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Archive 35 | ← | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | Archive 41 | Archive 42 | Archive 43 |
We have a bunch of pretty odd lists of ancient Greek people, with inclusion criteria which range from "isn't this better as a category?" to "what are inclusion criteria?", but for my money List of ancient Greek writers is the worst of the bunch. According to the lead sentence, this is a list of the "most influential Greek writers" from the seventh century BC to the seventh century AD; the list itself is... not that. My concerns with the list include:
So my question is: is this list worth salvaging? Do we need a List of ancient Greek writers at all when we have Category:Ancient Greek writers, the broader List of ancient Greeks and several more specific lists e.g. List of ancient Greek poets and List of ancient Greek philosophers and List of ancient Greek playwrights? Or should we simply redirect it to List of ancient Greeks and be done with it?
Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections. ... This is best done by sectioning the general page under categories. When entries in a category have grown enough to warrant a fresh list-article, they can be moved out to a new page, and be replaced by a See new list link.That's WP best prectice, not an arbitrary condition, and has the additional virtue of avoiding failures to include writers in both list pages. NebY ( talk) 13:26, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
I've been editing the articles relating to the Scythians over the course of several months, and since most editors tend to favour splitting pages after they reach a certain size, I split two further pages, Iškuza and Scythia, covering the phases of Scythian history respectively in West Asia and in Europe, out of the main page covering the Scythians.
However, trying to split it has resulted into three articles, with both Iškuza and Scythia requiring large amounts of material regarding the role of the prior and subsequent histories of the Scythians in the creation and destruction of those states copied from each other and from the Scythians page to exist since they are both about immediately preceding/succeeding states created by the same continuous population group. And because Iškuza and Scythia both cover immediately preceding/succeeding but also partially overlapping parts of the history of the Scythians, multiple sections and sub-sections of each page covering the culture, population, external relations, etc of these states also had to be copied from the Scythians page (e.g. the "Background" sub-section and "Society" section in Scythia, and the "Origins," "Impact," and "Legacy" sections of Iškuza). Moreover, the Scythia page as it exists now also functions as a WP:Semi-duplicate, given that most of the information relating to this polity also is also the same basic information that is required on the Scythians page.
Given this resulting situation, I have started a merger proposal to resolve this issue, per WP:MERGEREASON: Overlap, Context, not because I support a merger for the sake of merging itself, which I do not favour, but because Iškuza and Scythia require too much context and the information on these pages is too intertwined with each other.
The problem is that, despite months having passed, the discussion for the merger proposal is still at a deadlock, with three users opposed to the merger, and three users (including myself) in favour of it. In this difficult situation, I have been advised to bring this issue to the various WikiProjects which are relevant to Scythians as a way to possibly resolve the deadlock, and all good faith assistance to reach a consensus would be much welcome. Antiquistik ( talk) 18:13, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
A recent discussion concerning the future of List of Roman emperors and List of Byzantine emperors resulted in a reasonable degree of consensus that, while the latter article was imperfect, such a list probably should exist separately from the former instead of having all Roman and Byzantine emperors combined in a single list, and that accordingly the Byzantine emperors should be split off from the List of Roman emperors and merged in some way with the existing List of Byzantine emperors—possibly with the resulting article being mostly from the LoRe, but keeping anything useful already in the LoBe.
However, precisely where to draw the line—and whether there should be more than one line—has to be decided separately, and the discussion at Talk:List of Roman emperors seems to have gotten bogged down due to lack of input—there are only five or six contributors, and a monkey wrench in the works is that at least one, perhaps two of them favour splitting into three lists, with the third one consisting of some as-yet-unagreed-upon subset of emperors reigning for an undetermined span of time between Constantine and the eighth century, possibly to be called "Eastern Roman emperors" as opposed to "Byzantine", which frankly seems like a whole different issue, but clearly we cannot move forward with the limited input we have so far.
