Talk:Roman diocese

Factual inaccuracy
"It is, therefore, unsurprising that, as the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches began to define their administrative structures"

At the time of the the collapse of most of the western Roman Empire, there was no such thing as the "Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches". There was Christianity. In any event, the term 'catholic' meant, at that time the universal church, the true meaning of the word 'catholic'. To identify "Catholic church" in this context as the current Roman Catholic Church (by contrasting it with the Eastern Orthodox church from which Rome was to break - or the other way around, depending on ones views of Romes schism with the Pentarchy) is historically inaccurate.--jrl 13:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

rollback #1
I've rolled the article back to revision 854883716 of 13:04, August 14, 2018 by Furius to remove approximately 40kb of original research added by without the addition of a single source. Further rollbacks may be required. See also Talk:Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and the user's talk page. Mathglot (talk) 01:02, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

rollback #2
Rolled back further, to revision 845880869 of 19:26, June 14, 2018 to remove another 18kb of original research by the same user. Further rollbacks may still be required; in particular, those of who appears to have a very similar editing pattern, and who stopped editing a month before Duckegg Alex made his first edit. Mathglot (talk) 01:15, 28 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Note: Some explanation about this rollback is needed, in the face of a couple of things that at first glance might not look like improvements; but they are actually just a way-station on the way to a much better article: namely, the number of references, and the size of the lead. Please refer to the timeline below for details of what's discussed here.
 * The point of this rollback (like the first one) was to remove original research. But there is always a tension in any rollback between removing OR, and removing interspersed good edits by other users. During the period spanned by this rollback, contributed some great work, adding &lt;ref> tags where they were missing in the body (citation info was in the clear in the text, just missing the ref tags), thus jumping the count of references up by 37 (and reducing ibids and op. cits at the same time). This edit of Furius was backed out in the rollback, thus losing all the benefit of those additional references.  However, they were all added by Furius in one edit, and it would be easy to put them back in, thus recovering the benefit of Furius's edit. The reason I haven't done so already, is that further rollbacks are contemplated, so there's no point adding something that would just be rolled back out again.  Another thing affected by this rollback was the lead. Previously, the lead had ballooned to 51 paragraphs and 33kb, until that was fixed and it was reduced to two paragraphs. However, these fixes were also in the span of this rollback, so even though this rollback eliminated 38kb of text, the lead is back to 51 paragraphs again; but fixing that is more a matter of adding a section header to draw the line much higher up, and recovering the two-paragraph lead, so not a big deal. Once again, no point in doing that now, if further rollbacks are in the offing. Mathglot (talk) 22:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

post-rollback2 edits
Just a note to acknowledge that User:DuckeggAlex's eleven edits from Nov. 28 are fine; some even have edit summaries, and they appear to improve verifiability by adding ISBN's to some previously existing references. So that's the good news. However, any new edits to the article at this point, good or not, complicate clean-up of the already existing damage to the article by earlier unsourced original research which still needs to be investigated and removed, because further rollbacks would remove new edits including good ones, which would need to be reinstated after the rollback. So, as a courtesy, I'm asking everyone for their indulgence for a while, and posting this notice:

When things are back to normal, I'll strike the text above. This is just a request, as I can't tell anybody what to do or not to do, but further edits will cause an additional burden on editors trying to clean up the article. (If this message is still present after a long period, please ping me, in case I forget to strike it.) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:20, 28 November 2018 (UTC)


 * For the record, there were a slew of edits to the article on 2 December 2018 by, but these were exclusively or almost exclusively to add missing &lt;ref> tags, and not content. This was actually beneficial, because it exposed the references which had hitherto been buried in-line in the running text of the body of the article, so that they became visible in the "References" section in the bottom matter. The tags also permitted a Regex pattern which slurped all the references, so that we now have them available below at " for any future versions of the article, without having to dive into the History to find them.  Mathglot (talk) 21:33, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Rollback has been completed (see, below). Please feel free to improve the article. Mathglot (talk) 09:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Timeline of article edit history
This is a brief summary timeline of the article edit history, in order to give an overview and assist in deciding how best to proceed, especially (but not only) vis-a-vis sourcing and organizing current content vs. further rollbacks. The article began in 2007 and grew slowly over a period of ten years and numerous editors to 6.5kb. Starting in September 2017, the article exploded in size with hundreds of edits primarily by two users: and  (and also  as well as two IPs that belong to him I believe), reaching 192kb on November 27, 2018, before being sequentially rolled back in three separate operations ending on December 6, 2018.


