Talk:The Old Elm

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: This might be an interesting topic for WP:Did You Know if the unreferenced information can be cleaned up.

BuySomeApples (talk) 00:02, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 10:36, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that The Old Elm was used by the Ottoman Turks to hang captured hajduks?

• Source:

• ALT1: ... that part of The Old Elm's stem is cemented to preserve it and give it more stability? Source:
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/The Old Elm

Created by Yelps (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Yelps ᘛ⁠⁐̤⁠ᕐ⁠ᐷ critique me 09:48, 13 May 2025 (UTC).

• I'll review this article. Richard Nevell (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: The opening two sentences of the history section is almost identical to what Google Translate produces on this page; they need to be written and a reference provided. I only picked this up because of a spot check.

• Comment: Rephrased the entire paragraph.

• @Yelps: That's making progress, but the edits need to be more than swapping a few synonyms. At the moment, I'd consider it to be close paraphrasing. For two sentences it's a bit borderline, but I think it could be rephrased. Richard Nevell (talk) 09:01, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

• @Richard Nevell: rephrased again, I don't really know how to rephrase it more so this was the best I was able to do.

The statement about the age of the tree doesn't have a source – this should be relatively easy to fix as the first two references in the article give an age, though they do say 1,000 rather than 1,100.

• Comment: the claim does have a source, it's just later in the article. Also, the tree is 1100 years old. The first two claims just state that it's over 1000 years, and the other sources do say it's 1100 years.

• Apologies, I had missed the source in the body of the article and per WP:LEADCITE it isn't needed in the lead (I think that still applies during DYK). Richard Nevell (talk) 09:01, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

The statement "To stop any possible putrefactive processes or the breeding of microorganisms, the cavities have been filled with reinforcing filler, while openings for natural ventilation have been left" is not supported by the current reference.

• Comment: couldn't find a supporting source and seems to be a misinformation in the Bulgarian wikipedia, which this was partially copied from. So removed it.

The phrasing of the last sentence of the "Conservation" is a bit too close to the source. Richard Nevell (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

• Comment: Rephrased.

Pinging @Richard Nevell: everything is done.

@Yelps:, I'll take another look at the article. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:11, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Yelps: I've approved the article. I've also put the images into a gallery to reduce the amount of whitespace they were causing. Feel free to revert, but if you do I suggest dropping the image with the caption "Another angle of The Old Elm" to avoid crowding the article or creating white space. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:37, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

@Richard Nevell: undid since in my opinion, the coat of arms image and the 2019 image is needed to visually understand what the article is talking about, grouping them all together doesn't make sense from a reader's perspective. Removed the "another angle" image as you said, though since I'm a mobile user, I don't actually know how much whitespace there actually exists, so feel free to make any adjustments to reduce the whitespace that I can't see.

References

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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

Nominator: Yelps (talk · contribs) 17:23, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk · contribs) 03:49, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Hey, this was a really interesting article to review! You have done great work with it :) Earwig shows no issues and I cannot see any major problems so here are my comments:

1. Overview - Would it be worth linking List of protected areas of Bulgaria to "protected site"?

•  Done

1. Overview - "continuous care for The Old Elm is a priority for the Sliven Municipality" and "which is guarded by the state" - Could you please rephrase these two sentences to be more specific?

•  Done, or atleast I think so.

1. History - "The Old Elm of Sliven is one of the last remaining representatives of the forest" - I would recommend changing "representatives" to trees or plants to not confuse readers/sound idiomatic

•  Done

1. History - "Each of these trees has been officially recognized and protected as a natural landmark" - Would it be worth linking List of protected areas of Bulgaria here?

•  Done per MOS:DUPLINK, duplinks aren't allowed except when the links are on different sections. But for such a short article (for GA standards atleast), I don't think that matters. I still linked it though.

1. History - Could you please write which year the quote was said?
2. Disease and decline - Is it possible to link some of the terms readers may not be familiar with per WP:READERSFIRST? E.g. desiccated crown, central core, controlled sanitation cutting, water transport, skeletal branches etc?

•  Done linked some, not exactly those, but some technical terms still.

1. "there was a public debate on whether to replace the tree" - When was this? And are there anymore details (e.g. where?)?

• See below for explanation.

1. Could you please say who Stefan Stefanov is? Is he a scientist etc?

• The source remains unclear who exactly Stefan Stefanov is, the same can also be said for Damyan Damyanov, though for him, the footballer is the only "famous" person, which also happened to be born conveniently at Sliven. Same cannot be said for Stefan Stefanov, as there's multiple equally possible people that could've said it, and I haven't found any other source despite my extensive searching.

1. Cultural significance - "In the past, the altitude of the city was measured under the tree" - Do you know until when?

• No. This is yet, another claim, that the only source talking about it remains unclear on.

1. "the overwhelming outcome to an aggressive "get-out-the-vote campaign" organized by the youth of Sliven" - I think "aggressive" should be replaced with "intense" or something, unless it genuinely was aggressive in a negative way

•  Done

1. Should Bulgarian Posts be in speech marks?

•  Already done? Bulgarian posts are already in quotation marks, unless you're referring to some other symbol named speech marks.

1. Picture - "Another angle of The Old Elm" - Is it possible to add the year and to clarify which angle it is?

•  Partly done, added the year it was taken via the image description. Though the angle are too specific to ever be found. Using basic judgement and assuming the lead image is looking towards the north, this image looks like it was taken looking at the east. Of course, that's original research, soo...

1. Picture - "Coat of arms of Sliven" - Can you say from when that coat of arms has been in use (e.g. since 1995)?

•  Done

1. Would it be possible to archive Sources #2, #3, #5, #6 and #8? No worries if not

•  Not done not because I don't want to, but because there doesn't seem to be archived sources after multiple extensive searches, consulting deepseek's search mode (I'm a deepseek guy), and trying IAbot and other similar tools.

Once these have been addressed I will do a source spotcheck and pass the article :) Please let me know if you need any help or have any questions at all! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 03:49, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

• Hello Danilo! Surprised to see you again (don't worry about the Sunny Bunnies nom, I'll get to it someday, I live in Bangladesh where blackouts are frequent but last week they got even more common for some reason, so I haven't been able to edit that often for the last couple of days now). I've done some of the easier problems. Will tackle on the others later when I have ample time.

Hello again, everything is done... Mostly. The thing here, is that all the sources seem to be iterating the same thing over and over again, particularly, The tree of the year, the coat of arms, the "meeting are arranged here" statements. If I included every reliable sources, there'd be easily 40+ sources, but that's just citation overkill. I only included those sources, that have something new in their claims. And upon extensively searching all of google, all of the 200+ results for the old elm (Google scholar doesn't give me anything except for 2 PDFs, which again, iterate the same thing), everything I found should be here in the article. There's still minor gaps, but what am I supposed to do if all the sources say the same thing?

Pinging @DaniloDaysOfOurLives: everything is done (mostly, see my explanation) Yelps ᘛ⁠⁐̤⁠ᕐ⁠ᐷ critique me 07:33, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Hey, I understand. I think there is enough to pass it for GA criteria. Well done :) I have spotchecked Sources #7 and #14. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.