I'm sure that a lot of other editors who participate in this project must have an opinion on how many separate lists there should be—I hope without taking issue with the consensus that there should be at least two—as well as where to divide them, and whether there should be some overlap between them. If anyone is brave enough to weigh in, the feedback would be greatly appreciated! P Aculeius ( talk) 23:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
Some of you may have been aware of the debate raging on the Talk:Septimius Severus page about whether the Roman Empire achieved its greatest physical extent during his reign and not Trajan's, as is usually stated. The consensus for the article seems to have settled that it did (or at least that a number of recent scholars who published in the 2010s maintain that it did), and the page has been updated accordingly. So this now poses the question of concordance with both the Roman Empire and Trajan articles. Do we open up this can of worms and move away from the established Trajanic view? Or is it still a matter of debate? If we are foolhardy enough to discuss it here, may I suggest that scholars who have published since 2010 form a baseline? I see no point in using material published in the 1980s or early 2000s to defend a traditional viewpoint if more recent scholarship has moved away from that position. Oatley2112 ( talk) 21:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
This draft, which was created by banned user GPinkerton (banned more or less for incivility and bludgeoning, nothing content-related), looks like it is more than ready for mainspace (ref section clearly establishes notability, and it's already reasonably well developed). However, since I'm not familiar with the topic area I'm hesitant to move it myself. Could editors here please take a look at it? Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 15:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
A {{ primary sources}} template was placed on Caligula in May 2022. Well, duh. I don't consider, for example, Suetonius or Dio Cassius primary. It's not like they knew him. I was tempted to simply delete the template as silly, but am bringing the issue here in case there might be a wider problem, or in case some sort of consensus be needed.
(IMO, if someone's name has survived from Classical Antiquity, they're ipso facto notable whatever the state of the sources.) Narky Blert ( talk) 14:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
For example, Suetonius is our source for the birth & death dates of the 12 men he writes about: these are simple statements, which are either right or wrong. (I think it's reasonable to accept them as true unless an expert can show that he is mistaken in some way.) However, when we turn to motivations, there Suetonius should be cited, at most, as contemporary opinion about those motivations. It might even be more accurate to say they are evidence of Suetonius's opinions, & his alone. There is a subtle distinction here, which I feel many overlook -- although sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between facts of a primary source & the interpretations of a second one.
In the case of Caligula, we must struggle with the received opinion a few generations later: was he the debauched & spoiled manchild Suetonius makes him to be? Or is this just Senatorian gossip that circulated amongst the elite to justify his deposition? I'll note that, after looking at more primary sources than the usual historians, modern experts have redeemed Domitian's reputation: he wasn't another bad emperor in the mold of Caligula & Commodius -- although he definitely had a cruel side -- but a competent administrator who alienated the Senate & equites by his successful efforts to curtail corruption. -- llywrch ( talk) 00:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
But in my opinion, a more pressing reason to offer citations to primary sources is as a service to our readers, who will then find reason to begin their research by reading/consulting the relevant articles on Wikipedia. Offering these helps our readers, reducing the time they need to track down information with links to these passages. One could raise the objection that secondary sources also provide these links, but leaving that information to secondary sources forces the student to take a longer path, where providing them in a Wikipedia article saves them time. There is also the issue that, in many cases, secondary sources are harder to obtain -- either thru libraries or purchase -- than primary sources, especially for topics of Classical Greece & Rome. For example, one of the best commentaries on Tacitus is Ronald Syme's Tacitus, in 2 volumes. It retails new on Amazon for $229.97. (I just checked.) I was excited to find my local public had a copy, only to be disappointed to find that the second volume had vanished years before, & my public library had a policy that they will not borrow a copy of a book that is in their collection, even if it is an incomplete multi-volume work. (And they have been purging books they deem are not read by enough people.) I went hunting online for a used copy, & managed to find one for $60 or $75 plus shipping. On the other hand, one can buy a copy of Tacitus' complete works at almost any book store (or Amazon), borrow it from almost any library, or use the online version at the Perseus project website. If you consider that most of our audience will simply want to confirm the facts in an article -- not necessarily care about explications on the subject -- then citations of primary sources is again important.
