Talk:Armenia/Archive 1

message: Armenia is not the only predominantly Christian country in Asia.  Philippines and East Timor are also overwhelmingly Christian.
Oh. Sorry. I thought they practiced Judaism. But it's still the only one on the mainland, correct?--TigranTheGreat 22:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Headline text 

message: I would like to see a citation for this statement: "As with various other ethnic minorities who lived in the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge, millions of innocent Armenians were executed and deported.
The Purge itself may have been responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousand people across the Soviet Union, but the idea that Stalin engaged in political murder on a scale of "millions" in the case of Armenians is absurd.
Soviet agricultural policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s certainly played a role in widespread famine throught the former USSR, but "executed" is quite a rhetorical stretch for what was essentially boneheaded policy and a Soviet bureaucracy that was slow to react to mass starvation.  historymike 00:19, 1 Aug 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, millions or even hundreds of thousands is absurd. That can be said in regards to Ukrainians for example. Tens of thousands is a given though.--Eupator 11:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stalin and Soviets Killed Millions of Armenians??

message: SSherris 21:19, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mount Ağrı? 

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Armenia article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add  to this page. — LinkBot 09:56, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/Armenia|Link suggestions]] 

message: The map over where Armenia is in the world is really confusing - didn't help me pinpoint it, and that was one of the reasons why I looked up the article! Houshuang 05:34, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: Just to state that there is an open poll in here regarding the fact of Armenia being or not being in Europe and if it should figure in the template.--Joao Campos 17:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  European country? 

message: Ok I found a source which you wanted el_c.  The website is down but, Yoni Freeman, a professor at Connecticut College says "90% of all Armenians know Russian".  I don't know why the site is down, it was up a few months ago, but I found it on google, it has that caption which I just gave you.  Here is the link to my google search, the site is the 2nd to last.  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=90%25+of+armenians+can+speak+russian&btnG=Search
--Moosh88 01:20, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not trying to be difficult, but accuracy-wise,  Yoni Freeman's "The Spirit of Armenia" is not referenced to any studies. How do we know it isn't 95% or 85%? I suggest a less specific approximation until this can be established concretely. El_C 02:12, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I did. I'm comfortable with that. El_C 02:49, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

text: The best source here is Soviet language statistical data from 1989, it is produced by asking the Soviet citicens. It says that of 4 623 232 Armenians, 352 136 had Russian as a first language, and 2 178 212 had Russian as a second language. That gives a percentage of monolingual Armenians in the Soviet Union at appr. 45 %, approximately 46 % bilingual Armenians with Armenian as a first language, and appr. 6 % Armenians speaking only Russian. The data, quoted from Soviet GOS publications, are available online at my website. I find it unlikely that the percentage of Russian knowledge is estimated too low in the quoted figures, if anything, the census situation should invite to overreporting Russian skills, not to the opposite. Trondtr 15:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact there was a wave of Armenian nationalism in 1989. The census could be conducted by local nationalist-oriented polititians or people could hide the fact they know Russian.--Nixer 18:23, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  90% 

message: I have added a copyedit tag as I think there are quite a few grammar and style problems in the current article. I will go through it and change it, but as I am unable to do that right now, I have added the tag (I plan to fix it by the end of the day) alf 04:32, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyedit Tag 

message: The anonymous editor may have had a point. According to this, this, this, and this, the adult literacy rate is 98-99%. Even the CIA concurs.  Ramallite (talk) 18:28, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literacy rate 

message: "Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly Armenian-populated enclave that, as alleged by Armenians, Stalin had placed in Soviet Azerbaijan."
Is the "alleged by" really needed here?  One would think that whether Stalin had put it in Azerbaijan is either true or not and in either case is a matter of historical record. Ken Arromdee 03:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable statement 

message: 83.108.45.186, I explained on the talk page why adding McCarthy is inappropriate, and I will repost my explanation below. If you want to add McCarthy, we will have to add the hundreds or thousands of scholars (the vast majority of them in fact) who say that the Genocide happened. Maybe we can do that in the "Armenian Genocide" article, but not in an article about Armenia, where only a paragraph talks about the genocide. If you want to discuss the evidence of the Genocide, go to "Armenian Genocide" article. Neutral means presenting an accurate picture of the scholarship. If it's 99% vs. 1 %, then that's what an article has to convey. Here is my prior post.
83.108.45.186, the article *does* present both sides of the story. Majority of scholars admit the Genocide, and Turkey denies it. That is the accurate state of positions on the issue of the Genocide, and that's what Wikipedia should convey. Making it sound as if both sides are equal presents a skewed view and does disservice to wikipedia. There are no "lots" of historians who deny the Genocide, only a miniscule portion of the scholarly community does so (and they have questionable connections with the Turkish government). Actually I can probably count them (the ones "outside" Turkey) on one hand--McCarthy, Lewis, Shaw, and lately Lewy, who by the way doesn't deny it but says "the evidence is not as strong as for the Holocaust." On the other hand, there are 126 Genocide scholars alone who admit it, and hundreds of other historians doing the same. To present an accurate picture, if you include McCarthy's name, we would have to include the names of many of these scholars, or perhaps Pulitzer prize winner Samantha Power--there is simply no way to do it an article on Armenia--it's probably unpractical even on the "Armenian Genocide" article. --TigranTheGreat 11:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  To the anonymous user who is trying to add McCarthy. 

