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For the Alexandrian Crusade, you may wish to add Muḥammad ibn al-Ḳāsim al-Nuwayrī al-Iskandarānī. — Srnec ( talk) 03:41, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
This page already has 668,615 bytes of markup; that's far too big, and it needs to be subdivided. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how to split this article and it's not easy. Here are some options:
1. Split the work by centuries. This would entail moving the odd sections (e.g., travel, archaeology) into the respective centuries. This presents difficulties to the reader because many of the works are cross-referenced across centuries (e.g., translations or updates of earlier works).
2. Split the work into before and after 1900. The same problems as #1. Both #1 and #2 make the article less usable, as most Crusader historians treat the subject as a whole.
3. Eliminate some of the hyperlinks in citations. The vast majority of the article is used by citations (readable text character count is 75k). You have to figure that anyone that is actually interested in this material is smart enough to find a copy somewhere. Some are to limited access sites, others to scans of works that simply aren't readable to modern readers. Also, the Wikipedia format for citations frequently includes links to Wikipedia articles (e.g. Catholic Encyclopedia, Dictionary of National Biography) and that takes up all lot of space.
4. Eliminate some Wikipedia hyperlinks. For example, the entry on Sir Walter Scott has links to the author and three of his works. Those works also have the same links in Scott's article, so they don't necessarily need to be in this article.
5. Split the work into two pieces: One article on the authors, another article on the works. They are basically the same article but the first doesn't have citations for the works. The second doesn't have citations for the authors.
If the objective is simply to make it smaller, the easiest thing to do is to do a combination of #3 and #4, removing enough of them to squeeze it between Tawag ng Tanghalan (season 4) and the List of Hallmark Channel Original Movies. If all non-English citations were eliminated (e.g., references to German or Italian biographical articles, HathiTrust references to Latin and German works), it could possibly be below Opinion polling for the 2018 Italian general election. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
What's the objective here? If it's just to make it smaller, then how small? The suggestions of splitting it by time don't really work for reasons that I'll be happy to explain. I am planning to split off the Historiography section as that's going to have some significant expansion, and move some material to the associated Wikipedia articles on the individual authors. Is there anyone that works on Crusades articles for Wikipedia on this thread? I'd like to hear their view on this subject. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 19:09, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
It's not that simple to separate the sections as many of the entries tie to ones in a different century. Each one would need to be rewritten. Even at that, the Nineteenth Century would be over 200k. I fail to see how creating a mess of 14+ articles meets any objective other than to make it smaller. I do plan on spinning off the last two sections into separate articles as additional material is being accumulated. And yes, at least one of them will be over 100k. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:45, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
There is no consensus for doing this, which isn't as simple as you are letting on. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 05:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Well, you want to split the article and I don't, so that's hardly consensus. Despite what you say, it is not that easy to split, considerable work is required. FYI, this is part of a multi-part work "Historians of the Crusades" that still needs to be written. It will reference sources for the Crusades, collections of Crusader sources, this article, modern historians of the Crusade, and one other in the works. This reflects how actual Crusader historians list things in their bibliographies. I don't understand the "longest article" comment. There will always be a longest article. If we split this one, won't the next one also need to be split, and so forth. Wont' the split article eventually become the longest again? Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:44, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
There is no consensus to split this article, because no one has framed and asked the question. It is a useful article, so Dresser has an article on German WP, who knew, I didn't and have learnt something useful in a quick flick through the article. At 78kb readible words it is questionable even if it is too big, for a consumer of the information that would seem to make it usable. Would splitting make it more usable—I don't think so, it would just create a bunch of articles that no one uses. Is there a technical reason why size is a problem? No one seems to have come up with one. Personally, I think Dr G's good faith work should be accepted at face value and left as it is. That is of course, unless someone can come up with both an objective reason to split and a consensus gaining proposal for what that split should be. Everything else is just pedantry. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 18:53, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Despite what you say, it is not that easy to split, considerable work is required.This article is actually quite easy to split, as I have demonstrated when I split off the 19th century section. This is typical for large articles which are already separated into sections.
I don't understand the "longest article" comment. There will always be a longest article. If we split this one, won't the next one also need to be split, and so forth.The problem is that this is an article which is too large itself, and it just so happens that this is the largest article on Wikipedia. I have no problem with the content itself, and it's a shame that the size of this article makes the content less accessible. There is clearly enough work in the article for multiple articles, and that can easily be expected when this article has several centuries worth of detailed information. It's true that splitting this article would mean another article would be the largest on Wikipedia, and that article would likely have to be split as well, as there are many articles which are too large for one article, and this one happens to be the largest.
Wont' the split article eventually become the longest again?An article that is 200,000 bytes would certainly not be the largest Wikipedia article.
At 78kb readible words it is questionable even if it is too big, for a consumer of the information that would seem to make it usable.78kb in prose is reasonably large for an article, but there are multiple measures of article length. Currently the markup size is 700kb, which is well over any guidelines for how large an article should be, and this doesn't include the sizes of templates and page features outside of the article.
Would splitting make it more usable?It would make the content within the article more usable, certainly. Currently the content for the latter centuries is buried underneath a lot of content for the prior centuries.
Is there a technical reason why size is a problem? No one seems to have come up with one.I would recommend WP:SIZE which goes into fair detail, but to put it briefly, we want to minimise loading and scrolling times (particularly on mobile devices, and slower computers, internet connections), and to increase the time that people read the content.
Personally, I think Dr G's good faith work should be accepted at face value and left as it is.I don't think there are any concerns or issues being raised with the content itself, and I certainly don't see any need to change the content itself either.
I hate to keep saying this, but it is not that easy to split this article. Your attempt to split off the Nineteenth Century needed a lot of work on both articles to make them usable and have either article readable as a unit. Even with your split-off, this article was 504k, and it would've been the 4th largest article, just behind the enlightening subjects as Tawag ng Tanghalan (season 4) and List of Hallmark Channel Original Movies, both of which are being heavily edited on a daily basis. The third, List of Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign endorsements will be irrelevant come next month. So it is reasonable to assume that, at some point in the near future, it would need to be further reduced. Your claim of a 200k article is the spin-off, not the original. Similarly, the claim for mobile users being disadvantaged is a red herring. No one in their right mind is going to access this article on their phone. And it loads just fine on my iPad.
This article is not written for the casual reader who wants to learn about the Crusades. It is a reference article, not a browsing article. You may not like the structure or flow, but that is how Crusader historians organize this material. I didn't make this up. If you were reading, say the Routledge Companion to the Crusades, and needed some more information and a particular historian or history, this is where you would go. There is no source accessible on the Internet or hardcopy that you can go to. It also expands Wikipedia as a source for Google searches on authors or works not otherwise found her. That being said, Section 10. Archaeology... is one that could be feasibly split off which would move it to position #2 behind the Tawag article. Again, it can't just be cut and pasted. The content in both articles has to be massaged. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 21:42, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Well, I have loaded this on my phone, Samsung A70 so nothing special and the page is perfectly usable, although I take Dr G's point that only a madman would try this. So clearly there is no technical reason for the split. I also refreshed my memory of WP:TOOBIG and the policy appears to be on readible prose. At 78kb, this article is large, but not so large that the policy requires or even recommends splitting. Splitting the article presents far more problems than it solves. Crusade academics are an argumentative bunch, put two in a room and you get three opinions. Furthermore, many of the narratives of older sources are unreliable, politically and religiously partial, to remove context as some editors do in the crusade topics leads to statement that appera true in WP, but are actually highly contested. While translated, sources come in a variety of modern and older languages. This is a List, making editorial judgements without consensus would be wrong. Other opinions would be welcome and I accept that I could be wrong, but at the moment there is no consensus. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 11:17, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
probably should be divided. Readable prose is one measure of size, the other two being wiki markup size and browser size. We know what the wiki markup size is, and we know that it's the largest on Wikipedia, indicating there are clear issues. I don't see how you can say WP:Article size is a policy about readable prose size, when the first paragraph of the lead section lists the three measures of an article's size. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 21:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
It is clear that your intent is to split this article regardless of any argument against that view. For example, you say, and I quote " WP:TOOBIG does explicitly recommend splitting an article of this readable prose size" when it actually says "Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)." I think that you will agree that the term "explicitly recommend" that you use and what it actually says are quite different. In the middle of what was some of us trying to reach an accommodation, you claimed that you have a consensus and went ahead and split the article, despite arguments against just that. And then you changed the name of the article to something that it isn't. When it was pointed out that your "fix" would render it the 4th largest article that would soon require further splitting, you first claimed that it was only 200k, and then admitting that it was 500k, agreed that it would need to be split again. Your first position was that each article should be under 100k. Then, no, it was that it just needed to be smaller, but declined to answer the question, how small? I have spun off two pieces and am investigating splitting off a third, but it apparently must meet some goal that you are unable to articulate.
