Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 27

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Archive 20

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Archive 25

A link to a DAB page

Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Jovian (emperor) says that he "did not display the single-minded zeal of his Flavian predecessors in the cause of either heresy or orthodoxy". Flavian is a DAB page. I can't see anyone in Flavia (gens) who this might be referring too, and suspect that something may have gone wrong in the editing. Can any expert help solve this puzzle? Narky Blert (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Following the cited source for this sentence, recently added by an IP editor, I found the passage in Gibbon that seemed to correspond (the page number wasn't helpful since I found an on-line version, but the chapter helped), in which "Flavian" describes the family of Constantine, which makes sense chronologically. Checking on them, I find that most of this dynasty bore the nomen Flavius, which seems to explain the reference, and in fact the article calls them "neo-Flavian", probably to distinguish them from Vespasian's family. Piped link, since readers are likely to encounter this terminology, and would be well-served by seeing what it means. P Aculeius (talk) 16:29, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Good solution. That sentence has Gibbonian irony written all over it. I've also added Constantinian dynasty as a see-also to the DAB page Flavian. Narky Blert (talk) 04:32, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Great. In fact the "Later emperors" section at the gens article has a long list. Johnbod (talk) 13:27, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

List of liquor deities and category: liquor deities

Latest comment: 6 years ago11 comments5 people in discussion

Ran across these tonight while patrolling Dionysus, which had been added to Category:liquor deities. The category struck me as odd, because Dionysus is generally associated with wine, not "liquor". Looking at the list, I saw that the other entries on the list all seemed to be concerned with wine, beer, or mead, rather than liquor (a couple of the deities' articles didn't mention any beverages).

To the best of my knowledge, "liquor" describes only distilled beverages, and excludes wine, beer, or mead; that's what our article on liquor says, too (also excluding sake, I noticed). It's not a good description of the deities included in this category, and the linked article, list of liquor deities, has the same problem; all or nearly all of the deities listed are associated with wine, beer, mead, or sake, but not with liquor.

We seem to have a titling problem. There *should be* articles/categories grouping these deities, but the word "liquor" is clearly not applicable to most of them; I would guess that they were created by editors who were under the impression that "liquor" is a synonym for "alcoholic beverage". I checked, and it doesn't look like we have a list or category for "wine gods". That, however, would seem like a better title than "liquor deities", even though it still technically wouldn't apply to deities associated with beer, mead, or sake. But it would at least apply to a number of them, and including the others under a title that's accurate for a large number of the class would be better than using a title that doesn't apply to any of them. I also think that insisting on "deities" simply for reasons of gender neutrality is a bit pedantic, as the term "gods" is generally understood to include goddesses, but that's not really a big deal. "Liquor" being used to describe every beverage that isn't liquor, and rarely if ever liquor, is a problem in my opinion. But before I propose page moves, I thought I'd see if anyone here had some thoughts on what seem like badly misnamed articles to me. P Aculeius (talk) 04:20, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

I guess liquor stores in US states would handle wine and beer as well as Jack Daniel's. Indeed, I remember one that did. Some such connection must have been made ... You're right, Dionysus and the rest don't feel comfortable under "liquor". "Wine" would suit several of them. One would like a more general term, but I can't think of one. Andrew Dalby 09:05, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

"Deities of alcoholic drink""? Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:42, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

I would probably avoid technical language as much as possible. Nobody's ever going to search for "alcoholic beverage deities", but we might get searches for "wine gods", which I think is the safest choice at this point, although I find "alcoholic beverage deities" mildly amusing. "Wine gods" is at least idiomatic, and actually applies to a large proportion of the class members, even though it would be as much of an approximation as "liquor" is for others. P Aculeius (talk) 12:30, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, difficult. "Liquor" definitely isn't good, I recall seeing the price list for pie, eels, mash, and liquor, which was the broth that the eels had been boiled in. It was bright green and didn't look very theological. I never tried any and the shop (in The Cut, Lambeth), is now shut. I suppose that "wine" is reasonable, after all "rice wine" and "fruit wine" are perfectly good English. But as you point out, it still specifically excludes beer, and probably mead. What about a technically correct category with "alcoholic drink" and redirects as appropriate from "wine", etc. ? Richard Keatinge (talk) 13:33, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

I think that mead could still be included under the heading of wine, as it's synonymous with the term "honied wine" or "honey-wine" (although not all mead may fit the definition, I think that would be splitting hairs) although beer could not. Sake is called "rice wine" in some sources, so it's probably okay too. Maybe the category is too broad as it is, and could be the parent category for "wine gods" and other deities associated with alcoholic or intoxicating beverages. Some possible titles might be "alcoholic beverage deities", "intoxicating beverage deities", "deities of intoxication", "gods of wines and spirits", or perhaps (not seriously) "saloon gods". P Aculeius (talk) 13:49, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

'Alcohol deities' or 'intoxication deities' seems reasonable. 'Wine' seems problematic for Egypt, the Near East, and the Americas. Pssibly this is a conversation to have at Wikproject:Religion (or whatever it's called)? Furius (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Wouldn't call them either of those, because they're not gods of alcohol or intoxication, but of specific beverages, even though the common thread of those beverages is that they contain alcohol and are (at least potentially) intoxicating. Not sure why "wine" would be problematic for the near east, unless you're referring to the Islamic prohibition on alcoholic beverages, which wouldn't really be relevant to pre-Islamic deities. Wine certainly existed in the ancient near east, even if beer was more widely available. Not sure if anything classifiable as wine was produced in pre-Columbian America. Agreed that participants in other projects might want to discuss this, but as a member of this project, which tends to involve topics like this, and Dionysus in particular, I thought it would be useful to see where opinion might settle before proposing title changes for either the article or category (the category was only created yesterday). Right now we seem to be having trouble agreeing on better titles than the ones they have now, so I can only imagine what would happen if I proposed a page move at this point. P Aculeius (talk) 00:48, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Since the question arose, yes, there were alcoholic drinks in pre-Columbian America. Several surviving ones are now grouped under names like chicha etc. They had ritual importance and possibly patron deities. Early European explorers tended to call them "wine". Most of them, being relatively low in alcohol, are in modern life categorised somewhere alongside beer.

I would have said that intoxication/stimulation is the main point with gods like Dionysus -- there's no god of freshly pressed fruit juice anywhere, is there? The difficulty remains in choosing a term that's general enough and not too obviously anachronistic. If we decide that "wine" might cover everything relevant except beer, we could even say "Deities of wine and beer". Andrew Dalby 08:56, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

That actually sounds better than the other suggestions so far. Except the less-serious ones, of course. P Aculeius (talk) 12:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Although I'm coming late to this discussion, I concur with "Deities of wine and beer" is the best label. Those two nouns tend to be applied to most drinks created thru fermentation, such as "mullet beer" or "rice wine". The ancient polytheistic religions had long disappeared before distillation was documented as being used. And I have trouble picturing a "god of whiskey" being revealed to the faithful anywhere except maybe in Neo-pagan or Far Eastern countries or India; the traditional African & Native American pagan religions appear to be in serious decline or moribund, unlikely to be innovating. And anyway, those 4 topics areas are someone else's problem. -- llywrch (talk) 15:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

ROC: A.U.C., Ab urbe condita, Anno urbis conditae, and Ab Urbe Condita Libri

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please visit Ab urbe condita and comment on proposals for moving or deleting the page and replacing it with the article on Livy's book.Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 02:04, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Second Greek colonisation

Latest comment: 6 years ago9 comments8 people in discussion

Just to note that we have these articles First and Second Greek colonisation which were produced by translation from the el.wiki at some point. I've not really heard these terms and the material treated in the First article is generally considered to be highly mythicised, at least as presented in the literary sources. In English language scholarship, terms like "Greek colonisation" would usually be reserved for what is here called the "Second Greek colonisation". What to do? Furius (talk) 14:16, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm wondering if this is a term Greek-language historians use. Pinging @Cplakidas:, who is Greek & has in interest in Greek history. He might know. (If this is not the case, we might need to move these articles to more appropriate name spaces.) -- llywrch (talk) 04:49, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi! AFAIK there is no ancient Greek term for this, and modern historians simply use the common international terminology (Πρώτος/Δεύτερος ελληνικός αποικισμός). Cheers, --Constantine ✍ 06:22, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