message: I don't know why the provinces have been spelled the way they have, since nobody in Armenia spells them that way.  The pretty standard transliteration is used by all the major guidebooks as follows:
# Aragatsotn (Արագածոտնի մարզ)
# Ararat (Արարատի մարզ)
# Armavir (Արմավիրի մարզ)
# Gegharkunik (Գեղարքունիքի մարզ)
# Kotayk (Կոտայքի մարզ)
# Lori (Լոռու մարզ)
# Shirak (Շիրակի մարզ)
# Syunik (Սյունիքի մարզ)
# Tavush (Տավուշի մարզ)
# Vayots Dzor (Վայոց Ձորի մարզ)
# Yerevan (Երևան)
So the only changes are removing the apostrophes and the double rr in Lori.  If there is no explanation for that usage, and no complaints, I will change the pages to reflect this spelling, since for sure nobody is googling Geghark'unik' Marz --RaffiKojian 23:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey Raffi. Good job on the Cilicia website:) I have no problem with your proposal. I personally get annoyed when the accurate local Armenian names get tortured (how did Mountainous Gharabagh become Nagorno-Karabakh, which is not accurate even compared to Russian (which is Nagorniy). --TigranTheGreat 11:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks TigranTheGreat, since it's been 2 weeks and nobody seems to think it's a bad idea, and we both think it's a good one, I'm going ahead with it.  This way people who search for "Lori" or "Vayots Dzor" will have a much better chance of finding the articles...  --RaffiKojian 00:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Province spelling 

message: The 2492 date was added by user 195.250.64.76 on 1/17, and I guess because there was no supporting source, Khoikhoi removed it (which is the right thing to do:) ). I re-added the info because it is a date well known among Armenians as the year and day when, according to an ancient Armenian tradition, Hayk defeated Bel, which served as the "founding date" of Armenia. The ancient Armenian calendar used the date as its starting point, August 11 was the Armenian New Year, it is mentioned in the earliest Armenian sources (Anania Shirakatsi etc). It is stated in the "Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia" as well: "... ancient Armenian Calendar (the starting date was 2492 BC, when Patriarch Hayk killed Bel)", v. 4, p. 220, 1978, Yerevan. Note that this was published way before the collapse of USSR and the "nationalist" revival of 1988, at a time when local scholarship was under strict Soviet control to oppress any expression of dangerous "nationalism." The point is not whether the date is accurate historically, the point is it is regarded as the date of the battle according to tradition, which is what the article states, so the info itself is accurate.--TigranTheGreat 00:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It starts with "According to legend...". That's it, it is a legend that virtually every Armenian knows of. I don't see a problem.--Eupator 02:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2492 BC 

message: I also re-added the "southern Armenia" phrase added by user 195.250.64.76 on 1/17, with some modifications necessary to avoid POV. The fact that eastern Turkey is historic Armenia is well established and has been well known for centuries among Westerners and even Turks. Here is one example, from the "Armenia" article in World Book Encyclopedia: "Present-day Armenia and much of what is now eastern Turkey make up historic Armenia, the original homeland of the Armenian people." v. 1, 1994. Therefore, it's hardly POV. It's also relevant, since an unacquainted reader might wonder "what does lake Van have to do with Armenia?" and the addition clarifies the link.--TigranTheGreat 00:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: re-added the "Armenia is in north-east of Armenian Highland" section originally added by user 195.250.64.76 for the same reasons mentioned above. It is accurate, well established, and puts the geography of modern Armenia in the proper geographic and historical context. Removed POV-prone words ("only 30,000" "more than 400,000"). --TigranTheGreat 01:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-adding other info originally added by anon. user. 