 * 135585363 17:15, June 3, 2007‎ Article created as a redirect by and turned into a 2kb stub the same day.
 * Article expanded slowly over 10 years (diff) to 6.5kb with numerous editors
 * 786254572 07:54, June 18, 2017‎ (at this point, article was 6,544b, and had 2 refs)
 * 799956413 20:36, September 10, 2017‎  start of 864-edit run by this user (and )
 * during this three-month run, there were 29 other edits by 20 unique users
 * 840676833 12:23 May 11, 2018 Alexander Domanda end of 864-edit run. (135,078 bytes, 56 refs, 7 ibids, 99 op cits. Lead: 51 paragraphs, 5,450 words, 33.4kb; Body (excluding bottom matter): 139 paragraphs, 15,147 words, 92kb)
 * Between 840729848 19:40, May 11, 2018‎ and 845880869 19:26, June 14, 2018‎ 5.86.156.73 there were 25 edits by 8 editors; 14 of them by two IPs belonging to Alex imho: ( and ; ending at 136,118 bytes, 56 refs.
 * 846962102 00:05, June 22, 2018‎ first edit by . Article at 136,512 bytes. Start of run of 100 edits by DuckeggAlex. The IP edit right before this one, was the target of rollback #2.
 * Between 00:05 June 22 2018 and 00:26 August 14 there were 2 edits by 2 other users ( +46b, Magic links bot +20b)
 * 854816559 00:26, August 14, 2018‎ End of 100-edit run. (153,142 bytes, 56 refs, 9 ibids, 107 op cits; Lead: 2 paragraphs, 223 words; Body (excl bottom matter): 142,867b, 207 paragraphs, 23,309 words.) This rev was the target of Rollback #1.
 * August 14, 2018‎ three edits by (+1568b) rescuing 37 in-line citations lacking &lt;ref> tags, including conversion of 4 ibids and 10 op cits
 * 854883716 13:04, August 14, 2018 article stood at 154,710 bytes, 93 refs, 5 ibids, 97 op cits
 * 854896205 14:56, August 14, 2018‎ DuckeggAlex begins run of 466 edits
 * Between 13:04, August 14, 2018 and 23:10, November 27, 2018 there were 30 other edits by 13 users:
 * 870942685 23:10, November 27, 2018 last of 466-edit run by DuckeggAlex (192,739b, 93 refs, 17 ibids, 120 op cits; Lead: 9 paragraphs, 776 words, 4,845 bytes)
 * rb 1: 870954244 00:55, November 28, 2018‎ (-38,029b) rolled back by to revision 854883716 of 13:04, August 14, 2018 by Furius (154,710 bytes, 93 refs.  Lead: 2 paragraphs, 219 words, 1,392b)
 * rb 2: 870955752 01:08, November 28, 2018‎ (-18,592) rolled back by Mathglot to rev 845880869 of 19:26, June 14, 2018 by 5.86.156.73. (136,118b, 56 refs; Lead: 53 paragraphs, 5,564 words, 34,162 bytes)
 * References in rev 871592599 of 04:09, December 2, 2018 saved to Talk page. (permalink)
 * rb 3: 872274955 of 09:43, December 6, 2018 (-131,204‎b) rolled back by Mathglot to revision 786254572 of 07:54, June 18, 2017 by Materialscientist (6,551b, 2 refs; Lead: 1 paragraph, 46 words, 328 bytes)

I would like to keep this section lean and mean and data-rich; so please open a new section for discussions of what to do about the article. Comments related directly to the formatting of the timeline itself, or how to improve it are welcome here (or just fix it yourself). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:40, 30 November 2018 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 10:16, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

How to proceed?
Rollback #2 (see above) brought us to revision 845880869 of 19:26, June 14, 2018 by 5.86.156.73. There is still a massive amount of OR in the article, mostly deriving from the three-month run of 864 edits by starting at rev 799956413 of 20:36, September 10, 2017 (and also by , and by an IPv6 that edits just like him). (See Timeline, above.) The problem with rolling back further, is that 51 references were introduced during this run, and they would be removed along with the content; if we rolled back to the start of the run, the article would become a 6.5kb stub. So, where to draw the line?

Maybe it should be just entirely rewritten; from scratch, or possibly from the Sept. 2017 stub as a base. In its current state (or in its previous states before rollbacks 1 and 2) the article was long and inscrutable. Compare, for example, with the article Roman province, a far broader topic than Roman diocese is, but much more congenial and informative to read. This article just seems like a giant, bloated, rotting whale to me, and references or not, I just don't know if it's worth keeping. Who is going to read it like this? What will they get out of it? I'd much rather see a streamlined, lean machine like Roman province here instead, with a solid lead that makes sense, and gives you the elevator pitch in two paragraphs, which after all, is all the time 98+ percent of the readers are going to spend on it, anyway. In its current state, it just seems useless to me, and I just imagine people clicking out two seconds after they get here.

