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Dont know why are you pinging editors which did not contributed to this article, maps are long standing in the article and also according to their respective authors so there is nothing fringe in them, there is a section made for this, also map of Belgrade university was the one which was long standing for several years and has nothing to do with historical fabrications. I am going to ask you politely to remove pings. Thank you. Theonewithreason (talk) 16:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Santasa99 and Joy are mentioned in a discussion, and Santasa99 was present for a long time on the article (see the archive). "Long-standing" is not a valid argument, nor is the fact that they have an attribution. The 1st and 2nd maps are not controversial, but their inclusion is pointless as they are already included in visually better maps showing the same content. The 3rd and 4th maps are controversial fabrications and hence need to be removed. What is the point of having in the article these two completely inaccurate maps, with obvious analogies to the Greater Serbia propaganda?--Miki Filigranski (talk) 17:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, they haven't contributed to the article for a long time, Joy neither, maybe we should ping people who actually contributed, attributed sourced maps are on which Wikipedia articles are made by, that is why there is a section of maps in which different authors have their theories where did Serbian empire stretched, I dont see anything connected with as you call it Serbian propaganda especially if the authors of those maps are not Serbs but international scholars, we can rename the section to maps according to different authors or something like this, but to completely remove them especially the one from university of Belgrade - I disagree. Theonewithreason (talk) 17:19, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop diverting the subject and making excuses. Santasa99 contributed to the talk page for over ten years, and Joy is well-informed about these topics. Editors who contributed do not WP:OWN the article and as such not only they should be pinged.
I literally don't care about the one from the University of Belgrade, the issue is those two controversial maps. It's propaganda from the 19th century; that these were made by some international authors in the early 20th century doesn't mean a damn thing, it is a known fact that in old international scholarship can be found the same misinformation from the Serbian scholarship because of the influence and lobbying of the same scholarship and political apparatus at the time. The controversial maps don't belong in this, but in the Greater Serbia article. Why should this propaganda be promoted in the article, and why do you even agree to be here at all? If we included them in this article, then we need a very long section with a certain context, usually titled as "Legacy", in which would be described how the Serbian Empire statehood, its downfall, the battle of Kosovo, and so on, became an integral part of Serbian national identity, but also mythologization used for political purposes with its borders seen by some authors as much larger than they were in the correct greatest extent. -Miki Filigranski (talk) 19:47, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Neither of them contributed to this article, and pinging is not the option to resolve your own personal statements, also I am now going to ask you to read wp:civil, we dont need the section legacy since there is already part of the article that describes downfall and the legacy of the empire and definitely shouldn't include the narratives which you described since the battle of Kosovo happened later when the empire was already dissolved nor is the empire part of mythologisation, it dissolved because of inner conflicts. Also those maps dont belong to the greater Serbia article because they describe the Serbian empire and are from international scholars who made them. I gave a suggestion above we could rename the section and call them theoretical maps. Theonewithreason (talk) 03:23, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have a "Legacy" section of the article, the section "Aftermath and legacy" has only one sentence dedicated to legacy (" During the following centuries of Ottoman rule, the legacy of former statehood, embodied in the Serbian Empire, became an integral part of Serbian national identity.[21]"), neither the article's Fall of the Serbian Empire section "Legacy" is much better (again only one sentence "Serbian epic poems speak of the fall of the Serbian Empire.[26][27]"). Both articles have no mention or detailed explanation of being an inspiration, as Christopher Clark described in The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012), pg. 20-24: "Underpinning the idea of the 'unification of all Serbs' was a mental image of Serbia that bore little relation to the political map of the Balkans at the turn of the twentieth century. Its most influential political expression was a secret memorandum drawn up by the Serbian interior minister Hija Garasanin for Prince Alexandar Karadjordjevic in 1844. Known after its publication in 1906 as Nacertanije (from the Old Serbian nacrt, 'draft'), Garasanin's proposal sketched out a 'Programme for the National and Foreign Policy of Serbia'. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of this document on generations of Serb politicians and patriots; in time it became the Magna Carta of Serb nationalism. Garasanin opened his memorandum with the observation that Serbia is 'small, but must not remain in this condition'.37 The first commandment of Serbian policy, he argued, must be the 'principle of national unity'; by which he meant the unification of all Serbs within the boundaries of a Serbian state: 'Where a Serb dwells, that is Serbia.' The historical template for this expansive vision of Serbian statehood was the medieval empire of Stepan Dusan, a vast swathe of territory encompassing most of the present-day Serbian republic, along with the entirety of present-day Albania, most of Macedonia, and all of Central and Northern Greece, but not Bosnia, interestingly enough. Tsar Dusan's empire had supposedly collapsed after a defeat at the hands of the Turks on Kosovo Field on 2.8 June 1389. But this setback, Garasanin argued, had not undermined the Serbian state's legitimacy; it had merely interrupted its historical existence. The 'restoration' of a Greater Serbia unifying all Serbs was thus no innovation, but the expression of an ancient historical right. 'They cannot accuse [usl of seeking something new, unfounded, of constituting a revolution or an upheaval, but rather everyone must acknowledge that it is politically necessary, that it was founded in very ancient times and has its roots in the former political and national life of the Serbs.'38 Garasanin's argument thus exhibited that dramatic foreshortening of historical time that can some times be observed in the discourses of integral nationalism; it rested, moreover, upon the fiction that Tsar Dusan's sprawling, multi-ethnic, composite, medieval polity could be conflated with the modern idea of a culturally and linguistically homogenous nation-state. Serb patriots saw no inconsistency here, since they argued that virtually all the inhabitants of these lands were essentially Serbs ... Until 1918, when many of its objectives were met, Garasanin's memorandum remained the key policy blueprint for Serbia's rulers, while its precepts were broadcast to the population at large through a drip-feed of nationalist propaganda partly coordinated from Belgrade and partly driven by patriot networks within the press.42 The Greater Serbian vision was not just a question of government policy, however, or even of propaganda. It was woven deeply into the culture and identity of the Serbs. The memory of Dusan's empire resonated within the extraordinarily vivid tradition of Serbian popular epic songs... An imagined Serbia, projected on to a mythical past, came to brilliant life within this song-culture. The commitment to the redemption of 'lost' Serbian lands, coupled with the predicaments of an exposed location between two land empires, endowed the foreign policy of the Serbian state with a number of distinctive features. The first of these was an indeterminacy of geographical focus. The commitment in principle to a Greater Serbia was one thing, but where exactly should the process of redemption begin? In the Vojvodina, within the Kingdom of Hungary? In Ottoman Kosovo, known as 'Old Serbia'? In Bosnia, which had never been part of Dusan's empire but contained a substantial population of Serbs? Or in Macedonia to the south, still under Ottoman rule? The mismatch between the visionary objective of 'unification' and the meagre financial and military resources available to the Serbian state meant that Belgrade policy-makers had no choice but to respond opportunistically to rapidly changing conditions on the Balkan peninsula...".
There's no such thing as "theoretical maps", what you propose is WP:FRINGE and the gallery you made is WP:FALSEBALANCE. This article is part of the history subject area of scientific topics; it must use reliable academic literature and images. Meanwhile, pseudoscientific and fringe theories are avoided or allowed only in exceptional cases (as per WP:UNDUE "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true, or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article"). In that sense, such maps would be allowed only in a proper context, and that context is related to the Greater Serbia ideologization, liked it or not. Please cite reliable modern sources that have maps showing such borders of the Serbian Empire.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First of al the supposed Ilija Grasanin secret plan and its memorandum is construction of Croatian ultranationalists which are even disputed in Croatia because if it was secret then it could not have reached the population, second I am not supposing anything neither is this fringe or wp:fakebalance it is a contemporary map of the 19 th century not even placed in main body of the article, also you should really stop to use greater Serbian ideologization in every single comment especially with the authors who are not even Serbs. Theonewithreason (talk) 14:08, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Theonewithreason: why did you make a WP:POINTrevert? Until now, you have NOT provided a single valid argument that these two controversial maps should be in the article. The fact that they are from 19th-century German and French authors - due to the Serbian diplomatic propaganda spreading such viewpoints in Europe - is NOT an argument to be kept in the article. Please stop obstructing the editing of the article.