User talk:Helpful Cat

You are involved in a recently filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Russo-Ukrainian War AN discussion and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, Simonm223 (talk) 17:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

On 5 July 2025, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Zelensky Effect, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was that the authors of The Zelensky Effect analysed material from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's entertainment career in the context of the development of civic national identity in Ukraine? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Zelensky Effect. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, The Zelensky Effect), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Schwede66 03:54, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! :) Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 05:05, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Can you fix this map File:Control of Oblasts of Ukraine.png? The current captions here are implying that only the dark blue area is "real" Ukraine and the rest are not Ukraine but only "under Ukrainian control" as if Ukraine was an occupier of non-Ukrainian land despite the fact that the land in the other colors except for red is part of Ukraine under international law. If you can, can you fix it to better captions such as for dark orange be labeled something else, perhaps "under complete Russian occupation" or something? Most importantly, the blue needs to be labeled in a way that it is clear that the Ukrainian territory is not just the blue area. You're a lot better at being concise than me so whatever you can do would be great. Thank you!--CitationAuditor (talk) 16:04, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi! I don't have graphic design skills, but my sister does and is willing to help. However, my sister says that it is very difficult to change the text on top of the map (particularly the bottom part of the legend, which is on top of many small islands). I think the best way may be to contact the uploader and ask for the original layered version, which would let us modify the text freely.

I definitely think these labels should be changed - I think the biggest issue (as you point out) is that all of Russia is labelled as "Russia" (the red area), but only unoccupied parts of Ukraine are labelled as "Ukraine" (the blue area), implying that areas of Ukraine under partial or full Russian occupation are in some sort of limbo rather than being part of Ukraine. What would you think about these labels instead?

• Russia
• Ukrainian territory fully occupied by Russia
• Ukrainian territory almost fully occupied by Russia
• Ukrainian territory mostly occupied by Russia
• Ukrainian territory almost fully controlled by Ukraine
• Ukrainian territory fully controlled by Ukraine

It looks like this map isn't currently used in any articles, so this at least isn't too urgent, I think. Also, since this map is from February 2024, we might want to make sure it's still up-to-date before using it as the base for any revisions.

Thanks! :) Helpful Cat {talk} 17:23, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Those labels sound great!--CitationAuditor (talk) 17:38, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Let me know if you manage to get the original layered version from the uploader. Alternatively, my sister suggested that we could crop out most of where the legend currently is (since the grey parts are not relevant to the war anyway), and put the legend over Russia instead (since it's a large solid-colour area). That might still result in some sea borders in the grey region getting skewed by a pixel or so, but should mostly sidestep the difficulty of modifying the legend while it's on top of the map. Helpful Cat {talk} 18:21, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't think there is much point in asking for the original from the uploader because they are inactive and the map is their only upload. I would assume though that they got the template from one of the svg maps of europe on Commons, so maybe your sister could use one of those as a template?--CitationAuditor (talk) 18:23, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's an idea too. My sister says cropping out the original legend and placing a new one elsewhere would be easier than tracing the borders of each region onto a blank map. I'll let you know once there's an update! Helpful Cat {talk} 16:43, 21 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

See here: File:Control of Oblasts of Ukraine (updated labels).png. I hope this works! Helpful Cat {talk} 17:51, 21 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wonderful! The labels are so much better. I do think that pink was an interesting color choice for the key, but it's not material to the information. I've nominated the bad map for deletion and pointed to the map you uploaded as the proper replacement.--CitationAuditor (talk) 23:10, 21 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's great! Thanks! :) Helpful Cat {talk} 04:18, 22 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi Helpful Cat. Thank you for your work on High-rise littering. Another editor, 11WB, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

This is fine, but please be aware of WP:NOTNEWS. It would be a good idea to expand this beyond only occurrences.

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|11WB}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

11WB (talk) 18:00, 23 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I was tempted to cite Vice as their resources popped up multiple times while I researched Kapustin, but when checking with WP:RSPLIST, I found there's no consensus on the reliability of Vice over at least 17 discussions. As such, I've decided to avoid citing it altogether. I wouldn't remove your reference, but others might not be as lenient. Daisy Blue (talk) 18:14, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, thanks! I did see that WP:VICE says there is no consensus about whether Vice is reliable. I figured that that meant its reliability could be decided on a case-by-case basis per WP:MREL, and it's not unacceptable to cite it because there's no consensus that it's WP:GUNREL either. I made sure to back it up with extra citations to Colborne's book and to Le Monde - I only needed it as a source for the statement that Kapustin was involved with the Azov movement. Helpful Cat {talk} 18:31, 6 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, in your AN report, you linked Talk:Denis Kapustin (militant)/Source review as an example of Turbo's excellent analysis, but considering I've already challenged some of it, and it's possible there will be third-party edits to that table, could you instead link to Turbo's revision of it at the time of your report? Daisy Blue (talk) 19:12, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi! Thanks for pointing out that there were some questionable sources in TSA+'s analysis. I see that TSA+ has now removed them, so I don't think I should link to the original revision because I don't mean to endorse the original version as better. I'll add a note pointing out that there were issues and changes were made. Helpful Cat {talk} 10:56, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

