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Trajan's mother

An IP editor on Wikidata has added a different mother for Trajan named Aureliana. The sources for this supposed person seem to be from Medieval Spanish sources, while the supposed mother Marcia who is mainly accepted by modern scholars (as far as I know) is based mainly on the name of Trajan's sister. My question here is if there is any credibility to support the idea of "Aureliana"? Right now the Spanish language article for Trajan seems to portray that Aureliana is correct, which I'm sceptical of. ★Trekker (talk) 09:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The Spanish article suggests Aureliana at one point, but a couple of paragraphs down suggests Marcia or Ulpia with no mention of Aureliana as a possibility, and in the infobox says Marcia. None of the sources they cite for Aureliana seem to be modern scholarly sources, and from searching Google Scholar it is easy to find sources calling Trajan's mother Marcia, or saying that she was probably called Marcia, but I cannot find any scholarly sources supporting Aureliana. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:38, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The text in the article should reflect the consensus of reliable sources: if modern scholars heed this mediaeval Spanish source, then it should be dispensed with. At most, a comment should be added saying that some other source says that in the body text; if there are explicit comments that this source is unreliable it should be noted. Ifly6 (talk) 17:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

There's an endless swath of claims that medieval literature has claimed particularly about the Roman past. If modern scholarship does not attest to it, or even highlight that medieval source's usage of it, it should not be reflected there. At most, this seems to be a matter only of historiographical interest. Sleath56 (talk) 18:39, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Medieval treatments of figures from Roman history are still relevant, even when they can be shown to be historically inaccurate. So are modern ones, though of course here we have to be much more selective due to the number of treatments, many of which aren't necessarily notable. P Aculeius (talk) 18:45, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

While I don't disagree with that in spirit, there is a distinct difference between this and more well attested naming discrepancies like that of Tacitus' praenomen which should be remarked upon. Though entries there are not generally discriminating, I'd say a single offhand reference by a medieval source does not credibly qualify this alternate name for inclusion. Sleath56 (talk) 18:58, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

The fact that other sources follow it demonstrates why it should be mentioned: people will run across it and wonder why it says something different from modern sources. Having it in the article explains that a medieval source gives a different name—what that source is, whether it has any credibility, what basis there might have been for it, and whether modern scholars have anything to say about it. Failing to mention such materials leaves readers in the dark about an aspect of the topic that they might find confusing. P Aculeius (talk) 21:28, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

I came across this very interesting writing also in Spanish, sadly since I'm not that good with the language it's hard for me to make out a lot of it or asses it's reliability.★Trekker (talk) 22:07, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

A lot of reading there. The title is "The Baetic roots of Trajan and more new information on his family". The whole book has been put online by the author, along with some others of hers. According to the first endnote some of the work was presented at an international congress in Rome in 1998 Traianus Optimus Princeps; the author is definitely academic, a professor of archaeology at Madrid whose work seems to focus on Roman inscriptions in Spain. According to my searches on two pdf readers, "Aureliana" is not mentioned in this book. If that's confirmed, and since it's an academic publication all about Trajan's family origins, that's a strong reason not to mention Aureliana in our article ... unless in a section about medieval references to Trajan. Generally, one of the things that renders Wikipedia less reliable is when we make alternative views, alternative names and spellings, etc., look equal when reliable sources don't make them look equal. In this I might be disagreeing with P Aculeius, a thing that I don't often do :) Andrew Dalby 09:11, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not advocating a false equivalency here. A section on medieval views would be a logical approach, if there were more to say than simply "this medieval source gives a different name for his mother". That could potentially be footnoted where she's mentioned, or if there's any discussion of her to be had, then an explanation of what medieval sources add or how they differ would be in order. Under no circumstances should it be presented without context, as though the reader should simply choose which name is right! But leaving out that she's mentioned, or that the details are different in another source, would be leaving a known question unanswered, and that's my concern. P Aculeius (talk) 11:15, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Removing Collaborative Effort from WP:CGR/tasks

As per a decision agreed to three years ago about a collaborative effort dating to 2013 (see Archive 36; April 12th, 2021), I've decided upon seeing the project's tasks page that we are never going to make Theatre of Pompey a GA (at least in any remote connection to the collaborative effort's section being present on the tasks page). It's just kind of in the way for those of you who like to visit the tasks page. Yes I've lurked for that long :) Paladin Arthur (talk) 02:14, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I probably should have brought it up first to make sure we still feel the same. If anyone advocates for its continued inclusion on the tasks page there's nothing wrong with reverting and reopening discussion (after all, it was in 2021 when its existence was met with 'meh'). Paladin Arthur (talk) 02:18, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Lycurgus (lawgiver) and propagandistic content

This article really needs work. It needs critical appraisal, supported by a balanced, representative set of sources, by historians more modern than Plutarch. It currently contains text like the following uncited paragraph:

Some further refinements of the Spartan constitution came after Lycurgus. It turned out that sometimes the public speakers would pervert the sense of propositions and thus cause the people to vote foolishly, so the Gerousia reserved the right to dissolve the assembly if they saw this happening.

How wise and benevolent and utterly proof against conflicts of interest. And, for instance, it says that the helots were attached to the land, but that's about all. It does not say how many they were or how they lived or were ruled. So the vast majority of the people who lived under laws attributed to Lycurgus rate barely a passing mention.

I have no expertise in this area, but still know enough to know that this article is problematic. Some other articles on Sparta seem to have some similar problems; for instance, helots has uncited content on eugenics. HLHJ (talk) 00:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

probably most of the article should be nuked and stubified. while Plutarch is definitely going to need to be cited in the article, he shouldn't be considered a secondary source for, well, anything. so this is all WP:OR. it would be nice to have a policy that nothing before the 19th century should ever count as a secondary source for our purposes but I'm not holding my breath with this crowd... Psychastes (talk) 00:42, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I was partially wondering if this was content from the DGRBM but no, it seems even that article is in better shape than this one. Still well over a century old, and *far* less critical of reports of the Spartan constitution than I've ever seen a modern historian be, though. So probably still better to stubify this article than use the DGRBM. Psychastes (talk) 01:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Psychastes. I agree Plutarch counts as a primary source. Modern historians will, I'm sure, discuss his statements on Spartans, and I have no objection to such discussion being covered in the article. I seem to recall some Classical authors were a bit skeptical of the value of Plutarch as a source, too. If you'd like to nuke and stubify, go ahead.

