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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Cannae

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Battle of Cannae

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I believe that this is a highly informative page that provides a comprehensive view of the Battle, as well as quotes, tactical dispostions, and its effects. Furthermore, I believe that this article fully meets the given WP:WIAFA for a featured article......--chub 23:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Approve: But other than the few minor errors mentioned above (which can be easily corrected), I see no other reason why this article shouldn't be accepted--199.232.104.30 21:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have a lot of inline citations refering to the samefootnotes. Unfortunately, the baclinks will only ever link to the first citation. You might want to convert the article to the <ref> system. I'll help if you wantCirceus 22:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, looks very well-written and well-cited. It would be nice if the citations were converted to <ref> format and if the lead was lengthened, both points already brought up, but those alone are not sufficient to stop me from supporting. —Cuiviénen, Thursday, 23 March 2006 @ 02:20 (UTC)
  • Comment. Battles articles have usually a picture or a painting of the scene as a lead image. The map is really bad, I took a while before finding the Cannae town. I suggest you improve it by showing only the Italian peninsula. CG 16:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Adressing and acting upon comments: I appreciate the advice. I have expanded the lead. I am not aware of the </ref/> system, so I may need help with improving the citations. --chub 23:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Citations I converted the article to Cite.php <ref>s,but there were a couple issues:
      • I found 3 refs without equivalent notes, 2 were labelled "sealy" and one "gowen". They are still in the source, but commented out.
      • If a references does not have footnotes attaches, do not put {{note}} before it. These refs are in the "References" section instead of "Footnotes"
      • There are still 2 external links that should be converted to footnotes (The Cannae book link and the Titus livius citation), you might want to look into {{Cite web}}
      • I could not properly reference the PDF because I could not access it (A failure I blame on a problem with the PDFdownload extension of Firefox), someone else should fix it.
    • Circeus 15:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Minor Comments: As far as details and content goes, this article is indeed FA-worthy. Inline citations are properly formatted and the lead has been expanded as requested. However, there is still room for improvement. I recommend that this article undergo minor grammatical revision if (or before) it is to be saved as a featured article (fragments in the lead need to be eliminated. Furthermore, I suggest that (1) The lead include more details about the aftermath of the Battle (it provides a summary of the battle itself but devotes only two lines of info on its effects) (2) and The "United States Military Academy" text on the images be removed (I think they are, for all purposes, unecessary). But other than that, the article seems to be considerably well-written and EXTREMELY informative. --24.91.242.154 02:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The United States Military Academy text is not unecessary - but is part of the conditions of use of the copyrighted images. - Vedexent 16:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another Comment: Someone also needs to check the numbers of casualties, since battle casualties (in all military history articles in general) often have a tendency to contradict each other.--24.91.242.154 05:41, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lead of Article: I've made some minor adjustments to the lead. Unfortunately, I know very little about this topic, so I could not add any further details.--24.91.242.154 05:41, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The lead is long enough in my opinion. It should not go in-dept and should only contain the most significant details. According to WP:LEAD: "The lead should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it could stand on its own as a concise version of the article.". The fact that Cannae was not a decisive battle (meaning it did not determine the outcome of the Second Punic War) means that its strategic effects were limited. The defection of Capua and other Italian city states was perhaps the only significant strategic effect from the battle, and it is already mentioned in the lead.--Chubdub 19:06, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Support + Comment: Looking over these commments and the recent adjustments made, I think the format of this article has been greatly improved. Together with the content (which features highly detailed descriptions about the tactical dispositions and an abundance of additional facts), I would say that this article is certainly FA-worthy. Alhtough I would like to see more pictures of the battle itself rather than just diagrams. I know this is ancient history, and no photos were in existence back then. So I found this "virtual reenactment" from the TV series of Decisive Battles (TV series)

http://home20.inet.tele.dk/creativ/Cannae1.jpg --P.O.N.Y. 19:21, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunatly such images cannot be used due to copyright restrictions. Images in an article have to be in the public domain, or have permission granted by the copyright holder. - Vedexent 20:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose
    • I'd like to see my earlier comments on citations acted on,especially about making the PDF cited properly.
    • I don't think the big "trivia" section belong there. After all, if it is "trivia", then isn't it by definition unencyclopedic? If the material in there is really pertinent, then it should be possible to work it in the rest of the article. Circeus 19:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Weak oppose with hopes the objections can be cleared up so the article gets the FAC it clearly deserves: - This is a well written article, with a balanced approach of Carthaginian and Roman perspectives, it describes the larger background of the war, the rationale of the commanders in their deployment, clearly lays out the stategies of the two forces, what happened as opposed to what was supposed to happen (at least for the Romans), and goes on to explore the results an significance of the battle. I think a lot of praise is deserved by the nominating author who has obviously put a great deal of time, research, and effort into this article.

However, there are large blocks of facts that are mentioned, without citation. The makeup of the forces is in question, but by who - what sources are being accepted by the author? There are claims for the strategy and viewpoint of Varro and Hannibal; facinating and informative, but where do they come from?

I'm of the opinion that there should be a 1:1 ratio of claim (or group of related claims) and referance: "X was the case [1]. This caused Y [2]. There is evidence that Q,W, and W were probably in place, and this most likely would have lead to M[3], although it has been said by others that they would have resulted in P instead [4]." My example is pretty citation heavy (really, citations shouldn't be inside a sentance), but you get the idea.

Unfortunatly there are large blocks of claims that read like they do come out of the volumes in the bilbiography, so I don't think they are spurious, but they are not referenced, so I cannot find them.

This is well written and informative article. I just think it needs to be a little more informative about where it gets the information from. - Vedexent 19:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Slight retraction - some of the views attributed to Varro and Hannibal are cited. Plus, the ones that are not could be due to recent re-organization of some of the paragraphs by ... ahem... me.... (mea culpa) - and the citing author may want to examine the "tactical deployment" section to see if the citations need to be moved around. There are other areas that still do have the problem I outlined, however. - 19:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Support' with Minor niggling complaint - The author did a boatload of footnoting since my comment. We also discussed the footnoting style, and while I personally would like to see page numbers in the references, they don't seem to be needed for the Wikipedia style :) The only slight complaint I might still have re inline references is that there seem to be two diffrerent styles of footnotes being used - and because of this the numbering sequence seems to jump around out of sequence. Other than that, looks good to go :) - Vedexent 01:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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