So by omitting any reference to primary sources, we are short-changing our readers. Not only by forcing them to look at history thru multiple filters when they could be much closer to the events with intelligent use of primary sources, but by making it less convenient for them to access information in them. -- llywrch ( talk) 00:01, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
More context is nearly always better than less.I agree. That's why people should stop writing articles which are based only on primary sources (especially one primary source). As to the audience: the average reader is not a PhD historian who is seeking primary source references. The average reader is a lay person who should be directed to reliable sources and not the unprocessed raw material. This cult of the primary sources – to be clear, what I mean by this is writing an article with primary source priority in the research process (eg starting an article on Caligula by reading Suetonius instead of CAH2 10) – actively dis-serves average readers by diverting them from reliable sources (
academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history). Ifly6 ( talk) 06:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
Hello everyone. Do we have any good maps of regions, towns, etc that were involved in the Social war? Something like Boatwright et al (2012)'s Social war map I think would be best. Ifly6 ( talk) 21:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Is there a "wish list" page? If yes, would like to add ancient Roman pools of Gafsa ar:الحوض_الروماني_بقفصة, Wikidata:Q42764187, and I think la Bassin Romain de Gafsa or Piscine Romaine in French. No rush obviously but working on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and water and food are usually related! Thanks for all you do. jengod ( talk) 19:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
There are two articles
Senatorial province and
Imperial province. I feel like these articles should be merged or otherwise placed in a single article. My initial thought was something like Senatorial and imperial provinces
but a more sensible location might be in
Principate or
Constitutional reforms of Augustus. What do you think?
There are an absolute multitude of other poorly maintained articles and sections that touch on similar topics as well: Constitution of the Roman Empire, History of the Roman Constitution, History of the Constitution of the Roman Empire, Augustus#First_settlement. That's before getting into the highly duplicative, poorly sourced, and largely unmaintained constitution articles; I had filed some teeth years ago on Constitution of the Roman Republic but there are at least four for each periodisation, an overarching article that tries to summarise all of them (I think it should really be about fluidity and continuities), followed by "History" articles for each one. These really require clean up. Some reorganisation of this material along an agreed-upon schema might also be worthwhile. Ifly6 ( talk) 15:43, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
An edition of PIR I found has a on page 270 a mention of a M. Licinius Drusus Libo but I can't find mention of this supposed person anywhere else but in copies of PIR online, is this likely to be some kind of typo? ★Trekker ( talk) 16:40, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
The list of condemned Roman emperors has been slated for merging into Damnatio Memoriae for 8 months now. I outlined some thoughts on the topic at Talk:Damnatio_memoriae#List_of_condemned_Roman_emperors, but would really appreciate the input of specialists in the area. Felix QW ( talk) 17:37, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
There is a Featured Article Save Award nomination at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Diocletian/archive1. Please join the discussion to recognize and celebrate editors who helped assure this article would retain its featured status. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
Hey y'all.
There has been some contention between me and @
Ifly6 on the articles
Tiberius Gracchus and
Gaius Gracchus. Since 2021, he has repeatedly attempted to keep these articles from having a lead image, on the fact that there was no period depiction and dismissing posthumous ones as "fantasy" (I'm also mentioning @
Avilich since he was the one who first removed the lead image on Tiberius' article). Nearly two months ago, I added 19th century busts to the lead (since the argument for Tiberius' page was that he had a beard, which no Republican Roman would have). A month later, he moved that out of the lead. I reverted his changes since he was using a segment of
MOS:LEAD, Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Lead images are not required, and **not having a lead image may be the best solution if there is no easy representation of the topic.
, to justify his actions, and I saw his interpretation to be extremely bizarre, wrong, and subjective, something that didn't seem to have consensus given pages like
St. Augustine,
Jesus,
John IV Laskaris, etcetera, which all feature posthumous depictions.
@
Ifly6 told me to take it here, which heightened my suspicions that this may be some local WikiProject guideline. I would like the input of the folks here to see if posthumous portraits should be included in the lead.
Crusader1096 (
message)
14:29, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
the article needs an image at the beginning, in the infobox. The way I read these comments is basically that some editors are demanding an image, any image, to be placed in the info box field (for various reasons). I certainly do not believe we need an image at the top. We should place a good image there, not just any image that could be asserted as vaguely depicting the target.
it just doesn't seem to convey what you think Tiberius Gracchus means to history, as you said, above. Ifly6 ( talk) 19:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
TI SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUSat the bottom, this is an acceptable depiction to put into the info-box. (Jokingly, I'm sure that we'll all have to be togate.) I don't accept that, even if I trace the image so it looks like a medal on a wood-print or wait a hundred years. No image is still better than that; nor is there any material difference between hire-a-mason and PII or Brothers. If there really is a consensus that we need an image – I dispute that there is – I would prefer Brothers with traces of the other cropped out. (They are fortunately not in a socialist fraternal kiss.) Ifly6 ( talk) 03:41, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Notes
Nb romans in the republican period did not sport beards. My objection to PII is not that it shows people with beards when they would not have had them. It is that they are fantasy depictions of low quality.
