User talk:Jacob Haller

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Contents 1 Request for Mediation 2 Fact tags 3 Welcome to the Military history WikiProject! 4 The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue XI - January 2007 5 References 6 WP:MILHIST Coordinator Elections 7 WikiProject Military History elections 8 Gothic armies 9 The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue XII - February 2007 10 fact tags added to Campaign history of the Roman military 11 Aëtius (theologian) 12 Organization by Theme or Organization by Date? 13 Work to Structural History of the Roman military 14 The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue XIII - March 2007

[edit] Request for Mediation

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[edit] Fact tags

The correct usage is {{fact}} which produces:

^{[citation needed]}

Not [[fact]]. Thanks. -- Stbalbach 20:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to the Military history WikiProject!

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue XI - January 2007

The January 2007 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 20:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

Seeing your comments on Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, the usual tag for references is <ref>blah blah blah</ref>, which will put the text between the two ref's as a footnote. Then at the bottom of the page add a section of notes, using <references/>. I did this for the two notes you added. However, can you add where Belash's data is available, in some book or website or whatever? The point of footnotes like that is so someone can verify that it is true. Rigadoun (talk) 17:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:MILHIST Coordinator Elections

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[edit] WikiProject Military History elections

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[edit] Gothic armies

Hi

I saw that you were working on the Gothic armies article. I have a couple of tips for you since you seem fairly new:

• Jordanes entire "Origins and Deeds of the Goths" is online here, you could use that as a source for some more information.
• The article seems to be new and created by yourself. There's nothing wrong with that but you need to consider how you can tie it in with the rest of the articles on wikipedia. One of wikipedia's best features is that you can hop from one article to another via wikilinks. At the moment nothing much links to Gothic armies, you need to try and find its place in wikipedia's existing articles and put links in to it. The most obvious place to link from would be Goths - I would write a small section on Gothic military in that article, and then link to your main article at Gothic armies. At present, people are unlikely to find your article.
• I think you need to discuss the formation of the Gothic armies, their typical military units, how they were armed, etc.
• "Wulfila's bible translation often describes the 1st Century Roman army in 4th Century Gothic terms." - I'm not sure that this whole section is really relevant - the article should be about Gothic armies, not Roman ones.

Thanks - PocklingtonDan (talk) 07:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue XII - February 2007

The February 2007 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

Delivered by grafikbot 15:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] fact tags added to Campaign history of the Roman military

Hi, as you can hopefully appreciate with an article of this size with this many sources, trawling through all my references searching for a cite for the sentences you have flagged as needing cites would be something of a massive undertaking and not one I have time for at the moment. Would it be satisfactory to simply substitute "Goths" for "Visigoths" in the disputed sentences? Many thanks - PocklingtonDan (talk) 18:19, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I had recently moved Visigoth to Visigoths and was sorting though the links (still several hundred to go) hence my quick fact-tagging without much more. Yes, substituting Goths for Visigoths should do nicely. Thanks. Jacob Haller 06:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aëtius (theologian)

When you mark POV issues, please indicate on the Talk page what exactly the issues are, as specified by the POV tag. I believe I have addressed your issues, but can't be sure. --Macrakis 14:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Organization by Theme or Organization by Date?

I was working on the Structural History of the Roman military and I'm concerned about issues (like tactics) which fall through the cracks between "campaign history" and "structural history." Anyway, I copied the section over to a new page titled Late Roman military. I plan to copy the appropriate section from the other articles. I suggest discussing appropriate ways to divide the history and creating new period-based articles. Jacob Haller 03:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with this page creation. The issue you have raised is not valid, since pages covering these topics already exist at Strategy of the Roman military and Roman infantry tactics, for example - both linked in the main Roman military navbar at the top of each page. By creating this page, you are duplicating work from other articles and over-populating the category of articles on the Roman military - all the content in this article that you have created is already available in other articles. Th existing article structure is thematic (each article covers a different theme) with sections within each article covering each period - PocklingtonDan (talk) 10:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Work to Structural History of the Roman military

Jacob, I see that you have made widespread edits to this article last night. I have unfortunately felt it necessary to revert much of your work. My reasons for doing this are:

• You greatly altered the structure of the article, introducing sections that are contrary tot he article's title and are covered more properly in other, existing articles [1] [2]
• You removed cited quotes [3]
• The article is currently undergoing peer review, as noted on the talk page, and such widespreadh changes to an article are not helpful during such a process, which needs some article stability in order for comments made int he peer review to be useful [4]
• As per your comments at Talk:Military of ancient Rome, I'm not sure that you have fully explored or understood the existing structure of articles on ancient Rome and where certain content is most relevant.

