Talk:Battle of Vosges (58 BC)

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[edit] Previous untitled discussion

Sure, no problem. I was just trying to help :-) Nice job on this article so far! Brian 11:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)btball

[edit] Name of Battle

I see no reason why this battle should not be called the battle of the Vosges; however, I am not sure anyone else has done so. I don't know of any ancient sources that call it that and the name was not ready at hand to anyone else in Wikipedia. The problem is that, as far as I know (unless by archaeology recently) the site remains unknown. The one primary source is Julius Caesar and he gives some rough parameters but not enough to say, "it was here." Naturally the battle has to have had a name for the scholars of all these centuries but it usually makes use of the Suebi or Ariovistus or Caesar's defeat of the Germans or some such thing. Seeing that the battle of the Vosges seems rare if not actually coined for Wikipedia, could someone give an indication of where they saw the name used or who used it first or what standard reference work used that name or whatever? Thank you very much.Dave 17:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

PS I see there is a nice game site that grabs the name battle of the Vosges. Of course they would have to find such a name to refer to the game. There is another more recent Battle of the Vosges, so I am not sure this name is a good one for the ancient battle after all. Too bad caesar did not name it geographically as he did other battles.Dave 17:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible duplication

This is only a stub of an article of course at this time. Meanwhile a good article on Ariovistus was done by me and a few others that describes the battle. You only get one primary source, Julius Caesar. I was hoping a nice archaeological site had turned up by this time but I don't see any evidence of it anywhere. I should be delighted if one was out there. So, it looks as though Caesar is it. This article is not stable; i.e., it is not in good enough condition just to leave. There are a few possibilities. 1) Merge with Ariovistus 2) Plunder the battle part of Ariovistus and put it here. 3) Have two articles on the battle, one here and one under Ariovistus. Does anyone have any thoughts on the subject? As I say, if we are going to put the battle under the battle of the Vosges, some instances of the use of that name and how the battle got it would be ideal.Dave 17:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

2 is the way to go in my opinion. Flamarande 08:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My opinion on the possible duplication problem

I see two possible solutions. One would be to keep this article to a minimum and "see also" Ariovistus. The other is to break out the battle from the Ariovistus article, merge that here and have a link to this article in the Ariovistus article. My preference is the latter, but that's just my opionion. I'm not too concerned about the name as we can create redirects --- but I agree more documentation of which name(s) to use would be good. Brian 20:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC)Btball

You second proposal seems to be acceptable. Flamarande 08:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus Christ, will all of you please give me some time?

Look, I know that all of you are interrested in improving wikipedia, but please relax. I began this article yesterday and allready are you discussing if it shouldn't be merged with Ariovistus? I found plenty of stubs everywhere which have been stubs for ages and noone seems to care about it. This article will remain as stub for some time. I am currently improving the Gallic wars in a pace I like. Eventually, as I finish the main article I will slowly improve the mentioned battles articles. Until then noone is merging this article. As for the name issue this batlle is widely unknown and there seems to exist another two battles wich share the "Battle of Vosges" name: one of the 16th century, another of the WWII. and we have one of them allready: Battle of the Vosges. As I hope that Wikipedia will eventually also create the other article, I propose that someone creates a "disimbiguation page" presenting all three battles. To make it short: A merge? Only over my dead userbody Flamarande 08:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vosges revisited

Well, it has been over a year since the issue of the name came up. Nothing has been done to resolve the matter, and I know why. The battle actually has no name in history. It is quite true. No one bothered to name the battle. So here we are, not knowing what to call it and unable to go any further. But I think I can summarize a few truisms:

  • The stub is not satisfactory but the stub cannot be filled in without either pulling in material from Ariovistus or redescribing the battle here.
  • There are in fact a few other Vosges campaigns not yet written about in Wikipedia.
  • This ad hoc name of the battle has been worked into the Wiki battle literature.

Now that I have summarized I am not at all sure we have gained anything by it. But it seems to me the issue has crystallized into two possibilities. 1) Dump the article. 2) Keep the article.

Now, if we dumped it I suppose someone would suggest a merger with Ariovistus. After that succeeded I suppose we would take the nice box and whatever else is nice there and work it into the Ariovistus article. If we kept it I suppose we would hack up Ariovistus in favor of Vosges. We would have to point out that the battle was never named and that the name is a convenience only for this article. As for the gaming link currently in the article, let's get that out. The notions of gamers are not an adequate source of encyclopedic material unless the article is on a game or gaming.

For myself I favor dumping the current article. We don't want to make stuff up on Wikipedia. I've never suggested a merger before so I have to learn how to do it, if I can without being a sysadm.Dave 01:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)