Talk:Seleucia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Iraq Seleucia is part of the WikiProject Iraq, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Iraq on the Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
Low This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. To participate, improve this article or visit the project page for more information.

Moved here from an amalgam of short notes, what is now the disambiguation page at Seleucia. Added some information from the (local to me) U-M Kelsey Museum. Much more needs to be done.

--William Allen Simpson 01:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was PAGE MOVED per discussion below. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Seleucia on the Tigris → Seleucia — This was much the greatest, and remains the best known Seleucia, so it should get treated in the same way as Alexandria and Antioch, which each was likewise an ancient metropolis that shared its name with many lesser places. On Wikipedia, Antioch and Alexandria each have articles entitled after themselves, without qualification, each article having a leading note linking to the disambiguation page for other places of the same name. The same should be done for Seleucia. Lonewolf BC 03:12, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.
  • Weak Oppose neutral - this page used to be at Seleucia, before that became a disambig. Sure it's the "best known" Seleucia, as such things go, but that isn't saying much since none of them are that well known to the layman, not quite the name-recognition of Alexandria or Antioch. 'Seleucia' has too many different meanings / locations all named for Seleucus, sometimes it is even used for the larger Empire, etc. so I'm happy to see it continue as a disambig. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Changed vote - I currently have no reason to oppose this move. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 12:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Granted, not the same name-recognition in absolute terms. Comparatively speaking, though, do you not agree that this is the Seleucia, the one which a person is likely to know, if they know one; consider the important one, if they know more than one; perhaps most importantly, be looking for on Wikipedia, if they are looking for information on one? The disambiguation page, of course, will carry on regardless, so no worries on that score. -- Lonewolf BC 04:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. There's wide precedent: not just Antioch and Alexandria but also other homonym cities/towns where one is much more important than the others: Durango, Paris, etc. This Seleucia was as important as Antioch or Alexandria, and, while Alexandria is still an important city, Antioch is not and only Christian reference have perpetuated its memory a little bit more than that of Seleucia, which was "only" capital of an important homonym empire but not seat of any Christian Patriarch. In some senses Antioch is much less important than this Seleucia. --Sugaar 02:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
As a matter of fact, there was a Patriarch (Katholikos) of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in the Assyrian Church of the East (qv)... But that's really "neither here nor there" on this question...! ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 02:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
comment:Your comment on the Assyrian Patriarch actually weights even more to restore Seleucia, on matter of avoiding ethnocentric bias. --Sugaar 03:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Codex Sinaiticus. Although for some readers this undoubtedly is the Seleucia, all those who don't know much about it would be better served with the current disambiguation page, which simoultaneously conveys the richness of Hellenistic times better than any introductory paragraph in this article could do :-) - Evv 20:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, as per nomination.--Panarjedde 12:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, in books, when the name of Seleucia is made, it is taken for granted that one is speaking of the Mesopotamian city; and the example of Antioch is espeially pertinent, as Seleucia was the sister capital of the empire. Also, I have quite a good knowledge of hellenistic history, and have never read of the term seleucia used as a synonimous for Seleucid Empire.--Aldux 23:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I'm not sure epi Tigridi is the right disambiguator anyway. Septentrionalis 23:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Definite Oppose - for sake of continuinty; and similarity to articles like English, which are ambiguous, and need to say English people for disambig. - Patstuart(talk)(contribs) 02:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments:

I hope this proposed move proves uncontroversial. Note that I have already moved the former, omnibus "Seleucia" page to "Seleucia (disambiguation)", thus giving it a title of the standard form for a disambiguation page. So "Seleucia" is now available to move this article into -- or would be if it were not occupied by a redirect page with a one-item history telling that the article that used to be there has been moved, which is the residue left by the moving of the disambiguation page. -- Lonewolf BC 03:31, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] BC-vs-BCE, in relation to the article's history

I actually opposed the original move of content from Seleucia to here almost a year ago, because it was slyly done by a "date-warrior" who seemed to be trying to get around the convention that BC articles are not changed into BCE articles, by creating a "new" article here with the exact same content (except with BCE for BC), and then making Seleucia into the disambig. page. So now if the article is going to be moved back to Seleucia, I don't really object strongly, but in fairness I think the original BC format ought to be restored, in that case. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 02:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly favor BCE over BC because it's more laicist and somewhat less ethnocentric. --Sugaar 03:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
BC Ethnocentric? Now I've heard everything! What ethnicity would it be centred around exactly?!?!? Wikipedia polls have consistently shown a slight majority of people here think BCE is just PC gone a step too far, but official policy is that BC is perfectly acceptable, so charges of ethnocenticity would never fly. And the record will show that the article was originally in BC format, but last December was copied onto this page instead of page-moved, basically just to "game the system" and get around the "no-change from one to the other" rule that is in effect site-wide. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The matter is quite simple: 1) edit warring about allowed styles is not allowed; 2) BC and BCE are both allowed styles 3) BC was used in the first version of this article. I do not see any reason to change the format.--Panarjedde 12:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I concur. Whereas the first major contributor to the text about this Seleucia used BC-style (before that, the text had not contained any dates), plainly converting it to BCE-style was contrary to the "don't mess with the style" arbitration ruling and MOS guideline, about style disputes. The fact that the conversion was done in conjunction with moving the text into a different article is immaterial, because the clear breach of the guideline's spirit trumps any nit-picking technical argument that might be made. I would be cautious about assumimg that the move was sly trickery, whose true goal was to change the text's era-style. However, by rights the original BC-style should be restored, and I'm a bit surprised that this was not simply done at the time. -- Lonewolf BC 22:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
You can still see on what is now Talk:Seleucia (disambiguation) the discussion from last December, where I tussled with that user, who rudely refused to address me directly, only obliquely in the third person, and stated drily that BC was now "obsolete". Although I had contributed a good deal of what had been cut and pasted over to this GFDL at the time. At any rate, if BC is restored as is proper, and now two users have agreed, I will then change my opposition vote to the move. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
With regard to your last sentence, I think that you should support the proposed move if and only if it makes sense to you, on its intrinsic merits. Although I understand your wish to see BC-style restored, making your support for the proposed move conditional on that restoration does not really make sense except, perhaps, as a tactic, and is not quite kosher -- and of course no one can guarantee you that it will be restored if the article is moved. That said, it is plain that BC-style ought be restored, for reasons explained above, whether or not the article moves. Moreover, moving the article back to its original place would only strengthen, morally, the case for restoring the original, "BC" style -- not that that case really needs bolstering. -- Lonewolf BC 05:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I see what you are saying, but the way I see it, it would be less "moral" to move the page back to the original location as long as it wrongly has BCE, that is why I still oppose the move. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 13:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I fully support returning to BC in this article; while I'm "agnostic" on the BC vs BCE dispute, few things go to my nerves as much as these unilateral date changes.--Aldux 11:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Date warriors should be reverted anyway. If this checks out, I will change the style on those grounds, whether moved or not. Septentrionalis 23:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Please do. This chronology about the text on this Seleucia, within Wikipedia, may help you, whereas that tale is somewhat tangled:
-- (Lonewolf BC 01:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC))
Reverted to AD/BC. Septentrionalis 06:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)