Talk:Town of district significance

lead sentence is incomprehensible

I would like to simplify the first sentence but I have no idea what it means. It reads like a failed translation. Is "town of district significance" an actual designation of anything? It makes no sense in English. 69.86.6.150 (talk) 15:56, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

The problem here is that "town of district significance" is a convenience term to describe a concept for which no common term exists in English otherwise (which is not surprising, considering how the whole concept is entirely foreign to any English-speaking country). In that aspect, it is a direct translation from Russian. However, the big picture is more complicated. While the term itself would be understood in the context of Russia (and can be correctly used in the historical context), it is not used in that form in any given federal subject where the concept is used—they all have different term for what largely is the same thing (see the list in the article). "Town of district significance" is a convenient way to overview the whole concept without going into those details, but since the term is essentially descriptive, it was not presented in the lede as if it were an "official" designation for the whole concept.

To add to the confusion, this exact same term can be used to refer to a type of an inhabited locality (i.e., not an "administrative division"), which is another reason why the term was described as "umbrella" in the lede.

Probably I'm splitting hairs here, but hopefully this explanation will help you see that the the reason behind the confusion is the confusing nature of the concept itself and not a "failed translation" :) I'm not very happy with the current revision, but I see your point about the original version being confusing as well. Hopefully it doesn't matter much as long as the rest of the article does a decent job explaining the subject. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 31, 2016; 14:19 (UTC)