User talk:Kahkonen

The First post to me

Hi! The links to the text of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is quite useless in the Treaty of Tartu article. First of all the text is in Finnish. Secondly we already have an article on the Molotov-Ribbentrop (with a link to the treaty text, in english). If you want to write about how the Treaty of Tartu affected later treaties with the SU, please do so. I hope you had time to look at the Neutral point of view policy.

Good thing you started Viena expedition, do you know any good books dealing with the subject, in finnish obviously? :) With the exception of the Aunus expedition these "Heimosodat" are grey area to me. -- Jniemenmaa 08:09, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

About Karelians and Finns

Welcome here!

With regard to your comments on Finnish (language), my opinion is stated at User:Tuomas#Project spring 2004. Very little, if anything at all, is gained from talk page conversations in languages other than English. (Besides, down here in the South, even the University Library has a very small selection on sources in Finnish. I don't care to wait for requisitions, so I'm stuck with English, Swedish and (in few cases) Danish and German works.)

There is plenty of good advice to read at (or rather linked from) Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers. Nobody expects you to read all of it at once, but you might gain a lot from browsing through these pages every now and then. Particularly if you some day fall victim of wikistress. /Tuomas 13:12, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I think I or you have understood something wrong. But imho, Swedesh-speaking Finns are Finns. So are Karelians (Finns living North Karelia and those who lived in ceded territories), Tavastians and others. But Karelians of Republic of Karelia are not Finns.

/Kahkonen 6 May 2004

We have to be careful with the difference between Finnic and Finnish; as Finnish in its modern meaning is a term much younger than the concept of Karelians. In the 13th century, and for a long time after that, Finns denoted people from the other side of Tavastia (seen from Viipuri). — But I noted that my usage of all-caps in an edit summary ("KARELIANS"[1]) came to seem a lot more aggressive than I intended. — I guess you remember that, seen from Korela, they could as well have spoken of Swedes for what we today call Finns. ;-))

The concept of Karelians, on the other hand, is useful and functional for all of the period we try to cover. Despite some of them allied to the Swedes and some to Novgorod; despite some of them Catholic, later Lutheran, and some of them Orthodox.

By the way, and just for your information, even if I have remote family connections to the isthmus (and also to the northwestern Ladoga shore), I think I am not particularly attached, emotionally, to Karelia. But it is useful and informative to refer to Karelians in certain contexts. /Tuomas 18:52, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

But we still don't have to use term Karelians when writing about evacuees who left from ceded Karelia. They were Finns as more as Tavastians (as I'm from Häme), Swedish-speaking Finns and others.

And if we try to cover all times, we can't write about Finns before 19th century, because only then most Finns considered themselves as whole nationality. So, should we write Tavastians, Savolaks, Karelians, Proper Finns, ...?

The main point I want to say is that Finns living in North Karelia (Joensuu, Lappeenranta, ...) and those evacuees from ceded Karelia (Viipuri, Käkisalmi, Sortavala, ...) are not same nationality with Karelians who inhabitates East Karelia.

Also that is fun to mark Finland's borders before year 1920 :-), because there were not such a Finland before it.

Good sites

http://www.fikas.no/~sprocket/snpa/chapter-IX11.htm

/Kahkonen 7 May 2004 (disappointed after lost in Fin-Can 4-5 OT)

I don't want to be or sound more than mildly rude or something (yes, that WAS irony!), but for the time, I feel that there are quite a lot of issues where your POV differs not only from my personal POV, but from how most of the English speaking world understands things Finnish. (If they know anything about us at all, that is.)

The idea that the Grand Duchy was not "Finland", or that East-Karelians and West-Karelians should have been "different peoples" belongs here. (That their nationality was different is not the same as them being ethnically different.) That is not to say that your ideas are useless or utterly wrong or so, only that I think that you should consider what you write carefully. I believe your input then can result in very important improvements of many articles here. I ask you friendly to read more of the articles that describes the NPOV ideology and also the discussion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Unencyclopedic. /Tuomas 08:01, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it is POV. Grand Duchy was Finland, but before it there was not Finlad, only Eastern regions of Sweden. And about Karelians, do You think that other Finns and evacuated Karelians are "different peoples"? I, and official Finland, do not think. So you want to say that Karelians living in East Karelia are Finns? I think _that_ is very POV. Kahkonen 09:07, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think you should see the emerge of the concept of Finland as a more gradual process. The 50 years of experiment with parliamentarism, and the glory of Saint Petersburg, had effects before 1809. With regard to Karelians, no, I do not think that West- and East-Karelians were "different peoples". There were differences, which as far as I know all could be explained by their different experiences of history. I consider your edits to emphasize these differences more than necessary, and it's in some of your edits I saw them being made into different peoples, which in my opinion is a disadvantage with these of your proposals. I would never agree to unqualified statements like "the East-Karelians are in reality Finns", where did you get that from? However, to call them "Russians" as some Russian texts do, is also a little bit too much for me.

;-> /Tuomas 09:28, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Here: http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/karjala.html

I guess you refer to the following quotation:

Under the competing influences of East and West, the people of Karelia began centuries ago to split as it were into two distinct peoples. This bifurcation has been visible across the areas of language, culture and religion — Orthodox in the east and Lutheran in the west.

