User talk:Laveol/2008/February

Zlatarski
I'am going ro translate article about Zlatarski on Serbien. When will you finish it?--Vojvodaen (talk) 09:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

An administrator thought the article is too POV, and, therefore, I deleted my contributions on Vasil Zlatarski. In the moment I don't feel like continuing working on it. I don't know when and if I will overcome the frustration of editing articles here. Just in case someone entertains a wrong idea: no, I am not Laveol - User:Lantonov and User:Laveol are different persons who do not know each other.Lantonov (talk) 09:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Link in WP:ANI
This link: Administrators' noticeboard no longer works. Maybe it is deleted. Lantonov (talk) 09:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Archived probably. I don't know why, though. -- L a v e o l  T 10:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I searched 2 archives before and did not find it. Will search some more. Lantonov (talk) 10:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It was removed with one of the last 50 edits -- L a v e o l  T 10:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I found it - at the bottom of Archive 124-- L a v e o l  T 10:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Lantonov (talk) 10:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

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Abecedar
Could you please point out what exactly is POV in this article? Keep in mind it is about a schoolbook.  Balkan Fever  07:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Re:
I said grow up, not group up. You are accusing a user, who has made absolutely zero tendentious edits, and zero derogatory or pejorative comments, of being (from what I can judge from your comments) an über-racist. That is why you should grow up.  Balkan Fever  00:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * And if you cared to look, you would see I brought up Vergina Sun at Fut.Perf.'s talk page before telling him about Abecedar. Incidentally, it was also before your accusation of Kobra85 as well. Note that I have also been accused of being Frightner - in the name of blatant POV pushing on the part of that now banned user, so excuse me for being sceptical of your motives.  Balkan Fever  04:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You're sceptical of my motives cause you know nothing about Frightner. And it might've been me that thought you were him cause you started of with insults - as he ended so to speak. So excuse me for taking you for someone else just because you call me all sort of things - just like he did. -- L a v e o l  T 13:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It was not you I was referring to, and no, I did not insult you. I merely said most Macedonians think Bulgarians are Tatars, just as most Bulgarians think Macedonians are Bulgarians. I never said what I thought. Excuse me for being sceptical that you are actually the user I was referring to. I'm going to end this conversation now, for fear of others getting involved, and then a subsequent crackdown by the admins.  Balkan Fever  22:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * That's exactly why I said it might've been me not that it was me. But I'd consider it, too - Frightner already had one re-incarnation before you started editing - kind of makes sense. And no need to play innocent - you don't get blocked for personal attacks out of nowhere + the couple of warnings you got. -- L a v e o l   T 22:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * They weren't about Bulgarians though, as far as I remember. And don't forget that was before ARBMAC. Do you have any more questions about my blocks and/or warnings?  Balkan Fever  23:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I had no questions to start with ;) -- L a v e o l  T 00:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

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Blaga Dimitrova
PLease can you expand Blaga Dimitrova, Thankyou  ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 20:57, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Bulgarian administrator
Hello, Have you heard if there is an English wikipedia Bulgarian administrator? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Komita (talk • contribs) 17:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Your Reverts in Shishmanids
May I ask why you reverted the categorization of Shishmanids as a Turkic dynasty given that the article itself points to thier Cuman origin? You indicated that there was "no need for this". Tell us why is there no need to categorize a dynasty of Cuman origin as a Turkic dynasty.--Nostradamus1 (talk) 21:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It says 'of partial Cuman origin'. That does not justify your POV-pushing cats you've been promoting to all sorts of articles. -- L a v e o l  T 22:35, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Based on Vasary (2005) I can remove the word "partial" since English publications have a far greater credibility over non-English web sites. Furtermore why can't a partial Cuman ancestry be sufficient for this categorization? Do you know what Shishman means? It is clearly the male line that was Cuman.--Nostradamus1 (talk) 02:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Your tendentious editing in Cumans

 * 1) You deleted a well sourced sentence in the article commenting that "this is mentioned further in the text and it is not known for certain - I guess you haven't read the article" This was a false claim since the article did not already contain the information you removed. The sentence you removed was from a Cambridge University Press publication -one of the only three citations in the article.
 * 2) When I resored your deletion you restored it claiming that: "do not labe constructive edits vandalism - the sentence is reapeated in the article".  Your deletion appears rather to be a DESTRUCTIVE effort out of your POV. The sentence is clearly not repeated elsewhere in the article.
 * 3) Your next excuse for removal of the sentence became "repeating sentence + the way it is worded here is POV - your own POV Nostradamus".
 * 4) I restored the sentence commenting that: "Vasary(2005) worded it exactly that way. Verbatim".
 * 5) You deleted the sentence again with a comment: "the sentence IS repeating + it is POV-pushing".

