Wikipedia:Featured article review/Structural history of the Roman military/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 7:39, 27 February 2021 (UTC) [1].

Structural history of the Roman military

Notified: PocklingtonDan, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Rome, WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, talk page notification

Review section

I am nominating this featured article for review because it is an older FA with a number of issues that need to be adressed. For instance:

several uncited sentences;
"clarification needed" tags in the text since 2013;
Livy, Polybius and Tacitus are primary sources, maybe they should be replaced by secondary sources, ie. modern historians?
Is that "Strategy Page" reliable? (ref. 28)
the lead is divided in "Phases" but I see no reference to this "division" in the text.
citations need work, for instance:

Sekunda is not defined;
I don't think Boak's The Roman Magistri in the Civil and Military Service of the Empire is ever used in the article;
typically when we have 2 authors saying the same thing, we use 2 different references; here, every such case is bundled;

Explanatory notes are not referenced;
Edward Gibbon seems a bit dated.

Hoping to hear from more knowledgeable editors than myself, I'm not familiar with Roman history. RetiredDuke (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That was painful to skim. Plenty of content not cited at all. Of that which is I am not sure whether I find unsupported referencing to Gibbon or to Livy the most depressing, especially when some of it is simply wrong. The fundamental structure is OK, but it's going to take a lot of work to get it up to scratch. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:10, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The bones of the article aren't terrible, but the number of uncited pieces of text is alarming, and the "phase" system mentioned only within the lede is either poorly worded (to sound like these steps were planned instead of organic responses to crises) or straight up OR. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:44, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The ref system seems very outdated, and is overall pretty frustrating to work with. Will see about moving everything over to Harvard refs, much more servicable for an article this size. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:57, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC, edits since nomination. (Moving to FARC does not preclude improvements may still happen.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section mostly concern sourcing. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delist. Tagged as self-contradictory, needing citation, and needing clarification. DrKay (talk) 13:41, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delist per above. FemkeMilene (talk) 20:05, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delist, issues not addressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Iazyges: I see you've been putting some work into this - do you feel you're able to address the issues that have been raised, or do you concur that delisting is appropriate? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria: I'd like to see this remain FA but don't have the time to fix the pretty severe issues this article has within a reasonable time frame; I'd suggest delisting for now and I'll try to take it back up to featured article when I have the time to. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:45, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delist - Serious issues that are best addressed outside of FAR. Once they are fixed, another FAC can be made. Hog Farm _Talk 17:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:39, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.