Here's another one of your comments: "I don't have an issue with the content of this article, but it is important that all articles are easily understood and accessible to English speakers, including those who want to know about the historiography of the Crusades. Wikipedia doesn't do bibliographies, we do encyclopaedia articles." I'm sorry, but this article will not be understandable to your average English speaker. As a native English speaker myself, there are many things that I understand and many more that I don't, including a lot of Wikipedia articles. I have learned to live with that, investing the time in those areas that I am interested in. Dumbing down the article will not assist the generic "English speaker" in understanding the subject matter, which is not "the historiography of the Crusades." There is not even a consensus as to what that phrase means. You also seem to think that Wikipedia doesn't do bibliographies, which would come as a surprise to the many contributors in Category:Bibliographies by subject. Splitting the article will not achieve the goals you laid out in that statement. If you really feel that strongly about what you said, put the article up for deletion.
You keep wanting to understand why the sections can't just be separated. Well, here goes. As an example, the first four entries in Section 2 have five references to later sections. One is to Henri-Victor Michelant, who can only be found in French Wikipedia. Same goes for Paul E. D. Riant. A third is to Girolamo Golubovich who has no Wikipedia reference of any language that I could find and must be found in the databases for Bibliothèque nationale de France or WorldCat. These would need to be explained. Otherwise, they're just names without meaning. These authors appear frequently in Crusader articles in Wikipedia as their works are frequently referenced, and occasionally someone wants to find out more about them. Most non-English Wikipedia references are in French, German or Italian Wikipedia, but one is in the Norwegian Wikipedia. Each section is not stand-alone. This article was written with a particular objective in mind as were its companion articles, reflecting how Crusader historians do it. To split it would require rewriting. Let me repeat that just for emphasis, to split it would require rewriting. It's a lot of work to create a product that would be more confusing.
As a mathematician, I am familiar with the concept of well-ordered sets, particularly those that have a largest element. There will always be a largest Wikipedia article. This one is it for now, but won't be forever. I seems that things are reversed, that it's a solution (move this article down the "longest article" list) in search of a problem. And the logic keeps changing. First, you're worried about mobile users. After that's addressed, there's something else. You keep moving the goal posts, your argument is a Red Herring. Wikipedia lays out guidelines for article size and this one appears to meet them. Get together a review group and propose some solutions to this "problem." And find someone who wants to invest the time, only to have the "problem" come around again. You know what my vote will be. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 06:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
For example, you say, and I quote " WP:TOOBIG does explicitly recommend splitting an article of this readable prose size" when it actually says "Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)."Yes, saying something "probably" should happen is a recommendation, and that's only for readable prose size. The markup size and browser size is far larger than that as well.
In the middle of what was some of us trying to reach an accommodation, you claimed that you have a consensus and went ahead and split the article, despite arguments against just that.I would be very interested to hear the accommodation you have in mind, as it would please me greatly to find some common ground on this.
When it was pointed out that your "fix" would render it the 4th largest article that would soon require further splitting, you first claimed that it was only 200k, and then admitting that it was 500k, agreed that it would need to be split again.It looked like you were talking about the section that was split off into its own article (the 19th century section which was 200kB), not the main article after the split, so that's just nothing more than a miscommunication. The article certainly should be split to reduce it below 500kB as well, and getting it to 400kB would take the article to about ninetieth on the list, but that shouldn't be the main focus. What you said initially was
If we split this one, won't the next one also need to be split, and so forth. Wont' the split article eventually become the longest again?, which sounded like you were referring to the article that was created from the split.
And then you changed the name of the article to something that it isn't.I did that to make the article title more concise as per our guidelines, but that's a completely separate issue and not as important as the page's size.
I'm sorry, but this article will not be understandable to your average English speaker.It should be, but that's a separate issue. I don't have an opinion on whether this article is understandable or not.
Splitting the article will not achieve the goals you laid out in that statement.I agree, splitting the article is only a recourse for the size of the article.
As an example, the first four entries in Section 2 have five references to later sections.This is not a problem, the same reference can be used multiple times and on multiple articles.
To split it would require rewriting.Splitting articles doesn't require rewriting them, especially when they are from sections of the larger article. It's mostly a matter of transferring the content into their own articles, and adding some things at the top and bottom.
There will always be a largest Wikipedia article. This one is it for now, but won't be forever.You are correct to say that the issue is not that this is the largest Wikipedia article. That is simply an indicator of the problem, and as I've said before, addressing the ranking isn't the point.
First, you're worried about mobile users. After that's addressed, there's something else. You keep moving the goal posts, your argument is a Red Herring.This is absolutely still a problem for mobile users and how it works on your iPad doesn't change that. There certainly are other issues with an article being this size, but that remains an issue for the reasons I've outlined and the reasons listed at WP:TOOBIG. I hope this adequately responds to your comments and we can find a way forward. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 09:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
So by way of summary, what do we know. We know the at 78kb of readible prose that readible prose is not ad issue. This is an enormous subject that meets the caveat in the guidelines (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material). The page loads quickly and successfully on a number of different devices, in fact no one has come up with a device that the page doesn't load on. Therefore Browser page size is not an issue. Wiki Markup Size is large due to the number of hyperlinks, but I can't anywhere that mandates or recommends a limit for this, so we can safely ignore.
Using the usability criteria from Wikipedia:Article size then:
All in all looks pretty much in good shape, and there is no merit in the suggestion that the article should be split Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 12:15, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
This article has less than 50kb of readable prose & numerous sections, therefore it is reasonable in terms of size and structure. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 14:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Well, I have loaded this on my phone, Samsung A70 so nothing special and the page is perfectly usable, although I take Dr G's point that only a madman would try this.Onetwothreeip ( talk) 23:10, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Process issues aside, and I accept it is badly worded, it appears that there is no consensus on whether this article is too large. I'll close the rfc on that basis. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 21:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
A bit of history on this article (referred to here as Later Historians) might be useful in discussing this RFC. This is part of a larger article called Historians and Histories of the Crusades (referred to here as Historians) which was actually begun in its current form in June 2020 with the expansion of an existing article called list of sources for the Crusades. Concerns about its size led to the creation of two other articles under Historians, including Later Historians. Again, concerns on size led to material being moved to other articles and the creation of a new article, list of modern historians of the Crusades (Modern Historians) on 29 December 2020. Material is being moved from Later to Modern in a careful way to maintain the readability and appropriateness of the larger article Historians.
So, Later Historians is being split, but apparently not as fast as some would like. Also, my inquiries as to how long is acceptable ranged from "under 100k" to "just smaller." I would suggest the angst about the length of the article at least wait until I have finished what I had committed to, as the complaints began the day after the newly created article, Modern, began to be populated. I am continuing to move material from Later to Modern, but I want to do what makes sense and is readable to those with some knowledge of the Crusades. Despite the desire to make it "easily understood and accessible to English speakers," that goal is not achievable. If that is the criteria, then the article should just be deleted.
