Talk:Kyiv

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

• Archive 1 (2003–2004, regarding naming)
• Archive 2 (more about naming)
• Archive 3 (other discussions finished by mid-2005)

Modern City

Is there any chance someone could provide some information about the modern city, rather than its name or history? --Henrygb 23:19, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'll have a go at creating some kind of starting point. I've not lived in Kiev for 10 years now, but I've been back enough to see some changes occur. I'll post it here before we decide to move it into the Kiev page. -- mno 6 July 2005 01:09 (UTC)

I've started writing this section. Everyone's welcome to comment and contribute. Until it's more-so complete or at least in a decent shape, I have placed it here: User_talk:Mno/Kiev_Today. -- mno July 8, 2005 13:42 (UTC)

I've made some progress on Modern Kiev and would like to ask everyone to add their changes and comments. Kiev Today. -- mno 17:17, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Kharkivskyi neighborhood

Hi all. I've created a short article for the Kharvkivskyi neighborhood (under Kharkivskyy because that was the link on the Kiev page). I think it should be called Kharkivskyi, though, not Kharkivskyy. I didn't think about doing the change before I published the article, so maybe someone can please re-link the pages properly? Thanks! -- mno July 6, 2005 15:58 (UTC)

Attractions rearrangement

Presently, the article contains quite a few photos of Kyiv attractions. The photos are a bit scattered and this does not look good. Could anyone try to arrange the photos in nice looking tables, for instance, as it is done in Hawaii. Thanks in advance. Sashazlv 7 July 2005 05:29 (UTC)

Kiev Coat of Arms at the time of Imperial Russia

This image should be removed as someone's modern fantasy. As best I know, the current coat of arms is exactly the same as was used during Catherine the Great's reign. It is featured in Catherine's Gerbovnik as part of coats of arms of different noble families descended from Rurik, e.g., Baryatinsky, Volkonsky, Repnin, etc. --Ghirlandajo 7 July 2005 08:19 (UTC)

Feel free to modify if you are sure the CoA is wrong and see whether anyone will claim you're wrong. I won't. As for the history of this image, I got it from ( http://www.heraldry.com.ua/index.php3?lang=E&context=info&id=476#verh ). Maybe they didn't know what they were writing about. --Irpen July 7, 2005 17:12 (UTC)

Updated lilacs photo

I've updated the photo of the Kiev Botanical Gardens with a photo taken by R. Lezhoev. I have gotten in touch with him and asked his permission to upload the photo on Wikipedia. He agreed, assuming he is credited on the page where the photo is shown. The caption right now is a bit long, I'll leave it up to someone to change as they see fit. Getting rid of the note about Vydubychi would probably work. -- mno July 7, 2005 14:23 (UTC)

For those interested to compare the old and the new:

• Old photo: Image:Kiev BotanicalGardens lilacs.jpg (taken approx. 1994)
• New photo: Image:Kiev-BotanicalGarden-1280.jpg (taken 2003)

You can see how much the city changed (grew) from the amount of buildings in the background. Quit amazing. -- mno July 7, 2005 14:25 (UTC)

Livoberezhnyi district

I was just wondering after looking at the metro maps. The station Livoberezhna (meaning left shore or left bank) is located on the right bank of the river (geographically). A future possible metro extension (line 5), is also to be called Livoberezhna while it is located on the rigth bank geogrpahically. It seems the geographically right bank is called the left bank. Am I correct? I think we should add a small note about this somewhere on the Kiev page. -- mno July 7, 2005 16:56 (UTC)

It's the left bank as the river flows; i.e., on your left as you sit in a boat going downstream. —Michael Z. 2005-07-7 17:07 Z

Ah, makes sense. Thanks! -- mno July 7, 2005 17:08 (UTC)

Map of Formal Districts

I've created three versions of the map of distrcits:

• Image:Kiev DistrictMap Ukrainian.png - in Ukrainian
• Image:Kiev DistrictMap English.png - in English
• Image:Kiev DistrictMap Numbers.png - numbered

Feel free to use whichever one. I've added the Ukrainian version to the Districts section of the article.

-- mno 21:55, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

Kiev Photos / Pictures

I've contributed a few of the photos to Kiev article in the past. Most of my selections were based on key attractions. I see even more additions of Kiev photos in the Modern Kiev section. I believe that these are ALL GREAT PHOTOS! And I'm sure there are even more. I would love to have a separate section of Kiev Photos which would feature the key attractions. Those could be updated as better photos of the same places turn up...

