Talk:Bulgaria/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Tea with toast (talk) 04:53, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Initial review – Issues needing to be addressed
Overall, I am pleased to find that the article is well written, well organized, and goes into an appropriate amount of depth without getting too detailed. I appreciate the amount of work that has gone into the development of this article. That said, there are a number of details that must be addressed before I can pass this as a good article.

1. There seems to be a lack of consensus about the use of American English versus British English. For the most part, I see British spellings, but there are several words ending in -ize instead of the more common -ise. I am not fluent in British English, so I am not sure which is correct, but I think it needs to be looked over. I think it would be best to put a tag on the talk page as to which one is used in the article.

2. In the subsection "Third Bulgarian state", in the 2nd paragraph there is a confusing sentence: "The three wars combined led to 152,000 military deaths, 260,000 military wounded and a wave of 253,000 officially registered refugees, 6% of the pre-war population of the country, and an unclear number of unregistered refugees, probably as many as a third of the official ones, from the lost territories, Macedonia and Eastern Thrace, who put an additional strain on the already ruined national economy.". What is the 6% referring to? A third in relation to what? The sentence is far too long and needs to be split up. I would suggest one sentence about the dead/wounded, one sentence about refugees and one sentence about where the refugees came from and their economic impact.

3. I'm also confused by the first sentence in the "Environment and wildlife" subsection: "Bulgaria has signed and ratified the Kyoto protocol, and has managed to achieve its target by reducing carbon dioxide emissions with 30% from 1990 to 2009." Is it supposed to be "by" instead of "with"?

4. In the "Art, music and literature" subsection, the sentence listing Bulgarian writers is far too long and confusing. Please break this up.

5. In the "Economy" section, I think the Bulgarian currency deserves at least a sentence or two.

6 (a). The References section has some serious issues that need to be addressed. Several references need full citation (in reference to this edition): numbers 21, 22, 23, 24, 31, 147, and 89. Number 89 is also a dead link. The checklinks tool also found several other broken links. These need to be fixed.

6 (b). The "Further Reading" section is too long and unorganized, and consists of many items that should be in a separate "Reference" subsection. See Citing_sources. For more details. I believe that it would be best to create a separate section listing those sources that are cited in brief in the "Notes" section. All other sources that do not have in-line citations should remain in the "Further Readings" section; however, only include a selected few and make sure that they are alphabetized.

I will place this article on hold and allow one week for these changes to be made, more if it is requested. I'm willing to help with the formatting of the References section if you are unsure of how to go about reorganizing it. Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. I am very interesting in seeing this article improve. --Tea with toast (talk) 18:40, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * 1 - It has to be decided what variation of English will be used in the article. My English is a mixture of American, British and Rhodesian variations, so I wouldn't really be able to perform a standartization of the text under one style. I will ask either an American or a British user to convert the article in the appropriate variation when a consensus has been achieved.


 * 2, 3, 4 and 5 have been taken care of. I've shortened the "Third Bulgarian State" section a bit and slightly changed the wording on some sentences to make it an easier read. I also replaced the dead links with appropriate active ones, mostly fresh such.


 * As to the organization of references, I would need help with that, if possible. I could not provide full citations of the references you mentioned, as these works were added a long time ago by other users, and I do not possess the works in written format. - ☣Tourbillon A ? 22:34, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Problems with sources
Thank you, Tourbillon, for cleaning up some of the previous issues. I spent some time reorganizing the references and further reading sections, and I have been finding many more citations that are not properly cited. I've done some digging on the internet to find full information for some of them, but there are other citations that I don't think we will be able to find. For these, I think you will have to find new sources to support the text. This is very important as I can not give this article a good review if it is not 100% verifiable. --Tea with toast (talk) 01:43, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

(Referring to this edition) References needing full citation (or else find a new source): 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24


 * Now, I've done a search on some of the uncited sources. There is precise information here, such as:


 * ...Boris I of Bulgaria (852–889) was baptized a Christian in 864... (the sentence in the Bulgaria article itself could thus be transformed into "the spread of Christianity in Bulgaria started with Boris' conversion" or something similar);
 * Under Simeon’s successors Bulgaria was beset by internal dissension provoked by the spread of Bogomilism (a dualist religious sect) and by assaults from Magyars, Pechenegs, the Rus, and Byzantines. The capital city was moved to Ohrid (now Okhrid, Macedonia) by Tsar Samuel after the fall of Preslav in 971...


 * However, I also found this. On page 25 we can find a citation by Browning (1975: 194-5) that states "the grandiouse dreams ... of Symeon ended in the dreary reality of Peter's long reign, when Bulgaria became a harmless Byzantine protectorate." However, this document is a study by Paul Stephenson, another well-known historian, and further bellow in the commentary he states that actually Bulgaria declined militarily, but continued to prosper culturally and economically well into the 960s. This is a slight contradiction and might lead to a rewriting of the paragraph. This is something I did not notice before, but I guess it could be sorted out in the next 2 days.


 * In the article Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria, there are a number of online-available references, concerning 21 and 22. However, I couldn't find anything on 16, 23 and 24.


 * As I said, I don't have the works cited and I searched for a replacement, and this is what I've dug out for now. - ☣Tourbillon A ? 10:27, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I've found both new sources and added full information on the already existing ones. The article was also standartized to American English. If you have any other remarks, I'll be glad to fix them. - ☣Tourbillon A ? 16:05, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Final review
I am very pleased with the changes that have been made to the article, and am impressed that everything was accomplished much sooner than I had anticipated. I am happy to say that this article meets all the criteria to be listed as a good article. Congratulations! Thanks for all your effort!--Tea with toast (talk) 02:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

To give you some more suggestions on ways to improve the article, in case you plan to submit it for Featured article review, one area that must be looked at is the cuisine section. As the section is currently written, it sounds like an excerpt from the economics section. The main article on Bulgarian cuisine offers a wealth of information, and you could easily incorporate a few sentences from there to expand the content and give it some flavor. Also, the format of each of the cited references should also be combed through. I'm not sure about all the policies on non-English references, but I think there would be a preference to at least have the titles of those refs translated into English followed by an (in Bulgarian) notice. I'm not an expert here, so you should probably ask some higher authority about what is necessary. Good luck! --Tea with toast (talk) 02:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I will address these issues soon, although there is still some general work to do before I nominate it for FA status. Thank you very much for the quick response and all your efforts. - ☣Tourbillon A ? 09:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)