I really would like to get some ideas from other editors how to proceed, here. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:23, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I will list this at some WikiProject, but for now, Furius, you made some of the best edits trying to limit the scope of the OR damage by rescuing ref-tagless, sourcing information inline where you could, by adding the tags. What do you think about this whole situation now? I'm kind of leaning toward scrapping it and starting over, as trying to slowly go through the current version removing stuff and sourcing the rest just seems too slow and painful; but that would undo your your work (as well as that of others) so I'd really like to hear your opinion for starters. Mathglot (talk) 00:31, 1 December 2018 (UTC) Adding User:Materialscientist, whose clean version 786254572 of 07:54, June 18, 2017‎ is the last one I had no complaint with. Mathglot (talk) 00:34, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Listed at WT:ROME. Mathglot (talk) 00:54, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Listed at WT:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. Mathglot (talk) 00:57, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Jesus Christ, WUT IS DAT? It must be the most ridiculous lede I have even seen.  First thing is to block the guy to prevent him from doing more damage.  Apparently he doesn't want to answer despite your numerous attempts to reason him.  Second, I don't think it's worth saving 11 citations; perhaps copy-paste the text in the :talk (within a spoiler) to give some biblio advice for future editors.  Please revert that monster.  T8612  (talk) 01:54, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your response. Just to be clear, the current previous awfulness of the lede is partly the result of the rollbacks already done, because it was down to two paragraphs at its best, but in that version there was a shit-ton of OR that had to be removed. So, this version with the awful lede, think of it as a horrible way station along the way to getting rid of all the OR. That means that temporarily, we pass through some pretty dumpy, ugly stations along the way, like this one, but hopefully we'll zip right through to the next stop, and this junky lead will be a bad memory. As to the block, I've been trying to mentor him in order to try to prevent him from being blocked, but it's very slow going, and pretty exasperating. He's doing a little better, a little better, if adding one &lt;ref> tag without the closing &lt;/ref> can be considered better, but it's slo-o-o-w.  Hoping for the best with him, but it hasn't been easy.  Back to the matter at hand, though: block or no block, where do you think we should go from here?  Start from zero?  Start from stub? Try to go through the whole carcass bit by bit, looking for the sources and saving bits of text that they support?  I'm trying to figure out a navigation path from where we are, to where we want to be. Mathglot (talk) 02:17, 1 December 2018 (UTC)  updated by Mathglot (talk) 04:31, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Just a word by way of explanation for those who might be mystified by the comments about the lede: it was formerly 51 paragraphs long, when T8612 responded above; but User:Johnbod kindly added a section title ("Overview") to break it up after the first sentence, and fleshed out the remaining sentence into a brief lede for now. It already looks tons better just from that, and nobody will read the former lede, now "Overview", anyway, now pushed down below the ToC. Mathglot (talk) 04:31, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Notifying top ten contributors : Adding  Mathglot (talk) 03:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: roll back and merge refs back in
Riffing on an idea suggested by T8612 above. What if we pulled the references from the article and copied them to a section on the Talk page, along with whatever content is actually supported by them. That would be a relatively small and manageable chunk of text. Then, roll the article back to version 786254572 of 07:54, June 18, 2017, and merge legitimate sourced content and refs back into the article? Feedback or other ideas needed. Mathglot (talk) 21:09, 1 December 2018 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 02:21, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * This is always an option whether you roll the page back to a certain version or not. --Izno (talk) 22:05, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * My attention was brought to this article by the note Mathglot left at Classical Greece and Rome project talk page.....omg, I have never seen something like this. Could anyone actually read more than a paragraph without their eyes glazing over? And all the way through the references are in the body of the text. Yes, yes, put it back to the version of 18 June 2017.Smeat75 (talk) 23:45, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * All this is so unwikified and raw. Large unilateral additions in quick pace. It all leads me to speculate about copyright. Could this editor be typing stuff in from a book? Does anyone have these "offline sources" to verify existence/veracity/paraphrasing? ...I guess it won't matter if we intend to roll it all back, anyway. Elizium23 (talk) 02:25, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Here's another question: as we speak, DuckeggAlex has been on another tear at the article, this time, just adding missing &lt;ref> tags, increasing the count of references from 56 notes an hour ago, to 147 as I write (03:53 (UTC)). This is strictly from adding missing tags, the citation text was already in there as plain text. How this changes the situation, I'm not sure. And as Elizium23 pointed out, where are they coming from? Do these refs really support the text? On the one hand, adding references if properly done, is clearly a goal here and a move in the right direction. Does this mean we leave the article as is? Should a rollback still be on the table? Not sure where we are, now. Mathglot (talk) 03:59, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I hadn't seen this until now. As you can tell from my edits way back when, I haven't known what to do about this situation, largely because DuckeggAlex would just come steaming through and add more. The material is clearly the result of substantial engagement with the source material/scholarship on this topic, the references are all to real works and I don't think that they are being copyvio'd from anywhere. I think it is coming out of the author's Cambridge M.Litt. thesis, so I had hoped that it would turn into something good in the end. But DuckeggAlex's edits have persistently taken no account of the encyclopedic context (no ref tags, lots of impenetrable prose and undefined abbreviations, too much OR).
 * If this is rolled back to before he started, though, I don't think there will be anything to merge the refs into - almost all of them have been added by DuckeggAlex. Furius (talk) 09:57, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think you are correct about its originality. I spot-checked what I could from Google Books and there was no correlation of the text. If he is writing a scholarly thesis, then good. But is it Wikipedia-good?? Are any of us willing to sift through over 100K of contributions and distill it down to something usable? The easiest, default option would be to simply pitch it all out the window and start afresh. That would do a disservice to us for discarding a treasure-trove of information, and to DuckEgg who's obviously worked quite a while on this. But this article is clearly not ready for prime-time. Best I can say to do, is to carve it all away, put it in a holding-cell of a sandbox, and work at our leisure on gleaning out the best parts of it, then merge them back in. I am officially taking one step backwards right now. Elizium23 (talk) 10:07, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Body text duplicates footnote content
[T]he sections of the text that run from Civil Dioceses to Ecclesiastical Dioceses repeats in extenso the text that precedes from footnotes 1-35. Too much material? DuckeggAlex (talk) 15:57, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Since this concerns the article Roman diocese, it more properly belongs here. I've opened this section and pasted your comment from my Talk page, so that any user may reply to it. (As I will, but not just now.) Mathglot (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Except for just a quick note to say that this is originally your question, so if you don't like the section title I came up with above, feel free to change it to something more to your liking. Mathglot (talk) 17:51, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "Too much material" is right DuckeggAlex, way too much all the way through that article. Congrats on using a talk page, please communicate with your fellow editors.Smeat75 (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia article, or MA Honors Thesis
User:DuckeggAlex, One of the main problems I see with this article, beyond the referencing issues, is that it is absurdly long, overly detailed, poorly organized, and inscrutable. Nobody is going to read this article in its current state. In considering an incremental approach to improving the article step by step, there are so many problems, and the task is so daunting and huge, one hardly knows where to begin. If you look at the feedback above, there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the article, and there's possibly a majority opinion in favor of starting from scratch or from a stub. Or as User:Elizium23 phrased it, simply pitch it all out the window and start afresh. That could still happen, and currently is the approach I would favor, because sometimes starting from nothing and building up, is easier than reparing a giant, rotting, artifice timber by timber; it's sometimes just faster, and easier to just raze the whole building and start over.

