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Improving Mindat.orgOktyabr'skoye/Talnakh/Noril'sk/Taimyr locality hierarchy

24th Jun 2006 15:02 UTCAndrew G. Christy Manager

I was just looking up argentopentlandite and found that the positioning of the Talnakh deposit, Noril'sk is currently a mess. It reads:

Russia > Eastern-Siberian Region > Taymyrskiy Autonomous Okrug

Neglecting any disputes about the transliteration/translation of 'Taimyr Autonomous Region', I note that I. V. Pekov ('Minerals First Discovered on the Territory of the Former Soviet Union', Ocean Pictures Ltd, Moscow, 1998) places the famous Ni mines not in any autonomous Taimyr region but in Krasnoyarsk Territory (= Krasnoyarsk Kray), Noril'sk District thereof.

then things get worse...

> Putoran Mts > Noril'sk > Taimyr Peninsula > Talnakh Cu-Ni deposit > Oktyabr'skoye Cu-Ni Deposit.

1. Putora is a plateau, not a mountain range. The city of Noril'sk is on the edge of it.

2. The Taimyr peninsula is large and to the north of Noril'sk, not contained within it. It has no place in this hierarchy at all.

3. Oktyabr'skoe is a deposit near Noril'sk that is independent of Talnakh, not contained within it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg re. errors in Russian localities, but correcting it would be a start. ...

Many thanks in advance,

Andy C

24th Jun 2006 15:07 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.

Andy,

Relatively great efforts were expended several years back to "straighten out" the localities of the former Soviet Union. If you think there is a problem now, you should have seen it before that effort! There are still problems as you point out with your example. The best way to fix the residual problems is user input such as yours. I'll take your input and look at the problem. Thanks!

Chet

24th Jun 2006 15:11 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Hi Andy,

We all know it's far from finished, but we need more manpower (and time, of course) to do all the additions, corrections and modifications...

Cheers, Uwe

PS Everybody else: why not join and help us in this work in progress called Mindat?

We're all volunteers here.

24th Jun 2006 17:26 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.

Andy,

Please do a search on Taimyr and Krasnoyarsk. Are the corrections now appropriate??

Chet

26th Jun 2006 03:22 UTCAndrew G. Christy Manager

Hi Uwe and Chet-

Thanks for the fast responses and corrections so far. I appreciate that these things only get tweaked as and when people have the time and are notified of specific problems, and am happy to both keep pointing out errors as I find them and volunteer to do more Mindat editing myself if I am authorized down the track.

Kransoyarsk and Taimyr entries are nearly there, but not quite 100% yet. See below...

Re. the political subdivisions of Russia:

1. I am not sure how official the ten 'regions' are, but they are certainly very useful for locating smaller units. And they do seem to be used elsewhere, on sites such as http-colon-slash-slash-members-dot-tripod-dot-com-slash-tilde-argun-slash-index-dot-html. See there for an enumeration, maps, etc.

2. Re. status of oblasts (provinces), krays (territories), and autonomous okrugs (autonomous regions): wikipedia is a mine of up-to-date information. A search on 'Taimyr' reveals that the Taimyr (=Taymyr = Taymyria) autonomous region is currently not part of Krasnoyarsk Kray, but is due to be re-incorporated back into it at the beginning of 2007 after a referendum last year. The same applies to the Evenki (= Evenkia or, after its chief town, Tura) autonomous region to the East.

To be correct as of Jan 1st 2007, then, the whole 'Taimyr Autonomous Okrug' entry must be moved to be a subheading under 'Krasnoyarsk Kray', and the 'Taimyr Peninsula' heading that is currently under 'Krasnoyarsk' directly must be moved to be under 'Taimyr Autonomous Okrug'.

As usual with Russian entries, different transliteration conventions will cause grief and result in the need for multiple alternate spellings in parentheses.The two biggest problems I notice so far are:

(i) The short semivowel 'i' Russian letter with the twiddle on top can get transliterated 'i' (which confuses it with the longer 'i' letter), 'y' (which confuses it with the distinctively Russian muddy central vowel) or 'j' (which is natural and accurate for most users of the Roman alphabet EXCEPT English-speakers). My usage above is not consistent with most of mindat or wikipedia, but is what comes out fastest after decades of osmosis from English-language atlases.

(ii) Russian official names for political subdivisions and geographic features make a lot of use of the suffixes -skoe (-skoye, -skoje), -skaya (-skaja) and -skiy (-skii, -skij), which all correspond pretty closely to English '-ish'. It is usually permissible to drop these in translation, but not everyone will do so. Hence, probably the best solution is again to have all alternate transliterations in parentheses.

PS: Wikipedia undermines my pedantry re. Putoran plateau/mountains, claiming in the 'Norilsk' entry (no apostrophe/soft sign after the 'l') that 'P... Mountains' is an acceptable name for the rim of the Plateau.

26th Jun 2006 09:36 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Hi Andi,

we also use http://www.statoids.com/uru.html as a good source for the subdivisional names.

26th Jun 2006 11:06 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.

I think I nailed it this time.

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