Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bulgaria/Archive 1

Bulgarian politician stubs
Greetings everybody.

User:Barbov has created a new stub template for Bulgarian politicians - Bulgaria-politician-stub - and listed it on the proposal page of WikiProject Stub Sorting WP:WSS (usually, it is the other way around.) The reason I am writing to you is that I could only find 57 stub articles relating to Bulgarian politicians, and our stardard requirement to approve a new stub template is that it is used on 60 stub articles. So if any of you could, say, create 5 new stubs articles, the template will be sure to be approved. It probably will be anyway, but reaching 60-65 stubs will make it certain. Any new articles don't have to contain much information - e.g. "XYZ is a Bulgarian politician. He / she has been a member of Parliament since ... representing the ... political party."

If any of you create these missing articles, please tag them with either Bulgaria-politician-stub or both Bulgaria-bio-stub and euro-politician-stub. (I've used the last solution myself.) If the template is approved, I will update all articles to use the new template. If any of you create the "missing" stubs, please tell us where the proposal is listed on Best regards from WP:WSS. Valentinian (talk) 00:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The new template was approved. To use it, just type Bulgaria-politician-stub Again, good luck with your work from the guys at WP:WSS. Valentinian (talk) 22:58, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Great! Big thanks for the work and all the best to you too :) [[Image:Flag of Bulgaria.svg|20px]] → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 07:07, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:TownBG
Hello! I've been recently trying to make the Bulgarian town template look better by making it a real infobox with optional parameters and so. I'd like to include some space for a coat of arms (герб) left of the map and a Cyrillic name for the town under the (the PAGENAME I feel should be only displayed when there's no, say,  specified), an optional parameter for the party of the mayor displaying it  and in parentheses (скоби) right of his name, a parameter for the municipality (община) and other optional parameters that one would include in an infobox. Could someone more experienced with wiki and HTML markup make these changes to Template:TownBG or give some hints. I've been looking at other templates' sources and could ultimately cope with the task, but it's not an easy job after all. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 14:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Could someone write here how to obtain location maps (the grey ones with red dot) for the town infobox (if not available from the Bulgarian Wikipedia or Commons)? Preslav 10:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, there are maps available for all towns in Commons (but they use a different transliteration — they use 'kh' instead of 'h' for Cyrillic 'х' and 'u' for Cyrillic 'ъ'), and the Bulgarian Wikipedia has maps for most villages.
 * Here are some instructions on Petko's website explaining how to make such a map if there isn't one available (unfortunately they're only in Bulgarian). Basically, you enter the name of the village above the map and a map would appear illustrating a village with the closest possible name (you can ignore it), then you check the coordinates in GoogleMaps or any other another similar service, enter them in the field below the sample map to the right, click on the button below the two coordinates fields, save the map and upload it. Todor→Bozhinov 10:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Featured content
The snow scene at Shipka Pass photograph by User:Psy guy is set to appear on the Main Page on 3 June (a Saturday). Greetings everyone!

Also, the Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria article is currently being peer reviewed and will soon be nominated to become a featured article. Everybody is welcome to express his opinion when that happens. Todor Bozh inov   → 18:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation and naming
I think some work should be done on categorisation and naming of Bulgaria-related subjects. I think for artificial lakes (яаэовири), "Dam" should be used for the barrier and "Reservoir" for the lake behind it. "Mountains of Bulgaria" should be renamed "Mountain Ranges of Bulgaria", containing the ranges (planini) and subcategories for each range that contain the mountain peaks of that range. Comments? Preslav 17:33, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Indeed, "reservoir" is the better word in my opinion too. As far as I know, only Australian English speakers use "dam" to mean the artificial lake and not the barrier. And Bulgaria is not Australia for sure :) That said, I'd support moving the pages to "_____ Reservoir" titles. As for the mountains, a mountain range is only a type of mountain, but there are also massifs and so on. "Mountains of Bulgaria" fits with "Mountains by country", but creating subcategories for the better known Bulgarian mountains may be useful. That's what I think, hope my opinion was useful! Todor Bozh inov    → 18:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Provinces of Bulgaria categories
I've now created a category for each province of Bulgaria (e.g. Burgas Province has Category:Burgas Province). Make sure you add any new articles you create to the category in case they have a relation to it. Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 22:54, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 16:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Request for help
Well aware this isn't Wikiproject Romania, but you guys are just over the border... could you please take a look at Transformations imposed by the Soviet Union in Romanian Education after the WW II.. needs some attention and comment. It's listed for AfD right now. Buckshot06 08:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Bulgarian monarchs
While creating Template:Bulgarian monarchs I discovered that articles on this subject are quite a mess in terms of naming and numbering of monarchs, particularly during the Second Kingdom, and there are discrepancies between the bg and en versions. They need to be taken care of by someone with relevant qualification in history. --DStoykov 20:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Why do you think they're a mess? User:Imladjov, a historian who works at the University of Michigan, took care of them not long time ago. If there are any discrepancies between EN and BG, then the problem is most likely in BG. Todor→Bozhinov 11:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the article about Kaliman II is titled Kaliman II of Bulgaria, but the first paragraph starts with "Kaliman Asen II" and the Bulgarian page starts with "Калиман II Асен" ("Kaliman II Asen"). Michael Shishman of Bulgaria starts with "Michael Asen III" and the bg article is titled Михаил III Шишман Асен. This is very common, I'm not sure if there's a reason for that. Also, the 1246-1256 ruler is titled en:Michael Asen I of Bulgaria and bg:Михаил II Асен. I know history isn't maths and deals with vague information, but is it that bad? And I'm not talking about the content of the articles here - it seems to be quite good.

Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria FAC
I have (again) nominated the article Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria for featured article status at Featured article candidates. If you'd like to vote or comment, please do so at Featured article candidates/Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria. Thanks in advance :) Todor→Bozhinov 20:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 20:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

And again... Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria FAC
The Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria article has been nominated for a featured article yet again :) If you'd like to voice your opinion, you're encouraged to do so on the nomination page. Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 18:10, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Bulgarian movies
Hi folks, a few days ago I was asked to take part in WikiProject Films/List of films without article/List of missing Bulgarian Films. Never known there were so many BG movies and only 4 were done when I joined the initiative. I added "Orkestar bez ime" and "Opasen char" and will keep on adding. I have here "Toplo", "Lyubimec 13" and "Manevri na petia etaj" and will add them as well. So, if anyone would like to join the effort, the link is above. Cheers, GGenov 22:25, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Bulgarian Alternative Synod
I encountered several articles linking to Bulgarian Alternative Synod. Would anyone know what it is, and if yes, could anyone write its article? Nikola 21:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The Alternative Synod is (or was, dunno) a group of schismatics led by some Innocentius, which opposed the real Bulgarian Orthodox Church and was in control of some churches. Not sure what happened to it, I remember a police action which expelled the "alternative" priests and restored their property to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church some years ago.
 * After a brief search, it looks like this indeed happened, and in 2004. Todor→Bozhinov 09:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

User:AlexNewArtBot - New Article Bot
Hi, I am in the trial runs of the User:AlexNewArtBot (see Bots/Requests_for_approval/AlexNewArtBot). The bot reads all the new articles for a day and puts suspected Bulgaria-related articles into User:AlexNewArtBot/BulgariaSearchResult, the articles are suppose to be manually put into the portal page and/or removed if irrelevant. Or whatever you want to do with them.

