Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of armed conflicts between Bosnia and Serbia

List of armed conflicts between Bosnia and Serbia

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This is on the face of it a violation of our policy on improper synthesis, these were wars fought between vastly different entities across different time periods, political systems, etc. Not every battle of e.g. the Ottoman Empire that had been located in or near Bosnia constitutes a "battle of Bosnia + adversary", because the term "Bosnia" (or indeed adversary, Serbia) is used as if it was a coherent entity at the time, which it typically wasn't, as it was usually an occupation or a vasselage situation of some kind. I don't know if it can be rewritten to be actually fine, and I frankly do not trust the quote-less referencing from the newbie user that I already had to warn about sourcing at User talk:Vedib. It was passed through AfC but it shouldn't survive AfD as is. Joy (talk) 12:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: History, Military, Lists, Bosnia and Herzegovina,  and Serbia. Joy (talk) 12:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I should also note that the claims the list captions make are sometimes downright bizarre. Like Ottoman-Bosnian victory and Bosniak population in Podrinje massacred under First Serbian Uprising - this is both casually dismissing elementary facts of the situation, that these conflicts were between the Ottoman Empire and its subjects at the time, definitely not just Bosnia and Serbia as such; and it's making a point of listing massacres in some sort of a grief porn kind of way. It's really below the standard of an encyclopedia. --Joy (talk) 12:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete the article in its current form is extremely problematic; Siege of Belgrade (1521) is not a "conflict between Bosnia and Serbia". The nom's concerns would still apply even if only entries like War of Hum were included.  It should not have been accepted at AFC, but I see no need to draftify it now. Walsh90210 (talk) 23:06, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete . uf, there are all sorts of apples and oranges in this hodgepodge! (Shouldn't, say, Serbs of Bosnia rebelling against Ottomans be Bosnians fighting Ottomans, etc.?)-- ౪ Santa ౪ 99°  08:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Conditional keep . If the author of the article can write and source the article with the changes I list below (I welcome critiques and suggestions from the opposers @Joy, @Santasa99):
 * Bosnian War. The only point during the war during which an entity formally referred to in English as "Serbia" (shortened form) was in a state of war with an entity formally referred to as "Bosnia" (shortened form) was in April–May 1992 when the Socialist Republic of Serbia, as a constituent of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia or "Yugoslavia" (shortened form) was at war with the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Republika Srpska and Serbian Krajina were sometimes colloquially grouped together with Yugoslavia as "Serbia", but such nomenclature is not standard practice in this encyclopedia. If the author wishes to keep this entry, they are advised to replace "1992–1995" with "1992".
 * World War II in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Territorial control initially shifted from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to the German Reich and Kingdom of Italy, partly transferred to the Independent State of Croatia (shortened form "Croatia"). at no point was the formal English name for either the Yugoslav government-in-exile or the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland "Serbia", although their political administration eventually included an entity referred to as "Serbia", parallel to to the Banovina of Croatia (shortened form "Croatia"). Beginning with 25 Novemeber 1943, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (shortened form "Bosnia") was in a state of war with an entity that by that time included an entity "Serbia", so the inclusion of the entry is acceptable. If the author wishes to keep this entry, they are advised to replace "1941–1945" with "1943–1945". A more complex note will be required, complete with references, to explain its inclusion to the reader. Complicated by the fact that the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia also included a "Serbia", meaning "Serbia" was both an enemy and an ally of "Bosnia".
 * Second Serbian Uprising. The Bosnia Eyalet (shortened form "Bosnia") was in a state of war with an entity that already considered itself the Principality of Serbia and was referred to in English as "Serbia" (shortened form), so there can be no objection to its inclusion provided you can source this. However, I would advise striking the sometimes problematic contents of the entire Location column as redundant and (in the case of more expansive wars) too expansive. The same applies to the inlcusion of the First Serbian Uprising, but strike Much of the Bosniak population in Podrinje massacred.
 * Hadži-Prodan's rebellion. Its inclusion is problematic. Yes, it was a "Serbian" uprising, but so was the uprising of 1882 for the most part. Both uprisings featured armies loyal to "Serbia" by that name (in translation), but demonstrating that practically requires the use of primary sources, so they are more appropriate for a "List of armed conflicts between ... and Serbs" type article (see List of Serbian–Ottoman conflicts) than a "List of armed conflicts between ... and Serbia".
 * Flag of Serbia (1792).svg used during the Austro-Turkish War of 1788–1791.]]
 * Austro-Turkish War (1788–1791). It was this conflict that saw the resurgence of "Serbia" as a territorial entity in the first conflict since the death of Jovan Nenad, but it is missing from the list.
 * "Uprising in Herzegovina". Involved an army that mostly desired Austrian rule with a more religious than territorial conception of "Serbia", despite the term's use in a broader sense with undefined borders and administrative structure, making it ineligible for this list.
 * Strike the "Uprising in Drobnjaci", the Siege of Belgrade and the Hungarian-Serbian War from the list.
 * Entries from War of Hum through "Fifth Battle of Srebrenica" needs revision, including additions, merges and clarifications. During this period, both states formally referred to as "Bosnia" and as "Serbia" existed, and conflicts involving both entities in a state of war ought to be included, but only with the appropriate caveats. Part of the issue involves states having rival claims to the title "Serbia"; see List of wars involving Russia for a possible solution.
 * Ivan (talk) 18:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem with all of this is WP:NOR - if no historian would extend the description of e.g. Second Serbian Uprising as an "armed conflict between Bosnia and Serbia", then we can't do that either. By the fact that the term Bosnia isn't even mentioned in that article, it's safe to assume that we're looking at a hard fail here. --Joy (talk) 19:57, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Vedib if you want a source for the inclusion of the First Serbian Uprising:
 * Ivan (talk) 20:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * No, that is not a source for a historian, because that seems to be a political science journal and the first Google hit for Bratislav Teinović is Institut za političke studije. We would absolutely not be serving the average English reader well if we try to serve them this in lieu of actual secondary sources relevant to the topic. --Joy (talk) 09:05, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The journal describes itself as "a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal, which publishes original scientific manuscripts on topics from the humanities and social sciences field". The reviewers that year included historians Darko Gavrilović, Davor Pauković, Nebojša Kuzmanović, Vassilis Petsinis and Wolfgang Rohrbach. The website you cited for Teinović is not his primary affiliation, which is the Muzej Republike Srpske (according to that page and elsewhere). An understandable mistake. He received degrees in history from B.A. in 2001 through Ph.D. in 2019 at the University of Banja Luka. But this is just one of a number of sources stating as much. Ivan (talk) 11:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC) Ivan (talk) 11:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I saw he's also associated with a museum - but that's not reassuring at all, because some of the worst scholarly citations I've seen have been in works associated with museums as opposed to other kinds of research institutions. The issue here should still be fairly obvious - this person has 75 mentions on Google Scholar, where someone like Sima Ćirković has 1560. I've linked the policy on original research twice already, here's now a link to WP:RS for more information on identifying reliable sources. --Joy (talk) 12:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If you have a counterclaim from Ćirković, please do provide it, and I will introduce that into the article in parallel. Even then, one would have to cite more than one source to show something is against . Citation counts are a poor metric for determining what is and is not a "RS", especially in a field of study as small as the wartime politics of the Bosnia Eyalet in the early 19th century. Some of the worst scholarly citations I've seen have been in works associated with museums as opposed to other kinds of research institutions. I laugh in agreement, but while Teinović himself is associated with a museum, the work in question was published in a journal published by a university. And some of the scholarly works I've read have been associated with museums. Especially true for archaeological museums. I wouldn't cite Teinović for 1992 because he was effectively WP:INVOLVED even though his military service did not begin until 1994. But he is one of the few to have defended a doctoral dissertation to encompass the war of 1804–1813.
 * The worst that could be levied against Teinović is not providing reasoning for what to call the Bosnia Eyalet ("Bosnia") and the new Serbian state ("Serbia"), but the only work I know of offhand that discusses extensively the terminology for the Serbian state  the First Serbian Uprising is only available in a few libraries currently unavailable to me, so I couldn't quote from it. Although there are many scholarly sources calling Serbia by that name when discussing this time period, as is the case with Bosnia, there are only a few sources discussing the involvement of Bosnia (and especially Sinan Pasha) in the suppression of the uprising. Maybe 10-20 at most. I chose a recent one with a concise statement for quotation purposes, but there are plenty of others you could select to avoid WP:SYNTHESIS.
 * For an English example that discusses the formal name of Serbia during the revolution with "Karageorge Petrović, supreme commander in Serbia" while also describing "Bosnia" and "Serbia" in conflict:
 * Ivan (talk) 16:37, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * See the new "First Serbian Uprising" entry for a rough idea of what my version would look like. Ivan (talk) 17:16, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, did you just oppose the underpinning of WP:V? :D The burden of proof that something is out there is on the parties trying to introduce this list article. Y'all have to convince everyone else that this would be the encyclopedia describing something from the real world. If all you have is scattered, vaguely relevant mentions of the topic from vaguely relevant sources, that's just not it. The Bataković 2006 citation likewise does not support the case for this list article - yes, there's a sentence that talks of Bosnian beys, but then it also talks of Ottoman rule and the next sentences talk of Ottoman troops and Muslim violence and Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslim forces and it goes on and on. If we cherry-picked any one of these appellations and chose to create a list article based on that, it would be absolute madness. --Joy (talk) 06:54, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I am communicating that I can rescue the article, because its subject is something from the real world. An entity known as "Bosnia" has been in conflict with an entity known as "Serbia" on 6 occasions since 1788 and on more still before the death of Pavle Bakić. The Tanzimat reforms removed most of the autonomy the pashas of Bosnia had previously enjoyed, so you could make the case for excluding the Serbian–Ottoman Wars (1876–1878). But even the Serbian Despotate in exile enjoyed considerable autonomy, to say nothing of the Banate of Bosnia. These were entities that could be punished if they did not answer a call to arms, but were so autonomous that they often did not, and often undertook military campaigns on their own, with little to no involvement of the central authority they answered to.
 * The relevant portion of the Bataković quotation is in Bosnia that Ottoman rule might be replaced by that of Karageorge’s Serbia, but the preceding part shows that at times it was specifically the Bosnia Eyalet that was in conflict with Revolutionary Serbia. I still need to introduce more sources to help delimit the duration of conflict between those specific entities, but I have already shown that parts of the conflict are indeed described by historians as one between Bosnia and Serbia. And that is the norm rather than the exception for those parts of the conflict. So it is not a redundant duplicate of "List of Serbian–Ottoman conflicts", as "List of conflicts between Devonshire and the Upper Palatinate" would be a redundant duplicate of "List of conflicts between England and Germany".
 * Your opposition is because the term "Bosnia" (or indeed adversary, Serbia) is used as if it was a coherent entity at the time, which it typically wasn't, as it was usually an occupation or a vasselage situation of some kind. My support is because both "Bosnia" and "Serbia" were singular, militarily independent entities even when they were vassals. The Banate of Bosnia was on average even more independent than the Banate of Croatia, yet the latter's ban Pavao Šubić was so powerful he became ban of both entities following his conquest of the latter in 1302, entirely of his own initiative and with hardly any input from the King of Hungary.
 * Ivan (talk) 12:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Funny that, List of conflicts between England and Germany could have a redundant duplicate - if it existed. It probably doesn't exist because it's not a topic area that attracts so much contrived conflict. If this list is just going to be replicating low-quality nationalist axe-griding from the real world - Wikipedia still shouldn't have to include it, and WP:ARBMAC has a very clear rule against furtherance of outside conflicts. --Joy (talk) 14:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I am currently rewriting the article. In a few days, it should be well-sourced. Ivan (talk) 14:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Ivan, I am pretty much totally mentally and physically incapacitated with the heat wave we are experiencing around the Adriatic for the last few days. I barely managing to open my laptop and concentrate, and your proposal requires giving some real thought. But, if you think that you can somehow fix it, and if Joy gets on board, I won't oppose. ౪ Santa ౪  99°  08:34, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I understand, thank you. Ivan (talk) 11:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Ivan, I am pretty much totally mentally and physically incapacitated with the heat wave we are experiencing around the Adriatic for the last few days. I barely managing to open my laptop and concentrate, and your proposal requires giving some real thought. But, if you think that you can somehow fix it, and if Joy gets on board, I won't oppose. ౪ Santa ౪  99°  08:34, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I understand, thank you. Ivan (talk) 11:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Bosnia and Herzegovina–Serbia relations. Good last point, @Joy. For the most part, "List of wars involving Entity A" is sufficient, otherwise the possible combinations would produce thousands of stub articles. There are a few exceptions, such as List of armed conflicts involving Poland against Russia. But List of armed conflicts between Bosnia and Serbia is shorter and could be relegated to a section within Bosnia and Herzegovina–Serbia relations. Ivan (talk) 17:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * AFC reviewer comment: I accepted this with the understanding that it would probably get sent straight to AfD, on the grounds that the topic is broadly notable and this kind of more specific editorial decision ought to have some kind of consensus rather than just be the decision of a single AfC reviewer, especially since it's an obvious POV magnet. (Judging from the above, I was right.) If it's deleted, I think it's pretty likely that someone will try to create it again, so if this doesn't end as a merge-and-redirect, it's probably worth salting this one. -- asilvering (talk) 22:22, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Judging from the above, I was right. Out of curiosity, what POV do you think I represent? Ivan (talk) 11:38, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If you think I was implying that you or anyone else in this discussion was POV-pushing, I apologise for that. What I meant by Judging from the above, I was right. is that the fact that the discussion above is so extensive shows that this is indeed a topic that requires broader consensus than a single AfC reviewer's opinion. -- asilvering (talk) 19:50, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * References

Relisting comment: It would be helpful to hear from some new editors about how to consider whether: 1) there is improper original research (current consensus is leaning towards yes) and 2) whether or not deletion or something else is the right remedy if there is improper OR. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:48, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment: The article has changed drastically between the first discussion and now, and will likely continue to improve for several days. Ivan (talk) 13:54, 18 July 2024 (UTC)