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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Campaign history of the Roman military

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Campaign history of the Roman military‎

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I have been working on this article for the last few weeks after splitting the Military history of ancient Rome into the four componenets of Structural, Political, Campaign and Technological histories. Campaign is the first of the four I have been working on, but I intend to work on each of the others in turn.

I will be seeking featured article status for the article shortly and want to polish off any rough edges in a peer review first.

It was tough trying to stick to a straightforward campaign history without going into too many other areas on the one hand, or having a dry, soulless list of battles on the other. I hope that I have struck the right balance.

Any comments etc appreciated, but given scope of article factual checking from those with topic knowledge especially welcome - I have tried to cite as much as possible. Thanks - PocklingtonDan 10:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kirill Lokshin

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Quite nice, but a variety of things that still need work before this would be ready for FAC:

  • While I don't object to the {{href}} format in principle, I would avoid using it until the technical issues with it are worked out. In particular, anyone printing the article is currently out of luck as far as getting the citations is concerned.
Its not really that big an issue for me, if it needs doing, so be it, but I'm against the idea at present - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • In any case, footnotes need to be placed after punctuation, not before it.
See discussin below - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article might be a little campaignbox-heavy. More practically, please make sure that all of these new campaignboxes you've created are (a) listed at WP:CAMPAIGN and (b) comply with the standard formatting documented there. In particular:
    • The dates of battles should be omitted, with ordinals (1st, 2nd, etc.) used to disambiguate within a single campaignbox, where necessary.
Corrected now - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • The articles linked to should be actual battle articles (even if they don't exist) rather than merely the city articles themselves.
Corrected now - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would see all or most campaign boxes as starting out with only one or two entries and then being expanded, just as most articles start as stubs and get expanded - i know there was more than one battle in all these campaigns and would hope someobody will expand them in future - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, seems fine, then. One point: {{Campaignbox Crisis of the Third Century}} should really be broken into two templates, since the second half of it has nothing to do with the Third century. We ought to have a separate one for the fourth-century civil wars, possibly merging {{Campaignbox Constantine Wars}} into it as well. Kirill Lokshin 19:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, I will get on it - PocklingtonDan 19:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The use of first-level headings ("History" and "Assessment") isn't permitted by the MoS; everything will need to be bumped down. Alternately, you could just eliminate the "History" heading entirely; as the article is titled "campaign history", there's not much else that a reader could be expecting.
Corrected now - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first two sections seem rather short; I'd combine them into a single pre-Republican section.
Done now - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Adding date ranges to the Early/Mid/Late headings may be useful.
Done now - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Having a campaignbox and one of the left-floated blue pullboxes in the same place causes alignment problems; they should be spaced so as to stagger themselves.
Can you describe this a bit more? It doesn't seem to cause any alignement issued my browser so I don't quite see what needs doing - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Example: at the start of the "Triumvirates, Caesarian ascension, and revolt (53-30 BC)" section, the text is squeezed between boxes on both sides; at lower resolutions, you get a one-word-wide column. Kirill Lokshin 19:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'm with you now, hadn't considered lower resolutions, will fix this now - PocklingtonDan 19:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The heavy use of parentheses in the text is somewhat distracting. I'd suggest copyediting into more natural list forms, where possible; for example, replace "incursions in 356 (Battle of Reims), 357 (Battle of Strasbourg), 367 (Battle of Solicinium) and 378 (Battle of Argentovaria)" with "incursions in 356 at the Battle of Reims, in 357 at the Battle of Strasbourg, in 367 at the Battle of Solicinium, and in 378 at the Battle of Argentovaria".
Agreed, copyedited out now - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The list of battles in the "Usurpers (193-394)" section seems something of a cop-out. The period is complicated, but not so much that a narrative can't be written (particularly as the battles are not, except for one small group, ocurring at the same time); but, even if no narrative is given, the self-referential explanation of why none is present needs to go.
I know its a copout but I'm not sure how to move forward with it! I'll have a stab at writing a narrative for it later today - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Update: turned into prose now - PocklingtonDan 19:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The ending (e.g. "eternal glory or damnation", etc.) seems a tad melodramatic for my taste. At the least, it ought to be cited to a historian, with quotes used if possible.
Melodrama removed! - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(As an aside: it's not necessary to double-list things onto the MILHIST PR and the central PR by hand; there's a bot that will replicate all the MILHIST requests onto the central list. ;-)

Doh! Now I know. Oops - PocklingtonDan 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kirill Lokshin 14:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Kirill, I will get working on everything you suggest. The only items I have issue with are:
  • "In any case, footnotes need to be placed after punctuation, not before it." - I believe this is just US convention, I am British and was always taught the opposite!!
  • not using "hnote" reference system - I agree it is not perfect, but the standard reference system both led to a ridiculously long list of footnotes that took up several screens worth, and also led to great distraction when reading the text - "N" is a lot less of a distraction than "123", espcially if two cites are provided in a row for one fact, ie "NN" versus "[123] [125]"
I'll get cracking on everything else - PocklingtonDan 17:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The placement does seem to vary—although I've certainly seen any number of British works using the footnote-after-punctuation system—but the Wikipedia convention is to place the notes after most punctuation; see WP:CITE and WP:FOOTNOTE.
As far as the formatting of the notes themselves, I suspect this is largely an issue of personal preference. I tend to have no problems with very long sections of footnotes; but I also tend to add a lot of annotations to them, which wouldn't be possible with a more compact form. As I said, I have no problems with the principle here; my only concern is that these templates won't render correctly when the article is printed/accessed on a portable device/viewed through a text-only browser/etc. I suspect that you'll hear plenty of opinions on this topic once you take the article to FAC, though. Kirill Lokshin 17:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As an alternative, do you think if I reverted to plain footnotes it would then be possible to have them hidden by default by displayed by election, ie as the "More information" section int he MILHIST banner at eg Talk:Campaign history of the Roman military???? This would seem to address both your concerns and mine if possible... - PocklingtonDan 20:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a particularly clean solution; the collapsed-by-default section will prevent the actual hyperlinks in the note numbers from working. Whether that's better or worse than the current setup, I don't know; but, strictly speaking, both of them are "broken" in certain scenarios. Kirill Lokshin 20:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think I prefer it to the current solution though - it solves the problem of being neat and hiding the footnotes until the time anyone elects to show them for printing or whatever. Do you know how to implement this? - PocklingtonDan 20:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Add the following at the top of the "References" section, before the bibliographic listing:
{| class="collapsible collapsed" width="100%" style="border: 1px silver solid; background: transparent;"
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Notes
|-
| <references/>
|}
One additional point you might want to think about: the article is quite long. I don't see that as a problem, personally; but it's almost certain that somebody will bring it up at FAC. Kirill Lokshin 21:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(unindent) thanks for the footnote code, I think I will use this. As for the article length, I do think it is too long in that it is not an easy on-screen read in a single sitting, but I don't think its too long in that its a good go-to summary of all of rome's military campaigns. I think it depends what you want to use the article for - PocklingtonDan 21:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And just to say thanks for some really excellent input, I notice that at times it seems as if you are tackling all the MILHIST peer reviews etc single-handed and you still find the time to give useful, in-depth responses to each, so thanks - PocklingtonDan 22:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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