I was just thinking that if I add to that summary, and the potential goal was to make drastic changes, some of which are now in my draft, an administrator looking at that version days from now or in an archive in months wouldn't see the revision you were talking about, for better or for worse. Daisy Blue (talk) 11:23, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

True, you're right. I'll link to the current revision. Helpful Cat {talk} 11:52, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

On 18 February 2026, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article High-rise littering, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that bicycles, television sets, a sofa, and a washing machine have been thrown from high-rise buildings? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/High-rise littering. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, High-rise littering), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

		Hook update
		Your hook reached 11,550 views (962.5 per hour), making it one of the most viewed hooks of February 2026 – nice work!

GalliumBot (talk • contribs) (he/it) 03:29, 20 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

HurricaneZeta^C 12:02, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

On 20 April 2026, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Mount Shchekavytsia orgy, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that 15,000 Ukrainians joined a Telegram channel for an orgy on a Kyiv hill in the event of a Russian nuclear strike? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mount Shchekavytsia orgy. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Mount Shchekavytsia orgy), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

		Hook update
		Your hook reached 21,944 views (914.3 per hour), making it one of the most viewed hooks of April 2026 – nice work!

GalliumBot (talk • contribs) (he/it) 03:28, 21 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello, I found it very interesting to see that someone had created an article for the phrase "I need ammunition, not a ride". Do you think Zelenskyy's speech right after the invasion started would merit an article? I think it also has some legendary status today, and Putin's has one. Just giving an idea for an article in case it might interest you. Regards, Super Ψ Dro 22:47, 28 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello, thanks for the message! :) I do think that speech deserves an article. It's been on my idea list, I might get started on it soon. Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 23:30, 28 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I do think that particular speech can easily pass WP:GNG. One of the most epic statements during the conflict. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 13:53, 8 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

• Another interesting article idea might be the "social contract" theory on Putin's Russia. Basically, the idea that Putinist Russia works on the basis that the population stays out of politics as long as the government brings people prosperity or just stays out of people's lives . You'll likely have heard this argument before. I can find several reliable sources discussing the topic, not as much in academic journals as in think tanks and newspaper analyses (as it has started being discussed more only recently, since 2022). I am not sure if there's actually that many, but it might be worth looking into.

Hopefully I am not being overwhelming, please do tell me if so. Sometimes I think of interesting article ideas, but currently my energy for writing articles is very low. I like addressing users with similar interests in case it might intrigue them. I see you've started a draft on the speech, which is looking good so far. Hope to see more great stuff from you in the future. Many of the active editors in the Ukraine war topic area have gone inactive since 2022, so your role is appreciated. Regards! Super Ψ Dro 22:33, 29 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi there! Sorry for the late response, I've been travelling. That's an interesting idea and I've heard of it. I wonder if it's specific to Russia, because it seems that concept could apply in various authoritarian regimes (it reminds me of the term "performance legitimacy", for example). The general topic of how authoritarian states maintain buy-in from their populations must have lots of academic study. There's probably rich article potential there, although it would be a much more ambitious project than the articles I've written so far.

No worries about being overwhelming, it's always nice to hear from like-minded editors, and I'm glad articles I created are being read. Collaboration makes Wikipedia great :) Thanks for noticing the draft too, I'll post here again when I move it to mainspace. Cheers! Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 07:09, 1 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi Helpful Cat. Thank you for your work on Inauguration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Another editor, SunDawn, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

Thank you for creating the article!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|SunDawn}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 12:38, 8 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

On 17 May 2026, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article I need ammunition, not a ride, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that, on the fourth anniversary of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a video address showing the bunker in which he told the US that he needed ammunition, not a ride? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/I need ammunition, not a ride. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, I need ammunition, not a ride), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 17 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

On 19 May 2026, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Inauguration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy jumped to kiss his best friend on the head as he walked to his inauguration in 2019? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Inauguration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Inauguration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

Cielquiparle (talk) 00:03, 19 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