References
Nederlandse Leeuw and I have been having a spirited debate over whether this sort-of-listy article satisfies notability guidelines or falls afoul of synthesis and original research policy. Somewhere in the discussion, I think that deletion is being confused with questions about the article's name, and whether the subject of the article represents a distinct and valid topic. I spent quite a long time yesterday working to improve the article and deal with some of the concerns about its sources, although I do not dispute that much more could still be done. However, the two of us have taken the argument about as far as we can by ourselves, with only a couple of other editors participating. We could certainly use more input, and I know that there are wiser heads than mine here in this project. P Aculeius ( talk) 07:08, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at
Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent
Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class=
parameter to {{
WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{ WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{
WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom
parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present.
Aymatth2 (
talk)
13:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion about the name of the war between the Roman Republic and the Seleucid king Antiochos III here. T8612 (talk) 15:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
A few days ago, I have written about "ancient pagan writers on Christianity" under "Tasks". More details there. It would be cool if somebody could look into it, even if it's just to write down your first impressions on the respective talk pages. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've already done! Corneille pensive ( talk) 15:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Battle of Lade has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 ( talk) 22:29, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Does anyone actually use the project's Tasks page in any way? Currently there are nearly 30 pages listed as "requests from other members" of which nearly half have been listed for a decade (cf this revision). There's also our "current" project collaboration, which has been Theatre of Pompey since 2012; our article alerts (also transcluded on the project main page) and a table of article importance/quality ratings (also transcluded on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Assessment).
I had been leaving it well alone as not actually hurting anyone, but occassionally people do add stuff to the "requests" list (see the thread above this one) and if nobody is actually looking at it that is just wasting their time as well as cluttering up the project. If people do actually use it I'm happy to keep it where it is (and perhaps clear out some of the clutter), but if nobody does then maybe we should just remove it from Template:WPCGR/Tabs and mark it as historical? Caeciliusinhorto-public ( talk) 11:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Could anyone kindly do: QVEM GENVIT RUSSI FIORENTIA TUSCA JOHANNIS / ISTUD SCVLPSIT OPVS INGENUOSA MANUS, a 15th-century inscription on a work by the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo, or "il Rosso" (redhead), "Nanni" being short for "Giovanni". The mixture of V and U is per the source. Thanks in advance, Johnbod ( talk) 16:42, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
The thing that was bothering me is that "ingenuosa manus" is unusual, so I wondered if there was a reason for using that rather than the more typical "ingeniosa manus". And looking carefully at the best image we have showing the inscription - this one I think - I believe the transcription above is not quite right. At full size, the inscription is still somewhat indistinct on the bottom of the sculpted frame, but the Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali [5] and some other sources also have "ingeniosa" instead: "ISCRIZIONI cornice, lato inferiore - QVEM GENUIT RUSSI FLORENTIA TUSCA IOHANNIS/ ISTUD SCULPSIT OPUS INGENIOSA MANUS - a solchi - latino". And a close look at the inscription in the image suggests there are rather more Vs than Us too. ("QVEM GENVIT RVSSI" etc) So. Theramin ( talk) 23:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
There were recently changes at Special:Diff/1152362194 alleging the emergence of a consensus to delete most of the infobox. I am unaware of this, and feeling that I am too heavily involved in the talk page have exercised some discretion in doing nothing about it. Could someone inform me of whether this alleged consensus exists or, if otherwise, take action on the deletion? Ifly6 ( talk) 20:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
There is an article entitled Gaius Julius Caesar (name), which describes separately each part of his tria nomina. I question the relevance of this article considering that everything is already in Julia gens or the main Julius Caesar article. Moreover, most of the article was moved from citizendium.org in 2009 and contains large parts of original or poorly sourced material. I would like to make a redirect of this article to Julius Caesar. Any other suggestion? T8612 (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 35 | ← | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | Archive 41 | Archive 42 | Archive 43 |
We have a bunch of pretty odd lists of ancient Greek people, with inclusion criteria which range from "isn't this better as a category?" to "what are inclusion criteria?", but for my money List of ancient Greek writers is the worst of the bunch. According to the lead sentence, this is a list of the "most influential Greek writers" from the seventh century BC to the seventh century AD; the list itself is... not that. My concerns with the list include:
So my question is: is this list worth salvaging? Do we need a List of ancient Greek writers at all when we have Category:Ancient Greek writers, the broader List of ancient Greeks and several more specific lists e.g. List of ancient Greek poets and List of ancient Greek philosophers and List of ancient Greek playwrights? Or should we simply redirect it to List of ancient Greeks and be done with it?
Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections. ... This is best done by sectioning the general page under categories. When entries in a category have grown enough to warrant a fresh list-article, they can be moved out to a new page, and be replaced by a See new list link.That's WP best prectice, not an arbitrary condition, and has the additional virtue of avoiding failures to include writers in both list pages. NebY ( talk) 13:26, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
I've been editing the articles relating to the Scythians over the course of several months, and since most editors tend to favour splitting pages after they reach a certain size, I split two further pages, Iškuza and Scythia, covering the phases of Scythian history respectively in West Asia and in Europe, out of the main page covering the Scythians.
However, trying to split it has resulted into three articles, with both Iškuza and Scythia requiring large amounts of material regarding the role of the prior and subsequent histories of the Scythians in the creation and destruction of those states copied from each other and from the Scythians page to exist since they are both about immediately preceding/succeeding states created by the same continuous population group. And because Iškuza and Scythia both cover immediately preceding/succeeding but also partially overlapping parts of the history of the Scythians, multiple sections and sub-sections of each page covering the culture, population, external relations, etc of these states also had to be copied from the Scythians page (e.g. the "Background" sub-section and "Society" section in Scythia, and the "Origins," "Impact," and "Legacy" sections of Iškuza). Moreover, the Scythia page as it exists now also functions as a WP:Semi-duplicate, given that most of the information relating to this polity also is also the same basic information that is required on the Scythians page.
Given this resulting situation, I have started a merger proposal to resolve this issue, per WP:MERGEREASON: Overlap, Context, not because I support a merger for the sake of merging itself, which I do not favour, but because Iškuza and Scythia require too much context and the information on these pages is too intertwined with each other.
The problem is that, despite months having passed, the discussion for the merger proposal is still at a deadlock, with three users opposed to the merger, and three users (including myself) in favour of it. In this difficult situation, I have been advised to bring this issue to the various WikiProjects which are relevant to Scythians as a way to possibly resolve the deadlock, and all good faith assistance to reach a consensus would be much welcome. Antiquistik ( talk) 18:13, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
A recent discussion concerning the future of List of Roman emperors and List of Byzantine emperors resulted in a reasonable degree of consensus that, while the latter article was imperfect, such a list probably should exist separately from the former instead of having all Roman and Byzantine emperors combined in a single list, and that accordingly the Byzantine emperors should be split off from the List of Roman emperors and merged in some way with the existing List of Byzantine emperors—possibly with the resulting article being mostly from the LoRe, but keeping anything useful already in the LoBe.
However, precisely where to draw the line—and whether there should be more than one line—has to be decided separately, and the discussion at Talk:List of Roman emperors seems to have gotten bogged down due to lack of input—there are only five or six contributors, and a monkey wrench in the works is that at least one, perhaps two of them favour splitting into three lists, with the third one consisting of some as-yet-unagreed-upon subset of emperors reigning for an undetermined span of time between Constantine and the eighth century, possibly to be called "Eastern Roman emperors" as opposed to "Byzantine", which frankly seems like a whole different issue, but clearly we cannot move forward with the limited input we have so far.
