Talk:Battle of Vukovar/Archive 3

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Battle of Vukovar: 20th anniversary featured article proposal

The 20th anniversary of the fall of Vukovar is coming up this November. Given that, I think it would be an opportune time to get this article up to featured standard (as I note the Croatian Wikipedia's version already is), and ideally run it on the Main Page on November 18th, 2011. It would be better still if the English and Croatian Wikipedias ran it simultaneously on the same day - an inter-wiki project to mark a significant anniversary would be a useful bit of cross-project collaboration. The article does need work, as Cirt rightly says above, but I don't think it is actually in too bad a shape. It is already reasonably comprehensive and fairly well sourced. However, some of the writing needs an overhaul and it needs a lot more references.

I propose to work on this article over the next few months to get it up to featured standard, hopefully in time for a nomination by the end of September. Is anyone interested on collaborating on this? It would be especially useful to have some Croatian-speakers on board as there is likely to be a need to quote or check Croatian-language sources, though I plan to use English-language sources as much as possible. It would be especially useful if anyone knows of any images from 1991 that could be freely used (i.e. public domain or Creative Commons - fair use will not be acceptable in a featured article). Prioryman (talk) 23:25, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• I'm in. I speak only a few scattered words and phrases in Croatian, so I won't be of much help there. However, I am more than willing to help hunt down sources and do menial copy-editing and other odd jobs. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 23:29, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Hm, it's rated C-class now, that's a significant leap. Let's get it up to Wikipedia:Good article standard first :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• Unfortunately the GA review process is quite badly broken - it can take months for a review to even begin, let alone be completed. The timeframe is too short for that. Prioryman (talk) 08:02, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• The last GAN I posted was A2 (Croatia): it was nominated on July 28 and promoted on August 2, so I suppose it's reasonably quick. I'll pitch in with some of the required references, but a copyedit will be needed, I suppose. And I'd still recommend a GAN first FAC later.--Tomobe03 (talk) 00:20, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

• I would bet that it was reasonably quick because it was a relatively short article (1,978 words of prose). This one is 13,815 words, a much tougher proposition for a GA reviewer. The problem with GA is that articles can sit there unreviewed for months - unless of course you know someone who might be willing to review it as a priority. Prioryman (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I don't have much experience with nominating featured content but me and another editor recently put up a fairly simply list for FLC and it took about six weeks before it got promoted (there were no issues with it so we simply had to wait for 5-6 reviewers to come along). It all depends on how long it is and how interesting the article seems to reviewers. Going straight to FAC sounds like a good idea. Besides, it looks pretty good at the moment and it shouldn't be a problem to fix any possible issues that come up in the FAR. Btw great job Prioryman. I'd love to help but I don't know what with. If you happen to need to more references I'll pitch in. I read the article and it doesn't look like much copy editing is needed but it might be a good idea to ask somebody over at WP:GOCE to take a look at it before FAR. Timbouctou (talk) 00:38, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the help you've already provided with copyediting, it's greatly appreciated. If there are any other issues you think need to be addressed please feel free to fix them, or let me know and I'll sort them out. Prioryman (talk) 00:48, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

• It is possible to ask beforehand, sure, but even Croatian War of Independence took just three weeks, and it is one of the longest articles on the wiki. On a further note, may I suggest using references 181-187 from that article as I think those may be useful. At any rate - great work!--Tomobe03 (talk) 00:37, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

• Let's leave it for a few days to get feedback from other editors. I've asked for feedback on WikiProjects Croatia, Serbia and Yugoslavia, and I've asked for a review from the WP:MILHIST folks, who tend to be pretty speedy in my experience. Prioryman (talk) 00:48, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

New version of article

I've just posted a new version of the article. It's much longer, more detailed and better sourced than the previous version, and hopefully is better all round. There are still some issues to sort out regarding the reference format and some other technical issues such as image ALT tags, which I will sort out over the next week. I propose to kick off the featured article nomination process soon after that. In the meantime, I would be grateful for comments from other editors. Prioryman (talk) 08:06, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

lead section

Very excellent work, nice job. I don't really have much to say, but I did want to note one thing. I recognize that the siege is a complex event with significant ramifications. I do think that the lead is a bit too long though, and deserves trimming, perhaps by around 30% or so if possible. NW (Talk) 19:41, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'll take another look at it. I rewrote the lead in response to Cirt's criticism of the previous version's lead, so it's not impossible that I overdid it. :-) Prioryman (talk) 20:03, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I've now reduced it from 581 words to 356, a reduction of 38.7%. Prioryman (talk) 23:06, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm split: great job on one hand with all the new sources that expanded the article, but a terrible job on the other hand for deleting so many previous ones. I will just address a few issues here that should be explained:

The lead: the previous one was compact and had 12 references [1]. Why were they deleted? The new lead is so broad that it even encompasses Slovenia and the break-up of Yugoslavia, instead of focusing on basic data. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Cirt already addressed the issues with the lead in his comments above. I won't rehash them here other than to say that it was not the way a lead should be written, and an article with a lead written that way would have no chance of passing GA, let alone the much more exacting FA review process. I'm in the middle of rewriting it following NuclearWarfare's comments, so please check back and see if you think the rewritten version is any better.Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

The new lead is better now. However, two details should be re-integrated back into it: that Vukovar was the first European city devastated to such an extent by an army since World War II (other sources confirm it, like the BBC [2]) and that Croatian refugees were allowed to return to their homes no later than 1998 ([3]). --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added those two details. Prioryman (talk) 09:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

All right, I have no more issues with the lead anymore. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 13:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The lead is excellent IMO. Some nitpicking perhaps:

• "the federal Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) began to intervene in favour of the rebellion". From their perspective, it was not a rebellion, but rather an anti-secession struggle. (Although, to be fair, that story was already worn rather thin by then.)
• "At the time it was the fiercest and most protracted battle in Europe since the end of World War II". Sounds like there was a more recent battle that surpassed it. The first three words are probably unnecessary. GregorB (talk) 18:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• Sarajevo... Prioryman (talk) 19:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• Hah, now I'm officially stupid... :-) I've never perceived the Sarajevo case as an actual battle, I saw it rather as a siege with wanton shelling and sniping. Still, 9 thousand dead IIRC, so no contest there. GregorB (talk) 21:03, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

images

9 images from the article were deleted. Again, why? If the article actually became larger, one would naturally think that those images can stay and new ones can be added. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Some of the old images were frankly not great and didn't add much to the article. For example, the night-time tank image - it's just a tank on a plinth, and the image quality (why night-time?) is well below what I would demand of an FA. There were no fewer than eight pictures of ruined and damaged buildings; how does repeating the same theme add to the article? Most of those images had no obvious relation to what was in the text. Some images had other problems. File:Vukovaruins.JPG would never have passed an FA image copyright check given the inadequate sourcing. The approach I took was to use selected good-quality images, without any possible copyright issues, each of which would specifically tell a story directly related to the section of the text in which they appeared. So for instance I used the contrasting pictures of the home-made Croatian APC and the JNA tanks to illustrate the mismatch in armaments, the disabled JNA tank to illustrate the defenders' tactics, the child refugee to illustrate the human impact, the contrasting pictures of the destroyed buildings and the rebuilding to illustrate Vukovar's recovery. Each of those is specifically covered in the text. I did a lot of work to find new images for the article, combing Flickr and other archives for copyright-friendly images to use. I often think that people underestimate how important images can be to an article - they're a very powerful way of telling a story and adding colour to what you're writing about. My approach is to use images not just for decoration but as an integral part of the story I'm trying to tell. At the same time, it's important not to overload an article with images. Irrelevant images are a distraction, as are too many images. Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I can understand that some images might have been omitted for those reasons. However, at least three images should be returned to the article: File:Vukovar after occupation.jpg, File:Castle Eltz Vukovar4.JPG and File:Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars.png. How can you *not* mention/include Castle Eltz? Or the graphic plan for Greater Serbia? --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

@Justice and Arbitration:

Eltz Castle is mentioned and wikilinked in the "Croatian reaction" section. What is there to say about it anyway other than that it's an 18th-century castle in Vukovar which was heavily damaged? I see absolutely no informative value of File:Castle Eltz Vukovar4.JPG or File:Vukovar after occupation.jpg and File:Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars.png would make sense if Vukovar was in it. But it isn't. That said, a modified version of that map would come in handy here. Timbouctou (talk) 09:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

