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view · edit Frequently asked questions Q1: Why were my edits to the intro section removed ? A1: The intro represents a summary of the article itself. It should present, in a nutshell, the sourced information in the sections below, without unnecessary details. Therefore its structure should not be changed either, unless there is a general restructuring of the article itself. Q2: The national motto is "Strength through unity", not "Unity makes strength" ? A2: The national motto of Bulgaria is based on a phrase that was first used as a motto by the Dutch Republic in 1581. The phrase was later adopted by Belgium, as L'Union fait la force, and in turn by the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which ruled Bulgaria after its Liberation, in 1887. Q3: Why was my image removed ? A3: This is not a picture gallery. Images should illustrate information that is present in the text; they should illustrate the most significant points of a section and should be with near-Featured Image (if not FI) quality. If you think your image is good, consider proposing it for Featured Image status at Wikimedia Commons. Also, images of "modern buildings" are completely undesired; "modern" could mean anything and a building could never represent the entire economy of the country. If you want to remove or replace an image, please, discuss it with the community on the talk page. For more information, read Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Images. Q4: Bulgaria is ranked as the 98th-largest petroleum producer and was 5th on the Handball European League in 1996, this is important information, why do you remove it ? A4: Avoid including facts that are neither statistically informative nor significant on a global, or at least on a continental level. As the intro summarizes the article itself, the sections summarize the content of their respective main articles in the same manner. Include any information more detailed than the usual in the relevant History, Geography, Economy mains, not here. This page only presents the most basic information, along with the statistically superlative items of the country - Bulgaria being the largest essential oil producer globally or the site of the first man-made structures (yet discovered) in Europe is something significant; a Bulgarian making it up to the Wimbledon semifinals or discovering a sixth heart sound is not. Consider reading Misplaced Pages:Summary style and Misplaced Pages:UNDUE. Q5: I have added information on the origin of the Bulgars/Thracians, why was it removed ? A5: This article's historical section is only dealing with how the Bulgarian state formed. The origins of its constituent peoples are out of its scope and should not be included. Q6: There are no positive developments pointed out in the Ottoman rule section, this is not a neutral point of view ? A6: The events presented are a collection of sourced statements and historical developments. After all, the Ottoman era represents a long-lasting military occupation.

	Bulgaria has been listed as one of the Geography and places good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 29, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted September 2, 2010 Good article nominee Listed November 6, 2011 Peer review Reviewed January 20, 2012 Featured article candidate Not promoted Current status: Good article

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Bulgaria Etymology

For FA status you may want to add a section on the origins or the countries name.--Amadscientist (talk) 13:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Whatever exists as etymology is too short; I've considered including it, but two sentences don't really make a section. I've noticed several FA status articles are actually missing such a section. - ☣Tourbillon 19:35, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

If there isn't that much information there isn't that much information. Don't include if you can't. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from , 24 November 2011

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

I'd like the following part to be added after "...automobile traffic,", which is in section Environment and wildlife . toprentacar.bg. Retrieved 24 November 2011. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

Peteraa (talk) 14:37, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

The link was removed earlier as irrelevant. - ☣Tourbillon 08:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe

The Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe, merged with the local Slavic inhabitants in the late 7th century to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantine Empire to assert its place in the Balkans, but by the end of the 14th century the country was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. Northern Bulgaria attained autonomy in 1878 and all of Bulgaria became independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Having fought on the losing side in both World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946. Communist domination ended in 1990, when Bulgaria held its first multiparty election since World War II and began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007.

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bu.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.25.3.90 (talk) 16:59, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Gini

I know this probably isn't a priority for this article, but it seems like Bulgaria's Gini coeffecient has trended in the opposite direction to a lot of other European nations (just like it's debt levels). Maybe this is worth mentioning under economy.

Inequality is a notable problem for Bulgaria, I was to add a few words on the discrepancy between the average GDP of its NUTS II regions (lowest is 28% of EU average while highest is 73%), but forgot about it with all the issues around the FAC nomination. I will look into it. - ☣Tourbillon 09:01, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Most ancient Slavic language