I'm sure that a lot of other editors who participate in this project must have an opinion on how many separate lists there should be—I hope without taking issue with the consensus that there should be at least two—as well as where to divide them, and whether there should be some overlap between them. If anyone is brave enough to weigh in, the feedback would be greatly appreciated! P Aculeius ( talk) 23:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
Some of you may have been aware of the debate raging on the Talk:Septimius Severus page about whether the Roman Empire achieved its greatest physical extent during his reign and not Trajan's, as is usually stated. The consensus for the article seems to have settled that it did (or at least that a number of recent scholars who published in the 2010s maintain that it did), and the page has been updated accordingly. So this now poses the question of concordance with both the Roman Empire and Trajan articles. Do we open up this can of worms and move away from the established Trajanic view? Or is it still a matter of debate? If we are foolhardy enough to discuss it here, may I suggest that scholars who have published since 2010 form a baseline? I see no point in using material published in the 1980s or early 2000s to defend a traditional viewpoint if more recent scholarship has moved away from that position. Oatley2112 ( talk) 21:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
This draft, which was created by banned user GPinkerton (banned more or less for incivility and bludgeoning, nothing content-related), looks like it is more than ready for mainspace (ref section clearly establishes notability, and it's already reasonably well developed). However, since I'm not familiar with the topic area I'm hesitant to move it myself. Could editors here please take a look at it? Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma ( talk ☉) 15:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
A {{ primary sources}} template was placed on Caligula in May 2022. Well, duh. I don't consider, for example, Suetonius or Dio Cassius primary. It's not like they knew him. I was tempted to simply delete the template as silly, but am bringing the issue here in case there might be a wider problem, or in case some sort of consensus be needed.
(IMO, if someone's name has survived from Classical Antiquity, they're ipso facto notable whatever the state of the sources.) Narky Blert ( talk) 14:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
For example, Suetonius is our source for the birth & death dates of the 12 men he writes about: these are simple statements, which are either right or wrong. (I think it's reasonable to accept them as true unless an expert can show that he is mistaken in some way.) However, when we turn to motivations, there Suetonius should be cited, at most, as contemporary opinion about those motivations. It might even be more accurate to say they are evidence of Suetonius's opinions, & his alone. There is a subtle distinction here, which I feel many overlook -- although sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between facts of a primary source & the interpretations of a second one.
In the case of Caligula, we must struggle with the received opinion a few generations later: was he the debauched & spoiled manchild Suetonius makes him to be? Or is this just Senatorian gossip that circulated amongst the elite to justify his deposition? I'll note that, after looking at more primary sources than the usual historians, modern experts have redeemed Domitian's reputation: he wasn't another bad emperor in the mold of Caligula & Commodius -- although he definitely had a cruel side -- but a competent administrator who alienated the Senate & equites by his successful efforts to curtail corruption. -- llywrch ( talk) 00:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
But in my opinion, a more pressing reason to offer citations to primary sources is as a service to our readers, who will then find reason to begin their research by reading/consulting the relevant articles on Wikipedia. Offering these helps our readers, reducing the time they need to track down information with links to these passages. One could raise the objection that secondary sources also provide these links, but leaving that information to secondary sources forces the student to take a longer path, where providing them in a Wikipedia article saves them time. There is also the issue that, in many cases, secondary sources are harder to obtain -- either thru libraries or purchase -- than primary sources, especially for topics of Classical Greece & Rome. For example, one of the best commentaries on Tacitus is Ronald Syme's Tacitus, in 2 volumes. It retails new on Amazon for $229.97. (I just checked.) I was excited to find my local public had a copy, only to be disappointed to find that the second volume had vanished years before, & my public library had a policy that they will not borrow a copy of a book that is in their collection, even if it is an incomplete multi-volume work. (And they have been purging books they deem are not read by enough people.) I went hunting online for a used copy, & managed to find one for $60 or $75 plus shipping. On the other hand, one can buy a copy of Tacitus' complete works at almost any book store (or Amazon), borrow it from almost any library, or use the online version at the Perseus project website. If you consider that most of our audience will simply want to confirm the facts in an article -- not necessarily care about explications on the subject -- then citations of primary sources is again important.
