Talk:Founding of Moldavia/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

It's absurd to claim that there were no Romanians in 14th century. "Vlachs" is simply the name which the Slavs, Greeks and Hungarians used for Romanians.

Your claim that the Romanians of Maramureş were not Romanians in 14th century is simply your own POV, unsupported by any sources or scholarship.

The comparison with Charlemagne is a fallacy. He was a Frank, probably speaker of their Germanic language, so he couldn't have been French. bogdan (talk) 22:37, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

No that's only your POV. All sources from the period call them Vlachs. That Vlachs is not just the name of Romanians is proved by the fact that none of the languages you quoted use it to refer to the Romanians of today. Yeah, Romanians evolved from a part of the Vlachs, but to speak of Romanians in the 14th century is simply false. Just because they are fewer Moldovans here that's no reason to bully them to push your POV (you'd never dare to call the Asens Romanians because of the strong Bulgarian community here) Xasha (talk) 22:52, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Xasha, accusations of POV-pushing are generally unhelpful. Let's take a look at what Peter Jordan has to say on p. 184 of Linguistic Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Christina Bratt Paulston and Donald Peckham, shall we? (Note that none of these people are themselves Romanian.) (Emphasis mine) "Already in the thirteenth century there must have been enough Transylvanian Vlachs or Romanians to populate Moldavia and Wallachia by emigration right after their devastation by the Mongols and to give these regions a distinct Romanian character... Nobility [in Transylvania] was accessible only for Catholics; most Vlachs/Romanians, who refused conversion from Orthodoxy, became serfs".

As you can see, the terms as used in modern scholarship are interchangeable for at least as early as the 13th century. No point in pursuing this further. Biruitorul ^Talk 02:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Types of Vlachs

Nobody made a difference between types of Vlachs during those times.

Every historian I've read assumed they were Romanians. It's absurd to claim they were Aromanians. From their language are derived both Maramureşean and Moldovean speeches. It's clearly that it was a dialect of Romanian, not Aromanian.

bogdan (talk) 22:41, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Vasary says they came from the Balkans. And WIkipedia doesn't work on original research, even if its the original research of an administrator.Xasha (talk) 22:52, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

But Vasary also calls them "Romanians" :

The first Vlakhs must have appeared in Maramaros (Romanian Maramureş) at the end of the thirteenth century, but the first written evidence of the colonising activity of Vlakh knezes can be dated to 1326. It is disputed whether the Romanians of Maramaros took part in Lackfi’s Tatar campaign in 1345, but it seems plausible to reckon with their participation.

The social and political organisation of the Romanian populations in north-west Moldavia and in Maramaros followed similar lines. The basic elements of this system had been taken over from the Slavs of the Balkans much earlier: knezes were the chiefs of villages, and several knezes would choose the voivode from among their number. (p. 157)

bogdan (talk) 23:23, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

That's still anachronistic.Xasha (talk) 23:35, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

What is anachronistic? The Romanians called themselves români or rumâni before that and after that. The Hungarians and Slavs called the Romanians "Vlachs" (Olahs, whatever) before and after that. The word "Olah" was in common use in Hungary until the 19th century. bogdan (talk) 00:09, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The word "Romanian" is first mentioned 2 centuries later, so your claim has no proofs. The word Olah was used for every vlach there was, and not only for Romanians.Xasha (talk) 08:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The debate about Bogdan

Actually that debate is part of the Romanian-Hungarian debate over "who was here first". The Hungarians say there's no reason not to believe that the two Bogdans refer to the same person, while the Romanians say there's no reason to believe it's the same person. Both sides are arguing for the sake of argument, there's not much evidence for either version. I try to keep this kind of debate out of this article, it's not quite relevant to Moldavia.

