Wikipedia:Peer review/Deva Victrix/archive2

Deva Victrix

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This peer review discussion has been closed.

I've listed this article for peer review because it is an important article, in that it is a roman fort that turned into a town, it is a good article, both in class and quality, I plan to put it on FAC, (I actually already did before mistakenly before putting it through PR now.)

Thanks, Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:25, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by P. S. Burton

What information is the artistic rendering of the fortress and the outlines of the temples based on? A source should be given as to not constitute WP:Original research. P. S. Burton (talk) 12:46, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I believe the normal layout of forts, but the problem with that is they randomly threw in exceptions, so Ill see.

@P. S. Burton: I checked the image, the author has not edited in a couple years, however I think it may be safe (Based on the copyvio, unclear copyright etc notifications on his page) to say there is no source and or he stole it, as such I will look for a better one, if I dont find one, I will remove it entirely, good catch. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 14:43, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@P. S. Burton: I believe it may be based off of http://www.british-history.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/pubid-94/images/fig02.gif, which he may have used for lay out, it is different enough to avoid copyvio, but Ive asked them if its ok. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 14:50, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If this discussion includes File:DevaMinervaPlan(bq).jpg it is a model from the Grosvenor Museum on permanent display. That means it falls under freedom of panorama, and as it's a museum piece we're ok as far as original research is concerned. It would be nice to know roughly what period it is meant to depict, but I can't find details online. Nev1 (talk) 18:44, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Make sure to include full citations for your sources, and make sure the formatting is consistent across sources
Suggest doing a sweep for MOS issues - duplicate links, fixed image sizes, etc
Citation-needed tag should be addressed. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:34, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Nev1

~~I'll aim to leave some comments on the article this weekend. Nev1 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2016 (UTC)~~[reply]

General

First things first, I want to check that the topic of the article makes sense. It is both about the legionary fortress and the civilian settlement. Does this work or are two separate articles needed?

Structure and content

An entire section is devoted to a single section. I’m not entirely sure why this is. There is more to say about the 129 inscriptions generally, so I think if we change the title of the section and add more general detail we don’t need to get rid of anything.

When originally written, the main focus was on the fortress with some detail about the settlement. Hence there were sections on the major buildings associated with the fortress (baths, amphitheatre, and elliptical building). If more emphasis is needed on the settlement, more on the populace would be useful. Actual demography would be very difficult to establish – and even the population of the settlement would be hard to establish. However, maybe something could be done based on the skeletons.

The article is quite reliant on Mason and Carrington, which is reasonable because those are the two main sources on Deva. In fact I've just gone through and changed the authors for the multi-author volume so it's not all attributed to Carrington and it's even more clear how important Mason is. A search of Jstor indicates nothing new since the article was written in 2008.

There are however some contributions to the Carrington book which might be worth considering. It's a 120-page volume and the chapters not cited in the Wikipedia article are listed below:

Manning, W. H. 2002. Roman Fortress Studies: Present Questions and Future Trends, 1–6
Shotter, D. C. A. 2002. Chester: Early Roman Occupation, 25–32.
Henig, M. 2002. Tales from the Tomb: Sculpture in Roman Chester, 75–78.
Hoffman, B. 2002. Where have all the Soldiers gone? Some thoughts on the Presence and Absence of soldiers in Fourth-Century Chester, 79–88.
Mason, D. J. P. 2002. The Construction and Operation of a Legionary Fortress: Logistical and Engineering Aspects, 89–112.
Baum, J. & Robinson, D. J. 2002. Deva Victrix Restored: The Application of Computer 3-D Modelling Techniques in the Reconstruction of Roman Chester, 113–7.

I don't have the book to hand, so judging the book by it's cover (or at least the chapter by it's title) Manning's part is likely to be too general. Shotter would be worth consulting, but from this review it sounds like Mason's first contribution to the book might have covered a similar topic. Henig could be useful if we want to include more on the inscriptions. I vaguely recall Mason's second contribution and I think it was about the methods used to build the fort which I think is perhaps fine to overlook in an article of this scope. Though it would be useful for an article on Roman construction. Baum and Hoffman might be interesting but perhaps not quite a fit for this article. Overall I think going back to Carrington's book would be worth the effort (if it's not in the library, it is available from Amazon).

I've had a browse of some general books to see if they add useful context. David Mattingley's An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC–AD 409 mentions Chester and how it fits into the history of Roman Britain and could be used.

Sourcing

Ptolemy and Tacitus are both referenced. It’s a long time since I put the article together, but think this would have been because someone such as Mason or Carrington mentioned them. That needs to be made clear so it doesn’t look like original research. The online dictionary links (refs #19, #22, and #23 as of 25 September) look a little bit like original research. I’m sure that information is available elsewhere, so a better source could be found.

Two new books will be published on the excavations in the amphitheatre in 2016 and 2017. These should be checked when published to see if they have information which can be incorporated into the article, but as the topic is not Deva as a whole we can probably get away without citing them.

Overall I think we're not too far off FA quality. Nev1 (talk) 20:48, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Query: @Iazyges: G'day, this review seems to have come to a natural conclusion as there haven't been any edits since 10 October 2016, do you wish for me to close it and archive it? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:50, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@AustralianRupert: yes please. Thank you! Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:32, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, I've archived it now. Thanks for your efforts. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 02:41, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]