That's a "qualified statement". :-) It explains in what way the author reasons, and it says "began" to split into two distinct peoples which is a somewhat more careful statement than your[2]:

• The Karelians is a term used for two different types of Finno-Ugric people:
• Karelians inhabiting the Russian Republic of Karelia (and Tver's Karelia) and Finn tribe Karelians living in eastern Finland.
• The dialect of Finns called Karelians are often considered a Karelian dialect (Karjalan murre), but right term is Southeastern dialects (kaakkoismurteet).
• Many of Finn tribe Karelians are Orthodox Christians.

Even the Red Book is more careful:

However, the Finns from Finnish Karelia have also been called Karelians, although they speak a Finnish dialect.

So, what it all boils down to is that you may be understood as wishing Wikipedia to take the Stalinist or Russian POV that "Karelians are different from Finns and the inhabitants west of the 1812-border were not Karelians but Finns" and give it legitimacy while delegitimizing usage inherited from the Fennomans and their belief in Karelia as the well of true Finnishness. But Wikipedia is not to act as a judge between different points of view. Wikipedia is not to prescribe "correct" usage. Wikipedia is to describe usage in English, and possibly in other languages when that's relevant for the usage in English.

"Karelians are different from Finns and the inhabitants west of the 1812-border were not Karelians but Finns"

"However, the Finns from Finnish Karelia have also been called Karelians, although they speak a Finnish dialect."

I have understood that this is also POV of Finns and "West Karelians".

/Kahkonen 19:30, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

If you now instead had proposed an inclusion of a reference to this difference between points of view, I believe you'd made a much better impression and spared yourself some criticism. Such a proposal could for instance have been worded like:

In English works influenced by a Finnish or Swedish understanding, people both west and east of the border are considered Karelians. In text influenced by a Russian understanding, Karelians are distinguished from Finns (or Swedes) so that people west of the border are typically considered Finns and not Karelians.

By the way: In my understanding, which may (or may not) be a minority-view in Wikipedia discussions, POV is not a foul word and points of views are not wrong. :-)

/Tuomas 15:05, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

(Nowadays article Karelians is corrected by people who can English better than I.) Kahkonen 15:52, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Others

On the location of Käkisalmi, I'm distressed by having put it in the Republic of Karelia. I knew better, but made a mistake - stupidly. Thank you for correcting it. /Tuomas 07:50, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Many Karelias

Damn, I had a updated map lying on my harddrive. I've cleaned up the map somewhat. The most drastic move was to remove the pre-WW2 borders alltogether, I think that is the most sensile thing to do. Otherwise there are other historic borders that are interesting, Pähkinäsaari for instance. (That would need a map of its own). See Image talk:Many Karelias.png -- Jniemenmaa 18:54, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Java

Hi. Please disambiguate Java on your user page. For example, Java. Also, C as well. Thanks. RedWolf 16:43, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

About Karelia in List of territorial disputes

Hi, I've removed Karelia from the list when I moved it, and here's why I think it doesn't belong on the list.

On the CIA factbook, it says that:

various groups in Finland advocate restoration of Karelia and other areas ceded to the Soviet Union, but the Finnish Government asserts no territorial demands.

The key is that the Finnish government does not assert official territorial demands. Unofficial demands are too numerous to count, and every country has a few. Just to give three examples: Japan has Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, for example. Korea has Gando and Tsushima. China has Outer Manchuria, Mongolia, Tuva, and the Ryukyu Islands. (These aren't rare claims by the way; I encounter them online all the time, including POV language used on the Chinese and Japanese wikipedias.) Are we going to start adding all of them? -- ran (talk) 01:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we could add all of them to that list and then start a new list List of official territorial disputes or something like that. Did you say Kuril Islands dispute is not "official"? Kahkonen 19:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The Southern Kuriles are officially claimed, but what I was referring to was all of the Kurile Islands. That's why I didn't use the word "southern" in my original post.

As for a new article, I would suggest being cautious as I foresee the unofficial list being filled up quite quickly with a lot of fringe / unsubstantiated claims. So it would be better to leave the current pages as is, and start a new List of unofficial territorial disputes. -- ran (talk) 22:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Soviet-Finnish conflict 1921—1922

(When you made last editing in the article, I only was going to write to Talk:)

Moved this to the articles talk page. Kahkonen 17:49, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Unit matrix

Hi there - I noticed that you added a link to fi: for unit matrix, so I thought that maybe you would happen to have a reference for unit matrix? I have always thought that the unit matrix and identity matrix were always synonymous with each other. --HappyCamper 11:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

There is confusions in Finnish terms too, but for example in this page: [3] matlab function ones() (every element one) is explained as unit matrix (ykkösmatriisi) and eye() (diagonal elements one) is identity matrix (yksikkömatriisi, identiteettimatriisi). The Finnish article is translated from English one, btw. Any good reference I can not give, unfortunately. Kahkonen 11:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for your help! --HappyCamper 19:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Ce'Nedra

Ce'Nedra, an article you created, has been nominated for deletion. We appreciate your contributions. However, an editor does not feel that Ce'Nedra satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in the nomination space (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and the Wikipedia deletion policy). Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ce'Nedra and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Ce'Nedra during the discussion but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Skywolf ^talk/_contribs 20:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Please review What Wikipedia is not - encyclopedic material is not plot information and speculative analysis of fictional characters. I'm not disputing that this is a major character in the book, what the AfD is disputing is whether or not the content of the article is within WP:NOT guidelines. --Skywolf ^talk/_contribs 01:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Many_Karelias_further_north.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Many_Karelias_further_north.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 23:50, 29 September 2007 (UTC)