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1. User talk:Mzajac/2004
2. User talk:Mzajac/2005

Orange revolution

Michael, I remember well how painstakingly we were building a balanced article researching and adjusting every phrase. Therefore, it especially pains me to see it's being added to the butchers' list. Please keep an eye on it. This is one of few rather detailed articles we have. With Ukrainian language largely killed, we have now less article with FAC potential. I think OR is one of them. Cheers, --Irpen 03:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Michael, I worked a little more on the O.R on Sunday. Could you take a look, if you have time, whether it is ready for a peer review. I would love to have this featured.

On the side note, please check Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions/Geographic names and its talk. Right now a final verion is almost agreed by several interested editors. If approved, it would allow to keep vandals at bay with lesser effort. And yet on another side note, you reverted Chernihiv exactly 3 secs before I was about to. Have a great Monday (if it is possible). --Irpen 16:44, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Just forgot to mention re O.R. In the recent time two pieces from there were attacked. One was the SBU-KGB lineage which, I think, is well defined and I returned it. The other, is the perception of Yushchenko's "oath" that he took in the midst of events, the oath that helped to put pressure on "vlada" but had no legal bearing. I remember vividly that many people who supported and even participated in the protests against election fraud (they may have not been necessarily fervently pro-Yushchenko, but they definitely stood up to overturn the vote rigging), many of these people had mixed feelings about this "oath", while his strong supporters of course didn't mind. Also, the public figures from his camp obviously would not have expressed any ambivalence to the press, at least at that time, because that would signify the crack in the team. Nevertheless, from the articles published by pro-liberal observers and from the content of forums, such as Maidan.org.ua or Ukrayins'ka pravda, one could see that the perception of this step was mixed. Do you think the sentence should be rephrased? Because Andrew Alexander just removed it as he usually does. Would appreciate your opinion. --Irpen 20:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

T-34

Michael, I looked at the T-34 and made some small changes up to "Combat effectivenss]] chapter already. The article is great, and will be FA, I am sure. I checked ru-wiki and it also says that it was a first diesel engine tank. I have no idea, but I thought I let you know. --Irpen 08:37, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. I thought I was done, but now I'm thinking of expanding the intro into more of a summary of the whole article, since parts of it go into so much detail. I also want to add a paragraph or two of background, to show how the design of this tank was (r)evolutionary and how it came about against political pressure and circumstances. You don't think the production history section is too long?

I think its fine. I would keep it. Production history of T-34 is unnecessary as a separate article. --Irpen

The use of diesel fuel was important. But I read a Soviet tanker's account where he describes how the crew of a lend-lease gasoline-powered Sherman would hide under the hull of their tank when it was disabled (although they were called "Tommy-cookers" by the Germans). T-34 crews would run for it, because even a minor diesel fire would cook-off all the main gun ammunition. I'll read around a bit, and double-check that it was actually the first, and add this. —Michael Z. 2005-11-8 18:02 Z

Also, I added "best tank of the war" to the lead and google search confirms that. I may be wrong, of course. Also, I am not clear about the figure caption with sprung bed frames. How the frames helped is not evident to me. But this is the great article already. --Irpen

Have I anderstood you correctly? Do you mean that diesel is more inflammable then gasoline?

In fact, just in opposite. When I was in the army, one officer told us a story: the whole crew of gasoline-powered armor transporter ("bronetransporter") died because one idiot had been smoking there. It never happend to diesel-powered machines.--AndriyK 18:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Yup, just gas fumes are explosive while diesel is hard to get burning even with direct flame—big safety issue when you're shut up in something that's designed to be shot at.

The RPG screens are supposed to detonate shaped-charge (HEAT) rounds too far away from the armour for their focussed explosive force to penetrate; I'll try to make it easier to figure out in the article. —Michael Z. 2005-11-8 20:58 Z

I did a bit of reading. Morozov's Model V-2 diesel engine was first fitted into the very last BT tank model, the BT-8 produced from 1938. It also went into the T-34, KV-1 and 2, IS-2 and 3 and all the large self-propelled antitank and assault guns of WWII. The engines in the T-10, T-44, T-54, and T-55 (in production until 1981!) were versions of the same, so similar that in the 1960s T-54 engines were retrofitted into second-line T-34 tanks. It must have been a pretty solid design to be manufactured for over forty years. —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 08:17 Z

liberal vs strict interpretation of 3RR

Hi, in case you missed, I would like to draw your attention to the recent discussions at User_talk:AndriyK#User_blocked followed up at User_talk:Robchurch#3RR. The latter link is an interesting policy debate. I thought you might be interested. --Irpen 18:54, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Grand Prix