Have a look at Roman province, and compare it to this one. I'm not saying that Roman province is a model article; there are plenty of things that could be done to improve it; but it's approachable; it's readable. Already by the end of the first sentence, if you read no further, you already have a decent idea what a Roman province is. The short lead there is not that well organized, but nevertheless by the end of it we know about who governed it, and where, and when; as well as a bit about the connection with the English word province. The article organization into sections gives a sense of the different types of provinces, and a sense of how things changed over time. Then there are some lists of provinces, with a very brief description of each, and a hyperlink to the article about each one. All in all, quite comprehensible and readable; you come away with a distinct idea of what a Roman province was, and how to find out more about it. Minus the bullet lists and bottom matter (i.e., including the lead and all the prose in the body), the article is 5,486 bytes (868 words in 27 paragraphs).

In my view, that would be a better format and size for this article; at least for starters. I'm not saying it couldn't grow longer than that, but with a solid foundation based on a clear lead, and a good section organization fleshed out by a few well-written paragraphs, we'd have something much better than we have now, and a firm, clear base upon which to build further. We don't have that now.

I know you said you wrote your MA Thesis at Cambridge on this topic, and in a way, you may have too much knowledge about it, to be able to easily broach the topic to others at a more elementary level who have never heard of it before. Upon reading the article, the impression I get is having been parachuted into an advanced Honors colloquium about an arcane topic I know nothing about, where a bunch of learned doctoral candidates are having lofty academic arguments with each other about minutiae of something they've all studied for years until it's second nature to them, and can barely come back down to earth and talk like a normal person or even conceive what it's like never to have heard of a Roman diocese before. I feel like my eyes glaze over immediately, and I want to run away screaming and turn on a B movie comedy, for some brainless, light relief.

Speaking of your MA Thesis, something User:Elizium23 said above ("Could this editor be typing stuff in from a book?") made me think that you might be taking portions of the article directly from your thesis. Have you done that? If so, that would explain a lot, because Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and an article here does not have the same audience as a Thesis, and is not organized or written the same way. Something Furius said reminded me how I sometimes get the impression while reading the article, that much of the material may come from your Thesis, either directly or in paraphrase, and that the references such as they are, are only loosely coupled, if at all, with the material they are supposedly supporting; if so, that would be a violation of WP:V.

On the one hand, your recent run of adding &lt;ref> tags is a good thing, because verifiability via proper sourcing is required policy at Wikipedia, and that's one thing that the article has lacked up till recently. But it isn't enough, by a long shot imho because of the bigger problems in the article; and I don't want you to waste your time adding references, if the article is just going to end up being reduced to a stub. So I don't really know what to tell you, at this point. I'd almost rather see you work on a brand new version of the article, starting from zero, or starting from the 6.5 kb stub of June 18, 2017 that you can view here. Except I'm not sure I have confidence in your ability to shed the world view of that high-octane, honors colloquium, and just write as if you're talking to high school students who have never heard of any of this before. Do you think you could do that? It would require putting your Honors thesis away in a drawer, and locking it, staring at a blank piece of paper, and asking yourself: "How do I explain this to my (or someone's) smart, 12-year old granddaughter?"

Can you do that? I'm not sure you can. If you think you can, I'd like to see it. I can create a blank page for you called a Userspace draft where you can work on it at your leisure, without affecting the current article at all. Look at Roman province, and keep it that simple. I might even do the same thing myself, and create my own User draft; and of course, anybody is welcome to create their own. The other approach, would be to somehow start with the current state of the article (or some other earlier state), and to somehow improve it gradually by incremental modification. For myself, I've pretty much given up on that approach; I just don't think it's feasible, on any reasonable time scale for a volunteer organization, no matter how many people got involved with it.

So, that's basically where I stand with this. I could well understand how you would not be happy to see things move in that direction, and I wouldn't blame you for feeling so. That result is not inevitable, although I think it's likely. Wikipedia is based on seeking and achieving consensus, and just because I and a few others feel like starting the article over from scratch, doesn't mean you have to agree, and if you don't agree, you're free to argue your case, and try to draw others to agreeing with your point of view. If necessary, after some discussion on both sides, we could hold something called an Rfc ("request for comment") which is a more formal process for polling the Wikipedia community about how to proceed in an article for which there are two (or more) opposing opinions. But, we're not anywhere close to that, yet; it's not even clear if there is any disagreement, since most people seem to be on board with just starting the article over.

