(WT-en) Grinski

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As the primary author of the Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur guides, it's awesome to see someone else picking up the ball, and add additional content to the region - thanks! If you need any help, let me know. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 09:08, 29 January 2011 (EST)

Hello, I live here in Khabarovsk Krai and know a lot of local stuff. It's my first time and I have added some information that would be hard to find for a foreigner. Feel free to correct my mistakes, if you find any. I am not a native speaker. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Grinski (talk • contribs)

No worries, content is much more important than grammar mistakes, especially for a place like Khabarovsk Krai :) --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 10:59, 29 January 2011 (EST)

A big thanks from me also—you are doing great work! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:10, 31 January 2011 (EST)

And thanks for contributing to articles for Altai region, they had so little attention before you started working on it! If you need any help with policies or anything here, feel free to ask, запросто и по-русски. Спасибо ещё раз! --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:51, 4 March 2011 (EST)

You are welcome. I think since it's English version we'd better continue in English so that anybody can read. I wonder how one can see the attention to the article has increased? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Grinski (talk • contribs)

Altai pages are in my watchlist, and I don't remember any other series of contributions of your scale since I became a regular user here. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:17, 5 March 2011 (EST)

Do you know how to make a map of Altai cities, specifically Barnaul and Biysk, and Chuysky Highway? I found out at OpenSource that Linux is needed. I don't have one.

You mean technical side or where to find content for making maps?

Not sure on the latter; on the former, the most relevant place to ask is Project:Mapmaking Expedition, while User:(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald is the one whom I most frequently see helping others with making maps. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:01, 6 March 2011 (EST)

Pictures

While it is really nice with some good pictures of the area, please note that we only allow "Open Source" pictures, that is pictures licensed for sharing (mainly) under the Creative Commons licence, if it's your pictures - let me know and i'll help you licence them correctly, if you have taken them from another website, you need to make sure they are licensed in a way that allow you to upload them here. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 09:14, 29 January 2011 (EST)

Pictures are all from yandex photos, and are availiable to view, download etc. without registration. Is it under "open source" category? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Grinski (talk • contribs)

Unfortunately I doubt it. Try reading up on the Russian Wikipedia article on Creative Commons to get an overview. If the pictures ends up getting deleted, please don't take it personal, adhering to copyright laws is just really important for a project like ours. Though, for rare pictures of rare places, sometime it can pay of writing the photographer if it's OK to publish it, many amateur photographers are just happy to see their work spread. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 10:59, 29 January 2011 (EST)

In this case, I'd better delete the pictures and leave links to each of them. Waiting for photographer's reply may turn to be long. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Grinski (talk • contribs)

No worries, I'll delete them from the server then. Once again nice work around the region, it's nice to see content added around the region since Khabarovsk is set to be one of our featured destinations on the front page during a month in Spring/Summer.

By the way, do you know if there are any Hotels/Motels/Anywhere to sleep in Okhotsk? I can't seem to find anything online. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 20:12, 31 January 2011 (EST)

I found one address and checked by phoning them. BTW, I am too much in changing mode of grammar mistakes and other ones, is it possible to clear history?

—The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Grinski (talk • contribs)

External links

Hi! Thank you for your good contributions. Please have in mind that we have a strict external links policy. Please don't add external link categories. We only accept direct links e.g. to cities or their corresponding tourism agency. Links to virtual guides, photo galleries etc. are not acceptable. Best regards, (WT-en) jan 07:41, 2 February 2011 (EST)

Hi! What about local beer producers? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Grinski (talk • contribs)

Hi Mikhael! Of course you are allowed to link to restaurants, beer producers, hotels and anykind of Nature park etc. That's fine, only you need to use the primary link. E.g. you need to link to the Hotel Moskwa homepage not to a agency that offer rooms at hotel moskwa. Thank you for your excellent work! (WT-en) jan 08:11, 2 February 2011 (EST)