So by omitting any reference to primary sources, we are short-changing our readers. Not only by forcing them to look at history thru multiple filters when they could be much closer to the events with intelligent use of primary sources, but by making it less convenient for them to access information in them. -- llywrch ( talk) 00:01, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
More context is nearly always better than less.I agree. That's why people should stop writing articles which are based only on primary sources (especially one primary source). As to the audience: the average reader is not a PhD historian who is seeking primary source references. The average reader is a lay person who should be directed to reliable sources and not the unprocessed raw material. This cult of the primary sources – to be clear, what I mean by this is writing an article with primary source priority in the research process (eg starting an article on Caligula by reading Suetonius instead of CAH2 10) – actively dis-serves average readers by diverting them from reliable sources (
academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history). Ifly6 ( talk) 06:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
Hello everyone. Do we have any good maps of regions, towns, etc that were involved in the Social war? Something like Boatwright et al (2012)'s Social war map I think would be best. Ifly6 ( talk) 21:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Is there a "wish list" page? If yes, would like to add ancient Roman pools of Gafsa ar:الحوض_الروماني_بقفصة, Wikidata:Q42764187, and I think la Bassin Romain de Gafsa or Piscine Romaine in French. No rush obviously but working on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and water and food are usually related! Thanks for all you do. jengod ( talk) 19:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
There are two articles
Senatorial province and
Imperial province. I feel like these articles should be merged or otherwise placed in a single article. My initial thought was something like Senatorial and imperial provinces
but a more sensible location might be in
Principate or
Constitutional reforms of Augustus. What do you think?
There are an absolute multitude of other poorly maintained articles and sections that touch on similar topics as well: Constitution of the Roman Empire, History of the Roman Constitution, History of the Constitution of the Roman Empire, Augustus#First_settlement. That's before getting into the highly duplicative, poorly sourced, and largely unmaintained constitution articles; I had filed some teeth years ago on Constitution of the Roman Republic but there are at least four for each periodisation, an overarching article that tries to summarise all of them (I think it should really be about fluidity and continuities), followed by "History" articles for each one. These really require clean up. Some reorganisation of this material along an agreed-upon schema might also be worthwhile. Ifly6 ( talk) 15:43, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
An edition of PIR I found has a on page 270 a mention of a M. Licinius Drusus Libo but I can't find mention of this supposed person anywhere else but in copies of PIR online, is this likely to be some kind of typo? ★Trekker ( talk) 16:40, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
The list of condemned Roman emperors has been slated for merging into Damnatio Memoriae for 8 months now. I outlined some thoughts on the topic at Talk:Damnatio_memoriae#List_of_condemned_Roman_emperors, but would really appreciate the input of specialists in the area. Felix QW ( talk) 17:37, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
There is a Featured Article Save Award nomination at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Diocletian/archive1. Please join the discussion to recognize and celebrate editors who helped assure this article would retain its featured status. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
Hey y'all.
There has been some contention between me and @
Ifly6 on the articles
Tiberius Gracchus and
Gaius Gracchus. Since 2021, he has repeatedly attempted to keep these articles from having a lead image, on the fact that there was no period depiction and dismissing posthumous ones as "fantasy" (I'm also mentioning @
Avilich since he was the one who first removed the lead image on Tiberius' article). Nearly two months ago, I added 19th century busts to the lead (since the argument for Tiberius' page was that he had a beard, which no Republican Roman would have). A month later, he moved that out of the lead. I reverted his changes since he was using a segment of
MOS:LEAD, Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Lead images are not required, and **not having a lead image may be the best solution if there is no easy representation of the topic.
, to justify his actions, and I saw his interpretation to be extremely bizarre, wrong, and subjective, something that didn't seem to have consensus given pages like
St. Augustine,
Jesus,
John IV Laskaris, etcetera, which all feature posthumous depictions.
@
Ifly6 told me to take it here, which heightened my suspicions that this may be some local WikiProject guideline. I would like the input of the folks here to see if posthumous portraits should be included in the lead.
Crusader1096 (
message)
14:29, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
the article needs an image at the beginning, in the infobox. The way I read these comments is basically that some editors are demanding an image, any image, to be placed in the info box field (for various reasons). I certainly do not believe we need an image at the top. We should place a good image there, not just any image that could be asserted as vaguely depicting the target.
it just doesn't seem to convey what you think Tiberius Gracchus means to history, as you said, above. Ifly6 ( talk) 19:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
TI SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUSat the bottom, this is an acceptable depiction to put into the info-box. (Jokingly, I'm sure that we'll all have to be togate.) I don't accept that, even if I trace the image so it looks like a medal on a wood-print or wait a hundred years. No image is still better than that; nor is there any material difference between hire-a-mason and PII or Brothers. If there really is a consensus that we need an image – I dispute that there is – I would prefer Brothers with traces of the other cropped out. (They are fortunately not in a socialist fraternal kiss.) Ifly6 ( talk) 03:41, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Notes
Nb romans in the republican period did not sport beards. My objection to PII is not that it shows people with beards when they would not have had them. It is that they are fantasy depictions of low quality.
