Talk:First Serbian Uprising

Referencing

I'm addressing the concern that I didn't yet cite the tidbit about Wallachian involvement. Yet I can't help notice that this article's standard of referencing is ridiculous, with standardized formats at the very least inconsistent, when not randomly disregarded, with sources "cited" with no page number (the whole book is a reference?), and with books that are entirely dedicated to the topic being cited for just one or two tidbits (would you be able to pass that as referencing in an academic paper? no? good thing Wikipedia is here for you). The most annoying thing about this is that the sort of half-assed, purely perfunctory, work done on "sourcing" this article is the hardest to fix, because many readers, being themselves just as callous and lazy, will just assume this is somehow legit work. Dahn (talk) 07:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

• Also, given the stereotypical and antiquated phrasing that pops up here and there, one can be reasonably sure that this article plagiarizes from Jelavich. Dahn (talk) 09:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Censors and editorial voice

It appears that Aeengath has made a habit of stealthily imposing his own views in this article, with no or minimal commentary as to why he is doing it. The most annoying part is when he actually removed cited references to an episode he doesn't want mentioned, namely the Wallachian involvement on the Ottoman side (which was significant enough in at least one battle of the campaign, and is mentioned with even more sources in the article on John Caradja); the info then appeared unverified, presumably in preparation for its total removal. Now he apparently labels the source used as unreliable, which is hilarious in an article that is otherwise very poorly and incompetently sourced (see the above section); to be clear: the source is a top vetted scholarly one -- yes, it was published under the Ion Antonescu regime, but by scholars critical of Antonescu (see detail on this in the Dan Simonescu article, which also notes that the editors of the journal supported Balkan cooperation). It is also the kind of source that is expected to cover this level of detail.

As his only minimal concession, Aeengath has agreed that Wallachian "volunteers" should be mentioned as participants in the revolt. However, this is grossly misleading, a toned-down, Disneyfied version of what the sources say happened, and obscuring the real agencies at work.

