The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that
medieval Bulgarian military leader Ivan the Russian defended
Plovdiv in a four-month
Byzantine siege only for the citizens to let the Byzantines in while he was away?
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following
WikiProjects:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Bulgaria, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Bulgaria on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BulgariaWikipedia:WikiProject BulgariaTemplate:WikiProject BulgariaBulgaria articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Russia, a
WikiProject dedicated to coverage of
Russia on Wikipedia. To participate: Feel free to edit the article attached to this page, join up at the
project page, or contribute to the
project discussion.RussiaWikipedia:WikiProject RussiaTemplate:WikiProject RussiaRussia articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to
join the project and
contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the
documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a
list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the
full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
I will be reviewing this article in the near future, most likely later tonight. I can tell already, however, that the lead does not comply with
WP:LEAD as it must cover information from all major sections of the article.
CanadianPaul15:59, 26 April 2010 (UTC)reply
As mentioned above, the lead needs to comply with WP:LEAD, covering information from all major section of the article.
Under "Early years and siege of Plovdiv", up to the first reference - "Previously, it was thought that Ivan..." - Since there's no time line given for Pavlov's hypothesis, "previously" is out of context. Since Pavlov isn't cited in this article (I presume that the first reference is a summary of all these viewpoints?) I can't even conjecture when "previously" might have been by looking at the year of the source. Essentially, the reader needs to know here when Pavlov made this hypothesis if you're going to compare it to another time period. Please clarify this.
Same section, "However, in 1288 Hungarian sources make notice of one Russian named Ivan..." There's something grammatically off about this part of the sentence... maybe there should be a comma after "1288" or "Hungarian sources from 1288, however..."?
Same section, is there a reason to keep repeating Theodore Csanád's full name? Normally, per
WP:SURNAME, once a name has been used once, it should only be expressed with the equivalent of the surname in future usage unless there's a need to distinguish people with the same surnames. This happens later with Plamen Pavlov and Michael Shishman as well... from his article it seems like using "Michael Shishman" all the time may be appropriate, but at some points you use just "Michael". (Ivan the Russian is kind of a unique case as well... I would say just leave that usage as it is for GA, although if you're trying for FA status, they may have a problem with it) I guess what I'm trying to say here that the way that names are referred to is inconsistent and doesn't seem to follow WP:NAMES.
Same section, "Ivan is thought to have been joined as a commander subordinate to the despot of Vidin by his personal forces which consisted of Hungarians and, presumably, Russians." - This needs commas somewhere for readability, perhaps "joined, as a commander subordinate to the despot of Vidin, by..." if I understand the sentence correctly?
Same section, third paragraph - "However, Plovdiv was lost to the Byzantines in a rather careless way" - This seems really colloquial compared to the rest of the article. Also, I wonder if, per
WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV it wouldn't be better to leave out this descriptor entirely and let the reader decide for themselves whether it was careless or not.
Under "Anti-Byzantine plot and later career", third paragraph - "It is also probable that Ivan took part in the Bulgarian victory over Byzantium at Rusokastro in 1332 because he was last recorded as Ivan Alexander's representative in the peace negotiations that followed." - This is the perfect place to use "Ivan the Russian" for clarity, as you've mentioned three different "Ivan"s in the last sentence alone
Under "Assessment", are all those direct quotes really cited by the same Internet source?
This article is difficult to read in some places as mentioned above, so once you've gone over the changes mentioned above, I'm going to take another look at it just to make sure that everything is okay, at which point I may have further concerns. To allow for these changes to be made I am placing the article on hold for a period of up to a week. I'm always open to discussion on any of the items, so if you think I'm wrong on something leave your thoughts here and we'll discuss. I'll be checking this page at least daily, unless something comes up, so you can be sure I'll notice any comments left here.
CanadianPaul01:53, 27 April 2010 (UTC)reply
Thanks for your review! I've worked on #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7. About #4: I'm a bit reluctant to reduce Michael Shishman's name to Michael when this is preceded by his title, but I'll have to explain that in the evening in more detail. As for #8: yes, all direct quotes in Assessment come from Pavlov. If that is insufficient, I can probably find the Jireček quote in another of his book's editions (a Bulgarian one), but I don't have the History of Kantakouzenos available. I'll be working on #1 (a more complete lead) in the evening. Looking forward to your comments, my goal is after all the improve the article, not to have it underservedly promoted, so all your feedback is appreciated :) Todor→Bozhinov11:09, 27 April 2010 (UTC)reply
All right, I expanded the lead. As for Michael Shishman's name, the "Shishman" part is a patronymic referring to his father, the despot of Vidin named or nicknamed Shishman. At least in Bulgarian sources, he's rarely called simply "Michael" and practically never "Tsar Michael", probably because we have a couple of Tsar Michael Asens. So I'd rather have him as "Michael Shishman" throughout and treat it as an additional first name more or less. It's much like with
Ivan Asen II or
Ivan Alexander, for example. They wouldn't ever be called "Ivan" or "Tsar Ivan". Todor→Bozhinov19:09, 27 April 2010 (UTC)reply
I figured that the names might not fall into a simple "given name/surname" pattern, so I'm not too concerned about that - my worry was more that the usage is consistent throughout the article. Anyways, I'll have a look over everything now.
CanadianPaul04:20, 28 April 2010 (UTC)reply
Ah, this is much better now... even though I'm twice as tired as I was yesterday, I understand everything perfectly this time! Regarding the direct quotes, for FA that might be a problem that you'd have to deal with but, considering the nature of the source, I think it's sufficient for the GA Criteria. Thus, I will be passing this as a Good Article at the time, so congratulations and thank you for your hard work!
CanadianPaul04:31, 28 April 2010 (UTC)reply