I have written over 500 articles for Wikipedia and professionally edited thousands more, and I have been accused of being naive and a bad researcher, and have never been in the middle an editing war. I was therefore surprised that I was accused of malfeasance in dealing on this matter. I have reviewed the governing Wikipedia policy on this matter and am sure my behavior was appropriate. I can't say the same for simply splitting a complex article (badly at that) in the middle of an otherwise friendly discussion on size and renaming it incorrectly. I realize that this is a hot-button issue for some, but there will always be a largest article. Right now it is Later; it won't be forever.
I am working on a daily basis to right-size the overall Historians and, in particular, Later Historians. It isn't going to happen in a day, or even a week. I suggest the discussion be postponed at least until the article is finished. Yes, Later will be smaller. There might even be a new article based on Section 10, as I have discussed earlier. I can't commit to how small or how soon at this minute. Frankly, dealing with this issue on a near-daily basis is getting frustrating. Issues are raised and then addressed, only to have the issue change and the reappear a few days later. I hope this answers the latest question, which I have answered over and over again. For future reference, I am a "he", not a "they". I believe in the 21st century, "they" is reserved for people identifying as non-binary. I think "he /she" would have been better.
Perhaps the size of the article could be reduced by using a less verbose referencing style? For example, some of the references are just links to the works in question. For example, instead of:
write
You could probably cut the article by 30% or so by this trivial change. Also, why is each author's name duplicated? Instead of "Jean Germain. Jean Germain (1400–1461)," why not just write "Jean Germain (1400–1461)." Perhaps also look into using shortened footnotes to reduce the article size further. ImTheIP ( talk) 14:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for your constructive comments. And, yes, the citations are clearly a problem. When I first started editing this series of articles ("Sources..." was the first at 14k), I was chastised for using an abbreviated format for citations and so that's why you see them as they are. For example, the "template" citations (Catholic Encyclopedia, etc.) contain lots of information, like the hyperlink to the Wikipedia article "Catholic Encyclopedia." So, in response to the desire to cut the article size, I've been eliminating non-essential information from those (a work still in progress). Many of the others are to HathiTrust references, and what I have done is copy the APA citation and add the hyperlink to the book. (I'm pretty sure you are really supposed to add another line for the link, but that would really blow things up.) I'm going through an cleaning the words up, getting rid of things line lengthy commentary in Latin or German, but I'm a novice when it comes to cleaning up the hyperlinks. Occasionally, some WikiBot will come through and do something, but I'm never sure what.
I looked at that citation that you referenced, and clearly all the superfluous material is the result of my clumsy navigation. I have tried to be careful in that area and have obviously failed. As you can see from my moniker, I am not of an age that understands the intricacies of the "Internets." I can try to fix things but I fear any effort on my part will make things worse. In the meantime, I continue to winnow down the article as best I can.
The citations do sometimes provide additional information not in the writeup. For example, if X wrote a treatise in 1807, but the only one available in the 3rd edition published in 1815, with some editor Y, I'll leave that information in. Like I said, I'm in the process of cleaning up what I can, relying on others (human or bot) for assistance. It also may be worse as some of the references are supposed to have ISBNs and the format has lots of internal links, but so far the issue hasn't surfaced.
The "duplication" issue was actually given a lot of thought. The original "Sources..." was in table format and was easy to follow in a short article, but as it grew the format was too cumbersome. Given the size of these articles, it was felt that it was important to be able to quickly scan a page for top level information. Our first thought was to do as you suggested, but some of the references had a Wikipedia link and others didn't, so there wouldn't be a consistent look to each entry. Also many names are longer that what the person (or in some cases, document) is known by, and so the bolded portion can be a shortened version. This is particularly true for Arabic names, which tend to be lengthy, but also for modern authors such as J. B. Bury and C. E. Bosworth who are usually recognized by their initials. Your suggestion is the format used in the articles "List of Crusades..." and "Collections..", but not in the much longer "Sources.." and this one and "Modern..." and "Archaeology..." It seems like a lot of work for not much gain.
I am probably going to spin off Chapter 6 to a separate article, which will make the third one spun off as well as material moved to "Collections..." It makes no sense to move the 19th century material to "Modern...." That article was spun off on 29 December and has already tripled in size and will continue to grow as more historians (of which there are many) and referenced works are added. Besides a move that makes no sense, "Modern..." would soon be the largest article and then we're going to have to go through this all over again. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 17:16, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
This article is currently one of the longest on the wiki with ~425,000+ bytes, which is far too long. Also, after looking at the section sizes, the 19th century section seems to be a significant outlier and takes up at least half of the article size at ~220,000+ bytes, so I suggest splitting it into its own article: List of ninteenth century historians of the Crusades. Blubabluba9990 ( talk) ( contribs) 22:55, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
I support the proposal. zsteve21 ( talk) 13:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
deemed too long.
The formatting of the article is nonsense, repeating every single name for no reason whatsoever. And no, Dr. Grampinator, this is certainly not a well-established format within Wikipedia. Please undo your edit. All my warmest wishes, ItsKesha ( talk) 14:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
ItsKeshaFirst of all, this is a descriptive list, not a glossary. And even in the articles you provided there are many variations provided, including ones with models similar to the one used here as I pointed out yesterday.
Also, you would like to have things changed so that only the commonly used name is shown. That doesn't work very well for the Arabic or Persian names, and is contrary to common WP practices. Most biographical articles have for a title the commonly used name, with the article beginning with the full name and alternative names.
What you are proposing is a major rewrite and restructure of a stable article that is within Wikipedia guidelines and has been reviewed by dozens of experienced editors that are core Crusader contributors. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 16:51, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're saying here. This is a descriptive list and there is no prescribed format for them. It is similar, not identical, to a glossary and many of the glossary examples that you provided are of the same format. In fact, if you use the glossary template on this subject, you will get the existing article. The repetition of names occurs in many articles. We could make each entry a separate subsection but that would make the article unwieldy. As I have said before, this format has been used and reviewed many times and the people using it as a resource have found it effective. Many of the historians here do not have a separate Wikipedia entry, so it appropriate to include information, like other names, here. A brief description is included with citations to other biographical sources. No one claimed that it was a complete biography, but provides enough information towards the purpose of the article. I'm sorry I didn't use ::. I don't usually use them and, since it's just the two of use conversing, really, what's the point? Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 01:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Just like List of collections of Crusader sources, this list has great potential, but currently does not comply with WP:PRIMARY. References to primary sources themselves ( WP:SELF) do not establish their notability, nor their relevance for inclusion in the list.
Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship ( WP:V), are encouraged.
It should be possible to verify that each entry in a bibliography meets the inclusion criteria. If an entry has a Wikipedia article, merely wikilinking it to the article verifies it because the reader can navigate to the article and determine if the entry meets the inclusion criteria. If an entry does not have a Wikipedia article and there might be any doubt that it belongs in the bibliography, it should be cited with a reliable source that verifies its relevance.
I think this is a fixable problem. All that needs to happen is referring to a reliable secondary source which identifies a particular historian and/or their work as a 'later historians of the Crusades'. I'm sure such reliable secondary sources exist, although it would depend on the definition of 'later historians of the Crusades'. If secondary reliable sources agree that this is essentially anyone writing about the Crusades from the 13th through 19th century, that should be easy to do. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 17:43, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
This list has great potential, but currently does not comply with WP:NOR. This is particularly true for making potentially contentious claims. Reliable secondary sources are needed to establish who or what is 'prominent', 'important', 'interesting', 'notable', 'seminal' or 'relevant', not unsourced statements ( WP:V) or primary sources ( WP:PRIMARY).
Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation.
Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them.
Therefore, one cannot say Book X written by Historian Y about the Crusades is important.[1]
[1]. Historian Y, Book X.
I think this is a fixable problem. All that needs to happen is referring to a reliable secondary source which identifies a particular historian and/or their work as 'prominent', 'important', 'interesting', 'notable', 'seminal' or 'relevant'. I'm sure such reliable secondary sources exist. Cheers,
Nederlandse Leeuw (
talk) 17:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Attribute all of the following types of material to reliable, published sources using inline citations: (...) all material whose verifiability has been challenged.As it happens, I have challenged some of your material, so
Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source.By placing [citation needed] tags, I'm giving you time and opportunity to do this. (There is no set time for this, and in lists/articles like this there is no need to hurry, but it would be nice if you (or other users) could do that within, like, a year). If you don't think it's 'feasible' to support material that is challenged, then that is unfortunate for you, I'm afraid; we can't indefinitely have WP:MERCY on texts which do not comply with the rules. (Note that at this point I do not think this list should be deleted, just that some sentences here and there cannot remain as they are now, and will have to be removed if they remain unsupported for long). I can relate, I've written a lot of texts that I couldn't support when they were challenged, so I learnt it the hard way. The lesson is to always cite your sources as you are writing the text, so you can always show that what you've written is accurate and relevant.
Book X has long been influential...).
(Note that at this point I do not think this list should be deleted, just that some sentences here and there cannot remain as they are now, and will have to be removed if they remain unsupported for long).
(There is no set time for this, and in lists/articles like this there is no need to hurry, but it would be nice if you (or other users) could do that within, like, a year). It's just a suggestion, not a demand, let alone a task that I can give you personally (lol, I'm not that powerful). It's not 'your task (alone)'; as said, these articles are the community's responsibility, not just yours. Indeed,
Wikipedia [is] a collaborative enterprise.Perhaps you are confused by the idea that as the creator of an article, you are the 'owner' and/or sole caretaker of that article? This is not true, but if you thought it was true, then that could explain why you take some of these suggestions and notitions so personally? When I place a template like Template:Primary at the top of a page you created, that doesn't mean you are the only user who needs to fix the issue. It would be nice if you did, but if you don't feel like it, you can always leave it open for other users to do it. We are a community, a collaborative enterprise.
(UTC)
According to Lastname (year), historians of the Crusades can be divided into two groups: authors who were born before or while the Crusades took place, and authors who were born after the Crusades were over.[1]
- References
[1]. Lastname, Firstname, Full Title of the Book (year), p. [pagenumber]. Location: Publisher. ISBN code.
Someone or something living at the same time, or of roughly the same age as another.The works didn't exist yet before 1303, but the authors did, and so the works could still be considered contemporaneous. As such, a case could be made to include parts or the whole of the 14th century into the realm of contemporaneous sources. In the article List of sources for the Crusades, the opening sentence seems to allow such a broader interpretation: contemporaneous written accounts and other artifacts of the Crusades covering the period from the Council of Clermont in 1095 until the fall of Acre in 1291. One entry included in this list is Chronique du Templier de Tir [alias Deeds of the Cypriots, French: Gestes des Chiprois] attributed to an unknown author referred to as the Templar of Tyre (fl. 1315–1320). This is an interesting case, because the author was born around 1255, but wrote this work around 1315–1320, that is, the early 14th century. So you've included Chronique du Templier de Tir as a 'source' (e.g. contemporaneous written account [for the Crusades events of 1095–1291]) in the List of sources for the Crusades, but the Cronique could also easily qualify as a later work, written in the later 13th century through the 19th, and thus the Templar of Tyre as a later historian. Obviously, some overlap is sometimes inevitable, but we've now got a pretty large period from c. 1250 to c. 1350 that could fit authors and works in both lists, and no objective criteria provided by scholarly RS to group them.
objective criteria provided by scholarly RS to group themare needed to distinguish the scopes of List of sources for the Crusades and List of later historians of the Crusades). If Murray 2006 has made this subdivision into 4 categories, then it is okay; please cite the page in question where he wrote this.
References to works themselves do not establish their notability or their relevance for inclusion in the list.At the start of this very talk page section, I have explained why (as well as in the "Primary sources" section above on this talk page). I could reformulate it as follows:
...adding secondary or tertiary sources.
I don't support the renaming of this article as the focus is the historians. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 02:36, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Clearly the title is a problem, hopefully the content isn't. I'm not 100% sure of what you (Borsoka) are questioning, but it think it is why are they called historians. That's probably a bad word, as most aren't, and maybe sources is a better word. I can point you to a number of Crusades compilations that identify that pilgrimages, archaeology, geography, etc., are sources for Crusader histories (...). I think the title is wrong, but I'm not sure how to right it (...). I['m] open to suggestions for titles, structure and content. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 06:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC)(emphasis by me).
I think it makes more sense just to call these people 'authors' and their works 'works' or 'sources', that saves us a whole lot of trouble trying to define what a 'historian' is and isn't, and who does or doesn't qualify as one. And especially because the authors are often anonymous or we know very little about them, I think it's better to put the writings front and centre rather than the people who wrote them.You and Borsoka seemed to have already roughly agreed on that 2 years ago. That makes three of us agreeing to put the focus on the sources/works rather than the authors, so that we can solve the problem of having to identify them as 'historians' or not. :) Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 14:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
NL's proposed changes and responses:
In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents. It is located at the beginning of the article, before the table of contents and the first heading.According to the MOS:LEADCITE guideline,
information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source. But the "Overview" section in this article is after the table of contents and the first heading, therefore it does not fall under the MOS:LEADCITE guideline, and therefore does require a source, because it is part of the MOS:BODY sections. It's good to have an "Overview" section like this in order to not make the lead section too long, but it does fall under more strict WP:V rules.
Notable early travelers include Marco Polo, ibn Battūta, Odoric of Pordenone, John Mandeville, Bertrandon de la Broquière, Marino Sanuto the Younger, and Felix Fabri.Later travelers to include diplomats, were Jean Thenaud, Evliya Çelebi, and Richard Burton.Once again this is a situation in which mentioning supposedly 'notable' people up front requires a secondary or even tertiary source, otherwise it is not just WP:UNSOURCED, but could also constitute original research. We Wikipedians are not in a position to say who or what is notable or important; only reliable sources can do that for us, and we need to cite them rather than giving our own impression, opinion or conclusion.
There is no evident reason for inclusion of Christian European pilgrimages/explorations of the Holy Land before 1096 if the subject of the article is 'the Crusades'., still remains. Either the scope of the article must change, or this material will have to be removed or split off (my preferred option).
@ Nederlandse Leeuw, @ Norfolkbigfish. It's morning on the West Coast and I am met with 12 responses from NL totally over 8k in text just from last night. I cannot possibly keep up with this. I have spent all week trying to answer these questions and they keep growing exponentially. Is there some Wikipedia rule about over commenting? Are these articles that bad? They have survived for years with good, constructive comments. Until this week. I suggest NL limit questions/comments to five per day and allow me to respond. I don't expect this to happen and so will continue to answer them one at a time. But I'm not going to spend all day doing it only to find dozens more then next day. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:30, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
@ Nederlandse Leeuw, @ Norfolkbigfish. This is exactly my point. I couldn't ever finish my thought before getting an edit conflict. Here's what I was continuing with.