message: The links section needs a good cleanup.  There are many links which do not belong on this article, as they relate only to sub-topics which have their own articles.  I am going to take a stab at it, but it may need some more work.  --RaffiKojian 00:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links cleanup 

message: Hi! Please excuse my cheek, but I thought this site the best starting point for searching for Armenians with historical knowledge. Armenian medieval chronicler Zenob of Glak is AFAIK not available on-line, or even in English! There is a passage in his chronicle about the wars of the Parthian empire; he mentions a Greek king Demetrius (most likely Seleucid king Demetrius II of Syria) who was kept in Media where he was given land. Now there is some dispute as for whether this king in fact was an Indian king Demetrius. Is there anybody who has got his work and is willing to translate it to me, or could else assist me as for the context? I would be very grateful for help indeed! Many thanks --Sponsianus 21:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A request for chronicler Zenob of Glak 

message: Please support category Kurdistan against some biased users. Thank you very much. 
Diyako Talk + 17:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Barev

message: In the current article, the following passage appears: The United States House of Representative almost passed a similar law at the end of the Clinton years but Speaker Hastert withdrew the vote from the agenda at the very last minute. It was revealed in 2006 in prominent media outlets that Hastert had received compensations from Turkish authorities to stop discussion on the Armenian genocide.
Since the second sentence amounts to an accusation of bribery, shouldn't there be a citation, at the very least? Redneckgaijin 23:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not bribery, just political pressure but yeah this requires a source. If it's not sourced soon just remove it.--Eupator 00:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Here is the original source (and the sentence above has it wrong).  --RaffiKojian 04:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

text: As I said, the sentence above has got it wrong.  It needs to be re-written to reflect the Vanity Fair article (which preceded a number of others).  --RaffiKojian 04:12, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hastert and the Armenian Genocide

message: The sentence  Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its official state religion follows common misconception I believe. According to Edessa, Mesopotamia,  the kingdom of Osroene was officially Christian somewhat earlier. Note the sentence
:According to Gutschmid (1887), the Abgar who embraced the Christian faith was Abgar IX, and Christian writers have not challenged the substitution. Under him Christianity became the official religion of the kingdom 
in the article on Edessa. Abgar IX died around 212AD.... Stotr 17:24, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the Roman Empire from the 4th century onwards (i.e. the Byzantine Empire) was the first Christian state. Christianity became official in 391 AD, this was much later than Armenia.  --Telex 21:30, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, Rome was actually quite late to make Christianity official.  By 391 when it was declared official by Theodosius, it was already official in several states neighboring Rome in all directions, including 1) Armenia (305) 2) Aksum (c. 325-30) 3) the Goths (Arian Christianity from ca. 345)  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  first Christian state 

message: Does anyone know where the Urartu map comes from? It completely omits the eastern areas that were part of Urartu (including Urtekhene/Artsakh, Utiene/Utik etc).--TigranTheGreat 21:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Tigran, the map is correct. At the time Urtikhene was not under Urartu's domain. Urtikhene was established some 30 years later.
See the following maps with Urtikhene: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Urartu680-610.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Urartu713-680.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Urartu715-713.png
--Eupator 23:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Catalan Wikipedia.--Eupator 16:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Not sure, they look very legit. Urartian boundaries can only be reconstructed using Assyrian annals and Urartian inscriptions. I asked the creator how he made the maps though. Catalan Wiki has the best coverage of Armenian history anywhere in the internet, the sources are not cited unfortunately but almost every single topic is coevered. --Eupator 03:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

text: No it is. Compare the maps to one another and you'll see, in addition many sources confirm that Urartu's greatest extent was reached under Sarduri II. When lands were added in the East later, lands were lost in the South. Sarduri II's son Rusas I lost almost all the territories in the South to the Assyrians.--Eupator 15:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Tigran here is his response: Mainly they came from the text in "Histoire d'Armenie" by Grousset corrected by some later books. I elaborate some years ago thousands of maps based in accounts of history but they are near all hand-made and not availables for web (then were not computers). I elaborate the maps in Corel Draw and then exported to bitmap. They can be used as PD o GFDL. joc 14:32, 6 ag 2006 (UTC)'--Eupator 18:58, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map of Urartu 

message: Let's read the Republic of Azerbaijan Controversy! It is very interesting! Some people want to hide this fact and do not let them delete it!
:What does this have to do with Armenia? -- Clevelander 11:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fake Republic of Azerbaijan !! 

message: Please add a link of my none comercial project to the "News website" section.
Its a news aggregator engin which use new technologies (authomated scripts) to agregate news from armenian news sources in the one spot.
You can read about the project here
URL: http://www.armtown.com
TITLE: Armenian news aggregator
Thanks,
Serge
:The article nor the talk page is the place for self-promotion... —Khoikhoi 20:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll delete them when I have the time. Probably tomorrow. —Khoikhoi 22:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The links need to be separated into Government and Other. All the links in other must be about ROA (such as CIA factbook) not Armenia in general. I will do so today.--Eupator 22:27, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW, I think only useful links should stay. Pakistan is a featured article and look how many external links it has. —Khoikhoi 22:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I created two sub-sections, one for government sites and one for sites that deal with topics exclusively related to ROA not Armenia in general.--Eupator 14:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link suggestion