Talk:1500th anniversary of Kiev

Requested move 2 April 2023

The following is a closed 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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Absent any argument that the second bullet point of WP:KYIV does not apply (and it clearly does – something that happened in 1982 is "clearly historical"), then the consensus of the 2020 RfC holds until a further discussion finds that it doesn't. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 08:27, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

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1500th anniversary of Kyiv → 1500th anniversary of Kiev – This event occurred in 1982, during the Soviet times. According to Ukrainian place naming conventions of Kiev/Kyiv:

For unambiguously historical topics (e.g. Kiev Offensive), do not change existing content.

Thus, I find this move justified. What does everyone else say? Cheers, Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 00:17, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Support per nom-naming conventions BhamBoi (talk) 05:19, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Obvious support per nom. O.N.R. ^(talk) 10:00, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Weak support  – CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 14:58, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose after reading other editors comments, including by @Super Dromaeosaurus: and @Mzajac:. – CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 19:27, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose. This just exemplifies why the rationale-free “in historical articles” decision and its arbitrary cutoff dates are nonsense. Every single article link in this article is a subject that transcends 1982 and rightly uses the spelling Kyiv. The subjects of every article in the main Category:1500th anniversary of Kyiv transcend 1982. At this point, imposing the Russian spelling on this article is just pandering to people that can’t tolerate spellings they hadn’t been taught when they graduated school, presumably around 1982, people that insist that Wikipedia readers are best served by a random hodgepodge of spellings in the article History of Kyiv, or people that can’t tolerate acknowledging that post-colonial Ukraine has its own language. Let’s stop tolerating this juvenile or colonial attachment to an obsolete spelling. It’s an embarrassment. —Michael Z. 17:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Not a single source is cited using the proposed spelling.  —Michael Z. 17:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Mindful of WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NAMECHANGES, from 2013 to the present, Google Books Search finds "1500th anniversary of Kyiv" 13 results, and "1500th anniversary of Kiev" 13 results. The obsolete name doesn’t see a significant advantage in prevailing usage. There’s no reason to diverge from the main article’s spelling of Kyiv.  —Michael Z. 17:27, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, I tested this with an ngram of both names. "1500th anniversary of Kyiv" did not show up in the search, while "1500th anniversary of Kiev" did show up in the search. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 19:41, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, a burp before the city’s WP:NAMECHANGE.[1]  —Michael Z. 04:31, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

If we search sources in this century:

• "1500th anniversary of Kyiv" “Page 6 of about 672 results” (55 actually displayed)
• "1500th anniversary of Kiev" “Page 5 of about 820 results” (41 actually displayed)

There is no basis to diverge from the normal rule of using the main-article title’s spelling.  —Michael Z. 15:38, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Support - per and the convention referenced in the nomination. We don't change any reference to Constantinople in historical context to Istanbul, so why should this be different? Estar8806 (talk) 03:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Constantinople and Istanbul are two different names. Kyiv and Kiev are just different spellings of the same name. Super Ψ Dro 19:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose sources use 'Kyiv' or are in Uki—blindlynx 03:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Was called Kiev at the time. SnowFire (talk) 01:54, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Irrelevant. No such policy requires using names from the time the article covers. Otherwise, we would see Kiev Voivodeship titled as Kijow Voivodeship, or Chicken Kiev titled as Chicken Kyiv. Super Ψ Dro 19:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose there is no real benefit from this move, other than following a convention that contradicts other Wikipedia policies such as WP:COMMONNAME. Let's quit imposing a name over a city that it vehemently rejects. Super Ψ Dro 19:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Mzajac and Super Dromaeosaurus. --Nagsb (talk) 08:33, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Result of requested move 2 April 2023

I would have preferred to see the Requested move 2 April 2023 closed as no consensus result, as the result was 4 - 5 support - oppose !votes. This gives the oppose side a majority of !votes, and the closure sentence doesn't mention the oppose sides citation of WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NAMECHANGES.