References
Nederlandse Leeuw and I have been having a spirited debate over whether this sort-of-listy article satisfies notability guidelines or falls afoul of synthesis and original research policy. Somewhere in the discussion, I think that deletion is being confused with questions about the article's name, and whether the subject of the article represents a distinct and valid topic. I spent quite a long time yesterday working to improve the article and deal with some of the concerns about its sources, although I do not dispute that much more could still be done. However, the two of us have taken the argument about as far as we can by ourselves, with only a couple of other editors participating. We could certainly use more input, and I know that there are wiser heads than mine here in this project. P Aculeius ( talk) 07:08, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at
Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent
Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class=
parameter to {{
WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{ WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{
WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom
parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present.
Aymatth2 (
talk)
13:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion about the name of the war between the Roman Republic and the Seleucid king Antiochos III here. T8612 (talk) 15:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
A few days ago, I have written about "ancient pagan writers on Christianity" under "Tasks". More details there. It would be cool if somebody could look into it, even if it's just to write down your first impressions on the respective talk pages. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've already done! Corneille pensive ( talk) 15:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Battle of Lade has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 ( talk) 22:29, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Does anyone actually use the project's Tasks page in any way? Currently there are nearly 30 pages listed as "requests from other members" of which nearly half have been listed for a decade (cf this revision). There's also our "current" project collaboration, which has been Theatre of Pompey since 2012; our article alerts (also transcluded on the project main page) and a table of article importance/quality ratings (also transcluded on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Assessment).
I had been leaving it well alone as not actually hurting anyone, but occassionally people do add stuff to the "requests" list (see the thread above this one) and if nobody is actually looking at it that is just wasting their time as well as cluttering up the project. If people do actually use it I'm happy to keep it where it is (and perhaps clear out some of the clutter), but if nobody does then maybe we should just remove it from Template:WPCGR/Tabs and mark it as historical? Caeciliusinhorto-public ( talk) 11:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Could anyone kindly do: QVEM GENVIT RUSSI FIORENTIA TUSCA JOHANNIS / ISTUD SCVLPSIT OPVS INGENUOSA MANUS, a 15th-century inscription on a work by the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo, or "il Rosso" (redhead), "Nanni" being short for "Giovanni". The mixture of V and U is per the source. Thanks in advance, Johnbod ( talk) 16:42, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
The thing that was bothering me is that "ingenuosa manus" is unusual, so I wondered if there was a reason for using that rather than the more typical "ingeniosa manus". And looking carefully at the best image we have showing the inscription - this one I think - I believe the transcription above is not quite right. At full size, the inscription is still somewhat indistinct on the bottom of the sculpted frame, but the Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali [5] and some other sources also have "ingeniosa" instead: "ISCRIZIONI cornice, lato inferiore - QVEM GENUIT RUSSI FLORENTIA TUSCA IOHANNIS/ ISTUD SCULPSIT OPUS INGENIOSA MANUS - a solchi - latino". And a close look at the inscription in the image suggests there are rather more Vs than Us too. ("QVEM GENVIT RVSSI" etc) So. Theramin ( talk) 23:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
There were recently changes at Special:Diff/1152362194 alleging the emergence of a consensus to delete most of the infobox. I am unaware of this, and feeling that I am too heavily involved in the talk page have exercised some discretion in doing nothing about it. Could someone inform me of whether this alleged consensus exists or, if otherwise, take action on the deletion? Ifly6 ( talk) 20:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
There is an article entitled Gaius Julius Caesar (name), which describes separately each part of his tria nomina. I question the relevance of this article considering that everything is already in Julia gens or the main Julius Caesar article. Moreover, most of the article was moved from citizendium.org in 2009 and contains large parts of original or poorly sourced material. I would like to make a redirect of this article to Julius Caesar. Any other suggestion? T8612 (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2023 (UTC)