Since the broader problem of panegyric accounts of Sparta seem to have links with 20th-century fascism (see, for instance, Agoge#19th – 21st centuries), I think I will also ping K.e.coffman, who has done a lot of good work in that area. HLHJ (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Stubify done. I've kept the first couple sentences. Probably some small amount of the info I removed could be added back, but it's all tangled up with uncritical citations of ancient authors so I erred on the side of not having wrong information. Also, agreed that the links to fascism make this the sort of misinformation that should be removed with more enthusiasm. Psychastes (talk) 01:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I've actually cut a bit more, since I'm not sure if his reforms were military-oriented or not, and I know there is a serious historical arguement the Spartan constitution was not actually effective at promoting equality (even just among the tiny minority of Spartiates), military fitness (as measured by, say, military skills or performance), or even austerity (among Spartiates). I've also edited the template message.[1] HLHJ (talk) 02:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

You've taken a C-class Level 4 Vital article that was twenty years old with over 800 edits, and reduced it to four sentences with a single source. This was undertaken in the course of a few minutes, without any prior discussion on the article's talk page, or any involvement by any of the more active editors in this WikiProject. This has to be the most extreme example of its kind that I've ever seen on Wikipedia.

So the article cited Plutarch: it also cited a lot of fairly well-regarded modern historians, now consigned to the dustbin (I'm no expert either, but I recognize J. B. Bury, N. G. L. Hammond, and Michael Grant; I'm currently reading one of Grant's books, though not the one that was cited). The remedy for uncritical statements is to substitute more critical ones, or place them in context; not to delete everything so that there's no information left. You said that the DGRBM article was in better shape than this one; that's not hard to believe, since those articles were written by the finest classical scholars of their day, and relatively little that is new can have been "discovered" about Lycurgus since that time, although certainly attitudes toward history have changed (and of course that has to be accounted for). But you could do a lot worse than cite the DGRBM; in fact, you have: now readers searching for information on Lycurgus will find nothing.

WP:TNT is supposed to be used only when there is nothing worth saving in an article, and that's a heck of a conclusion to reach given the number of experienced editors who've contributed to it over the last two decades. TNT is just another form of deletion, and deletion, as is rightly said, is not cleanup. One of you claims to have no expertise on the subject, and neither of you seem to have any prior involvement with the article. Do either of you intend to rewrite it from scratch, or are you just planning to leave it a pile of rubble in the hopes that someone else will come along and write something? I certainly wouldn't want to make the effort, given what was just done to the article. I realize that just voicing this opinion will probably result in some very angry replies. But I'd like to hear from other members of this project: was this "stubification" a good idea, and was this the right way to go about it? P Aculeius (talk) 05:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

In my view, a (real) discussion should have been had. A rewrite should have been done. The rewrite then should have replaced the original text. I wouldn't oppose reverting stubification; but at the same time I'm unconvinced that the original text had much of any value. I have no idea why WP:TNT is at all relevant; that, and WP:TNTTNT, relate to real deletions – those purge page history – and not stubifications. Ifly6 (talk) 05:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

If we had to rewrite every bad article on this project before removing a bunch of bunk, we'd never get anything done. Deleting most of the content in a poorly researched article full of WP:OR encourages people to add material in a collaborative project, one person pledging to go off on their own and rewrite the article results in no changes to the actual article people read until they get around to finishing it (which, let's be honest, most of the time is "never") Psychastes (talk) 16:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Who are we? Ifly6 (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

(and FWIW I'm similarly confused about the invocation of WP:TNT. the content is all still there in the page history, if there's anything worth scavenging from there, which there probably is, it can just be copied from a prior version) Psychastes (talk) 16:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

This isn't an important point, and I don't intend to argue it, but WP:TNT is effectively what was done here. That essay doesn't say that it refers to the deletion of the entire article, although that's one way to implement it; it also refers to deleting the contents, and keeping the title, and subsequently it mentions "stubifying". Since practically everything in the article was in fact deleted, including perfectly good sources besides Plutarch (although as everyone here seems to admit, Plutarch does need to be cited alongside what modern writers say about him), the article was pretty much "blown up" (in fact, the discussion above expressly refers to "nuking" it; I don't see any productive reason to quibble over the type of explosive used). P Aculeius (talk) 18:15, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Plutarch is not "well-regarded" among modern historians. Plutarch is a primary source, and interpreting primary source data is a job for historians. not for wikipedia editors. it's vaguely concerning that you don't seem to grasp this. Psychastes (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

PA said So the article cited Plutarch: it also cited a lot of fairly well-regarded modern historians, now consigned to the dustbin. Ifly6 (talk) 16:49, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I started some work on a rewrite some time ago here: User:Ifly6/Lycurgus (lawgiver). Many other projects intervened (and I realised I like Roman history much more than Greek). This partial deletion is tough medicine indeed; I don't find it particularly objectionable given that the original article was rubbish but a replacement should (probably must) be worked on promptly. However, I do find the mere minutes-long discussion here objectionable. Practically no time was given for basically anyone to weigh in. Ifly6 (talk) 05:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I made a WP:BOLD edit. you're certainly welcome to revert it per WP:BRD, but whining about how your permission wasn't granted before someone made a change to a page sounds a whole lot like WP:OWN. Psychastes (talk) 15:52, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Different WikiProjects have different cultures; this one is more dicussion-oriented than most. That stubifying an article and then refusing(?) to contribute to it irks people shouldn't be surprising. Calling it whining and ownership is unnecessarily inflammatory. Ifly6 (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether completely unnecessarily personalising a discussion by characterising people who disagree with you as whining is more or less unhelpful than characterising somebody not reverting you as WP:OWNERSHIP, but I am sure that neither is productive. Let's not. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:59, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

On the actual content, I largely agree with Ifly6. The Lycurgus article wasn't great; the stubbing it was probably overly aggressive; given that a discussion had been opened here the issue probably wasn't so urgent that it couldn't wait for some people to actually weigh in. Glancing at Ifly's draft it doesn't have the reliance on ancient sources of the previous text; I'm not seeing any obvious issues with what's written there and it's clearly more comprehensive than the current stub. Does anyone have any issues with promoting that to mainspace? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:04, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

It's hugely incomplete and mostly focuses on historicity with almost nothing on what the figure is alleged to have done. I suppose it could be a starting point for a new article but an {{under construction}} is definitely needed. Ifly6 (talk) 17:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but it's less hugely incomplete than the four sentences we have currently! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, I've been putting some effort into it today (fortunately it's been a very slow day at work). I don't mind others editing the draft I have up already. Though I would probably want someone to take a look at it before moving the text over the existing now-stub. Substantial portions remain unfinished. Ifly6 (talk) 01:21, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Ifly6's draft looks much better than the old article, and I strongly support moving it into the mainspace. It covers pretty much all the points the old article did (attributed educational reforms aside), and it does so in a much more balanced way, with much better sourcing, and proper critical analysis of the ancient sources. I'm sure Ifly6 sees all the shortcomings, but it is already a vast improvement.