Since you are a lot better at being concise than me and have helped come up with better titles in the past, can you help think of some better titles for the current Fergana massacre article? It's a rather complicated situation but the cliffnotes is basically that Meskhetian Turks forced into exile in Central Asia by Stalin were the target of large-scale mob violence spread throughout the Fergana Valley (generally attributed to Uzbeks, although there is evidence of very significant participation from other nationalities dressed in Uzbek garb, but that's another story) in May-June 1989. I feel that the current title is crappy because this was not a single massacre but rather a series of massacres with no particular one being the most significant; it does not specify the year, and that presents a problem because there was a pogrom in the same region almost exactly one year later that targeted Armenians and Jews, but details of the 1990 one constantly get mixed into the article without clear differentiation of the timeline. That said, I'm not sure an article about the 1990 pogrom against Jews and Armenians would survive an AfD on notability since it was much smaller in scale so there's a lot less RS to work with. Some of my ideas for a new article title are 1989 violence against Meskhetian Turks in Central Asia or 1989 Fergana pogroms against Meskhetian Turks but those are pretty long. Your thoughts?--CitationAuditor (talk) 01:23, 11 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi there! Sorry for the late response, I've been travelling. How about just 1989 Fergana massacres? Since the pogrom against Armenians and Jews was in a different year, adding 1989 should be enough for disambiguation without needing to add "Meskhetian Turks".

An alternative would be to broaden the article's scope by adding a section about the 1990 pogrom (distinguishing the timeline clearly) and rename it Fergana massacres or 1989–1990 Fergana massacres, but I don't know enough about the topic to determine if it would be reasonable to group the 1989 and 1990 events into a single article. Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 13:40, 12 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Do you think you can help find some sources for Draft:Ukrainian Humanitarian Mission in Georgia (1993)? It's not my draft but I think the topic is highly notable and I fear it will be rejected due to insufficient sources, especially since AfC has a serious bias against non-English subject matters. Can you help add sources to it? Thank you!--CitationAuditor (talk) 23:48, 27 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

I didn't know about this one. Here are some sources I've found so far that aren't yet in the article (not all might be RS):

• documentaries/video reports: Ukrainian Toronto Television, 1+1, not sure about the provenance of this one (might be WP:SPS? But the military history museum below says this documentary, or one with the same title, was presented there)
• radio/podcast
• articles: RBC-Ukraine 1 and 2, Gazeta, National Military History Museum of Ukraine, Ukrainska Pravda, brief mention in ZN interview with Georgian Azov instructor

I'll let you know if I find any more! Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 16:06, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello! Why did you reject my edits to the article about Ukrainians? Do you doubt the greatness of this nation? Nikolai Kurbatov (talk) 07:51, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Not at all. But as I'm sure you're aware with almost 200k edits, articles need to be WP:NPOV, and subjective opinions about the greatness of any nation don't belong in articles :) Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 08:13, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm drafting an essay about the importance of using native-language sources (and fact-checking crappy Russian encyclopedias). I've been trying to use more Georgian sources and less Russian sources in my writing and fact checking, but the extremely poor quality of Mkhedruli OCR makes it far more convenient to use Russian newspapers and books since they are searchable by keyword a lot more often. Since you do a lot of work related to Ukraine decolonization, I would like your input. I'm not as aware of the status of Ukrainian OCR in Ukrainian library websites, although I would imagine it's a bit more useful than the Mkhedruli OCR I usually deal with which is almost always completely useless.--CitationAuditor (talk) 18:06, 4 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi! Thanks for this; I think it's interesting and important, and in line with other efforts against systemic bias. I haven't needed to try Ukrainian OCR in Ukrainian library websites, as so far I've only written about recent topics that had web sources available, so I haven't run into this dilemma too much. I would absolutely strive to focus on Ukrainian sources over Russian ones for Ukrainian topics, where available and following the considerations you wrote about. (Although I would distinguish Russian sources from Russian-language Ukrainian sources; I've often encountered the latter especially for events before 2022 and 2014, although I've had little occasion to use them on Wikipedia). Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 16:32, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