I am also struggling to understand why Aeengath is performing these tricks on the readers. Does he fear that mentions of Wallachia in two or three contextual and qualified sections, and at a relevant place in the infobox, are overfocused? Does he believe that Wallachia, as a client state, did not have its own agency -- when, strangely, he seems to claim that the pashaluks, actual provinces of the Ottoman Empire, did? Does he want to obscure this apparent moment of tension in what was by-and-large a solid friendship between Romanians and Serbs -- and, if so, does he not understand that this army was one of professional soldiers, answering to a Greek prince? or that Wallachians of the period often fought each other, let alone various surrounding factions? And why would the article need to reflect these peculiar qualms, instead of just spelling out the facts? Dahn (talk) 07:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Dahn First thank you for removing that contentious material. As for the remaining content that you want to add in the infobox: Great Banate of Craiova / fighting under / Wallachia / fighting under / Ottoman Empire (from 1813). I removed it because it was missing a citation and Wikipedia policy requires "an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports content" see WP:WTC. It is the same with the various Pashaliks and leaders missing a citation that I also removed. Following WP:MINREF, "material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source". I added the tag following one of your six refs in the article because "all content in articles must be verifiable" and the source you added for those refs "Contribuțiuni la istoria românilor din Peninsula Balcanică. Românii dintre Timoc și Morava" is inaccessible. These are Wikipedia guidelines, see WP:VERIFY and WP:INTEGRITY. I have searched on my end but have not been able to find anything in Bibliography about the Great Banate of Craiova being a belligerent on either side or about John Caradja being a leader of the First Serbian Uprising under the Ottoman Empire (I have added a to that one). I am not against adding Wallachia or any other co-belligerents, we just need to follow WP:POLICY. Please provide inline citations to verifiable reliable sources that directly support your edits, this way we can start improving this article. Thanks and have a nice day. Aeengath (talk) 13:50, 27 February 2024 (UTC) edited Aeengath (talk) 14:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Aeengath: You are simply disingenuous by this point. Every info you keep removing or twisting is cited with an inline citation, at the proper place in the text. Enough, or I shall have to request arbitration. Dahn (talk) 22:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for adding an additional inline citation about the participation of "several hundreds of Caradja's Romanians" even though from the same unverifiable source; even if this came from a RS I do not think it can support the insertion of "the Great Banship of Craiova as a co-belligerent on the Ottoman side". Wallachia and the Banship of Craiova were territories under Ottoman suzerainty at that time and were expected to provide troops or support to the Ottoman Empire when called upon, just like Bosnians, Albanians..etc While Wallachia may have had some interactions with both the Ottomans and the Serbs during this period, it didn't take a direct role in the conflict on either side. Barbara Jelavich does not mention it in her reference book, There is also no citation showing that John Caradja took part to the First Serbian Uprising as a commander. This looks like WP:OR and the fact that you “won't bother providing and translating quotations” as you stated in your edit summary is not helpful and might get your edits challenged again. Please follow WP:PG. Thanks and have a nice day. Aeengath (talk) Aeengath (talk) 12:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Where do you get the nerve to call it "unverifiable"? Unverifiable by whom? Was it not published? And of course other sources may not mention it: other sources don't mention the Timok campaign at all, yet, lo and behold, Veljko managed to die during the Timok campaign, and, lo and behold, the troops that killed him included Wallachians. Once we, unlike Jelavich (whom you plagiarized in writing this article), go into that level of detail, it becomes idiotic and anomalous not to mention that fact, even as it is mentioned in the article. It is by no means "OR" if it is mentioned in a published source, just because you haven't read the source (just like I can't read many of the published sourced in Serbian that are presented here and taken at face value). It is also not "contentious material" if the contention is that you haven't heard of it -- your weird disputes with published sources are of no relevancy to what goes in the article, since the implication behind that would be that you are yourself a published reliable third-party source, and not some guy on wikipedia. Are you sure you even understand how wikipedia works? Dahn (talk) 12:33, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Also: I find it annoying that you keep pretending that the argument here is "John Caradja took part in the campaign". He did not personally take part, but he was the commander in chief of all Wallachian troops (few as they were in that day and age), and is clearly mentioned as the agency behind sending the hundreds of soldiers. This, may we note, is presently one of the select few articles that advance the unequivocally stupid claim that commanders are only those present on the battlefield. The article on World War II clearly mentions Hitler in the infobox as a "leader" -- to name just one example. Again, you are holding this article hostage to your very very peculiar whims. Dahn (talk) 12:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I guess I should dwell a bit on the absurdity, or plain misdirection, of claims that Wallachia, a client state, had a status similar to "Albanians and Bosnians" in this regard. I don't even know where to begin: there were no "Albanians and Bosnians" with their own agencies, there were Ottoman citizens in regular pashaluks, i.e. within the very core of Ottoman territory, under unmitigated Ottoman control. The peoples themselves did not have agency, not even in Wallachia., let alone in "Albania" and "Bosnia" (none of which actually existed as political entities at the time). So why go for this evident bait-and-switch, where I am expected to discuss vague ethnic qualifiers as somehow similar in nature to a client state?

As for the client state: it had its own army. It was a pitifully small army, and it was evidently under the ultimate command of the Turks, but it was an army. Wallachia was under no obligation to participate in each and every military conflict of the Porte -- what Ottoman suzerainty actually did to it was to eliminate most military requirements, precisely so that the Phanariotes, even as the nominal lapdogs of the Turk, would still have no standing army to work with, should they get any ideas. This is precisely why the fact of a small Wallachian participation, while easily disregarded by many authors, is not just expected to be included in a more thorough review, but also historically significant on its own.

Lastly: I commented on how editors of the article have obsessively striven to remove all mention of Wallachia's carrying water for the Ottoman overlord; this removal was done silently for the most, but at times it was "explained" away under the evidently ridiculous assumption that Wallachia had no agency of its own (we get a repeat of that absurdity just above). In my comment, I also mentioned that the editors in question keep at it even as they keep in mentions of the pashaluks, who had even less agency than Wallachia -- a paradox that went "invisible" until I dropped mention of it. What was the "solution" to this paradox? The editors removed the pashaluks from the infobox, even though their presence there was justifiably encyclopedic (so was Wallachia's, to be sure). Who even imagines this is a good way to write articles? who actually believes that we are under any constrains not to mention plain, verifiable, facts? Again: who claims to have been designated as the editorial voice here? Dahn (talk) 13:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)