Talk:Pontius Pilate's wife/GA1

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GA Reassessment[edit]

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


This article is not very thorough in its coverage of the topic, and reading it raises more questions than it answers. The following problems were present when I first edited the article:

Content concerns
  1. A work apparently composed in the seventeenth century is cited in a section called "early Christian literature".
  2. A sentence from the New Testament about an entirely unrelated figure who probably didn't have the same name is quoted with no commentary indicating why it is quoted.
  3. An obvious modern forgery is given its own section of the article but it is not clarified that it is a forgery.
  4. The highly dubious claims in the infobox that she was born and died in Israel are not sourced, and the former was templated over two years ago.
  5. The "Christian literature and legends [that] have amplified the brief anecdote about Pilate's wife in the New Testament" are barely discussed in the body ("legends" are not mentioned at all), and they definitely should be.
  6. The anti-semitic elements of her veneration by later Christians, along with that of her husband, are not mentioned.
  7. There is an unsourced claim that the name "Procula" originates in translations of the Gospel of Nicodemus, but Nicodemus dates to the fourth century, and "the Letter of Pilate to Herod" apparently called her "Procla" and at least one scholar dates that letter to the third or fourth century (see this book by the leading NT scholar in the United States).

These problems about things I do know about (I consulted . All of these problems were already present in the 2008 version, so I don't think this should have ever been listed as a GA. Hijiri 88 (やや) 07:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Off-topic personal discussion
@Francis Schonken: Why did you fork the discussion? It's bad enough that you removed all the "reason" parameters from the templates I added to the article and placed them out-of-context on the talk page, but now you are trying to move the GAR onto the article talk page? Hijiri 88 (やや) 08:48, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't attack me in edit summary notices as you did here – giving you a big frown for that. That edit summary should be oversighted.
I didn't remove a single one of the six tags you added to the article (the GAR rules invite not to "tag bomb" prior to a GAR request: adding six tags comes however close to that imho):
  • Two of the tags added by Hijiri have a "reason=" parameter that is processed by the template (i.e. the "reason=" content shows up on mouseover). I didn't touch those tags, nor their "reason=" parameter.
  • four tags added by Hijiri don't process the "reason=" parameter, so nothing shows up on mouseover (the remark can only be seen in edit mode): I kept the tags and moved the stated reasons to talk page for further discussion.
I'm indifferent whether the discussion is here or at the article's talk page (and indeed I would keep it in one place). I suppose a GAR process manager can give some advice where to hold the discussions? I also went from the assumption that such GAR process manager would more likely decline the GAR request on sight when no prior talk page discussion had taken place (not for me to decide, but speaking from experience in similar previous procedures).
I'm indifferent on whether the article keeps its GA status or not. At least some of Hijiri's comments need further attention.
I'd be very glad if Hijiri further improved the article: that would be largely preferred over tag-bombing without actual improvement to the article's content. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:51, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(1) I apologize for my edit summary. I was feeling ... "oppressed" by the unnecessarily aggressive tone you have been taking both here and the last time we interacted. I don't think it deserves to be called a "personal attack" or to be over sighted, mind you; it is no more a personal attack than the numerous aggressive comments to which it was referring. Let's just both agree to drop the stick.
(2) I wasn't aware of lack of processing for the "|reason=" parameter in some of the templates. I apologize for this mistake.
(3) I was not wrong to attempt to insert some form of comment explaining what each of the templates was for. You on the other hand were in the wrong to remove all of my comments to the talk page and cramming them all into an arbitrary section, where my comments didn't make any sense without the text to which they referred and where your replies could not be properly addressed as they dealt with a wide variety of unrelated issues.
(4) I did not "tag-bomb prior to a GAR". I added three tags before even noticing that the article was a GA; I then added one more tag before deciding the GA-status should be reexamined, and then two more after. This is not "adding six tags" "prior to a GAR request"
(5) I am happy to hear that you are indifferent as to whether the article preserves it's GA status; I too am indifferent, but I do not think it should preserve its GA status unless the concerns I have raised are appropriately addressed.
(6)Virtually all of this discussion is off-topic for the purposes of this GAR, so can we just collapse it?
Hijiri 88 (やや) 08:00, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Re. 1: you provide no diffs but resort to vaguish complaints which I deny, while the diff I provided is clear: personal attack, edit summary should be oversighted.
Re. 4: you added six tags (including the two that accept a "reason=" parameter)
For me this can be collapsed only after (1) the PA edit summary is oversighted; (2) We know a GAR process manager's reply to the question where the content discussion should be held. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:12, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(1) The abuse you gave me over the course of multiple posts the last time we interacted (on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability about a month ago) caused me so much stress that I briefly considered leaving the project. No need for riffs, as virtually every edit you made to that discussion was a snide attack against me. in fact you have been behaving in a similar manner here, refusing to discuss content and instead posting reams about how my templates are poorly formatted and how I am violating NOR by saying stuff should be taken out of the article (!?), and how my use of the word "apocalyptic" in its correct technical definition rather the one you are familiar with is somehow "incorrect" and I should stop using it (note that in the last case you completely ignored my main point in order to start a garden path discussion of early Christian apocalyptic literature). My pointing all or some of this out in an edit summary may be inappropriate, but it is no more inappropriate than the snide personal remarks about my awareness of a certain type of (largely irrelevant) literature on the article talk page, the assumptions of bad faith (repeatedly insisting that I must have already intended to initiate this GAR when I added the templates) and the off-topic personal commentary (about my accidentally misformatting some templates) added to his GAR.
(4) Look at the timeline. I only added three templates after opening the GAR (including one more just now); it was only after adding the first four that I thought maybe I should initiate a GAR. Your repeatedly insinuating that I planned all this out in advance is a minor AGF-violation, and I would ask you to stop.
Anyway, if you want the edit summary oversighted, please email oversight. The instructions are here. This page is for discussing whether the article still meets the good article criteria. Collapsing off-topic discussion.
Hijiri 88 (やや) 10:01, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Though for the record, I already apologized and admitted the edit summary was a poor judgement above. I am not averse to it being removed. But your calling it a "personal attack" just because my evidence took the form of "check our previous interaction on WT:V" rather than specific diffs is inappropriate, especially now that I have now provided a reason why citing diffs would be impractical (every comment you made in that discussion, and this one, was aggressive and ABF). Hijiri 88 (やや) 10:08, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Closing individual GA reassessment; switching to community reassessment[edit]