So don't want to give the impression that I am in any way unhappy with this outcome, but I apologize for the offense given by the speed of the discussion. Stubifying wasn't exactly urgent, as recent versions were similar, until you go back about a decade ago, when the "Lycurgus" article was much better. While it was still rather Plutarch-centric, it repeatedly drew attention to the fact, and included caveats like "Again, this section is taken mainly from Plutarch, a writer in Greek in the Roman period, and should not be taken as offering verifiable facts about Lycurgus' life, so much as thoughts of a later age about Spartan institutions and government." It wasn't anywhere near as good as Ifly6's current draft version, but it was more useful that the recent or current version.

The Great Rhetra article is strongly related in topic, and covers the writtenness or otherwise of Spartan constitutions and laws. I'm not sure I understand how it relates to the "Political and military" section of Ifly6's draft, which seems to refer to a single written text, preserved in fragments.

If the old article's "Depictions" section is to be preserved, it might make sense to put it in a into a separate List of depictions of Lycurgus article, and merge in Lycurgus of Sparta (David), an article cited to a single source which seems to be a blog post (and actually has an extensive gallery of artistic depictions of Lycurgus, together with a text retelling Plutarch).

Categorizing Spartans by century, and people by birth and death centuries, presents some difficulties for categorizing this article. Suggestions?

Could we discuss a few more articles? Sparta#Notable ancient Spartans lists a number of other biographies, many with similar problems. There are also problems in other articles at Template:Ancient Sparta; for instance, the lede description of Crypteia would fit many universities pretty well, and its body discussion of what the Crypteria was names three 18-hundreds historians, with their opinions decribed in the present tense.

What should, generally, be done about Classical articles which are largely original research (usually uncritical and unbalanced), or seriously outdated history? HLHJ (talk) 03:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Re Great Rhetra. That article confuses the Great Rhetra with the other rhetras. (The tradition calls them this because they're supposedly divinely inspired from the Pythia.) The former alone is the Spartan constitution. There are supposedly three other rhetras: (1) that laws should never be written, (2) that houses should be built by axes and saws alone, and (3) that Sparta should never fight the same foe over and over again so not to teach them how to fight. *insert chuckles here* See Plut. Lyc. 13 cited by OCD Online. Ifly6 (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh no, you broke the first rhetra! And I'm sure I've broken the second. No container for the plaster, no stick to stir it, no rock for a hammer, no chisel to shape a mortise, no way to bore a hole for a trunnel? This seems like a rule made by people who had never actually built a house (though Wikisource:Plutarch's Lives (Clough)/Life of Lycurgus restricts the rule to ceilings and the surface finishing of gates and doors, which seems more managable). The third... "if you fight an enemy long and repeatedly, you may lose" seems like a very unfalsifiable oracle.

Thanks for the clarification. HLHJ (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Lycurgus is just as far outside my area of expertise as it is that of the people who deleted the entire thing, along with the work of everyone who ever contributed to it. But anything would be an improvement over what there is now. If reverting it and working on cleaning up each section is not an option for the people who plan to work on it, then perhaps a viable strategy would be to look over the last stable version of the article, finding sections or topics that need to be covered in the new version, and working on rebuilding them one section at a time, saving anything useful from the old version and then building on it.

I'm tempted to pitch in, but I don't want to make things worse if there are people like yourself who have considerably more knowledge of the field and who plan to do some of this. It's just my basic strategy: use the most comprehensive scholarly article on the subject as a starting point, then build on it using other sources and what they have to say, including what the Greeks themselves had to say, and what standard modern reference works say about that. But you already know how to do this, so I won't harp on the subject! P Aculeius (talk) 18:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I was intending to come back and restore-with-rewrite the "Historicity" section, which I think contained the most decent refs, but Rotideypoc41352 did it first; it's currently part of the mainspace article. I've copied over some material from the old article into the draft, for Ifly6 to retain or remove as they see fit (one of the sources is 19th-cen, though used for a very basic claim). Is there is any other content anyone would like to salvage, from any old version of the article? The word pelanors is cited to a source which may be solid, but we don't have much solid content on the topic, and I'm not entirely clear that pelanors actually existed. Since the new draft is far better, and being made with more expertise than I can bring to bear, I don't want to obtrude with less-informed edits, but I'm happy to do some tidying-up as needed. HLHJ (talk) 22:51, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

No objections here, that certainly looks better than a stub. Psychastes (talk) 17:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

What to do about obsolete or original research articles

@HLHJ: Re What should, generally, be done about Classical articles which are largely original research (usually uncritical and unbalanced), or seriously outdated history? There have been discussions on this board on this topic before that all do not end up with any kind of consensus. Relevant threads, among others, include:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 41#Guides extension
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 41#User ignoring WP:ERA at Pompey (See my comments starting with Having read the original version of the article...)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 40#Caligula

There are usually two prior disputes. The first one is whether something like Plutarch is or is not a primary source. The people who think Plutarch is a secondary source rather obviously never read classics. The second is whether we should write, or contribute to, articles today based solely on primary sources. I think policies etc say no.

What you have brought is very new. Before, we were having discussions about whether it is acceptable to just overwrite an WP:OR and WP:OLDSOURCES article. Now we're having discussions about whether we should just stubify them. That's a massive shift in the Overton window. Ifly6 (talk) 04:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Having introduced the topic... I'm not comfortable with this just-stubify approach. At the same time, I accept that having bad content is probably worse than having no content. If we want to do things quickly we also cannot really wait for time-consuming in-depth rewrites. I've done a number of these; each one can take weeks. Rewrites of lower quality based on acceptable academic sources (rather than bad popular press or ancient secondary sources) should probably be preferred. If you want to do this, this is not something only one person can do.

Re Could we discuss a few more articles? Sparta#Notable ancient Spartans lists a number of other biographies, many with similar problems. There is, very simply, an insufficient number of editors who can (at all promptly) rewrite all those articles. We have to settle for third-best, which is probably a slow series of rewrites in order of importance. Your help in doing the work itself would definitely be appreciated. Ifly6 (talk) 04:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the links to the local discussion history, Ifly6. I share your unease. I was a bit startled by the proposal to stubify, but not as startled as people familiar with this Wikiproject, because I have seen similar approaches to similarly OR articles on other projects. When I thought it over, I came to the conclusion that I didn't really have a good reason to oppose stubification. I did not agree to stubification because it was inadequately cited (the editing community seems to be forgetting this, but uncited content is perfectly okay for anything except a WP:BLP, which this isn't). I agreed because most of the content was so poor that it was actively misleading, and it honestly seemed easier to start from a stub and re-introduce the salvagable sentences.

So I think source quality is a related but separate issue here (and I've added a section accordingly). The main problem is people unfamiliar with Classics writing really bad content (often because they vastly overestimate their expertise; it may not be co-incidence that Randy in Boise is an amateur Classicist). I don't think this is in dispute; no-one seems to have been of the opinion that the Lycurgus article was just fine and contained no problematic content, nor that such problems are restricted to that article.

