Talk:1917 Odessa City Duma election

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Z1720 (talk) 00:12, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

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• ... that women were elected to the Odessa City Duma for the first time in 1917?
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Baratal limestone

Created by Soman (talk). Self-nominated at 23:00, 10 April 2022 (UTC).

• @Soman: New enough, long enough, and content/sources look fine (I can't read Ukrainian but even rudimentary translation tools suggest everything's legit). Well done. Curlymanjaro (talk) 10:30, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Promoted to Prep 1. Z1720 (talk) 00:12, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Spelling in the title

@Soman reverted my move with the edit summary:

• undiscussed move, and I thought we had agreed not to apply the 2000s naming conventions retroactively?[1]

And reverted changes to the article: I don’t believe we agreed anything like this. If so, please link to the consensus discussion.

• revert changes in spelling in English. Odessa was, at the time in 1917, largely recognized as a city in southern Russia, with a predominately non-Ukrainian population[2]

We agreed Odesa is the spelling for the title of the main article, and consensus is to use the main-article title’s spelling in article text (you don’t need me to hunt down a quotation from the guidelines do you?), and WP:consistency dictates use in titles.

I don’t think the statements about 1917, “southern Russia,” or non-Ukrainian population have anything to do with any Wikipedia guidelines regarding spelling.

The article lacks recent English-language sources to argue WP:COMMONNAME, and there is no article about the Odesa City Duma, or Odesa City Council as it’s known today.

So let’s return the state of the title and article to what the guidelines do mandate, and discuss this further. —Michael Z. 17:26, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

• COMMONNAME would definately apply here. As of 1917 (with Warsaw excluded from the cities covered by the 1897 census), Odessa was the third largest city in Russia and the city had international fame as a compolitan city with extensive trade with the outside world (including the Anglosphere). But more importantly, we should use the name of the city at the time of the election. Likewise it would be wrong, if we had such an article, to call the Wahlkreis Königsberg-Stadt as the 'Constituency Kalinningrad City' in English wikipedia. As of 1917 Odessa wasn't part of any Ukrainian state formation and it did not have major Ukrainian population to justify to impose a present-day Ukrainianized spelling in English. --Soman (talk) 18:35, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

  You’re mixing some things up.

  Commonname only applies to this article’s title if you can demonstrate that English-language reliable sources use “1917 Odessa City Duma election” for its subject. As you haven’t done so, then we refer to the main article title.

  “As of 1917,” “extensive trade” and the rest don’t matter.

  “More importantly” is simply wrong. The name of the city has never changed. There are two English spellings, and one has become more common (see also wikt:Citations:Odessa).

  But we’re not talking about the name of the city (which consensus is to spell Odesa), we’re talking about the name of this election.

  “As of 1917 Odessa wasn't part of any Ukrainian state formation and it did not have major Ukrainian population to justify to impose a present-day Ukrainianized spelling in English.” Are you suggesting we consult contemporary censuses for tens of thousands of settlements to determine how to spell their names? None of these things have anything to do with our article naming guidelines or consensus. (But incidentally, Odesa did have a significant minority Ukrainian population in 1917, it was in mainly Ukrainian-inhabited and Ukrainian-speaking region, the Russian empire no longer existed, Odesa had declared itself a free city before this election but was in territory claimed by the Ukrainian People’s Republic.)

  Please check your rationale and relate it to the guidelines. Perhaps you are trying to WP:right great wrongs and assert ideas that actually stem from a colonial WP:bias. —Michael Z. 19:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

  Your reading of COMMONNAME appears very selective. Quote from COMMONNAME: "For example, the city now called Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig in historic contexts to which that name is more suited (e.g. when it was part of Germany or a Free City)" Now, the name Gdansk wasn't invented post 1945, it was used by the Polish minority in the city prior to that. In English, 'Danzig' was the far more common wording at the time. Thus we have 1935 Free City of Danzig parliamentary election, but in Polish it's "Wybory parlamentarne w Wolnym Mieście Gdańsku w 1935 roku". --Soman (talk) 22:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

• Also, did you wiki-link to Wiktionary a listing with 8 (!) citation references with the sole substantial contributor being yourself as a reference? --Soman (talk) 22:07, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

  The quotations speak for themselves. How would you like it if I ridiculed your volunteer work here? Please don’t act like a jerk. —Michael Z. 23:17, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

There’s no consensus to use the alternate spelling of Odesa anywhere. You haven’t demonstrated that the alternate spelling is used more in historical contexts than in modern ones. Restore the article to the version that follows the guidelines and in the meantime go ahead and find a consensus for an exception. —Michael Z. 23:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)