Do you really think you are going to fool anybody by throwing out the accusation of "POV-pushing"? It is clear that your objective is nothing other than the removal of the following sentence from the article:"The Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (Asenids, Terterids, and Shishmanids), and the Wallachian dynasty (Basarabids). István Vásáry (2005) 'Cumans and Tatars', Cambridge University Press."--Nostradamus1 (talk) 02:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you read the article? I take it for NO. Do it and then we'll talk. And if I'm wrong could you tell me why you were reverted by another editor as well? Or you'll avoid that question as you did all the others. -- L a v e o l  T 08:49, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Your tendentious editing in List of Turkic states and empires
The section Historical kingdoms and empires has the following comment:"The following listed kingdoms and empires were at some time ruled by Turkic kings/khans/shahs or other dynasties. Mentioning of any particular entity in this place should not be read to mean that the entity as a whole was Turkic or even had more than a significant minority of Turkic subjects."
 * 1) Despite that you removed content commenting: "ho-ho-ho - could you please provide me with some info what a Turkic country is - and why do you deny the fact that these diansties might (not for sure) have Turkic origins (partial)"
 * 2) I restored the content back asking you to: "Read Vasary(2005) and Hupchick(2005))".
 * 3) You again deleted the same content with a comment: "POV addition - contributor refuses to co-operate in any way"

How am I refusing to cooperate? By refusing to give up sourced material and yield to your POV? I am not impressed therefore your tendentious deletion will be restored.--Nostradamus1 (talk) 03:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've responded to you twice on the talkpage, but you avoided the questions asked (again). If you do not provide any answers why are you pushing your POV, I'll have to revert you again because of your refusal to even think about a consensus decision. -- L a v e o l  T 09:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Sandbox article
Hi Laveol, I have made some changes to the sandbox article on the Macedonian alphabet in response to your comments, if you'd like to take a look and make any comments/suggestions. I have addressed your comments on the sandbox talk page. (→ sandbox link, → sandbox talk link) Cheers, AWN AWN2 (talk) 06:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

History
Hi, Laveol. As much as I would like to contribute to Bulgaria-related history articles, I gave up completely on this because the experience is too stressing for me. Especially with the arrival of the brutal Turkish propagandist, it became impossible to write anything remotely approaching historical truth. Therefore, I returned to fields that were my previous contribs to Wiki: math, physics, and biology. In those, no one could push me rubbish like "POV", "NPOV", "OR" or the likes. In history, it is very easy for someone with a handful of propaganda pasquilles to push anything he likes, and at the same time be protected by admins. There are several factors contributing to my decision to give up on history: The above make Wiki-editing a drag and a permanent source of irritation. This is why I refused to partipate in this farce when I have the option to avoid this unnecessary and unhealthy spending of nerves. In the course of the arguments, I gave many non-Bulgarian sources (50+) that are listed in Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2008-01-05_Turks_in_Bulgaria. All those were ignored, and only the sources of the Turkish POV pusher were taken as reliable, despite the ample evidence given on the talk page that many of his books were written by a political order, and all of them were cited very selectively. The non-Bulgarian sources cited by me are mostly unbiased, but very few of them give much detail and facts. Facts are what is needed, not opinions. For a wealth of very accurate facts, one must use Bulgarian sources. The best sources are:
 * 1) The insistance to use English sources over all others. English sources in all times and topics in history are more biased than original ones because they are highly dependent on the political situation in which they are written, the personal biases of their authors, and the propaganda of the party who has had enough motifs to translate that into English. Also, there are many factual mistakes in them, coming from the author not knowing the language, geography and customs of a country. For the same reason, I wouldn't rely on English history written by French, or German authors, for instance. Here comes also the general reliance of guidelines and admins on English sources before all others, exemplified by the requirement to provide authorised translations of non-English sources.
 * 2) The blind following of the letter but not the spirit of the guidelines by the admins which results in a highly distorted picture of history given by the agenda-driven people (those who edit Wiki for some outside benefit or for taking a revenge) who quickly achieve dominance in edit wars because propaganda is their main business, and they do not have other work or interests beside it.
 * 3) The ARBCOM ruling on Macedonia-related articles which, according to me, is wrongly extended to all Balkans, and which in practice forbids editors to reach some consensus on these articles. Usually those articles end up in whatever POV the admin leaves them in.
 * 4) The attitude of admins who view all editors that edit Balkan history, and other topics listed in a special page, as "plague", or at best, as persons with a criminal intent, liable at any time to a grading system of punishments (see "rouge admins" and the Moreschi page on "Plague").
 * 5) My dislike of being confronted each day with new abuses and threats by people with a real criminal intent, deliberately distorting obvious historical facts with transparent aims.
 * 1) Петър Петров. Съдбоносни векове за българската народност. В "История на България", т. 4, 1975, София
 * 2) Иречек, К. История на българите, София, 1878 (Those are German originals)
 * 3) Иречек, К. Княжество България. 1901 (Those are German originals)
 * 4) Димитър Ангелов. Образуване на българската народност. Наука и изкуство. София. 1971
 * 5) Петър Петров. Образуване на българската държава. Наука и изкуство. София. 1971
 * 6) Йорданъ Венедиковъ. ИСТОРИЯ на възстанието въ Батакъ 1876 год., София, печатница Художникъ 1929
 * 7) Хр. Гандев. Българската народност през XV век. Демографско и етнографско изследване. Наука и Изкуство, II изд., София, 1989. This is especially useful because it relies extensively on Ottoman documents. Also sources given in this book.
 * 8) Страници от българската история. Очерк за ислямизираните българи и националновъзродителния процес. Many authors, under the principal editorship of Hristo Gandev. Наука и изкуство, София, 1989. Many more facts and sources in it.
 * 9) Mercia MacDermott. History of Bulgaria. non-Bulgarian source by a truly informed English historian (knowledgable in language, geography, customs, folklore, etc.)
 * 10) Sources that are listed in the book: J. McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, 88–91,(1996).