The controversy around the wholesale deletion of the bad content seems to be on where the borders of acceptability lie; I think we probably all agree that no content is better than sufficiently bad content, not least because it discourages people from writing good content.

Policy is that we should remove content that cannot be verified by the balance of reliable sources, which generally means statements that are wrong. We are also supposed to flag content we think is unverifiable, and otherwise give other editors time to verify it. A decade is obviously too much time. Minutes is too short.

I, too, do in-depth rewrites, and indeed doing a decent job takes time. If I were familiar with the topic, I could write a decent overview quickly, but if I have to actually represent the balance of reliable sources, I have the read and understand them first. I'd love to fix every article on Wikipedia that is wrong, but I can't, and it also makes more sense for me to work on topics where I have some background expertise, or at least a strong interest.

So I'm asking "What should, generally, be done about Classical articles which are largely original research (usually uncritical and unbalanced), or seriously outdated history?". Specifically, what should I do when I come across an article which has really obviously problematic content of this type, and I don't have the time, background, or will to rewrite it entirely? What would help the encyclopedia most? I am completely open to suggestions.

I'll throw out a few suggestions of my own. Would an essay on the specific pitfalls of citing Classical sources be useful? We could link to it from an edit warning template given to editors who are blundering through those pits. Is there a more specific article template than the one I slapped on Lycurgus? Would removing the least-salvagable content a week or so after adding such a template be acceptable, at least in cases where it leaves more than a stub? Should digging throught he history to find a better version be part of the proceedure? HLHJ (talk) 19:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Would an essay on the specific pitfalls of citing Classical sources be useful? Many people over the years have intoned against writing primary-source-based articles. (I am among them: 1, 2.) I doubt that consensus can be formed but an essay is not consensus. It would probably fall into {{WikiProject content advice}}. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

There is the problem that many recent historical sources are outrageously expensive. There are also many topics where the sum total of sources is a few hundred words, and just quoting a translation of them in the article vastly illuminates the arguments of modern historians (who of course assume that every reader has the sources memorized); an old professional PD translation is often perfectly suitable, especially in the context of modern commentary. I'll read through some more of the arguments and have a further think about it.

We already have some consensus for Classics-specific applications of general rules, like "don't assume that Augustus is a neutral, unbiassed source for his own reforms". But just an essay could get new editors thinking about the sort of issues Classical historians breathe; informed disagreement would be a huge improvement over unthinking ignorance. HLHJ (talk) 03:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Most of the newer sources are available via Wikipedia Library. OCD's move online and the work that has followed that has also created a lot of publicly accessible high-quality overview articles that are very valuable. Ifly6 (talk) 23:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Is there a more specific article template than the one I slapped on Lycurgus? The usual template to throw on to articles that overuse primary sources is {{primary sources}}. I've thrown it on articles I don't really have any intent to rewrite. I don't think anyone is going through and rewriting (or doing anything to) articles so tagged. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

We could make a specific Template:Classical primary sources or Template:Ancient primary sources or some such, pointing at a rough primer to the isssues. I think we could get consensus that there are things people need to be aware of when citing Classical sources. But this sounds like a possible later step, if warranted. HLHJ (talk) 03:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The standard {{primary sources}} template looks rather complicated. You might want to talk to someone who knows how this kind of coding works. Ifly6 (talk) 20:42, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Would removing the least-salvagable content a week or so after adding such a template be acceptable, at least in cases where it leaves more than a stub? It would depend on the content. If what's is being cited is Ciceronean letters describing what Cicero thought of some topic, I don't see any immediate need. If what's being cited is the fantasy about the Alban lake's supernatural rise during the ten year siege of Veii and the prose describes it all as truth, I would remove it immediately. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's about how I would judge it. Unfortunatly, I'm likely to be absent for a bit now, but thank you very much for rewriting Lycurgus. I think it's now better than our article on Sparta. HLHJ (talk) 05:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

On sources which are superceeded or require expert interpretation

I think that arguing over whether Plutarch is a primary or secondary source is maybe a bit moot, a logomachy that obscures a more fundamental issue.

Plutarch may technically be secondary or tertiary or even quaternary, in the sense that he is basing his writings on other sources, which aren't always identifiable. But that in itself is not reason to consider him reliable. He is often inaccurate, as noted even by other Classical authors, as well as subsequent historians; his biogs are written to be moral examplars, not accurate historical accounts. But that's not the problem either. Thucydides, by contrast, is a conscientiously exact source, and outright states that he is a primary source, writing from his own observations, on many of the topics he discusses. That is also irrelevant.

The key issues are shared by both Plutarch and Thucydides. Firstly, both pre-date all the substantial scholarship on their work, meaning that they are not the last word on almost any topic, and they are not in any way guaranteed to represent the current scholarly consensus.

We can see dramatic shifts in consensus on far smaller timescales; for instance, a 1985 news story stating that the US is not selling any weapons to Iran was already obsoleted by the 1986 revelation that actually, yes, the US was breaking its own arms embargo. It is just as possible for a new archeological discovery to falsify a statement by a Classical author.

Secondly, interpreting Classical sources has become a skilled task. We've literally centuries of scholarly work on how best to interpret them, because it really isn't as simple as it looks. They are written in dead languages, human languages have ambiguities, translations are by their nature capable of being misleading, and cultural context (like an understanding of the authors' perspectives, biasses and conflicts of interest) can also cause us to misinterpret a text.

This is not a new problem. If I remember correctly, in the 13th century BCE, an Egyptian medic felt it necessary to add glosses to the Secret-book of the Physician, a trauma-treatment manual written around 1600 BCE, because students were failing to understand it. What had been clear a few centuries earlier was now confusing (though 1600 BCE collarbones broke and healed ~just like modern ones).

It isn't adequate to just have any old modern source discussing these authors. Anyone can read a translation of a Classical author and spout uninformed opinion; pop culture does it all the time, as in medicine. Such sources are unreliable. Uncritically accepting the views of an ancient historian (especially Plutarch) is just not something a topic expert or reliable source would do.

My interpretation of yesterday's news story leans on the expertise of the journalist. The news story should not be missing any significant info, and it should not mislead the average modern reader (or it isn't RS). My interpretation of Plutarch is far less reliable. Plutarch is out-of-date and was not writing to be understood by the modern reader. Even experts lean on him with caution, through a hedge of caveats, as Wikipedia should do.

A reliable source gives expert appraisal of what can currently be known. A source is reliable only if it has throughly considered the information currently available on a topic: major primary sources on the topic (including sources not available to the Classical authors, like archeological excavations, or, say, DNA testing of victims of the Great Plague of Athens), and significant previous interpretations and other non-primary sources, which may have useful insights. No Classical source can do any of that. Most pop sources can't.