File:Vukovar after occupation.jpg doesn't really add anything and the image isn't contemporary (it's dated 22 October 2009). I used instead File:Croatian War 1991 Vukovar street.jpg, which is contemporary (29 November 1991) and shows the direct aftermath of the battle. I've already mentioned Castle Eltz under "Croatian Reaction". File:Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars.png doesn't show "the graphic plan for Greater Serbia" - it supposedly shows the boundaries of Serb-held territories at their maximum extent (actually it doesn't, since it erroneously shows Srebrenica and Zepa as not Serb-held). As such it is anachronistic for this article as it deals with the Bosnian war, well after Vukovar. Instead I've just added a map showing majority-Serb areas of Yugoslavia according to the 1981 census, which seems more relevant to me as it shows the pre-war situation. What do you think? Prioryman (talk) 09:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

"What is there to say about it anyway other than that it's an 18th-century castle in Vukovar which was heavily damaged? I see absolutely no informative value of File:Castle Eltz Vukovar4.JPG or File:Vukovar after occupation.jpg." That just like me saying something along the lines of "Gosh, what is the purpose of image File:Croatian War 1991 Vukovar street.jpg anyway? It's just a stupid street, who cares about it? And why do we need File:Croatian War 1991 child refugee.jpg anyway? It's just some random kid staring at you, nobody know who he is anyway, what's the big deal?" I guess the Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars image can be omitted, but the Castle Eltz image should be there to show that even cultural buildings were not spared in the conflict. You can put it in the "Occupation, restoration and reconstruction" section or "Fall of Vukovar". The same goes for File:Vukovar after occupation.jpg. They may not be contemporary, but if they stayed virtually the same as they were in 1991, I see no reason for not using them. Unless someone destroyed Castle Eltz and that Vukovar house again. If you have such a big article, with so many room for images on one side, and so many unused images on the other, then that's what I call "underused". --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 13:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The article devotes a lot of space talking about how not a single building in the city was spared which obviously includes Eltz Manor, which at the time housed the Vukovar City Museum. File:Castle Eltz Vukovar4.JPG is useless - a reader can't even deduce from the image that there's a castle in the picture. It could be just one of thousands of other Vukovar buildings damaged during the siege for all we know. If you insist File:Castle Eltz, Vukovar3.JPG or File:Castle Eltz1, Vukovar.JPG would be better, although neither are contemporary. Timbouctou (talk) 18:33, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Images File:Castle Eltz, Vukovar3.JPG or File:Castle Eltz1, Vukovar.JPG can be added, though the version I suggested really sums it up so much better.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't think any of the images of Castle Eltz are very good. I'm reluctant to use them because they don't seem to me to add much to the article, but I do think it would be worth adding something about the destruction and looting (and ultimate return) of Vukovar's cultural heritage. I might be able to work an image into the "War crimes" section as an example of wanton destruction, but only if we have a good image - which right now we don't. Prioryman (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The one I suggested is excellent and would fit perfectly into that section. Good idea about the cultural heirtage. Therefor, I see no reason to continue pretending it's a "bad image" and include it already in the article.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 08:49, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not "pretending" - it's genuinely not a very good image. Why not help out by seeing if you can find a better one? We have a couple of months, after all, before the anniversary is due. Prioryman (talk) 22:28, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's a compromise suggestion: why not just simply make a gallery of remaining images bellow the page? It would not "disrupt" the article writing and would still be in the article itself.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 14:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether that would fit into WP:IG. GregorB (talk) 18:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

ICTY quotes

The quotations of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia: two were in the article, one even in the lead, which was stylish and gave a neat summary of the events. Why were they deleted? --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't think the long ICTY quotations added much to the article, to be honest. We're trying to tell the story of the battle in Wikipedia's own "voice", not simply parrot what others say (and although the ICTY is a very good source it is still only one voice of many). Of the two boxed quotations previously used, the first one didn't belong in the lead, as already discussed, and the second one was no longer necessary once I'd found contemporary eyewitness descriptions of the aftermath. Please note though that I still use the ICTY as a source in many places. Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I contest that, to some extent. The ICTY quote did not seem out of place in the lead at all. See article Srebrenica Massacre, they also have a quote in the lead.

Quotes in leads are always a bad idea and putting large chunks of ICTY's documents in articles (any especially in leads) is a symptom of editors' laziness. Srebrenica's lead has several quotes in its lead - and that is one of the reasons why that article is miles from ever becoming FA. Timbouctou (talk) 09:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Please trust me on this one. Yes, Srebrenica Massacre may do the same thing, but that is not a featured article, and if it were ever to be nominated the lead would certainly have to be rewritten. I've written this article with one eye on what a featured article reviewer is likely to say, and the lead will most definitely be a key issue. Prioryman (talk) 09:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, I guess I will have to trust you on this one. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 13:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, the ICTY mentioned that 20,000 people were deported from Vukovar, and that should be returned in the lead. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

You in particular and Wikipedia in general should be way more careful when using stuff you described as something that "ICTY mentioned" as facts. Court indictments are not facts - otherwise we wouldn't need trials. I have no idea whether 20,000 people were displaced following the fall of Vukovar but I'd like something better than ICTY's indictment to base that figure on. Timbouctou (talk) 09:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added the ICTY figure on deportations, and I'll see if I can find a source for that list of indicted officials. Prioryman (talk) 09:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, maybe we should mention that seven officials were indicted by the ICTY for connection with war crimes in the region (Milošević, Hadžić, Mrkšić, Šljivančanin, Radić, Šešelj, Dommanović). This image can also be added: File:Accused Mile Mrkšić.jpg.

Until next time.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Why? This article is about the siege of Vukovar, an event precisely defined in space and time. "Connections with war crimes in the region" is exactly the opposite. Timbouctou (talk) 09:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

When I said "in the region", I meant "Vukovar region". If you want to nitpick and treat the sole Vukovar massacre as a separate event, all right, but even if we narrow it down just to the sole siege, three officials were still indicted by the ICTY for wanton destruction, unlawful confinement, persecutions, deportations or forcible transfer starting from August 1991: Milošević, Šešelj and Hadžić. They could be mentioned in the lead. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 13:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added a mention in the lead, focusing on Milošević as he's already mentioned there. Prioryman (talk) 22:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Tuđman's positions

Section "Rise of ethnic nationalism and the disintegration of Yugoslavia": "By the time of the election he (Tuđman) had adopted an overtly chauvinistic tone, denounced Croatia's Serb minority and called for Yugoslavia's borders to be redrawn to incorporate Croats in other republics, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, into Croatia." False. Stjepan Mesić and Ante Marković both confirmed during their testimonies at the ICTY that Tuđman initially supported Bosnia's independence. It wasn't until the Karađorđevo agreement, way into March 1991, that he fancied parts of Bosnia - and he changed his mind only after Milošević persuaded him. Since the election was in May 1990, this statement is historically false and should not be stand alone without mentioning Milošević's influence. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Those are fair points and I'll see what I can do in the article to address them. Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Still waiting for a reply.

Regards.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 13:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

@Justice:

- It is true that partition of Bosnia was never mentioned in HDZ's 1990 election campaign. In fact it was never discussed publicly in Croatia at all during the entire course of the war (in contrast with Serbia where you had politicians and the media openly calling for all Serbs to live in the same state since circa 1990) and even our article on the (secret) Karađorđevo agreement (March-April 1991) says that his policies on BiH "were never completely transparent". The sentence here - as it is now - implies that HDZ had won the election by promising to expand Croatia's borders, which is not true, even though many commentators have drawn that conclusion in retrospect. However, the degree of his support for independent BiH and the degree to which he was "influenced" by Milošević during the Karađorđevo talks is pure speculation so I don't see why Milošević needs to be mentioned here. Tuđman was a big boy and should be held responsible for his actions. Timbouctou (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

With regard to what Tuđman said in 1990 about redrawing borders of republics, this was too liberally quoted from Boduszyński (Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States). That book in turn (pages 80 and 81) references Bugajski's Political parties of Eastern Europe, but doesn't seem to list a page number. Google Books preview of the latter book doesn't seem to include anything of the sort, at least the searchable part; to the contrary, there's stuff about how Stjepan Kljuić was replaced as the head of HDZ BiH in 1992 in relation to his position on the indivisibility of BiH, which can't support the assertion that Tuđman wanted to split up Bosnia back in 1990. Can anyone actually verify this in a proper copy of these sources? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:09, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that we simplify and correct what is said about Tuđman's election platform. Could anyone suggest a form of words that they think might be suitable? Prioryman (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I think Joy already fixed it here. I'd only make a minor change to the sentence "Tuđman's statements about Croats and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina implied..." into "Tuđman's later statements..." since the sentence before it talks about the 1990 elections and it is unlikely that he sad anything about Bosnia before 1991. Timbouctou (talk) 02:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Possible, but it's hard to infer the exact timeline from the context. Boduszynski, page 81, literally says:

