Talk:List of sources for the Crusades

Is this an encyclopaedic article?
As of writing this talk page section this article is not linked to the main Wikipedia article on the Crusades, and while this article is not a subsection of the article on the Crusades, does this article fall foul of WP:NOT given the restriction on Further reading? -- PBS (talk) 17:05, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * it's a bibliography and we have lots of those. I do not think they are considered WP:NOT. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:58, 19 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes sure this is an important topic. Wikipedia needs more historiography articles, there are historiography encyclopedias. --  Green  C  16:03, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * "What links here" (now) includes Crusades. Johnbod (talk) 14:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Article size
At the start of June 2020 this article was 14,067 bytes in size. Since then (at 16:45, 19 July 2020‎) it has expanded to 238,138 bytes.

This is way over the size recommended in Article size. So what is to be done about it? -- PBS (talk) 17:05, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * it's long, but because it's in a list format, it does not have a readable prose size that would violate any of the numbers at WP:SIZERULE (the readable prose size is 15kb). Markup size is different and offers no useful comparisons. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Nice work. For the few visits this article will get it looks great. Considering the amount of the information it looks like it should be a special case. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 06:08, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Btw, I only make the word count around 20k, so no problem there in any case. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 06:11, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The page size tool under-measures the amount of text on the page. It doesn't count anything in a bulleted list as text. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:28, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with your edits, but what were are left with is generally inconsistent formatting and the deletion of some material that is of interest in the topic. Please discuss. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 16:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Off topic material - not sources about the Crusades - and general repetition of the source name before the linked article on the source - eg " Nicholas Ambraseys. Nicholas Ambraseys ". If the bold is supposed to be pusedo-deading then perhaps the entries need to be formatted using glossary techniques.
 * PS: I came across this article when it was identified at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history as one of the ten largest articles. GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:27, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I was just surprised that you would make major changes to a mature article without discussing it. And inconsistently, for example, Canso d’Antioca. Canso d’Antioca survived but the entrees above and below didn't. Also, coverting Sources on relics to glossary format.

The reason the format was used is one of consistency. Some of the bold headings are authors or works, others categories of works. For example, Saladin in Literature. The format is within Wikipedia guidelines and so I don't understand the changes, especially as the article now looks unprofessional, with some bullets bold, some not.

The material that was deleted is not off-topic. The topic is sources that historians use to write of the Crusades, and are not limited to written works. Crusader historians often use auxiliary sciences of history, to includes such things as epigraphy and archaeoseismology, to verify other sources.

As to the size of the article, this article has been split many times (see Historians and histories of the Crusades) and I am in the process of trying to cull it down. The runner-up from your list list of later historians of the Crusades will be split off soon. I've already prepared the split on a Sandbox page, converting portions of it to glossary format as you did on on Sources on relics.

I know there's an obsession on Wikipedia with long articles, but this one was not in the top 50 and so not specifically targeted by those editors whose existence is only to split the largest articles. I am surprised that Project Military History keeps such a list. Sadly, I'm also surprised that TRADOC is now known as Futures Command. What a great name! I would have thought they would've given up with Future Combat Systems.

For what it's worth, those who write on the Crusades do find this series a useful compilation. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 18:14, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Be bold. Can't tell if a format change works unless you put it into play. And WP:Prose because where detail is involved, straight text is preferred.  WP:BULLET says of that bulleted lists that "[t]hey are not appropriate for large paragraphs". This article actually seems to be using a list-def approach but not formatting it as list-def where the "alternation of typically short names and longer values makes the separate components easy to spot while editing" (or reading) but the descriptions are not large or multi-paragraph such that they warrant getting true section headings.
 * As to other matters: 1) Milhist does not maintain a list, but an editor mentioned this article in a list. 2) I came here to see what made it so large but aside from a bit of what I thought is off-topicry (ancillary sources are part of generial historian research but not specific direct sources on the Crusades which is what the lead sentence pitches the article as), what makes it large is content, and is the presentation of the content I sought to enhance. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:52, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Doubling up on referencing/mixed referencing styles
Entries with mix of both parenthesis and end notes at the end eg Geoffrey of Villehardouin...... "(Runc. Vol III, pp. 110n, 483, 497) " This appears to be either doubling up on the referencing - that the content preceding it is covered in Runciman Vol III pp etc and in Noble pp507-508 but mixed referencing styles parenthetical (which has been deprecated for about a year) and endnote - or that Noble is giving the reference that Runciman covers the topic, in which case the endnote citation is possibly superfluous. {This is as opposed to naming - in abbreviated form - a work which reproduces the other work within it.) GraemeLeggett (talk) 06:48, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The purpose of the parenthetical notes is informational, showing where the author or work is referenced (Runciman primarily) or where the work can be found RHC, MPL, PPTS, etc. The citations are generally pointing to a related encyclopedia article, e.g., Catholic, EB11, Ency of the Crusades. I don't know if that is superfluous on not, but the objective is to provide information in a concise way. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 16:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)