Talk:Mari, Syria

Italics
Why is the sentence in the middle of the paragraph on the 2nd Golden Age in italics? Mdotley 00:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

THIS ARTICLE HAS NOT FOOTNOTES. SOMEONE HAS TO DOUBLE CHECK THE INFO AND INSERT FOOTNOTES. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.200.65 (talk) 23:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite
Hello, I have rewritten this article as I think Mari is one of the most important cities of ancient Syria. I have counted on the newest sources and made sure that every sentence is referenced. When the history or the events are ambiguous or when the topic is debated, I made sure to represent all the views.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 10:11, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Recent changes
Taking this article to FA has been on my list for a while, but it will need an overhaul which I plan to start soon. One point is that too much lists, especially the last layout where each kingdom had its list of kings within its section, lower the quality of the article as it break the flow of the prose. As is customary, I have moved the kings to an article dedicated for them, which is customary for monarchs in general. This is in line with Wiki policies Embedded lists, Lists, tables and summaries and List size. Another change I made was removing the citations from photos. Generally, the photo needs to be cited within its file, unless the caption in the article is stating information not stated in the photo description (and its always better that all information be in the prose not in photos captions). The year names of Sargon do not belong in this article and are definitely out of the scope. As for photos, while important, they also need to have serve the prose and need to have enough place and not squash the text and they need to fit within their section and not push the photos in the following sections down. Therefore, choices must be made, and I removed the photo of Isqi-Mari which was pushing the table of the third kingdom down, and the seated couple was pushing into the economy section. Lastly, the citation style needs to be uniformed.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 11:55, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Please go ahead. I am jut trying to help, but I'm sure you can improve the article with dedicated work. पाटलिपुत्र  Pat   (talk) 12:00, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * You have improved much पाटलिपुत्! Specially bringing all those photos to Wikipedia (I tried to get the photo of Isqi-Mari statue to no avail years ago). Not to mention the new articles about Mariote kings. The list of kings was just too big for the article (I was a beginner when I originally added it and it should have been in its own article from the beginning).--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 12:04, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you Attar-Aram syria! I like to have references in photo captions, because images have much impact (often more than the prose itself) so it just feels useful (and often necessary) to back up the images and captions with references. And references on Commons don't quite work as it's very hard to follow changes there and there is not the level of scrutiny or monitoring we have on the language Wikipedias. I would be almost incapable to know (exhaustively and in a timely fashion) if one messes with my references on Commons. Cheers पाटलिपुत्र  Pat   (talk) 12:17, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Google Books apocalypse
Many cites contain direct links to Google Books. Many of them no longer work. Take for example. This is because Google Books is not an archive or library. It's a commercial book seller. They are not in the business of making citations available at Wikipedia, they are in the business of providing free previews solely for the purpose of prospective buyers purchasing the book. Thus, making pages not available encourages readers to purchase the book.

Instead, you will want to use a reliable site, like the non-profit library archive.org which actually exists to provide reliable long term stable links for Wikipedia. -- Green  C  16:56, 28 December 2023 (UTC)