Over time, the HDZ's rethoric became openly chauvinistic with regard to the ethnic question. Tuđman implied that republican borders would need to be revised in order to assure that all ethnic Croats were living in a Croatian state, claimed that Bosnian Muslims were actually ethnic Croats, and launched verbal attacks on Croatia's Serb minority (Bugajski 2002:584). As Belgrade became increasingly confrontational and ethnic tensions inside Croatia increased, the HDZ broadened its constituency substantially using populist nationalism, so that by the time of the first elections it resembled a broad movement.[16]

This is all in pre-1990-election chapter, but I can't verify reference #16. Although I notice now that there is in fact a page number for Bugajski, 584 - and luckily Google Books is showing me exactly that page, which says among other things:

President Tudjman and his associates sought to transform nationalist sentiments into electoral support and ended up making a number of inflammatory statements. For example, he implied that the republican borders would need to be revised in order to draw together elements of the Croatian nation resident outside Croatia. He claimed that the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina did not constitute a separate ethnic group but were an integral part of the Croatian nation. He also called for the overhaul of the administrative structure, which had extended too many important positions of power to Serbs, in numbers that were disproportionate to their share of the population.[3]

And again I don't think I can find and verify the reference #3. It's hard to date these things when the sources don't bother to date them properly inline, but it certainly seems they're talking about 1990. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:57, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I've went through a number of books available at Google Books and I haven't found a single 1990 quote from Tudjman saying that his plans included some kind of partition of Bosnia. This guy even published an analysis of the 1990 campaign in Croatia and lists themes which dominated the campaign discourse and Bosnia is never mentioned. I tend to think that this book gets it right when it says that Tudjman "rewarded his financial backers [who had financed his 1990 campaign] by fully supporting the annexationist program" by "committing himself to Bosnia's partition in March 1991" (p. 249). I mean, it just wouldn't make sense to say that Tudjman won the elections in 1990 by arguing for a redrawing of borders when it's a pretty well known fact that by spring 1992 most of the Croatian public rejected the idea of partitioning Bosnia ("The first response of most Croats to the war in Bosnia was to view their neighbouring republic as another victim of Serbian aggression and to support the Bosnia government in its battle against YPA"; same source, same page) plus you've got several politicians close to Tudjman at the time (like Mesić for example) who claim to this day that they had left his camp after his plans to divide Bosnia became apparent. If the plans had been apparent all along than than their explanations would not make sense. But anyway, it's a marginal point for this article and it seems that commentators never bothered to make the distinction between his pre-1990 and post-1990 antics. Yes he "implied" the partition by saying stuff like that about Bosniaks being Croats but it was just dog-whistle politics aimed at right-wingers. Just one of those nuances which will be lost in the historical narrative like tears in the rain. Timbouctou (talk) 08:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the partition-of-Bosnia narrative isn't particularly relevant for the battle of Vukovar. The genesis of this conflict was much more clear-cut and it's doubtful that possible arguments or propaganda regarding Bosnia was relevant compared to the more local issues that are already pretty transparent. We could also talk about Kosovo in 1989 and whatnot, but we don't, because it's only vaguely relevant. In fact, I'd venture to say that, compared to whatever Tuđman might have been thinking in 1990, a much more practical relationship of BiH and the eastern Slavonian front existed in the form of local people with Herzegovinian roots. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I see that you've edited the article concerning this issue; I'm content with what you've come up with. (Bonus points to Timbouctou for the Blade Runner reference...) Prioryman (talk) 19:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Coat of arms, national minority

Likewise, "A particular focus of contention was the reintroduction of the traditional coat of arms of Croatia, which had been used in a modified form by the Ustaša during the Second World War." Why was a part of the section deleted, the one that mentions that the coat of arms existed even during the Socialist Republic of Croatia? It was used even in modified form by Yugoslavia, obviously. And why was another section omitted, the one that the Serbs were the only national minority in Croatia opposed to it? --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Also a fair point, though we'll need to make sure that dissenting views are reliably sourced. Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments; I hope this reply helps in clarifying the reasons for some of my the editorial decisions. Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Still waiting for a reply.

Regards.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 13:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

- Regarding the coat of arms - while it is true that a modified historic CoA was used during the communist period, things are not that simple here. This often quoted and misinterpreted argument concerns the CoA as it appeared in this flag, a version briefly used in 1990 which sported a chequy with the first (top left) field in white. During the communist era SR Croatia sported this CoA with the first field in red (and did not appear in the flag at all), which had been modified in 1945 specifically to distance it from the WWII Ustaše state which used the flag with the top left field in white. Waving the first-field-white flag in 1990 was a direct nod to the symbols used by the WWII Croatian fascist regime. Granted, this needs to be explained in the article - but the argument is certainly not nonsensical. Timbouctou (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

- And why was another section omitted, the one that the Serbs were the only national minority in Croatia opposed to it? - The first thing that HDZ did after winning elections in May 1990 was to pass a new constitution in December 1990 which demoted the status of Serbs of Croatia from a "constitutive nation" (a status they earlier shared with Croats exclusively) to a "national minority" like all others, at the same time publicly waving flags which were nearly identical to the flag used by WWII fascist whose main concern was persecution of Serbs. It wasn't difficult for Serbs to put 2 plus 2 together and conclude that this was a chauvinist regime. Timbouctou (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I really, really don't want to get into the disputes about the rights and wrongs of the Croatian coat of arms. It's not very relevant to this article and we don't have the space for it anyway. Following J & A's comments about the Serbs being the only minority who objected to it, I've made it clear in the article that it was specifically the Serbs who objected to it. If a reader wants to learn more about the dispute he can always click through. Prioryman (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we need to go into all that either. But it is true that a very similar coat of arms was used during the entire Yugoslav period (although it wasn't featured on SR Croatia's flag) so we need to be precise. The sentence:

• "A particular focus of contention for Serbs was the reintroduction of the traditional coat of arms of Croatia, which had been used in a modified form by the Ustaša during the Second World War." could be rephrased a bit to make it more similar to the citation used to support it:
• "The symbols, such as the flag and coat of arms adopted by the new Croatian government, were quite similar to those used by the fascist Croatian government during the Second World War." into something like
• "A particular focus of contention for Serbs were the flag and coat of arms adopted by the new Croatian government which were quite similar to the ones used by the Ustaša during the Second World War."

The point is that, although the coat of arms didn't change much for the past few centuries, the specific version and the flag adopted by HDZ in 1990 bore a striking resemblance to the ones used by fascists in WWII. Justice & Arbitration just wanted to you to avoid making it sound as if fascists invented the red-and-white checkerboard since it was used way before them and is still used to this day. Timbouctou (talk) 02:42, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think I fixed this now. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll defer to the greater expertise of you guys on this issue. I'm happy with what you've come up with. Prioryman (talk) 19:34, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Merčep

Section "Escalating violence": While Tomislav Merčep did indeed look for Serb paramilitary soldiers in wrong places in Vukovar, the number of 86 people killed/disappeared is contested. Other sources claim 19 people disappeared.[4] It should be mentioned. That all for now. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any figure other than 86 mentioned in the article you linked. Who are these "other sources"? Timbouctou (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

With regards to Merčep's killings, I erred with a wrong link. I however found this link: that mentions that around 30 civilians were killed in Vukovar by Merčep. Therefor, a range from 30 to 86 people should be added in the article. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I said specifically in the article that Merčep was alleged to have been responsible for killing or disappearing up to 86 people. I don't think the exact figure is important - nobody knows what it is anyway. The point that we need to get across is that there was violence and allegations of mass killings, which worsened ethnic relations in the town. The exact number of those who were killed is a secondary issue. However, if people feel it's important I suppose we could add a footnote or something. Prioryman (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the current wording is now OK. Prioryman (talk) 07:32, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Cyrus Vance

Btw Cyrus Vance is inconsistently described as either a US or a UN envoy. Timbouctou (talk) 09:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Prioryman (talk) 22:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

children massacre

A cracking article. It is very well-informed, with lots of finesse - by that I don't mean (just) NPOV, it's the attention to details. I still haven't read it in its entirety, from start to finish, but it looks FA-worthy. Two suggestions:

Vukovar children massacre might receive a mention.