"Migration(s)" would be more appropriate here, as "colonisation" is a state-controlled process. Then the first article really lacks sources; it only relies on Herodotus and Pausanias, and modern sources are not properly cited. It also considerably overlaps with the Dorian invasion.T8612 (talk) 09:59, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

If my recall is correct, current scholarship in English holds that the term "colonization" is incorrect for Greek settlement of Asia Minor and Cyprus in the wake of the Late Bronze Age collapse. So "first Greek colonization" is mistitled, at best. The First Greek colonisation article has severe problems beyond its title; for instance, it is debatable whether there was such a thing as the Dorian invasion, and most recent English-language scholarship doubts that such an event occurred. A responsible Wikipedia article would reflect this. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:16, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Not sure when colonization became the exclusive province of states. My understanding of the word in English is that it refers to the deliberate settlement of a foreign area, as opposed to random wandering or nomadic behaviour. Migration might suggest periodic travel, without any intention of permanent settlement. The Greek cities founded during this period are commonly referred to as "colonies", and their inhabitants "colonists"; many of them claimed parent cities in Greece, and some established daughter colonies. So I don't think the term "colonization" seems either inappropriate or inaccurate, while "migration" seems vague and potentially misleading by comparison. P Aculeius (talk) 19:26, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I generally agree with T8612 and Akhilleus. To make clear my stance, I'd like to see the first period referred to as 'Iron age Greek migrations' or some such and be overhauled to give much more attention to the serious issues about the historicity of the literary material and to include much more discussion of archaeological material, such as it is. I'd like to see the second period become 'Greek colonisation' - that is the usual term in scholarship, though pretty much every scholarly discussion since the 1960s will include a caveat that the phenomenon is very different from what the term 'colonisation' usually means in contemporary English (as should our article). Furius (talk) 23:15, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree there's nothing wrong with "colony" and "colonisation/colonization". However, I think a single article covering the entire topic is appropriate. I surveyed the German, Spanish and French wikis and found that they covered it as a single topic. and the "Second Greek colonisation" article is wiki language linked to each language's "Greek colonisation" article. No mention of "second". Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 05:20, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

If there's an emerging consensus that the earlier events should be described as "migration" and the later events "colonization" (see e.g. Furius above) I agree with it.

The only reliable sources for the early events are archaeology and linguistics: written sources for those early events yield myth and legend rather than history. Although the end result was the later existence of Greek-speaking city-states on the Aegean islands and the coast of Anatolia, it is (I'd say) impossible to know whether the process itself was state-led or not.

The later events have always been described as colonization -- it's the defining use of the word, in fact -- and it is clear, since some goodish written sources exist, that it was largely planned by existing city-states and largely resulted in the immediate creation of new city-states.

Ancient Greek writers of antiquarian-type history didn't necessarily see so much difference between the two events; perhaps some modern Greek historians don't emphasise the difference either, but in modern scholarship generally the term "second Greek colonization" is very rarely used. What typically happens instead is that those early events will be discussed in the first section of a general book or article about "Greek colonies"/"colonization" (as with the German and French wikis), but when the early events get a book or article to themselves the typical term used is "migration". Andrew Dalby 09:03, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Isis is now at FAC

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The article discusses Isis's significance in Greco-Roman culture about as extensively as it does her significance in Egypt. Feel free to comment on the article's nomination page. A. Parrot (talk) 14:59, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Roman Republic

Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Roman Republic, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual 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. AIRcorn (talk) 10:53, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I just removed 2 of those tags -- one because the statement flagged was wrong, the other because the request for a source was obviously silly -- & may be able to fix 2 or 3 more. (Some I simply don't know where I'd search to find reliable sources for the statement, & some I don't know if the statement is true.) All of the passages flagged with "citation needed" refers to everyday life, IMHO one of the hardest topics to research & find solid information about. (Even social historians are often reduced to handwaving when discussing certain aspects of ancient Roman society.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:27, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. — The Transhumanist 10:54, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

AfD for List of Latin phrases

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

List of Latin phrases (full) has been nominated for deletion again, after having been kept on four previous occasions. Since the article and its subdivisions are presumably of great interest to members of this project, I thought they might want to weigh in on the debate. P Aculeius (talk) 12:35, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Ancient or ancient

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 July 5#Ancient Greece. We have lots of "Ancient Greece" and lots of "ancient Greece" categories, and I've created a test-the-waters nomination to judge consensus on a couple of sample categories; if there's consensus one way or the other, I expect to nominate a lot more categories in the future. Your participation, therefore, would be quite helpful. Nyttend (talk) 03:00, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

AfD Pegasis

Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Pegasis has been nominated for deletion. Would any of your members be able to assist in a better solution.

All because I tried repairing Pegasis, a nymph, as it was being used as a redirect for a typo concerning Pegasus, yes, a horse, of course. I made my case on her talk page, her notability ought to be on par with her Emathion and Atymnius. WurmWoode^T 19:01, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I was part of the earlier discussion, and while I don't fault you for asking members of this project to weigh in, I also disagree that the nomination was in bad faith. Let's restate the issues: in Greek mythology, "Pegasis" has three distinct meanings: 1, an adjective describing things (including people and places) associated with Pegasus; 2, an epithet bestowed on nymphs associated with fountains (such as Oenone, according to Ovid), including the Muses; and 3, the name of a particular nymph who, according to Quintus Smyrnaeus, was the wife of Emathion/Emalion and mother of Atymnius, who fell in the Trojan War; another source makes her husband the father of a certain obscure figure named Diomedes (not the hero from the Trojan War), from which it may be inferred that Pegasis was his mother, although she is not named. All we know of her is her name; her husband and both of her sons are similarly obscure, and while I agree completely that they're worthy of being mentioned or included in Wikipedia in some form, it makes no sense to have four separate articles about a family consisting of four persons, for each of whom whom only one fact is known apart from their relationship to each other.

It would make more sense to discuss them all in one article, which could be reached by links from hatnotes or disambiguation pages. Since "Pegasis" has multiple uses and can refer to multiple persons, the only reason for making this nymph primary would be if she were somehow more important or noteworthy than other uses of the name; and I just don't see that where the only facts about her are that she was 1, a nymph, and 2, related to four other mythical personages who, with the exception of her father, Granicus, are almost as obscure. I think that the best solution here is to make "Pegasis" a disambiguation page, on which there would be a link to Emathion/Emalion or to Granicus, where the whole family could be discussed. Everything known about them could easily be combined into one short paragraph. P Aculeius (talk) 21:21, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Granicus is not as obscure as the other names here, but I don't know what source makes Pegasis daughter of Granicus. Quintus Smyrnaeus says, rather, that she gave birth to Emathion's son Atymnius on the banks of the Granicus (Posthomerica 3.300-302).

Atymnius and Emathion are already annotated disambiguation pages, and Pegasis could be converted into something similar. But the individual Pegasides have too little going for them to achieve notability, so I have said at the deletion discussion that my suggestion would be to redirect to Pegasides. The nymphs who are thought to have been called "Pegasis" as a proper name could quite logically be listed and footnoted there. There was never any reason that I can see to redirect to Pegasus. Andrew Dalby 14:39, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I did what I and others had suggested, incorporating information from Pegasis into Pegasides. That seems to work, anyway. Then, prodded by @InformationvsInjustice:, I tried improving the references to Greek and Latin sources on the two minor pages Atymnius and Pegasides. That put some thoughts into my mind, which I'll add to the discussion about references above. Andrew Dalby 16:40, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Historical Gundaharius

Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I'm about to start improving the page Gunther for its medieval legendary aspects, but the information on the historical figure Gundaharius is pretty bad and all derives from primary sources. I can supplement a bit with the snippits that are given in any good book about the development of the Nibelung legend, but I was wondering if any of you might be able to help improve the information on the historical person. I don't think there's a lot known, so it should be an easy enough job.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:48, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, I've come to find that if you have no idea where to start in looking for sources to improve an existing article, a good place to start is to look at linked articles & see what sources they use. For example, Burgundians list many of the sources I would suggest to beef up that section. -- llywrch (talk) 19:50, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I've rewritten the section in question if anyone more knowledgeable about late antiquity than I would like to take a look at it.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:19, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Standardisation of bibliographies and citations

Latest comment: 6 years ago45 comments9 people in discussion

I was wondering whether it could be possible for us to agree on citation and bibliographic standards for the wikiproject. While I'm aware that WP:CITEVAR says that there is no house style, I think it is still important for the consistency of the project. There is also the problem that sometimes I do not make changes to an article because I find the reference system used on this page awkward or too different from what I'm familiar with, and I don't want to break the uniformity of the bibliography or spend 30 minutes to format my references to the page standard. There was a discussion about referencing last year, but nothing conclusive was decided.