My proposal - create a separate page on Wikipedia : Kiev/Album or Kiev/Photos which would be entirely dedicated to all pics.

On the main article page include one or two photos per related section and a link to the newly created album page where more photos can be viewed.

What do you guys think? -asmadeus 18:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Aaaah... just figured out that there is also tons of Kiev Photos on Wikimedia Commons -asmadeus 18:44, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Article Quality and Reorganization

I thought about a list what must be done to make Kiev a perfect article. Feel free to add or modify. Sashazlv 04:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

1. Make the lead section shorter. Especially, the paragraph with history. Possibly have 3 paragraphs there, but not more. (I already shortened the history in the lead couple of days ago. Do you think still shorter needed? -Irpen)

Yes, please, try to cut out all inessential detail (like Muskovy, later Russian empire, -- just Russian empire is enough). I think, for the lead, history paragraph is too long. Instead, if possible try to give a sentence or two about major tourist attractions. Plus Eurovision and Orange revolution - for PR reasons - most people are much more interested in recent events than history.

OK, I will try to rewrite the lead as per your suggestion. --Irpen 03:49, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I am somewhat concerned that Kiev article, as a whole, is improperly structured. For instance, universities are under attractions. That's nonsense. Other important/useful info is missing: e.g., where most government building are, where to look for embassies, where to go shopping. There is no discussion of the economy of Kiev. Sashazlv 08:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

While I mostly agree here, we need to avoid ovedoing it. Embassies, for sure, belong to Wikitravel -Irpen 03:49, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Also, peers suggest reading articles on other cities as examples. See Wikipedia:Peer_review/Kiev. Sashazlv 08:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Will do. --Irpen 03:49, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

1. Squeeze the into tab.
2. Rearrange pictures into galleries. The way it is done in Hawaii article may be a good example.
3. Redraw the picture with formal districts, Kiev DistrictMap Ukrainian.png into English names
4. Put district names into table.
5. Add section on transportation and consider other possible sections as in New York City article.
6. Make a separate article on the history of Kyiv and summarize history in the main article.

On 1. I agree, I just expanded a lead a little bit, but what I think is that the 2nd para from the lead may actually become a basis for an entire history section and the current history can be indeed spun-off to a separate History of Kiev article. You are correct in everything else here too. This is so much better than Kiev/Kyiv/Kijow wars! Regards, --Irpen 04:14, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

History of Kiev is now a separate article, initially pasted from here. Please go there and help improving it, add pictures, etc. The plan is to have both at FA level. --Irpen 07:20, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

The current history section is based upon old "quick-history" in the lead. Please remember that History of Kiev is now a separate article and most of editing on history related matters should be there!

The even briefer history outline for the current lead is new. Please help with images arrangement at this page.

Since there is an ongoing drive to make both this and History of Kiev articles featured, please use extra care. Editing is welcome (this is wiki afterall), but please avoid careless "throwing in some thoughts" into the text. Also, a reminder, for Kiev/Kyiv/other disputes, archives reflect some thorough discussion. Before returning to this, read what was said before. Thanks to all! --Irpen 20:19, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

When I drew the maps of Kiev, I made 3 versions:

Media:Kiev DistrictMap Ukrainian.png

Media:Kiev DistrictMap English.png

Media:Kiev DistrictMap Numbers.png

I can also provide a version without any headings. -- mno 18:26, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

I substituted the second of these for the existing one in the article. Is it possible to slightly color up the map? Say, Obolon in light blue, Pechersk in light green, etc. If that's overly time consuming - no problem, the current version should work fine. Thanks. Sashazlv 05:24, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I originally had drawn it in different colors, but that looked very ... colourful? ... to me so I changed it to plain. I don't have the coloured version anymore, but I can make it quite easily again. I will upload it in the next few days. -- mno 14:25, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

I much prefer the way you guys have done the images now. I found it annoying having to scroll through them all before. -- mno 14:25, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

New Images

The new images look great, but we've lost their logical ordering. Sashazlv 05:00, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Categories

Why is it under Khazar towns | History of Russia categories? Ilya K 17:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Sound for the pronounciation in Ukrainian

Tell me if this is fine: I noticed there's the Russian pronounciation, but no Ukrainian! I was born in Ukraine, so this is how most people pronounce it. Iopq 07:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

