Talk:Viktor Yushchenko/Archive 1

ATTENTION PEOPLE!

As a Ukrainian journalist and one of Yushchenko's supporters, I insistently ask all of you TO AVOID P.O.V. PUSHING, UNBALANCED WRITING AND OVERINFORMING, not only on his page, but also everywhere regarding Ukraine. He is not a Saviour, and Ukraine is not an ideal nation as some of you are likely trying to show. This is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. If we don't keep ourselves in neutrality limits, less informed readers may consider us the propagandists of a loosing side. And please, be more professional in updating serious non-event articles like Politics of Ukraine. Best wishes, AlexPU

Much of the biography section is from http://www.rol.org.ua/eng/newsitem.cfm?unid=20, some word for word. I don't think this warrants a copyvio notice, since not everything is exactly the same, but it should be reworded. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 23:16, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

image

is that like his "official image" -- one before the poisoning?

I'm not thrilled about it, as it's a composite image of an earlier portrait added to an Orange Revolution background. The word Ukraina was added by computer. We do have the mitigating factor that he was poisoned and he evidently prefers to use early-2004 pictures of himself, but there is another one on the page. --ProhibitOnions 11:11, 2005 May 21 (UTC)

bank theft

Yushchenko has been accused of stealing from the bank

"The recent publication of a book whose author, described as a 'medium-level tax inspector,' discloses, among other revelations, that Yushchenko stole 'millions of dollars' from the state in 1991-92."[1]

"Viktor Yushchenko may have been popularly elected as president on Sunday, but he is no angel or an icon of Western transparency. A politician called a 'fresh start' in the West is accused of stealing over $120 million from the National Bank."[2] Ruy Lopez 04:41, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd like a bit more detail on the "accused". Accused by whom? Is it an implication made by political opponents? Or were criminal charges filed? As it stands it feels too vague to me. Aris Katsaris 04:55, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If these references are too vague, then the accusations on the Yanukovych page are way beyond this in vagueness. Ruy Lopez 05:26, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree this is too vague. Yanukovych 1968/1970 convictions have been documented by numerous newspapers/web sources and have been confirmed by Ukrainian court officials. Those confirmations can be found by a simple google search. For allegations about Yuschenko and stolen millions, google finds nothing. If you have a credible source giving more details, give a link.

Otherwise, Yuschenko millions story looks more like accusations that Yanukovich has committed rape (which was removed from Yanukovich article a few weeks ago, as unconfirmed rumors). Then, it should probably stay out of article. Andris 00:22, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Note: untimely-thoughts link that you gave as a reference about 120 mln does not seem to be working. My comments above are based on your first reference, plus several google searches that did not find any other sources. Andris 00:26, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

I would like to add one thing to this subject. Please, remember that discrediting your politicals opponents is about the commonest thing that exists in Ukrainian politics. Unfortunate, but true. Now, I'm ready to believe that Mr. Yushchenko is no saint, and neither is Yuliya Tymoshenko. But this kinds of rumours are bound to happen in times like these in a country like Ukraine. Unless some real evidence turns up, I will discard these accusations as part of a political smear campaign. Besides, if it were really true, then I suppose the hard evidence would have turned up by itself before the presidential elections! IJzeren Jan 22:21, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC).

Citations in the intro

Do we really need to cite the basic facts in the intro, as it is now? I think that looks awfully clumsy and is rather unnecessary. Everyking 22:46, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IMO it avoids vandalism to those facts. It would have prevented the vandalism in that experiment posted on /. a while back, since RC patrollers could verify the facts against what was added. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 14:54, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you're right, but I generally think links and references should be reserved for quotes, obscure facts and controversial or questionable things. An article could potentially become unreadable with a source cited for every fourth word. (And this is coming from someone who had a FAC nomination shot down partially for overciting.) Everyking 16:33, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Everyking here. Surely those are among the least-controversial facts in the article, and they could each have a hundred sources. Why the citations?
— Ford 17:22, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

I would suggest using the comment tags instead of citations. Comment tags are invisible to readers but are visible when editing page/viewing source or viewing diffs from RC. Is everyone fine with that? Andris 20:27, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, great idea! IJzeren Jan 22:17, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC).

Privatization

Can any Ukrainians clarify if this sentence in the article is accurate?

