Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History/Archive2

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject History. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Article or not enough information?

Before I submit it to articles for creation, does anyone know anything other than the date of creation for the Statement Relating to Defence, a white paper made in the March (around the 4th, I think) of 1935? There's not much information on it, but it did seem to mark a change in British foreign policy, as it recommended rearmanent in the face of growing agression from both Japan and Hitler's Germany. The only problem I can see is it's not particularly notable - Googling returns about 20 results.

Feel free to leave posts here or on my talk page!

EvocativeIntrigue 16:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

These sorts of pre-Internet age things rarely get many Google hits, but many are still very much worth having an article. We also do already have a page on the 1966 Defence White Paper. - SimonP 16:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

"Name a specific person" template discussion

I've started a discussion of a proposed template at Wikipedia talk:Template messages/Disputes#"Name a specific person" Template needed. The template will deal with the frequent cases where an article has statements like "Democritus found fault with the philosophers around him..." without giving examples of those unnamed philosophers.

I've prepared a draft of the template, which will work very much like the present templates for ^{[citation needed]} or ^{[original research?]}, asking an editor to "please insert specific name." I think participants in the History project may be interested in commenting, but it would be most convenient if all reactions were posted at the original discussion page. --SteveMcCluskey 00:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Normandy, Hrolf Ganger and other problems

The User:Comanche cph has for some time been changing articles sometimes deleting chunks of info to remove all traces of Norwegian involvement in Normandy and the theory that Rollo and Hrolf Ganger was the same person. He has been stating that asserting this ammounts to vandalism. He has also for some reason been changing articles about Norway during the Viking age in order to diminish the role of Norway during this time. I am demoralised in dealing with this person and have too little patiense to deal with his problem. I hope some neutral people with knowledge in the area would look into the problem. Some articles to look into:

Inge 23:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Inge. Now you have talked to two moderators and complaning about me, They both refused you. -I´m cleaning up after you, and then you call me for vandal. Like then you writed on "Norway" that Norway outcunqured England!. Please Inge, this is a Encyclopedia not a Pro-Norwegian fiction site. The articles about "Hrolf Ganger" is changed because of the source the for Hrolf Ganger=Rollo of Normandy is based on one singel saga, "The Orkneyinga saga" and most likely untrue. The Orkneyinga saga is not a strictly historical work. The saga is as much a piece of medieval literature as historical documentation and, writed three centuries after some of the events it records. There is found examples of obviously fictional elements - such as Earl Sigurd's raven banner, the poisoned shirt of Earl Harald, and the Hrolf Ganger saga. Also there is no evidens that name Hrolf Ganger was used by people from Normandy or Francia. But im glad you take this issue up. Because we need to get cleared the things out. I will soon put some hard facts about the history of Rollo, on the discussion bord on "Rollo of Normandy". And please stop attacking me like this :o). --Comanche cph 21:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not against you. I am aginst the onesidedness of your edits. I have not been in contact with any moderators. I have however explored the possibilities of how to stop your rampage since I saw you had been blocked before and I am not accustomed to dealing with the problems I ran into with you. You are removing and altering information which has not been put in by me and which has been present in the articles for a long time. I have edited very little of what you have "cleaned up". I understand you have very little faith in the Norse sagas, but then you have faith in the myth about a King Dan of Denmark being the fouder of the country and the source of its name. If you were trying to make the arguments against Gange-Rolf being Rollo more prominent in the articles I would not have reacted, but your edits only remove all traces of that theory. In addition you are trying to remove all traces of the fact that the inhabitants of the British isles did at least sometimes call all Norse Danes, thus crediting all actions mentioned in those sources only to the people from Denmark. I admit I have been too unpatient with you, but some of your edits do amount to vandalism. A term you yourself are not shy of putting on me and other editors trying to keep the articles clean. So beacause of your obvious lack of faith in me and my low patiense with you I ask other knowlegeable people to get involved and enhanse the quality of these articles. Inge 15:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

-Yes you have been in contact with two moderators and they both refused you, I can link it to you? -You can call my edits Rampage, one sided, vandalism or what ever you wants. But if you take off your Norwegian glasses, you might see, what is wrong and correct. Im not moving any traces, only fake traces. And it seems like they all are writed by Norwegians. -You keep talking about Snorre like he is the man of true. First. Much of Snorre work is copied and rewrote from other Sagas. Allot of Snorres work has been proofed as fiction. The Dan (king) - Denmark thing you talk about is not from Snorre. It´s from the "The Leire Chonicle" and before Snorre, and also mentered by Saxo Grammaticus. Snorre proberly copied from it... The Brits did not call all Norse for Danes. where do you get all this nonsense from? :oD And why do you want Norwegians to be Danes? The Danish and Norwegian language was also a much different as you can see here, old norse language. I´m not moving any traces, you can join the discussion pages. The only source there is about Gange Hrolf is the the very doubtful Snorre saga, -nothing more! There are atleast 10 other, true and proven sources that Rollo from Denmark. --Comanche cph 17:03, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid my knowledge of history doesn't really extend to Scandinavian history so I'm unable to help with the specific issue. However, can I make a request? Whilst it's fine to request a review of articles regarding history on here, it'd be nice if you could keep any dispute regarding content on either the article talk pages or your own individual user talk pages in order to prevent this page getting too cluttered. If either of you feel you're getting nowhere in discussion, please refer to WP:DR for further ideas. Just remember, Wikipedia articles are supposed to represent all views and so should be written from a neutral point of view. I hope you manage to work this problem out! Thanks. Oggy 18:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed castles WikiProject

Hi

Is there any interest in creating a project to improve the coverage of the world's castles and castle-related topics?