Several points to discuss:

What general reference standard should we use in the bibliography (books and articles)? There are many ways: "Smith, John (1968), A History of Rome, Oxford: University Press." or "John Smith, A History of Rome, Oxford University Press, 1968." etc. Should we add links to Google Books, the ISBN, etc.? What about articles in journals?
How to list authors in the bibliography: alphabetically or chronologically? Should we make different sections for ancient and modern authors? On some pages, the bibliography is split between "references", "further readings", or "sources", could we agree on what should be listed under each of these title? "Notes" doesn't always have the same meaning, for some it means "footnotes", for others "citations", etc.
How to short cite ancient/modern authors in the text? In some articles, you have just "Abbott, 203", in others the full reference with ISBN and link. Sometimes, ancient authors are cited through a modern edition, which makes it difficult to find which paragraph was initially quoted as few people have the same edition.

If we agree on a standardised system, then I think it would be useful to have a bibliography tab on the wikiproject's page, with a list of all the books quoted, ancient and modern, arranged in the agreed order, as well as a short citation model for each entry. Therefore we could just copy-paste the reference without having to look for an ISBN or trying to find that link we saw somewhere once. There would also be a request system, for users who don't know how to cite complicated sources, such as a German collaborative work of 50 authors in 80 volumes over a century. That would be a huge time saver when implementing a biblio. References for existing articles could be updated when upgraded to good and feature status.T8612 (talk) 13:02, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I doubt you're ever going to get all of the authors in a project to agree on a single set of protocols for citations and bibliographies, because each of us has our own preferences, and reasons for believing that those preferences are better for the articles we're working on. I doubt most of us would want to have those preferences overridden by a vague notion of consensus that satisfies no-one in particular. My advice would be, if an article has an established and logical format, and you're only making minor changes, follow the format it uses. If you're making large-scale revisions to the article, or the citations and bibliography are a mess, then go ahead and use the style you find most useful, as long as other readers can be expected to understand it. I could write an essay on this, but I have no desire to inflict that on you or any of my other friends in this project. Let's just say that we've gotten fairly good at not bumping heads whenever we have different notions of what makes the most sense, and I really don't want to create more opportunities for conflict. P Aculeius (talk) 14:12, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree completely with P Aculeius, here. Paul August ☎ 17:04, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Me too. I have my own ways of doing things, and would not like to change. Many articles also fall under other wikiprojects - Visual Arts in my case - & it wouldn't do to have clashes of project-imposed styles. MOS:FURTHER (and Wikipedia:Further reading) sets out what should go in that, and that at least should be consistently followed - not works referenced in the text, and not the remainder of a full bibliography. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Makes sense, although I regret that Wikipedia didn't choose a standard from the beginning as I think it hurts its coherence. I first thought about this when reading the article on the Roman Republic, as there are several different citation systems in the references.T8612 (talk) 00:43, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I guess I should comment on your individual ideas, apart from a general aversion to standardization. Go ahead and link to on-line copies if you think people might want to consult the original text, and can be expected to find it for a long period of time. Google Books can be iffy on this depending on the book and type of digitization, so I don't usually link to that unless the work is public-domain and not likely to disappear. Good tool to find text, but not really something to link to in most cases, since the text may not be available to all readers or on a permanent basis. I don't see much benefit to including ISBN. Alphabetical listing would make sense if all the sources are somewhat contemporary, but when I have authors from the late Roman Republic down to modern times, I prefer a chronological listing (mostly by death date of author, if the year of publication isn't available). We could try to separate historical and contemporary authors, but I really don't like doing that for a variety of reasons. I always cite ancient authors by their own books and chapters, when I have them. If you cite by page number of an ancient work with many modern editions, indicate which edition/translation you're citing to (i.e. "ed. Orelli", "Selincourt, trans." or something like that). P Aculeius (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Including ISBN is useful for WikiData and also allows readers to add the books/articles to bibliographic software quickly, so I'd encourage editors to include them, if they have the numbers to hand. Furius (talk) 20:38, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

In fact, I mentioned Google Books because there are such links on Cleopatra's article, where you can see that the ordering References(notes/citations/cited in text(online sources/printed sources))/further reading/external links, is not easy to understand. Adding a source on this page is also painstakingly long.T8612 (talk) 00:25, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @T8612: for bringing this up and thanks for everyone's comments! I have had the same experiences regards the referencing style of individual articles' as a barrier to my intended edits.

I love the idea of creating a project bibliography featuring only the most commonly used primary sources, i.e.: Plutarch's Lives, and perhaps modern sources, i.e.: Cornell's The Beginnings of Rome. Could we create templates for each? Even if we can't agree on a citation format, we could still offer them to editors as a suggestion.

WP:CITEVAR does not preclude making changes to existing articles in any and all cases. At a minimum, we could undertake to identify articles with inconsistent styles and address those. Where articles do have a consistent style, could we add a tag that informs would-be editors when they go to make a change? Something akin to a hatnote? It could say something like "This article uses the blankety-blank style of citations, please use template here..." Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 01:22, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

There are various such notices, visible in edit mode only. I don't know how much notice people take. Per WP:CITEVAR a change in style should be raised on talk first - most of the time no one will object, if only because the original editors are no longer around. Changes to change stray refs to an "established" style for the article do not need this, in theory, but it may sometimes be wise. Johnbod (talk) 02:26, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps restricting the standardisation to ancient Greek and Roman authors would be more realistic, and in line with the wikiproject.T8612 (talk) 18:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

That could be useful to editors on other areas (if they knew it was there). There are lots of articles where people write up a source that includes say "Pliny says...." with perhaps some ref using an abbreviated title, and aren't clear how to proceed. Johnbod (talk) 18:52, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Some thoughts.

As others have said above, I have no real issues with the citation styles other people use, as long as it is consistent & has all of the expected information. (The other day I happened on an article that offered three different versions of the same book in its bibliography If you haven't settled into a specific style, pick one of the many style guides in print to follow, such as the MLA Handbook; I follow the 6th edition. And I agree with P Aculeius that I don't see the point of linking to Google Books. I don't include ISBN numbers because I'm old enough to remember when most books didn't have them, & just never got into the habit of including that information. So it's probably a good idea to include. But some specific items related to style I do have an opinion about:

Please use inline citations, & include page numbers. There are a lot of articles written long ago where the contributor omitted these, & if I (or anyone) want to add to them, I end up needing to rewrite the whole article -- after I have found the work the article depends on
If a source is available online, do try to link to it, & a surprising number are. These include many Latin & Greek inscriptions; many Loeb Classics, now in public domain; & I added a number of websites rich with these texts to the Guides page.
If a primary source has a translation into a modern language, especially if into English, include a cite to the translation. Most of our readers do not read Greek or Latin.
I know Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a classic. But people, it was written in the late 18th century, & Classical studies has advanced a great deal since that time; only cite Gibbon if he happens to make a quotable quote on the subject, not to confirm some historical fact. Moreover, there are dozens & dozens of printings of his book out there, which means for more people than not, citing a certain version by page will be useless to most people seeking confirmation. Either simply provide the volume & chapter the passage appears in, or use J.B. Bury's edition at Wikisource (currently under transcription).
I actually tried something along the lines of creating standardized citation templates for Wikiproject Ethiopia a few years back. Since I was the only person to use them, some helpful Wikipedian nominated them for deletion, so all the work I put into it ended up wasted.
Leaving a note on the talk page when you decide to make a major change in an article -- say the citation style, or date style -- IMHO it's only polite & considerate to first put a note on the Talk page that you are going to do it. 95% of the time no one will object if you do, but if you don't you may succeed in adding that straw to the camel's back that triggers an otherwise patient Wikipedian into a meltdown that leads to their departure.
When writing an article, try to make the first couple of sentences a compressed explanation of the subject. (This is hard to do with many biographical articles on people who are notable, but not particularly famous for doing one specific thing.) This is an idea Dr. Blofeld proposed, & it makes sense to me. And for the record, few print encyclopedias do this regularly.

