Talk:History of Zakynthos

Original research, refusal to communicate, ridiculously excessive detail, etc.
[copied from ANI] is an SPA whose only interest seems to be to describe the Greek island Zakynthos in excruciating detail. If you're looking at the big version you'll see what I mean--the experienced editor will quickly see that the excess is caused by unverified content and unwarranted detail about anyone, notable or not, who may have had something to do with the island. Last year, warnings and comments were offered by, , , , and even the enigmatic , but the user is unwilling to communicate and, worse, unwilling to abide by our policies. Their disruption led to a short block, but they have returned to restore the article to its glorious 300+k, even adding to it. This really has to stop. Drmies (talk) 15:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * All those admins and not a single one knows how to block as NOTHERE? It's really fairly easy.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:49, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , I tried the nice way last year by making extensive article edits, so that takes me out of the picture. Bishonen may have gotten stuck in one of those famous no-go zones, and you know that Doug Weller is useless the day after a Triple Crown event. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * With an individual that determined? be on the look out for future socks, at that article. GoodDay (talk) 15:57, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've reverted that enormous addition again. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you Boing. Drmies (talk) 16:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * did something important happen yesterday? I vaguely recall something about a lemon and elderflower cake, but that's all. I'd have blocked but like you I was too involved. Thanks to User:Bbb23, a good block. Doug Weller  talk 16:13, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It's a shame he won't listen. If he's the genuine original author of all those words, then he seems to be a talented writer and I'm sure there's material there for a number of spin-off articles about notable people etc, but we'd need far less flowery editorializing prose. I say "If", because I've searched using a few chosen phrases from the bloated version and found lots of hits - though so far only mirrors and, curiously, a number of essay-writing services. If anyone is bored and has nothing better to do this fine Sunday afternoon, try "Ominously, Gedik Ahmed Pasha then proceeded" to see what I mean. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:38, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I tried to convince this editor in 2017 to tighten up the main article about this island and to create spinoff articles about the history, cuisine, music, art and so on. I tried to convince them that including dozens of unreferenced or poorly referenced "mini-biographies" of various people in an article about an island of 41,000 people was inappropriate. Others offered similar advice, which was all rebuffed. I support Bbb23's block. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  17:04, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I was just reading through the history of your attempts (and those of others) to explain and to help, which were rebuffed without listening and with accusations of prejudice. The outcome is unfortunate, but I support the block too as I really don't see any alternative when an editor refuses to budge from an entrenched position. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:14, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A block for NOTHERE seems bizarre. I have moved the long history to History of Zakynthos, so no reader will have to wade through history before getting to the temperature charts - God forbid! The level of detail would not be considered "excruciating" if this was in the Anglosphere, say in Kentucky, and of course Zakynthos has had a lot more history than Kentucky. Johnbod (talk) 17:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , I commend you for creating the spinoff article about the history of Zakynthos. Well done. But your comparison to Kentucky is not convincing. Kentucky has more than 100 times as many people as Zakynthos, and a rich though admittedly shorter history. And yet our article Kentucky is about one quarter the length of Zakynthos at its height, and the Kentucky article contains links to over 30 Kentucky-related spinoff articles and lists. This is precisely the kind of standard structure that we routinely utilize in decent articles about geographic features throughout the encyclopedia, but this editor doggedly rejected all such advice, flinging misrepresentations and assumptions of bad faith toward any editor who disagreed with their methodology. All that being said, I am sure that the article about Kentucky could be trimmed and tightened as well. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  17:55, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * There's detail, and then there's documenting every last belch, grunt, and fart anyone ever emitted in or on a given landmass. The recalcitrance here is an issue, even if this editor is trying to be constructive the repeated refusal to get the point is a bad sign for competence. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 17:23, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, well: History of Kentucky 138k, History of slavery in Kentucky 14K, Kentucky in the American Civil War 78k, Hatfield-McCoy feud 49k. Then there's all the governors. Plenty of belch, grunt, and fart there I'm sure. Johnbod (talk) 22:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The largest of those is only half the size of the aforementioned version of the Zakynthos page, as I'm sure you've seen. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 14:54, 21 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It's full of dreadful peacockery, editorializing, and obvious one-sided opinions/judgments expressed in Wikipedia's voice. I admit I haven't read all of it, but what I have read is full of stuff about heroic Zakynthos folk versus dastardly foreigners. A reasonable article could be salvaged if someone has the sources, the time and the patience to do it. But as it stands, this horribly bloated puff piece is entirely unsuitable as a Wikipedia article. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:30, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * - Seriously?
 * History of the Universe - 38kB
 * History of the solar system -43kB
 * History of the world - 62kB
 * History of Europe - 109kB
 * History of Greece - 45kB
 * History of the Roman Empire - 73kB
 * History of the Byzantine Empire - 86kB
 * History of Athens - 33kB
 * History of Crete - 21kB
 * History of the United States - 111kB
 * History of England - 84kB
 * History of Kentucky - 74kB