While I think it is worth it to distinguish Russian-owned sources from Russian language sources like you said, I still feel as a matter of principle it's far better to use Georgian or Ukrainian-language sources whenever possible. I've started having a little more luck with the Georgian OCR for pdfs of საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკის უმაღლესი საბჭოს უწყებები but I just can't it working on the regular newspapers, the font is too small and it thinks lots of Mkhedruli characters are numbers! Sadly though there is a harsh bias against non-English sources here, and an even bigger bias against sources in the smaller languages because some people here have a mindset that if a person is only subject to media coverage in their native language, then they can't be notable, which is (here comes my slogan) giving in to Russian propaganda that non-Russians aren't as important as Russians. I often feel guilty whenever I cite to a Russian newspaper for an award date because I'm often pretty lazy and don't want to do the extra work of digging up a Georgian equivalent that isn't indexed as well or typing out a really long title letter by letter instead of copy-pasting Russian OCRed text.--CitationAuditor (talk) 16:57, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Also, as far as verifiability is concerned, you might want to start fact-checking Ukrainian articles that cite the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia and cross-reference the facts to Ukrainian newspapers of the time. I've noticed lots of fact errors in articles that cite Soviet and post-Soviet encyclopedias often have typos in the dates, my personal favorite being all the times these "Great" encyclopedias say people died after their obituary was published.--CitationAuditor (talk) 17:02, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, and sorry for the late response! That's a good idea, although I haven't attempted to search or use historical Ukrainian newspaper archives before, and that would be more challenging than the research I've done for articles so far. You're doing really invaluable work with this in-depth archive research and fact-checking.

I also agree with your thoughts in your first message about Russian propaganda that non-Russians aren't as important as Russians. Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 14:48, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm not too familiar with websites of libraries of Ukraine, but I sure wish they had more stuff digitized. If you want to start fact-checking award dates of Ukrainians with Soviet honorary titles, you can look up the decrees in Vedomosti in The National Library of Armenia. They have only the Armenian translations for the earlier decrees but for the later decades they have Russian language issues with pretty accurate OCR so they're searchable. I would not be surprised if the articles about Ukrainian celebrities have the wrong dates for when they got high titles like People's Artist of the USSR. You can also read issues of Materialy Samizdata in the Blinken Archive, if those materials interest you. And Hathitrust has Daily Reports, which are in English.--CitationAuditor (talk) 23:55, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

That's great. Thanks for the resources! Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 14:45, 9 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Happy to help! I'll let you know whenever I come across some other goodies. I really want to reduce reliance on websites in the .ru domain, so I try to compile good resources when I find them.--CitationAuditor (talk) 00:31, 11 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I forgot to mention: it is often possible to reverse-engineer the title of an article from a snippet in a Google Book that is an entire volume (or even several volumes) of a particular periodical. It's a rather complicated process sometimes, but can sometimes be accomplished by either guessing a ton of words until things can be put together, finding a table of contents from a different website, or finding other things that cite to it and the subject matter and page numbers line up. If you ever find a quote in Google Books but can't figure out the title, author, and which issue it was from, let me know and I'll take a look and see what I can do.--CitationAuditor (talk) 00:38, 11 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! That's great, I'll let you know if I ever face that issue :) Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 07:32, 11 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I just discovered that https://diasporiana.org.ua/ has free digital copies of Ukrainian publications. I strongly encourage you to check it out, I just found out that it had a copy of this book I've been trying to find for ages! It even has issues of The Ukrainian Quarterly which is in English.--CitationAuditor (talk) 23:18, 17 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

And https://archive.ukrweekly.com/ has archives of The Ukrainian Weekley which is also in English.--CitationAuditor (talk) 23:32, 17 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Wow, these are excellent. I also see many English books on the first site. Thanks for the links! Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 01:49, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

If you are browsing them and find anything about Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, or Ilia Chavchavadze please let me know and share it - I swear every time I go around looking for Georgian stuff I find at least two things on Ukraine before I find what I'm looking for, I wonder if this happens in reverse too.--CitationAuditor (talk) 12:50, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Interesting, I'll let you know if I run across any material about them! Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 13:50, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

It actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it: Ukraine had a lot of dissident activity, especially from church activists, just like Georgia. So collections of materials about dissent in the USSR that contain the mentions of Georgia that I find in Google Books almost always contain mentions of Ukraine in their series too. And because there's many issues in each volume in Google Books, making me check each issue until I find the right one, it's pretty much inevitable that I'll stumble on interesting stuff about Ukraine before reaching the quote I want. It's very similar with Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks - the situations of Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks are very very similar too, being Muslim minorities originating from Christian-majority republics of the Soviet Union until they were violently expelled from their homelands in the year 1944 by Stalin. In fact, during the huge 1989 pogrom some Crimean Tatars were even attacked after being mistaken for Meskhetian Turks in the chaos. So materials about Meskhetian Turks and Crimean Tatars are often in close proximity in collections of samizdat materials.-CitationAuditor (talk) 13:57, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I just made this page for websites for citations to use in lieu of sketchy Russian websites like kino-teatr.ru (I have lost count of the number of errors I have seen there). Please add to the list anything good that you find.--CitationAuditor (talk) 18:36, 18 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! I'll add resources there if I find any :) Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 02:53, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply