Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Battle of Pliska

Battle of Pliska

This is being created for the User:Lantonov. Any comments would be welcome. Woodym555 10:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added new material in this article in the past week. I do not have much outside opinion about how it looks now, except a perusal and approval for meeting criteria for B article by User:Kirill Lokshin. Before my involvement, there was an opinion in the talk page that the article is not POV-free by anonymous user who, by his words, is acquainted more with Byzanthine than with Bulgarian history. As far as I could, I removed the statements, objected to by to him. Being a Bulgarian, I tend to lean on the Bulgarian POV because I use mainly Bulgarian sources, monographs, textbooks, etc. Besides, I don't know if the content is right in regard to omissions or superfluous material. A review will be helpful on improving the quality of the article. Lantonov 11:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kyriakos

Overall the article is good but there are some issues that need to be addressed before you can advance the article any further.

The article doesn't seem to be too Bulgarian POV. However, it is good to mix up some Bulgarian source with some Byzantine ones to keep people like thae placing POV tags.
At the moment, the lead section is short. Expand it so that it is a summary of the entire article.
Some paragraphs and some sections are un cited. It would be good if you could add some more cits.

Ok those were my issues. I hope that my review helped with your improvement of this article. Kyriakos 22:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Kyriakos. I made some edits towards meeting your suggestions.

I ordered and improved the sources, also added some sources by Western scholars, like Sir Steven Runciman, and John Fine. I plan also to look up and add material from Bury and Mercia MacDermott. The most complete secondary source I could find on the battle is by the Bulgarian Medievalist Prof. Vasil Zlatarski. Although I cite him in several places, the facts that he gives belong to the many primary sources he uses, the principle ones those of the Byzantine writers Theophanes and Michael the Syrian. So, if we look on number and weight of sources, the article is somewhat biased towards the Byzantine view. I think that this is right, however, because most chroniclers at the time were Byzantine, and it is always the best to use such original materials for events so distant in the past. I will try to find some Bulgarian primary sources. Bulgarian (meaning Bulgar) sources are very few, and they are partly read inscriptions on stone in Bulgar language which used the Greek alphabet. They do not add many details about the battle. Other Bulgarian sources are from later time (centuries later) and many of them are simply translations from Byzantine sources.
Expanded the lead section. Plan to expand it a little more.
Corrected some dates and facts and put citations on them.

Regards, Lantonov (talk) 09:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]