Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Marcian/archive1

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

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 9 March 2019 [1].

Marcian[edit]

Nominator(s): Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:03, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about an Eastern Roman Emperor who reigned for only seven years, yet brought about a fundamental reshaping of Eastern Roman policy, and increased the divide between the Western and Eastern Empire. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:03, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • An interesting and enjoyable read; however, I mainly came here to suggest you rework the introduction, as the current version repeats itself several times. Thank you for bringing the article up to this level, however! -- NoCOBOL (talk) 04:23, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by KJP1[edit]

Interesting and well-researched. But it really does need a copy edit. The prose issues aren't confined to the lead - there are instances throughout of repeated words/phrases, misaligned sentence structures, missing words etc. Some examples from the first four para.s below:

  • "where was cared for by Tatianus" - missing word
  • "To the north, the Huns, who had customarily attacked the Eastern Empire whenever their armies were preoccupied" - EE is singluar
    Here the reason armies is plural is not because of the Eastern Empire, but because unified army structure didn't yet exist; much like the various "armies" of the Civil War, multiple armies did actually exist.
  • "Theodosius agreed to the demands, to pay 350 pounds (160 kg) of gold every year" - a single demand
  • "In 434, the Eastern Roman armies still campaigning against the Vandals in Africa, having faced initial defeats and the withdrawal of a large number of Western Roman soldiers" - missing a verb
  • "Sending away such a large amount of the Eastern Roman forces" - "such a large amount" doesn't work
  • "recalling Aspar back to Constantinople" - unnecessary "back"
  • "who agreed to marry Marcian, although she kept her vow of virginity, which she had taken in 413, aged 14, during her three years of marriage to Marcian" - this appears to look both ahead and back, making a confusing construction.
  • "the Comes et Magister Utriusque Militiae (supreme commander) of the of the Western Roman Empire" - duplicated "of the"
  • "This marked the official abandonment of a rigid Danube barrier, manned by Roman Laeti, replaced by barbarian foederati" - can't work out what the last clause is trying to do
  • "This network of subject peoples, which were overall reliable, and overall manageable" - "peoples which", and the next two clauses read oddly.

I see the suggestion of a GoCE check was made at the A-class review but I don't think it was taken up. In my view, the prose doesn't currently meet 1a. KJP1 (talk) 09:14, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • @KJP1: I've fixed the examples you've given and had a run through the article to fix mistakes, hopefully I've caught most of them. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 23:50, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I put the FAC on my watchlist so that I could do a prose review if I had time to get around to it – prose reviews are a lighter workload to source reviews, and tend to refine my own writing. The thing about prose is that fixing mistakes is the simplest part of writing. The workload post-research is dominated by focusing in on improving prose – I do two/three full copy-edits after I have the base article ready. As an example, the paragraph in Buildings – I copy-edit from the bottom up, so it's the first section I looked at – doesn't contain any obvious errors, but it has room for improvement. The primary change I'd recommend in the section is cutting down on redundant/unnecessary wording; e.g. The Column of Marcian was dedicated to Marcian <- two instances of Marcian in the fist clause of the sentence (refer below proposal). There's a further four within the paragraph. You also have [i]t still stands in modern Istanbul <- "still" and "modern" are unnecessary here, "stands" is in present tense and thus implies currency (as in current, not as in money).
    The Column of Marcian was dedicated to Marcian, built by the praefectus urbi Tatianus, sometime between 450 and 452 -> The ''praefectus urbi'' [[Tatianus]] [had/built/raised] a [[Column of Marcian|column]] dedicated to Marcian, sometime between 450 and 452 <- the main point here is that you can cut the redundancy by using a piped redirect. Alternatively, <nowkiki>The praefectus urbi Tatianus [dedicated/commemorated] the Column of Marcian, sometime between 450 and 452 <- the name of the column lets the reader know to whom the column was built in honour of, so stating the obvious – Column of Marcian, dedicated to Marcian – is unnecessary. Mr rnddude (talk) 01:02, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Image review[edit]

Commencing now. Kees08 (Talk) 07:17, 4 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That should be all. Thanks. Kees08 (Talk) 07:29, 4 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kees08: Done. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:12, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like File:20111224 Flavius Marcianus Augustus Column Fatih Istanbul Turkey.jpg needs a US-PD tag Kees08 (Talk) 04:20, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kees08: done. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 21:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support by Gog the Mild[edit]

Disclosure: I reviewed this article for ACR.

I have made a few small edits which you will want to check.

  • "for long enough that the invasion force could secure a secure foothold in Africa" "secure" twice in three words.
  • "the empire was met with its first succession crisis in 60 years" "was met with" is a bit archaic, could you reword?
  • "in an attempt to preserve the purity of the senatorial class" It is not clear if this is Constantine's attempt, or Marcian's.
  • "There is some circumstantial and direct evidence that Marcian was planning on invading the Vandals" You go on to list the circumstantial evidence; what is the direct evidence?
    Took the direct and circumstantial from source; the direct being Theodorus Lector saying it was so. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 21:34, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fair enough.
  • "C. E. Stevens interprets that it only reflects amicable meeting of diplomats" is not grammatical. Could you rephrase?