He (Yushchenko) is also an advocate of massive privatization of the economy.

I thought that most of Ukrainian economy was already privatizated in 1990s. But I am not so sure, since I am not from Ukraine. Any Ukrainians? Andris 23:13, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

You're right - this is POV statement influenced by propaganda. I'm ready to edit the page professionally as soon as the election ends and PARTISANS STOP CHANGING THE ARTICLE EVERY FREAKING HOUR. AlexPU

I can tell you didn't try editing the George W. Bush article during the US elections. ;-) -- ChrisO 22:43, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

His policy on privatization is not the same (is a seperate peace of information) as the current state of privatization. Mir 06:26, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Poison

I know it's under the Current events Dec. 8 article, so should this be included somewhere? Times, Who poisoned Yushchenko? Yahoo News Retract statement...my bad. RoboAction 23:48, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Three before/after photographs? Isn't that a bit forward? I'd think that's pushing the boundaries of NPOV-- one picture comparing before and after the poisoning would be enough. Three, in my opinion, is unnecessary.
(I'd fix it but don't have a clue how to work with images) --Thejabberwock 21:33, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It has been confirmed now by Austrian doctors that he suffered Dioxin poisoning. Also, the CNN article seems to have a better before/after photograph.

Should we add Yushchenko's being run off the road and the bombing attempt?

Would it be NPOV to include the poisoning and the other incidents under "Assassination attempts"? --ProhibitOnions 11:14, 2005 May 21 (UTC)

I dispute the official dioxin story, on the grounds that too many suspicious events are unaccounted for. Especially consider http://www.insudok.nl/eng/ukrain/poison.htm, among several other commentaries. Note that the pro-dioxin stories/doctors are primarily Western or Western-favoring, and that Yuschenko was pro-Western (and doubtlessly supported by the West in various ways). Seeing that the dioxin story is not so much as questioned in the talk pages leads me to seriously question the neutrality and critical thinking of the Wikipedia community.

Romanization of Ukrainian names

I got the link backward in my edit summary. It should link to Romanization of Ukrainian and say "Ukrainian National". --Doradus 18:06, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

What religion is Yushchenko?

Epidemiologist Igor Gundarov?

The leprosy text below sounded a bit too much like the early conjecture by some non-neutral discussion sources.. Googling for the epidemiologist mentioned doesn't result in anyone appearing to be the person cited. Since talk of leprosy has vaishished from all current discussion of the subject, I believe that removing this from the article is wise without a solid citation.

Several doctors, including Russian epidemiologist Igor Gundarov have criticised the dioxines diagnosis and argued that leprosy is the most likely version. However, according to Dr Michael Zimpfer, Yushchenko has refused the facial tissues test that could to confirm or reject this diagnosis.

Gmaxwell 22:29, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Phoneticisation of Yushchenko's Name

I've had a go at putting Yushchenko's name into X-SAMPA, but I wasn't sure on the stress and I'm not sure whether the final 'o' of Yushchenko is said like an 'a' would be (like in Russian), so please sort it out of you know! :-) Also if anyone wants to put it into the normal IPA aswell that'd be great. Thanks!

Here's my attempt at the syllable breaks and stress, and IPA. I've nested them in [:Template:IPA] so that the fonts should work in Windows Explorer.

Yushchenko

IPA /ˈvik.tor ˌʌn.driˈjo.vɪʧ ˈju.ʃʧenˌko/

X-SAMPA /"vik.tor %Vn.dri"jo.vItS "ju.StSen%ko/

Yanukovych

IPA /ˈvik.tor ˌfe.doˈro.vɪʧ ˌjʌ.nuˈko.vɪʧ/

X-SAMPA /"vik.tor %fe.do"ro.vItS %jV.nu"ko.vItS/

—Michael Z. 01:56, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Are you sure the correct pronunciation of Ukrainian "щ" should be /ʃʧ/, and not more like /ʃː/ ? Disclaimer: I speak no Ukrainian.

rado 17:27, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks lots mate. I've put your transcriptions on the pages.

- - - -
And I am taking them off, until someone can find an appropriate place for them. This is against standard practice and it makes the opening a good deal less readable. X-SAMPA is not a particularly important or useful system in any case. IPA might be a good thing for an infobox, but not for the article itself. And I, too, would want a native Ukrainian to sign off on the transcriptions; I suspect that they are wrong.
— Ford 01:32, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

What makes you suspect the transcriptions? They were correct. —Michael Z. 18:16, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

correct transcriptions of what? how the name is pronounced in ukraine or how the western media say it (which may well not be the same thing) Plugwash 19:07, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Correct phonemic transcription of the name in Ukrainian. I do speak, read, and write the language. Please don't assume that stuff people post is incorrect for no reason. —Michael Z. 23:22, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

The transcription matched up perfectly with the transliteration, and that is what I found suspicious — which is not to say that I assumed it was incorrect. Notably, there are three key ways in which the Russian pronunciation would differ from the transliteration, and I would have been surprised if Ukrainian, so closely related, shared none of those, or had none of its own. The three are the ‘в’ in the patronymic, the pronunciation of ‘щ’, and the weakening of ‘о’ at the end. After you added the template, I became even more supportive of placing the IPA on pages, but there needs to be a lot of thought, possibly a separate project, before this starts to happen, because it would be a major undertaking and would ideally be done uniformly throughout the encyclopedia.
— Ford 13:24, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

It's a rather phonetically-spelt language. The pronunciation of Щ (/ʃʧ/) is correct, and О is not weakened to /a/, as in Russian. What about the В (/v/) in Russian? In Ukrainian В it is sometimes softened to [w], and in some regional accents it almost always is, but I think /v/ is always appropriate in a phonemic transcription. That reminds me, these phonemic transcriptions should be surrounded with /.../, not [...].

The IPA reference refers to the period as a syllable break, but I keep seeing it used as a word break (like in Descartes). Can anyone clarify?

I would also like to see pronunciation, transliteration, alternate names, and alternate language names in some standard place in Wikipedia articles, rather than cluttering up the intro. But I'd hate to see an infobox on every single page. Maybe it all belongs in a separate paragraph or table, below the introduction. —Michael Z. 21:20, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Point 1: I'd have thought the transliteration was appropraite phonETically too, as you say В CAN be said as [v], so it doesn't really make much odds does it?

To split hairs: the letter is called /ve/ (Ве) and it's 'proper' sound is [v]. It can sound like [w] when some people say it in casual conversation, but even they would probably call the letter [ve] or [vɛ]. To transcribe Yushchenko's middle name as /ˌʌn.driˈjo.wɪʧ/ would not really be correct, unless I were describing a specific accent. More at Phoneme. —Michael Z.

Point 2: I'd like to see a seperate section too - it'd be much neater and would avoid all these silly issues. I think having a section perhaps on the rendering, origin and pronunciation of the name of the thing the article's about on every article in a standard place would be best. Maybe for places, foreign terms and people's names we could give the phonemic/phonetic transliteration but not for other things like 'plant' or 'dog' or such? We could have the etymology for everything, although I spose it becomes a bit of a dictionary then. To be honest I don't get why wikipedia and wiktionary don't just merge anyway, as there's no size constraint like with a book, but I'm sure that'd be fairly controversial!

Point 3: I'm as puzzled as you Michael are about the syllable break/word break thing!

Xipirho 22:15, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For the record, I was referring to the elision of the /v/ in most instances of the patronymic in Russian, as well, sometimes, as the vowels surrounding it. On another subject, if we are writing phonemes and not phones, transliteration is just as good if not better than IPA, because using IPA for phonemic sequences is, in my opinion, misleading, and some phonemes really cannot be pinned down to an underlying phone.
— Ford 00:29, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

Reverting

after checking some diffs I reverted to my last edit. Most of the recent changes have been vandalism or reversion of vandalism. since my previous edit only one has had an edit reason and that edit apepared to be vandalism (he completely REMOVED the intro section.

There was however one bit of possiblly good editing here I have reverted it because it had no justification (sorry but with the way vandals are hitting this article every edit must be justified) but i don't know about x-sampa so i can't say which version is correct. Plugwash 21:48, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ok The more complex x-sampa has been put back this time by a registered user with an edit reason that seems to show understanding so im leaving it in for now. Plugwash 22:43, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

SO CAN THE X-SAMPA AND IPA COME BACK OR NOT? I'm a registered user too, I just probably wasn't signed in. I'm quite happy for the pronunciations to go somewhere else on the page, but I think they should definitely be there somewhere as I for one always like to find out the native pronunciations of the names of people and places so often mis-pronounced by the UK media. What IS the standard practice with pronunciations anyway? On the Descartes page there's a pronunciation done in the same way, as there is on the Puu Oo page. Also, I take issue with X-SAMPA being less important and more complex - the '%' signs might make it look more complex, but it has the same number of characters, and the idea of it is important as some people are unable to display IPA characters for whatever reason.