Nevertheless, I added the information to Bogdan I of Moldavia and this kind of facts should be added to articles connected to Origin of Romanians, but I'm not going to touch that article anytime soon. It's much too messy and too full of POV-warriors, fighting on both sides. bogdan (talk) 22:57, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Foundation of Moldavia/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: DustFormsWords (talk) 02:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I am commencing a review of this article. - DustFormsWords (talk) 02:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct;

The prose is not clear and concise, as described below. I regard these problems as being fundamental problems with the article, not capable of a reasonably quick fix, and do not propose to place this review on hold awaiting their resolution:

• The article topic is not defined - what is the foundation of Moldavia?
• The article regularly uses complex jargon where simple English would suffice. Some examples just from the lead paragraph include "linked by medieval chronicles", "incipient states", "took place within the external context created by". This pattern continues throughout the document. Acknowedging that this is a complex subject, significant work still needs to occur to make this document accessible to a non-expert reader.
• The article appears to fall out of encyclopaedic language at times: eg "caused a real exodus of the Cumans". If "real exodus" is a term with a distinct meaning from "exodus that is real" it should be wikilinked or explained. Otherwise the world "real" can be removed. Likewise the word "however" in "The process of political unification, however," and "on the other hand" from "On the other hand, during the same period,". There are too many other examples to list conveniently.
• The text is regularly vague, introducing concepts and people with no regard for their context or significance. For example: "The correspondence of the popes from the 1330s also contain references to the “powerful men of those parts” (potentes illorum partium)." What correspondence? Which popes? To whom? There are multiple instances of this problem.
• The section "'Dismounting' by Dragoş" contains an exceptionally long quote from "Moldo-Russian chronicle". A quote this long is almost never appropriate in an encyclopaedic article, and there is no justification for it here. Consider transwikiing to WikiSource.
• "In lack of documentary evidence, it is disputed" is poor phrasing. Possibly "Given the lack of documentary evidence"?
• The article as a whole is confusingly written. There is no through-line for the reader, and while without being familiar with the sources I'm unable to tell whether the overall problem is a lack of detail, an overabundance of detail, or simply poor presentation, in any case I am unable to gain any real appreciation of the subject from the article as written.

Spelling and grammar, for what it's worth, are fine.

(b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

This article complies with the manual of style for layout, lead sections, words to watch, list incorporation and fiction, insofar as those policies apply.

2. Verifiable with no original research:

(a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;

All references appear in the section "References".

(b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);

All content requiring citations appears to be appropriately referenced.

(c) it contains no original research.

The article does not appear to contain any original research.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic;

The article appears to be appropriately broad in its coverage.

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

TI am unable to determine whether the level of detail is appropriate because of the problems with the article's writing style discussed under criterion 1.

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.

The article appears to represent all relevant viewpoints. Obviously with a topic like this, new viewpoints are likely to emerge over time, but there is no obvious bias in the current article and the article's talk page does not alert me to any areas being overlooked.

5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

The article does not appear to be the subject of rapid changes, edit wars, or ongoing disputes.

6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

(a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content;

Images in the article have the following problems:

• File:Hordecup.jpg is not in the public domain and does not have a fair use rationale justifying its use in this article.
• I frankly don't believe the licensing information on File:Hungarian_Angevin_coat_of_arms.jpg. For it to be valid, the uploader would have to be the craftsman who created the fairly expensive items being photographed. I have severe doubts he is even the photographer, given the poor quality of the licensing rationale and the value of the pieces. Please contact the uploader to verify the status of the image.
• The licensing information for File:Moldova_1483_EnglishPNG.png is clearly wrong as the page has obviously been taken from a published atlas, no publication details for which are given. The same uploader uploaded File:Coat_of_arms_of_Moldavia.svg with the same rationale which makes me suspect that that one might also be problematic.

(b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

Images are relevant to the topic and are appropriately captioned. (You should consider adding alt text, but this is not required for the GA process.)

Overview - This article has significant problems with its images (fixable) but also severe problems with the quality and readability of its prose, which I estimate to require substantial work and probably a significant rewrite of the article. I am therefore proposing to close this GAR as a Fail, pending discussion. I realise prose quality is a subjective issue and so you are welcome to seek additional opinions from other independent reviewers, although the decision to pass or fail the article at this review remains mine. - DustFormsWords (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC) Result: Failed - There has been no response to this review from any editor, despite notifications, and no edits have been made to the article or its talk page in the intervening period. I am therefore proceeding to fail the article for the reasons set out above. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:06, 1 February 2011 (UTC)