The list of rules are in User:AlexNewArtBot/Bulgaria, there is also the log on the User:AlexNewArtBot/BulgariaLog explaining the rules that sent an article to the search results (the log is cleared every day, so try to look into the history of the log). Please contact me if you are interested in the fine tuning of the rules

That is all. Any suggestions are welcome. Alex Bakharev 07:16, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 16:51, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Simeon I of Bulgaria FAC
I've just nominated the Simeon I of Bulgaria article, which I wrote, for a featured article. You can see the nomination at Featured article candidates/Simeon I of Bulgaria, where you're all invited to vote and comment! Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 19:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * In case you haven't heard, the nomination has passed successfully! :)

Banat Bulgarians GAC
As part of Messedrocker's Contest, I've considerably improved the Banat Bulgarians article and I've nominated it for Good article status. If you'd like to review it, please do so according to the guidelines that you can find at Good article candidates. Thanks in advance! Todor→Bozhinov 16:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Featured picture nomination
I have nominated a map of Livingston Island and Greenwich Island by the Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria for featured picture status. The map is related to Bulgaria because the two islands are abundant in Bulgarian toponyms, and the Bulgarian St. Kliment Ohridski Base lies on Livingston Island. Please vote at Featured picture candidates/Map of Livingston Island and Greenwich Island. Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 19:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Bilateral relations discussion
I would like to invite you all to participate in a discussion at this thread regarding bilateral relations between two countries. All articles related to foreign relations between countries are now under the scope of WikiProject Foreign relations, a newly created project. We hope that the discussion will result in a more clean and organized way of explaining such relationships. Thank you. Ed  ¿Cómo estás? 18:33, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Invitation
I had created an invitation template for WPTR a while back at WPTR-Invitation and I thought a similar one could be used here. The code is WPBG-Invitation. Feel free to modify it to suit WPBG better if needed. Baristarim 21:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks! It's just great and certainly will be of use! Todor→Bozhinov 08:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Category missing
Hey,

I was just looking at an article in your WikiProject, and noticed a redlink to GA-Class Bulgaria articles. There was an errant mass-deletion of various categories some while back. You need to check all your cats and see if others are missing too!--Ling.Nut 19:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

project stats?
Didn't see your project stats on the project page. Maybe you don't want them there, because the table is kind of large. But if you do want them, then gets you this: 


 * Actually, I just didn't know I could include the stats as a template. The table is very convenient and illustrative and by no means large. Thanks! :) Todor→Bozhinov 17:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Decare
I've noticed that in the many new articles about (a.o.) Sofia suburbs, the decare is used as an area unit. I would suggest to use hectares (=10 decares) instead, as this is a much more common unit in the English-speaking world. I've started to edit some of the articles already. Preslav 15:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * All right, I will change decares to hectares : ) In fact I would much more prefer km², at least for the total municipal areas. --Gligan 20:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Banner nesting
Does anyone know how to make it work? Right now, it seems to just stick the full banner in the overarching nesting box, but doesn't get minimized like others I've seen. -Bbik 21:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, I got it working. I don't think I broke anything else in the process (this time), but if I did, someone go ahead and yell at me and revert. -Bbik 15:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Hadzhi Dimitar and Haiduti
I was surprised that the Hadzhi Dimitar and to lesser extent Haiduti (because it covers haiduti from several countries) didn't fall under the banner of the wikiproject bulgaria when they are clearly valid pieces of Bulgarian history. Is there any way to add them? VmanBG 14:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The only reason is that they haven't been added a tag... it's mostly me who does it, and I obviously can't put tags on all relevant articles that the project covers. Any help would be appreciated. It's simple &mdash; put WPBG on the top of the article talk page. You're also encouraged to rate the article, by adding:

Best, Todor→Bozhinov 16:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Bulgarian involvment in the World Wars
After browsing trough the Wiki articles devoted to the World Wars and the seperate front it seems that the articles involving Bulgaria are in need of revision. The overall Balkan Theather of Operations (for WWI) article and the different fronts (Serbian, Romanian, Macedonian etc.) are severely lacking information about Bulgarian unit names, strenght, casualties, commanding officers, overall tactical and strategic situation of the army. Worst are the articles for the different battles (Ovche pole, Morava, Doiran, Tutrakan etc.) which baraly give any usefull info, with possibly the exception of the Tutrakan Epopee, though this could also be expanded.
 * Then roll up your sleeves and get to work! It's a wiki, be bold :) Todor→Bozhinov 12:34, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I would, but sadly my English isn't all that great. Still, I'll work on the articles, but I hope someone can check them after that?
 * Yep, you can count on me at least, and your English seems to be fine. If you'd like a specific article checked, you can notify me at my talk page :) Best, Todor→Bozhinov 18:33, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Bulgarian football
As a member of WikiProject Football I'm naturally very interested in football. This interest also include Bulgarian football of wich my knowledge is regrettably poor. The 2006-07 season of the "A" group seem to have been rather less fortunate for Chernomorets Burgas Sofia with a points deduction and all losses except from one draw. This sparks a lot of interest, as well as the club's name and its connections to Chernomorets 919. As I understand, there are quite a few Chernomorets teams from different parts of Bulgaria, including a third Chernomorets Burgas team in the Amateur "V" Group. Unfortunatly it's difficult to get information on Bulgarian football for a non-Bulgarian. So, if a football-interested member of WikiProject Bulgaria would like to enlighten the Footballing community on Wikipedia and the rest of the world on any of these subjects I know I wouldn´t be the only one who would be very grateful. Sebisthlm 16:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Bulgarian Scouting
Can someone help render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Bulgarian? Thanks! Chris 14:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Bulgaria featured nomination
Portal:Bulgaria has been nominated to become a featured portal after the recent significant improvement by Daniel and Riana. You can vote here :) Todor→Bozhinov 12:30, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

witch
can anyone translate the bulgarian (church slavonic?) words on this (click 2-3x to enlarge) picture to english? -- 78.55.242.157 (talk) 20:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC) The parts in round brackets I am not sure about. The [...] part contains two verbs that I cannot read well. Hope I was of help :) The language is Bulgarian, somewhat archaic though. Curious picture, by the way. Best, Todor→Bozhinov 18:37, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Merci, i put your translation to the image-description site on commons. -- 78.48.170.111 (talk) 10:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting. It could well be that the missing words are "the devil often rejoices, jumps, and plays" ("дѧволъ о многосе радува, скача и играе").  The "р" and "а" in "радува" are very close together, the "к" in "скача" looks almost like a "в" because of the serifs, and the "ч" is somewhat tilted. --Cameltrader (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Deciphering an inscription is an interesting challenge for me, so I had a go at this. Wikipedia has a different of that painting plus two of its neighbors; I located another version of this that I like better (Creative Commons 2.5 licensing) and downloaded it. Then I set to work with Paint Shop Pro. I adjusted perspective, and uploaded, I got brave and put it on Commons.