What does adding "__NOTOC__" to Grand Prix do exactly? {{TOCright}} is putting the contents on the right, "__NOTOC__" seems redundent to me.--Commander Keane 06:14, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that's why it didn't seem to work. I thought it was a glitch. the __NOTOC__ directive prevents a table of contents from being shown, which seemed like unnecessary clutter on such a short page. —Michael Z. 2005-11-4 06:16 Z

Historic maps of Ukraine

Hi Michael, thanks for the hint. That is a very interesting source of maps. I didn't know about two more oblasts of ukraine yet. When I look at the oblast articles I'm a bit sorry, that the enWP obviously don't like to store images at commons, so other languages could use it more easy. commons:ukraine --ST ○ 17:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Are you thinking of the little oblast maps with highways, etc? They are public domain, so I'd be glad to move them to commons; let me know. We could ask User:ChrisO to provide the source files, so you could make multilingual versions. I've looked at the original UN pdf maps, and some of them have all the themes separated out into layers, so they shouldn't be too hard to work from, either. —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 18:03 Z

Yes, like Image:Lviv oblast detail map.png. We could store this images as SVG (best option: vector graphic shapes) so everybody can use them directly in all wikimedia projects or make his own language version without problems (see also: meta:SVG image support). --ST ○ 18:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Cool; does the SVG rendering to PNG work automatically, or is this still the plan?

I'll post a note on User talk:ChrisO. —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 19:07 Z

Sample: --ST ○ 19:22, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Cooool! —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 19:28 Z

ChrisO doesn't have source files to offer. It sounds like the individual maps are derived directly from this PDF. According to the licence posted with them, it appears that derived maps are public domain; I would interpret that to mean that if you clipped a region or changed some colours, then you're free to post it at the Commons. I have got to get myself a copy of Illustrator, so I can join in the fun. Cheers, M. —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 20:37 Z

Subdivisions of Kyiv

Hi Michael. Here is the article of a man who haven't been writing in English for a few months. Would you please making it a little bit normal? And of course sharing your thoughts on how to use it best? Details on the respective talk page. Thanks, AlexPU

I'll read it over and see what I can add. I think you may want to merge it into this initial article: Raions of Kiev. —Michael Z. 2005-11-11 21:12 Z

moved the rest to Talk:Subdivisions_of_Kiev. --Irpen 21:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Michif

Michael, take a pill and try to relax. The comment was not even directed at you - given the constant vandalism the article has been getting, I assumed that the term was added added by one of the many previous anon vandals, and that it had simply been overlooked in earlier corrections. My previous ignorance of the term comes into play...the fact that it looked like "mischief" and was not wikilinked led me to believe that its addition was just a kid playing around. So apologies... you will notice that I wrote the bulk of the text now present at Red River Rebellion, so I thought I knew the subject area reasonably well....but you learn something every day I guess. Fawcett5 19:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for apologizing; I appreciate that it was a misunderstanding. I'm sorry to have reacted so extremely; I'm oversensitive because I'm involved in editing dozens of articles that have non-stop edit wars and reams of unproductive discussion. Please try to keep your edit summaries informative, not accusative; I understand the temptation. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-11-13 21:36 Z

Ukrainian language

Michael, thanks for your attemts to appeace the short-tempered folks. Although I grew rather a thick skin in the time I've been around here, a word of support helps.

What do you think about spinning of the history of UA L into a separate article? On one hand, we have it much more complete than the rest and, if in the separate article, it would be easier to bring it to a WP:FAC. Also, the word or two about suppression that some are just so eager to have in the lead would at least make sense there. OTOH, if we do that there will be little left in the UA L article and someone will have to write a short history summary for the UA L article to replace a detailed history, and I am afraid that would have to be one of us. Please, see also my note at Talk:Ukrainian_language#The_opening_paragraph.3F.3F. Cheers, --Irpen 23:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I've been keeping an eye on that. I'd be glad to write the summary of UA lang. history for the main article. Actually, with the history removed, it could still be a nice concise article.