I've babbled enough so I'll stop here. -- llywrch (talk) 06:44, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I want to comment on citations that link to Google Books. I noticed P Aculeius's comment above: "Go ahead and link to on-line copies if you think people might want to consult the original text, and can be expected to find it for a long period of time. Google Books can be iffy on this depending on the book and type of digitization, so I don't usually link to that unless the work is public-domain and not likely to disappear. Good tool to find text, but not really something to link to in most cases, since the text may not be available to all readers or on a permanent basis."

As a prefix, P Aculeius's first clause as I quote it really surprises me, because surely there is no point in putting any citation in an encyclopedia article, ever, unless someone might want to consult the text cited. What other reason could there be? Anyway, I always link to the original text if a reliable form of it is available on line.

That aside, I fully agree with these points about Google Books, although, based on the little that I understand about Google Books, I would express the caveats somewhat differently.

Of course there's no point in a link to Google Books if no text is to be found there. On authorship, title, date and publisher, Google Books is highly unreliable. (If evidence is actually wanted on those questions, a library catalogue is likely to be best.)
If for an in-copyright book Google Books provides selected pages, and I was able to see the relevant pages this way, I normally include a link. True, those pages may not be visible to all, but then the next editor who finds the link useless can remove it.
If Google Books provides a Kindle-like view, with no proper formatting or page numbers, I don't link to it, because I don't know whether what I'm seeing reliably represents the printed book.
If Google Books (or indeed Amazon) cites an on-demand reprint of a PD book, I never cite the on-demand reprint. Who knows whether it exists? Google Books and Amazon are no evidence of that. I always prefer to cite the original edition, and I try to find an online copy to link to.

There's one more general point I'd like to feel confident about: is it true that WP:NOTBIBLIOGRAPHY? If it is true, it might partly explain why Llywerch's work on WikiProject Ethiopia (mentioned above) bit the dust. Because I thought it was true, whenever I now gather a bibliography I put it on Vicipaedia, not here. However, I've never seen a discussion of the guideline if such it is. Andrew Dalby 19:32, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Reply to Andrew Dalby: there would certainly be cases where the original text is of limited value, and many more where it isn't permanently available on Google Books. Much of what can be found there is only available in "snippet view" or not even that; you may not be able to locate the text in question, and the search feature may not find it. If the sum total of the fact cited is, "Gaius Carbunculus Minor was consul in an uncertain year between AD 206 and 217," and that's all it has to say about him, then the original text of a modern work on the Severan Dynasty may not be terribly important, and you would simply cite the source and page, without creating a link to it on Google Books; but if your fact is cited to a discussion in an old treatise on Roman inscriptions that isn't widely available and hasn't been reprinted in a century or more, but happens to be digitized on Google Books for anyone to consult, linking to the exact page or to the beginning of the book may be highly desirable. It's certainly not necessary to stop and make every citation link to every source that might be (partly) available on-line just because you can; but for some sources it's very helpful to be able to look at exactly what the author had to say about the topic, especially if his or her words might be interpreted in different ways, or what we say about them depends on the interpretation of another cited source. P Aculeius (talk) 23:15, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

By and large I agree with Llywrch's comments above. Even if we among ourselves agreed to a standard for the Project, it would need to be discussed, accepted, and somehow enforced, and I think no-one wants to spend time to do that, never mind the inevitable disputes that will follow... One area where it does make sense to standardize though is in standard reference works. I've created some relevant templates, e.g. {{Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire}}, {{Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition}}, or {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}}, not primarily because of the huge variety of citation formats I saw, but because these very often contained wrong information. Especially since most such resources slowly become digitized and available online, it will soon be easy to link to the online versions through such templates. Constantine ✍ 21:03, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@Cplakidas: nice work there. Those ought to be better known, but for various reasons/excuses Wikipedia's collection of templates is badly known & poorly indexed.

@Andrew Dalby: a desiderata would be to establish a standard that excluded Google books entirely. Something along the lines of the following:

All books published after 1970 (or the date ISBN became a widely-accepted standard), include the ISBN for all books.
All books published before 1923, in the public domain, or are published under a Creative Commons-Share alike license should be linked to a durable online copy where available. (Internet Archive & the Gutenberg Project would be good places to begin looking.)
All other books that have a printed form should be linked to the related entry at a non-commercial library site such as the British Library, Library of Congress, equivalent national library, or (if all else fails) WorldCat.

Of course getting this adopted on Wikipedia would require a consensus involving more than our WikiProject. It probably would need to go thru an RfC, which I've been getting much experience with lately. -- llywrch (talk) 21:58, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Re WP:NOTBIBLIOGRAPHY, I certainly think this is true. It's not our business, and bibliographies need to be done by those with excellent subject knowledge, and then they date pretty quickly. A growing proportion of our articles on core encyclopaedic topics have been little altered as far as the text goes in ten years or more. If I see what claims to be a bibliography on WP I don't know who created it, or on what basis. In my experience most such attempts on WP come in articles translated from German WP, where they do things differently, and so most of the entries are in German. The sources used, and a handful of the best sources not used in Further reading, is what we should do, and what you mostly see in FAs etc. I sometimes recommend the bibliography in one of the sources in a note. Johnbod (talk) 23:36, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@Cplakidas: Precisely, your templates and other similar works should go on the Wikiproject's page. It's difficult to find such things if they aren't advertised.T8612 (talk) 12:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@T8612: Possibly they could be included in the Resources section? I'll definitely create a few more (e.g. for Pauly-Wissowa and the New Pauly) rather soon, and a couple of others, like {{Cite DGRA}} can be found at Encyclopedia source templates. Constantine ✍ 13:49, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Dalby and Johnbod: the WP:NOTBIBLIOGRAPHY policy isn't really germane to this discussion. It's a part of WP:NOT, which governs the appropriateness of a given article in general, not the inclusion of a bibliography section within an article. What it says is that an article which is just a list of related things--unless that relationship itself is "culturally significant"--doesn't belong on Wikipedia. IOW, the criteria of inclusion itself must satisfy WP:NOTABILITY, etc. So a List of Governors of California belongs as a stand-alone article, because the relationship between those included (being a Governor of California) is "culturally significant". However, a stand-alone article on the topic "List of sources for the Roman Republic Wikipedia article" does not belong, because the relationship between those included in that list (their use in another Wikipedia article) is not culturally significant. Whether or not to use a bibliography section, falls more under the Manual of Style, not the core content policies.

That said, Johnbod, you make an excellent point about maintenance. Having a references section AND a bibliography section means redundancies and extra work when changes are needed. But having a single, central bibliography on the project page (perhaps with individual templates) would not have that problem and would provide a tool to make editing and creating pages easier. And, in the long run, it should lead to greater standardization among the pages of interest to the project (apologies to @P Aculeius:). Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 07:05, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@InformationvsInjustice: It hadn't struck me (though it should have done) that the WP:NOT page applies essentially to whole articles, not to sections of articles. Thank you for clarifying. In that case it makes good sense to me to build up on a project page a bibliography of works that are generally useful to us, especially those that are complex and difficult to cite, so that editors can copy them as appropriate into reference sections of articles; also wherever possible to include links to online versions ... which are not always easy to find. My impression is that PD texts at archive.org (Internet Archive) get bounced to a low position on a Google search page, and PD texts at the German, French and maybe other national digitization sites may not appear on Google searches at all.

