Talk:Autonomous Republic of Crimea/Archive 5

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Crimea should be about the peninsula

FWIW, I have thought the same as Dbachmann: Crimea should be about the geographical entity, the peninsula, rather than any particular political entity present in the region in its millennia-long history. The primary usage of "Crimea" has always been the peninsula, all political usages being derived from it, IMHO. Something as ephemeral as a state or province should not be allowed to block such a prominent headword. For example, the history of the Crimean Peninsula goes back to at least the 7th century BC or so, while the republic is less than 100 years old. Making Crimea about the peninsula would considerably simplify things, render the article much more effectively neutral, and resolve the awkward contrast between Crimea being about the modern republic and History of Crimea covering everything from prehistory over antiquity and the medieval until the modern period. It's the cleanest solution. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree. There is a move request taking place now that should be resolved soon, hopefully in favor of moving this article to Autonomous Republic of Crimea and moving Crimean Peninsula to Crimea. -Kudzu1 (talk) 18:06, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

ok, I have now been asked to perform the move on my talkpage. It seems that there are no objections.

the problem is the messy page history, beginning November 2012 when there was a move just like the one now proposed.

At the time, it was argued that yes, technically the ACR and Crimea are separate topics, but the overlap being huge (the topics are identical with the exception of Sevastopol) the split was not worthwhile.

I would argue that this has now changed, and that the "Ireland" approach is now warranted (or perhaps rather "China", I mean by this, treat the geographical topic as the main entry and do separate pages on political entities explicitly). But due to the to-and-fro in late 2012 and early 2013, we now have the redirect Autonomous Republic of Crimea with its own page history, and although it mostly consists of copy-paste dumps and move wars, I am reluctant to just delete that.

so if we have a consensus here and somebody has a suggestion on how exactly to deal with the individual page histories, I am willing to implement the move, just let me know. --dab (𒁳) 18:48, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

That appears to be the strong majority view. As for page histories, not sure how to resolve that, but considering how frequently content has been duplicated across Crimea articles, I think it's a minor consideration. -Kudzu1 (talk) 18:51, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

There is currently no content on Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and its history shows that it never contained any information that was not also presented in this article at some point. So if we move this page over it, I don't think we're losing anything worth keeping. CodeCat (talk) 18:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

ok, I implemented the move. Now, on the off-chance (?) that this results in wiki-drama, before people go off screaming admin-abuse and try to get my head, just let me know there is reasonable dissent and I will self-revert and leave the question to more ponderous wiki-process. Also, it seems I have a mess of moving talkpages to sort out now... --dab (𒁳) 19:13, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Might be a good idea to go ahead and close the movereq on this page as moved as well. Thank you very much for your action. -Kudzu1 (talk) 19:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Christ, I see only now that there are some well-argued oppose votes. It may be I have done something stupid now. There does seem to be an arguable "consensus", but there clearly isn't a literal consensus. --dab (𒁳) 20:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the disambiguation links and the split proposal at the top were removed though? CodeCat (talk) 19:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

well, the current page isn't ambiguous, so there is no need for disambiguation. And the material to be split has mostly been split already. --dab (𒁳) 20:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Far too much about Russian propaganda stunt

The material about the Russian propaganda stunt occupies a far too large part of the second paragraph of the lead. I suggest we return to the stable version of the lead and then add maximum a couple of sentences stating that Russia has invaded this Ukrainian region and that it is currently under military occupation. Specifically, Russian frivolous irredentist claims on the territory is basically a fringe point of view, as it is not recognized by anyone and obviously of no legal validity under international law. Erik Monsen (talk) 16:40, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

look, I understand your point of view, but otoh, they did a referendum, and there seems to be no doubt that this "fringe" view is that of the actual population of the territory in question. It's still not straight sailing under international law, which doesn't look kindly on unilateral secession, but it cannot be considered a "fringe" view that the Crimeans want to leave any more than similar statements about the Tibet, Xinjang, Catalonia, Kosovo, etc. etc.

so for the purposes of Wikipedia, we are just stuck with reporting the status quo giving as little cause for outrage to either side. The Crimea considers itself Russian now, and Russia considers it Russian, while the rest of the world considers it a renegade province of Ukraine. The end. We have been stuck with the same situation on the Kosovo page since 2008, so I fear you'll just have to come to terms with it. --dab (𒁳) 18:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

They didn't do a referendum. A "referendum" organized by an authoritarian country occupying the province is not a real referendum and no country in the entire world recognised this "referendum" of the Putin regime. The situation is not comparable to Kosovo at all, it's comparable to Hitler's invasion of and annexation of Poland. Erik Monsen (talk) 15:38, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Readers must arrive to their own conclusions based on the presented facts. It is not our job to make such conclusions for them, and it is especially not our job to draw historical parallels or to supply colorful analogies. It is, however, our job to report facts and to support them with reliable sources, and that's exactly what's being done in this article.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 24, 2014; 15:54 (UTC)

indeed. Also, Godwin. It is fair to argue things "aren't comparable"; but only as long as you don't come up with even more bizarre counter-comparisons. Sheesh. The problem is not the referendum outcome. It is perfectly undisputed that a clear majority of Crimean population identifies as Russian. The point is that under international law, Crimea isn't allowed to secede even if its population is in favour of it. It's only legal if the Ukraine is also fine with it. Otherwise, lots of people would secede, including, yes, Kosovo, and Catalonia, Basque country, Padania, etc. --dab (𒁳) 08:52, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Russian law question: On what date did Crimea become legally Russian territory?

Could persons knowledgeable on Russian law kindly help answer the above question. One editor says it was from when the accession treaty was signed; another editor says it was from when the accession treaty was ratified. Input requested at Talk:Republic of Crimea (country)#On what date did Reunification with Russia occur?. Thanks. Frenchmalawi (talk) 14:27, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Crimea is a province of Ukraine, not part of Russia. Whether a territory is part of a given country is a question of international law, and Russian claims on this Ukrainian province are baseless from the legal perspective. Erik Monsen (talk) 16:44, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

But Wikipedia doesn't blindly follow international law any more than it follows any other kind of "prescription". The whole point behind WP:NPOV is that Wikipedia shouldn't choose who is right, or whose views to follow. Instead, it documents all viewpoints neutrally, including those of Russia, Ukraine and all other countries. So our articles shouldn't take any side or give more prominence to one viewpoint over another, it should just say "these are the viewpoints". CodeCat (talk) 17:03, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

well, we do not really report "all" viewpoints, as this would be madness. There is WP:DUE, which means we report viewpoints by their respective notability. But note how notablity does not necessarily correlate to legality, palatability, or anything else. --dab (𒁳) 19:05, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Some people have argued that since "Crimea is Ukraine" is a majority viewpoint in the international community, it should receive more prominence according to WP:DUE. But that doesn't sit well with me at all. CodeCat (talk) 19:07, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I guess no one here has an answer. Frenchmalawi (talk) 02:04, 26 March 2014 (UTC)