Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/miscellaneous

Comments by Todor Bozhinov

So far, the main points look OK to me (I'm talking specifically about the proposed guidelines on this project page, didn't really have the time to review the sister pages right now). There's a thing that bothers me, which is:

"Macedonian Slavic" can be used instead: ... when dealing specifically with the regional varieties in historical contexts before 1944, when Macedonian was not yet standardised and not yet predominantly regarded as a separate language

I'd like to be able to use "Bulgarian" where appropriate, and I believe my arguments should be clear. Also, shouldn't "Macedonian Slavic" link to Slavic dialects of Greece instead of a section of Macedonian language? Todor→Bozhinov 17:54, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

As for using plain "Bulgarian", that should indeed be uncontroversial when dealing with contexts earlier than the beginning Macedonian ethnogenesis, and whenever referring to Bulgarian language use in general – "Macedonian Slavic", in historical contexts, should be only for referring specifically to the regional varieties, where the focus is on their distinctness. I don't mind tweaking the wording if you think it should be clarified. As for the link target of Macedonian Slavic, it's a bit of a judgment issue: what are our readers most likely to be interested in, in the contexts where the link is to be used? If we expect our readers to be asking mostly on the social/political level: "how come there's talk of 'Slavic' in this Greek context; what is Slavic doing up there in northern Greece?", then indeed the link to Slavic dialects of Greece is more informative. If we expect our readers to ask more on the linguistic level: "so, what kind of a language is this Slavic, how is it pronounced, how is it related to other languages, ...? etc., then what they need is a link to one of the main language articles, and while it doesn't matter overly much which of those we offer them, the Macedonian language article would be the most directly pertinent. The only thing we should not be thinking of as our criterion here is the issue of whether this or that link serves as "laying claim" for this or that national cause, but unfortunately that mentality among wikipedia contributors is difficult to eradicate. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would be better if we include a reference to that in the wording just to make it clear.

As for the "Macedonian Slavic" linking problem, I believe that "Slavic dialects of Greece" can address linguistic issues as well. I see "Slavic dialects of Greece" as a parent article to the section in "Macedonian language". A separate article can be more detailed, more informative and better organized than a section.

While you are putting the blaim on the "claim-laying" mentality of contributors, I tend to think that contributors are no different than readers in their understanding and a link to a specific national language article does look like a claim to many people. Todor→Bozhinov 15:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

As for linguistic detail, we can't really expand the "Slavic dialects in Greece" article into a full-blown language article, complete with a grammatical system sketch, phonology and everything, can we? The idea behind the redirect-to-section solution was that the reader ends up on a page that also has these things. – Also, let's of course not forget that not all applications of the "Macedonian Slavic" term are related to Greece, there are also the historical ones. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:32, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Still an active proposal?

Just trying to clean up Category:Wikipedia proposals so wondering if this is still an active proposal or if it can be tagged otherwise? Hiding T 09:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)