 * History of Zakynthos - 172kB - over 10,000 more words than United States, the next-longest article on the list
 * WP:SIZERULE upper limit - 50-100kB
 * Maybe you could spare the accusations of this being related to ethnocentrism, and work on whittling down the article you've just taken responsibility for into a policy-compliant size? Thanks! S warm   ♠  22:11, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A policy-compliant writing style would be nice too. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 05:05, 21 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The sizes of the above listed article have increased.
 * History of the Universe redirects to Chronology of the universe 87.9kB
 * History of the solar system redirects to Formation and evolution of the Solar System 102.8kB
 * The sizes for the other pages have also increased. History of the United States has increased to 221.7kB-- Auric   talk  16:11, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Why are we fixated on which topic is largest in size? Many of the examples above have articles devoted to parts of their histories that when aggregated make the sizes not really comparable. For example: Crete has Ancient Crete, Creta et Cyrenaica, Byzantine Crete, and Emirate of Crete. All that may be needed is proper organization; and that's hardly a topic that needs admin attention. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:25, 21 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It was never really about size, though that's one thing; the level of detail adding up to size, that was something. A whole series of articles based on some of the content, that's a great idea--but still spin-off articles need to have relevant content. One of the the problems with the article as I saw it the first time and this last time was that it basically was a history of Greece, or of a significant chunk of the Mediterranean, inside the article of a small locality, and that's how I tried to narrow it down the first time, but to no avail. NOTHERE is one way of saying "disruptive and can't work within our guidelines and policies", but that doesn't mean they can't help write an encyclopedia if they promise to work within the parameters. I'm not sure that they can, though I am sure that significant parts of their writing can find a place somewhere in our project. But that is a few steps from where we are now, and that's setting aside the sourcing problems, which I didn't seek to address here. I didn't come here to make fun of the editor; I really came here so they could hear it from others as well, hoping they'd have something helpful to say. Drmies (talk) 21:10, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't actually agree with this ("it basically was a history of Greece, or of a significant chunk of the Mediterranean, inside the article of a small locality") at all. The ancient history, and 900 years of Byzantine rule, are actually covered pretty briskly. But from the later Middle Ages to the Early Modern period, Zakynthos and the Ionian Islands in general became a front line in the major strategic conflict between the Ottomans and Venice and the rest of Western Europe, so naturally this is covered in detail, and rightly so. Most of the article covers these several centuries of struggle, with a succession of Ottoman attempts to take the island. Then, between 1797 and 1809, the island managed to be ruled by the French, the Russians, the Septinsular Republic, the French again, and the British.  Naturally this takes some time to cover.  The island was not a scene of fighting in the Greek War of Independence, but was involved. All the period after it joined independent Greece in 1864 is again dealt with very briskly.  The level of detail doesn't seem excessive to me; for most of the 2nd millenium the island had different rulers from the Greek mainland, and developed differently in many ways.  Various people have now swooped on the article and changed the references, which makes it harder to divide the article up, which of course could be done.  Johnbod (talk) 22:47, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I removed a reference or two but I trust that I explained/that it was clear what I was doing. Thank you . Drmies (talk) 22:56, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying nothing there should be touched - of course. I have asked a WP specialist in later Greek history to take a look. Johnbod (talk) 22:59, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Drmies, Johnbod, Boing! said Zebedee, Cullen328 : sorry for the delay in responding to Johnbod's message, but I was very busy both in WP and in real life, and this is a huge article. Having had a look here and there, it needs *a lot* of work. Much of its content is unattributed copy-paste from other WP articles, and is irrelevant to the history of Zakynthos. About half of the article can be trimmed per WP:SS without any serious detriment to the topic at hand. However, the lack of pages in the sources used, and the tendency of the author to throw in Zakynthian presence in events where such is not really attested (I just reviewed again the Morean War section, which is a very poorly edited summary of an article I substantially wrote, and I certainly can't find so many or prominent references to Zakynthians in the sources cited), mean that a thorough pruning is probably impossible. I will attempt a clean-up in the spirit of WP:SS, but this will take time. Constantine  ✍  21:33, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Sigouros and Soumakis families
The second half of the section on the Sigouros and Soumakis families relies exclusively on this book. The book doesn't mention these families nor, as far as I can tell, any of the key facts in the paragraphs it's cited for. Thus I'm going to remove all the content supposedly based on this book. Huon (talk) 00:04, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

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 * Xristos Rouseas zakyn8ino-karnavali.jpg

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I wanna try trimming this down
Hi all, I want to take a stab at trimming this article down of unnecessary detail. It's clearly way too long and not too much progress has been made since this fact was established in mid 2018. Just a heads up. Also, feel free to lmk anything you think I should know before I start trimming it down that can help me do a better job - what parts should I give the most scrutiny to, what parts should I not cut out? Etc. Some advice would be appreciated, I don't want to delete stuff that was actually valuable or without giving notice and seeking advice. Thanks! QueensanditsCrazy (talk) 03:19, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

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 * Panagia Faniromeni.jpg
 * Πυργος-Δομενεγίνη-Ζακυνθος12.jpg

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