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Rasputitsa

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Rasputitsa (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Fails WP:GNG.

Rasputitsa is the Russian name for mud season (according to this very article’s lead). This article should be merged into that one which covers the same subject and is titled according to WP:USEENGLISH.

Rasputitsa as distinct from mud season receives no significant coverage as the main subject of reliable sources. Mud season is a prominent topic in some works about logistics or war, and is sometimes mentioned by its Russian name in specific contexts (usually WWII in Ukraine, Belarus, and the western margin of European Russia). But the Russian name is not generally used in English, and when mentioned it appears in italics or quotation marks as an unnaturalized foreign term. Mud season has been mentioned in some recent news about Ukraine, where the Russian name has equal or less prominence to the Ukrainian translation bezdorizhzhia. The Russian translation rasputitsa doesn’t have a distinct special meaning in English, and doesn’t appear in general English dictionaries., not even the OED. It does have a 23-word entry in A Dictionary of Weather.

The article mud season has 5.2 kb of readable prose, and this one about 2.2 kb, so the largest possible merged length of 7.5 kb is still far short of a length of 45 kb plus that would justify two articles according to WP:SIZESPLIT.

Previous discussion:

• Talk:Rasputitsa#Should Be Merged With Mud Season
• Talk:Mud season#Merge proposal

Pinging previous participants: user:DavidWBrooks, user:KlausFoehl, user:Macktheknifeau, user:Olegwiki, user:Rheinguld.  —Michael Z. 21:02, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Some contributors and users are missing here!Taksen (talk) 08:14, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions.  —Michael Z. 21:02, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:26, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, term appears in many works on the eastern front during the Second World War, but also on the Napoleonic, IWW and other wars; it refers to the particularly strong type of 'mud season' present in Russia. WP:USEENGLISH does not mean that we can only use 100% English names, but that when we have a choice of several versions we choose the one that is most popular in texts written in English. Rasputitsa is certainly such a one.

Besides, I don't know why you give as a reason for removal the fact that the Ukrainian term is more popular than the Russian term for mud season in Ukraine. Firstly, we are talking about mud season in Russia so I think this is natural, secondly, I am not convinced that this is the case actually. Marcelus (talk) 21:30, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

• there is no "particularly strong" mud in Russia - it is an excuse for losers. I assure you, mud in Poland is just as strong if you go off paved road. And God what a swamp Silicon Valley was until it was drained! And I am not even talking about Canada, Alaska, Norway... - Altenmann >talk 21:50, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
• A synonym appearing in works doesn’t mean it’s a separate subject. Can you cite sources where the word clearly refers to a different subject than mud season, however strong it be? Can you cite sources where the term is used exclusively and not mentioned in passing? Can you demonstrate significant coverage as per GNG?

It’s not about using the word. It’s about declaring that the word represents a distinct subject per our guidelines and creating an article for the mud seasons of supposedly higher strength levels that supposedly occur in supposed Russia.

The Ukrainian name is now being mentioned, not used, exactly the way the Russian name used to be mentioned regarding fighting in exactly the same region. Please be aware that much of the fighting “in Russia” during WWII, the Russian Civil War, WWI, and Napoleon’s invasion took place in Ukraine and Belarus.  —Michael Z. 22:46, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

• merge into "Mud season" There is close to zero novel content, expect for speculations that somehow mud season helped Russians to defeat enemies, as if Russian army was immune to mud. But, as Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated, mud is an enemy for any army; which is even in military handbooks now. - Altenmann >talk 21:50, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: There is no Misplaced Pages guideline that requires "regional variants" of an over-arching subject to be condensed/merged into a single article. For example, Fremantle Doctor and Southerly Buster are both terms for a strong wind, but there is no reason those two pages would have to be merged into Gale. Macktheknifeau (talk) 04:24, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

    Those aren’t merely terms meaning “a strong wind.” They aren’t just synonymous regionalisms. They are specific, named winds. The capitalization of these proper names attests to that.