Although sourced, the term is somewhere between vague and self-contradictory. Does "most ancient" mean oldest? Well it cannot be older than or more ancient than its predecessor tongue from which it derives - and that is Slavic. And just as Latin over years became the modern languages of French, Romanian, Portuguese, etc., so too did Old Slavic become today's European languages. So what makes one older than another? Does it mean it was attested at an earlier date? If so, what were the other Slavophonic people talking at the time? Either their own languages which must have paradoxically emerged before Bulgarian, or they were still talking older Slavic dialects which must have been older than the then-new Bulgarian tongue. Macedonian is attested around 1944, that was when it was accepted into the new Yugoslavia and a standard finally became official. But does that mean the language wasn't spoken before? From 1912-WWII, anything in the south of the Kingdom of Serbia that didn't resemble Serbo-Croat was forbidden - and some of the characteristics of Macedonian are features stretching a long way into Central Serbia (such as Torlakian regions) but were not standard Serbo-Croat. Prior to 1912, people spoke in their own dialects and those dialects have a history that go back to the same ancestor language as Bulgarian's. There were five centuries of Ottoman rule when the Vardar region had no standard for the Slavophonic people but even if there were, language changes with every generation. To that end, Macedonian - which is so close to Bulgarian - surely contains many features which other Slavic languages lost but only Bulgarian retains. Except Macedonian wasn't mentioned until much later in history, and the Bulgarian tongue cannot take credit for what is Macedonian today even if many did declare themselves Bulgarian a century back. Everything had to 'snap away' from its neighbour at some point but there is no set time that a population ceases to speak one language and starts the next. Also, the Slavic languages within the former Ottoman Empire became very corrupted in vocabulary because of the heavy influence of Turkish, the Orthodox tradition languages also take a lot from Greek. Gramatically, Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost the inflection system which the other Slavic languages have kept; BG and MK have also adopted alien features resulting from the Balkan Linguistic Union such as definite articles (absent from Old Slavic) and loss of infinitive mood of verb. The section surely needs to be rewritten somehow but I need to know - what makes Bulgarian more ancient than Slovakian? Can someone explain? Evlekis (Евлекис) (argue) 23:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I would suppose that the author of the publication meant that it was the earliest testified Slavic language, as it was the first one with its own alphabet. Having a writing system of its own, its development can be traced back in history with a high degree of certainty, unlike other Slavic languages for which there is little to no written evidence of how they developed or when they emerged as distinct languages. - ☣Tourbillon 07:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Well Slavic itself was known! But it split and became many languages as did Latin. Bulgarian then is the earliest attested among the modern Slavic tongues. Evlekis (Евлекис) (argue) 23:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Cyrillic and IPA names in opening sentence

An editor recently removed this and when it was cleaned up and reinserted less obtrusively, he removed it again (this time to a footnote) with the reasoning "this is the English wikipedia, not the Bulgarian, Ukranian, Russian" etc. I am of the opinion that it should remain in the lede as this is fairly standard in all country articles (see for example Russia, Germany, France, Thailand, Cambodia).--William Thweatt | 07:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Could you provide a reason that two and a half lines of gobbled text intruding after the very first line is useful for English-speakers? It is not in a footnote, thus perfectly accessible. Or you could go to the Bulgarian WP. Tony (talk) 08:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to the effort of reducing the clutter, but removing the whole info completely or relegating it into a footnote is not a good idea. Information about the native name of the country is a vital part of our encyclopedic coverage of it. When it's in a footnote people won't find it, because people expect footnotes to primarily contain references. What I think can be left out is the IPA rendering of the English pronunciation, because that is not really problematic for English-speaking readers. We might also leave out the Bulgarian rendering of the "Republic of..." part, because it's a trivial translation matter. But the name itself should be there both in Cyrillic and in a transcription. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It's the English WP, not the Bulgarian WP. Foreign languages, especially impenetrable foreign scripts, have no place right at the opening, occupying two and half lines after the very first word. If it were one or two words, it might be passed over: but it's humunguously long and destroys the opening. If you really insist on retaining it in the main text, it needs to go somewhere further down, not in the summary. I'm sorry that Bulgarians who consult this will have to click on the opening footnote to get that little shot of serotonin from seeing their own script. My advice: work on the Bulgarian WP article on Bulgaria. Could I ask whether the Bulgarian WP gives English-language equivalents after the first word of each geographical article? No. en.WP is not for readers who do not speak English. That is why we have 282 WPs in different languages. Ease of reading and keeping the text relevant to the 99.99% of readers who are not Bulgarian is more important. I cannot see any remote use in having the cyrillic script in the article at all; a prominent footnote is a reasonable compromise. In the info box, I also object to the use of Bulgarian script and language for the national motto, then the transliteration, then the English translation. But I suppose we'll have to put up with that clutter. Infoboxes should not be unnecessarily long. And a national motto seems rather trivial to be displaying right at the top. Tony (talk) 08:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Future, I've had dealings before with you where you act before editors can come in to discuss a matter. Please wait. Tony (talk) 09:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

You've been edit-warring. Next revert and you're at WP:AN3. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

That is an offensive post, and your editing behaviour on the article page was also offensive. You are warned. Tony (talk) 12:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think edit-warring by any user is something productive, at least not while the article is at a nomination. By viewing other FA-status country articles, I see the name of the country in the local language, and one transcription at most (as IPA symbols are understood by only a handful of users). There is no need to make a transcription of the official name (Republic of...), but not rendering the short form Cyrillic name and one transcription of it isn't correct either, IMO. - ☣Tourbillon 14:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Preslav school - the birthplace of the Cyrillic; Bulgaria - the major centre of Slavic culture

Why this about the birthplace of the Cyrillic was deleted? Isn't this an important description for Bulgaria as a whole and isn't it has to be noted? If not in the begining of the page, it deserve to be written in the map of the Cyrillic countries. Also some books from Google in the page say directly that Bulgaria was the major centre of the Slavic culture in the Middle Ages exerting considerable cultural influnce over rest of the Eastern Orthodox world - not just "a cultural hub of the Slavic peoples" as is written now, I am on the opinion that this sentence has misses and should be corrected too. And second I think that the Ancient Macedonians were present in the territories of Bulgaria not the Ancient Greeks, or at least for longer period, the Macedonians I think hould be noted. Comments? Thanks for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.204.137.215 (talk) 10:24, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

If you have read the article thoroughly, you would notice that it both implies and points directly towards a firm position of Bulgaria as a centre of Slavic culture in general. You might think that Ancient Macedonians were present on Bulgaria's teritories before the Greeks, but that is incorrect. The first Greek colonies were established in what is now Bulgaria long before the first Macedonians ever appeared in the area. - ☣Tourbillon 14:36, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Sunny Beach ?

