Wikipedia:Peer review/Gelou/archive1

Gelou

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it has been substantially rewritten based on academic works and it needs to be checked against WP:NPOV criteria.

Thanks, Borsoka (talk) 02:57, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Oncenawhile

• Great article and interesting topic. My suggestions below
• The first picture in the article should be a representation of Gelou himself, not a map. Whether imaginary or not, I assume representations of him exist?
• Many of the key sources are unavailable online, so for the more contentious refs, I suggest including a sentence of quotation as support
• The lead should be longer and should summarise the article more closely
• The "Gelou in modern historiography" section needs some improvement to its structure:
  • "have always" in the first two sentences should be more specific
  • It reads like a "pros and cons" list. I suggest that the first paragraph becomes a simple summary of the historiographical debate(s) - i.e did Gelou exist. Then rather than having two paragraphs with one "for" and one "against", have paragraphs focusing on the specific areas debated by the scholars, e.g. motivation to invent, similarity to local names, other proven or claimed examples of similar inventions.
• Oncenawhile (talk) 07:49, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Oncenawhile, thank you very much for your above comments. I highly appreciate your throughful review. Based on your comments, I expanded the lead and tried to modify the last section ("Gelou in modern historiography"). Unfortunatelly, I cannot add a picture of Gelou, because I have no information of such a picture. Sorry, I do not understand your suggestion about sentences "of quotation as support": in most cases, the article itself contains a quotation. Borsoka (talk) 13:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

From the Chronicon Pictum

@Borsoka: Is this a picture of Gelou? Oncenawhile (talk) 15:42, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

No, it is a picture of Gyula III, a Hungarian chieftain ruling in Transylvania a hundred years after the Hungarian Conquest. Borsoka (talk) 15:51, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

What about one of the seven pictured at Seven chieftains of the Magyars - according to Simon of Kéza one of them may be Gyula?

Separately, are you sure Gelou is the WP:COMMONNAME for this article? It might be better to be consistent with Gyula (title), Gyula II and Gyula III. Oncenawhile (talk) 16:55, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

The Gyulas (or one of the three Gyulas) and Gelou are not identical. Gelou was a Vlach prince fighting against the Magyars, while the Gyulas were Magyar chieftains. Gelou is mentioned under this name in the academic works cited in the article. Borsoka (talk) 17:06, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah ok. Given everything we know about Gelou was written by Magyars, and given that Gyula (title) is a generic title, surely this connection should be made clearly in the lead. I assume the academic works mention this? Oncenawhile (talk) 07:44, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• László Péter: "Who ruled Transylvania for a period during the tenth century until his defeat by King Stephen. Just as Anonymus derived Salan from the phonetically analogous Kalan, so too did he create Gelou from Gyula."[1]
• Endre Haraszti: "In some of the Chronicles, this Gyula, or Gylas appeared as "Gelou, dux Blacorum"[2]
• Béla Köpeczi: "While it is evident that Anonymus had converted honorifics into the real names Gyula and Horka, the source of the name Tétény is less clear: he may have borrowed it from a Hungarian family's legend, or from the locality, on the Danube, called Tétény. Gelou was an authentic personal name as well as a toponym that is noted in the chronicle: the fortress of Gyalu, at the confluence of the Szamos and Kapus rivers. This Hungarian name, of ancient Turkic origin, occurs as a toponym in other regions of Hungary as well. Curiously, Anonymus did not choose a royal castle — such as Kolozsvár or Doboka, both proximate to the scene of his story — for the seat of the Transylvanian Blak leader. Instead, he opted for the Transylvanian bishop's castle at Gyula — perhaps because it was the closest major fort in relation to the Almás River and the Meszes Pass, and because it sounded similar to the leader's name, Gyalu."[3][4]
• [5]

Hopefully the three quotes above are helpful and could be added to the article. Also, on a different subject, may be worth adding this: Pál Engel "After Gelou was killed by the Hungarians in a battle near the River Somes, his subjects elected Tuhutum, one of the 'seven dukes', as their prince."

Oncenawhile (talk) 07:56, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Oncenawhile, thank you for your above comments. Could you provide the exact sources of your above citations? I would like to use them to improve the article. Borsoka (talk) 12:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Borsoka, I have added the links above. Oncenawhile (talk) 07:22, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

By the way, if you have time, i'd be very grateful for your thoughts on Wikipedia:Peer_review/Timeline_of_the_name_"Palestine"/archive1. Oncenawhile (talk) 09:54, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley This is a most impressive article, both for its scholarship and its prose, which, if I may be permitted to say so, is astoundingly good for something written in someone else's mother tongue, and puts monoglot Englishmen like me to shame. Just a few comments:

• Lead
  • "a dozen of persons" – idiomatic English requires this to be just "a dozen persons" or (I think preferably) "a dozen people".
  • "a sedentary population" – this may be a technical term of which I am ignorant, and if so ignore me, but the normal use of "sedentary" is quite literal – sitting as in being seated, not standing or walking. The term comes up again, I see, in the Background section.
  • "Weapons unearthed in the same regions suggests…" – "weapons" (plural) need a plural verb – "suggest".
• Background
  • "the presence of Romanians in this context should not be ruled out" – I'd lose the quotation marks. With such a plain phrase you're in no danger of being accused of plagiarism, and the quotation marks don't add much.
  • "the use of spurs by the Avars have not been proven" – the reverse of my comment above: this time we have a singular noun with a plural verb.
  • "ask that they should not sell salt to the Moravians" – another phrase in what I think are unnecessary quotation marks.
• Gelou and his duchy
  • "a tradition which contradicts their narration" – I think I'd substitute "narrative" for "narration" here: the latter implies the act of narrating, whereas the former is just whatever is being narrated.
• Sources
  • Macartney, C. A. (1953). The Medieval Hungarian Historians: A Critical & Analytical Guide – according to WorldCat and Google Books the title uses the full word "and" rather than an ampersand.
  • You are inconsistent in how you indicate that a book is in a language other than English: compare the Kordé listing with that for the second Sălăgean. To my mind the former is preferable, and it is certainly more usual.

Those are my few, minor quibbles. As to NPOV, it didn't cross my mind for a moment that there was anything of concern on that score. If you take the article to FAC please ping me. Tim riley talk 13:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Tim riley, thank you for your thorough review, and also for your kind words. I fixed most problems you mentioned above. Sorry, I insist on "my" quotation marks. :) I do not want to be involved in a copyvio issue. Borsoka (talk) 14:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. I don't at all press the point about the quotation marks. Onwards and upwards to FAC! Tim riley talk 14:42, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

• "turn of the 9th century" usually means around 800; I went with more straightforward wording. [Thanks for fixing my mistake with the time frame.]
• "The inhumation cemeteries": The word won't be known by many of our readers. I take it you mean the non-cremation cemeteries, but just "the cemeteries" usually means that, so I went with that.
• These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 15:17, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Dank, thank you for your edits. I highly appreciate them. You even answered a question I was planning to raise (I did not understand the deletion of the "inhumation" adjective.) :) Have a nice day! Borsoka (talk) 16:49, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Glad you liked it, looking forward to seeing this at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 17:29, 4 November 2014 (UTC)