Talk:Battle of Salyersville

Reenactment image
keep the image of the reenactment. if other battles can have them as images why not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bj howard (talk • contribs) 00:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You mentioned the Battle of Richmond article as precedent. That's a pretty good precedent for why we shouldn't use re-enactment photos to illustrate civil war era articles: They may be outright ahistorical. Just to use your precedent: The Confederate flag in the Battle of Richmond reenactment has seven stars, but by 1862 the Confederate national flag had thirteen. Were there really Confederate troops at that battle whose flags didn't show the correct number of stars? I doubt it. The Confederate flag on the Salyersville image is just as dubious: The Confederate battle flag was actually square. Asked conversely: How is a reenactment photo supposed to help a reader? What kind of information does it convey? I don't see what good this image does the article. Huon (talk) 02:24, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

it looks better than not having any image at all. and it was the first reenactment of the battle of salyersville ever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bj howard (talk • contribs) 02:42, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "It looks good" is not a reason, and neither is being an image of the first-ever reenactment. This isn't an article on the reenactment, after all. With all due respect to the reenactors, the image may give a misleading impression, it may suffer historical inaccuracies (such as the flag - and I doubt that the heavyset guy in the background actually wears anything resembling a Union uniform), and in my opinion we're better off with no image at all than with such a problematic one. It'd probably be very hard to have a reenactment without some anachronism or other - that's not the reenactors' fault, but it means that reenactment images should always be considered tainted. I've asked for additional opinions at WT:WikiProject Military History. Huon (talk) 03:14, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

i was in the reenactment myself and am 1 of the courpses. my relative was who took the image.Bj howard (talk) 04:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your interest in reenactment, but that is irrelevant to our purposes here. A reply has been given at WT:WikiProject Military History, and I agree with that reply that reenactment photos are not useful for illustrating articles on historical battles. Huon (talk) 14:59, 12 January 2011 (UTC)