I think this works well. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:01, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
If this is acceptable, I suggest moving the discussion to the parent article and work the issues methodically as the new article gets created (which could be in a couple of weeks.) Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:06, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
late medieval works, early modern works, modern historians(/works?). Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 00:04, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
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For the Alexandrian Crusade, you may wish to add Muḥammad ibn al-Ḳāsim al-Nuwayrī al-Iskandarānī. — Srnec ( talk) 03:41, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
This page already has 668,615 bytes of markup; that's far too big, and it needs to be subdivided. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how to split this article and it's not easy. Here are some options:
1. Split the work by centuries. This would entail moving the odd sections (e.g., travel, archaeology) into the respective centuries. This presents difficulties to the reader because many of the works are cross-referenced across centuries (e.g., translations or updates of earlier works).
2. Split the work into before and after 1900. The same problems as #1. Both #1 and #2 make the article less usable, as most Crusader historians treat the subject as a whole.
3. Eliminate some of the hyperlinks in citations. The vast majority of the article is used by citations (readable text character count is 75k). You have to figure that anyone that is actually interested in this material is smart enough to find a copy somewhere. Some are to limited access sites, others to scans of works that simply aren't readable to modern readers. Also, the Wikipedia format for citations frequently includes links to Wikipedia articles (e.g. Catholic Encyclopedia, Dictionary of National Biography) and that takes up all lot of space.
4. Eliminate some Wikipedia hyperlinks. For example, the entry on Sir Walter Scott has links to the author and three of his works. Those works also have the same links in Scott's article, so they don't necessarily need to be in this article.
5. Split the work into two pieces: One article on the authors, another article on the works. They are basically the same article but the first doesn't have citations for the works. The second doesn't have citations for the authors.
If the objective is simply to make it smaller, the easiest thing to do is to do a combination of #3 and #4, removing enough of them to squeeze it between Tawag ng Tanghalan (season 4) and the List of Hallmark Channel Original Movies. If all non-English citations were eliminated (e.g., references to German or Italian biographical articles, HathiTrust references to Latin and German works), it could possibly be below Opinion polling for the 2018 Italian general election. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
What's the objective here? If it's just to make it smaller, then how small? The suggestions of splitting it by time don't really work for reasons that I'll be happy to explain. I am planning to split off the Historiography section as that's going to have some significant expansion, and move some material to the associated Wikipedia articles on the individual authors. Is there anyone that works on Crusades articles for Wikipedia on this thread? I'd like to hear their view on this subject. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 19:09, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
It's not that simple to separate the sections as many of the entries tie to ones in a different century. Each one would need to be rewritten. Even at that, the Nineteenth Century would be over 200k. I fail to see how creating a mess of 14+ articles meets any objective other than to make it smaller. I do plan on spinning off the last two sections into separate articles as additional material is being accumulated. And yes, at least one of them will be over 100k. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:45, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
There is no consensus for doing this, which isn't as simple as you are letting on. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 05:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Well, you want to split the article and I don't, so that's hardly consensus. Despite what you say, it is not that easy to split, considerable work is required. FYI, this is part of a multi-part work "Historians of the Crusades" that still needs to be written. It will reference sources for the Crusades, collections of Crusader sources, this article, modern historians of the Crusade, and one other in the works. This reflects how actual Crusader historians list things in their bibliographies. I don't understand the "longest article" comment. There will always be a longest article. If we split this one, won't the next one also need to be split, and so forth. Wont' the split article eventually become the longest again? Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:44, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
There is no consensus to split this article, because no one has framed and asked the question. It is a useful article, so Dresser has an article on German WP, who knew, I didn't and have learnt something useful in a quick flick through the article. At 78kb readible words it is questionable even if it is too big, for a consumer of the information that would seem to make it usable. Would splitting make it more usable—I don't think so, it would just create a bunch of articles that no one uses. Is there a technical reason why size is a problem? No one seems to have come up with one. Personally, I think Dr G's good faith work should be accepted at face value and left as it is. That is of course, unless someone can come up with both an objective reason to split and a consensus gaining proposal for what that split should be. Everything else is just pedantry. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 18:53, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Despite what you say, it is not that easy to split, considerable work is required.This article is actually quite easy to split, as I have demonstrated when I split off the 19th century section. This is typical for large articles which are already separated into sections.
I don't understand the "longest article" comment. There will always be a longest article. If we split this one, won't the next one also need to be split, and so forth.The problem is that this is an article which is too large itself, and it just so happens that this is the largest article on Wikipedia. I have no problem with the content itself, and it's a shame that the size of this article makes the content less accessible. There is clearly enough work in the article for multiple articles, and that can easily be expected when this article has several centuries worth of detailed information. It's true that splitting this article would mean another article would be the largest on Wikipedia, and that article would likely have to be split as well, as there are many articles which are too large for one article, and this one happens to be the largest.
Wont' the split article eventually become the longest again?An article that is 200,000 bytes would certainly not be the largest Wikipedia article.
At 78kb readible words it is questionable even if it is too big, for a consumer of the information that would seem to make it usable.78kb in prose is reasonably large for an article, but there are multiple measures of article length. Currently the markup size is 700kb, which is well over any guidelines for how large an article should be, and this doesn't include the sizes of templates and page features outside of the article.
Would splitting make it more usable?It would make the content within the article more usable, certainly. Currently the content for the latter centuries is buried underneath a lot of content for the prior centuries.
Is there a technical reason why size is a problem? No one seems to have come up with one.I would recommend WP:SIZE which goes into fair detail, but to put it briefly, we want to minimise loading and scrolling times (particularly on mobile devices, and slower computers, internet connections), and to increase the time that people read the content.
Personally, I think Dr G's good faith work should be accepted at face value and left as it is.I don't think there are any concerns or issues being raised with the content itself, and I certainly don't see any need to change the content itself either.
I hate to keep saying this, but it is not that easy to split this article. Your attempt to split off the Nineteenth Century needed a lot of work on both articles to make them usable and have either article readable as a unit. Even with your split-off, this article was 504k, and it would've been the 4th largest article, just behind the enlightening subjects as Tawag ng Tanghalan (season 4) and List of Hallmark Channel Original Movies, both of which are being heavily edited on a daily basis. The third, List of Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign endorsements will be irrelevant come next month. So it is reasonable to assume that, at some point in the near future, it would need to be further reduced. Your claim of a 200k article is the spin-off, not the original. Similarly, the claim for mobile users being disadvantaged is a red herring. No one in their right mind is going to access this article on their phone. And it loads just fine on my iPad.
This article is not written for the casual reader who wants to learn about the Crusades. It is a reference article, not a browsing article. You may not like the structure or flow, but that is how Crusader historians organize this material. I didn't make this up. If you were reading, say the Routledge Companion to the Crusades, and needed some more information and a particular historian or history, this is where you would go. There is no source accessible on the Internet or hardcopy that you can go to. It also expands Wikipedia as a source for Google searches on authors or works not otherwise found her. That being said, Section 10. Archaeology... is one that could be feasibly split off which would move it to position #2 behind the Tawag article. Again, it can't just be cut and pasted. The content in both articles has to be massaged. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 21:42, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Well, I have loaded this on my phone, Samsung A70 so nothing special and the page is perfectly usable, although I take Dr G's point that only a madman would try this. So clearly there is no technical reason for the split. I also refreshed my memory of WP:TOOBIG and the policy appears to be on readible prose. At 78kb, this article is large, but not so large that the policy requires or even recommends splitting. Splitting the article presents far more problems than it solves. Crusade academics are an argumentative bunch, put two in a room and you get three opinions. Furthermore, many of the narratives of older sources are unreliable, politically and religiously partial, to remove context as some editors do in the crusade topics leads to statement that appera true in WP, but are actually highly contested. While translated, sources come in a variety of modern and older languages. This is a List, making editorial judgements without consensus would be wrong. Other opinions would be welcome and I accept that I could be wrong, but at the moment there is no consensus. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 11:17, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
probably should be divided. Readable prose is one measure of size, the other two being wiki markup size and browser size. We know what the wiki markup size is, and we know that it's the largest on Wikipedia, indicating there are clear issues. I don't see how you can say WP:Article size is a policy about readable prose size, when the first paragraph of the lead section lists the three measures of an article's size. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 21:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
It is clear that your intent is to split this article regardless of any argument against that view. For example, you say, and I quote " WP:TOOBIG does explicitly recommend splitting an article of this readable prose size" when it actually says "Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)." I think that you will agree that the term "explicitly recommend" that you use and what it actually says are quite different. In the middle of what was some of us trying to reach an accommodation, you claimed that you have a consensus and went ahead and split the article, despite arguments against just that. And then you changed the name of the article to something that it isn't. When it was pointed out that your "fix" would render it the 4th largest article that would soon require further splitting, you first claimed that it was only 200k, and then admitting that it was 500k, agreed that it would need to be split again. Your first position was that each article should be under 100k. Then, no, it was that it just needed to be smaller, but declined to answer the question, how small? I have spun off two pieces and am investigating splitting off a third, but it apparently must meet some goal that you are unable to articulate.