This sounds fine to me. Vivafelis^talk 17:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Put that in the article? Iopq 22:53, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Any way this could be re-recorded without background noise?—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 00:46, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I used a sound editing software to remove hiss and then I shortened the sound to just the segment where I pronounce it. Where my microphone fails GoldWave succeeds :) here is the new file: (Should I have just uploaded the new version on the old file's page?) -Iopq 03:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds much better now, although there are still two clicks that can be heard in the beginning and the end of the recording (but that's probably me just being too picky). If you have no objections, I will delete the original version and move the new one to its place.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 12:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why it clicks. Probably because it's cut out of a longer file. Go ahead and delete the old one and replace it with this one. I may be able to fix the clicks later and I'll just upload a new version then. -Iopq 21:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I deleted the original (with noise). Since media files cannot be moved, would you, please, reupload the clean version to kyiv.ogg? I could do it myself, of course, but if you do it, the credit is going to show up in your name, not mine (and the PD-self notice will stay). Once you re-upload the file, I'll delete it from the kyiv2.ogg location, finalizing the move. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 01:35, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I removed the clicks by muting the first 0.05 seconds and the last 0.1 seconds (approx.) of the file and it should be fine now. I uploaded it to so you can delete kyiv2.ogg and you can put that in the article.

Great job, thanks! I deleted kyiv2 and updated the article to include link to the new media file.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 12:28, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Kijow?

People are editing that out and editing it back. In my opinion few people in Ukraine are aware of the Polish name or the Czech name or the Bulgarian name of the city. That's because they have nothing to do with the city. The Russian pronunciation is improtant due to it being the "official" name of the city in the USSR - which the English name is based on. How it is written in Polish of Belorussian or Lithuanian may apply in some cases in historical articles, but it has nothing to do with the city now. (user:Iopq forgot to sign)

For more on this, see Talk:Kiev/Archive02#Kij.C3.B3w_in_Kiev_article. --Irpen 13:31, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

All the foreign-language versions belong at wiktionary:Kiev. —Michael Z. 2005-10-10 17:04 Z

The Polish name of the city is absolutely irrelevant. Why don't we add the city's name in Swahili? The only two languages that should be represented in this article, are Ukrainian as the official language of the country and Russian, as the language which 90% of the city's population use in everyday's life.—Voyevoda Z. 2005-11-10 14:04 Z

Summary of older discussions over names in the articles

For those who are too lazy to read older discussions here is a quick summary. Polish names probably exist for every city of Ukraine. There are three ways how they can apply.

1. For some cities, their Polish name is so important that it may be found in English texts even nowadays (Lviv/Lwow/Lvov/Lemberg). For such cities it needs to be placed in the very first line of the article, except perhaps when the article has a name etymology piece close to the top where similar names are listed and explained (current solution at Kamianets-Podilskyi). In such articles all names except native are given within etymology discussion.
2. For some cities, while much of the Polish history still applies to them, they are never, or almost never, called nowadays by their Polish names in English language texts. Examples are Kiev/Kyiv/Kijow, Chernihiv/Chernigov/Czernihow, Kaniv/Kanev/Kaniow, etc. Polish name should be used for such cities in the history sections (like Voivodship name) but not in the first line, because otherwise (like for Kiev) any name of any country that ever conquered it (Lithuanian, German, Crimean Tatarian, Swedish, whatever was the Khazar language, Cuman, etc.) deserves the place in the first line. Similarly, Варшава, Белосток, Краков, at times conquered and controlled by Russia, by this token would need to be mentioned in the first lines of the respective articles (and I know some of our Polish friends will not take it lightly). This would be clutter and/or bad blood. We have a separate list article called Names of European cities in different languages for this information.
3. Finally, for some cities in Ukraine (Sevastopol, Kramatorsk) Polish name is totally irrelevant.

The same rule of thumb applies to Russian names. However unfortunate it may seem for some, many Ukrainian cities are mentioned in English by their Russian names occasionally even today (Kharkiv/Battle of Kharkov, Chornobyl/Chernobyl accident), etc. So, there are more Russian names than Polish ones in the first lines. I hope I captured everything. Do read archives, if interested. --Irpen 17:43, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Good as long as we're all clear on this. -Iopq 23:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

This was an implied consensus. However, it was never voted or formally approved, unlike Gdansk/Danzig dispute. If most agree on this, I could set up a page for up and down vote on this proposal so that edits in violation of consensus (if reached) could be reverted on sight similar to Gdansk/Danzig vote results. Any objections to trying to run such a survey? --Irpen 03:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and of course we need to establish in advance the criteria of establishing sufficient English usage. I propose the following:

1. check other respected encyclopedia such as Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Microsoft Encarta. What names they mention early on?