I could also add a bit of linguistic information based on the articles in my Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia, but there's really a huge amount of very specialized writing to be done there. I was planning to do some more work on the history of orthography at Ukrainian alphabet before starting to chip at that iceberg. Come to think of it, the UA lang. article could also use a little bit more summary on the Ukrainian alphabet too. —Michael Z. 2005-11-14 04:28 Z

Also, user:Iopq mentioned in a discussion I had with him at his talk that he was considering writing a Ukrainian phonology article. As for the history part, spinning it off might really be a good idea. Then we could restore large pieces butchered from there by I don't want to call names who as "too much politics". History has illustrations, details and potential to become a FA on its own. This is definitely one of the topics I intend to be firm with the POV pushers/butchers because so many people invested so much effort into it and the article is featurable. I care less about Polkovnyk, an interesting but rather obscure topic, and being called ignorant about it by the same characters. --Irpen 06:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Meat Shield redirect?

Hi. I wanted to ask you why you created a redirect from Meat shield to Tank (role-playing game terminology)? Considering that Meat Shield has a full history and Tank was created that day by an anon (as a cut and paste of the Meat Shield article...I would have preferred a move to preserve the article history.

Can you take care of that as an admin? I certainly don't object to Meat Shield being moved to the new name. Thanks! :) --Syrthiss 13:04, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry that I didn't realize what had gone on before I got there. I merely moved Tank to a correctly capitalized name (without the capital R in role-playing), and updated the redirect which was already in place.

Cut-’n’-paste moves are bad. I'll have a look, and see if I can set it straight. —Michael Z. 2005-11-14 15:28 Z

Done. A cut-paste move is simply undone by reverting, since this preserves the page history. The important part is to explain to the offending user how a move should be done—make them feel welcome and prevent misunderstandings. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-11-14 15:40 Z

Thanks. Yes, I know I could have reverted it. ;) What I had been suggesting was since Tank (role-playing game terminology) did seem a better name, that we do a rename/move of Meat shield to that (which requires an admin since the target page exists, correct?). Heh in any case, tis fixed as it sits now and I'll go write a nice note on their page.--Syrthiss 15:52, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

ah you already handled that too.  :) --Syrthiss 15:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Nope, it's still at Meat shield. I'll let you handle the move. If it can't be done without an admin, post a request at WP:RM.

But I suggest a simpler name if possible; maybe Tank (games), or Tank (role-playing games)? Be consistent with other article names if possible. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-11-14 15:59 Z

WPSU

Hi, thanks for joining WPSU and thanks for your input :) - FrancisTyers 22:24, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Need your help (as always)

Hi Michael. Here are two brief questions for you as a Wikiexpert:

• how the F. exactly should I eliminate the double redirects after creating or moving the page? Couldn't find the understandable explanation. So please drop a link or something
• don't you think we urgently need few more stub templates for the Category:Ukraine-related stubs (with more than 140 articles inside and counting)? I become scared every time I get in there :)
• how can I have a "noie" notice in the middle of my page too? Should I just copy the code from yours and change the digits? Do you mind that? BTW, it was a brilliant idea to stress the fact that we don't use Billy's explorer. If you know some Wiki campaign on this issue - please drop a link!

Pryvit, AlexPU 20:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

1. In the "what links here" listing, click every disambiguation page that links to another disambiguation page (I cmd-click to open each in a new tab in my non-Billy™ browser). Then edit each one, and change the link target to go to the new real page. Very low tech; the server should be programmed to skip all the redirects automatically.
2. Honestly, I never browse the stub categories. With 140 articles though, it sounds like a good idea, but don't spread it too thinly. On the other hand, they still fit on one page, and it is nice to see them all at once.
3. There's an official way to do it described at Misplaced Pages:Babel, but I don't like the extra box around the boxes. You're welcome to copy my code (below). There's also a zillion other languages, and see also User:NSR/userboxes (although I would avoid using an image until the servers catch up to the load).

Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-11-15 20:55 Z

<div style="float:right; margin:.25em 0 .5em 1em; width:245px; text-align:right;">
{{User en}}
{{User uk-2}}
{{User fr-1}}
{{User noie}}
<small style="margin-right:3px;">see ]</small>
</div>

Done. Thanks! AlexPU 21:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Re:Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_adminship/Halibutt

Thanks for your vote of support for Halibutt. Could you perhaps address the statement by Ghirlandajo, who is accusing Halibutt of strong pro-Polish and anti-Russian bias? It would certainly add a more legitimacy to Halibutt's position if Ghirlandajo would be moderated by somebody who is not Polish (like me or Halibutt). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:03, 16 November 2005 (UTC)