The starting point, is to discuss it. If you don't agree with cutting the article way back, as I can well imagine you don't, now is the time to get involved, and state your opinions. Remember that an article talk page is for discussing how to improve the article, so it's not enough just to say that you don't like the idea of cutting it. You'd have to propose something that would improve it, although of course you could just state that it's perfect in its current state, and needs no improvement. My sense, though, is that most people would disagree with that. Now's the time to step up and have your say. Mathglot (talk) 19:30, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Clarification: user DuckeggAlex's response below was at my user page; it appears he is responding to the comment above, but it's not certain he had read it when he wrote this comment below.
 * Not taken from my thesis 50 years ago...never referred to it once in Wiki Article nor even looked at it. Cut it back as you wish, no problem at all --- as I suggested even 90%...thru footnotes 35 + section on ecclesiastical dioceses will cut it 75%...can be trimmed more as you wish down and down to get the essential what the admin unit was about, how it fit in and what it declined. Sorry for making so much trouble. Really got into systems analysis. Someone from Wiki keeps sending notification of an incoherent and rambling sentence I wrote July 18. I promptly removed it that very day, but this person thinks it is still in the text.  DuckeggAlex (talk) 19:41, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * DuckeggAlex, that is a remarkable, and generous response. We should still wait a bit nevertheless, and let others have their chance to weigh in. But it looks like we are close to consensus, or have it already, and can proceed. Mathglot (talk) 19:49, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your more than generous comments after I caused you and others so much headache. I am not a little tech challenged. The article was based on more recent scholarship with Jones as a base...as for distilling the 'essence' of the diocese the consensus seems to have shifted to a date of creation from 297 to 313/14 due to the Zuckermann article of 2002. An important point is that the appearance of the regional unit marks a major shift from emphasis on provincial to regional governance. The vicar was given additional fiscal responsibilities 325-329 that makes the post clearly in the driver's seat from 330 or so. The post and unit go decline as the imperial administration shifts back to a two-tier model of administration from the 440s. My contribution is based on the relationship of the vicar to the Treasury and Crown Estates as an extension of Delmaire, and further development of the vicar's fiscal role as found in my Review of 2016. The rest of the work rests on the shoulders of others to whom I have given the credit in citations. Anyway this is the story in short of vicars and I do mean short. I am sure there is a way to say this in a paragraph or two. DuckeggAlex (talk) 20:13, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your more than generous comments after I caused you and others so much headache. I am not a little tech challenged. The article was based on more recent scholarship with Jones as a base...as for distilling the 'essence' of the diocese the consensus seems to have shifted to a date of creation from 297 to 313/14 due to the Zuckermann article of 2002. An important point is that the appearance of the regional unit marks a major shift from emphasis on provincial to regional governance. The vicar was given additional fiscal responsibilities 325-329 that makes the post clearly in the driver's seat from 330 or so. The post and unit go decline as the imperial administration shifts back to a two-tier model of administration from the 440s. My contribution is based on the relationship of the vicar to the Treasury and Crown Estates as an extension of Delmaire, and further development of the vicar's fiscal role as found in my Review of 2016. The rest of the work rests on the shoulders of others to whom I have given the credit in citations. Anyway this is the story in short of vicars and I do mean short. I am sure there is a way to say this in a paragraph or two. DuckeggAlex (talk) 20:13, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Refs saved from article
In looking ahead to a new, streamlined version of the article which may be significantly cut back, we may wish to have a list of sources and references from an earlier version at our disposal. These are preserved in history, of course, but placing them here makes access easier.

in numerical order
References in revision 871592599 by of 04:09, December 2, 2018, in numerical order:

These are in numerical order: the same order they appear in that version of the article:

Numerical list moved to: /Saved refs from rev 871592599

in alphabetical order
References in revision 871592599 by of 04:09, December 2, 2018, in alphabetical order:

Alphabetical list moved to: /Saved refs from rev 871592599

Possible new sources
This is a list of possible new sources for developing the article going forward:


 * Roman Political Institutions; Leon Homo;2000 – from the article Senatorial province