Gog the Mild (talk) 22:26, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, but skimming the sources I note that the use of apostrophes in ISBNs is inconsistent. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:19, 7 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Gog the Mild: Fixed. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:02, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jens Lallensack[edit]

Interesting article, but unfortunately quite some prose issues. I would suggest to request a good copy edit (maybe from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors, although this may not be possible within the time frame of this FAC). Examples below (I did not read everything very carefully yet):

  • saying he may grant gifts if Attila was friendly – "friendly" seems to be an unfortunate word choice. Is this precisely what is meant? I would have expected something like "remained peaceful".
  • but if he attempted to raid the Eastern Roman Emperor – do you mean "empire"?
  • This battle involved around 100,000 men total, and involved massive losses on both sides. – I would replace the second "involved" with "resulted in".
  • for loot and many resources. – Do we really need the "many"?
  • Despite having the rich plunder – colloquial, not precisely neutral speech?
  • Comma placement seems to be off sometimes.
  • across the Danube and inflicting a defeat upon the Huns – here we really need a date I think.
  • Furthermore, I wonder if the structure within the "Reign" part is optimal. A section "Politics" is very general (basically the whole "reign" section discusses politics), difficult to guess what to expect from that section.
    The politics contains all the known political standings, influences, and leanings of Marcian. I'd be happy to change the section name/structure if better methods and names are suggested.
  • some citation error in the sources list.
  • The part on Attila contains very little on Marcian himself. Isn't there more? If not, maybe consider shortening the actions of Attila and the Western Roman Empire somewhat, to keep the focus on Marcian. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:28, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jens Lallensack: have addressed what I could; The issue with Marcian's participation is that Attila's actions were massively consequential for the empire, and thus Marcian, but Marcian himself was not involved. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:10, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage[edit]

Addressing mostly sources, source formatting, and reference selection:

  • All ISBNs should ideally be presented as properly hyphenated ISBN-13s. Several of the online ISBN converters will let you produce these.
  • Publication locations. They're optional, but you've opted in, which is fine. And I'm fairly certain you actually have them included for all the book sources. You may wish to set some standard for identifying where these locations are, however, especially when they're not clear. In particular, Abingdon (which I presume is actually Abingdon-on-Thames, UK, but maybe not?) and Union (which... I don't actually know where this one is offhand). There are about eleventy-seven competing standards for which cities need clarification and how precisely to format and abbreviate when doing so. I'm actually uncharacteristically unconcerned about which standard you employ, but you probably need to employ a standard.
    I've chosen to link the first instance of a cities mention. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:26, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bury died in 1927. I presume the 2012 date of the source you're citing is a reprint of an work publisher earlier. But that really needs an origyear here. I'm concerned that this may be true for some of the other sources as well.
  • The Dawes source is a mess. The website you are citing is part of Paul Halsall's Internet Medieval Source Book. In and of itself, I'm not sure that constitutes a reliable source. It's effectively a collection of public domain works, and it's sponsored by Fordham University, but it's pretty much exclusively Halsall's creation. In any case, the specific page you are referring to is reprinted from: Three Byzantine Saints: Contemporary Biographies of St. Daniel the Stylite, St. Theodore of Sykeon and St. John the Almsgiver. Translated by Dawes, Elizabeth. Introductions and notes by Norman H. Baynes. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. 1996 [1948]. ISBN 978-0-913836-44-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) You have several options on how to format the reference here, but what you've currently got isn't really one of them.
  • The Grant author link is incorrectly targeted. I'm pretty sure you want Michael Grant (classicist), not the young adult fiction author. Also, I could be wrong, but eyeballing it, that looks like a hyphen in the title's date range, which should probably be an endash.
  • Kazhdan 1991 has an archive url but no archive date, which throws a template error. You don't really need to give a doi for a book-format work with an ISBN; note also that the two Kazhdan works are different chapters in the same edited work, but are formatted differently at the moment.
  • The Kostenec source is not presented correctly. The article title you appear to be referencing should be "Chrysotriklinos", and the website is Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World, Constantinople. I'm not certain whether there's a book-form version of this, but the website suggests the name be italicized as if it were, and I have no reason to suggest otherwise.
  • The Nathan source also uses the url in place of the actual website name, which apparently should be De Imperatoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Rulers and Their Families. This also has a publication date (24 August 1998; see the bottom of the article).
Let's talk about this source a little more. I'm not trying to argue that this isn't a reliable source. The DIR was produced as a sort of collaborative, peer-reviewed effort with declared editorial practices. It is a reliable source. But this article leans on it very heavily: over 22% of the article's citations are to the single article on Marcian in the DIR. I am not entirely convinced the the source quality is commensurate with the weight given its viewpoints.
  • Is there content in important sources that haven't been addressed here? Nathan lists several sources in his biography that don't appear to have been themselves consulted (Croke, Devos, Holum, Kohlfelder). Do they add anything not already being covered? This book may have some more things to say about his religious policy? Is this paper relevant?

I only skimmed the prose, but I'm inclined to echo the above reviewers in thinking this just isn't quite ready. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:11, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Cas Liber[edit]

taking a look now. will copyedit as I go. Please revert if I inadvertently change the meaning. comments below....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:23, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Marcian...was the Eastern Roman Emperor from 450 to 457. - "the Eastern Roman Emperor" sounds odd, maybe "Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire"? sounds more natural....
He is described by the ancient historian John Malalas as being tall and having some sort of foot impediment - I would put this at the end of the section. It interrupts the flow where it is.

Coord note[edit]

Having been open well over a month, and with no activity for a couple of weeks and extant concerns with prose, I think it's time to archive this. I know it passed a MilHist A-Class Review but a copyedit and perhaps a Peer Review after that seems in order. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:53, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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