Talk:Denarius of L. Censorinus

Purpose of article?

I'm a little unclear as to why an article is needed on this topic, when Wikipedia doesn't even have an article on L. Marcius Censorinus yet. The title of the article makes it look as if "Denarius" is part of his name. I don't know that this particular coin is notable enough to have a separate article; it's already discussed on the Marsyas page (to which the author should feel welcome to contribute), and much of its other material would be more appropriate as a subsection of a Marcii Censorini article. Besides the lack of an introduction, the article has many other issues, from minor style issues to general existential issues. If there is to be an article, an image of the coin is available to illustrate it. I don't want to be uncharitable and target it for deletion, but ... it does read more like a student paper than an encyclopedia article. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

To clarify: My objection to the article is its notability, not the non-Wiki manner in which it is written. But here's why the two overlap in this case. When I happened upon the article and saw its problems, I thought I might Wikify it, since I was familiar with the coin and its issues. In trying to think how to do so, I realized the problem was that I didn't know how to make it stand as an independent article. (I've written several articles on fairly narrow and obscure topics.) The issues of interpretation raised by this coin aren't notable or distinctive; they're pretty typical for Roman coins. An article might be written on "Mythological iconography of the Roman denarius" or "Numismatic propaganda on Roman coins" (not that I'm recommending it), but I don't know what a first sentence to the current article should be, or what phrase would be put in bold as the subject. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:01, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

all coins about which articles have been written or discussed in two or more reliable sources would seem to meet the General Notbility guideline WP:N. As for the title of the article, I changed it a little, which should help. DGG (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

OK. I still think it's a pretty thin and stinky article, and suspect it was created to fulfill some kind of class assignment, but I've tried to edit out some of the worst bits of student essay writing. And I added the image of the coin, a rather basic omission on the part of the creator, if the person was actually serious about contributing an article. I've also placed the article in a category. If I feel some overpowering desire to add the missing Marcii Censorini to Wikipedia, I'll try to find a reason to link to this article, which would address the orphan issue as well. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)