article shouldn't be moved to the 's' form? (I'd get input from my Russian roommate, but she won't be back from work for at least 6-7 hours). Thanks. Niteowlneils 17:55, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC) Talk

I found that the same basic article had been added a few weeks ago as Joseph Vladimirovich, Count Gourko. I liked your intro better (it established why he was notable right away), and you had some extra info at the end and an additional cat, so I moved all that to the earlier one, moved it to Joseph Vladimirovich Gourko and made Jozeph Gurko a redir (and updated all the pages that were looking for it there), along with some extra redirs to try and keep it from getting accidentally duplicated again. I even found an article that didn't link to either of them, so now Veliko Turnovo does. Niteowlneils 05:43, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Great additions! Thank you! -- Chris 73 Talk 10:40, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Let's bring an arbitration case against Emax. If you agree to support my move to file charges against him, we should do it tomorrow. --Gene s 15:06, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

ß íå âîçðàæàþ, íî íèêîãäà íå ó÷àñòâîâàë â òðåòåéñêèõ ïðîöåäóðàõ ðàíåå. Êàêèì îáðàçîì ýòî ïðîèñõîäèò? --Ghirlandajo 15:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See WP:DR, WP:RFAr. And please do use summary field in your edits, because it's difficult to argue against Emax for his no-summary edits when you often do the same. I am leaving for today now. Bye. --Gene s 15:59, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The guy got banned for 24 hours. Let's see if that is enough. I guess there is no need for further action at this time. --Gene s 05:35, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Are you actually disputing the article on Anti-Polonism? I'm asking because I can't find any comments from you, neither in the edit history, nor in the talk page. Could you explain what is it that you find NPOV on the talk page? Alternatively we could simply erase the NPOV tag. Halibutt 09:32, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

That's a spectacular illustration you've added. I hope you won't be cross that I shifted it upwards and gave some specific text to show how conservative taste could employ some hints of neoclassical features within a wholly Rococo setting in the 1770s. This is an Orlov interior, so I added it at Gatchina to contrast with Paul's neoclassic gallery. (Old Rinaldi died in 1794.) --Wetman 09:08, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Надо всё-таки подойти к консенсусу по статье Russification (ответҗте на User talk:Untifler)/ Заранее спасибо. --Untifler 19:11, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just a note of thanks for your recent edits at Symbolism (arts) and for the Vrubel image as well. Someone does need to do the article about the Russian Symbolist movement; it probably would help a whole lot if the person who created it read Russian. -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:19, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ghirlandajo,

Just to let you know that your Prokudin-Gorskii picture, Image:Lugano prokudin.jpg, is up for Pic of the Day on the 6th March. You can check and improve the caption at Wikipedia:Picture of the day/March 6, 2005. -- Solipsist 10:03, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ghirlandajo! Could you please add all of the names of the Russian foreign ministers to your Russian Foreign Ministers template? I'm not sure how to do it. It somehow starts with Ordyn-Naschekin and ommits all of the ministers precedeing him. Or is it on purpose? Thank you! KNewman 18:53, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Ivan Fedorov (printer) Ilya K 09:01, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Ghirlandajo! I am very glad to see you back and very much appreciate your knowledgeable editing over the articles I created/worked on previously as well as over all articles. May I ask you to please be more patient, except of course, when you simply add more info to the article, as you did very well with St. Andrew's Church. For example, I spent some time looking for the info on children of Svyatoslav II and I was kind of sorry to see this just blanked. If you think I made a mistake on who their mother was, sure correct it. Same with Ivan Fyodorov. I didn't erase your version about "annihilation" but raised the objection first, because I agree that there is indeed a controversy going in Lvov regarding the issue. I am sure all the differences can be resolved at relevant article's talk pages. I am just asking you to change what you see as mistakes with little more patience. If we just stick to facts, we will be able to defend the info from being manipulated by all sorts of nationalist, -philes, -phobes, imperialists and (insert any other cliche here).

Some time ago I tried to move forward the History of Christianity in Ukraine article as well as the articles of several Ukrainian churches. I kind of lost the steam but I would appreciate any input there.

Finally, the Ukrainian Wikiportal put together by several users is almost ready to be released. I made a draft based on Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Russia which I helped maintain to a very small degree. Now, improved by several coworkers it is still at my userspace at User:Irpen/uawp and we plan to soon move it to Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Ukraine and link to it prominently in several major UA-related articles like Ukraine, Ukrainian language, etc. If you want to take a look at it and propose changes at its talk pages, or just do them if you don't expect opposition, your help would be most appreciated. Thank you, -Irpen 19:59, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Ghirlandajo! Thanks for your support at talk:Minsk page. I hope the stories with name insertion like the recent ones with Kiev and Minsk articles won't be too common. There are many reasonable people among the Polish editors, although some certainly have issues with sensitive national pride. On my own, I recently compiled the discussions from several talk pages regarding the Kijow in Kiev article and placed the compilation in my userspace. If you want, take a look at it at User talk:Irpen/Kijów in Kiev article. Finally, if this is going to start over, I don't think placing "Varshava" in the Warsaw article and "Belostok" into Bialystok would help. That's exactly a WP:Point position took by several editors that disrupted the Kiev article for the day. Stchastlivo, -Irpen 06:10, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Hi there, Ghirlandajo! I thought you left us for some reason. Haven't seen you in a while. Good to have you back. I don't know if you check Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Russia on a regular basis or not, but I would really appreciate it if you could find and upload some nice pictures of different Russian monasteries. I posted two articles about monasteries under the "Requested images" section. You did a wonderful job on finding images for other monasteries, so I figured you could help us out here. Check the Russian Wikiportal more often! I look forward to working with you on other articles, as well. Cheers! KNewman 12:42, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

I see you are doing art articles, with plenty of pics. I'd suggest you to put images into wikicommons, where they can be accessible from other-language wikipedias as well. mikka (t) 23:22, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you most kindly. Will have a look. Smerdis of Tlön 04:55, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why not for a translation of Vladimir, but it is already done ... :fr:Vladimir. Anyway, I am trying to do a new article about a World Heritage site every day (original - like DR Congo or Belgium- or a de/en/nl/ translation), and I will probably translate some other russian ones...