   The only issue I'd like to raise about using other encyclopedias is if we do so extensively (and as I've seen, many articles source other encyclopedias as source), it almost becomes pointless to write the article in the first place. Why not just say "Read Brtiannica"? And further, doesn't it become a copyright issue, also? -- mno 01:47, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

2. Check the current media usage. Search engines are LexisNexis, Google News, maybe others...
3. An good old google test but only among English language web-pages.

Does the list seem objective and unbiased? --Irpen 03:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. I can see how this would apply to article titles, but can we extend it to include the secondary names too?

I would add that the default titles for Ukrainian place names on Wikipedia have generally been spelt using the simplified National transliteration system (see Romanization of Ukrainian). Notable exceptions are the well-known names Kiev, Odessa, Dnieper, but not Kharkiv, Lviv. —Michael Z. 2005-10-11 15:52 Z

PS: let's not create any templates of domination. —Michael Z. 2005-10-11 21:04 Z

I am also against domination templates. To Michael's question on how this would apply not only to article's titles but also the secondary names, my view is the following. First of all, primary names (titles) are more or less settled now. Except of Kiev, Odessa, some cities of Crimea (as well as the name Crimea itself), Dnieper, Southern Bug (maybe there are a couple of more examples but I can't think of any off hand) the Ukrainian name is primary and the article is entitled by its transliterated version. This is already determined via the criteria listed above by looking for the most common English usage and finding that for the places of UA, except those listed above, the most common usage name coinsides with the transliterated Ukrainian name. In a similar way, we can determine an existence of the usage for the secondary name. EB article for Kharkiv is called Kharkiv, but introduces Kharkov in the first line. EB article on Lviv introduces Russian, Polish and German names, EB's Chernivtsi introduces Romanian, Russian and German. I am not saying we should just copy Britannica. If we find via methodes 2 and 3 that other names (Czernihów) are used in modern English we will also add them to the first line.

Let me repeat that the issue here is not the usage of the names in the article in appropriate context Czernihów Voivodship but what names should be mentioned in the first line. I want to settle the issue not because I want to remove some particular names, but because settling this would help consistency, reduce clutter (explained in the beginning of this section) and put an end to a very popular type of edit wars over this. So, any objections to putting this proposal up for a vote? I will then set a separate page for this. Thanks! --Irpen 04:17, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Here is one more related question. Which name should be used in the text. Should it be the title of the article, excluding probably some historial names like Kijow Voivodship?--AndriyK 11:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

You are correct that here are three issues: what name to use for the article's title (settled earlier practically for all Ukrainian places), the name(s) to mention in the first line and the name to use within the articles. We are not deciding the latter issue right now, but a rule of thumb is to use the name that is used in modern English L. history books that write about that particular period. This tradition is broader than WP. Check for instance WW2 books terminology. However, this discussion for now is only about the names to be listed in the first line as alternative names. --Irpen 02:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I've been reading old discussions and it seems the trend is to beginning to emerge to write it as Kyiv. More new webpages on google write it as Kyiv. But since so many old webpages remain, it will take a long time before Kyiv becomes the most popular google spelling. Compared to 2003, the ratio between Kyiv and Kiev has shrunk considerably. Even in a few months that I spend looking it seems Kyiv gained on Kiev. We should begin thinking about when we plan to rename the article to Kyiv. -Iopq 10:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

What we are discussiong right now are the rules of the game not the particular name. When Kyiv prevails in English L usage, we will move the article. What matters much more than google test, is the major media test as well as other online reference sources, like Britannica and Oxford. I proposed Kharkov->Kharkiv and Lugansk->Luhansk myself as you can see if you read the earlier discussions. Let's just all agree on the general rules first and discuss the applications for particular cities separately. --Irpen 16:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Remember: Wikipedia:Use English. What about use inside article? Let me add a comment based on personal experience: there are new Polish names waiting for English/Russian/Ukrainian versions in the Dymitriads article. I find it useful to keep Polish names in the article (after first instance of use, following English of course), since they are useful when one wants to research some stuff in Polish (many of my articles are based on transltion from Polish and I find it mighty useful to have Polish name mentioned in the articles). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 04:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

This is not about the use inside of the articles as I said above. This is only about the first line. Besides, we have a great list of Names of European cities in different languages. Use inside the articles is a separate issue. --Irpen 04:59, 23 October 2005 (UTC)