GregorB (talk) 22:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! Replies to your suggestions:

I came across the children massacre claims in the course of researching the article but I wasn't aware there was already an article on the subject. I decided not to include this as, frankly, the article is already very long and I suspect I will probably be asked to reduce its length in the FA review. Prioryman (talk) 22:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

It just seemed natural to me that the satellite article should have at least an incoming link from the main article. Not much is lost by omitting the subject altogether, though. GregorB (talk) 00:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Added a mention, but I think Vukovar children massacre really needs a rewrite - it's not very good at the moment. Prioryman (talk) 08:25, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

deliberate sacrifice

In Croatia, there's a popular belief that Croatian leadership deliberately sacrificed Vukovar by denying reinforcements and supplies, in order to gain sympathy from the international community and the media. While this may be described as an urban myth or a conspiracy theory, it is definitely not a fringe position - a poll cited by M. Žanić in his paper states that 63% of respondents agreed that there were "deliberate failures to act" by the Croatian government regarding the city's defense.[5] (in Croatian) The accusations along these lines were first put forward by Siniša Glavašević,[6] (in Croatian) which was apparently one of the reasons his latter reports from Vukovar were suppressed. I'll be back with more comments once I make a couple of passes through the text. GregorB (talk) 22:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Same issue with the belief that Vukovar was sacrificed. I've referred to it in passing in the article but I didn't want to go into too much detail. The poll by Žanić looks interesting though, I'll see if I can work that into the text (provided the source is reliable of course). Prioryman (talk) 22:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

This is fairly important IMO, given the FA-level comprehensiveness that is expected. I presume the sources on this are plentiful, although most are in Croatian. (There's a BBC News article that makes a passing mention.) The article duly notes the Croatian disappointment - even humiliation - over the defeat, and it could be argued that these feelings created a psychological need to believe that things would have been different if it weren't for someone's betrayal. It is essentially a Stab-in-the-back legend. (Insert WP:OR disclaimer here...)

Length may indeed be an issue. My impression is that sections on reconstruction and reconciliation (or lack thereof) - excellent as they are - seem to run a bit long. Some of the content might be moved to Vukovar, as it is more closely connected to the history of the city, rather than the battle itself. Again - this is just a quick impression, so I may be off here - more on this tomorrow after taking a closer look... GregorB (talk) 00:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

BTW this is the link with the metadata on the PDF: http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=65494&lang=en --Joy [shallot] (talk) 22:28, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Red links

Note to willing editors: there is a couple of redlinks to be taken care of... GregorB (talk) 00:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Marinci, Croatia was one, it now exists. Maybe we should enumerate the rest here, to emphasize them: --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• Aleksandar Spirkovski
• Mladen Bratić
• Andrija Biorčević
• Branko Borković
• Vesna Bosanac
• Miroslav Radić - I can probably do this one too, it should be an easy crib from the ICTY's judgement. Prioryman (talk) 20:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
• Extermination (crime against humanity) - I'll take care of this one. It was previously linked to Genocide, which was wrong - they are two different legal offences. Prioryman (talk) 20:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, Vukovar needs some work (but I have some material I can add to it) as does Borovo. Prioryman (talk) 20:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Vukovar children massacre also needs a complete rewrite. Prioryman (talk) 08:26, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Krumov, R-40

Two very minor remarks:

• There is a dead "Krumov" reference in the text - does it actually refer to Kruno Kardov?
• "However, one of the aircraft was shot down by a Russian R-40 missile". A bit odd, since the article on R-40 (missile) does not list Yugoslavia as one of the operators. Apparently this missile could be fitted on MiG-25 or MiG-31 aircraft, neither of which was operated by the Yugoslav Air Force. Hrvatski vojnik says it was SA-6 (Kub-M),[7] (in Croatian) which makes more sense. GregorB (talk) 08:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
  • ...and also spells the pilot's name right: Marko Živković. GregorB (talk) 09:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Thanks, all three issues now resolved. Prioryman (talk) 22:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

appeal to formatting :)

Guys, you seriously need to adapt the format of this discussion to other readers and generally to Wikipedia talk page practices - it's very hard to track topics by number in one big pile of text. Each topic should get its own thread, i.e. a series of increasingly indented responses. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

To make it easier to follow this discussion, I'm adopting Joy's suggestion of threading the topics that have been raised so far. Prioryman (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I've reordered everything accordingly. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Sourcing for the civilian casualties

The infobox says "~1,100 Croatian civilians killed", sourcing it to a Lonely Planet tourist guide. Now, while I'm definitely not against using such books as sources, it would be nice to have a more solid source here. GregorB (talk) 18:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I've replaced it with a better source and a more exact figure. Prioryman (talk) 19:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Mixed marriages

"The 1991 census recorded that around 35% of the marriages in the municipality were mixed" - the figure seems plausible, but its derivation seems very odd. I don't think that 1991 census involved any questionnaire items that specifically enumerated mixed marriages. In other words, I don't think it is possible to arrive at such a figure other than through some sort of data mining. The source is reliable, so this is not a real issue, but I just had to mention it. GregorB (talk) 18:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

It's mentioned by other sources too; Stover & Weinstein refer to Vukovar having "one of the highest interethnic marriage rates in the former Yugoslavia". Prioryman (talk) 19:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Urbicide

Maybe the article should also mention that some sources began describing the destruction of the city as Urbicide.[8] [9][10]. It could be placed in the lead or in the aftermath section.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 08:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added a mention at the end of "Escalating violence in eastern Slavonia", as it seems to follow on most naturally from there. Prioryman (talk) 00:26, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Vukovar as a rich city

Not directly commenting on the article, more like providing an illustration: Vukovar indeed was a rich city according to 1981 product per capita figures - it was ahead of Split, Osijek, Dubrovnik, Pula, Varaždin, even Belgrade. For the exact figures see here. GregorB (talk) 19:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

geolocation

We need to clarify and illustrate some of the relevant toponyms better:

• Milova brda is mentioned in the article, but not marked on the map (at least I couldn't find it now)
• The status of Bršadin, Lipovača and Sotin is not explicated - I'm guessing their situation was similar to Borovo (Selo), but is this so?
• The location of the amphibious assault on November 3rd isn't really clear, I inferred it was somewhere east-northeast of Lužac, but it should be spelled out
• The last link between Borovo Naselje and Vukovar was cut on November 13th - where was this link, if it wasn't through Lužac or by the Danube - a dirt track in the fields?
• Cerić is introduced much later than Marinci - but it was occupied on October 2nd, so their fate was apparently linked, unlike...
• Bogdanovci, introduced much later than either Lužac or Marinci, but its position on the map implies that it was in a pocket - did it hold out longer because of the river Vuka to the north?
• No mention is made of what was happening immediately across the Danube (Vajska, Bođani, Plavna, Bačko Novo Selo, ...) - maybe nothing, but it should be made clear how and why

--Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:05, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• It's not desperately important to include Milova brda; we can always remove it if it causes confusion.
• Bršadin, Lipovača and Sotin are Serb-inhabited, I believe. Paramilitaries from Bršadin and Sotin seem to have played a significant role in the battle and are mentioned in Balkan Battlegrounds. Lipovača is mentioned in the 1992 Croatian propaganda publication The War against Croatia: a chronology of the aggression, which I can get hold of, though I'm wary of its reliability.
• The location of the assault on 3 November is shown on this map - look for the arrow marked "3 November" crossing the Danube.
• No idea where this link was, but through the fields would be my guess too.
• Bogdanovci - no idea, to be honest. Hard to say if geography was a factor, this map would suggest so, though.
• I'm afraid I have no hard information about what was happening in the trans-Danubian villages. There are indications of things happening there (cross-border shelling, refugee movements etc) but we can't add anything without firm sourcing. It would be necessary to look at old Serbian/Yugoslav media sources such as Tanjug. I may be able to get something from Lexis-Nexis, but probably not this weekend.

One thing to bear in mind: the article is already very large, so we are likely to be constrained about how much more can be added. Prioryman (talk) 09:45, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

For the hill, a NSEW direction or even a quick ref with the coordinates would be sufficient. It's not confusing, in fact it seems to add a valuable information from a military point of view, but it should also be more immediately verifiable. For FA, having things in a clear geographic context would seem be preferable, and it shouldn't take a lot more text to provide the relevant bits of info. Just naming and linking some of those locations would be better than omitting them completely, and that way extra content can be offloaded to those other articles. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:30, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Try Googling for "Milovo brdo" (which is the correct spelling?). I think I've found it - see [11]. Prioryman (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

That Bing URL fails for me. Googling helped a little, apparently that's also the name of a street. So I searched at kartegradova.com and found it [12], it looks like it's around 45.349683°N 18.998933°E / 45.349683; 18.998933. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:35, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

This interview might also be of interest for the final phase of the battle: [13] Prioryman (talk) 13:48, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Another thing strikes me as insufficiently explained - where was the barracks physically, i.e. we need to explain how was it possible for JNA to lift the siege without also taking a substantial (nearby) portion of the city. From the reading of the current text, I'd guess it was in the extreme south of the city. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:23, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

You're right, it was in the extreme south. Look on maps.bing.com for the D57 road leading south of Vukovar - that's Sajmište, where the barracks was. I don't know if it's still used by the Croatian Army but on Google's satellite view [14] you can clearly see a large installation with a helipad, which looks very much like a military site. Prioryman (talk) 09:47, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

If you remember there was a helicopter crash there, so even though I'm not sure the Croatian Army still uses the facility, it used the barracks until very recently at least.--Tomobe03 (talk) 09:55, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

And apparently the barracks are destined to become a museum of the Croatian War of Independence.--Tomobe03 (talk) 09:58, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, see also [15]. Prioryman (talk) 10:32, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Remaining issues?