@P Aculeius: I forgot snippets. I agree, I wouldn't link to Google Books if only a snippet view is offered. That's never enough to be sure that one understands the context or the justification for a statement. Andrew Dalby 11:52, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I was talking about bibliography sections in articles. I've nothing against a central project one. Also, I normally link to a gbooks preview where available - they are especially useful for art history and archaeology, I find, not least because you get the recent stuff. Most WP biogs of classical authors have links to online texts at the bottom, which I find is usually the quickest way to reach them. The project should try to keep these maintained, and expand them where necessary. These will be more widely used than a central project list. Johnbod (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

On references to Greek and Latin sources

I tested a couple of thoughts on the minor pages Atymnius and Pegasides. Diffs will show the changes I made. I guess project members would agree (I don't feel sure that every Wikipedian agrees) that for things sourceable to Greek and Latin authors, a direct reference to the source, with an online link, is a good idea. (Quite apart from, in addition to, references to reliable secondary sources.) So, how to do it in the simplest possible style? For the test cases in the footnotes of these two pages, I decided

to link to Perseus if I could find text and translation in parallel at Perseus. [Aside: I didn't grow up with Perseus, but I now at last fully understand what they mean by "focus" and "load". I wish I could feel confident that non-classicists visiting such a page for the first time would understand it too.]
second choice, to link to a Loeb text at archive.org if there is one. Disadvantage to readers: no online links to further information, which Perseus has in spadefuls. But Loebs are widely regarded, for better or worse, as a standard reference, and they always give text and translation in parallel.
If neither is available, I suppose one would link to any English translation one could find: or one might link to the Loeb website for their recent editions, but that requires subscription access.
In one remaining case on those pages, where there is surely no English translation available, the scholia to Apollonius Rhodius, I linked to a Greek text. Is that worth doing at all? It might help somebody.

I made sure that authors had a bluelink to the author article. There (or in an article about the specific work) we would want to find links to further useful texts, translations etc., but, in a footnote, I said to myself, one chosen link should be enough. For this particular task I did not see much value in creating templates: if a citation is as brief as Ovid, Heroides 5.3, plus a precise link, how would a template help? But it may be that a project page containing a list of classical sources, with online links to the handiest online text and translation in each case, could be useful. It's a bit of a struggle to find them sometimes.

I'm probably repeating things that others have already been doing for years. Sorry. I certainly noticed how long it takes, especially if the existing references are slightly wrong or ambiguous ... Andrew Dalby 16:40, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Dalby: Kudos on the work! Templates would help because (presumably) they would get used and that should lead to more standardization. Assuming one wants standardization. :-)

It seems to me that once we create a single template for one of the works that is found in Perseus, it would be easy to create others, using it as a, well, as a template.

Also, what is the opposition to using Google books? I use it often in my own searches and link to it when editing. Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 05:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Andrew, I'm not clear on what the point of what you have been doing is. Adding links to the text of primary sources? Definitely a good thing, & I am very grateful for discovering templates that allow me to link to the collection of Latin inscriptions at Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss / Slaby. (As an example of this, have a look at the second footnote of an article I wrote today, Publius Cluvius Maximus Paullinus.) Attempting to tie into the incipient networks that scholars at Perseus & elsewhere are creating? It depends on the network. (A few weeks ago I closed an RfC concerning using Wikidata in Infoboxes, where it was clear that a large group of Wikipedians want nothing to do with Wikidata. At all.) I think we all would enjoy having Wikipedia articles serving, in part, as entry pages to an open network of glosses, expert opinions, & both further material & readings -- although I remember Jimmy Wales stating years ago that he wanted articles to stand alone without any connection to the rest of the Internet. Perseus presents a very powerful vision of using technology to elicit further meaning from Classical texts & materials here, but looking at some of the research projects undertaken to make this vision real (e.g., "TEI-compliant XML transcriptions", TimeML) appear too theoretical to be much use to either Wikipedians or people who use Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 06:36, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

You raise four issues, Llywrch, and I can offer answers to all four. Satisfactory answers? That's a harder question.

Should Wikipedia articles stand alone, with no onward links? I suspect Jimmy Wales may meanwhile have reconsidered his negative opinion ... For me, and I hope for others too, since "Wikipedia is not a reliable source" (another Wales dictum) its saving grace is to indicate where one looks next. OK then, for classics, Pauly-Wissowa already did that. The saving grace of Wikipedia's location and architecture and the world it lives in, in contrast e.g. with the printed volumes of PW, is that onward links are possible and easy. If it weren't so, I don't think I'd use it ...
Should we link to reliable sources full stop, or to facilities like Perseus that are bases for further research? Both, in general. The distinction becomes unclear as resources multiply that (like the Epigraphik-Datenbank that you mention) are reliable sources and bases for research at the same time. The question I set myself here (and it's exactly what I would want other opinions on) is, what to choose if trying to give one simple useful onward link from a primary source reference in a Wikipedia footnote. Maybe you think a simple text-translation would be handier than Perseus? Maybe I think so too ...
Although I saw not much use for templates in my few examples, I strongly agree that templates are useful in giving links to rich databases (e.g. your example) of which there are now so many.
Will we get all Wikipedians to agree? No, never. (On Vicipaedia, incidentally, we use infoboxes fed from Wikidata, but, because Wikidata's reliability is not the same as ours, we credit Wikidata at the top of the infobox and use the shadowbox format to mark it off from our own material. As on some other language Wikipedias, readers are enabled to go and correct faults in Wikidata, but heaven knows if any ever do.) Andrew Dalby 09:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Responding to @Andrew Dalby: points in order, except for #3 (since I can't say much more than "I agree with you agreeing with me" ;-):

1. My point here concerns an issue about Wikipedia I suspect few Wikipedians have seriously thought about (such as Jimmy Wales): should Wikipedia aim to contain all information (a "universal & complete encyclopedia" is a concept first raised in the 17th century), or should Wikipedia aim at being an introduction to all information? The first is, by any measure, an impossible goal to reach. Even if Wikipedia were written by experts, knowledge constantly increases & eventually renders any encyclopedia obsolete. The example of Pauly-Wissowa demonstrates that; while that monumental reference work does have an article about every conceivable topic relating to Classical studies, many of them are out of date. On the other hand, being an introduction to knowledge, while difficult in itself, is an attainable goal.

2. My point wasn't that we should not link to facilities like Perseus (& for the record, I have no problem with preferring a link to Perseus to a link to an online copy of a source), but that we shouldn't link to other databases unless it is clearly useful to our readers. Looking at some of the projects listed at the URL I added above, I find they seem unhelpful to what we are doing here (for example, maybe I lack intelligence & imagination, but I don't see how a treebank would be useful to a Wikipedia article on most Latin works), & frankly some seem to be exercises in technofetishism. Maybe my concerns are best expressed as "online databases for the classics can be useful, but they need to be considered individually."

4. My point about Wikidata is that integrating these resources need to be done with intelligence & tact. One reason there is so much resistance to Wikidata is that it has been forced upon Wikipedians with so little sensitivity by the Foundation. (The PTB at the Foundation seem to lack any awareness that they need to work with the project communities, rather than expect them to accept any & all changes without complaint, no matter how inconvenient or damaging these changes may be.) And another point -- which ties into #2 -- is that we need some guarantee that a given external database will be around for a while & maintained. For example, I was repeatedly disappointed when I would find a project mentioned on the Perseus site that piqued my curiosity, click on the link, only to find the page or site had vanished. And I can mention a few more websites which were quite valuable when I first found them, but over time either degraded from lack of maintenance or simply vanished. -- llywrch (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Most digital humanities projects now are pretty thoroughly interlinked to one another, to perseus, to wikidata, and to wikipedia, so I'm not sure about the degree to which we actually need to worry about engaging with these projects; in most cases, if a wiki page is relevant then the projects themselves will do the work of linking in. Furius (talk) 00:42, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

True. Andrew Dalby 17:58, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

@InformationvsInjustice: Google Books is often useful. For full texts of PD material, it's sometimes the only available source. For recent publications, I am amazed how often it happens that Google Books lets me read the very pages that I needed to read to answer my question. (Query: is it chance, or do they tailor their page selection to my need? I don't know.) So I wouldn't exclude Google Books altogether, as I think Llywrch suggested, far above. Andrew Dalby 11:26, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Great work. I made some time ago a list of ancient authors (mostly Latin) in a sandbox here. It can be a good way to start a list of works/authors.