Because McCarthy's book is written explicitly to deny Ottoman attrocities, and present Muslims as victims, the authors he argues against tell the hurting truth. Those books are only the beginning. However, the facts and numbers listed in them are enough to tear to pieces all the Turkish propaganda on the Wiki pages on Bulgaria. This is why the Turkish propagandist is so afraid of them that he calls them "criminal". Criminal, indeed, but pertaining to the Ottoman attrocities described in those books. Because, in fact, he is trying is to rewrite Bulgarian history mainly in the Ottoman period but not only, also topics like very early Bulgarian history, in a manner to make the Turkish Yoke a blissful and longed for period in history, I do not see a more effective means than to give facts and numbers, in tables, graphics, and details in all related pages, and if necessary create new pages like Early Ottoman Period, Demography of Bulgaria in XV century, and the like to contain all those facts and numbers. Also, for every source given by him, one has to give at least five sources to counter that. It is not very hard to do because his sources are very limited being only those English writers who support Turkish revisionism, and those are very small isolated minority, diminishing with every passing day. One has to ignore his rants about "Bulgarian nationalism" and abuses on ethnic and national grounds. There are enough sources to counteract, what is lacking is time and perseverance. I do not have enough of those, and seeing that you are a very conscientious and honest person who can easily spot the falsity, and become personally offended by all those lies, I cannot recommend it to you either. To counteract this, one has to be at least such gönsurat as the pan-Turkic pusher. --Lantonov (talk) 10:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * As I feared you're frustrated by Nostradamus'es attitude towards other editors. That's why I had him on ANI, but nothing happened. He called us all sort of things and even said you were lying about your degree and so on. Even now he's pushing the same stuff everywhere in Wiki with the same attitude he had for us (calling us vandals, insecure Bulgarians, liars etc etc). I really can't understand why all this hatred towards us and I am totally sure it's not just because of content disputes (or nationalistic communist driven changes as he calls it whenever a Bulgarian dares to edit an article). -- L a v e o l  T 22:18, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. I am frustrated not so much by Nostradamus1 as by the lack of reaction towards your complaint which was very justified in the event of one person abusing and parodying a whole nation and grotesquely distorting large spans of history in a very public place, such as Wiki. At first I thought that his main reason was frustration by the "re-birth process" in which either he or his parents suffered exile in Turkey (and probably, after failing to find a job there, in another, maybe Western, country where he learned good English). However, judging from his high activity (he has many POV forks in Wiki connected with apologizing the Ottoman empire, as well as articles in project on his user page which are his POV forks of Bulgarian history under the Turkish Yoke) on various topics connected with Ottoman attrocities, Ottoman rulers (look especially on his activity in the Anti-Turkism category) and the sources that he cites in all those POV articles (eminent apologetics of Turkish genocide denial) it became very clear to me that he is a part of the Turkish genocide denial pack responsible specifically for the Bulgarian branch. He knows Bulgarian very well, although he denies this several times. His insistance of someone translating the Bulgarian-language message of Gligan showed very clearly that those claims of him not knowing Bulgarian are false, as is almost everything that he writes here. In short, he is the most obvious POV pusher there can be. And instead of banning him out of hand, he is encouraged by banning his opponents, people who are just disgusted by his blatant lies and abuses. I cannot blame only the admin for this because he is following closely WP:NPOV although he was instrumental in enforcing the MOSMAC foolishness which made the already hard task of dealing with such blatant POV pushers next to impossible. Instead, this admin directed his sights at me declaring the whole article about Vasil Zlatarski which was just a crude translation, for a complete POV and adorning it with POV tags. After shutting us up on ANI, he pushed your complaint under the carpet. The guideline itself promotes the POV pushing by deterring users of using accurate history facts. This is a policy good for Wiki admins and owners because it saves them the cost of litigations: they say that Wiki only quotes what is written in English. However, this policy is not good for the truth of the information because most propganda lies are written in English while the truth is written in another language. "Truth" itself is a dirty word here in Wiki which must never be used in discussions, and ridiculed in semi-official guidelines as TRUTHR as a trade-mark of "nationalists". In short, the whole process of editing in history sucks and Wiki articles on history and politics are definitely a place to be avoided if one searches for some truth. I hope it is not so in other sections, that truth matters more in them but the future will show. I wish you a nice day today and less nerves in editing here. Lyudmil. --Lantonov (talk) 07:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