Russian version of Wikivoyage

Hi, Mikhail! Thanks for your contributions. Since you are writing about Russian destinations, you might also be interested to join the Russian version of Wikivoyage. It is very similar to this one with respect to policies and objectives, but, of course, far less developed. Despite this fact, the Russian version has better potential for fresh updates and immediate usage by Russian travellers who are unlikely to search for information in English. Although I do my best to translate articles (examples are Vladimir, Yuryev-Polsky, and Nevyansk), we definitely need more multilingual contributors. One missing thing is the Far East, a great work by Stefan. Last year I translated into Russian and augmented Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, but other Sakhalin destinations as well as Khabarovsk are still waiting on a list. We will highly appreciate your help! (WT-en) Atsirlin 07:04, 22 March 2011 (EDT)

Hi, Alexander! I am wondering how many Russian readers are there to use Russian wikivoyage as a source, there is so much information in Runet after all and the percentage of Russians coming to Vladimir as tourists are as big as 98%. I think it would be better to increase the foreign share. Reverse my thoughts and I'll write an article on Khabarovsk. :)

Well, I can't give you a conclusive answer regarding Russian readers of wikivoyage and their intentions. Personally, I am not interested in writing Russian texts for those who are unable to read excellent English guidebooks that are widely available for popular world destinations. Although the Golden Ring heavily dominates internal tourism, it is a worthy goal to advertise other places in Russia, and this is something I try to do. My own experience with Central Russia shows that the information in Runet is abundant but poorly organized and lacking proper emphasis. And I know other people who face similar problems.

OK, there is plenty to do. You are welcome to translate from English into Russian and the other way around as well. It will be all helpful, I think. (WT-en) Atsirlin 06:18, 23 March 2011 (EDT)

Sorry for jumping in, JFYI: Yandex is banned by Wikivoyage.org servers, therefore Russian-language arcticles are quite unlikely to be found by ~60% of Runet users (per search engine market share). More on this: User talk:(WT-en) Peterfitzgerald/Archives 2010#Yandex block and wts:WtTech:Wikivoyage doesn't load at all from certain subnetworks. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:13, 23 March 2011 (EDT)

Hi, Denis! It sounds quite disappointing. You haven't got any response to this bug report, right? Any other ideas?

I must say, however, that the information disseminates. I know people who read Russian texts from wikivoyage, and I find my own texts copied to other websites. (WT-en) Atsirlin 17:51, 23 March 2011 (EDT)

InternetBrands is not interested in having *any* load for its servers and bandwidth from a search engine that brings only a fraction of incoming traffic. It's a vicious circle (no traffic > no readers > no contributors > no content > no traffic) and I have no idea how to break it.

It does dissiminates, but having it absolutely missing in a major search engine is a huge barrier to being widely familiar. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 18:23, 23 March 2011 (EDT)

Yes, I agree...( Well, I can only think of writing thorough Russian articles, linking them in Wikipedia, and drawing people who are potentially interested in content of this type. Just tried Google searches for destinations I started with. Some of them are surprisingly high, even in Russian. (WT-en) Atsirlin 18:57, 23 March 2011 (EDT)

How do you search for them on Google? I mean, if they are already ranked highly on general search queries on Google, that should already bring considerable traffic--and opening to Yandex would increase it for IB. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 20:34, 23 March 2011 (EDT)

I have no idea how these search engines work. I simply make searches that I would run myself: for example, "Alexandrov + guide". In Russian, "Юрьев-Польский + путеводитель" also works well. But they are still few and, I guess, of no interest for IB. (WT-en) Atsirlin 06:49, 24 March 2011 (EDT)

Is Yandex the only national search engine on the ban list or there are more of them? Just curious.(WT-en) Grinski

Looks like Rambler is on the same list (WT-en) Atsirlin 18:32, 24 March 2011 (EDT)

In the Google-dominated world, there is only half a dozen countries where Google leaves a considerable share to alternative search engine (local or global): http://seznam.cz in Czech, yahoo.co.jp in Japan, Badoo in China and (I don't remember) in Korea. Beyond Russia, of course :-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 19:09, 25 March 2011 (EDT)

Question

Any comment here? Talk:Teaching_English#Russian.3F (WT-en) Pashley 03:43, 8 May 2011 (EDT)

For that matter, is there a Russian program that should be listed here? Teaching_English#Governments_of_destination_countries (WT-en) Pashley 04:01, 8 May 2011 (EDT)

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