Kind regards,

Vincent

Thanks for tracking down the Imperial Academy of Arts. I knew there should be an article but couldn't find it. Now I hope I'll find the other articles that needed the link as well. Rl 09:21, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm an admin on Belarusan Wikipedia (so far, everything has been going very smoothly over there, we did not have almost any problems of any kind), and in our Belarusian WP I really enjoy contributing articles on natural science and technology, especially on computers, physics, astronomy and aerospace. What is especially important is that those articles very rarely become an object of conflict or revert wars. This is because it's hard science and we deal with hard facts. I wish I could work on similar articles in English Wikipedia, but there are really smart people working on those topics and they've already have wonderful articles, and therefore in 99.9% of the cases I simply had nothing to add.

So I started thinking, what are the areas then in which I could contribute something valuable to the English Wikipedia? After browsing around a little bit I concluded that Belarusian history pages (or, actually, most Belarus topics) are grossly under-represented here or presented in a twisted fashion from the imperial Russian or Polish perspective (not to say POV). I've tried to correct the bias and fix the factual errors, but most of the time my edits were reverted by Polish and Russian "watchdogs." Finally, I decided that I have enough of that. It's a waste of time. Today, feeling sorry for my lack of judgment, feeling sorry for my wasted time, feeling disgusted by some Wikipedians, I'm simply leaving English Wikipedia, with a possible exception that I'll be occasionally inserting interwiki links.

So now it's all back to "normal." Let Polish people call Ignacy Hryniewiecki and Jan Karol Chodkiewicz Poles. They can also call me a Pole, because I'm definitely as much Polish then, as both of those men. The Russians can have their fun too. Let them use Russian spellings for Usiaslau and Rahneda and Polatsak and any other Belarusan person or place which they want to present through a Russian imperialistic perspective and in Russian spelling. They can call me a Russian too. Enjoy it. Whohoo! I feel like it's 1905, not 2005.

There is a great "Polish" poet Czeslaw Milosz, a Nobel prize winner, who considered himself a citizen of our Great Duchy of Lithuania. I read his wonderful brilliant book Native Realm (Rodzinna Europa) several years ago and I was really surprised what he says there about Belarusians. He said something like this (sorry, the book is in Minsk, so I can't give a precise quote): I don't really understand how Belarusians survived and how they can survive, living always between the two big hammers, the Russian hammer and the Polish hammer.

I always found this quote a bit bizarre. I could only understand the Russian part, it was obvious what he meant. But Polish? I never understood that until now. And now after attempting to fix some historical mistakes on such articles as Battle of Orsha, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Adam Mickiewicz, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, I suddenly got a few powerful blows in my head from the Polish hammer. And I finally felt on my own head what Czeslaw Milosz really meant. Thank you, Czeslaw. And bye-bye, English Wikipedia.

Let Russians and Poles have their fun.

--rydel 11:43, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dear Ghirlandajo, I have changed Rus into Varangians since Rus is used in a very ambiguous way in the article. I know that the so called Normanist theory makes you upset, but you'll have to live with it.--Wiglaf 10:39, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dear Wiglaf, stop flooding East Slavic articles with your Swedish nationalism. If you don't I have to bring an arbitartion case against you. The only account of the events in question is contained in Ibn Miskawaih and runs thus:

[The] army of the nation called Rus invaded Albania, where they attacked and seized Berdaa, taking its inhabitants captive. They don’t know defeat, nor does any of them turn back till he slay or be slain.

Your conclusion that Rus is Varangian is a second-hand speculation. We should cite the sources, which speak of the Rus and not of Varangians (or of Swedes, if you put it this way). --Ghirlandajo 10:57, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It takes a nationalist to know one. Plese give a single non-Slavic scholar who believes these Rus to have been Slavs.--Wiglaf 11:01, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dear Ghirlandajo, unfortunately, it is not I who is the nationalist POV-pusher in this case:

These particular Varangians were known as Rus, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans and Angles, and still others Gotlanders, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichs and the Ves then said to the Rus, "Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come reign as princes, rule over us". Three brothers, with their kinfolk, were selected. They brought with them all the Rus and migrated (The Primary Chronicle).

As for the Rus, they live on an island ...that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy....They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and...sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from the Slav's lands....When a son is born, the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says, "I shall not leave you with any property: You have only what you can provide with this weapon." (Ibn Rustah, according to the National Geographic, March 1985)

So, why do you insist that the Rus who attacked Berdaa were not Varangians?--Wiglaf 11:56, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

don't just needlessly plaster articles with npov warnings. Even the Kievan Rus article says they were founded by Varangians. The question is just, did they call themselves Varangians up to the 940s or didn't they. This dispute has no factual content, it is just about your personal dislike of the word "Varangian". dab (ᛏ) 19:38, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)