Talk:Fall of a civilisation

This article is intended as the backbone of a presentation of the factors that lead to the fall of a particular historic civilisation. It is not intended to be an examination of the destruction of humanity, or the extinction of life (For those interested in that topic see End of Civilization). At present this is just a stub and I invite others to contribute to it. For example the list of causes for the collapse of civilisations needs examples added, and references of particular authors and cases. This article also needs proper linkage with other topics and examples. John D. Croft 10:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * What is the correct capitalisation? You've got "civilisation" lower-cased in the article title, but upper-cased in the main text, which looks bad. I'd also suggest considerable wikification, and rewriting a bit to make this look more like an encylopedia article and less like an essay. Loganberry (Talk) 15:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Loganberry, Feel free to make the change you feel works best. John D. Croft 16:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I'd rather leave it to you, or another, because I honestly don't know; this is not a subject I'm knowledgeable about. Loganberry (Talk) 23:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Societal collapse
This article duplicates the scope of societal collapse. Both articles deal with historical social collapse, or "fall".


 * Societal collapse refers generally to the collapse of any kind of society. Fall of a civilisation refers only to the collapse of civilisations - a certain class of society.  So this article does not merely duplicate societal collapse work. John D. Croft 18:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, using terms like "fall" and "dark ages" is a nod to Western European historiography and the fall of the Roman Empire and the start of the Dark Ages - both terms are largely outdated and mythological - fun for the popular history crowd, but problematic and largely outdated from a scholarly view. -- Stbalbach 18:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Not so. Read Peter Heather's book "The Fall of the Roman Empire" or the work of Bryan Ward Perkins, who has also written on the subject.  "Dark Ages" are found in many cases of civilisations which collapse or suffer a hiatus.  The earliest recorded Dark Age is the period of the Gutians at the collapse of the Akkadian Empire 2,250 BCE, and the 1st Inermediate Period in Egypt also has many of the characteristics of a Dark Age - i.e. a reduction of literacy, disappearance of centralised government, restrictions in long-distance trade, general impoverishment of the population and a major depopulation.  John D. Croft 18:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

NPOV
Listen, I don't know who keeps writing all this anarchist crap about "beggars and slaves" have everything to gain, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't belong on a perspective-neutral encyclopedia. I have removed it for like the 5th time. Please do not bring it back, I will delete again and again until it stays deleted. Martin152.23.48.99 23:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It is not up to a single editor to undue the considerable hard work of others with a mass deletion. I didnt write the passages in question, but the work is sourced and should be altered, not simply deleted.  If you have removed it five times you are editing this page under quite a few different names.  If you are a serious editor, please open an account so that your communications can be tracked. thank you.  By the way the deleted material has now received a few edits, so please work constructively and surgically alter parts that you think are non-neutral. regards. Anlace 02:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I added the NPOV tag to the section "Experience of dark ages" because I feel like I'm reading somebody's book written about their personal research into a theory, rather than an encyclopedia article. Judging from this talk page, there's been a little bit of an edit war. I want to add a copyvio tag, but I have no idea who the copyright holder would be. Xaxafrad 00:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC) (see next section, Copyvio)

Copyvio
I found the source by searching Google for the section title, "Experience of dark ages", which comes from this site, maintained by some guy named Marc, who doesn't have any copyright notices on any of his pages. On further investigation, it seems Marc's website at lineone.net was the first, before he gained HTML proficiency (or hired an HTML consultant), while darkage.fsnet.co.uk is his more recent creation. I didn't see any copyrights on either site, however he does reveal the table of contents to a book which is under production (which might be copyrighted when it gets published). Maybe this Marc character is the one who added this material to wikipedia, or maybe it was somebody else, in either case, it seems like blatant WP:OR.

In fact, I feel like nominating this article for deletion, but I don't feel like being that heavy-handed, so I'll just put the motion on the floor and see if anybody will second it. Xaxafrad 01:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Citation requests
I have added citation requests. Please do not remove them unless cited. 71.191.131.7 (talk) 15:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I have re-added the citation requests. Please do not remove them until the author of this article either improves it or these things are deleted. The generic "more sources" at the top has been there for almost a year and doesn't seem to be helping. This article is riddled with neologisms and weasel words. -- 71.191.131.7 (talk) 05:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If the generic more sources tag won't help, tagging everything with fact won't help either. It makes the article look ridiculous. Garion96 (talk) 07:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It's basically one long piece of original research and weasel words. A simple banner at the top doesn't address the gravity problem. I've taken the courtesy of my time and efforts to read this article carefully, to point out exactly where the problems are, and to ask for someone to provide citations. The banner has been in place for over a year and John has not corrected the problem, most people don't care about banners. I would suggest we deleted the uncited material and let John re-add it later once he has done his research. Clearly the number of cite requests takes up almost the entire article. -- 71.191.131.7 (talk) 23:01, 15 December 2007 (UTC)


 * BTW, specific citation requests are always better than banners. Banners can mean anything, specific actionable requests are easily resolved. -- 71.191.131.7 (talk) 23:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Almost always better. But this edit is just ridiculous. I agree that if it is controversial and not sourced it should be removed. I do see the article is slowly improving. Garion96 (talk) 19:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that if it is controversial and not sourced it should be removed. - oh good. Since we can't come to an agreement on citation request tags I will begin removing unsourced material per WP:V right away. Per Jimbo Wales:
 * I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced.


 * The editor said he plans to improve it - great. He's had 12 months with a citation request banner. 12 months is "ridiculous". -- 71.191.131.7 (talk) 21:16, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


 * More references have been cited to various sections. Work is proceeding. John D. Croft (talk) 00:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)