Wolverène

Hello Wolverène! Welcome to Wikivoyage.

To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page.

If you are a Wikipedian then you may notice some differences in policies and the style of our articles. These include:

• NPOV → be fair (not quite the same thing!)
• be bold → plunge forward
• Village pump → travellers' pub
• External links → We do not use a separate external links section, but incorporate primary links only into the text itself.
• sandbox → graffiti wall
• stub tagging → Article status

It may also be very useful for you to check out Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians. If you need help, take a look at Wikivoyage:Help, or else post a message in the travellers' pub or on my talk page. Thanks for contributing!--Ypsilon (talk) 10:01, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you. --Wolverène (talk) 10:10, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Bad choice of words

On reflection, this edit summary might have seemed rude or unkind. If I were able to go back and repeat it, I would write it without the rhetorical question, and use a more constructive phrasing. I hope I didn't offend you, but I apologise if I did.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:24, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

• Please don't worry, it was not rude. It was a good feedback, perhaps I didn't fully understand the stylistics that's normal for Wikivoyage, must admit I didn't read a local policy, just editing intuitively, mostly looking back on experience in WP. Plus I really have a dubious tendention to be more wordy 'cause I'm afraid of being not understood enough - it's a bit personal and shouldn't reflect on my work here. Best wishes, --Wolverène (talk) 18:58, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Belarusian and Ukrainian

Regarding this, my experience interacting with Russians in online forums is that their view is generally that Ukrainian and Belarusian are not languages and are simply dialects of Russian, and they get annoyed when people refer to Ukrainian and Belarusian as languages (eg. if you are casually talking about the vocabulary differences between Russian and Ukrainian). For that matter, they even insist that Ukrainians are just a bunch of Russians who randomly decided not to be Russian and artificially created something called "Ukrainian" by replacing some Russian words with Polish ones. They in fact resent Lenin for allowing the Ukrainians to have their own national identity. How prevalent are such views in Russia, and how sensitive are they? The dog2 (talk) 15:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

• @User:The dog2 Hello. It's a known thing to be expressed by some Russians, but I'm not sure it's a sincere opinion. Of course, educated people understand that these three languages are different and even not enough intelligible between each other. Such things (Ukrainians are wrong Russians, Ukrainian is a dialect, etc.) can be expressed by many for a sort of 'emotional release' right after getting information from TV, radio, Telegram/WhatsApp channels with aggressive anti-Ukrainian propaganda. When people take a break from propaganda and start dealing with their own problems, they don't care about linguistic/ethnic similarity. The local science and education also don't promote the govt-sponsored POV on a 'dialectical nature' of Ukrainian.

All the things that are related to Ukraine are sensitive to Russians for these days (and for the next several decades, I guess). But as for statements like 'Ukrainian is just polonized Russian' in particular - it's too small itself to be a source of potential verbal conflict between a Russian and a foreigner. --Wolverène (talk) 20:01, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

P.S. Actually, the main sensitive issue for Russians is their Slavic heritage. Russians are proud of being Slavs and of their role in the rise of self-awareness among the Slavic nations in the 19th century. So the easiest way to make the vast majority of Russians angry is attempting to deny the 'Slavicness' of Russians. You might've ever heard of a statement that Russians are 'a marginal Finno-Turkic-Baltic race mix who spoke Finno-Ugric dialects and followed the Volga Finnic (Mordvinic) cultural features before the time of Peter the Great'. It's a very inaccurate statement that's refutable by genetical and archaelogical studies, but it's very popular in Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus thanks to efforts of local political activists and some historians of 19th century. It can be only justified as means of information war on Russian toxic influence, but it doesn't stop to be a lie (for 90-99% :) ). Expressing something like this in Russia is an extremely bad idea, no irony.
Same with stating that Russian is allegedly an artifical language, or even isn't a Slavic language at all (often being 'proved' with quite dubious arguments from the Internet). Almost always it will lead to hostile reaction.
Perhaps, this could be added to the article, in a shortened way. :) --Wolverène (talk) 20:52, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

But why would a visitor to Russia make such a stupid statement, using arcane fake reasoning like that? You'd have to really try. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:09, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. Thanks. From linguistics videos that I've watched, Russian and Ukrainian are not that similar, and it is in fact tricky for a Russian to understand Ukrainian and vice versa (presuming the Ukrainian in question does not also speak Russian, since it is quite common for Ukrainians to be bilingual). But on the other hand, Ukrainian and Belarusian are very similar, and mutually intelligible to a large extent. The dog2 (talk) 22:49, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

So are Spanish and Italian. w:A language is a dialect with an army and navy. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:58, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: And with regard to your question on comments of Russians not being true Slavs, some people in Belarus and Ukraine indeed hold the view that the Russians have been "tainted" by "yellow" blood (since the Mongols occupied much of Russia for a long time) and are thus no longer "pure" white people, so they and not the Russians are thus the true pure descendants of the ancient Slavs. So you could say it's a manifestation of the fear of the yellow peril. The dog2 (talk) 00:06, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

My position would be that we don't need to mention every kind of stupid bullshit someone might say in their home country. If you travel to another country and insult the people there, you are an idiot, and nothing we could say could cure idiocy. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:22, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Russia: photographs

Sorry for writing in Russian =). Добрый день! Хотел заменить фотографию File:Киришский НПЗ, Россия, Ленинградская область.jpg, но не нашёл хорошего аналога. Хотел на File:Moscow 05-2017 img47 Refinery.jpg, да как-то получается две подряд фотографии Москвы. Думал добавить про Горьковский автомобильный завод, но не нашёл таких захватывающих фотографий...А вообще хотел заменить, потому что фотографий Санкт-Петербурга и Ленинградской области в статье перебор. Если File:Winter Palace Panorama 4.jpg, File:Swan Lake at the Alexandrinsky Theatre.jpg, File:Narva vs Ivangorod.jpg и File:Grand Cascade of Peterhof 01.jpg я бы оставил как очень нужные и качественные (вместо с той уже это 5 фотографий!). Понятно что статью Russia правил и правит участник LPfi из Финляндии, ему конечно, Петербург географически и по другим параметрам гораздо ближе, чем какая-то Москва =) ...Но мне, как настоящему москвичу, видится, что фотографий из СПб и области просто дофига. Буду благодарен, если найдёте какие-то интересные замены этим фотографиям. Особенно фото про кораль StPeterLine (такой ещё есть в РФ?), Mariinsky Theatre, File:The Church of the Nativity of St John the Baptist.jpg и File:Icon Kazan cathedral.JPG. В сумме уже это 10 фотографий! Кстати, "моей" Москвы вообще в статье мало: две фотографии МГУ и ГУМа + добавил ещё фотографию по траффику, но из неё вообще неясно, что это Москва. Хотел фотографию банкоматов добавить, но что-то потерял у себя. Спасибо! Brateevsky (talk) 11:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)