Talk:Khtzkonk Monastery

Marshall Bagramyan's repeatedly ludicrous edits to this article
Marshall may well be a native speaker of English, but as a writer, his (her?) level is demonstrably not very high. Repeatedly in this article he has restored ridiculous turns of phrase, suppressing those that have been 'corrected' for him / her. For example, take the phrase: It [Khtzkonk Monastery] is now near the town of Digor, ... It always has been - apparently it never has been erected elsewhere, - so the now is preposterous and has been edited out, only for Marshall repeatedly to restore the cut, as if (s)he is unaware of the meaning of English in this case! Or then, the statement : the destroyed churches have been entirely leveled, with repeated Americanisation of the spelling of levelled and a demonstrably groundless modification of this verb with the adverb entirely. when freely available, up-to-date photographic evidence proves that this claim is false. (See for example: www.virtualani.org with its photos in the section entitled ''Winter in Eastern Turkey) Other editings are also preposterous, with undisputed facts relevant to the article repeatedly removed - perhaps simply because Marshall did not originally include them him (her?) self? facts such as the restoration of the monastery and its buidlings during Russian administration of the region from 1878 until late in the First World War, or the fact that the use of explosives is disputed by some (e.g. T. A. Sinclair of the University of Cyprus) and cannot be conclusively 'proven'. (Otherwise perhaps, Marshall could cite his evidence and sources?) While the use of explosives for deliberate destruction is quite credible as an explanation for one, more isolated chapel, nearer the town of Digor and at some distance from the rest of the monastery complex, it is not at all clearly the case for the others. Any unbiaised observer of what remains at the site will easily come to question the veracity of the unreferenced claim presented as a point of 'fact' that : Their [some unnamed second hand sources] information is confirmed by the physical evidence on the site. Indeed, the resorting to secondary sources presented as reportings of 'fact' is all too typical of poor-quality articles and Marshall regularly pooh-poohs primary sources when they conflict with his (her?) preferred interpretations. As for the patently ludicrous claim This is damage that cannot have occurred as a result of an earthquake, attributed to The Independent Magazine journalist, William Dalrymple, - and this for a region where frequent, major earthquakes that cause widespread damage is amply attested, Marshall really needs to back up the claim with evidence, in order to be more academically respectable. Does he (she?) understand the meaning of the English cannot, or is he (she?) quoting Dalrymple, without indicating such quotation through the use of appropriate markers? Otherwise, why report the opinion of a journalist without further comment, contextualisation or attempt to explain? As for the explanation of the reason for the latest editing by Marshall as Restoring less tendentious version, it is wholly unclear what could be tendentious about edits such as the removal of an absurd now; the addition of known and undisputed facts such as Russian restoration and administration; the removal of further evidence in favour of earlier versions of the article that pass off quoted, but unmarked opinion as 'fact'. Does Marshall know what tendentious means? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.6.24.219 (talk) 16:41, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've just deleted a quantity of text from the article that at first I thought was derived from this post. However, looking at the deleted stuff again although it is very similar in its aims it is different in content (though is still all OR) so maybe they are not by the same person as my edit summary suggested. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 22:36, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The IP edits have gone from Ankara back to from Istanbul: Is it the same person? It seems unlikely that an obscure article could have more than one longstanding inserter of the same denialist OR. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:48, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Funny coincidence for a rarely commented article?
Funny that Marshall, that someone under the pen-name Anonymous, should post an apparently belittling and somewhat racist reference to the editing of this article on the VirtualAni site's message board, on the very same day that the English Wikipedia Khtzkonk article was edited, restoring lower quality, earlier versions. The posting goes under the title: ''Johnny the Turk Proves Point August 23 2012 at 2:23 PM'' (See: http://www.network54.com/Forum/146256/message/1345728216/Johnny+the+Turk+Proves+Point) Perhaps the times of the edits and postings were widely apart, given differences in time zone from where the postings were made or where the site is located? This Anonymous surely cannot be you, Marshall, now can it? (Mother tongue English-speaker's use of a question tag, modified by an idiomatic use of the adverb now). (The French version of the article by the way, makes a better stab at things, though it does contain howlers, such as the use of locaux to mean locals, as in local people, when a more regular English translation would be premises, as in building premises, as well as other infelicities, due no doubt to the author not being a native-speaker of French. Oh well, I guess some people will always try to pass themselves off to others as something or someone that they are not. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?)

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Try the wonderful website at: www.vanker.org (in French only, but with beautiful, recent photography) for much better, up-to-date visual information on this incredible site, together with valuable historical photos. Any close, visual inspection, forensically conducted even by amateurs, will show that the ruination of the site is a far more complex affair than suggested by the obvious nationalist political and prejudiced perspective motivating the writing of much of the text.

If explosives had been systematically used, then why is anything significant remaining at all? Could incompetence in using explosives be the suggestion here? And how come so many ancillary buildings, even foundational retaining walls and pathway boundaries have disappeared? Systematically destroyed by very hard-working, wholly obsessed fanatics at a very remote site, evidently spending inordinate amounts of time and effort for systematic destruction of a hated site - work that must have taken weeks on end if plannned, or a gigantic host of dedicated labourers working in co-ordination, or just the simple decay of nature, in an earthquake prone site seldom visited and certainly never maintained in the last century?

Vanker.org is an Armenian-French site, but thankfully objective and free from the horrendous, fanatical nationalism that cannot find ways for co-operation in appreciation of these relics of the past. The author of the article as it stands looks as though getting over historical grudges is sadly still too difficult a challenge a century later.