Talk:Soviet (disambiguation)

Merge proposal

The "soviet (word)" must be stripped from dicdef content (moved to wiktionary), and if necessary merged into the disambig page. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, in particular, not a Russian-English dictionary. `'mikka (t) 08:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I created this page in a hurry after objecting to the sudden move of this page from Soviet (disambiguation) (See Talk:Soviet (word)). After studying the history I now see that the mess started with an edit by User:158-152-12-77 (no longer anonymous). The new article contains material that should have gone to Wiktionary. The old version [1] is in many ways better than my new version. I would prefer disambiuation pages on people and places to be able to discribe the history and etymology of the word. An example of the problem is Saxony (disambiguation). This is however not in line with Wikipedia MoS for disambiguation pages. Well, maybe in a thousand years we will have an article called the Names of the Soviets or Etymology of Sovietsky and derivatives :-)

I have nothing against the merge. Too bad we are about to loose the edit history. Petri Krohn 09:46, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I am against it. It is difficult enough via search engines to find the meaning of "soviet" as such; this helps when studying 20th century Marxist movements, including factional fights (e.g., Spartacist organizations versus Leninist ones. Peter S. 4 April 2006

I agree with this Peter S. The current setup has no way of getting a user who types "http;//en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Soviet" to the disambiguation page or the councils page, and someone who types this in likely to be trying to find out what a Soviet is. The analogy (made on some other talk page) to "American" is not valid: An "American" is simply someone of America (the U.S., or the two continents), and if there were an article on American people, then it would be titled something like "Americans" or "Demographics of the United States". A "Soviet", on the other hand, is, in its original sense at least, something wholly different from a person of the Soviet Union. Also, there's not really a point in having a disambiguation page if there's no indication of it when you type in the name of the page w/o the "(disambiguation)" part. --Atemperman 18:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Nothing wrong here, this is per WP:COMMONNAME. Remember we're in English language encyclopedia. In English language, most people use the word as an adjective in constructs like "Soviet troops", "Soviet industry", "Soviet pencil sharpeners", etc. And they mean Bolshevik/USSR by that. If they mean "council" they say simply "council". If they care what the word soviet actually means in Russian, they usually use dictionary/wiktionary (or they need to spot the link to disambig page on top of Soviet). --Kubanczyk (talk) 10:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The root meaning of "Soviet" (that is, besides being a council)

Interesting! By seeing the name of USSR in Ukrainian, I can see that word for Soviet sounds like Radianskyi -- as in radiant? Could this be the root meaning of Soviet? --Pinnecco 10:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not quite sure I understand your question. In any case, "radianskyi" is the adjective, formed from the noun "rada", which, in turn, means "a council". There is no connection with "radiant" whatsoever; it only looks similar and depends only on the romanization system used. Hope it helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the old Slavic "rada" (and "radianskyi") has no connection with "radiant": from Latin radiantem (nom. radians) "shining," prp. of radiare "to beam, shine". --Kubanczyk (talk) 10:50, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Probably a cognate to German Rat, too. Vmenkov (talk) 06:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Suggested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not Moved Mike Cline (talk) 22:35, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

---

Soviet (disambiguation) → Soviet – the term soviet (council) is not the primary topic in English. That would be the adjective for the Soviet Union, or alternately, the Soviet people, therefore, the disambiguation page should be at the primary position. 65.92.180.137 (talk) 13:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Good point. Support. I don't believe that most people searching for "soviet" would actually be looking for the article about the council concept.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 8, 2013; 14:22 (UTC)
• Support It seems especially silly to have Soviet as a redirect. --BDD (talk) 17:36, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
• Question - how many articles do we have titled with adjectives? The primary meaning of "a soviet" is a soviet, "the soviet" is also a soviet, a noun. Can an adjective be a primary when a noun exists? In ictu oculi (talk) 17:58, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

  Does it matter? Readers typing "soviet" into Wikipedia's search box are likely to be looking for a wide variety of things, which makes defaulting to a dab page the only logical solution. This very question, by the way, illustrates how the whole concept of the "primary topic" does more harm to Wikipedia than good—Wikipedians are happy to spend countless hours debating individual cases of "primaryness" (instead of spending those hours editing) yet the net savings hardly ever exceed one click for some readers. This remark is not intended to be personal, by the way; it's just that I hate seeing time wasted on this kind of discussions, so I'm just venting.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 8, 2013; 18:15 (UTC)

  • "Soviet" in the sense of a citizen of the Soviet Union is not an adjective, it is a noun, same as with an Englishman or an Italian. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 20:36, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

@Ëzhiki, yes I'm afraid it does matter. Article titles are usually nouns. Hence the question.