I'm planning to kick off the featured article nomination process this weekend. I've been through the article to resolve issues such as references, typography etc; some ALT tags still need to be done but I'll sort those out shortly. Is there anything else that people think needs to be resolved before the article is nominated? Prioryman (talk) 11:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I was about to suggest that the article be nominated straight away - two months left until the anniversary, and FAC process is somewhat congested and is not too quick. While I still haven't made a full scan of the article, I've been nothing but impressed with what I've seen thus far, and - possibly apart from various minor issues - I don't think there's anything standing in the way. GregorB (talk) 12:51, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

External links section might need some attention. The Đorđe Balašević video is probably inappropriate and HRT footage link is no longer available. Vukowar.com looks like some kind of fan site, don't know if that's okay. But here's a three-part video showing lots of HRT footage without commentary from the actual battle and this clip was apparently filmed by an Italian TV crew two days after the fall (it's pretty explicit content). I'd also suggest including Martin Bell's BBC 4 radio programme "Return to Vukovar" here (on BBC iPlayer). Timbouctou (talk) 19:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

On the subject of Balašević: the video ("Krivi smo mi") is off-topic, but there's other song of his, "Čovek sa mesecom u očima", which is specifically about the Battle of Vukovar. That may be something for the popular culture section, but the lyrics are a bit oblique (Vukovar is actually never mentioned), and sources are needed to establish the connection. GregorB (talk) 21:36, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd suggest taking him and Vukowar.com out in that case. The other YouTube links will need to be reviewed to see if they comply with the WP:EL rules on copyright. (If they've been uploaded by private individuals, they probably don't.) Prioryman (talk) 21:46, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I had a look and I don't think they meet the copyright criterion. B92's documentary is the only one that's left. Martin Bell's programme is already used as a source so I don't think the rules allow us to use it again as an external link. Are there any other copyright-legitimate external links that we could use? Prioryman (talk) 22:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the official site for Heroes of Vukovar TV series? It was aired on HRT in September 2008 and the site contains some clips. Also, maybe the popular culture section could be expanded with some information as to how they depict the battle (Branko Schmidt's Vukovar se vraća kući for example is usually hailed as one of the worst Croatian films of the past two decades for its explicit propagandist stance; the more recent Fadil Hadžić's Remember Vukovar was panned by film critics as well). Interestingly, both Croatia and FR Yugoslavia had submitted films about Vukovar for the 67th Academy Awards in 1994 (Yugoslav/Serbian entry was Vukovar Poste Restante, referred to as Vukovar: A Story by Goulding). Croatian magazine Vijenac published an article in November 2008 with a overview of films made about Vukovar which says that "the hero city hasn't had much luck with celluloid adaptations of its tragic fate" and concludes that Harrison's Flowers is the best one made so far. Also, the film festival bit could be removed because it has little to do with the battle - it's an international festival which simply screens new films from what they call the "Danube countries". Timbouctou (talk) 23:51, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

If you want to make changes please feel free. As a Croatian-speaker the sources will be more accessible to you, anyway. Prioryman (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

HOS

Apparently Sikavica got it wrong that the Croatian paramilitaries HOS were led by Dobroslav Paraga. Paraga was at the time chairmen of the far-right Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) and probably spent most of the war in Zagreb. The HSP-sponsored paramilitary unit of the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) which arrived in Vukovar in August 1991 was led by one Robert Šilić, according to this HSP website. Timbouctou (talk) 00:25, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

IIRC the phrasing in our article was vague enough - it could be interpreted to say simply that Paraga was the top-level leader, which he apparently was. At the same time, this could deserve some clarification - their numbers, 87 and prospective 200, could be considered to have made a non-trivial amount of impact on the battle. It's certainly part of the whole stab-in-the-back narrative. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:37, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Featured article nomination

The 20th anniversary falls exactly two months from today - the clock is ticking! Joy and I have co-nominated the article for featured status at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Vukovar/archive1. Anyone who wishes to comment there is very welcome to do so. Prioryman (talk) 00:03, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Logo issues

A reviewer at the FAC page has raised the following queries:

• File:Logo_of_the_JNA.svg - on what source was this image based?
• File:JTO-logo.svg gives a deleted page as a source. Please check for other image issues

I made only minimal changes to the infobox and I have no idea about the sourcing of the logos. Could someone please look into this? The photographic and map images should all be OK though, as I've already reviewed them. Prioryman (talk) 08:41, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Not quite sure what the reviewers meant here:

• File:Logo_of_the_JNA.svg is a self-made vector image.
• File:JTO-logo.svg is a self-made vector image based on File:JTO_Logo.jpg - I don't see any "deleted pages"

On Commons, "self-made" is a perfectly valid source for original works (which these are obviously not), so the problem I see here is the issue of original vs derived work - i.e. copyright, rather than sourcing. GregorB (talk) 09:04, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

In the case of the second image I believe what the reviewer meant was that on the File:JTO_Logo.jpg commons age the source given points to a missing file on en.wikipedia. I'm not sure I understand the issue here but shouldn't PD-Yugoslavia apply? Timbouctou (talk) 09:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The instructions on that template say that it shouldn't be applied alone but needs to be accompanied by a PD declaration for a successor state. Which would be the applicable one? Prioryman (talk) 09:34, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea, I suppose we are free to choose any of the six present-day countries as they all legally claim copyright (if there is any) on federal property (which would also include logos published by federal ministries). And in this particular case we don't know the author and we don't know the publication date. We only know the publisher - Yugoslav Defence Ministry. Croatian law stipulates that all works by unknown authors published before 1949 are PD so I guess PD-Croatia applies here unless I'm missing something. Timbouctou (talk) 09:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The JNA logo can't predate 1949 because the JNA wasn't called that until 1951. Prioryman (talk) 09:47, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, let's stipulate that the copyright is the issue. What is the answer to that? Prioryman (talk) 09:12, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The way I see it, the best shot is PD-Yugoslavia plus PD-Croatia plus identifying the two logos in question as derived works, and providing a source other than "self-made". GregorB (talk) 09:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The Croatian TO used the same logo, correct? As for the JNA logo, I would guess that this remained with Serbia given the reconstitution of the JNA as the army of the rump Yugoslavia. Prioryman (talk) 09:41, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

TO logo was the same. Unfortunately the question of copyright ownership is far from clear, and PD-Yugoslavia itself is rather vague. Croatia co-owns it at best. Not sure myself. GregorB (talk) 09:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Who would know? Perhaps it would be worth writing to the Croatian Ministry of Defence to ask them. Prioryman (talk) 10:06, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Since at least Croatia and Serbia enacted legislation which released all laws published in official gazettes into public domain, by extension official Yugoslav logos can be considered public domain IF they were proscribed and published by "Službeni list SFRJ", the national gazette. This is pretty likely since regulations on insignia, branch logos, flags and uniforms are published in Narodne novine and signed by the defence minister to this day. However it is very difficult to find the official gazette issue which proscribed these JNA logos (if there is one). I found out that JNA had issued four official sets of regulations about uniforms and insignia ("Pravilo o vojnim uniformama oružanih snaga SFRJ"; 1946, 1955, 1971 and 1989) but I have no idea if these were printed in the official gazette at any point, and there aren't any online databases available to check. Timbouctou (talk) 11:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm thinking of a last-ditch solution: upload the logo to en wikipedia and claim fair use, as one would do with any copyrighted logo. The sourcing problem still remains: all works other than self-made ones must state a source. GregorB (talk) 20:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• It's certain that pictures of these logos must have been published in Yugoslav MoD's 1989 regulations book (Pravilo o vojnim uniformama oružanih snaga SFRJ; Savezni sekretarijat za narodnu odbranu, Belgrade, 1989; NSK link) which would mean that the originals are public domain and covered by PD-Yugoslavia in conjuction with PD-Serbia (it was published in Belgrade and Serbia's law states that "regulation or official material of a Republic of Serbia state body or a body performing public functions'" is PD). So that would make these two files derivative works, created by users Apiya and Snake_bgd and released under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license and they should be properly tagged as such. Alternatively we could upload them to en.wikipedia and claim fair use but then I'm not sure if they could be used in articles about anything other than JNA and TO.

