Talk:Almaty

Almaty is a right name of city, not Alma-Ata!!!

Alma-Ata was renamed to Almaty in 1992 by kazakh government, remeber that! 95.56.150.140 (talk) 14:59, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

That does not remove the fact that the city was named 'Alma-Ata' for decades, nor does it necessitate the removal of the Russian characters for Alma-Ata. Such action is WP:Vandalism. Buckshot06 (talk) 15:49, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Considering it is on maps, and history books to that effect, it would be difficult not to, wouldn't it? (sigh)

The Russian Wikipedia uses Alma Ata (in Cyrillic), though Russian-speakers in Almaty and public services written in Russian in Almaty exclusively use Almaty (in Cyrillic). Kdammers (talk) 06:33, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

They use Almata in speech. 2.133.231.202 (talk) 12:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Better not to improve obviously poor writing?

@~2026-32321-28, JohnLaurens333, Campssitie, and Athanelar: a continuation of the "teahouse"

It's obvious that recent edits to this article have made it less awful. But have they really done so?

Let's look at one oopsie that has survived the edits. The article currently (2 June 2026) tells readers that The economy of Almaty and Almaty Region is expected to increase by 6.5 percent per year until 2020. So it first looks as if time is going backwards (as in some forgettable Hollywood comedy). This claim is equipped with a reference, to a page published in 2015 by the World Bank. So, an easy fix: The economy of Almaty and Almaty Region is was expected in 2015 to increase by 6.5 percent per year until 2020.

Except that: (i) The cited source (World Bank) doesn't say "6.5 percent", it says "nearly 6 percent" (which in this context of course means 'less than 6%'). (ii) Not only this sentence but the entire paragraph is taken verbatim (though in places, faultily) from the source that it cites; thus it plagiarizes. (iii) The source describes an achievement that in part was/is thanks to the World Bank; it's not independent of its content.

This article may well have some good bits, honestly summarizing and citing sources that merit being summarized and cited. But the article as a whole will be suspect until a team of conscientious editors has done the hard work of comparing what the article says (its propositional content) with the sources that it cites. Stripping away the puffery, clichés, anachronisms, etc isn't a particularly demanding chore (it can even be enjoyable); but if, as I tend to think, these failings may warn readers that the factual assertions that they might imbibe from the article should be taken with a handful of salt, perhaps the failings would be better retained. -- Hoary (talk) 23:25, 1 June 2026 (UTC) [Slightly reworded -- Hoary (talk) 03:36, 2 June 2026 (UTC)]

I've removed the plagiarizing paragraph. Any editor is of course welcome to restore it, as long as they do so in such a way that (i) it's faithful to what the cited original says, (ii) it either (A) avoids the wording of the original, or (B) retains the wording, but uses quotation marks, ellipses and (square) brackets appropriately, and preferably (iii) the article's body text attributes it to the World Bank. -- Hoary (talk) 23:35, 1 June 2026 (UTC) [Slightly reworded -- Hoary (talk) 03:36, 2 June 2026 (UTC)]

Ok, so here's my cup of tea: The live source cited at the lead says that the city is a Gamma+, but the archived source says its Beta-. Should I replace the source? The Wikipedia article linked also says its a Gamma+, so it might just be a case of needing to update the sources. ★ Campssitie (msg) (contribs) 🧋🏖 03:27, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd think I'll BOLDy replace it, it's not up to date, apparently. ★ Campssitie (msg) (contribs) 🧋🏖 03:30, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, Campssitie. The same sentence makes another assertion, which was backed up by a permanently dead link; a few minutes ago I replaced that with a live one (which does confirm what was attributed to the dead one). -- Hoary (talk) 04:04, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks and you're welcome. This article's sources are a little wonky and I didn't know what to do with the other (dead) source. The side-problem is getting the sources up to date, though. ★ Campssitie (msg) (contribs) 🧋🏖 04:16, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I think it's obvious from the slightly outdated AISIGNS that the article previously got given the AI rewrite treatment by an older model which was also more prone to factual hallucinations. The article definitely needs a far more fine-toothed comb. Athanelar (talk) 04:56, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd advocate a two-step LLM cleaning in this order: first, check every source and remove everything that is sourced to dead links, mangled links (not to the stated source, different parts disagree), and sources that don't support the text. Remove the bad source, and remove what it supports. The second step, only after the first is done, is to remove AISIGNS from the surviving text. Doing them in the opposite order risks leaving good text with bad sources, and that's a worst case.

I just did detailed LLM-removal rewrites on a couple articles (Hypocnemis, New Vision, Mariam Luyombo), and I've convinced myself not to polish the turd: bad info should just go away. New sources and text can be added in a third step as desired. Mariam had an infobox consisting solely of her name for a while, but that beats one with falsehoods in it. M kuhner (talk) 01:52, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

A passing typhoon has kept me indoors today, but this meant that one chore I attended to was checking the references to the lead and those to the first titled section ("Status"). That may well sound more impressive than it was: there weren't many references, and I didn't attempt to reference what wasn't referenced. When I checked any reference, I updated access-date= within its citation template; I recommend this practice. ¶ As we keep being reminded, Almaty was supplanted as capital by Astana. And surprise (not), the article Astana seems to share the problems of this article. -- Hoary (talk) 07:34, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, the lead was puffed up by a large margin. (unsourced and WP:OVERDETAIL for a lead) I've tried to fix it. ★ Campssitie (msg) (contribs) 🧋🏖 08:09, 3 June 2026 (UTC)