—Xipirho 11:30, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The IPA, as I said, would be a welcome addition to articles, in an appropriate place, but this should be determined in consideration of the encyclopedia as a whole. X-SAMPA is not used by linguists. It is a computer-oriented substitute. In print, the IPA is used almost exclusively, though each language tends to have its own “localized” transcription. As computers become better able to render IPA (and other characters), X-SAMPA will likely have no place at all. And we do want internet presentation to approximate print as closely as possible, as soon as possible. The template Michael has employed above should help.
— Ford 13:24, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Thanks for the swift response. I'm glad the IPA would be welcome - that's good news as far as I'm concerned. I must ask what an appropriate place IS though - at the top, the bottom, a seperate section or what? I would refute that X-SAMPA is not used by linguists - it's used by them when they have to use computers which can't display the IPA - that's why it exists isn't it? :-) Please don't think I prefer X-SAMPA to the IPA though - I look forward very much to the day when IPA will be rendered 100% perfectly be all computers and X-SAMPA can be dropped. The template does seem to have worked (how does it work BTW? It's very cool), so I'm guessing it'd have worked for most computers. I think it should be encouraged to have the template for all such trascriptions. Perhaps X-SAMPA transcriptions of bit of IPA could go as notes at the bottom of articles or something, just in case people can't display IPA properly?

Xipirho 14:06, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The template appears to basically specify a large font fallback sequence to drasticlly improve the chances of a charachtor being found and rendered properly. Plugwash 17:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

jumping the gun

an anon named Viktor Yushchenko as "president elect" both here and on President of Ukraine. I have reverted due to lack of source. Are there any credible sources that ABSOLOUTELY confirm that the results of this re-run have been accepted? Plugwash 03:07, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Several other wikis do that (the president-elect thing). Yesterday I even encountered a version of the page Ukraine that mentioned Viktor Yushchenko as president and Yuliya Tymoshenko as prime minister; I reverted to the version with Kuchma and Yanukovych.

Answering your question: Yanukovych has issued several complaints regarding the elections. The Central Electoral Committee has acknowledged the elections, but now Yanukovych wants to go to the High Court with his complaints... in other words, it still might take a while. If you ask me, the only president until the inauguration of Yushchenko is Kuchma.

IJzeren Jan 07:42, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC).

"nazi"

The "nazi" thing may originate in some idea a couple years back of Yushchenko's nationalists giving honour to fallen SS and their collaborators...if I read [this density http://eng.for-ua.com/comments/2002/03/22/141006.html] right. I remember the hubbub when Raygun paused at a Nazi grave ~20a ago...I can't imagine the land of Stalingrad taking kindly to such things. (But a born-of-Nazis like Dumbya would lap it up.) Kwantus 06:49, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC) (thanks to TENC)

No offense but, either way Ukrainians were screwed, so its not like the Nazi's would have been any worse than the Soviets, even if the Nazi's killed 10 million Ukrainians it would still be less than the Soviets killed. There was no winning for Ukraine so lets try not to critize Ukrainians for thinking "what if".

picture

does anyone have a free picture of his face while in the very bad state im not sure the image we are using right now is a very good fair use case. Plugwash 01:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Encarta

Need proof we rock, Encarta sucks? They only just added an article on Viktor, mid-April 2005. -- user:zanimum

President's son and "journalists acting like hit-men"

Maybe the article should write something about this: Guardian: Son's antics vex Yushchenko bogdan | ^Talk 07:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

No objections. It is important though to find a way to write this encyclopedically. Too easy to insert a couple of phrases disrupting the flow. But if well written, definetely welcome. --Irpen 08:06, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe, Prince_Harry_of_Wales#Nazi_costume could be a generic example what to write in that section (or other similar sections on media scandals). You could also use BBC report as a reference. Sashazlv 21:38, 29 July 2005 (UTC)