• PD-Yugoslavia and PD-Serbia plus source looks like the best shot after all. Fair use may indeed be problematic, even if logos are used in the context of (visual) identification, which is their basic purpose after all. GregorB (talk)

So what is the verdict about these images? Do we have a way forward, or is it going to be necessary to replace them with national flag images instead? Prioryman (talk) 18:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

other pictures

Btw File:Sve hrvatske pobjede za Vukovar.jpg will have to be taken out I'm afraid - it's non-free and the album cover license clearly says it should be used only for articles containing critical commentary about the recording itself. Timbouctou (talk) 02:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

After clicking on File:Sve hrvatske pobjede za Vukovar.jpg I'm convinced that not much will have been lost in terms of aesthetics. :-) GregorB (talk)

Per WP:NFCI #8 screenshots taken from HRT footage are allowed. The iconic images of the refugee column comes to mind and I'll see if I can get a hold of some. Timbouctou (talk) 02:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

WPMILHIST review

Unfortunately thus far FAC didn't turn out that well... What is disappointing to me is the fact that virtually 90% of the issues that were brought up were minor things which were solvable in a matter of minutes, and as such do not really preclude the article from reaching FA. Also, I don't think that an article can (or should) be failed on hypotheticals ("I've found 10 issues, but it doesn't matter even if you fixed them all, because surely there are more"), although I must say I understand the need to economize the reviewing effort.

What about further comments - should we continue to post them here, or do we post them to the WPMILHIST review page? GregorB (talk) 20:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The FAC nomination is just on hold, it's not been withdrawn. I suggest leaving the review page to the MILHIST reviewers - if there are issues to be resolved in the meantime let's sort them out here as we have been doing up to now. Prioryman (talk) 22:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course the FAC is still alive, that why I said "thus far". It is the process that is a bit frustrating, we'll see about the final outcome. GregorB (talk) 22:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

author name diacritics

What would be the point in removing diacritics in this edit? Is this some Latin-1-based problem - it left a š alone, but removed č, ć, ... --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:31, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

How annoying. Yes, that's a Latin-1-based problem - it'll have to be fixed now. :-( Thanks for spotting it. Prioryman (talk) 08:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. Prioryman (talk) 06:57, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Purda

I don't really understand these two removals:

namely based on evidence collected while he was a prisoner of war in the Sremska Mitrovica camp in 1991, whose existence at the time is denied by the Serbian authorities.

http://www.rferl.org/content/pejic_bosnia_commentary/2328106.html explicitly says:

Deputy prosecutor Bruno Vekaric told RFE/RL on March 3 that the case "was poorly prepared." No one has investigated or responded to charges that Purda was tortured while in a Serbian detention camp. In fact, Serbian officials do not admit the camp exists.

I fail to see any reason to censor the story of Purda's arrest, because it's a direct modern-day consequence of what happened immediately after the battle of Vukovar. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not censorship by any means. Nikkimaria pointed out in the FAC that "the source mentions that Purda was in a detention camp, but does not explicitly connect that to the indictment". The original line in the article said that he was indicted "based on evidence collected while he was a prisoner of war in the Sremska Mitrovica camp in 1991". The source says nothing about Sremska Mitrovica. It mentions the claim that "Purda was tortured while in a Serbian detention camp" but does not name the camp, nor does it say anything about evidence being collected while he was there. So I'm afraid the claim in the article constitutes original research. Prioryman (talk) 20:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, but that's not really a contentious issue, we just have to add a source that explicitly mentions the camp's name. A quick google search [16] gives you a plethora of Croatian mainstream news sources confirming the same factoid. I initially picked RFE/RL because it was in English; just let me know which other one would you prefer. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

To be honest I think it's too much detail - we need to prune the entire article and I think this is probably not essential detail, or at the very least it needs to be expressed in fewer words. I'll have a go at pruning this evening and then perhaps we can take stock and see what we need to do with the Purda bit. Prioryman (talk) 06:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Featured article nomination redux

Please note that I've renominated this article as a featured article candidate at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Vukovar/archive2. Editors are invited to comment there on whether this article should be given featured status. Prioryman (talk) 21:22, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Things during Oct 2011 copy edit

Needs clarification

In the 1st paragraph of the Croatian forces section, the expression "the Croatian 4th Battalion/3rd Guards Brigade and the 1st Guards Brigade" begs questions. What is the relationship between the 4th Battalion and the 3rd Guards Brigade, and is the 1st Guards Brigade related to either? --Stfg (talk) 22:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Not my area of knowledge but could the source there be referring to the 4th Battalion of the 3rd Guards Brigade? The 1st Guards Brigade is clearly a separate unit. Prioryman (talk) 22:59, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is the meaning, but a bit it's more nuanced - the 4th is mentioned as the one that was stationed in Vukovar. Per Croatian sources at [17] and [18] and [19], the 3rd Brigade had only that one battalion in Vukovar, but then in the first half of November one more and finally all four battalions were involved in the battle. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:42, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. Our source uses the same punctuation and the Croatian WP article on 3rd brigade says there was a batallion (later two), but doesn't say which. Is it safe to rephrase as "the Croatian 1st Guards Brigade and the 4th Battalion of the 3rd Guards Brigade", do you think? --Stfg (talk) 07:55, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I rephrased the entire paragraph to be clearer. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:08, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Source check please

Please could p.180 of Silber & Little (ref 101), be checked with regard to the punctuation of the sentence "Grisly skeletons of buildings still burned, barely a square inch had escaped damage." This comma splice might have been put there for effect, but it would be good to be sure. --Stfg (talk) 13:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Checked, it's exactly as per the source. Prioryman (talk) 14:15, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Eastern/eastern Slavonia

It's fine to go for "eastern" with lower case, of course, but to be fair to me, my change was not inconsistent. What I did was to address a previously undetected inconsistency in the article as it was. Also, I did a search for Eastern Slavonia in Wikipedia and found this. Yes, I know that refers to something larger, but that was where I found guidance. As pointed out, the present article was inconsistent.

I agree, it's not your fault, the SAO had a namespace-polluting/pretentious name. I'm not entirely sure if my reason for removing the capitalization is right as far as English is concerned, but I've still done it simply to avoid the WP:UNDUE issue with the topic. I've also now replaced the redirect with a disambiguation page so that it's clear that the same term can mean two different things. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:56, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The reason is fine. Per WP:MOS#Directions and regions, we would only capitalise the E if we consider "Eastern Slavonia" to be the name of a region. If all we mean is parts of Slavonia of a rather less westerly persuasion, then lower case is good. --Stfg (talk) 20:28, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. To elaborate a bit more - during the battle of Vukovar, SAOESBWS technically existed, but it was a new, generally unrecognized entity with fluctuating borders, so it didn't even come close to being the default meaning of the term eastern Slavonia - when people said that, they meant the eastern parts of Slavonia (which in turn is an old, well-established toponym). Today, perhaps because of numerous contractions related to UNTAES, I accept that there may be a need for disambiguation, but not in context of the battle/war, nor in modern-day context. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:11, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I am not comfortable with all the edit summaries that have appeared in the article's history today. I am not "try[ing] to present" anything as anything, merely trying to improve consistency. Nor am I trying to introduce anything "under the guise of copyedit". I owned up to the mistake about the town; now WP:AGF, please. --Stfg (talk) 19:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean you as the person trying to present eastern Slavonia as a standalone region, rather that was about the article text doing it, sorry about that. But I do take issue with what you did in the second case - you missed not only the immediate field of operations, you missed the entire country... it made me think you neither checked the referenced source nor read the related material at the war article, any of which would have made a claim that Croatian forces held a position east of the .hr/.sr border highly suspect at best. We (the nominators) have been criticized already for failing to intervene quickly enough in case of problematic edits, so please, if you're not sure about an edit, it's much better to bring it up on talk or at FAC page rather than do something that can further detract from our effort. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. I suppose you cannot have read my edit summary on this edit, which was written before you wrote the above, or I assume you'd have recognised that the above was unnecessary. Please observe Help:Edit summary#How to summarise, especially the last bullet. In one of your edit summaries, you came within a whisker of accusing me of using copy editing as a cover for deliberate vandalism. Not cool. Edit summaries are not a good place for emotional outbursts. I misinterpreted something. Please keep perspective.

You also need to review your expectations of what copy editing does. It tries to get the writing into a state that communicates well with the reader. That means we have to look at the text from the point of view of the reader, who may have no relevant background information, and not so much that of the subject expert. It is not our job to check your facts or to figure out what you meant if you use pronouns or expressions like "the town" when the referent is ambiguous. On Wikipedia, where few writers are professional, GOCE editors often try to help out like that. But it's going the second mile, and you aren't entitled to assume that it's our duty. --Stfg (talk) 20:28, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I missed that summary, because I didn't read all of them, there were so many edits that I didn't examine them one by one but did a group diff later. In any case, I didn't think I accused you of using copyedit as a cover for deliberate vandalism, sorry if that came across like that - the idiom "under the guise of" apparently has a much more ominous ring to it than what I actually intended. I'm sorry.