Please get in contact before performing any more such radical article overhauls on an article that is under development by another editor and in the peer review process. Thanks! - PocklingtonDan (talk) 10:32, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I am going back over your edits, re-adding in all the content you added that is relevant to the article, but maintaining the existing structure - PocklingtonDan (talk) 10:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

You're right that I can't make heads or tails of the Roman Army article structure. Jacob Haller 11:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

As for the substantial issues ... I read the article and found it often contradicted the most recent scholarship. I removed one quote because I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to mean. Jacob Haller 11:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Jacob, there is no need to create an entire parallel structure for the late Roman military, when a structure is already in place for the entire Roman military. Stop making edits for a second and take a step back. The structure of the articles is very simple - it is thematic. There is an article on the Structural history (how the structure of the army changed over time), one on the campign history (the battles they fought in), one on the technological history (weapons development etc), political history, one on the strategy, one on the Roman military personal equipment, and one on the tactics. All the edits you have made can be fitted into one of these articles, there is no need to create an entire parallel structure for the late roman military you are interested in. All aspects of the late roman military are aspects of the changing face of the roman military as a whole, and should be fitted into the pre-existing articles on these subjects. For example, you were adding content to the Structural history of the Roman military on weapons and tactics - these already have existing articles, in this case technological history and tactics. If they currently cover only the weapons and tactics of the early empire, then they should simply be expanded to include information on the late empire too. This is a problem with a lot of articles on the Roman military, that there is a focus currently on early empire only, which is not representative of the entire roman military history.

What I am trying to say is please try and understand the existing structure and where the edits you are making should be fitting into that. You say "I have other articles which need to reference the Late Roman military (including its organization, tactics, equipment, campaigns, etc.)" - what you should do in each case is create a section by date in the relevant structural, tactics, equipment etc article and link to that section - you don't need to create brand new articles for all of these. For example, structural and campaign history already have sections on the late empire you can link to, and if the tactics, equipment, etc etc articles do not, then you need to create new sections in them for the late empire to indicate the differences. Having to link to sections within articles is perfectly standard and is not indicative that an entire new parallel article structure needs to be set up

You also say "I have had to write extensive sections on Roman military equipment". Why? There is already an article called Roman military personal equipment that should hold all this information. If it doesn't, then add it. Again, there are correct places for all this info you're adding, but you are currently duplicating a lot of work and ignoring the existing article structure.

I understand exactly where your frustration is coming from - it is true that some of the articles cover the entire roman military period and some cover only the early empire. This is not deliberate, it is a legacy issue that is due to a lot of the early editors begin interested primarily in the early empire, and writing articles as if this was representative of the entire roman military. In more recent articles, I and several other editors have restructured several of the articles to include information right from 800BC to 476 AD. However, some articles that we haven't got around to yet still focus only or predominantly on the early empire (the classic legions everyone is familiar with). This is not because this is how these articles should be, but because that's how they have been historically, and haven't been worked on since. If an article claims to be on Topic X for the entire roman military, but only holds info on the early empire, don't create a duplicate article just for the late empire, populate the existing article with info on the late empire too, and make clear when the changes occured and why.

If you carry on in the direciton you have been, we are going to end up with a very confusing mix of some articles on the entire period of the roman military, some on the late, and some on the early. It is far easier to comprehend as a structure (and would require far less reworking of existing articles) to continue the practice of assigning the scope of the entire roman military period from 800BC to 476 AD to each article, and editing it accordingly.

To sumamrise: if an article claims to be on "Roman military equipment" but only has info on early imperial roman military equipment, don't create another article called "late roman military equipment", just split the existing article into sections "republic military equipmetn", "early imperial military equipment", "late imperial military equipment" etc.

Many thanks - PocklingtonDan (talk) 14:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

As an example, I started the article Gothic and Vandal warfare (originally Gothic armies), initially to support Battle of Adrianople. The article clearly needs to refer to Roman warfare and the Roman military. However, while it may need to refer to the Roman military from the 230s to the 550s it doesn't need to refer to the Roman military of the early Republic, etc, etc. Many battle articles might need to refer to Roman military organization in their period (i.e. the structural history article), tactics of the period (tactics), weapons (which might go in tactics, in technology (which currently focuses on civil engineering and siege warfare), or in personal equipment), etc. I'm sorry about screwing with the peer review process. Jacob Haller 01:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

And I'd point to Byzantine army as a period-based subdivision of Roman military history. Jacob Haller 01:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• Hi Jacob, no probs with the peer review process, perhaps it wasn't obvious from the article that it was ongoing. I understand exactly what you are saying, but it should be possible to simply link to the relevant period sections of the existing articles on each topic. I do see the difficulty in that you want to link to an article summarising all aspects of one period, but think of the reverse - if it was sorted by date and you wanted to look at roman military tactics, you would have to again look at lots of sections of different (by period) articles. I'm not sure there is a solution really, since it doesn't make sense in my view to duplicate everything into both by-theme and by-period articles - PocklingtonDan (talk) 07:11, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue XIII - March 2007

The March 2007 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 19:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)