Dweller 10:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... no-one? (sigh) Guess I'll do it myself. --Dweller 06:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Whoops - I meant to reply to this! I'm happy to help out when I can (depending on workload) with anything related to British castles. I'm not much help at anything outside of Britain though! Oggy 15:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, that goes for me too, outside of a few Crusader castles. Take a look at my User page. Ta! --Dweller 16:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Hannibal

Could members of this project please take a look at Hannibal and respond to the Associated Peer Review. Thanks. Nobleeagle (Talk) 00:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Glorious Revolution

This edit to The Vicar of Bray (song) is a change, but not necessarily an improvement. I'm hesitant to just revert, but I don't think either is a great summary of what occurred. Does someone want to take this on? I'm guessing that someone on this project can do a better job. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Portal:History needs contributors

Portal:History has been somewhat dormant. The "Selected article" for July has not yet been chosen, but needs to be set up sometime in the next 24 hours. If anyone is interested in making the selection, and otherwise helping with the portal, it would be greatly appreciated. The "Did you know..." section also needs updating. For these, I usually take items that were used on the Main Page Did you know. As well, if people have the initiative to choose articles, I think there is enough good and featured history content on Wikipedia for the articles to rotate weekly rather than monthly. If you would like to help and have any questions on how the portal works, formatting, ..., please drop a note on Portal talk:History. -Aude (talk contribs) 20:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

border changes

I'm trying to put together List of national border changes in the twentieth century partly to help clarify exactly where the boundaries are in 20th century maps. Does anyone want to help expand the list? --Astrokey44 01:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Lineages

Hello all. I am wondering what the common practice is regarding lineages. I work on a lot of articles on samurai and other nobles & aristocrats of pre-modern Japan; lineage and clan membership was very important to these people, and is very useful for the historian or interested reader towards understanding a continuity of events. I see that many articles on royalty use the Monarch Infobox, which contains information on mother, father, and children... Is there an infobox for nobility, or is there any other convention for it? How is this generally handled? Thank you. LordAmeth 12:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Urartu, Hurrians & Near East

Hi everyone, quite a nice job on this project. I think, we also need to update some articles on the History of the Near East. esp. Urartu and Hurrians. There are also many articles waiting to be created. I will try to do much of the stuff. But you guys can help me in Wikifying the articles as well as expanding them. Well, that's it. Bye & have a nice time.

--X y l y X | (talk) 14:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Original Research on "History" Pages

Maybe I'm misreading the concept of original research, but after a few months reading a range of history articles in Wikipedia, I see that many of them only cite primary sources and fail to cite reputable historical research. An example of this problem is the History of Creationism article, which ignores the many excellent historical studies of the rise of creationism, (I found 103 entries when I searched "Creationism" in the History of Science Society online Bibliography) but instead cites books by advocates and opponents of creationism. That is the way to do original research in history; it is not the way to write an encyclopedia article.

To the extent that primary sources may be selected to advance a particular point of view, this goes beyond the No Original Research policy into the Neutral Point of View policy.

Should the History Project take the lead in drafting some standards about how the No Original Research policy applies to history?

Off the top of my head, at a minimum historical articles should cite a range of reliable secondary historical studies on the topic under study. Primary sources may be used to illustrate and document a position but should not stand alone without citation of suitable secondary literature.

Personally, I'd argue that secondary literature should play the predominant role in any historical article. Specifically, every fact that is not common knowledge should be supported by citation of at least one specific secondary source and that the secondary source may be supplemented by citation or quotation of a primary source. --SteveMcCluskey 00:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

History of the Netherlands

History of the Netherlands is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 00:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Use of Æ in article names

Medievalists may wish to join the discussion of the use of Æ (æsc) in article names at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) --SteveMcCluskey 07:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Historical information

I would like to call your attention to WikiProject Historical information, which aims to better the quantity and quality of historical information in articles not about history. (E.g., to have "invention of the wheel" and "wheel through the centuries" sections in wheel. This does not duplicate in any way WikiProject History.) Anyone who is interested is invited to join!—msh210℠ 17:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Former countries

And I would like to draw your attention to Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries (formerly known as WikiProject Historical States. The objective of this project is to better organise and improve entries for countries that no longer exist. - 52 Pickup 20:37, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Expert attention required

Hey there folks. Could you have a look at Category:Pages needing expert attention from History experts? I'm in the middle of sorting out the expert requests and the ones in your field are going to go there. Thanks much! --Brad Beattie ^(talk) 04:05, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSED ROCKER★ 03:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Possible change of direction

I know that this project has a number of members, and I support its stated goals. The disadvantage I see is that maybe, like had been the case with WikiProject Religion, the scope is so broad and contains so much material that it makes it all but impossible to actually bring about reasonably frequent collaboration and cooperation. I clearly do not know the subject well enough to make any blanket sttements here, but I wonder if maybe restructuring the project along similar lines to the above Religion project might bring about a more effective unit. Like I said, I don't know this subject that well, so acknowledge I might be very mistaken, and would appreciate any response, either positive or negative. Badbilltucker 18:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

It's a good suggestion. Also, thanks for the link to WikiProject Religion, which I did not know about.