I also didn't mean for my later caution to imply that you weren't acting in good faith - I realize that you were, it's just that doing that alone is not necessarily sufficient. I just warned you of overreaching in the copyedit - if your attempt to correct a sentence so that it is clearer to the reader ends up introducing a whole new factoid into it, then you need to be reasonably sure that the final wording is still in fact correct, rather than broken in a whole new way. If you're applying style fixes, being bold is just fine, but if you're also changing the substance, then you should either be more careful with the fact-checking, or fall back to tagging with {{clarify}} or similar.

And thanks for doing that later - some of them were easy to fix for me, but you actually pointed out one that I don't know how to instantly fix, either. That was true proofreading :)

--Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:58, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I wasn't intentionally overreaching, I misunderstood. I thought I had figured out what you were saying, but it was a mis-read. I did try for the reference, but it's inaccessible to me. Re the later point: you probably realised that the problem with "mirror-image" and "analogous" is that they are metaphors whose application to a pair of propaganda machines is unclear. Perhaps "comparable"? --Stfg (talk) 13:44, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't actually see how mirror-image and analogous are unclear metaphors given the example laid out in the same section. When both entities use the same kind of input data to produce the same kind of output data, with the only change being the claimed nationality, that's more than merely comparable (as in, able to be compared), although I checked a dictionary and I see now that you could mean comparable as in "conforming in every respect" - which seems no more clear than "analogous" (which, as WordNet says, means equivalent in some respects though otherwise dissimilar). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

It may be best to avoid metaphors and state things directly. I see neither a mirror nor an analogy in any sense that assists understanding; what I see is the similarity of behaviours, described well enough in what follows. If you don't like "comparable" (in the sense when it's accented on the 1st syllable, meaning "similar") then "similar" is another possibility. Or, since this phrase is just introductory to the facts immediately following, you could just rephrase as: "Both sides' propaganda machines aimed to promote ..." I don't think that really loses anything. --Stfg (talk) 11:00, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

*nod*. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:03, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Ovčara numbers, and of what

Immediately after the long quote in the war crimes section, we have: "Many of the non-Serb patients in Vukovar's hospital (around 260 people plus several medical personnel) were taken ...". The wording is slightly strange here (if 260 is the number of patients, why not just say so without the parenthesis?) - so I went to the source, ref 11. It gives a total number of people = 264, but I can find nothing to divide it into patients and medics. A text search for the (sub-)string "patient" gives no hits in the page. Search for sub-string "medic" gives a single hit (clause 65), irrelevant to what kind of people were taken from the hospital. Do you want to adduce new sources, or would you like me to derive something from ref 11?

By the way, the Milosevic indictment is long and nitty-gritty. It could be helpful to cite specific clause numbers in it.

I'm taking the rest of the evening off. Back in about 12 hours, probably. --Stfg (talk) 19:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I've reworded the line you quote and cited it to a different and perhaps clearer source. Hopefully this helps. Prioryman (talk) 21:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; it does. P163 of that source is not included in the Google books preview, but what you wrote is clear. --Stfg (talk) 11:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Of the three Milošević indictment references, I've updated one that specifically talked about Dalj. It turned out it was a really good idea to review it because the text had remained a tad confusing - we had two separate sets of mass murder in Dalj. The two others generally reference various Vukovar crimes, and there's a lot of it - do you think we should list them all in the same ref tag or in separate ones? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:40, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure I understand the question, but if it's a question of whether the two uses of ref 11 (the generic one) need to be separated, then no, I think they are fine as they are. Ref 114 is good, of course. Is that what you meant? --Stfg (talk) 15:11, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I meant that we could theoretically add a long list of #1, #2, #3, ... into the generic reference, listing all the issues there mentioning crimes at Vukovar. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:56, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

A bad habit

In the War crimes section, I've tagged a use of the phrase "the town's" asking for the town to be named. Don't be distracted by the "Clarify" tag - it's the best I could think of - the issue is the manner of writing. When you mean a particular town, it's usually better to name it. There are exceptions, such as when you're mentioning something that belongs to your town, like "the town church", or to avoid too much repetition of a name. Otherwise, it can sound dismissive (if you were writing about a person, think what it would read like if you kept referring to "the person"). And when you do use this construction, the identity of the town referred to needs to be unambiguous from the writing, not just from contextual knowledge.

I'm not going to tag every instance, nor, after yesterday, will I myself attempt the clarification in any instance. But I do recommend that, after the copy edit is over (to avoid edit conflicts), someone go through the article searching for each instance of "the town" and, especially, "the town's", and consider whether (a) this is better than naming the town concerned and (b) whether the writing itself has made it clear which town is being referred to at the moment. --Stfg (talk) 11:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

The battle was centered in and limited to the single town of Vukovar, and this should be pretty clear to all readers, so when only a single town is mentioned in a paragraph, I don't quite see the potential for confusion or a requirement to verify which town is talked about in references. The phrase is often used in the article to avoid too much repetition of the name of Vukovar. But I'm reading through it to see if we can sprinkle some more "Vukovar" where there's too much of "the town" :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:56, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I think repetition of "the town" is rather worse than repetition of the name, though I already acknowledged that it's good to avoid too much of that as well. Don't forget "it" as well; where it's possible it may well be best, and it can stand more repetition before it jars. --Stfg (talk) 14:52, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Got it. It's a bit harder to grep for 'it', but I'll try to reduce that, too. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Apologies, I must have mis-stated it. "It" is good. Just like basic words such as "the", "a", etc, you can repeat "it" as much as you need without jarring. It's high-information words you want to avoid repeating too much. Sorry if I misled you. --Stfg (talk) 19:48, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

oic, you must have meant "it" as a possible replacement for "the town". --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:08, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Ref 185 (Kardov)

I went to the reference to check whether it's really "Croatian Memorial Cemetery of Homeland War Victims", since "for" would be more normal than "of" here, and also because we have that capitalised but "Serbian memorial cemetery" not. OK, those are in the source, but the source doesn't say "Local Serbs have tended to avoid participating ..."; it says that they don't participate. There appears to be no mention of 2003 on the cited page either. --Stfg (talk) 19:33, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Kardov's account is a bit awkwardly worded; he says he carried out his fieldwork in 2001–2002 but the book in which his account appears was not published until 2007, and we are now further on still from the things he recorded. It is an historical account rather than an up-to-the-minute statement of how things are in Vukovar. I've reworded the line and corrected the reference (it should have been page 87 not 81). Prioryman (talk) 19:53, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

It is, isn't it. What you've written is much better. --Stfg (talk) 20:51, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Copy edit done; recommendations

I've finished. I hope it will help, but I think there's more work needed in the following areas:

• "the town" and "the town's" as described above. This requires checking the citations, many of which are inaccessible to me (no-preview book or cited pages excluded from preview);
• there is still a lot of passive voice in the article. Some is good, but there's too much here. Again, it would often be necessary to go to the citations to establish the subject of an active verb, unless you can think of another way to turn it round (like changing "... prepare the region to be reintegrated ..." into "... prepare the region for reintegration ...";
• images: two pairs are centred and one is to the left; all the rest are to the right. It's better to approximately alternate left and right.

--Stfg (talk) 20:46, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work you've done in reviewing this article. I'll work on the changes you've suggested over the next few days. Prioryman (talk) 22:09, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Prioryman. And thanks, too, for helping out when I asked things here. --Stfg (talk) 09:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Request

Could someone with access to the refs please check that this and this are still true to the Thompson and Karlov sources? Thanks a lot. Hey, it's really started to look good, hasn't it? --John (talk) 06:52, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Just checked and yes, the edits are fine. Prioryman (talk) 08:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a million. Do you recall if the tens of thousands in the second instance are spectators, participants or is there a better word? I was worried that "attended" was too weak a verb. What do you think? --John (talk) 08:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

A few details

I asked a journalist who is a friend of mine who had covered the entire war for an international news agency to skim through the article to see if he had some suggestions. He said it looked great, however, he had a few minor remarks:

1. Apparently Milan Brezak never held the post of Croatia's Minister of the Interior. He was a high-ranked official of the ministry involved in the whole thing but his actual title was something else (I'll do some research to try to find out what exactly).

(Got it. Brezak was deputy interior minister according to New York Times.) Timbouctou (talk) 22:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that out. Prioryman (talk) 20:22, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

2. He mentioned that Bernard Kouchner might have been involved in the Médecins Sans Frontières convoy which visited Vukovar, but I'm unsure if that's true (I know he was involved in the siege of Dubrovnik though). Anyway, if this is supported by reports it would probably merit a mention as he was appointed minister in the French government not long after in April 1992.