Per discussion at WT:GAN, what had really been intended here was to open a community reassessment, not one that would need to be conducted entirely by Hijiri88. As such, I am closing this individual reassessment, and at the same time, opening a community GA reassessment based on the Content concerns section above. No action will be taken on the article at the present time; any possible future action will depend on the results of the community reassessment. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:37, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Llywrch[edit]

Although no one has commented on this proposed reassessment, I concur that the article doesn't meet the intended standards for GA, & either needs work to keep this status or be downgraded.

Having read this article, I am left with a confused impression of this minor character. (I've read the Gospels several times each, & managed to overlook her existence until I discovered this article, so I feel comfortable calling her a "minor character".) Is there any evidence for pre-modern traditions about her? The talk page allude to the fact she might be mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which would indicate some pre-Medieval tradition about her. I'd also like a list of primary texts that name her "Procula", "Claudia", a combination of the two; otherwise, I'm left suspecting that she never was given a name, & any assertion that she had one is a hoax. (Yes, there are people who add hoaxes to Wikipedia articles that don't get much attention just to see how long the misinformation will stay.) Looking at the article on her husband, I found a lot of evidence that confirms there were many traditions about him; yet no indication whether any of those traditions mention her. Her only visibility appears to be in modern works -- which makes her something of a modern antihero.

Lastly, while I don't agree with some of Hijiri's criticisms, addressing most of them would be a good first step. But I haven't seen any effort to make any changes in response, so I wonder if the proper thing to do would be to remove it's GA classification, requiring any advocate for the article to make desired improvements to it. -- llywrch (talk) 21:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywrch: Re "Is there any evidence for pre-modern traditions about her?" Yes. As you indicate you have read the talk page, several NT apocrypha feature her much more prominently than Matthew. This material absolutely needs to be added to the article. But, not being a content expert, I don't feel comfortable doing so myself. FS does not appear to be either. Hijiri 88 (やや) 02:21, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.