So two problems; Classical sources are superceeded by later work; and, interpreting them is a job for an expert. Reliable sources need to give state-of-the-art information (even if no-one has done any work in the field for a century), expertly interpreted for the modern reader. HLHJ (talk) 19:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

This is quite the manifesto. But basically, flag stuff you question with "citation needed"; fix the stuff you can; and do the work you're interested in doing. And if enough people do that, eventually the encyclopedia will be better. What's stopping you from carrying out these improvements within the articles themselves? I'm unclear on what the issue is. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that HLHJ thinks that there are some articles which are being written mainly by paraphrasing some ancient sources (ol' unreliable Plutarch especially) and ripping from DGBRM. I don't know whether – and, frankly, doubt that – this is still happening. I know it happened in the past, though. That we have done so little to fix it, however, may call for stronger impetus. Ifly6 (talk) 23:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless you're deep into the scholarship, you have to have a foundation on which to build an article. Even old sources and primary sources can provide that, if used carefully. When it comes to bare facts—who held what magistracy, what form of worship was paid to a god at which town, what omens were said to have preceded a battle—there's no harm in reporting that a source said it. That's not interpretation or original research. Those come into play when an editor fails to distinguish between fact and opinion, or attempts to draw some novel conclusion from the sources.

The remedy for too much reliance on old or primary sources is rarely to remove them; instead we should find and report what other and more modern sources have to say on the topic. Sometimes that will mean rebalancing or replacing what the article previously said, but that doesn't make the previous version worthless, or justify blowing it up and starting from scratch. That should be done very, very rarely. If you can narrow down the point you're trying to verify, a lot of sources are available over the internet (which is not to say that sources not available on the internet are any less valid; they're just harder to find). The older sources are easy to find and read because they're in the public domain (and some, though not all, are very well written); publications less than fifty or sixty years old are harder to come by, though if you search for just the right ones you can often find at least partial texts online.

But my advice remains the same: take what exists as a foundation, and improve it, section by section and paragraph by paragraph. If you don't have the time to put into revising an unsatisfactory article, it's still almost always better to leave it until you or another editor finds the time to work on it. I know I'm unhappy with some of the things I wrote years ago, but they're a lot better than nothing, and I can afford to be patient while I find time to gather material to replace them. P Aculeius (talk) 01:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

We have full text for probably a majority of reputable books and journals published in classical studies in English via Wikipedia Library. Inability to access the modern scholarship is not a compelling excuse. Ifly6 (talk) 18:21, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Following the classical antiquity new article alerts makes it rapidly apparent that some people still do create articles by just copying and pasting from DGRBM. All of the low-hanging fruit has already been done though, so these are mostly poets known from a single epigram in the Greek anthology and minor mythological figures mentioned in one line of Apollodorus – in most cases I assume nobody is ever going to read the article anyway! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I can't say I was aware that people are still doing this. Very frankly, that should be proscribed. Ifly6 (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I thank P Aculeius for saving me the time of saying that. I agree with Caeciliusinhorto that no harm is done by copying over little articles on obscure topics, however unsporting it may be to lay claim to having created a new article in this way. I came upon one this morning that was created in 2006 and still reads mostly as copied and pasted. It's nearly incomprehensible but not fundamentally wrong. I was not involved in the first wave of article creation (I started mid-2008), but I think the groundwork was laid for comprehensive G&R coverage by going through those standard reference works in Classics that were PD. Not sure there was a better or more efficient way to have gone about it. After leaving WP for about a decade, I have the impression that the overall methodology for creating G&R articles is infinitely improved. I'm more irked by content decontextualized from contemporary RS of good quality but twisted by contributors to fit their own ahistorical belief system. "That doesn't sound like something this or any classical scholar would say," I think, and sure enough, I check the cited source and it says nothing of the sort. RS can become a fig leaf for agenda-pushing. Not a fan of proscriptions, though. :) Cynwolfe (talk) 14:14, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there was much ground to object to copying PD sources in the Wiki stone ages because the alternative was a blank page and editors had few resources. Neither are the case anymore. We have pages on most topics; we have university-library level access. Wikipedia is biased towards modern reliable sources. Those modern reliable sources are mostly not in the public domain, unlike modern sources from over a hundred years ago and the primary sources. We should be encouraging people to use the resources that the site, foundation, etc has with so much effort acquired for us.

Also, people who use sources wrong will always be a problem: if I wanted to push the POV that the patricians were a masculine Aryan master race that had defeated and subjugated the effeminate Mediterranean plebeians, I would definitely start with DGRBM (The patricians must be regarded as conquerors who reduced the earlier inhabitants of the places they occupied to a state of servitude), Niebuhr 1837, Bernhoft 1882, Bachofen 1861, and Binder 1909. Then I would tell you can't remove my Aryan master race "content" because these old sources are were written by the finest classical scholars of their day and nothing new has been discovered since and that you can only add modern stuff that provides different theories.

Even someone acting in good faith, rather than being a Stormfront plant, would be far more likely to put this kind of nonsense into the encyclopaedia if that person started their research with these old sources instead of starting with the modern sources we have access to. Encouraging people to use modern sources – which to be clear other parts of Wikipedia already do – is the best way minimise this agenda pushing, fringe content, and original research (whether intentional or otherwise). Ifly6 (talk) 20:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

In trying to prove your point, you've actually engaged in exactly the kind of source manipulation that you're criticizing: you've taken a single quotation out of context (and from a different source than the one you attributed it to in order to criticize it, I add) in order to accuse the authors of advocating racial theories that had not yet been developed, much less become the stuff of twentieth-century Nazi ideology. Yes, you're saying that it would be wrong to use it to support such rubbish—but you're basically saying that it does, when in fact it doesn't.

And again, you miss the point of the preceding comments about distinguishing between fact and opinion in sources, something that is just as important with "modern" writers as with older ones. It would be an act of supreme arrogance to suppose that whatever the prevailing opinion of scholars is today must be regarded as incontrovertible fact, while that of scholars from fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years ago is wrong simply because it is old and contradicted by more recent opinions—because we can say with virtual certainty that the opinions of scholars fifty or a hundred years from now will differ just as radically from that of today.

What I've been trying to say here is that all sources, ancient, older modern, or the latest scholarship available, need to be cited carefully so as to distinguish between fact and opinion, as well as to note, when possible, the differences in opinion that have prevailed in the scholarship of different eras—not necessarily to declare all opinions equally valid, but simply to note that our understanding changes with time and (occasionally) with new discoveries.