Seriously, this is the best way to represent the economy of Bulgaria ? It's like representing the Colombian economy with an image of a coke plantation, simply because it "brings a lot of money". Even if we assume tourism was more significant than exports in mining and metallurgy (and it's not), why would this campy, overconstructed, cheap squalor have any merit to stand there ? - ☣Tourbillon 20:30, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, if not Sunny Beach, then at least Golden Sands or Primorsko or Sozopol deserve a photo in this section. File:Town of Primorsko aerial Boby Dimitrov 2.jpg - this is a good one, for example. A photo of a Bulgarian major sea resort is simply better as, as I said before, tourism is an important source of income for the economy and such photo will be better than the current one, which simply shows what's written in the text and adds nothing more. - Nicksss93 (talk) 09:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Golden Sands and Sozopol don't really have a good reputation outside Bulgaria. I'd suggest this view of Sveti Vlas, it's not such a display of megalomaniac overconstruction and is a less popular destination for non-Bulgarian tourists. Anything from the 100 Tourist Sites of Bulgaria would also be a good choice, though there are little quality photos of those objects. Also, if any such picture replaces the exports map, the Sofia photo in the upper right corner would also have to be removed - two photos of settlements would put too much weight on geographic locations. - ☣Tourbillon 10:18, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a better one. Also, I don't think having 2 photos will be a problem - FA articles like Cameroon and Chad have as many as four photos in their economy sections. - Nicksss93 (talk) 18:49, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

The second one is too generic, in my opinion. And the problem is not that there will be two photos, but that both will be of geographic locations. - ☣Tourbillon 19:11, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't see anywhere a Misplaced Pages rule or FA criteria that there shouldn't be two photos of geographic locations in the economy section. However, if it's really a problem, then a specific photo from Sofia with a place of economic significance like Business Park Sofia, The Bulgarian National Bank, Bulbank, etc. could replace the overall image of the city. And about the Sveti Vlas photos - in my opinion, the overall photo of the resort is better exactly because of its generic character as it gives the reader a more overall notion of the town, and is also of better quality. - Nicksss93 (talk) 22:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

This is an economy section after all, having pictures only of settlements would not look very adequate, simply because any settlement with a size of more than 100,000 inhabitants could claim economic significance and, therefore, an image in the section. Economic activity is worst represented by buildings or locations. Generic photos like the one of BPS, the National Bank or any resort not only make the section look like a tourist advertisement, but also don't bring any information to the reader. Not to mention that they're not even pretty nor impressive, as much as many people would think BPS is something significant. I suggest we leave the article as it is now in terms of images, and resolve the question after the FA nomination expires. - ☣Tourbillon 07:20, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Ottoman tone

This article generally is much better than many at NPOV, but there are some issues with the Ottoman empire I think should be addressed.

• The infobox has a stage of sovereignty noted as "Liberation from Ottoman rule". Liberation is always a word which rings alarm bells, and probably isn't that accurate. It was still nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, which is why a declaration of independence was made. Something like "Ottoman client state" would be better, or perhaps "Autonomous principality" if we want to emphasise the fact it emerged from the Ottoman Empire, rather than being conquered by it.
• "The Ottomans subjugated all Bulgarian lands south of the Danube after the Battle of Nicopolis and the fall of the Vidin Tsardom three years later." Subjugate is another powerful word, and again misplaced. Land can't really be subjugated, it's just physically there. Better to say annexed or conquered. It may also be a good idea to change the order of the sentence, so note the battles and the result, rather than result than battle. Rough eg. "After the Battle of Nicopolis and the fall of the Vidin Tsardom three years later, the Ottoman Empire took control of all Bulgarian lands south of the Danube."
• "and the population lost its national consciousness under the oppression of the invaders." The last part, "under the oppression of the invaders" isn't needed. Aside from using both "oppression" and "invaders", it doesn't help the readers as it should already be clear why the national conscience was lost. The oppression is very clearly laid out in the previous two sentences.

While I'm here, I suggest shortening "Ottoman rule and national awakening" to just "Ottoman rule". The national awakening happened as part of Ottoman rule, and looks weird in the TOC as it implies there was no national identity before (It's also currently the longest title in the TOC). Also, in the sentence "This prefigured Bulgaria's militaristic approach to foreign affairs and its participation in four wars during the first half of the 20th century", "prefigured" is a weird word. Perhaps replace it with something like "was a major factor in". CMD (talk) 18:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

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