There is some reaction by the admin today (blocked for 24h) so I hope what I wrote above is at least partly untrue. --Lantonov (talk) 09:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If the situation is not as hopeless as I think, I can propose the following strategy: This looks like a hard trudge, and I doubt if I would be able to achieve it even partially, but it is worth trying if the situation with the history section changes dramatically. --Lantonov (talk) 11:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Find as many sources as you can, aiming primarily on facts, numbers, and details
 * 2) Find his sources, preferably the editions that he uses (very important)
 * 3) Find as many of the sources listed in HIS sources (many of those will contain truths that the apologets try to refute and counter with lies)
 * 4) Ask him to verify each of his sourced statements with template by quoting exactly the relevant passage from the source and to point to the exact page in the source
 * 5) Place "fact" tags after each of his unsourced statements, no matter if they seem good or bad; watch those tags and delete unsupported statements after one month
 * 6) Find the places he has cited in the verification in the respective book, compare them, and compare the context they are in (in selective quoting often the partial quote says exactly the opposite the author wants to say)
 * 7) Search for the respective places in "your sources" (understood as points 1 and 3)
 * 8) Flood his statements with your statements so that his man appears marginal, and place him last
 * 9) If you find compromate against his man (I gave McCarthy's compromate in the talk to Turks in Bulgaria), place this compromate before stating his man's opinion
 * 10) Watch and weed out words that can be thought as POV (a list of such words is in the guideline)
 * 11) Read everything 2 or 3 times trying to imagine how it would appear to a reader who knows nothing about it
 * 12) Look for relevance of the material to the article


 * Ahem. Guys. This "strategy" looks very much like a recipe for POV-pushing. No, Lantonov, this is definitely not the way to do it. This is countering tententiousness with more tendentiousness. It is exactly this strategy that everybody seems to follow, and it is exactly for this reason that these pages are so bad.
 * The only legitimate way out of a dispute like this is writing for the enemy. I keep repeating it, but few people seem to be prepared to listen. You must take his concerns on board, take them seriously, and do your best to give them the fairest treatment you can. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, please allow me to disagree with this. Let's take Nostradamus, for instance. We have a user, armed with 5 or 6 books, selectively chosen from about 300-350 books on the same topic. These half a dozen say exactly the opposite of what the rest say. This example is similar to the one where someone takes from the many books written about the Holocaust, only those that support the Nazis and start citing them everywhere. The only difference between the two cases compared is that apologizing Holocaust is explicitly forbidden, while apologizing Turkish attrocities is not explicitly forbidden (yet). To "write for the enemy" in these cases means to sympathize with the Turks (Nazis) with what they have done and take their concerns as legitimate which means that we at least partly justify their actions.

I do not see where my strategy violates WP:NPOV. On the contrary, it lays emphasis on verifiability in connection with reliability. It emphasizes that POV which is supported by more sources and marginalizes the POV which is supported by less sources. It lays stress on facts, numbers, and details, and less stress on opinions which are subjective by definition. It guards against factual errors by emphasizing native sources, by people who know the country, language, customs, folklore, geography, etc. all of which are very important for the history of a place. It gives more voice to the actual participants in the events, which have written memoirs, for instance. Although memoirs of one person are probably subjective, memoirs of 15 persons are not so subjective. So if you have a better strategy that addresses these issues, I will be glad to hear it. --Lantonov (talk) 16:02, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

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Sandbox article
Hi Laveol, thanks for looking over the sandbox article. I have added a comment regarding your comment! (→link) Cheers, AWN AWN2 (talk) 06:55, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Balkan peoples
The Ianyevs are colonists from the Republic of Ragusa that have moved to the center of the Serbian Medieval Realm as miners practically seven centuries ago. They have survived in Kosovo until the Albanian KLA's guerrilla attacks, after which most of them fled to Croatia.

The Succi are a large Slavic ethnic group with very deep roots. They formed a majority in Slavonia and have had significant populations in Vojvodina. --PaxEquilibrium (talk) 18:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)