I would support reorganizing this page along similar lines, in hopes of also creating spinoff projects. -- Rob C (Alarob) 20:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Interloping: The basic idea seems nice, but I don't quite follow what's proposed... to my eyes, WP:RELIGION seems to suffer from more or less the same problems as this project. Would suggest that the military history project might provide more useful guidance for structuring a meta-project. Coming from the Korea WikiProject, where we've recently formed a working group for history, I would be delighted if there were a structure here that would allow efficient networking among such sub-projects. Cheers, -- Visviva 03:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Napoleon / Middle East

At Antoine-Jean Gros, some help is needed: someone added a paragraph on the painting Bonaparte Visiting the Plague House at Jaffa; it was poorly written (which I think I've fixed) but also had other issues about history and geography (which I'm hoping someone here might help address): see Talk:Antoine-Jean Gros. - Jmabel | Talk 00:15, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Comments on Talk:Pontic Greek Genocide

Please could people leave their comments at Talk:Pontic Greek Genocide in order to achieve and improve consensus. - Francis Tyers · 12:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

History of Central Asia FAR

History of Central Asia has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 23:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

History of disasters

Any historians want to contribute to the history found in the disaster articles we have? Have a look at Category:Disasters and then add thoughts at Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management. I hope to expand coverage there to include history and science of disasters, as well as the management aspects. Carcharoth 19:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

History of Sub-National Entities

I'm working hard these days to improve the history pages for some of the Canadian provinces, especially History of Alberta, and some of the former colonies that existed where Canada is now, like Upper Canada and Canada, New France. WikiProject Former Countries has helped with the colonies, but are there any guidelines to follow for writing the histories of modern sub-national states? In fact, are there any guidlines for writing the histories of modern states at all?? Kevlar67 00:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Taj Mahal RFC

I've filed an RFC relating to the Taj Mahal at Talk:Taj Mahal#Request for Comment: Inclusion of minority points of view. Your comments would be most welcome. Joopercoopers 18:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Castle nominated at Wikipedia:Article Creation and Improvement Drive

Just to let everyone know that Castle (which perhaps ironically is in an appalling state of ruin) has been nominated at WP:ACID --Dweller 11:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

History of Poland (1945–1989) FAR

History of Poland (1945–1989) has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Marriage

The history section of this article is horrible. Any expertise would be appreciated. CovenantD 10:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Medieval cuisine

I almost forgot about it, but medieval cuisine is up for FAC. The nomination can be found here.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Greek and Roman astronomers

Category:Greek and Roman astronomers is being proposed to be renamed category:ancient roman astronomers 132.205.44.134 00:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The Decline of the West needs your help

Any Spenglerians or Spenglerologists out there who would care to take a shot at improving The Decline of the West? Thanks -- Writtenonsand 18:13, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

American history WikiProject

Does anyone know if there's a WikiProject for American history? If not, would anyone care to start/co-start one as an offspring-project of this one? (I would do so myself but lack the time/know-how/confidence.) — AnnaKucsma (Talk to me!) 17:45, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Byzantine Empire FAR

Byzantine Empire has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for assistance: Thomas Pickering (Revolutionary War soldier)

I invite any editors interested in American history, particularly those with access to print sources, to take a look at the article Thomas Pickering (Revolutionary War soldier). One would think that the individual is notable, but the single source in the article seems to be the only information about the subject that is available online. For more details, please see the article's talk page. Thank you, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

How do I join this wikiproject

I would like to know how to join this wikiproject Franco 01:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge and redirect mess discussion

If this project isn't dead i think you should help me at the discussion i've started over at Talk:Historical method. We currently have a mess of articles with about the same content or with a content different from what it is supposed to be: Historical-critical method which should really be about the Historical method but which is about the use of the Historical method in Bible studies , an article called Historical criticism which was really about Historical criticism in Bible studies, an article called Source criticism which is also about Historical criticism in Bible studies but which should be about the Historical method. It is a great mess and a lot of articles should be merged, some should be redirects to others and some should have different content than they have. Please help me straighten it up.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 10:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

RfC on a content dispute in History section of the India page

Hi, This probably isn't the right place to advertise this RfC, but since we haven't had too many responses, I am posting on more distant sites. The RfC itself is posted here. Since both statements, the original poster's and mine, in response, are long, you might want to skim through them first. Any help, by way of comments, will be appreciated. Regards, Fowler&fowler «Talk» 21:17, 29 August 2007 (UTC)