BK was certainly heavily involved with Dubrovnik but I've not come across any reference to him being involved in the MSF convoy. Prioryman (talk) 20:22, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I just thought it was worth checking out. Timbouctou (talk) 10:42, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

3. Mile Dedaković apparently is not a Serb. It seems the idea that he was originally came from a misunderstanding (his name "sounded Serbian" to defence minister Šušak) and was later perpetuated by the government which was keen to point out to the outside world that Croats had a multi-ethnic force as opposed to the Serbs (which they did, only Dedaković was not an appropriate poster boy for that claim). Some say there's an explicit statement he made about that but I failed to find it by Googling.

(continued in the following section)

Dedaković ethnicity

As for point 3, I found this article written by Davor Butković, a long-time columnist for Jutarnji list, in which he talks about the participation of ethnic Serbs on the Croatian side during the war, and briefly touches on Dedaković: (the translation is my own)

According to some people we talked to, persons who were in the top military echelon at the time, up to 20,000 Serbs defended Croatia. In the crucial war year of 1991 the Croatian state leadership was very much aware of the importance of emphasising the Serb element in the Homeland War. Even Gojko Šušak, the ultimate chief of HDZ's "hawks", had appeared on a TV programme in late autumn of 1991 and proudly said that the defence of Vukovar was in charge of a Serb, colonel Mile Dedaković.

Šušak, who was an amateur for most things he had been involved in, obviously did not know that Dedaković was a Croat. However, the important thing here is to point out that Tuđman and Šušak wanted to spread the word that the Croatian army at Vukovar was being commanded by a Serb.

It was perfectly clear to Tuđman how important that might be, not only from the aspect of foreign policy, but also for domestic policy. In later years, following the armistice signed on 3 January 1992 in Sarajevo which once and for all ensured that Croatia would not lose the war, the "multicultural" tendencies in the top ranks of the Croatian state and military, unfortunately, became redundant and unpleasant [suvišne i antipatične].

— Davor Butković, I Srbi su branili Hrvatsku, Jutarnji list, 6 November 2010

Interesting, I think that might be worth mentioning in the article. What do you think? Prioryman (talk) 20:22, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

We only have James Gow's book as citation, and it doesn't seem to examine the issue, Google Books preview just says:

The tension between Vukovar and Zagreb was evident when the town eventually fell after a three-month siege. Mile Dedaković, a Serb known by the nom de guerre 'Jastreb', a military leader in Vukovar, was arrested by the Zagreb authorities initially for 'desertion', [...]

It doesn't seem to examine the background issue in any sort of detail, so we can't really depend on it to make such a contentious statement. I'll add a short discussion; if anyone thinks it's too long, just omit it completely. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the current wording in the article ("a claim that [...] was actually false"), because AFAIK we have no way of knowing that Šušak was wrong while Butković was right, and not vice versa. Without a definitive answer, I think it is sufficient to say that Serbs fought on the Croatian side, without mentioning anyone in particular. GregorB (talk) 12:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there's a lot of ambiguity here - we have a record of two people saying briefly that Dedaković was a Serb without analysis (in 1991 and 2003), and a third person analyzing the exact issue and saying the opposite (in 2010). Butković also said the same in one of his 2009 columns. Jutarnji is a too large a pulpit for his repeated claims to go unnoticed and unrefuted if wrong, whereas few people in Croatia really know/care about the former two sources. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd be much more comfortable if we had a direct quote from Dedaković, but Joy is right - Jutarnji list is the most widely read daily in the country and it would certainly not go unnoticed if what Butković had repeatedly claimed was a mistake. Not only did Butković remind the nation in 2010 and 2009, he also mentioned it in his column in August 2006 and November 2004. In the 2004 article he says that Šušak's statement that Dedaković was a Serb in 1991 was "immediately refuted by Dedaković" himself. Timbouctou (talk) 10:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

All good points. My concern was that there were two opposed claims without any particulars that would support one or the other. What Butković says in the Nov 2004 article ("immediately refuted") is a crucial detail that settles the issue. GregorB (talk) 11:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Dedaković on attempts to break the siege

Also, there's this interview Dedaković gave Jutarnji list in November 2006. He talks about the details of the two Croatian counter-attacks of 13 October and 13 November 1991, in an interview he gave Jutarnji list on 18 November 2006, on the 15th anniversary of the fall of Vukovar:

• I commanded the first breakthrough on 13 October, while the entire operation was commanded by Karl Gorinšek. The truth is as follows. At 05:30 we began with artillery shelling to prepare the way for the breakthrough, and at 06:00 we went in with troops and at 12:15 we entered the village of Marinci. The first one who entered was Vjeko Čuljak with the Yellow Ants, and special forces followed. So, Marinci were practically already taken. JNA was retreating. While we were entering Marinci, my adjutants Ivica Kasalo and Nikola Fenix Toth came to me and said that president Tuđman was on the phone wishing to talk to me. I shook my head saying "no" because I didn't want to pick up the phone as I assumed that Tuđman was calling to stop the operation. However, a little while later, a order came from somewhere ordering to stop the whole thing...

• ...It came from somebody above me. Then Čuljak called me over the walkie talkie from the field and was shouting frantically "What are you doing commander, what's this about retreat!?". And when we began to pull back, everything was over. The Serbs regrouped. We had 18 dead. They were all killed while we were pulling out!

• ...The order probably came from somebody above me, but not at their own initiative but upon intervention of president Tuđman. I later found out that Hans van den Brooke had put enormous pressure of Tuđman to stop the operation and promised that the Doctors Without Borders convoy which was in Đakovo would help evacuate the wounded. I do not know what kind of pressures were involved, but if we had succeeded back then, who knows how everything would turn out. I assume that Van den Brooke's arguments were such that it had to be called off, but I regret that, to say the least.

• ...The second breakthrough was pure show! It was a way to deceive the public which had demanded that something be done. Entire Croatia was sympathetic towards Vukovar and they wanted something to be done. If the first breakthrough was a military operation, the second one could be described as a political one. A force was sent from Nuštar, but it was too weak to actually break through, especially since JNA and the Serbs had brought extra reinforcements, and the fall of Vukovar was at that moment, unfortunately, only a matter of days. Our forces at Vukovar were either already separated or soon to be separated. JNA had made a wedge between our northern and southern lines of defence. However, I know that on 9 November a decision was made at a government meeting which ordered a breakthrough and assistance for Vukovar. But military calculations were then made which envisioned a loss of about 5,000 men in this situation and said that even that would not ensure a successful de-blockade of Vukovar. When that was put on the table, it had been decided to give up on Vukovar. But those calculations were badly done. I don't know where they got the figure of 5,000 possible casualties. Somebody who graduated from military schools could not have made such a mistake or was totally incompetent or everything was done to prove - that is, create an alibi - how another breakthrough was pointless.
  — Mile Dedaković, Vukovar nije dobio oružje plaćeno s tajnih računa, Jutarnji list, 18 November 2006

Maybe some details disclosed here by Dedaković could merit inclusion? Timbouctou (talk) 22:07, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

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Dating images

Hi! I noticed discussion on date of publication of a (presumed) 1912 postcard from Vukovar at the Battle of Vukovar FAC. Since I couldn't venture an opinion on date of the actual image there (other than that it seems old), I opted to post here: Would it be of any use in terms of removing doubts of image age if an image such as one posted in this article were used? It contains caption "Pozdrav iz Vukovara" and "Gruss aus Vukovar" indicating its pre-1919 printing. A similar image contains the same caption, uses the same typeface, and there's additional caption of "Franje Josipa ulica"/"Franz-Josefs-Gasse". Since no Franz-Joseph street existed in Vukovar after 1918, and I sincerely doubt German was used for Vukovar postcards since demise of Austria-Hungary, these two specimens seem to be at least 93 years old.--Tomobe03 (talk) 21:18, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Would you be able to use the picture under the copyright rules of wikipedia imagaes??P0PP4B34R732 (talk) 21:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Possibly, but it's a bit uncertain. We do have the advantage with the image I uploaded of knowing where and when it came from (i.e. the publisher and date). I don't think we have that advantage with the others, unfortunately. Prioryman (talk) 22:24, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Just asking. The latter of the two is always dated to 1917 on the web, however no backside is shown. There is an instance where a similar postcard, using the same style of image and typesetting is shown with the backside and it is dated to 1917 though. But if you have solid info that the image posted is dated to 1912, that's no contest really.--Tomobe03 (talk) 00:08, 25 October 2011 (UTC)