Here's another one of your comments: "I don't have an issue with the content of this article, but it is important that all articles are easily understood and accessible to English speakers, including those who want to know about the historiography of the Crusades. Wikipedia doesn't do bibliographies, we do encyclopaedia articles." I'm sorry, but this article will not be understandable to your average English speaker. As a native English speaker myself, there are many things that I understand and many more that I don't, including a lot of Wikipedia articles. I have learned to live with that, investing the time in those areas that I am interested in. Dumbing down the article will not assist the generic "English speaker" in understanding the subject matter, which is not "the historiography of the Crusades." There is not even a consensus as to what that phrase means. You also seem to think that Wikipedia doesn't do bibliographies, which would come as a surprise to the many contributors in Category:Bibliographies by subject. Splitting the article will not achieve the goals you laid out in that statement. If you really feel that strongly about what you said, put the article up for deletion.
You keep wanting to understand why the sections can't just be separated. Well, here goes. As an example, the first four entries in Section 2 have five references to later sections. One is to Henri-Victor Michelant, who can only be found in French Wikipedia. Same goes for Paul E. D. Riant. A third is to Girolamo Golubovich who has no Wikipedia reference of any language that I could find and must be found in the databases for Bibliothèque nationale de France or WorldCat. These would need to be explained. Otherwise, they're just names without meaning. These authors appear frequently in Crusader articles in Wikipedia as their works are frequently referenced, and occasionally someone wants to find out more about them. Most non-English Wikipedia references are in French, German or Italian Wikipedia, but one is in the Norwegian Wikipedia. Each section is not stand-alone. This article was written with a particular objective in mind as were its companion articles, reflecting how Crusader historians do it. To split it would require rewriting. Let me repeat that just for emphasis, to split it would require rewriting. It's a lot of work to create a product that would be more confusing.
As a mathematician, I am familiar with the concept of well-ordered sets, particularly those that have a largest element. There will always be a largest Wikipedia article. This one is it for now, but won't be forever. I seems that things are reversed, that it's a solution (move this article down the "longest article" list) in search of a problem. And the logic keeps changing. First, you're worried about mobile users. After that's addressed, there's something else. You keep moving the goal posts, your argument is a Red Herring. Wikipedia lays out guidelines for article size and this one appears to meet them. Get together a review group and propose some solutions to this "problem." And find someone who wants to invest the time, only to have the "problem" come around again. You know what my vote will be. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 06:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
For example, you say, and I quote " WP:TOOBIG does explicitly recommend splitting an article of this readable prose size" when it actually says "Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)."Yes, saying something "probably" should happen is a recommendation, and that's only for readable prose size. The markup size and browser size is far larger than that as well.
In the middle of what was some of us trying to reach an accommodation, you claimed that you have a consensus and went ahead and split the article, despite arguments against just that.I would be very interested to hear the accommodation you have in mind, as it would please me greatly to find some common ground on this.
When it was pointed out that your "fix" would render it the 4th largest article that would soon require further splitting, you first claimed that it was only 200k, and then admitting that it was 500k, agreed that it would need to be split again.It looked like you were talking about the section that was split off into its own article (the 19th century section which was 200kB), not the main article after the split, so that's just nothing more than a miscommunication. The article certainly should be split to reduce it below 500kB as well, and getting it to 400kB would take the article to about ninetieth on the list, but that shouldn't be the main focus. What you said initially was
If we split this one, won't the next one also need to be split, and so forth. Wont' the split article eventually become the longest again?, which sounded like you were referring to the article that was created from the split.
And then you changed the name of the article to something that it isn't.I did that to make the article title more concise as per our guidelines, but that's a completely separate issue and not as important as the page's size.
I'm sorry, but this article will not be understandable to your average English speaker.It should be, but that's a separate issue. I don't have an opinion on whether this article is understandable or not.
Splitting the article will not achieve the goals you laid out in that statement.I agree, splitting the article is only a recourse for the size of the article.
As an example, the first four entries in Section 2 have five references to later sections.This is not a problem, the same reference can be used multiple times and on multiple articles.
To split it would require rewriting.Splitting articles doesn't require rewriting them, especially when they are from sections of the larger article. It's mostly a matter of transferring the content into their own articles, and adding some things at the top and bottom.
There will always be a largest Wikipedia article. This one is it for now, but won't be forever.You are correct to say that the issue is not that this is the largest Wikipedia article. That is simply an indicator of the problem, and as I've said before, addressing the ranking isn't the point.
First, you're worried about mobile users. After that's addressed, there's something else. You keep moving the goal posts, your argument is a Red Herring.This is absolutely still a problem for mobile users and how it works on your iPad doesn't change that. There certainly are other issues with an article being this size, but that remains an issue for the reasons I've outlined and the reasons listed at WP:TOOBIG. I hope this adequately responds to your comments and we can find a way forward. Onetwothreeip ( talk) 09:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
So by way of summary, what do we know. We know the at 78kb of readible prose that readible prose is not ad issue. This is an enormous subject that meets the caveat in the guidelines (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material). The page loads quickly and successfully on a number of different devices, in fact no one has come up with a device that the page doesn't load on. Therefore Browser page size is not an issue. Wiki Markup Size is large due to the number of hyperlinks, but I can't anywhere that mandates or recommends a limit for this, so we can safely ignore.
Using the usability criteria from Wikipedia:Article size then:
All in all looks pretty much in good shape, and there is no merit in the suggestion that the article should be split Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 12:15, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
This article has less than 50kb of readable prose & numerous sections, therefore it is reasonable in terms of size and structure. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 14:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Well, I have loaded this on my phone, Samsung A70 so nothing special and the page is perfectly usable, although I take Dr G's point that only a madman would try this.Onetwothreeip ( talk) 23:10, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Process issues aside, and I accept it is badly worded, it appears that there is no consensus on whether this article is too large. I'll close the rfc on that basis. Norfolkbigfish ( talk) 21:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
A bit of history on this article (referred to here as Later Historians) might be useful in discussing this RFC. This is part of a larger article called Historians and Histories of the Crusades (referred to here as Historians) which was actually begun in its current form in June 2020 with the expansion of an existing article called list of sources for the Crusades. Concerns about its size led to the creation of two other articles under Historians, including Later Historians. Again, concerns on size led to material being moved to other articles and the creation of a new article, list of modern historians of the Crusades (Modern Historians) on 29 December 2020. Material is being moved from Later to Modern in a careful way to maintain the readability and appropriateness of the larger article Historians.
So, Later Historians is being split, but apparently not as fast as some would like. Also, my inquiries as to how long is acceptable ranged from "under 100k" to "just smaller." I would suggest the angst about the length of the article at least wait until I have finished what I had committed to, as the complaints began the day after the newly created article, Modern, began to be populated. I am continuing to move material from Later to Modern, but I want to do what makes sense and is readable to those with some knowledge of the Crusades. Despite the desire to make it "easily understood and accessible to English speakers," that goal is not achievable. If that is the criteria, then the article should just be deleted.