I usually prefer Attalus over Perseus, as it is way easier to use (and Wikipedia is aimed at the general public), but can go with Perseus.T8612 (talk) 15:56, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

As it happens, all of the entries in this list are from bibliographies I've added to Roman gens and biographical articles (although many of the modern sources were originally cited in other formats by other editors, and regularized by me). This is a small selection of all the bibliographic sources I've collected in the course of writing these articles, but I've never placed the whole list on Wikipedia before. Your sandbox page suggests that perhaps it would be useful if I did. Would you like me to upload the whole list (bearing in mind that I do add and modify entries from time to time)?

Yes, that would be really useful.T8612 (talk) 22:12, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps you all know this, but I recently found a load of online translations on the site of Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies. On Creative Commons License 3.0.. Also many articles, papers and books. All Greek of course. For example large parts of Pausanias, in a new translation by their Gregory Nagy. Johnbod (talk) 14:28, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

@Johnbod: & everyone, I added a section to Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Guides listing online collections of primary texts like that for everyone to use. Feel free to add resources like the one at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies to it. (BTW, I am still looking for a usable database of inscriptions in Greek. I found one, but I'm still wrestling with how to find specific inscriptions in it.) -- llywrch (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

@Llywrch: The Packard Humanities Institute's Searchable Greek Inscriptions. Paul August ☎ 19:03, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this will really be useful to anyone, but here's a link to the bibliographic sources in my list. A few of these are probably outdated or need additional information, as I started the list of sources I'd been using or citing to before I actually adopted bibliographic format. I hope that the bibliographic format I use is regular enough to be useful. I've omitted a few sources that I didn't expect to use repeatedly (they're not in the original list, so I couldn't easily add them here), and included some that I may only have cited to once, but thought were useful to keep track of. This is especially true with the oldest sources, since citing them correctly can be a pain, but they're sometimes mentioned in reference works, so it's a good idea to keep a record of them.

Some sources are listed by title, some by author, depending on how they were usually cited when I added the entry (in a few cases I've moved them since then). A few have notes explaining alternate titles or important older editions. Most of the abbreviated titles are found in the Clauss-Slaby Databank, where I go to find inscriptions. Some of these seem to be standard inscriptions, i.e. CIL or PIR, but others may not be widely used outside of the C-S Databank, so I often cite these by title rather than abbreviation, although I may use the abbreviations in this list. I haven't usually included external links in these, except for CIL and AE citation templates under "Fasti", since editors may or may not want these in the bibliography, or might want to link to specific pages, rather than the beginnings of works (or vice versa), and different editions and formats are available for many of them. P Aculeius (talk) 13:33, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Inspired by Llywrch, who boldly corrected my translation of a title (can't really argue with the change) in the modern section, I started editing the list to explain and reformat my notes so they'd be useful to other editors, and make a few adjustments/minor additions. Only done the ancient sources so far, but I'll go over the modern ones when I have time. Note that these are just the sources I've used (and not quite all of them), not an exhaustive list of extant works by each author. P Aculeius (talk) 00:35, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, this is great work and exactly what I had in mind. It should go on the wikiproject page.T8612 (talk) 09:35, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

P Aculeius's reasons for not including external links in this list (with the exceptions noted) are sensible of course, but I still wonder whether it might be useful, if the list is copied to a project page, to insert external links to a useful text and/or a useful translation of the ancient sources. True, editors using the list should often preferably link to a specific book/section or page, but a link to a complete text would get them started. If others think it would be a good idea I could add some links of that kind. Andrew Dalby 15:39, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I think such links would be useful. By the way for what it's worth here is a link to my User:Paul August/Bibliography. Paul August ☎ 16:14, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

So, could we create templates based on P Aculeius' entries that could be cut-and-pasted by an editor, who would only have to ad the pinpoint citation? Also, could we create a stand-alone project page of external links? and put a static link to that page into the templates? A single page, with, for instance, a link for a given work on Perseus, Lacus Curtius, etc. Instead of each article containing its own "external links", section, it could contain a link to the project page. It seems like there should be a way to index fo different topics for ease of both readers and editors. Since I've never created a template, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here. Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 20:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Honestly, while I'd be flattered if anyone wanted to use my source citations, I worry that making templates based on them (or anyone else's) would be a small step away from prescribing the format that editors are expected to use in this project. After all, templates take up a lot less space on a page than the full text of a citation. But each editor is entitled to use their own format, and many of us are attached to one or the other. Do we really want to risk that? I suppose perhaps if we added templates/links to a project page, we could specifically state that no particular format is mandated, and that editors aren't required to use them. But I could see that kind of policy changing quickly. I'd like to hear what other members of the project think before I start making templates (although I think making them could be fun). P Aculeius (talk) 21:22, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Even if this standardisation did eventuate, I don't see why it would be such a bad thing? Furius (talk) 00:35, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

The making of templates and the adding of links to useful editions/translations are separate things, though both are potentially useful, and they could be combined by a really assiduous templateer. I tend to go the shortest way: so if P Aculeius moves or copies his bibliography to a project page, I will start adding links to the handiest editions/translations of classical sources. If anyone else wants to incorporate them into templates, that's fine. Andrew Dalby 17:48, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to have "Etruscan" redirect to Etruscan civilization

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

... instead of going to a disam page. Please comment at Talk:Etruscan. This follows a similar agreed move of Minoan. Johnbod (talk) 21:55, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

"Regnal names" revisited

Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

The "Regnal names" "Imperator Caesar Augustus" have been re-added to the infoboxes of all Roman emperors. Should this be listed in every infobox as the name of the emperors in question? Until earlier this year, this wasn't done. I believe we talked about this at the time, but it's not clear whether we reached a conclusion about adding every imperial title to someone's name in the infoboxes. "Regnal name" doesn't even seem to be a thing in the infoboxes of other monarchs; I checked English, Swedish, French, and ancient Greek rulers (including the Ptolemaic dynasty) for comparison. Henry VIII's infobox doesn't have "Regnal name: Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head". So why do we need this heading for all Roman emperors? P Aculeius (talk) 12:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I do think it's interesting to have the full official name of monarchs/emperors somewhere. It is especially relevant in the case of Roman emperors as their current names are often very different from their official names during their reign (Caligula or Caracalla for example). However I think it would be better to put them in the article (rather than in the infobox) as the regnal names can be long, and often changed. Commodus' infobox is a bit awkward because of this.T8612 (talk) 08:25, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

The thing here is, at the time, there wasn't a clear distinction between "names" and "titles". But while the early emperors treated "Imperator" as a name, and "Augustus" and "Caesar" began as surnames, they quickly became rather pro forma titles, and today we don't think of them as part of the name at all, except in the case of Augustus himself. So while it's useful to list titles in infoboxes, I don't see the point in having a separate heading in which they just get tacked on to everybody's name, especially when, as in the case of all the later emperors, the name itself doesn't even change upon assuming the "throne" (a figure of speech in the case of Roman emperors). P Aculeius (talk) 13:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

"Hortensius" Peer-Review request

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

If anybody is interested, I've requested a peer-review for Cicero's Hortensius. All comments are greatly appreciated!--Gen. Quon (Talk) 15:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

ITALICTITLE for Latin/Greek terms (especially occupations)?

Latest comment: 6 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Articles with italictitle as of this writing: Rationalis, Cursus publicus, Cursus honorum, Princeps senatus, Praetor, Magister militum, Basileus.

Articles with plain titles as of this writing: A rationibus, Cursus (classical), Equites, Magister equitum, Roman censor, Aedile, Quaestor, Stratopedarches, Stratelates, Kommerkiarios, Archon, Basilinna.

Personally I prefer the plain titles, and here's why. Assume that the italicization should be carried over to "See also" sections; assume that most people associate italics with proper nouns (e.g. names of books). Then it is less confusing to see

Conflict over citation format in Germania Superior

Latest comment: 6 years ago16 comments6 people in discussion

Sorry to bother you over what should be a trivial matter, but I guess I'm letting the small stuff a good Wikipedian should ignore annoy me.

I added a bunch of names with a reliable source to the list of governors in this article & provided a reference for the material in the manner I usually do. However, another Wikipedian for reasons I still don't understand, reformatted them in a peculiar manner. Okay, there are many other things needing attention on Wikipedia, this is not the most important issue out there, etc., so I let this slide for a year or so. Over a year later I happened to need to update this table, & it was clear that the peculiar manner this Wikipedian insisted on was too complex to maintain. This annoyed me, so after some thought I yielded to temptation & a little more than a week ago I reverted his edits back to the style I use. (Which, BTW, removed about 5,332 bytes of duplicate information.) Then today I found he reverted me back.

Now in 15+ years editing Wikipedia, I've watched some very valuable contributors suffer a meltdown over trivial matters, & end up leaving the project under a clous. It's almost as if a disagreement over whether to use AD/BC vs. CE/BCE style (or something even more trivial -- see WP:LAME for examples) is the last straw & provides an excuse for veteran Wikipedians release pent-up frustration & rage. But in this case I am really tempted to get into an edit war over this because this style of referencing appears so stupid & ill-thought-out to me that I shouldn't let it stand. So can I ask for some reasoned, third-party input on this trivial matter before I do something inexcusably stupid & get myself banned? (Or, maybe even worse, find all of the other lists I have been working on altered into this convoluted & wasteful format because it makes sense to everyone but me?) -- llywrch (talk) 19:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

"Suffering a meltdown over trivial matters...", "pent-up frustration & rage", "tempted to get into an edit war", "so stupid & ill-thought-out": oh my, all that? This appears to be a simple content dispute over the manner of footnoting. Have you tried discussing this at Talk:Germania Superior? That would certainly be the first place to start. If you can assume good faith on the part of the other editor and discuss it with them, perhaps they will explain their rationale and you can reach some understanding about how to proceed. That is the first step, and if that doesn't work, there are other routes you may take in dispute resolution. As a 15+ senior editor, it's somewhat puzzling you didn't start with that. Also, please keep the fourth pillar in mind when dealing with other editors; they are probably here to improve the encyclopedia, just like you. Mathglot (talk) 20:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

The other editor being you. Llywrch has a point about this being an extremely odd and potentially inconvenient format for footnoting, and there was nothing wrong with his original citation style. I've found him to be quite reasonable even when we disagree. However, the notes you added are relevant and useful, although perhaps not in the table format for this article. May I suggest starting a separate article for "Governors of Germania Superior" or "Roman governors of Germania Superior", in which you can treat each governor separately, providing as much detail and as many notes as the supporting materials may justify? Then the original list in the Germania Superior article can be pared back a little to its original format, with any emendations that Llywrch can extract based on your additions/the new article. Other than the footnotes and one or two minor differences, the list is the same except that you've excluded Pomponius Secundus and given an alternative, shorter version of the name of a polyonymous governor. Since Llywrch has spent a great deal of time documenting Roman consuls, including both of the aforementioned, I believe, he's probably got the names and identifications right. But splitting off the additional notes and information into an article dedicated to the governors seems like a logical way to resolve this. P Aculeius (talk) 22:08, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, it is. First: this discussion belongs at Talk:Germania Superior, not here. That said, the original footnote style fails the verifiability policy, which states: "In Wikipedia, verifiability means that other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source," and goes on to say, "Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)." WP:Citing sources shows how to do this. In the previous version of the article, the article was subject to having the {{Page numbers improve}} citation maintenance template added to it.

The original style uses page ranges, with caveats stated such as "Unless otherwise noted, governors from 69 to 112 are taken from... [pages] 281–362." If you have the original source reference in front of you, you will immediately see why this fails verifiability: the complexity of the work and the interconnecting footnotes make tracking down facts about individual governors a painstaking effort, sometimes even when the exact page is known. When the exact page is not known, an eighty-page range in an abstruse, highly cross-footnoted text, is all but an impenetrable thicket for verifying a name or date, even when you know German. To fulfill verifiability requirements, I located and documented the exact page of each governor and cited them.

In a first attempt, I had a {{cite book}} per governor (sometimes two, as they would appear in two sections of the book). This solved the verifiability issue, however at the cost of an ugly rendered page cluttered with citations, and since few readers will likely follow these notes, it merely served to interrupt the flow of running text and make for a difficult reading expereince. I opted for using bundled citations which are designed for cases like this, preserving the same number of total footnotes as in the original version, but bundling the new information so that each governor is now fully documented and verifiable with a page reference, and sometimes additional notes or coverage from the original work, using the exact same rendered citation number as before, and in the same location.

This seems like the best compromise to me between readability of the passage, and verifiability of the information. However if there is strong objection to bundling, then I don't object to someone implementing a citation-per-governor version, as in my first attempt (not saved in history), as long as page numbers per governor are preserved in individual {{cite book}} templates. Another approach would be to use {{rp}}. Both alternatives have the disadvantage of increasing citation clutter, as well as some difficulty of coding the additional source information, although in the case of {{cite book}} at least, the quote param could be pressed into service for this, although not with {{rp}}. Mathglot (talk) 00:18, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Postscript to Llywrch: your long-standing and ongoing efforts in this area are much appreciated; I hope you have garnered some barnstars or other words of acclaim in consequence. Just please remember to accord all users the same good faith they offer you, and if you feel a tinge of ownership creeping in causing undue wikistress, maybe consider a break or a change of focus. Thanks for all you do! Regards, Mathglot (talk) 00:34, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

I disagree that the lack of specific page numbers for each entry somehow makes the information unverifiable. That's not what the policy says. While specific pagination can be useful, it's not indispensable, and the lack of it doesn't render the list unverifiable, or require the addition of tags. Particularly if it summarizes a list of individuals profiled in separate, linked articles, or a main article that discusses them all briefly. If someone has the book in question to refer to, it should be relatively easy to check the index, or simply flip through the pages from one governor to the next. But even if you wanted to add specific pagination to individual entries, or groups of entries, it would be less obtrusive to do so without the detailed notes that you added; which again, would be more suitable in a separate article on the topic. There's nothing wrong with having a short list here, with names and dates, as well as a longer article focusing on all of the governors, but with limited information on the province, and then separate articles on those governors about whom enough is known to justify stand-alone articles. And I think following that approach will lead to the fairest and most agreeable solution. P Aculeius (talk) 03:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Verifiability delayed, is verifiability denied. You might disagree, and perhaps you are right, but your conjecture that "it should be relatively easy to check..." is not what I experienced, and I wonder if you would change your opinion if you had the reference in question in your hands. The main value-added I felt I was bringing to the table in my edits was not the "relevant and useful added notes" (thank you for that, all the same) but the page numbers, which felt like a sleuthing expedition to find them, and which was designed to avoid anyone else having to repeat that effort. My opinion is that absent the page numbers, no one will attempt to verify any of the content, or if they do attempt it, they will give up. Though you're right that the policy does not require page numbers in all cases, it is my contention that in this case, for this reference, omitting the page numbers fails the verifiability policy on citation precision: Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate). I have no objection to spinning off the governors into a longer list article, or perhaps separate articles per governor where warranted, and if you want to omit the "relevant and useful added notes" I'd be sorry, but wouldn't object. But I do object to omitting the page numbers per governor, absent some policy-based reference that supports this. If you, or Llywrch, or somebody else objects to the style of presenting the page numbers, that's a problem that can be resolved through compromise, and I've already offered one compromise I consider acceptable, though not optimal, for consideration. I'm open to others. Mathglot (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

If there is no objection, I'd like to move this discussion to Talk:Germania Superior, leaving breadcrumbs from here. Once it becomes archived, it will still be easily findable there, but few will think to look in archives here. Mathglot (talk) 00:42, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure that you're right about nobody objecting to pagination. If that had been all this was, I doubt anyone would have been frustrated by your edits. The issue was the extent of edits with substantial footnotes that made the section much more cumbersome, and discarded the work that another experienced editor had done to clean it up. Complaining about a lack of specific pagination for each entry as a violation of policy, making the subject unverifiable, and justifying all of the other changes, was very aggressive and not really on point. Resolving the dispute would be as simple as acknowledging the hard work and valid points made by the other editor, and working collaboratively toward a solution that satisfies everyone. The above reply is simply defiant. Nobody's telling you that your information or notes are useless or need to be deleted. Just that this article may not be the best place for that level of detail. It wouldn't take more than a few minutes to start a new article that could contain all of the details you have now, and leave room for more in future. That's a win-win for everyone. Let's just try to get along, please. There are much more stressful situations than this to deal with in Wikipedia. P Aculeius (talk) 00:48, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Defiant? Are we even looking at the same thing? I've already said I agree with your idea of moving all of the additional information and detail to another article, or articles. I've already acknowledged the hard work and valid points of the other editor, I'm already working collaboratively by having offered a solution that dispenses with all of the additional detail you want to separate while keeping pagination, and I have already said I am open to other compromises as well. I agree with your win-win solution, and I agree with getting along. I don't know what else to add; I can't understand your tone, nor do I see what's so frustrating about this. Have you never had a content disagreement before? I edit in some controversial areas of the encyclopedia, including more than one that are subject to WP:AC/DS and I have never encountered a serious problem there, so this issue seems to be pretty small potatoes to me indeed; whence this animus? If you can be specific in exactly what it is you want to do, especially if the solution is only a few minutes away, that would help. If you could make a specific proposal of how you'd like to move forward, I'm likely to agree with anything reasonable; so no reason to get frustrated, really. I really don't see any impasse here at all; but if you do, there's WP:3O, as well as other methods of dispute resolution available, but we seem to be separated by a feather, so it hardly seems worth it. Mathglot (talk) 02:29, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I have another proposal, which I think you'll like better. Why not simply revert to version 851884718 of 06:06 July 25, 2018? Mathglot (talk) 06:42, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Just chiming in. The new citation style is more difficult to understand. If you click some of the ref-links, like no. 5 or 6 for example, you will find a the source followed by a list of bulletins with a lot of seemingly unrelated information to the governors mentioned. For that reason I would revert the new citation style because of too much clutter (unrelated information in the citations). I'd say it's an unusual form of citation overkill. See WP:CITEKILL. In addition, the references are harder to understand and to navigate than traditional styles seen in most articles on ancient persons. SpartaN (talk) 03:34, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree with other editors that bullet-lists in references is a big no-no. I know that German classical scholars enjoy making things difficult in their works, but the problem here is that the article reproduces this complexity, instead of summarising these German works for the layman. I would much prefer separate refs for each governor (I mean each governor would have a ref to Eck and/or Alföldy), and put biographical information currently in the references after their names, as it is currently done for each Roman gens in the list of Roman gentes.T8612 (talk) 10:03, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

I think I agree with this approach: the information in the references is useful, but the bullet point lists within the refs are not the best way of presenting it (and also will make it harder to add any new information). A small caveat, though: I think a tabular presentation of the list might be better than notes (perhaps something like List of mayors of Detroit). Furius (talk) 11:25, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

I've been sitting on the sidelines, lurking & reading, but now it's likely time for me to intervene.

First, Mathglot, when I made my comments -- "Suffering a meltdown over trivial matters...", "pent-up frustration & rage", "tempted to get into an edit war", "so stupid & ill-thought-out" -- I was thinking more of myself than anyone else. Despite what P Aculeius kindly wrote about me, I know I have a temper & sometime I can lose it very quickly. Hence I sought a third opinion here, knowing that consensus could easily be against me.

It appears that Mathglot's proposal in their post dated 06:42, 11 August 2018 has been embraced by a consensus here -- & is what I wanted. So if someone wants to make that change, that would be good.

A last point. Addressing Furius's proposal, I think all the tables of officials should/will eventually be converted to the format they describe. It would allow adding relevant information such as date of the governor's consulship (for those offices which holding the fasces is a requirement), & a space for notes. It may even conform to the MoS, for those who care about such things. The current form of these lists is simply evidence that putting the information into Wikipedia quickly took priority over making it look pretty. -- llywrch (talk) 06:24, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Llywrch, Thanks for de-lurking and offering your thoughts. Also wanted to thank previous commenters, in particular T8612, SpartaN and Furius. I largely agree with them; but before I get into the areas of agreement, I have one slight bone to pick: bullet-lists in references are not automatically "a big no-no"; there is no policy or guideline that says anything like this; in fact, there is a guideline that says the opposite. Wikipedia:Citing sources in the section on #Bundling citations explains the advantages in some cases of grouping citations into one footnote, and the proper use of bullet lists in implementing this. I judged that the Germania Superior article would benefit from this type of bundled footnoting, with all four of the advantages listed at the guideline being applicable in this case.

However, others are not in agreement with this, and the consensus appears to be that this method is not helpful here, and might be confusing. That being the case, I'm in agreement with T8612's suggestion of separate refs for each governor. This preserves the main issue of Verifiability that I originally attempted to address in my edit. If his suggestion is amenable to all, and my reading of the above is that it is, then I think we have the solution. Btw: I also like Furius's proposal of a tabular format, but I think any format which preserves verifiability precision is fine. Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Lucumone

Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Does anyone feel like translating Lucumone, a two-line article, from Gibberish into English? (I'd have to do the research. It'd be easier for someone who already knows the subject.} Thanks, Narky Blert (talk) 10:26, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Found a better source, Heurgon, and revised the article. Not sure if the part cited to the architectural source is accurate, but Heurgon doesn't seem to address it, so for now I've edited it to make it more readable. Article needs to be moved to the correct singular title, "lucumo" over a redirect, but I couldn't do it, so I've posted under "uncontroversial technical requests". P Aculeius (talk) 14:47, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Battle of Cannae

Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I have nominated Battle of Cannae for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. DrKay (talk) 17:24, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Yow. This article does need work, although some of the assumptions in the nomination are questionable. (For example, which would you rather rely on as being closer to the truth: the statement of a primary source, or a paraphrase of this primary source in a secondary one?) And I'm wondering if all of its problems could be fixed in two weeks. In any case, it would be a shame if the article on one of the most famous battles of antiquity were to lose FA status. -- llywrch (talk) 23:02, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Likewise, I don't see the problem with using primary sources; Livy and Polybius represent everything we know on the battle (and the Second Punic War). For the same reason, there is generally no need to mention page numbers when citing ancient sources (the tome and paragraph are enough).T8612 (talk) 00:00, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

The page numbers aren't a problem on the primary sources. It's some of the secondary sources where they're missing. DrKay (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Vital articles

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have made some suggestions in the list of Level-4 articles regarding Ancient History. Can you guys take a look?T8612 (talk) 10:52, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

A link to a DAB page

Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Dominic Rathbone links to the DAB page Greek and Roman Egypt. Does anyone here know his area of interest? Thanks in advance. Narky Blert (talk) 11:14, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Surely the most practical solution, since there only seem to be three topics listed—one of which seems to be the main article for "Greek Egypt", one of which covers "Roman Egypt", and one of which is for "Post-Roman Egypt"—is to split the link between the first two articles, as both seem applicable given both the plain language and the list of publications at the bottom. Done, unless someone thinks of a better solution. P Aculeius (talk) 11:47, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

I'd have said his focus is Roman. To do Roman Egypt you have to know about what went before, and you have to do Greek, and he does. But P Aculeius's solution is ideal. Andrew Dalby 12:08, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I was thinking that way, but it's good to have confirmation. Narky Blert (talk) 08:05, 11 September 2018 (UTC)