Talk:Saratoga campaign

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[edit] Structure of the Saratoga articles

There are more notes on the Talk:Battle of Saratoga page, but I felt a brief explanation was called for here. I plan to go build and/or update articles on the inividual battles and events of Burgoyne's expedition, updating these sections with appropriate summaries as those articles are finished. As always, any help will be appreciated. Lou I 21:43, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Great work on all these articles Lou. (I realize I'm writing this more than two years later, so you may not even be watching this page any longer.)

There is one major problem that has developed with this structure over the years since you initially wrote the articles. The issue is that of "forking". Suppose that a person wants to add or correct something about the Battle of Bemis Heights. There are several possibilities: he or she might edit the Saratoga campaign article, or the Battle of Saratoga article, or the Battle of Bemis Heights article. That person might not edit all three articles, and may not even understand how the three articles relate. Multiply this by the many editors who contribute to the articles over the years, and you get diverging accounts of the battles and expeditions.

One way to avoid this is with "Wikipedia:Summary style." Make it clear when the "see main article" notice is used that what follows is a summary of that topic, and that additional information should be added to the "main" article, in order to avoid forking.

Additionally, there may not be a need for a "Battle of Saratoga" article at all, since all that information can be divided between the "Saratoga campaign" article and well as the two battle articles. This will prevent confusion and further forking.

Because my time is limited, I have no intention of making these changes myself. I hope someone reading this will attempt to reorganize the Saratoga articles to make them easier to understand and edit, and to prevent forking. The fact that I must add this notice to four or five different articles is an illustration of the problem. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 19:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC

[edit] Merge proposed

I am at a loss to figure out why there are separate articles for Saratoga campaign, Battle of Saratoga, Battle of Freeman's Farm and Battle of Bemis Heights. That is at least one too many. I am inclined to believe that "Battle of Saratoga" is the article that should be merged/deleted, because there was no such thing as a "battle of Saratoga". There were two actions, Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights, eighteen days apart. I suggest that "battle of Saratoga" be a redirect to the Saratoga campaign article, and that the Saratoga campaign article include links to the battles at Bemis Heights and Freeman's Farm. Vidor (talk) 04:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Despite the common view of Saratoga as a single battle, it was certainly a campaign.--201.213.46.44 (talk) 17:23, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Separate but need to be cleaned up. A while back I was confused by the same thing and thought Saratoga Campaign and Battle should be the same. However I'm now inclined to paring down the campaign page so that it forks to each of the individual skirmishes. There's a whole bunch of strategy over several months in the campaign including fights at Fort Ticonderoga. Some of these battles were more than 100 miles apart. In American Civil War battles the format is to keep the campaigns and individual battles separate. Americasroof (talk) 17:37, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Another option would be to retitle the "Battle of Saratoga" article as "BattleS of Saratoga", merge both the Bemis Heights and Freeman's Farm articles into that article in their entirety, and delete the latter two. Vidor (talk) 21:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, that's what I'm going to do. Going to change the title of the "Battle of Saratoga" article right now, and merge the two separate battle articles into it at some future date. Vidor (talk) 22:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea -- basically to include all the action the Saratoga National Battlefield. Americasroof (talk) 02:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)