    The common noun rasputitsa is just the Russian term for a general phenomenon that can occur in many places and at different times.  —Michael Z. 04:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

  The Russian army was not immune to the mud, it was just that the rasptutitsa particularly affects the offensive side, stopping the attack and allowing the defending side to reorganise its forces. Soviet troops faced the same problem during the counter-offensive. Marcelus (talk) 06:48, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. This is the wrong forum for a content dispute. This quite clearly meets WP:GNG (beyond sources in the article we have quite a bit of in-depth news including for example ), doesn't fall afoul of WP:NOT or WP:V, given the way the articles are structured it doesn't violate WP:CFORK. I don't oppose an editorial decision to merge, but I don't see any policy reason to enforce a merge at AfD. Even the discussion here so far suggests this seems to be a content dispute and AfD discussions are not the place to resolve content disputes. —siroχo 03:57, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep: WP:SK Rule 3 "The nomination is completely erroneous". We went through this exact discussion about a merge a year ago and there was no consensus. This article clearly meets GNG and AfD is not the place to try and force through a merge just because the article has a Russian word as the title. There is also no wikipedia guideline that any article has to be of a particular size to justify being a stand alone article. If anyone is worried about the length of the article they can feel free to expand it, rather than simply nominate it for delete/merge. I would respectfully request to the OP to withdraw the nomination.Macktheknifeau (talk) 04:24, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• Keep (no merge): A quick google search shows that it is not only the Russion word for mud season, but is used also in English sources as well: Oxford Dictionaly of Weather, Rasputitsa as title of an English book, an article by RUSI (UK), Yahoo News and more. @Altenmann and Michael Z: I think claiming that the terms Rasputitsa and Mud Season are used interchangeably is WP:OR, this needs a proof and not the opposite. --Cyfal (talk) 08:34, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Speedy keep: as particularly ironically timed given that the term has enjoyed a massive uptick in recent usage in connection with the Ukraine war as a strategic factor effecting that conflict. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:03, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep What you do here secretly without mentioning this on the talk page is against the rules.Taksen (talk) 10:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC) We do not need a privy council on Misplaced Pages.Taksen (talk) 11:10, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

No, I followed the rules for proposing WP:AFD. Your casting WP:ASPERSIONS is against the rules. Please familiarize yourself with both guidelines.  —Michael Z. 14:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

It should be the other way around: Rasputitsa has ten times more visitors a month than Mud season (ca 11,000 and 1,100). Every one can see on the talk:Mud season Mzajac has a goal: to get rid off the Rasputitsa article. It was Cyfal who added after a few hours a link to this discussion; not Mzajac. It cannot be true that if one starts a discussion he doesn't have to mention this on the specific talk page. It causes confusion certainly not clarity.Taksen (talk) 02:42, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

In 2007 Mzajac deleted a category: Russian loanwords, explaining Rasputitsa "is not a loan word in English". To my surprise it is included in the List of English words of Russian origin.

Already in April 2022 Mzajac suggested a merge; in June the template was deleted.Taksen (talk) 14:21, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

The history of the article on the Ukrainian Misplaced Pages is also curious. There are many bots and there is only one user who added most of the text. It is User:YuriyTer who calls himself a grammar nazi.Taksen (talk) 07:31, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

• Keep Sources provided above demonstrate this is a sufficiently notable subtopic to warrant its own article. Furthermore, the separation between the two articles appears to be well-established consensus. OP has not provided sufficient evidence to overturn such consensus IMO. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 16:15, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment: there is disagreement over what the scope of this subject includes, and some edit warring over entire paragraphs. See Talk:Rasputitsa#Scope of the article. Perhaps that should be resolved before this AFD is closed.  —Michael Z. 17:28, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I think that is part of the content dispute that should be resolved independently of AfD. —siroχo 20:46, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

There is no really any dispute, it's only @Mzajac creating artificial problem Marcelus (talk) 21:03, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

@Marcelus, please stop with the unfounded personal attacks. I started a discussion there trying to resolve edit warring that I was not involved in.  —Michael Z. 21:15, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

• Speedy Keep. A five second Google Book search indicates this is a standard English language term. - SimonP (talk) 05:13, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  The same test indicates that tovarish (see also tovarishch) is a standard English-language term. Significantly more so, as it appears in English dictionaries, and doesn’t need to be glossed in virtually every source where it’s mentioned. But that doesn’t indicate that it is an independent encyclopedic subject.  —Michael Z. 14:17, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

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