Rollback #3
Article has been rolled back to version 786254572 of 07:54, June 18, 2017, per consensus of participating contributors at discussions here and here. All references from the previous version of the article have been saved, and copied to this section above. Anyone should feel free to edit the article again. Mathglot (talk) 09:43, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The way forward
Now that we're back to a stub after the rollback, let's talk about moving forward again. How do we want to improve the article? Some random thoughts: Other ideas welcome. Mathglot (talk) 10:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It's already been pointed out to look at the structure of the Roman province article as a possible organization to use
 * check out some foreign language wikipedia versions, to see what they've done:
 * French: fr:Diocèse (Empire romain) – a very nice version; 43 refs, 12 notes, several maps and other images
 * Spanish: es:Diócesis (Imperio romano) – 9 refs, 4 maps.
 * Italian: it:Diocesi (impero romano) – 32 refs, bibliography, 2 maps, 3 tables
 * German: de:Dioecesis – not so great; one big map, a hierarchical list of dioceses; zero refs, 2 sources
 * DuckeggAlex mentioned a few milestones or points to keep in mind in his post of 20:13, 2 December.
 * I have skimmed these now. The French article has some useful sections (Like the one on the functions of the vicars), but is based entirely on French sources and a lot of it is irrelevant material (like the long section on 'Avant Dioclétien' which belongs in an article on Roman province and most of the section on Diocletian). It has a couple of 'case studies' which probably would be better in the articles on individual dioceses. The Italian article is a straightforward narrative and seems pretty good at that, but some of the detail in it on changes to individual dioceses would again probably be better in the articles on specific dioceses. It is weak precisely on things like what the vicars actually did, so the French and Italian articles potentially supplement each other. I don't really read Spanish, but it seems to be just a list of dioceses - I don't think it adds much. I think I have time to make translations of the French and Italian articles over the weekend; when I have done that, I can put them in my sandbox and provide a link. I also think that quite a lot of DuckeggAlex's material and refs can be reincorporated (and I'm happy to do that), but I think it is best done once we have a backbone in place. Furius (talk) 17:28, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me! Johnbod (talk) 17:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the foreign article assessments. The other thing that occurred to me, is to think about the organization, as reflected in the section title/subtitle structure. Naturally, this is dynamic and would evolve, but it's also something that's harder to redo if it starts off completely on the wrong foot at the outset, and we're pretty much at the outset.  So another useful sandbox (or TP) initiative would be just to write out a proposed section structure.
 * As to translations, Furius, I could help with those as well, in case you want to split up the work. I could imagine setting up a dummy section org as a kind of workplan, and then instead of body text, adding links to xx-wiki article sections from whichever xx-wiki we thought had good info for that proposed section in our new structure, and then tag them for who would do which one, if you want. What I'm picturing, is just the skeleton section structure with no body text yet, and instead of body text, links to translatable [sub-]sections of whatever foreign [sub-]section we wanted to insert, and a tag to "claim" the task, so we don't duplicate work. We could use a subpage here to do that. Maybe I'll mock something up on that score. Mathglot (talk) 19:59, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Basic definition
Just wanted to start by verifying the basic definition of what this article is about. All four articles (de es fr it) pretty much agree with the English one that it's an intermediate level of the late Roman Empire civil administration: starting with the four praetorian prefectures at the top, each divided into a number of dioceses under them, and provinces under that.
 * de: Dioikesis (Greek διοίκησις, German Diözese) originally designated administration, and especially state financial administration. Diocese (dioecesis) later developed as a term for the middle level of late Roman administrative system. The term was not widely used until late antiquity: The Roman Empire was initially divided into 46 provinces, which were increased to 101 provinces around AD 300 by Diocletian, primarily by subdividing them; these in turn were grouped into dioceses.
 * es: Diocese (in Latin, diœcēsis, διοίκησις dioíkēsis 'administration') was the term for one of the admistrative divisions of the Late Roman Empire, starting with the Tetrarchy. It formed an intermediate level of government, comprising several provinces. Each diocese was governed by a vicarius ("vicar") who reported to the Praetorian Prefect.
 * fr: A diocese (Latin : diœcesis or diocesis) is a geographic subdivision of the territory of the Roman Empire.¶ In its most well-known sense, it is a subdivision of the Roman Empire specific to Late Antiquity, which comprises several Roman provinces under the authority of a vicar.
 * it: The diocese (dioecesis, from διοίκησις, "administration") was an administrative division of the late Roman empire, which grouped together several provinces. The diocese was subordinate to a praetorian prefect, which was the highest administrative division of the empire. The diocese, therefore, was at an intermediate level between the provinces and the aforementioned prefectures.

The French article points out that there are actually two meanings for it, the main one, but also, a secondary meaning of a judiciary subdivision of a Roman province, and they have a brief section discussing that sense of it at the end. The second paragraph of the Spanish article says the same thing, also saying that civil diocese is a synomym of the primary meaning, in order to distinguish it from the ecclesiastical meaning. THe German one starts out with a more overarching term that includes a Greek sense of it. The Spanish is the only one to specifically call out vicarius (instead of the indigenous word for vicar, vicario in the case of Spanish), so that's worth a look. Mathglot (talk) 12:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Subpage for structure
Ok, I have done this now: Talk:Roman diocese/Draft structure. Probably best to keep discussion here as much as possible. Looking over the articles in more detail makes clear that they focus a lot on territorial adjustments. We will need to go back through DuckeggAlex's material for the organisational side of things. Furius (talk) 11:52, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Note for the record: the page was moved without leaving a redirect (hence the red link), and can now be found at redirect page . The content of the Draft structure page was copy-pasted to the article itself; see this discussion for details. Mathglot (talk) 09:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Here we go again...
Ann-n-n-nn-d, here we go, again. This time, by anonymous users: one IPv6, but mostly by. Their editing pattern suggests very strongly that they are a block-evading sock of. User:73.219.142.120 is now the #2 editor at the article; way behind Alex, but ahead of everybody else already. All-time #4 is the IPv6, but it looks like Alex gave that one up, in favor of IP-73. Not sure who's interested or following, but notifying previous discussants. Stay vigilant; a rollback #4 may be in the offing. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:00, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, minor player . Mathglot (talk) 23:04, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've blocked IP73 for a month. Please let me know if there is continued disruption here. --Izno (talk) 01:39, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Rollback #4a: IP socks of DuckeggAlex
This likely would have been easier, had if I kept closer tabs on this article. I see that DuckeggAlex was on another tear starting shortly after, before finally giving up the ghost with their last edit in rev 927810681 on 23:10, November 24, 2019, just before they got indeffed. That would have been a perfect time to roll back, but unfortunately nobody noticed. Anyway, after a handful of good edits by four editors (last was rev 934191591‎ of 05:48, January 5, 2020 by ), DuckeggAlex's anonymous socks took over, starting with rev 940141714 of 19:44, February 10, 2020]] by one of his IPv6 socks, and continuing through various IPv6es, and especially by and. Between 5 January and now, there are 71 edits by 18 users, but outside D-Alex's socks, everything else is pretty much fixes of Alex's issues. Given this situation, and the history of previous disruption and rollbacks, I don't think we need a discussion to roll back to Chris's rev 934191591.‎ (If anyone disagrees, please just revert and let's discuss, but before you do, read the previous history above, please). I'm calling this one, "rollback-light", or, "rollback #4a". This could come under either of two policies: WP:DISRUPT, or WP:EVADE.