I have written over 500 articles for Wikipedia and professionally edited thousands more, and I have been accused of being naive and a bad researcher, and have never been in the middle an editing war. I was therefore surprised that I was accused of malfeasance in dealing on this matter. I have reviewed the governing Wikipedia policy on this matter and am sure my behavior was appropriate. I can't say the same for simply splitting a complex article (badly at that) in the middle of an otherwise friendly discussion on size and renaming it incorrectly. I realize that this is a hot-button issue for some, but there will always be a largest article. Right now it is Later; it won't be forever.
I am working on a daily basis to right-size the overall Historians and, in particular, Later Historians. It isn't going to happen in a day, or even a week. I suggest the discussion be postponed at least until the article is finished. Yes, Later will be smaller. There might even be a new article based on Section 10, as I have discussed earlier. I can't commit to how small or how soon at this minute. Frankly, dealing with this issue on a near-daily basis is getting frustrating. Issues are raised and then addressed, only to have the issue change and the reappear a few days later. I hope this answers the latest question, which I have answered over and over again. For future reference, I am a "he", not a "they". I believe in the 21st century, "they" is reserved for people identifying as non-binary. I think "he /she" would have been better.
Perhaps the size of the article could be reduced by using a less verbose referencing style? For example, some of the references are just links to the works in question. For example, instead of:
write
You could probably cut the article by 30% or so by this trivial change. Also, why is each author's name duplicated? Instead of "Jean Germain. Jean Germain (1400–1461)," why not just write "Jean Germain (1400–1461)." Perhaps also look into using shortened footnotes to reduce the article size further. ImTheIP ( talk) 14:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for your constructive comments. And, yes, the citations are clearly a problem. When I first started editing this series of articles ("Sources..." was the first at 14k), I was chastised for using an abbreviated format for citations and so that's why you see them as they are. For example, the "template" citations (Catholic Encyclopedia, etc.) contain lots of information, like the hyperlink to the Wikipedia article "Catholic Encyclopedia." So, in response to the desire to cut the article size, I've been eliminating non-essential information from those (a work still in progress). Many of the others are to HathiTrust references, and what I have done is copy the APA citation and add the hyperlink to the book. (I'm pretty sure you are really supposed to add another line for the link, but that would really blow things up.) I'm going through an cleaning the words up, getting rid of things line lengthy commentary in Latin or German, but I'm a novice when it comes to cleaning up the hyperlinks. Occasionally, some WikiBot will come through and do something, but I'm never sure what.
I looked at that citation that you referenced, and clearly all the superfluous material is the result of my clumsy navigation. I have tried to be careful in that area and have obviously failed. As you can see from my moniker, I am not of an age that understands the intricacies of the "Internets." I can try to fix things but I fear any effort on my part will make things worse. In the meantime, I continue to winnow down the article as best I can.
The citations do sometimes provide additional information not in the writeup. For example, if X wrote a treatise in 1807, but the only one available in the 3rd edition published in 1815, with some editor Y, I'll leave that information in. Like I said, I'm in the process of cleaning up what I can, relying on others (human or bot) for assistance. It also may be worse as some of the references are supposed to have ISBNs and the format has lots of internal links, but so far the issue hasn't surfaced.
The "duplication" issue was actually given a lot of thought. The original "Sources..." was in table format and was easy to follow in a short article, but as it grew the format was too cumbersome. Given the size of these articles, it was felt that it was important to be able to quickly scan a page for top level information. Our first thought was to do as you suggested, but some of the references had a Wikipedia link and others didn't, so there wouldn't be a consistent look to each entry. Also many names are longer that what the person (or in some cases, document) is known by, and so the bolded portion can be a shortened version. This is particularly true for Arabic names, which tend to be lengthy, but also for modern authors such as J. B. Bury and C. E. Bosworth who are usually recognized by their initials. Your suggestion is the format used in the articles "List of Crusades..." and "Collections..", but not in the much longer "Sources.." and this one and "Modern..." and "Archaeology..." It seems like a lot of work for not much gain.
I am probably going to spin off Chapter 6 to a separate article, which will make the third one spun off as well as material moved to "Collections..." It makes no sense to move the 19th century material to "Modern...." That article was spun off on 29 December and has already tripled in size and will continue to grow as more historians (of which there are many) and referenced works are added. Besides a move that makes no sense, "Modern..." would soon be the largest article and then we're going to have to go through this all over again. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 17:16, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
This article is currently one of the longest on the wiki with ~425,000+ bytes, which is far too long. Also, after looking at the section sizes, the 19th century section seems to be a significant outlier and takes up at least half of the article size at ~220,000+ bytes, so I suggest splitting it into its own article: List of ninteenth century historians of the Crusades. Blubabluba9990 ( talk) ( contribs) 22:55, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
I support the proposal. zsteve21 ( talk) 13:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
deemed too long.
The formatting of the article is nonsense, repeating every single name for no reason whatsoever. And no, Dr. Grampinator, this is certainly not a well-established format within Wikipedia. Please undo your edit. All my warmest wishes, ItsKesha ( talk) 14:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
ItsKeshaFirst of all, this is a descriptive list, not a glossary. And even in the articles you provided there are many variations provided, including ones with models similar to the one used here as I pointed out yesterday.
Also, you would like to have things changed so that only the commonly used name is shown. That doesn't work very well for the Arabic or Persian names, and is contrary to common WP practices. Most biographical articles have for a title the commonly used name, with the article beginning with the full name and alternative names.
What you are proposing is a major rewrite and restructure of a stable article that is within Wikipedia guidelines and has been reviewed by dozens of experienced editors that are core Crusader contributors. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 16:51, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're saying here. This is a descriptive list and there is no prescribed format for them. It is similar, not identical, to a glossary and many of the glossary examples that you provided are of the same format. In fact, if you use the glossary template on this subject, you will get the existing article. The repetition of names occurs in many articles. We could make each entry a separate subsection but that would make the article unwieldy. As I have said before, this format has been used and reviewed many times and the people using it as a resource have found it effective. Many of the historians here do not have a separate Wikipedia entry, so it appropriate to include information, like other names, here. A brief description is included with citations to other biographical sources. No one claimed that it was a complete biography, but provides enough information towards the purpose of the article. I'm sorry I didn't use ::. I don't usually use them and, since it's just the two of use conversing, really, what's the point? Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 01:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Just like List of collections of Crusader sources, this list has great potential, but currently does not comply with WP:PRIMARY. References to primary sources themselves ( WP:SELF) do not establish their notability, nor their relevance for inclusion in the list.
Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship ( WP:V), are encouraged.
It should be possible to verify that each entry in a bibliography meets the inclusion criteria. If an entry has a Wikipedia article, merely wikilinking it to the article verifies it because the reader can navigate to the article and determine if the entry meets the inclusion criteria. If an entry does not have a Wikipedia article and there might be any doubt that it belongs in the bibliography, it should be cited with a reliable source that verifies its relevance.
I think this is a fixable problem. All that needs to happen is referring to a reliable secondary source which identifies a particular historian and/or their work as a 'later historians of the Crusades'. I'm sure such reliable secondary sources exist, although it would depend on the definition of 'later historians of the Crusades'. If secondary reliable sources agree that this is essentially anyone writing about the Crusades from the 13th through 19th century, that should be easy to do. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 17:43, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
This list has great potential, but currently does not comply with WP:NOR. This is particularly true for making potentially contentious claims. Reliable secondary sources are needed to establish who or what is 'prominent', 'important', 'interesting', 'notable', 'seminal' or 'relevant', not unsourced statements ( WP:V) or primary sources ( WP:PRIMARY).
Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation.
Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them.
Therefore, one cannot say Book X written by Historian Y about the Crusades is important.[1]
[1]. Historian Y, Book X.
I think this is a fixable problem. All that needs to happen is referring to a reliable secondary source which identifies a particular historian and/or their work as 'prominent', 'important', 'interesting', 'notable', 'seminal' or 'relevant'. I'm sure such reliable secondary sources exist. Cheers,
Nederlandse Leeuw (
talk) 17:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Attribute all of the following types of material to reliable, published sources using inline citations: (...) all material whose verifiability has been challenged.As it happens, I have challenged some of your material, so
Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source.By placing [citation needed] tags, I'm giving you time and opportunity to do this. (There is no set time for this, and in lists/articles like this there is no need to hurry, but it would be nice if you (or other users) could do that within, like, a year). If you don't think it's 'feasible' to support material that is challenged, then that is unfortunate for you, I'm afraid; we can't indefinitely have WP:MERCY on texts which do not comply with the rules. (Note that at this point I do not think this list should be deleted, just that some sentences here and there cannot remain as they are now, and will have to be removed if they remain unsupported for long). I can relate, I've written a lot of texts that I couldn't support when they were challenged, so I learnt it the hard way. The lesson is to always cite your sources as you are writing the text, so you can always show that what you've written is accurate and relevant.
Book X has long been influential...).
(Note that at this point I do not think this list should be deleted, just that some sentences here and there cannot remain as they are now, and will have to be removed if they remain unsupported for long).
(There is no set time for this, and in lists/articles like this there is no need to hurry, but it would be nice if you (or other users) could do that within, like, a year). It's just a suggestion, not a demand, let alone a task that I can give you personally (lol, I'm not that powerful). It's not 'your task (alone)'; as said, these articles are the community's responsibility, not just yours. Indeed,
Wikipedia [is] a collaborative enterprise.Perhaps you are confused by the idea that as the creator of an article, you are the 'owner' and/or sole caretaker of that article? This is not true, but if you thought it was true, then that could explain why you take some of these suggestions and notitions so personally? When I place a template like Template:Primary at the top of a page you created, that doesn't mean you are the only user who needs to fix the issue. It would be nice if you did, but if you don't feel like it, you can always leave it open for other users to do it. We are a community, a collaborative enterprise.
(UTC)
According to Lastname (year), historians of the Crusades can be divided into two groups: authors who were born before or while the Crusades took place, and authors who were born after the Crusades were over.[1]
- References
[1]. Lastname, Firstname, Full Title of the Book (year), p. [pagenumber]. Location: Publisher. ISBN code.
Someone or something living at the same time, or of roughly the same age as another.The works didn't exist yet before 1303, but the authors did, and so the works could still be considered contemporaneous. As such, a case could be made to include parts or the whole of the 14th century into the realm of contemporaneous sources. In the article List of sources for the Crusades, the opening sentence seems to allow such a broader interpretation: contemporaneous written accounts and other artifacts of the Crusades covering the period from the Council of Clermont in 1095 until the fall of Acre in 1291. One entry included in this list is Chronique du Templier de Tir [alias Deeds of the Cypriots, French: Gestes des Chiprois] attributed to an unknown author referred to as the Templar of Tyre (fl. 1315–1320). This is an interesting case, because the author was born around 1255, but wrote this work around 1315–1320, that is, the early 14th century. So you've included Chronique du Templier de Tir as a 'source' (e.g. contemporaneous written account [for the Crusades events of 1095–1291]) in the List of sources for the Crusades, but the Cronique could also easily qualify as a later work, written in the later 13th century through the 19th, and thus the Templar of Tyre as a later historian. Obviously, some overlap is sometimes inevitable, but we've now got a pretty large period from c. 1250 to c. 1350 that could fit authors and works in both lists, and no objective criteria provided by scholarly RS to group them.
objective criteria provided by scholarly RS to group themare needed to distinguish the scopes of List of sources for the Crusades and List of later historians of the Crusades). If Murray 2006 has made this subdivision into 4 categories, then it is okay; please cite the page in question where he wrote this.
References to works themselves do not establish their notability or their relevance for inclusion in the list.At the start of this very talk page section, I have explained why (as well as in the "Primary sources" section above on this talk page). I could reformulate it as follows:
...adding secondary or tertiary sources.
I don't support the renaming of this article as the focus is the historians. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 02:36, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Clearly the title is a problem, hopefully the content isn't. I'm not 100% sure of what you (Borsoka) are questioning, but it think it is why are they called historians. That's probably a bad word, as most aren't, and maybe sources is a better word. I can point you to a number of Crusades compilations that identify that pilgrimages, archaeology, geography, etc., are sources for Crusader histories (...). I think the title is wrong, but I'm not sure how to right it (...). I['m] open to suggestions for titles, structure and content. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 06:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC)(emphasis by me).
I think it makes more sense just to call these people 'authors' and their works 'works' or 'sources', that saves us a whole lot of trouble trying to define what a 'historian' is and isn't, and who does or doesn't qualify as one. And especially because the authors are often anonymous or we know very little about them, I think it's better to put the writings front and centre rather than the people who wrote them.You and Borsoka seemed to have already roughly agreed on that 2 years ago. That makes three of us agreeing to put the focus on the sources/works rather than the authors, so that we can solve the problem of having to identify them as 'historians' or not. :) Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 14:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
NL's proposed changes and responses:
In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents. It is located at the beginning of the article, before the table of contents and the first heading.According to the MOS:LEADCITE guideline,
information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source. But the "Overview" section in this article is after the table of contents and the first heading, therefore it does not fall under the MOS:LEADCITE guideline, and therefore does require a source, because it is part of the MOS:BODY sections. It's good to have an "Overview" section like this in order to not make the lead section too long, but it does fall under more strict WP:V rules.
Notable early travelers include Marco Polo, ibn Battūta, Odoric of Pordenone, John Mandeville, Bertrandon de la Broquière, Marino Sanuto the Younger, and Felix Fabri.Later travelers to include diplomats, were Jean Thenaud, Evliya Çelebi, and Richard Burton.Once again this is a situation in which mentioning supposedly 'notable' people up front requires a secondary or even tertiary source, otherwise it is not just WP:UNSOURCED, but could also constitute original research. We Wikipedians are not in a position to say who or what is notable or important; only reliable sources can do that for us, and we need to cite them rather than giving our own impression, opinion or conclusion.
There is no evident reason for inclusion of Christian European pilgrimages/explorations of the Holy Land before 1096 if the subject of the article is 'the Crusades'., still remains. Either the scope of the article must change, or this material will have to be removed or split off (my preferred option).
@ Nederlandse Leeuw, @ Norfolkbigfish. It's morning on the West Coast and I am met with 12 responses from NL totally over 8k in text just from last night. I cannot possibly keep up with this. I have spent all week trying to answer these questions and they keep growing exponentially. Is there some Wikipedia rule about over commenting? Are these articles that bad? They have survived for years with good, constructive comments. Until this week. I suggest NL limit questions/comments to five per day and allow me to respond. I don't expect this to happen and so will continue to answer them one at a time. But I'm not going to spend all day doing it only to find dozens more then next day. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:30, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
@ Nederlandse Leeuw, @ Norfolkbigfish. This is exactly my point. I couldn't ever finish my thought before getting an edit conflict. Here's what I was continuing with.
I think this works well. Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:01, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
If this is acceptable, I suggest moving the discussion to the parent article and work the issues methodically as the new article gets created (which could be in a couple of weeks.) Dr. Grampinator ( talk) 18:06, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
late medieval works, early modern works, modern historians(/works?). Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 00:04, 23 January 2023 (UTC)