And none of this changes the fact that it is fine to use primary and older modern sources as a foundation upon which to build, as long as one takes care to distinguish between fact and opinion. If an earlier analysis has been superseded, then cite the scholarship that supersedes it, if you can. If a source has been cited wrongly or an interpretation placed on it that is not grounded in reliable secondary sources, then fix it. If you have access to more recent sources, cite them. Nobody's telling anyone not to use the most up-to-date scholarship available. This discussion is about the urge to delete older modern scholarship and primary sources simply because of what they are, instead of because they are no longer relevant to an article, and whether it is better to demolish entire articles with no immediate prospect of replacement, merely because they don't cite enough recent scholarship. The consensus here is that it's not: in nearly every instance, an article that needs a lot of work is still far better than none at all. P Aculeius (talk) 21:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I confused DGRBM ≠ DGRA because they are interchangeably obsolete sources accessed through basically two portals (Perseus, LacusCurtius). The 19th century fables of patrician conquest – DGRA, Niebuhr – are now covered in textbooks in the quantity zero. They are covered in specialist books like Bradley 2020 in two sentences. It is the other things cited – Bernhoft, Bachofen, Binder – that say that the specific incontrovertible conquerors (that are now universally denied) are the Aryan master race. How is removing mention of the incontrovertible fact that the master race conquered the barbaric plebs, who "were an amorphous rabble and lived like wild beasts" (Cornell Beginnings [1995] p 243), consistent with your other remarks?

The whole matter as to what theories of patrician aetiology were prevalent in the 19th century is irrelevant to the core matter – "Should we use obsolete and primary sources?" – which we have disagreed on every time. Every time, you inject truth and recentism.

But neither truth nor recentism are relevant. Wikipedia does not deal in truths, it deals in WP:HQRS. I, and I think I am not alone, cannot be mind-tricked into believing these Smith's dictionaries are HQRS. We should be giving them the same regard and impact factor that modern scholars do. That is what supremely arrogant Wikipedia requires (WP:AGEMATTERS; WP:DUE; WP:BESTSOURCES). Nor are we engaged in original research to spin a narrative of how beliefs have changed over time or summarise all the versions in the primary sources. Even if I wrote a scholarly-level article on the emergence of the patriciate citing Livy and DH it was nowhere out of place in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, policies say it should not be included. Nor should a novel literature review discussing all the various theories presented through history for their emergence be included. Such contributions simply do not comply with WP:PRIMARY and WP:OR. Ifly6 (talk) 01:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Again, missing the point completely: you took one sentence out of context and spun a whole narrative about outmoded beliefs from it, utterly disregarding everything useful in these sources—as well as the point about distinguishing between fact and opinion in using any source from any era. Yes, the article you linked cites Niebuhr—though none of the other sources you built your "Aryan master race" straw man around. They're not mentioned in our article either, so I'm not sure why you're injecting them into the argument because of a hypothetical view that isn't in any of the sources actually cited or likely to be cited in Wikipedia. Apparently you cribbed all of them from a footnote in Cornell!

But failing to mention the views of scholars such as Niebuhr because some of their conclusions are no longer widely held would be just as harmful as pretending that they had all the answers—something that nobody here has ever advocated! And the article in question is citing Niebuhr not to claim that the patricians were a "master race", but to explain how they came to possess political power in early Rome.

The narrative that they were the whole of the original populus, and that the plebeians arose from those who were added to the city through conquest seems simplistic, but it is consistent with what the Romans themselves believed in the late Republic, and we would be as negligent to disregard the fact that this was once widely accepted in classical scholarship as we would if we asserted that whatever opinions are held by Cornell or Forsythe are the "truth", and whatever they disagree with is "outmoded" or "obsolete" merely because it is older.

I am most emphatically not attempting to argue that recent scholarship is wrong. My point remains that the sole remedy for a lack of currency or balance in an article is to provide more context, not to substitute one set of opinions for another and pretend that we have all of the answers. That would do a greater disservice to our readers than merely citing sources inadequately.

Older sources are fine when used carefully. The examples you're giving are not instances of proper sourcing, and they would be just as inappropriate citing recent books as with older ones. If a source is being cited for something that it does not support, or it is contradicted by other sources, then fix it. That would be so much easier than trying to formulate a one-size-fits-all solution based entirely on the age or classification of a source, instead of paying attention to what it's being cited for. P Aculeius (talk) 04:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless you want to accuse me of being an actual believer in the Aryan master race hypothesis who has placed such material actually in Wikipedia, the fact that it's not on Wikipedia has been something I disclosed immediately at the start: if I wanted to push the POV... So too could a Nazi have read or discovered those same sources in Cornell Beginnings (1995) and push the same POV with the same sources. I make and made no claims of originality in this literature review; in fact, I said such originality would violate WP:OR!

These paeans to more context are not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia policies say all articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (WP:BESTSOURCES). WP:SCHOLARSHIP says:

• However, some scholarly material may be outdated... or largely ignored by the mainstream academic discourse because of lack of citations. Try to cite current scholarly consensus when available
• Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible.

The opinions that should be cited are the scholarly consensus. The way the Niebuhr et al should be cited is not "Oh, this is one just one theory". One way to do it respecting guidelines would be to cite Bradley Early Rome (2020) citing Cornell Beginnings (1995) citing Niebuhr with a sharply negative tone as is taken by both sources. So it is too with Romulus appointing the first senators. It should be presented. But it should not be presented as "Romulus did this". It should be framed by Bradley 2020, Cornell 1995, Forysthe Critical history (2005), Lomas Rise 2018, etc all citing whatever the relevant passages are; then mentioning that that modern scholars, unlike the Romans, do not believe this. Presenting "Romulus appointed the patricians" as fact or as a theory scholars believe is WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE.

You'll then say that doing that is adding context because that's what you said last time. But the real problem is that it needed fixing in the first place. It would not have needed fixing if the editors that first broke it followed existing Wikipedia policies and guidelines. It is extremely unlikely that a competent editor could write an article saying Romulus appointed the patricians and they were the Aryan master race when starting with current scholarship. But a competent editor could, but for anti-racism, write such an article when reading only Smith and those books Cornell cited.

There are too many articles to rewrite already and too many editors who are – astonishingly still in 2024! – adding obsolete line noise into the encyclopaedia. This noise is far in excess of editors' ability to fix. Saying we can't take away the crutch that is paraphrasing Plutarch or copying Smith is burying the fixers under a Monte Testaccio of broken articles that is far beyond our meagre ability to fix: it is going through the store, breaking all the merchandise, and telling me I can't stop anyone from doing that but I should content myself with putting it back together. Ifly6 (talk) 05:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

That's kinda how WP works, though. I am puzzled and saddened by the heat of this discussion, since I have never seen P Aculeius in my many years of watching WP enter anything into the encyclopedia that wasn't constructive, have never seen Ifly6 make anything but good-faith edits, and have never read a G&R article in WP that asserted that the first Romans were an Aryan master race, which seems completely contrary to … everything. But if I wanted to prevent people from making edits unless they do it the way I might like, exactly how would such prophylaxis be implemented beyond existing policies on RS and weight? And why would it be my prerogative to insist that my way is best? Do we get to provide our credentials as classical scholars so we can boss everybody else around? That seems rather contrary to the WP spirit. So I'm not seeing a clear goal stated here, let alone an actionable proposal. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:36, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

What we need to do is actually enforce Wikipedia policies and guidelines on use of primary and secondary sources. Enforcement moves beyond contesting editors' prerogatives to overwrite existing content that does not use them. It moves beyond just saying that people should use good ones. We need to actually remove and actually discourage P&G-violating content. Enforcing these policies is not tyranny.