I would start a WP:MOVEREVIEW, but there's no point if there's no chance of the result being overturned, so I'm asking an admin's opinions.

@Sceptre: Pinging the closer.  – CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 10:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion are not a vote, but a weighing of arguments and how Wikipedia policies apply. Personally I don't see any errors in the review and close of the discussion, but if you feel that certain policies were not applied properly or not considered, you should request a review. 331dot (talk) 10:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@331dot: Yeah makes sense. If I'm honest, there's a very small chance of this being overturned. – CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 10:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It’s a WP:CONLEVEL thing: whilst the consensus in the RM alone is against moving (and I admit, I’m sympathetic without an editor hat on), we do have a more global consensus to go with the Russian spelling for Soviet Ukraine topics. Sceptre (talk) 11:44, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Thanks for your work @Sceptre.  – CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 11:45, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

• Sceptre, my reading of the second bullet point is that pages should not be moved if they discuss an unambiguously historical topic, because the bullet point uses the wording "do not change existing content". this page was created using the spelling "Kyiv", so a move that changes the spelling used to "Kiev" would change the existing content, violating the second bullet point. am i not reading this correctly?
  i would have assumed that, had the second bullet point advocated the use of "Kiev" in unambiguously historical topics, it would have used the wording "Kiev is preferred", in the same way that the first bullet point uses the wording "Kyiv is preferred". i got the impression from the rfc that the second bullet point was so worded to prevent edit wars rather than determine the spelling to be used for historical topics, and that an rfc may be held in the future if reliable sources start preferring the use of "Kyiv" when discussing historical topics. (had the rfc been intended to be prescriptive, i think the first bullet point would have said something like "use Kyiv" instead.)
  at the time i created the page, i could not find any reliable english-language sources definitively using an english-language proper name for the anniversary, but amongst the recent ones that used a descriptive phrase to refer to the event, there seemed to be a strong preference for "Kyiv". (even english-language russian source meduza uses it here.) the 'a' in this article's title was not capitalized to emphasize the fact that i was using a descriptive phrase rather than a proper name. dying (talk) 01:38, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I thought of having a RfC on the issue as well. We could start a RfC to allow analyses of cases individually, so that the conventions on Kyiv do not override general rules and policies of Wikipedia. It is nonsense that Kyiv here is the most common name but that we are using the outdated name, rejected by the city's inhabitants. It kind of even feels like a blatant insult to them. Super Ψ Dro 18:13, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

It's weird that and RFC overrides wp:RS in this case right? Archaic names and spelling for Ukrainian places feel extra insulting lately but that's not exactly a thing polices address—blindlynx 00:45, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if I understood your comment. My idea was not to add another layer but to make a RfC to end the prevalence of the Kyiv conventions over Wikipedia policies. Super Ψ Dro 13:06, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, i'm agreeing with you. For this article the RS using 'kyiv' but twas overridden by the 2020 rfc, that feel like its a bad outcome right?—blindlynx 14:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

The basic problem is the systemic contradiction of the “the consensus of the 2020 RfC”: it was a pure WP:VOTE based on the personal preferences of the participants. Neither its proposal nor its decision referred to any logical rationale based on guidelines or reliable sources. Participants expounded on a number of rationales that had nothing to do with sources, based on unfounded factoids and assumptions and prejudices. That vote was conducted with the participation of a much smaller number of enthusiasts than the much broader and longer discussion which ended with the retitling of the main article Kyiv.

This RM is essentially enforcing the tyranny of the few who participated then on the rest of the encyclopedia.

In fact, current sources on Ukrainian history prevalently use the spelling Kyiv, perhaps even more so than the corpus of all sources. That RFC should be overturned and Ukrainian history articles should use the current spelling following Ukrainian history sources.

This situation is ridiculous.  —Michael Z. 16:08, 12 April 2023 (UTC)