Talk:Voskhod, Russia

Why Voskhod, Russia is important - at least as a Wikipedia article - to this editor

At first glance, Voskhod, Russia can seem like the trifecta of obscurity: all red links, little-known topics, and it’s a set-index-article (the disambiguation page’s lesser known sibling). But researchers and investigators depend on pages like this precisely for these characteristics.

Here’s why:

1. It's a Gazetteer. Consider a researcher finding a letter written by an historic person with the inscription “Today I leave for Voskhod”. The researcher has questions: “Which Voskhod? How many are there? Where are they?” Consulting a map alone would be very laborious and you’d never know if you’ve missed a Voskhod. Same with Google. The researcher needs a complete list of all the Voskods and their locations, in order, with no duplicates, with standard accepted spelling. They need a gazetteer.

A gazetteer is “a geographical dictionary or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas”. The article Voskhod, Russia is a geographical dictionary. Note that being a gazetteer is part of the very first pillar of Wikipedia’s Five Pillars: “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia: It combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers.” (WP:5P1)

2. Standardizing the Expansion of English Wikipedia. Many en.wp editors are working on subjects outside of the US, UK, etc. When writing on topics in Russia, it is sometimes unclear how to transliterate the Cyrillic characters to Roman characters. “Voskhod” creates a standard spelling for Wikipedia editors writing about places named “Восход” in the original sources. Without a standard list in WP itself, the Voskhod’s of Russia could end up with several different spellings, or worse, duplicate but different articles on the same subject.

3. Red links for non-Anglosphere articles mean “We haven’t gotten to it yet”. Consider List of protected areas of China. Hundreds of red links. But the areas named are definitely notable: there are giant areas with giant pandas, etc., and most protected areas have spawned numerous scientific journal articles about the plants and animals found there. The red link lists act as checklists for building out the blanks spots on Wikipedia.

4. Rural communities are like navigational lighthouses. Most people think of places by names, not GPS coordinates. The names of rural communities act as designators for all kinds of notables events – a plane crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, gold is discovered near Sutter's Fort, etc. One of the clean-up tasks I do for Wikipedia is place coordinates on articles and Commons photos. When I see a photo entitled “Voskhod on the Amur River”, I can quickly go to Voskhod, Russia to see if there are any Voskhods located in a district touched by the Amur.

Note that in Wikipedia, rural communities are “inherently notable". From WP:GEOLAND: “Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low.” No map-maker would advertise “Our navigational charts are better, we took out all the lighthouses that aren’t notable!”.

5. Using the Type Characteristic of Set-Index-Articles (WP:SIA) Unlike disambiguation pages, the links on a Set Index Article list all have the same name AND are of the same type. This is useful when working with text-templates for articles. For example, the links in Voskhod, Russia all point to “rural localities”, so I know I can write one model article that would be a starting point across all of them. Furthermore, this particular article list shows the sub-types for each: settlement, selo, or villages. This provides a guide for additional sentences to add to the model outline for Voshkod articles.

(If this should be on my User Page as an essay I'll move it)

Every-leaf-that-trembles (talk) 22:15, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the nice write-up! I think in reality most of the opposition to these pages stems from the confusion between disambiguation pages and set index articles (and the obscurity of the latter as a concept). Also, ideally, each of these set indices needs to be properly referenced and expanded, which as you can imagine is not a very difficult, but a very boring and time-consuming task. In the future, if you ever need a reference point of what a more complete set index should look like, feel free to point to Alexandrovka, Russia, which I've been using as a development model for all subsequent set indices (Voskhod, Russia, in contrast, is ground zero in that development cycle). And of course, should you find yourself in need of perusing a set index which is missing, feel free to drop me a line. I have means to create a "ground zero" set like this one in a matter of minutes, so it's no trouble at all. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 25, 2016; 13:35 (UTC)