We should start a project-wide effort to go through and remove violating content along with an effort to promptly rewrite the bad articles that our ratings say are important. We should be making efforts to train new and existing editors on responsible sourcing. None of this is currently being done even though other WikiProjects regularly do this. Naturally, if I recall correctly, all of it has been lambasted by the other interlocutor as tyranny. In fact, even mentioning that {{sfn}} exists makes me Imperator Flavius Liliputtius Yuppius VI. Ifly6 (talk) 15:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I see. I would just reiterate that I continually see and make use of P Aculeius's valuable contributions to Roman prosopography, so I think the proposed reeducation might be better directed at other editors, such as the ones grinding their ideological axes. But the more problematic the contributor, the least likely they are to submit to tutelage. (Also, I thought student projects were a nice idea until I saw the actual results in articles.) Which is why I'm not sure there's a problem here that can be fixed through dictates. Like, how do you compel individual project members to improve problematic content? I'm only going to spend my time researching and rewriting problematic content that interests me and relates to other problematic content I'm working on.

If I violate policies, you can direct me to the relevant policies and/or remove my content. If my contributions are disruptive or deleterious, you can have me blocked. If you find a top-importance article in desperate need of improvement, you can bring it to the project's attention and issue a call to arms. Why do you think your fellow project members aren't enforcing policies and guidelines? Are you saying they are intentionally negligent or lackadaisical? In addition to questions of practical implementation, that rhetorical strategy may not be optimal for rousing action. However, I am interested in learning more about what you are proposing. Could you link to some examples of the admirable ways other WikiProjects are formalizing the process of amelioration? Cynwolfe (talk) 18:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have often thought our hagiographic Xenophon needs a major rewrite. It uses primary sources heavily (e.g. treating the Anabasis as gospel truth, at great length) along with nineteenth-century praise of him as one of the greatest writers of antiquity, with no awareness that "no work of ancient literature has in this century suffered so sharp a decline in reputation as Xenophon's Hellenica" (George Cawkwell, 1979). But I know a serious rewrite would be strongly contested, I don't have the stomach or energy to push it alone, and the discussion above reinforces my sense that I'd be alone in wanting comparatively recent scholarship (say, the last fifty years) to be our foundation. NebY (talk) 18:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Not quite seeing how you got that from this discussion. That isn't what I'm trying to say, anyway. I'm saying that the age of the source doesn't necessarily mean that the factual content is wrong, and the content need not be deleted simply because of the age of the source. When I revise artefact articles, I try not to leave any of the PD content from handbooks and encyclopedias. I replace it all, but I don't delete it unless I can offer replacement text. (I do delete content that misrepresents the source, but it's staggering how often that happens under cover of an elaborate Harvard citation apparatus.) On the other hand, I had been going to great lengths to avoid citing Buckland's 1908 book on Roman law as it pertains to slavery, since I'm aware that some WP editors think there's something wrong with citing older scholarship. That was hard to do because I kept seeing everybody still referencing it (as in "I won't go into this here, but see Buckland …"), and then in the introduction of a 2023 book I've been using, the editor stated flat-out that Buckland is still a standard work on the subject. So I went to the source, and finally I understood the full picture of what they were talking about because I had read the scholarship their assumptions were based on.

But the regard in which an author is held is an opinion that changes over time, and the reasons for that kind of changing view are themselves revealing in what they say about the uses of Classical antiquity. The neutral factual statement, based just on what you say here, would be something like "while Xenophon was regarded in the 19th century as one of the greatest writers of antiquity, the reputation of his Hellenica in particular declined in the 20th". The factual statement is not "the Hellenica isn't as good as people thought in the 19th century cuz Shmoe said so in 2011." But alas, we live in times when everyone who doesn't think exactly as I do is supposed to be my enemy, so I should probably shut up, since I don't like to edit high-traffic or contested articles either.

I hope you will work on Xenophon. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:24, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I wasn't so much trying to argue for or against someone's position as to introduce another example, one that is as much about an article being formed from an unquestioningly adulatory conception of the subject. (Although my "sense that I'd be alone in wanting comparatively recent scholarship (say, the last fifty years) to be our foundation" does respond to this discussion's "it is fine to use primary and older modern sources as a foundation".) That Xenophon article, though ... it can't simply be fixed by inserting balancing statements. A couple of examples, without doing serious work on it: for the first part "while Xenophon was regarded in the 19th century as one of the greatest writers of antiquity" may not be a good summary of its one source anyway, and the late 20th-century counterpoint is by no means restricted to the Hellenica; we present an unsourced list of thinkers who praise his philosophy but not "his philosophy is second-hand and second-rate". The second half of our lead's first paragraph doesn't need extending with balancing statements or qualifications; it's empty cherry-picked gilding. It's a wild exaggeration to claim that Xenophon's books inspired Alexander to conquer the the Persian empire, but that's in our lead. A large part of our narrative is unquestioningly based on Xenophon's account of his vital leadership in his Anabasis, with nary a hint that other accounts of the Anabasis found barely any occasion to mention him at all; WP:PRIMARY meets WP:UNDUE. And on, and on .... I expect you'd find much more.

Could it be fixed? In theory, but in practice it would probably be a struggle - I tasted a little last year at Talk:Xenophon#Xenophon as a Thucydides co-author - and too much for my abilities alone. To bring it back to this discussion, I do also fear that however much I cited WP:PRIMARY, WP:SCHOLARSHIP, WP:NPOV and WP:DUE, others would be pointing to the norms of other CGR articles. NebY (talk) 22:06, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

NebY, even if wanting our articles to be POV neutral and based on what current scholarship cites is tyranny, I'm still with you. Ifly6 (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

As to the scholarship that is old but still regularly cited, which I think is Cynwolfe's point, I don't recall anyone advocating a minimum publication year. There are old books that scholars still regularly cite: RE and MRR are among them. Maitland and Dicey on the common law and British constitution are similar examples. Citing such books not only is okay but is best practice because they are current. "Current" is what the scholarly community is citing, not some arbitrary year.