@65.92.180.137, sorry no, "Soviet" in the sense of a citizen of the Soviet Union is not a noun, see wikt:soviet.

@PamD, that's a scary number of redirects. Special:WhatLinksHere/Soviet. People and print sources casually use "Soviet" as an adjective abbreviation for "belonging to Soviet[Union]-"

The lazy solution is to leave pointing at Soviet Union. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:36, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: I suggest 65.92.180.137 consults any dictionary, where Soviet is only given as a noun in the sense of meaning a council. All other uses are as an adjective. Skinsmoke (talk) 11:55, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support the requested move, or a return to the redirect to Soviet Union as discussed at Talk:Soviet. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:40, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support: and then someone needs to go through the 4500-5000 incoming links to "Soviet" and disambiguate them. On an unscientific survey of the first from each of the first few pages of 500 of those links, all of them appear aimed at Soviet Union ("the Soviet-allied party actively resisted" in Anarchism; "advancing Soviet forces" in Ahnenerbe; "Under Soviet power" in Beshankovichy; "Soviet intelligence source" in Bill Haydon). And then we need to regularly check the dab page for incoming links and fix them. The page history of Soviet shows that it has been retargetted umpteen times over the last seven years, making a nonsense of the encyclopedia. To my mind the Soviet Union is clearly the primary topic of "Soviet", but there will be less trouble ahead if we move the dab page to that title. I've just looked how we treat other "country" adjectives: French and Tunisian are dab pages, but Australian and Pakistani redirect to Australians and Pakistani people. So no consistency there. Checking the next few I can think of shows dab pages at Norwegian, English, Italian, Brazilian, Georgian (a complex case) and Peruvian redirecting to Peru. Alternatively we change Soviet to redirect to Soviet Union and then fully protect that redirect from further changes. The situation where those thousands of links are currently pointing to Soviet (council), a specialised sense which I suspect few, if any, of the linking editors intended, is not good for the encyclopedia. Putting the dab page at Soviet seems the most likely to move to a stable outcome. PamD 14:21, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Pending the outcome of discussions, I've just reverted Soviet to point, again, to Soviet Union (as it was from April 2006 to 13 Jan 2013, with only brief, swiftly-reverted, changes) as I believe the encyclopedia's readers are better served that way. PamD 14:37, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

There are too many questions being discussed here at once. I supported the original proposal to move the dab page to "Soviet" because at that point "Soviet" redirected to the council. I didn't realise at the time that this was just a temporary blip, "Soviet" having been a redirect to Soviet Union from 2006 to Jan 2013, with only a few quickly-reverted changes! PamD 12:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• • One difference is that there is no Soviet language, and I don't think Soviet people is not as distinct from Soviet Union as some of your other examples. Nevertheless, I'm willing to support the move, although Soviet Union may be primary. TimBentley (talk) 15:05, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as a single word used in an adjectival form or as a plural noun - note also capitalization - the primary meaning (appears to me to be the Soviet Union. Use of "soviet" in its general form is much less common. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - The primary topic is the Soviet Union, to which Soviet should redirect. - BilCat (talk) 19:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose Keep Soviet as a redirect to Soviet Union. -- PBS (talk) 19:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose-An outsider would expect to land on the Soviet Union page. It should redirect there. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 19:54, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose in English one would expect this to point to the Soviet Union. MilborneOne (talk) 20:12, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I can't believe someone wanted to convert 4-5 thousand cases of "a [[Soviet]] something" to "a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] something". What a vast amount of unnecessary complication, wasted editor's attention, and wasted time... --Kubanczyk (talk) 20:56, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose page move and Support redirect Soviet to Soviet Union, per overwhelming usage. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose moving the dab page; Support keeping the redirect from Soviet to Soviet Union, and wonder whether that redirect can be protected so that we don't have to go round this discussion again and again (see page history) when someone takes it into their head to change the redirect. (The editor who retargetted it this January made just 3 edits and has now been blocked). At least it'll now be on a few more watchlists so that any future attempt to retarget it will be spotted rather sooner. My previous "Support" was made in the context where "Soviet" pointed to the council, in which case moving it to the dab page was preferable. We are discussing 3 possible targets for the word "Soviet": Soviet Union, the dab page, or Soviet (council). The first of those is clearly the primary usage. PamD 12:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Since it looks like this proposal is going to pass immanently, I am preemptively fixing the incoming links. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