Prior to that version, and also to the four good edits in between, there is a series of hundreds of other edits by DuckeggAlex, which started at 4:49, December 6, 2018 with edit 872305108 right after on 6 Dec 2018, and ending at 23:10, November 24, 2019, just before they were blocked. These should be rolled back, too, but that 11-month stretch, which involves 912 edits by DuckeggAlex (and three or four IP socks of his), also involves 34 other editors who edited in that period. Most of the other edits were fixing/repairing typos or other problems with DuckeggAlex's additions, but there has been some independent, good work as well, such as edits by. If executed, rollback #4b would bring us back to rev. 872274955‎ of 09:43, December 6, 2018, just after. Although it seems like we have previous consensus for not having to go through long discussions to prevent endless disruption, that's still a very significant rollback, so I'll hold off on #4b for now, and start off with the limited #4a, which rolls back only the latest disruption by the currently block-evading IP sock activity (by users, and ). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:41, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Rollback #4a complete. Please note that this rollback also undoes edits performed in the interval by twelve other users . Spot-checking, these edits are mostly minor fixes to rolled back content introduced by the socks, so the additional edits are probably moot now after the rollback. If an edit of yours was removed that you think would still be an improvement to the article, please let me know, and either:
 * feel free to reinsert your edit yourself, if you wish (please let me know, so I can retain it if there are further rollbacks), or:
 * ping me, and I will restore your edit for you; please provide rev numbers, or UTC timestamp(s) of affected edit(s).
 * My intent is to follow up rollback #4a with a further rollback described as #4b above, but that probably should wait a bit (a week or two?) while we sort out whether there is any fallout or cleanup necessary after rollback #4a. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:04, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've reinserted the formatting fixes I made before (originally revs 961511032 and 961510919) along with fixing a 3 other similar typos that I missed before. I think 's edit (rev 970201695) is probably also worth re-adding but I don't want to do it myself. --Pokechu22 (talk) 06:50, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Pokechu22. Mathglot (talk) 08:14, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like I was just correcting a typo by the now reverted editor, so nothing needed re my edit.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  07:11, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, WereSpielChequers. Mathglot (talk) 08:14, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have (broadly) reinstated my previous edit along with some additional minor corrections (mostly typos, formatting etc).


 * As a side note it might be worth taking a look at the references at some point, as the current "system" is not very consistent: it combines simple page references, notes incorporating quotes and multiple sources etc, and there also doesn't seem to be a standard format. Now doesn't seem like the best time though given the situation. [Edit: I've just had a quick look at the rest of this page and it would seem this is known issue.]


 *  Alphathon  /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ( talk ) 09:51, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Alphathon. Mathglot (talk) 10:11, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Note: Since IP is blocked currently, I think we should wait out their block until around this date in October before considering a further rollback in case they want to add anything here about it. I've notified them on their talk page about this. Mathglot (talk) 17:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I don't understand why we wait for an IP block to expire. The IP block length is largely arbitrary, to prevent damage from this user's block evasion. The user is indeffed. The user will never come back to edit Wikipedia. If the IP begins to edit again, we can have him blocked for a longer period for the same reason: evasion. So why would we wait for a banned sockpuppet to contribute to this discussion? Elizium23 (talk) 18:14, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , actually, you're right. I tend to try to "bring errant users back to the fold" whenever I can, and if you look at User talk:DuckeggAlex, I probably tried way too hard, and gave him too much slack. Part of the reason I did that, is that in his case, it's a CIR issue, not a malicious intent issue; I never saw anybody else but Alex apologize for causing us so much trouble, right after we rolled back hundreds of his edits. So, I tried to give him as much slack as possible. But at some point, you have to protect the encyclopedia. I'm probably too much of a soft touch, sometimes. If you have the time and the stomach for it, it would probably be better if someone other than me led the rollback effort for 4b. If nobody steps up, I'll do it, but it would be nice to spread the burden a bit. The sad part is, he really does know a lot about this stuff. Sigh... Mathglot (talk) 23:14, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

I'm still getting periodic messages that this rollback is complete. I reviewed my edit, which was only a correction of a typo, and it appears that the word is no longer in the article, so everything is fine by me. Getting the automatic messages is no big deal, but if they are being sent because I didn't previously respond, I just want to say that there's no longer a need to send. Thanks for keeping in the loop.

Ira

Ira Leviton (talk) 14:30, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

The way forward: redux
Anyone in favor of WP:TNT at this article? has kindly provided us with this draft; what if we just blew away the current article entirely, and started from Furius's draft? That would make any further rollbacks unnecessary, along with the management headache involved in dealing with it. We just start clean, from zero. Well, not zero: from this draft. Mathglot (talk) 06:40, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Rollback #4b: further back, or TNT
Following up on the previous section, and responding to 's comment above: we've gone through this so many times, and as you pointed out, why wait for a banned sockpuppet? Adding this new section, so we can discuss a possible second rollback, as previously described. Quoting from above:

I think we have every justification, given the history here, and the block evasion, to go ahead and do so. I'm not sure we need another long discussion about this; policy on evasion seems clear. I'm not sure to what extent we need to courtesy-ping 34 editors; in all likelihood, most of those edits are fixes/improvements to Alex's stuff which will be removed, anyway.

