Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Great Moravia/1

Great Moravia

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Result: GA status maintained There are no significant concerns left to solve, minor issues can be dealt with on the article's talk page. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 01:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article refers to primary sources (e.g. Constantinos VII Porphyrogenitos: De Administrando Impero), but it does not provide in-line citations. Moreover, the text of the primary source referred in the article contradicts the text of the article. I think, instead of following one interpretation of the sources, the article should clearly cite the referred text.Borsoka (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. The article now quotes primary sources in footnotes and briefly discusses different interpretations of Constantine's work. Tankred (talk) 23:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tankred and others are to be commended for quickly addressing issues raised at GAR. However, some of the citations need tidying -- some links are dead, in some other cases the citations appear incomplete. Majoreditor (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have just completed all the incomplete citations I could find. There are still red links to three medieval sources without an article in Wikipedia, but I hope these articles will be written at some point in the future. None of the external links is dead.[1] References to the modern publications of medieval chronicles appear in the bibliography section as without an author, but this seems to be a standard way to cite them. If you find any other problems, please do not hesitate to drop me a line and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. Tankred (talk) 20:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article's lead presents theories as facts:

It was inhabited and ruled by the ancestors of modern Moravians and Slovaks. The core territory laid on both sides of the Morava river, in present-day Slovakia and the Czech Republic, but the empire also extended into what are today parts of Hungary, Romania, Poland, Austria, Germany, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Ukraine.

None of these are for sure, but written as proven facts. Good article? Squash Racket (talk) 06:55, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you can read the article and the referenced secondary sources (except for one website all are peer-reviewed academic articles and books written by leading historians and archaeologists), you will see that this is the view of the mainstream science. If you wish, I can add references also to the lead. No sweat. Tankred (talk) 15:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right now the lead only cites Slovak (and/or Czech?) sources. I don't think the issue is too minor, so yes, neutral English language sources would be OK. But I don't think these would present the mentioned theories as facts. Squash Racket (talk) 17:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I will add citations to the lead. The article does cite English sources. Unfortunately, Great Moravia is not exactly the favorite topic of the Anglo-American academia. That is why most academic sources are written in Czech, Slovak, and (to a lesser degree) German. However, quality of the sources cited in this article is very high as they are all peer-reviewed academic articles or books written by the most important historians and archaeologists working on Great Moravia. If you could cite other works of the same rank criticizing the sources used in this article, it would make this discussion more fruitful and less vague. Otherwise, I am not completely sure what your criticism of the article's references exactly is. Tankred (talk) 17:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For example the second reference contains Slovak historian Dušan Kováč who according to this article in Hungarian says that in the time of Great Moravia there were no Slovaks, just Slavic people. How is it sure that those Slavic people are ancestors of a nation that first appeared in sources hundreds of years later? Isn't the gap too large for 100% statements? Squash Racket (talk) 18:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, no serious academic source claims that the founders of Great Moravia died out and modern Moravians and Slovaks immigrated to the same territory later. It is the opposite. Historians (including Dusan Kovac) say explicitly that there is clear continuity in terms of settlement, culture, and descent, which can be traced back to the Great Moravian times. But, as you have surely realized, the article does not claim that Great Moravia was founded by modern Moravians and Slovaks. It refers only to ancestry. If you want to continue in this discussion, please address what the article actually states and come up with serious academic sources, not with your own interpretation of what some website says. I will be happy to respond to any serious issues raised here after I return from my business trip. Tankred (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The statement that someone "died out" is just a plain lie. See e.g.: Čaplovič, Dušan: Včasnostredoveké osídlenie Slovenska, 1998, Bratislava for an academic summary of this issue. The book also contains a list of some further 3000 references. Anonymous

Keep To be honest, I don't really understand what's being objected to. Foreign language sources are perfectly acceptable, where there are no English sources of equal quality (WP:SOURCE). Translations are recommended, but that doesn't invalidate use of the source. From the same policy, our inclusion criterion is verifiability, not truth; we may disagree with the source, but that's irrelevant. There are some tweaks that could be made: the article does have one or two gaps in its referencing (eg parts of "After unification" and "Decline and fall"), but is generally adequately cited. One has to be careful in using primary sources that no synthesis is made, but these have not been used exclusively and there is a good spread of secondary sources to support the statements made. I would recommend expanding the lead; although it very broadly summarises the article, a little more detail would help to cover all the article's sections (per WP:LEAD). Finally the license for "Prince Rastislav.JPG" is depreciated. However, there's nothing that would warrant a GA delist IMO. EyeSerene^talk 20:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We should vote here?
"A kind of predecessor of Great Moravia was Samo's Empire, a Slavic tribal confederation existing between 623 and 658." This is a theory again, presented as a fact.
"Most castles and towns survived the destruction of the empire." Although there are two Slovak (or Czech?) sources for that, Hungarian academic sources (like this one) say Great Moravia disappeared without trace.
A review of what the sources really say also wouldn't hurt. My intention is not to remove this article's good article status, but to present theories as theories, not as facts. Squash Racket (talk) 05:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously the article should reflect the sources, and where reliable sources differ, this should be mentioned (even if only in a footnote). Per your first point, perhaps something like "According to historian [guessing his occupation] Josef Poulik, a kind of predecessor of Great Moravia..." would do the trick?

On your other comments, the purpose of this page is to challenge either the existing GA status of a article, or the outcome of a recent GA assessment. The article is evaluated from the perspective of the GA criteria, and the outcome will be decided based on the consensus of those commenting. It's not really a vote, and the closer will read all the comments before closing (ie you don't have to !vote if you don't want to!). If your concerns are not with the article's GA status, then the article's talk page may be a better place to raise them... although "factual accuracy" is a GA criterion. Hope this helps ;) EyeSerene^talk 08:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The words "a kind of predecessor of" were a bit awkward, so I replaced them with a sentence that is not only more neutral, but also more descriptive. Tankred (talk) 06:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Provisional keep. I see no real problems here. There are a couple of places where there could be more citations, and the caption in the territory section is rather long. I think it would probably be better to move the description of the territories into the text, and float the map on the right. I also spotted some minor prose and MoS issues, but nothing that prevents listing as GA. Geometry guy 17:36, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]