And as to what other people are doing, the obstinate retentionism of obsolete content that NebY attests makes fixing things controversial is part of the problem. Establishing norms such as rewrites are okay and obsolete content should be removed helps fix things and create up-to-date content. Establishing norms against adding obsolete content and primary source paraphrases reduces the influx of line noise that needs fixing while providing enough stick to get editors to change. We can do these things, just as WP:MILHIST has. (I do not buy the argument everyone will drop off the face of the earth if people have to cite current scholarship; WP:LIBRARY exists; WP:CIR.) Ifly6 (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Spartan mirage article needed

I think an article is needed on the Spartan mirage. The current article on Laconophilia and section at Sparta#Laconophilia doesn't seem sufficient. Ifly6 (talk) 05:59, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible that the topic Spartan mirage might be more usefully contextualized as a section of Laconophilia? You'd risk a lot of overlap and hairsplitting debate over allocating content between two rather fork-y articles. The two are mutually informative, perhaps inextricably. (Where I'm coming from on this: I've had some trouble lately with choosing a target for linking at times because the topic has been split so minutely into separate articles that linking to any of them would potentially misrepresent the intended meaning of the source I'm citing.) Cynwolfe (talk) 17:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree - no need. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The Laconophilia article generally does not contrast beliefs about Sparta with the historical reality (which I think is what you want to add, Ifly6, and it's an excellent idea). It's more of a he-said-he-said (sic) list of opinions, pro and con. Redirecting both Spartan mirage and Laconophilia to the content under some neutral title like Attitudes to Sparta might help; it would avoid having a "contrary views" WP:CSECTION subsubsection in every subsection. Currently, all the non-Laconophilic "contrary views" described are from Ancient Greece, while the Laconophilic views also run from the Renaissance to the 21st century, skipping a few notable chunks, including Roman opinions. HLHJ (talk) 20:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The Spartan mirage is a well-known historiographical concept, which in my opinion deserves an article. The founding book was François Ollier, Le mirage spartiate, 1933. Elizabeth Rawson (Spartan Tradition in European Thought, 1969), Anton Powell, Stephen Hodkinson (see Sparta beyond the Mirage, 2002) and Paul Cartledge have also dealt with this concept in depth. T8612 (talk) 21:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. This isn't some kind of obscure thing. This is a whole historiographical question. Ifly6 (talk) 23:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

But how much is there to be said about it that isn't or can't be covered in the other two articles? I don't mind too much what the articles are called, but like Cynwolfe I'd prefer to avoid too many layers. HLHJ's Attitudes to Sparta might well be fine. Johnbod (talk) 23:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The Spartan mirage is certainly notable. If I understand, it is the product of strong opinions distorting descriptions of Sparta. If it is possible to solidly document the Spartan mirage without documenting Laconophilia fairly comprehensively, and vice-versa, I have no objection to separate articles.

Since "Spartan mirage" seems to cover both Laconophilic and Laconoskeptic illusions, it might also work as a neutral name for an overarching article, instead of Perceptions of Sparta or some such. HLHJ (talk) 03:08, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Agree. I have no qualms about notability or the availability of sources – I get more than 70 results when I search "Spartan mirage" on JSTOR, though the vast majority are review articles where I'm guessing the term is only used as a shorthand. If I have an article on a painting that an art historian says draws on while also undermining romanticizing ideals about Sparta, it would be helpful to direct readers to an overview article that provides big-picture context for understanding what that means. The titling of such an article is challenging; Perceptions of Sparta is headed in the right direction, since it's about how Sparta is conceptualized and imagined, but I don't love it either, and perhaps HLHJ is right about the utility of Spartan mirage as the title for an overview that incorporates Laconophilia – otherwise, I would hesitate to link to an article on Spartan mirage unless the source I was citing narrowly used that term. Right now, there are only three WP articles that use the phrase "Spartan mirage." This is not at all discouragement against pursuing the topic. It's encouragement to deploy the information where it will be more visible and most useful. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Gaius Servilius Geminus (prisoner of war)

This seems like a nonstandard way to name an article on a Roman magistrate whose highest office (praetor) is apparently known (though not the year). Gaius Servilius Geminus (consul) appears to be the only article on another person of this same name, and if there were other Gaii Servilii Gemini whose highest office was praetor in an unknown year, they aren't listed at Servilia gens#Servilii Gemini. However, I see P Aculeius in the article history, so perhaps this has been duly vetted as a legit departure from WP:ROMANS? Cynwolfe (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

My only involvement was a change in sorting key from cognomen to nomen. The page used to be at "Gaius Servilius Geminus (Praetor)", but was moved to its present title by Avilich in 2021. I assume this was because he was more notable for having been captured and held by the Boii for fifteen years than for anything he did as praetor. His year of office is not known, according to Broughton, and while many Roman biographical articles with offices in their titles don't have years, that's not a great practice if the year is known, IMO. So perhaps Avilich chose to go by what made him most notable, instead of his magistracy in an uncertain year, about which nothing is known. P Aculeius (talk) 17:30, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I'm aware that Broughton says only "before 218" and doesn't make a conjecture about the year. But highest office needs a date in an article title only if there are others by the same name whose highest office is the same, as with his son, Gaius Servilius Geminus (consul), whose year in office is known. There are many, many Roman men whose primary historical interest is not the highest office they held, but I thought the purpose of using highest office was to regularize and simplify article naming and avoid debate over the nature of notability. I'm going to boldly move it and explain why in detail on the article talk page so as not to burden this page, but I see no reason to depart from the title conventions at WP:ROMANS, which state that a descriptive phrase is something to resort to when no public role is known. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

In this case I don't have any strong feelings, because I don't think "prisoner of war" is a great disambiguator, but I don't like using an office without a date. I know that's what the disambiguation team likes to do, even when there is a date, but it's annoying to see. Maybe we should look at our project's article naming conventions, and consider qualifying the language to say something along the lines of:

disambiguation, when necessary, should be based on what the person is most notable for, if it can be expressed simply. In many cases this will be the highest magistracy held, together with the year, if known, e.g. 'Gaius Bolonius Maximus (praetor 130 BC)'; 'Lucius Velvitius Quadratus (merchant)'; 'Aulus Tomatius Rufus (friend of Cicero)'.

I realize that prioritizing offices held is easy to follow, but in some cases the results seem suboptimal; more flexibility may be the solution. P Aculeius (talk) 14:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that a date – eg not consul but consul 44 BC – should be at least preferred. Ifly6 (talk) 15:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

The date is preferred, of course. But "most notable for" is debatable and, as P Aculeius allows, often not precisely reducible in a title. In this case, the greater notability seems to be that he figures into scholarship on transitio ad plebem as perhaps (but only conjecturally) a patrician who became a plebeian. Hard to disambiguate on that basis, and I listed my reasons on the article talk page. The current hierarchy of titling conventions is functional and already allows for special cases for figures who are not primarily polticians. I do like having a date to disambiguate Romans, but in cases not permitting exactitude I would want a floruit or a century, like praetor 3rd century BCE. I recall being shouted down a decade or so ago, though, when trying to use a floruit or non-magisterial public role (such as princeps senatus), perhaps for one of the Lucii Valerii Flacci for whom "highest office", given his many honors, was in question. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:19, 2 June 2024 (UTC)