It was your messing with the "preemptively fixing the incoming links" that highlighted this RM. As it is now not certain that this is going to pass, I suggest you revert your changes. -- PBS (talk) 19:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

As it stands, the proposal seems to have more support than opposition. However, even if this proposal fails (which seemed highly unlikely when I began the preemptive fixes), the redirect is not stable. Consensus can change. Furthermore, why would I revert changing redirects to direct links, which are preferable in the first place? bd2412 T 19:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Because you are distorting the redirect indicator which is an aid to deciding what the AT policy describes as Naturalness. If editors naturally link to Soviet intending a link to "Soviet Union" then your alteration masks that, and such masses edits are contrary to guidance (WP:NOTBROKEN). -- PBS (talk) 19:50, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

It is not technically practical to undo the changes made (merely reverting the edits is inadvisable, as I used AWB and also made other minor fixes to some fairly random proportion of the articles), and the links as they stand are just as much WP:NOTBROKEN. However, since everyone knows I made these fixes, you can chalk up the number of pages that would have linked to Soviet at about 4,000 and count that as the redirect number. Please note that I had planned to close this discussion in favor of moving, and was fixing the links in advance as a courtesy, to avoid a false spike in links to disambiguation pages. At the time I began the task, consensus was indisputably clearly in favor of the move, and the discussion had been stagnant for a week. The sudden influx of opposition basically brought about by executing the change itself was unforeseeable, given the lack of participation by yourself and the late-coming editors in the discussion up to this point. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Unforeseen, not unforeseeable. I think I recall other instances where some issue seems to have been settled with consensus but it was not until the resulting large scale change was implemented that more editors became aware. But the discussion was properly advertised and while editing to avoid a redirect is not advised as the sole content of an edit, I am not going to criticize if someone does chose to put in the work.GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I move that the current discussion is moot: it tuns out that the Soviet (disambiguation) page was filled with junk in violation of MOSDAB; as I put in my edit summary: (rm non-ndisambig list of various soviets: just as Foreign Ministry is not a disambig for Ministry, Supreme Soviet is not a disambig for Soviet). And now I suddenly see there are only two items remaining. AFAIK in such cases the dabnote {{redirect}} is advised. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:46, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

@BD2412 you wrote "As it stands, the proposal seems to have more support than opposition." Move decisions are not based on voting, but also on assessing the arguments put forward by those expressing opinions against the advise in the AT policy and its naming conventions. If you had investigated the statement "Pending the outcome of discussions ..." you have realised the reason why this was an odd requested move and what has been the stable redirect for many years. "Please note that I had planned to close this discussion in favor of moving" I suggest that in future when you are considering the close of move requests such as this, that you take into account the number of redirects used as an indicator of "Naturalness" and ere on the side of caution. -- PBS (talk) 10:09, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

If you had said everything you've said here two weeks ago, this entire issue would probably have been avoided. I arrived at this discussion while reviewing old move requests yesterday, and it looked like this - five respected editors joining the nominator in supporting the proposed move in a discussion that expressly took into account the number of incoming links. When I got here, the discussion had been inactive since February 12th. That said, I am all for page protection for redirects with large numbers of incoming links, and for requiring discussion before changes can be made to them. I would be glad to help create a policy proposal to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Addition of Federation Council (Russia)

@The Mysterious El Willstro: Please stop adding the Russian Federal Council article to this DAB page. This is English language Wikipedia, meaning that it serves English speakers. Per WP:COMMONSENSE, no English speaker is going to use 'soviet' to find an article on a council which doesn't use the term in its English WP:COMMONNAME. This discussion was already underway on the relevant article's talk page, and discussions should not be split up over otherwise unrelated pages as a matter of transparency. Please present policy and/or guideline arguments for the inclusion, and do not use edit summaries assuming bad faith on my behalf placing demands on me not to 'fight' you. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:39, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I, too, agree that this entry does not belong in the main list, but on the off chance someone would be looking it up using a transliterated name (the inclusion of which is not in the realm of impossible in English texts), it can probably still be covered in the "see also" section. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 22, 2017; 17:30 (UTC)

@Ezhiki: Ultimately, I'm okay with it if you wish to reinstate it. I got caught up in the silliness of the editor adding it as an alternative name in the relevant article, and have had time to cool my heels. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:01, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if it's that useful to warrant reinstating, but I certainly won't object if someone else does it. Just not in the main section :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 23, 2017; 03:56 (UTC)