Then I extracted only the part of the photo that matches the Krankenbehandlung... image, and mega-tweaked color ( have not uploaded this yet oops! I mistakenly uploaded that file first, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Detail_of_Rila_Monastery_wall_painting.jpg here), so if you want to have a look at it, you can!

Finally, I extracted the inscription only, and played with various parameters to make the writing as clear as I could. I've also upload, but I not on Commons, because I don't think it's keeper-quality (correct me if I'm wrong) - but I want other people to see what my tweaking made of the inscription. Here is what I think it says (I can't seem to find the proper character for у):

Магесницыте и вражілицыте са дѧволски слуги за това и дѧволъ о многосе радува, скача, и играе, предъ оніѧ, що идат при ни, и това що запоѧват, и що захрануват, оно е дѧволски гнусотіи ?кои? остават бга, законъ (законите?) и церквата, и ходат при вражiлицыте они не са бжiй, но дѧволски слуги..

Translation:

Magicians and healers are servants of the devil that's why the devil rejoices greatly, jumps around (cavorts?), and plays in front of people who come to them, and what they [the devils] give them to drink and eat [witness the picture!] is devils' filth ?people? who abandon God, the laws and the church and go to the healers, they are servants not of God, but of the devil.

If this looks correct to people, then I can enter this info in the description(s) - but it'd be nice to have all the alphabet details correct including stress marks, and I'm not quite up to that, myself. — Martha (talk) 03:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What you've done is amazing! Really, I didn't expect anyone to go this far with decoding the inscription.  I'd only like to share some thoughts on minor details:
 * "вражілицыте" should be "вражалицыте"—plural feminine of an archaic word for "healer" ("вражалец"), with a definite article. The "A"-s in the text look very narrow, but can be told apart from an "I" by the the dot above.  The "I"'s dot looks like an accent, but precisely vertical.
 * "скача и играе" probably has a connotation of "dances", I'm not sure to what extent "cavort" is a good match.
 * "законъ/законите" could be "законъ-а". Note, that in other words the suffixes representing the definite article are clearly marked with smaller letters.  So are other suffixes, like the raised small "T" for third person plural.  Therefore, I think the isolated "A" is a suffix, separated by a hyphen in order to preserve the mute "Ъ".
 * "кои" looks ok.
 * The tilde above a word ("бга", "бжiи") in archaic inscriptions used to denote an abbreviation—hence the missing "o". Apparently, they didn't want to "mention G-d's name in vain".
 * The "i" in "бжiй" might have a diaeresis, and the last letter is an accented "и" rather than being an "й", because the word is pronounced with two separate "i"-s. I'm not sure about this.
 * I'll try to produce a version with the correct Unicode characters later today. --Cameltrader (talk) 07:14, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I made, but I cannot guess which kind of Cyrillic accent to use, so I used &#768; (U+0300, combining grave accent) everywhere. --Cameltrader (talk) 11:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * In words "б҃га" and "б҃жiй" there should be used titlo ( ҃), and above the first letters of words "и҆", "о҆ни", "о҆ніѧ", "о҆но̀" should be put spiritus lenis. Grave accents should be replased by acute accents in other words, exept the cases, when grave is placed above the last letter of the word. ОйЛ (OiL) (talk) 13:17, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Cameltrader and Ойл! (This is my trouble, though - I find some little thing that captures my fancy, and spend an entire evening on it!  Long ago, I was a Slavic Lang & Lit major...so I've run across some of these things before.)  I took a quick look at Cameltrader's attempt, looks good to me, but you experts should figure out what's really "right" about the accents.  I'll be happy to carry this through, but need a little advice about how to name the images, which ones merit posting/deleting (and where), should they "replace" the original b/w image??, etc.  I'm a bit new at this Wiki stuff, but I always seem to pick complex things to dive into!  — Martha (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S. Ойл, some of the accents in the original text really look grave to me (e.g., the first one) - I don't understand the rationale of which should be grave/which acute - so someone with more knowledge of old Slavic languages should make those corrections please! — Martha (talk) 17:36, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As a disclaimer, I am not an expert on this. I asked OiL for help at the Old Church Slavonic wikipedia, where he is active, so I trust his advice. --Cameltrader (talk) 19:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Grave accents (varia) are placed only above the last letters of words (but have the same meaning as a acute accents). It is a rule of the Church Slavonic language. If you understand Russian, you can read the article about it in Russian Wikipedia: ru:Вария. ОйЛ (OiL) (talk) 11:24, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