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 15:36, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, the wp:or is your statement that they belong to greater Serbian propganda for which YOU did not provided any valid argument in fact, your recent edit in another article was tagged as I quote: a fabricated description and tagged [[1]] which you directly removed [[2]], this is WP:gaming not to mention you added far right authors to prove your wp:point, this is some serious WP:Gaming. Please stop obstructing the editing of the article with unbalanced edits. Like I previously politely asked you, you cannot tag everything as greater Serbian propaganda. Theonewithreason (talk) 15:46, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed that on the Greater Serbia page, the same user keeps trying to insert their fabricated content while ignoring warnings about the required sources. It’s quite obvious by now that this is an attempt to promote personal pseudo-historical views on Wikipedia. Shadow4ya (razgovor) 15:57, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What fabricated content? What far-right authors? This is sourced, common knowledge how and why such content was put into maps in the mid-19th century. It is completely ridiculous that editors are defending the inclusion of maps with Greater Serbian propaganda on unrelated articles, and doing it without providing a single valid argument, obstructing discussion and content dispute with ignorance, and making personal attacks and aspersions on me and reliable authors.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 16:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like more of the Serbian nationalistic POV pushing that has already been documented to exist on the English language Wikipedia. There is probably no solution here other than investigating it further and letting administrators consider more sanctions if necessary on the editors involved in aforementioned POV pushing contrary to Wikipedia policy. TylerBurden (talk) 18:24, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@TylerBurden: POV pushing void of context for international inaccurate maps on this article as being of international authors, outside the regional nationalistic antagonisms, gives an impression of 'validity' to one nationalistic POV about non-existant medieval borders, but now in the same time pushing removal of all international maps at Greater Serbia ([3] > [4] > [5], Talk:Greater Serbia#Henri Thiers's 1862 map) because in the same time confirms nationalistic political background of such maps which undermines the international 'validity' and POV pushing itself.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 21:06, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So about those two most controversial old maps, who are the authors?
For the 1886 map, it says "professor G. Droysen's". We have Gustav Droysen linking to a historian who lived 1808–1884, but this should instead be Gustav Droysen who lived 1838–1908?
For the 1857 map, it says "Louis Etienne Dussieux", is that Louis Dussieux [fr]?
Are these mapmakers relevant to the discussion of the territorial extent of the Serbian Empire, or would these just be their old mapmaking mistakes? Can we find later secondary sources which reference those maps and put them in context? --Joy (talk) 12:30, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes those are the 2 linked historians, we could put them in context as suggested maps of 19th century authors or old contemporary maps (attribution is already given). Theonewithreason (talk) 13:23, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Like I said, the wrong person is linked, their biography says they died 2 years after that map, it had to be another one. If this is the standard of verifiability that we base the inclusion of that content on, we're on the wrong track. --Joy (talk) 13:44, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well the name is there, the historian is real, and according to map summary it should be the second historian you linked who died in 1908. if you wish to make deeper research be my guest, however this maps have attributed authors and at least are supposed to be sourced, unlike previous discussions where you didn't object to leave unsourced material in articles. Theonewithreason (talk) 13:54, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we attributed the wrong author by adding the wrong link, we confused the readers. That is genuinely bad, and you shouldn't handwave it away.
I’ve cleaned up the article. I added a new, relevant image and created a Gallery section. One obsolete map was removed; I kept the other one, which is by a credible historian and illustrates the development of historiography on the topic. Additional description may be added. I hope that works for all of you. — Sadko(words are wind)19:03, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, it does not work. Banate of Bosnia was never part of the Serbian Empire, making the map very misleading. Please provide a reliable secondary or tertiary source that the map illustrates the development of historiography on the topic; otherwise, your claim is WP:OR and POV-pushing.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 20:51, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please provide the quote from the RS, this is pure WP:OR. Nowhere in the RS is it implied that Bosnian recognition of his title of an emperor meant emperor of Bosnia or sovereignty over Bosnia. The Bosnian-Serbian dispute was about Hum, and Stefan Dušan re-conquered it, but never conquered Bosnia. He failed to conquer Bobovac and capture Bosnian ban Stephen II Kotromanić, soon abandoning Bosnia and leaving forces only in Hum due to conflicts in the eastern frontier of the empire.--Miki Filigranski (talk) 21:56, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My sincere idea was that it would add additional context i. e. the full context. Perhaps someone else has a better suggestion. My overall approach was to find a middle ground here. Best. — Sadko(words are wind)23:02, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