What's next, here?
So, User:Cameltrader/Rila monastery inscription is looking very good to me (I looked long and hard to find that lovely old "у" character, but I guess it must be considered simply a calligraphic variant). What's next, on this? Should I put both my earlier version of that panel, and the inscription-work, on Commons, and get them deleted from Wikipedia where they now are? If I do that, how can I link them to the larger picture? And...is it WORTH it? or is it just a curiosity? I can incorporate the text and/or translation into the "description", too. Advice? —Martha (talk) 23:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I edited the description of your enhanced image. I included the English translation with some small changes.  If you think anything's wrong, don't hesitate to change it back.
 * The beautiful "у"-like character is, AFAIK, a rendering of "ѹ" (U+0479), presented as "Ѵ" (Izhitsa) on top of "о" (see it in various fonts). But that ligature must have been long gone (replaced by the plain "у") when the fresco was painted, so I'm confused about which is the correct one to use. --Cameltrader (talk) 08:32, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing that uploading and fleshing out!
 * Did you look at the color-corrected version of the lower portion, which you can find as the "original version" of the inscription because I uploaded it by mistake! - at all? I let PSP "one-click correct" it and I thought the results were pretty spectacular!  Maybe it's worth my uploading that too?  Should ALL of these images be moved to Commons??
 * I checked more on ѹ, it's all explained on Early Cyrillic alphabet (Note 2) (why can't we find these things when we need them?? I have SO much trouble finding the things I need on Wikipedia!!!).  But it's such a beautiful character....I guess it's not P.C. to use a "special" font? so I should let it go.  —Martha (talk) 21:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Accountable source
Hello there, as I just read Simeon I of Bulgaria, how can I tell if the sources listed under References and Footnotes is accountable in the eyes of a non-Bulgarian language user? Ktsquare (talk) 03:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Ummm what do you mean with accountable? Whether you can check them out or whether they come from respected historians ... or?-- L a v e o l  T 21:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
 * For instance, how would I know historical works by Vasil Zlatarski and Bozhidar Dimitrov is respectable in the eyes of an history outsider? The article seems to assume the point. Ktsquare (talk) 15:42, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikimeeting in Bulgaria
FYI --Cameltrader (talk) 17:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Dospat Dam (or Reservoir???)
I've been eyeing the Dospat Dam page for some time. I have some beautiful photos of this place, and a bit of knowledge about it (plus, I read Bulgarian well). I have two questions at the moment:
 * 1) It bothers me to have this called a "dam", because in Bulgarian they do distinguish between the Reservoir (Bg. язовир) and the Dam (Bg. язовирска стена).  I have not been able to find solid evidence to support either usage, yet.
 * 2) I've been working on a map to show the shape of the reservoir and the positions of Dospat and Sarnitsa.  You'll find a link to my attempt on the Talk page - comment would be appreciated (please put it on Talk:Dospat Dam).  Thank you.  — Martha (talk) 23:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Spelling: really "Tryphon"???
I stumbled on the page Tryphon Zarezan — why would this be the transliteration of this name? Is there some precedent that I don't know about? I know Bg well, and it would never occur to me to search for Трифон зарезан with that spelling! I find also a stub for Saint Trifon (supporting my preferred spelling), but I also find a (brief) article for Saint Tryphon of Pechenga (supporting this spelling). Unless there is solid historical (or other?) precedent for the "Tryphon" spelling, can't we stop it before it multiplies??? — Martha (talk) 00:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * They probably meant that it was "derived from the Greek τρυφη (tryphe) meaning softness, delicacy" (see Tryphon of Campsada). However, combining this spelling with the transliteration of "zarezan" ("зарезан", derived from "режа", "to cut", referring to the vines) is awkward, I think. --Cameltrader (talk) 07:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree - Трифон Зарезан is an old folk (pagan origins??) holiday, mixing two styles of translit seems peculiar. The alternate spelling and derivation could be added.   Are we justified in changing the page title, then?  Are you still working on some text (translation?) for the page?  I think I saw that somewhere.  — Martha (talk) 17:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't take part in the translation of that article, but I'd support the title you proposed. It seems the original translator abandoned it nearly a month ago.  Unfortunately, the Bulgarian-language version is not quite encyclopaedic or well-sourced, so I don't think we can quickly produce anything more than a stub here.  --Cameltrader (talk) 19:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I left a note on User_talk:Bgtranslater about the spelling of the page, referring him to our discussion here. (It was amazingly hard for me to locate this page so could find out something about what's going on here!  I'm still not used to how to find things in the various parts of Wiki, but I'm learning!)  — Martha (talk) 23:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Planning regions
Fellows, please comment on whether we should keep these articles: Severozapaden, Severoiztochen, Severen tsentralen, Yugoiztochen, Yugozapaden, Yuzhen tsentralen. They are not (yet) formatted, categorised, linked, and interwikied, the titles are bad (nothing more than transliterated compass directions), and I think the content has barely any encyclopaedic value. --Cameltrader (talk) 10:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * They're outdated as well - Delete. -- L a v e o l  T 22:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe they are used by the EU as level 2 statistical regions . Assuming they are part of a series on EU statistical regions, they should be kept, categorised as such, and improved (a lot!). Preslav (talk) 09:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I checked it out and you're right. It turns out my info is outdated (I'm not a geography type of person anyway). But it's not an administrative system, but some sort of a statistical region for European matters (that's what I suppose as the communal elections that took place last year did not include such regions, but the Oblastni centrove rather) -- L a v e o l  T 15:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that first we should create a NUTS:BG page with a chart, like other countries did. Note that divisions which only bear a "compass name" usually do not have dedicated pages (for instance, Austria or Spain's level 1-s).  Those with a proper name and distinctiveness in historical context (equivalent, say, to Bulgarian portions of Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia) have their pages.  Our current level 2 system looks like nothing more than arbitrary grouping of provinces by proximity, adjusted to match the population limits.  I can't think of any useful information to put there in order to prevent those articles from becoming the next couple of unmaintained stubs.  My vote is biased to deletion of the transliterations and merging them into a single page.  Otherwise, they should at least be renamed to "South-western Bulgaria", etc. --Cameltrader (talk) 16:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  22:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 1580 articles are assigned to this project, of which 234, or 14.8%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:39, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Bulgaria
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:33, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

306 Bulgaria-related articles needing geographical coordinates
Based on a search of Wikipedia's articles related to Bulgaria, I've found some articles that I believe are about places in Bulgaria, and could usefully have geographical coordinates added.

The articles in question are listed in Category:Bulgaria articles missing geocoordinate data. At the time of writing, some examples included:
 * 1) Kardzhali Dam
 * 2) Krumovo
 * 3) Lake Pomorie
 * 4) Levski, Pazardzhik Province
 * 5) Monument to the Unknown Soldier, Sofia
 * 6) Serdika
 * 7) Slatina, Bulgaria

...and there are many more, as well. At the time of posting this notice, there were 306 articles in this category needing geographical coordinates.

Why add coordinates?
By adding coordinates, a Wikipedia reader can easily view the location on a street map, nautical chart, topographic map, by satellite photo, realtime weather map, and in many other ways. Coordinate data makes an article eventually appear in various services such as Google Maps' Wikipedia overlay, Google Earth, and Wikipedia's own internal map service. Coordinate data also helps readers looking for geographically-based data, such as locations near a reference point, or related information.

How can I do it?
The articles are all marked with coord missing tags, which need to be replaced with coord tags that contain the location's latitude/longitude coordinates; or you might be able to add coordinates to an existing infobox. You can find out how to do this at the Geocoding how-to for WikiProject members. Please let me know if this is useful, or if you have any questions! -- The Anome (talk) 09:48, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Municipality articles vote
Hello everyone, without discussing, User:Mukadderat has began forking some of my articles on the localities in Pleven Province. What he did was essentially copy content from the town article and the Pleven Province article to make a municipality stub.

Now, he claims that we have a precedent with the bot-created stub municipality articles on the BG and RU Wikipedias. I say we have a precedent in the town+municipality one-article solution used by Serbian and Norwegian places: see e.g. Kraljevo, Bosilegrad, etc. I believe the better solution is to unite the two in one article for the sake of writing an actual article: if we split content before it is ready to be split, we'd end up on countless stubs on the Geography of Pleven, History of Pleven, Pleven municipality, and no complete article on Pleven itself. The user responded by copying my writing style and my points and writing the opposite: a classic method of trolling, and reverted all my changes.

That has forced me to organize this vote. Please voice your opinion whether we should have administrative centre + municipality in one article (example: the GA Chiprovtsi), or in two separate articles (example: Dolna Mitropoliya and Dolna Mitropoliya municipality).

The vote is to last one–two weeks, depending on how many opinions we can get.

Editor behavior. Todor-Bozhinov presents his opinion in absolutely non-neutral tone presenting me as a brainless idiot and troll and starts the vote without bothering to present opposing pointrs of view in equally balanced way. I can go exactly in the same way. SO let us see here. User Todor without even discussing with me started reverting my edits being endlessly sure he is right and other wikipedian in not. He falely claims that I am "forking" his articles. He probably has to read and understand what WP:FORK in wikipedia means. Furthermore, during his reverts he deleted new content added by me. His behaviour is clear demionstration of WP:OWNership and lack of desire to let other people edit text he created. Please be advised that once you put something in wikipedia you no longer own it, and other people may move your content whenever they want. I have never crossed my paths with this editor so far and his animosity shown in some wording is worrisome. Mukadderat (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Article content My points were presented in Talk:Pleven Province and I received no convincing counter-argumens. Basically, a town and the corresponding obshtina are very different entities. Wikipedia is not paper and I see no reason why these data must be kept in one place. There is no almost no common content which would benefit from putting into one article. The way wikipedia works, we expand articles by adding more content. Please expand obshtina articles. Please take a look into pages, e.g., bg:Община Червен бряг and see that there is plenty of content possible for separate obshtina articles. I am starting to expand the pages, see Cherven Bryag municipality for my first work. Please join the work, not the fight. Mukadderat (talk) 15:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Administrative centre and municipality in one article

 * ✅ Support Todor→Bozhinov 17:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ Support -- L a v e o l  T 18:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC) - Just a note: About big centers as Sofia and maybe Varna and Plovdiv, there might be enough for a separate article. In the case of Sofia they'd just make the article even more lengthy and even less readable. For all the others an "all-in-one" seems to be the best choice. -- L a v e o l   T 18:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course, "in-city municipalities" like the ones of Sofia and Plovdiv, and municipalities that have the provincial capital as their administrative centre (Rodopi municipality, Dobrichka municipality, etc.) are a separate case :) Todor→Bozhinov 18:54, 24 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Mukadderat (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Two separate articles

 * Oppose Todor→Bozhinov 17:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ Support Mukadderat (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Other suggestions

 * Please stop spreading animosity and expand the articles in question. There is plenty of informaion to be added to wikipedia into the pages in question, see., eg. bg:Община Червен бряг, instead of wasting time on bureaucratic procedures. I am starting to do this, see Cherven Bryag municipality. Please join the work, not the fight. Mukadderat (talk) 15:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * And what is it in bg:Община Червен бряг that can't be used to make Cherven Bryag a better article? At the moment, you've turned Cherven Bryag into a stub without a stub tag, get the info from bg:Община Червен бряг and make it a real article. Join the discussion on the principle, don't give us examples how we can improve our existing articles because this is against your own point. Todor→Bozhinov 16:37, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Because Cherven Bryag is an article is about town. Please add more information about town and make it a better article in thsi way. Please stop spreading malisious false information about me. I did not take info from bg:Община Червен бряг: this is against wikipedia rules. I provided references to sources where the info is aken from. Your behaviour is not that of a good colleague wikipedian. Instead of expanding wikipedia contents you are smearing dirt on me. Mukadderat (talk) 16:57, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Calm down, it's just a discussion about a policy :) You say those are article about towns, I say they're articles about town and municipalities and this is how I intended them to be. That these are articles about towns is merely your view and that's wrong. Taking info from bg:Община Червен бряг is not against the rules, all Wikipedia text content is GFDL and translating foreign Wikipedia articles is a thing many people do, including myself. Don't get offended, that's not the point: the point is, next time you should discuss before splitting stubs into more stubs, it just doesn't work. My intention was not to "smear dirt on you", I apologize if any of my remarks has caused you stress, and at the moment I'm mostly writing other important articles, this discussion is just a side issue for me, so it's not like I'm not expanding Wikipedia :P Todor→Bozhinov 17:59, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, here's a very nice example: Kranj, Slovenia! Had it been split into Kranj and Kranj municipality, it would be two stubs instead of one average article. Todor→Bozhinov 18:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You wrote "That these are articles about towns is merely your view and that's wrong." Disagreed. Each article is about what is written in the title. The article Cherven Bryag municipality is about Cherven Bryag municipality. Cherven Bryag is  about Cherven Bryag, just as the article Pleven is about Pleven, Pleven Province is about Pleven Province, Pleven municipality is about Pleven municipality, and [Pleven Panorama]] is bout Pleven Panorama. Every reasonably notable separate subject gets a separate page. Small stubs is an indicator of laziness or lack of human resources, but not a message to merge the whole bunch distinct topics into one big page. Mukadderat (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Taking info from bg:Община Червен бряг is not against the rules. Yes it is against the rules. Please get yourself familiar with the most basic wikipedia policy: Verifiability, in its important part, reliable sources: blogs and wikis (including wikipedia) are not valid references for wikipedia. At best what I could do is to look into references in article bg:Община Червен бряг. Mukadderat (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, by removing the Municipality sections you do make the articles stubs about towns, but that's not what I meant ;)) You've already seen countless examples that merging is the best idea, and it's a matter of finishing this vote that the articles be merged back where they belong. Yes, Pleven Panorama should be separate: it's not a forked stub, neither is Pleven Province, but Pleven municipality can coexist perfectly inside Pleven with a few rewordings: as has been done by Norwegian, Slovenian, Serbian and many other articles.
 * Please, stay on topic, calling someone lazy won't prove your point, and it's plain false that we lack resources. Also, please make a difference between policies/guidelines and rules: breaking a policy or a guideline makes a bad article, breaking a rule is more like an offence, a bannable one, for example. Translating is a perfectly usual practice and nobody said that foreign-language articles can't have references. I don't think you seriously believe I haven't read WP:V, so I won't comment on that. Todor→Bozhinov 20:45, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I am on topic. You are saying: "calling someone lazy won't prove your point, and it's plain false that we lack resources" Then why the articles in question are miniscule stubs while in other languages they are large? Another possible reasons are lack of interest and thinking that these topics are boring and not important. You may list more reasons, may be some of them are serious enough not to write big texts about the 'obshtinas' and their capitals, but I somehow doubt. You are saying I don't think you seriously believe I haven't read WP:V,  Now please read it once more, in the part I indicated: "blogs and wikis (including wikipedia) are not valid references for wikipedia." Translating an unreferenced article may be a "perfectly usual practice", but it does not make it valid. The article in question does not have inline citations, so I have no other way to check its correctness but to look into external sources. But then why would I need to translate a wikipedia article if I am reading original texts? Translation may be reasonable if it is a perfect prose/exposition, but the article in question is just plain collection of facts. Mukadderat (talk) 23:43, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you accusing a Wikipedia editor of being lazy? Don't forget we're doing this for free, my friend. If you have a lot of free time and the available resources, expand the city+municipality articles, but you can't accuse me of creating them because they're short. You should be thankful that they exist so you can fork them. Now, please don't teach me how to create an article and why it needs references: we all agree an unreferenced article is in most cases better than no article. Instead of trying to prove nonexistent points, you can help me merge them back together. Todor→Bozhinov 15:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You wrote:we all agree an unreferenced article is in most cases better than no article - no we don't all agree. And there will be no merge back, since wikipedia works exactly in opposite direction: different topics belong to different articles and the articles grow and split, not shrink and merge. You wrote " Don't forget we're doing this for free" - Yes, me too. I work for free and I will not allow to destruct my free work just because some wikipedian has more fun smearing me in dirt for free than writing wikipedia articles. Obviously we are in strict disagreement therefore here my discussion with you stops, since all your interest seems to be to present me in bad light, rather that to expand the articles in question.    Mukadderat (talk) 17:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Your accusations are baseless, but whatever: it's your choice. Have a nice day. Todor→Bozhinov 12:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment If we agree to make the section on the municipality in the same article of the main town/village then we should change the look of the map because the map in the infobox show only the location of the town. I think that if we agree to do so, we should use the kind of maps they use in Serbia like here but also showing the location of the town which means a different concept... I really doubt which way is more useful because in Bulgaria, unlike other countries, the main town is not that strongly identified with its municipality but if the we make a separate article on the municipalities, it would be either a list of the settlements or will repeat information to some extend... Best, --Gligan (talk) 09:00, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar for WikiProject Bulgaria
Why don't we have a Barnstar to reward editors who have written exceptional articles relating to Bulgaria, or have otherwise furthered the work of WikiProject Bulgaria? Barnstars are part of the Kindness Campaign and are meant to promote civility and WikiLove. Many other country related WikiProjects have them, and I think it will have a very positive impact on the Project Community and would encourage other editors to get involved in improving and writing articles about Bulgaria. Please give your opinions on this proposal below. P.Marlow (talk) 15:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Here are my ideas for designs:

and The Bulgaria Barnstar of National Merit may be awarded to an editor who contributes significantly to expand or improve Wikipedia's coverage of Bulgaria as the caption. The same applies for the ribbon equivalent. I will shortly make templates for both.

Final
Here is the template:

and for what it should be awarded:

The Bulgaria Barnstar of National Merit is awarded to users who have made extraordinary contributions to Bulgaria-related articles, and to any editor who contributes significantly to expand or improve Wikipedia's coverage of Bulgaria.

To give it to someone you have to type message ~

Wikipedia Ad for WikiProject Bulgaria
I made a wikipedia ad, (see Template:Wikipedia ads for more info on those), for the project. See below:

P.Marlow (talk) 23:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

New Bulgarian municipality templates
Hi there! I've recently created WikiProject Bulgaria/Municipal templates in a drive to build a detailed guide to Bulgaria by municipality by adding villages, notable landmarks, people and culture from each municipality. Please follow Template:Smolyan as a guideline and help get Bulgaria covered in detail in this way. I am creating the bones of the templates first but I will need help placing the notable articles into each new municipality template and then of course starting the missing articles we have for each of them in abundance. Feel free to start adding links to all of the others like Template:Smolyan. Thankyou and I hope people will see their potential for building a more detailed guide to Bulgaria! Count Blofeld 14:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I've got a style related question. When filling out the Municipal templates should we include the Cyrillic versions of the village names as well, (see Template:Lukovit)? When filling out the Lukovit one I was unsure, but did so anyways. Personally I think its better to have the cyrillic versions as well, however the concept might not work that well when there are a lot of villages present in a particular municipality.--P.Marlow (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Naming of municipalities
I made an overview about what naming style for municipality articles is currently used. You can see it at Category_talk:Municipalities_by_country. Only few contries have municipality articles that can be identified as such from looking at the title alone. BG is on of the 10 or so front runners. Also I saw that other entities further up in the hierarchy use uppercase, e.g. it is "Abc Province" not "Abc province". How about joining Denmark, Sweden, Venezuela etc. in their Abc Municipality naming scheme? From the above discussion I guess the articles are quite fresh, so the sooner the switch is done the less work in fixing links and redirects is required. I personally think the switch is inevitable in the long run anyway. Thoughts? LocodeMaster (talk) 19:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine by me, although you can see my opinion on municipality articles above :) Todor→Bozhinov 21:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes I also usually insist that they are capitalised, I in fact moved most of the Central American districts to ...District. However in the case of municipalities, this is a matter of greater debate. Normall y I see municipality in lower casing such as has been done with Mexico etc. However they should be consistent I think. One solution might be to change the convention to Municipality of ..... Incidentally we had this discussion not so long ago at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mexico. The Bald One     White cat 21:03, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Not quite correct. Mexico uses "Abc (municipality)" - if the word is used at all see: Category:Municipalities of Mexico. This is not usable in written text. So one would write "[Mm]unicipality of Abc" or "Abc [Mm]unicipality" or "Abc [Mm]unicipality" . If the Central American district use Abc District and the Bulgarian provinces use Abc Province, I would conclude the most logical extension to be "Abc Municipality" . I have also seen this is used by rivers. Have not done a recent servey on other toponyms. I think "Municipality of ..." is unecessary long and does not well in sorting and in the wikipedia article search. If you type "Abc " you get all Abc Province/District/River/Municipality/Bridge together. (try search box with "Pleven")
 * I think the question for Bulgaria is only whether to use "Abc municipality" or "Abc Municipality". Blofeld, would you go with Todor and say it is fine with you to use "Abc Municipality"? LocodeMaster (talk) 22:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Category:Municipalities of Bulgaria - I added some more to the category and moved them all. Now there are 23 municipality articles. BTW: I also linked to obshtina where I found the word. LocodeMaster (talk) 18:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Bulgarians in Turkey
Bulgarians in Turkey has been proposed for deletion I thought that that might interest your project the reasons why are on the talkpage. 安東尼 TALK 圣诞快乐  18:00, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Todor→Bozhinov 14:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * To anyone interested, the AfD is here: Articles for deletion/Bulgarians in Turkey. Todor→Bozhinov 21:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Malina Dimitrova
This article is up for deletion. Can any members can shed light on possible sources, etc.? The deletion discussion is at Articles for deletion/Malina Dimitrova. Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 09:32, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you tell me...
anything more about Battle of the Red Wall. I happened upon the article while working through WWI battles for WP:MILHIST. The way it's written struck me as a little bit odd, and I can't find anything about it through Google searches. Does anyone know any English-languages sources that mention this battle, online or offline? Many thanks, The Land (talk) 13:13, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

TIM Group
Tim Group was about to die as a proposed deletion. The existing article had major issues, so I replaced it with a 1-line stub. I gather this is a major company in Bulgaria, but I don't know anything about it. Please expand the article. If there are articles about it on other wikiprojects please add interwiki links as well. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  23:59, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Help needed with translation
I want to expand the article about Dobruja in a month or so, and if we want to propose it for WP:GA it needs a decent geography section. After some searches, I was able to find an up-to-date(1980s) reliable source that deals with the geography of the Bulgarian part Dobruja: the first chapter of Istorija na Dobrudzha, vol. I. However, it is in Bulgarian, and I know too little to make use of it on my own and OCR-izing it to try Google-translating it is a very tedious process. Could one or more Bulgarian speakers take a look at that chapter I scanned and uploaded at this address, make an adequate abstract and insert it in the Dobruja article (or even create a new article about the Geography of Dobruja if he finds it necessary)? Note that on page no. 10 it was just a generic topographic map of the region, and I haven't included it in the scan. Baltaci (talk) 02:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I can take care of that if time allows. Might take a few days, but it's worth it and I'm definitely willing to help in any way I can to get Dobruja to GA. So far the article is shaping up quite nicely indeed. Todor→Bozhinov 11:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No hurry. RL projects won't let me work on the article for another 2 weeks or so, so you can take your time.Baltaci (talk) 17:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Article about Rupite: wrong picture of Kozhuh hill
Dear all,

the picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kozhuh-rupite-imagesfrombulgaria.jpg placed in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupite do not contains Kozhuh hill. It contains Skalata hill. See this map: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=h&hl=cs&msa=0&ll=41.472059,23.263893&spn=0.087592,0.121021&z=13&msid=109027140081966053495.000462faebbdad967ff8a

I have spend about 15 days investigating local herpetofauna on both hills during last three years. Kozhuh hill has quite different shape than Skalata hill. And through the middle of the Kozhuh hill leads electrical line on high columns, which are not at Skalata hill as well as mentioned picture.

I'am sorry for my English and maybe bad location of this post.

Petr Balej

petr.balej@balcanica.cz

http://en.balcanica.info —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.91.217.70 (talk) 20:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I hope you made photos of your field of study? Please add them! Preslav (talk) 16:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I just replaced mentioned photo by my own picture of the Kozhuh hill. I have thousands of pictures from different parts of the Bulgaria. But I'am busy and editing of Wikipedia/or adding photos isn't what I want to do permanently. Thanks for understanding, Petr Balej, Navay (talk) 00:09, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 08:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks from me too. No one is editing Wikipedia permanently (although some get close); we'd be very happy if you'd add your photos just occasionally :) Have a look here Preslav (talk) 08:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Help needed from someone who reads Bulgarian
I recently wrote the article SMU UB-45 about a German submarine that sank off Varna in November 1916. I've found a Bulgarian-language article that may give additional information about UB-45, and I'm hoping that someone who reads Bulgarian can confirm some details I have gleaned from a Google translation and possibly answer some questions. The article is on pages 45–48 of this pdf file of a Bulgarian magazine/journal.

This is what I think the article says:
 * from p. 45:
 * UB-45 sank at position 43.2°N, 28.15°W
 * UB-45 was found near the Romanian–Bulgarian border on 19 July 1934 and raised in two sections
 * The cost of the salvage operation was several times less than the salvage value of the submarine's 88 mm deck gun
 * from p. 46:
 * The intent was to repair UB-45 to serve as a training vessel
 * Technicians from AG Weser in Bremen evaluated UB-45 and determined that it could be repaired to serve as a military submarine
 * Restoration of the submarine would have cost about half the price of a new submarine.

Some unanswered questions:
 * What eventually happened to the submarine? Was it used for training?
 * It looks like the photo on p. 45 shows the boat in Varna in 1936 after it was raised. Is that correct?
 * The photo on page shows p. 46 shows a memorial or grave(?) of seamen from UB-45. Any ideas on where this is?

Many thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:07, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello, I see you've written a great article there :) Indeed, the Bulgarian article may be of great use in improving yours even more.
 * I can confirm all the facts that you have listed except the last one about the relative price: the article says a boat of that size and class would cost 56–65 million leva whereas the restoration was valued at 21 million leva (right column, p. 46), which is about three times less. This is also said directly in the middle column of p. 45. Also, the vessel may have been used as a military submarine, not just for training, had she been restored.
 * And the questions:
 * The submarine was never repaired, as the Ministry of War preferred to purchase new vessels from Germany, but even that failed to bring any new submarines to the navy.
 * Yes, the photo shows the submarine after it was raised in Varna in 1936.
 * Yes, this is the common grave of the UB-45 crew. This photo doesn't say where the grave is on its caption, but the one on p. 47 depicts the funeral of the seamen in Varna on 13 November 1938; even without that, I would have said Varna is by far the most likely location given where the submarine was raised.
 * By the way, the name of the Bulgarian vessel mentioned in your article is most certainly Strogi ("Rigid"), not Stragi. Also, it was a torpedo boat, not a destroyer, as far as I know; it was part of the series of torpedo boats that also included the more famous Drazki.
 * All the best and good luck in improving your article, Todor→Bozhinov 07:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for your help and the kind words. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:00, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Citable source for lev values
Can anyone provide a citable source for an approximate conversion of the lev to either USD or GBP in the 1930s? I have cited figures of 21, 56, and 65 million leva, circa 1936, in an article that could benefit from a reference point. Many thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see a citation, but Bulgarian lev does say: "In 1928, a new gold standard of 1 lev = 10.86956 mg gold was established." (Looks like an interesting article, but it'd be better if one knew where the info comes from!)  I tried searching Google, but without much luck.  — Martha (talk) 01:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is also an interesting page, though probably not of much help with Bg lev! — Martha (talk) 01:41, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I found a source listing 100 leva=$1.22 in 1936. Check out this Google Books link:  --Raskovnik (talk) 13:12, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, fantastic. Thanks you. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:24, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Zdraveite
Hello all. Just wanted to ask if anybody knows what the old Balkan song discussed in the Bulgarian movie Chia e tazi pesen is called. Mersi :)  Balkan Fever  10:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Здрасти. Well, understandably, the names must vary from country to country. In Bulgarian, it's Ясен месец веч изгрява. Todor→Bozhinov 11:59, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Featured article review
nominated Macedonia (terminology) for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Picture of roses
Hello guys. I hope someone has pictures of the Rose Valley and some roses from Bulgaria. Could you upload some to Commons ? That will help me a lot to improve Bulgaria-related articles on Japanese Wikipedia. Thanks in advanse.--Peccafly -talk-hist 15:30, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Did you look in these sites? Preslav (talk) 17:58, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yeah I have put some picture from those sites to wiki commons, but I could not find any pictures of roses. Are there some ?--Peccafly -talk-hist 12:14, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for a 200-WikiProject contest
A proposal has been posted for a contest between all 200 country WikiProjects. We're looking for judges, coordinators, ideas, and feedback.

The Transhumanist 00:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation
This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 05:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

General Vasil Kutinchev
Birthdate of 1868 can not be correct (Graduates from military school in 1879 and is a commander in Serbo-Bulgarian War in 1885) --Vestuviata (talk) 21:01, 2 June 2009 (UTC) Fixed it - 1859 actually. -- L a v e o l  T 21:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Peter Dobrev spam
There is an IP user:168.7.241.58 which is busy putting Peter Dobrev's fringe theories about the influence of Bulgarian runes on the development of glagolithic and cyrillic. Can an admin please handle this as I'm getting annoyed reverting so much, and I don't want to contravene WP:3RR. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Bulgarian Genocide
I proposed this article for deletion. Please contribute to the discussion by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/Bulgarian Genocide. Preslav (talk) 08:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Archive Issue
I wonder if we need a new archive page for the project's talk page. The current archive page is very long and bloated, (nearing 90,000 bytes in size), and so is very difficult to navigate. If no one objects I will do this myself, so please do comment.--P.Marlow (talk) 18:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject TRANSWIKI
You are all invited to join WikiProject TRANSWIKI and join the Bulgarian language transwiki project. The aim is to draw up a full directory of missing articles from Bulgarian wikipedia and build a team of translators to work at bridging the gaps in knowledge and to improve existing articles by translation. We need your help, so if there are any Bulgarian speakers here please join up as your language skills are crucial. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 09:46, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Flag of the Kingdom of Bulgaria (1908-1944)
Hi all, I wonder if someone could clarify this issue for me: Did the national flag of the Kingdom of Bulgaria between 1908 and 1944 (before the Fatherland Front flag) have a red crest in its upper-left corner, or was it the plain tricolor? Thanks in advance :) -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 08:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The national flag was plain tricolor (no crest). I hope the answer did not come too late. -- L a v e o l  T 11:54, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The first theatre and actors in Bulgaria
What was the first theatre in Bulgaria with professional actors of both genders? Who is counted as the first professional actor and actress respectively? Thank you in advance for those who can answer!--Aciram (talk) 10:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The net say the first modern theatre in the country was founded in 1883. What was it called? And who were the first actors and actresses there? I am very interested in theatre history. I would be grateful if anyone could reply on my talkpage. Regards--Aciram (talk) 14:22, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Some edits made to the article on Bulgarian national identity card
I added several facts to the introduction in order to make it a little more informative.

In the Physical appearance section I added several details regarding information contained in the card. I also added an 'Obtaining an Identity Card' section that provides information of what you need to get an identity card.

Hope people find my additions helpful.

Da cute wabbit (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:43, 3 September 2009 (UTC).
 * There's no need to explain or justify your contributions. So long as you are improving an article (or at least you honestly believe that you're doing so) and nobody is objecting to your edits, then you're doing well :) Keep it up and be bold! Todor→Bozhinov 14:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

How do I join the collaboration?
I am interested in joining this project, seeing as I am a Bulgarian born in the UK.

How do I join the project, may I ask?

The main service I am offering is direct translation of articles from Bulgarian to English, but I am of more use than simply translating. I am also offering myself up as a proofreader, seeing as I already spend vast amounts of time reading (and correcting) Wikipedia articles), so I might as well be useful in the meantime.

I am 100% supportive of increasing knowledge of Bulgaria around the world (too many people in the UK cannot even point out Bulgaria on a map, think we speak Russian, think we are still under communist rule and believe we are a third world country!)

In reference to standardisation, I recommend that the chosen regional variant of all Bulgarian pages on EN Wikipedia is British English, except when the article is about America/Canada/Australia/etc. and Bulgaria or Bulgaria's influence in such countries, or when quoting names or text. The reasoning behind this is not only the proximity of the United Kingdom to Bulgaria, but also to the fact that the Government has adopted British English in signposting infrastructure (e.g. roads) and education (teaching of english in schools). Usage of GB-EN in both signposting and education is EU policy (I am led to believe). Also, standardisation will eliminate any possibility of edit wars and disputes over spelling, grammar and word usage corrections.

The Z UKB G <font color="DimGrey">(talk) , 28/10/09 @ 16:57 UTC
 * Hey there and thanks for the interest. Your English skills can be of great use, seeing as most Bulgaria-related articles are written by people who speak English as a foreign language (me including). We don't really assign tasks here, feel free to contribute in any way you want. If you need any advice or feedback, do contact me via my talk page. Generally, high-profile articles about Bulgaria (like Bulgaria or History of Bulgaria and such) are written by a large number of people, many of which lack good English skills. If you feel like contributing as a proofreader, I'd say these would be a good starting point. Anything would do, though: you might also want to follow the new article feed at WikiProject Bulgaria and copyedit any new article that gets posted there. There's a lot to write about too, but that depends on your specific interests.
 * As for the English variant that Bulgaria-related articles should be using, that would be British English. In general, all articles about Europe use British English in Wikipedia.
 * Best, Todor→Bozhinov 19:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You can formally join the project by adding your name here. A good place to start contributing is here. Welcome! Preslav (talk) 15:53, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the information. I already look around Bulgaria-related Wikipedia pages quite often and correct any errors and add any issues to talk pages. I am usually quite scrupulous when it comes to corrections and quality, so although some of my changes and suggestions may seem rather anal, I believe they all contribute towards raising the level of quality of the article overall. I would like Bulgaria-related articles to be of the topmost quality. This is, after all, meant to be an accurate encyclopaedia, which does compete with professional publications. Regards <font face="Eurostile"><font color="Blue">The Z UK<font color="Green">B <font color="Red">G <font color="DimGrey">(talk)   03:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you have time, there is plenty of work to do :) For example some sections of the First Bulgarian Empire and Second Bulgarian Empire would probably needed to be rewritten; the article Battle of the Gates of Trajan is a candidate for GA and you can correct punctuational or stylistic mistake. You may see and correct the mistakes in Church of St Sophia or the Old Bishopric because I bet that there are plenty of them since I am not sure how those thing would sound in English - the article is a translation from the Bulgarian one and you can see what is meant of the English text is confusing :) You can make articles for the birth places of you relatives. Those are only suggestions. Поздрави! --Gligan (talk) 11:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Cyrillic edittools
Hello everyone. I am currently updating some of the functions in the edit window here in Wikipedia. Below the edit window we have a list of Cyrillic characters, so it should be easier to insert them in articles. That list is currently not complete, so I would need some help from some editors than can read and write Cyrillic. See MediaWiki talk:Edittools.

Oh, and please don't start a discussion about the edittools here on this page, instead come to that page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Konstantin Evtimov
Dear Sir/Madam,

You wrote to me: "Very few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links to this page from other articles related to it. " I tried to add some external links but you have just deleted them. I cannot understand what I should do. Please tell me what do you mean by "other articles related to it".

Yours faithfully, V.N. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vladislava1306 (talk • contribs) 22:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you wrote that you have deleted only the youtube link. But the others are aslo gone. Does that mean I can add them again (without the youtube link)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vladislava1306 (talk • contribs) 22:33, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for helping me! I am sorry that I bother you. I hope you and I finally succeed in creating this page! :)

Vladislava1306 (talk) 23:11, 21 December 2009 (UTC)Vladislava1306

I would like to ask you why the remarks at the top of the page are still there. I think I did what they adviced me. Vladislava1306 (talk) 09:05, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Vladislava1306

Hello! Thank you very much for helping me. I would like to ask why the wiki page "Konstantin Evtimov" does not come out when I type "Konstantin Evtimov" in Google. Yesterday it worked. If it is because of the remarks, then why other pages WITH remarks do come out in Google. For example the page "Arto Noras" does not have even one reference but when I type "Arto Noras" in Google, it comes out in the first place! Please tell me where is the problem. Thank you! Vladislava1306 (talk) 20:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Vladislava1306

Konstantin Evtimov
Супер! :) Много благодаря! Лошото е, че за първи път се занимавам с такова нещо и малко ми е трудно да разбера какви точно са изискванията. Не разбирам защо хем искате още информация, хем казвате, че тази е много и трябва да се намали.. Радвам се че можем да си пишем на български :))) Ако може не трийте нищо, ще се опитам да го променя. Vladislava1306 (talk) 21:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

searching for no longer existant village Pazelno (sp??)
Looking for ancient village of Pazelno, possibly in the Starra region...any info would be helpful. sorry not sure of spelling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.118.203.85 (talk) 05:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Any more info on this? There seems to be no village with that name. By Starra do you mean Stara Planina? -- L a v e o l  T 09:49, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, please be more specific. There are lists of villages in Bulgaria and many of the old names are known, so I think we can be of help here. Todor→Bozhinov 10:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Starra region = Stara Zagora Province? Preslav (talk) 10:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)