I'm kind of partial to the WP:TNT option mentioned above, and skipping the rollback entirely, and just replacing the entire article with 's draft (here). If there's some support or no strong objection, maybe I'll just do that. Would prefer to have some feedback, but if there's no objection in a week or so, I think we can proceed with this. I sure hope this is the last time we are doing this. Mathglot (talk) 03:57, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

pre-TNT feedback

 * Does anyone have a preference? If there's no objection, I'm going to go ahead and replace the article with Furius's draft at this point. Adding . Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:37, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The draft that I drew up is not perfect, but will hopefully provide a good start. I'd retain the first paragraph of the current article as the lead. Furius (talk) 12:35, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Blow it up per Mathglot and Furius is my view. Smeat75 (talk) 13:44, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No comment. --Izno (talk) 14:43, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

prepping Draft for release
, I've been tidying the Draft so it's releasable; you'll see some Expand and dablinks templates; those can remain and don't need action before it's released, mostly to keep it there as a reminder. I've moved yellow notes into those, and other inline templates. Copied two sources, added Refs section, copied navs, and categories. If you can tidy up anything that you think *must* be done before moving the Draft to the article, that would be appreciated. Anything that can be left until after the move, just leave it; if possible, flag it with one of the inline templates ( is a good, all-purpose one). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:17, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Some unlinked short footnotes need sources added to the "Sources" section to resolve them, in particular, sfn's for Bury, Jones, Halden, Cosentino, and others. I'll check the just-created ref-lists, and see if I can find them. Mathglot (talk) 01:01, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've done that and made all the other changes that I'm going to make. Since the draft draws heavily on the fr. and it. articles' texts, a note will need to be incorporated on the talk page. Furius (talk) 01:39, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , Thanks. Here are some templates we can paste into the Talk page above, as soon as the move is done:
 * Besides the translated page templates, which are helpful but optional, we'll also need an attribution statement in the Edit summary via a dummy edit in order to satisfy Wikipedia's licensing requirements for copied/translated content; but it's too soon for that yet. When the time comes, see WP:RIA.
 * See also, . Mathglot (talk) 02:29, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Besides the translated page templates, which are helpful but optional, we'll also need an attribution statement in the Edit summary via a dummy edit in order to satisfy Wikipedia's licensing requirements for copied/translated content; but it's too soon for that yet. When the time comes, see WP:RIA.
 * See also, . Mathglot (talk) 02:29, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

improvement suggestions copied from Draft article
The following suggestions are removed from the Draft and posted here instead:

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:17, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

The following was copied from section #Vicars of the draft:

Mathglot (talk) 00:39, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

HISTMERGE issue
Please everyone hold off either moving, or copy-pasting the Draft over the article for a short while: there may be a WP:HISTMERGE issue here, and to do this the right way, we may need admin assistance. Untangling it after the fact, puts an undue burden on admins. I'll get someone to look at this, and advise. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:02, 26 September 2020 (UTC)


 * If an admin lands here, the Tl;dr is this: we plan to execute WP:TNT by dumping the content of Roman diocese, and replacing it with Talk:Roman diocese/Draft structure, which has its own history now. We're almost finished tidying the draft, and will soon be ready to hit the launch button.  What, if anything, should we do before that, and should we have an admin do the actual move, or should we? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:05, 26 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Listed: at WP:AN.    Mathglot (talk) 02:13, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * These cannot be merged because of WP:Parallel histories. What you should do is to give credit to the people who wrote the new version in the edit summary on Roman diocese when you copy it over. It's usually also a good idea to provide a permanent version link of the exact version copied. Then what you should do is redirect the draft either to that page or this talk page. --Izno (talk) 02:33, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * What I would do is pageswap with the draft and give credit in a null edit summary if necessary. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  03:38, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I considered a pageswap too, but it didn't make a lot of sense given the other attribution requirements going on here. --Izno (talk) 04:47, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, for your feedback. I assume "null edit summary" is a dummy edit, which I'm familiar with. I further assume that "pageswap" is akin to a round-robin move (which I'm also familiar with) swapping pages A and B via an intermediary, so B ends up in A's former spot, and A ends up as the former B. (And then is altered to redirect to A, but that's external to the pageswap itself.)  Have I got that right, so far?
 * Based on the slightly differing opinions on the pageswap idea so far, unless a consensus develops or more people weigh in, let me add one more piece of additional info, which may help figure out the best solution, here: the Draft is young, and has had basically two editors, User:Furius, and myself. The Roman diocese article goes back to 2007, and has had 127 editors (pagestats).
 * Let me ask about a copy-paste approach: is it desirable for people to be able to view the full list of all editors even after the TNT? If so, it seems to me that we could keep the current article page where it is, and do a WP:Copy-paste of the Draft content on top of it. This would preserve the history of the original article, to which I could add one dummy edit listing Furius and my contributions at the "Draft" page. (Although, both of us have also edited the main article, so is it even necessary?).
 * Or, is it sufficient that the 127 editors are represented only at the redirected 'B' article after doing a page-swap, so that editors viewing the history of Roman diocese after the swap, will see only Furius and me in the history? I suppose at that point, we could add a dummy edit saying "See the redirect page *here* for the other 127 editors, before this page was recreated from scratch", or some such.
 * One additional wrinkle: currently, the "Draft" isn't actually a Draftspace page, but a Talk space subpage, so in the copypaste scenario, it won't actually need to be turned into a redirect, and can just be deleted. In the pageswap scenario, it would have to be kept somewhere, but not as a Talkspace subpage, but somewhere else; maybe just moved to Roman dioceses and rcat-ted as a plural-to-singular redirect.
 * So, what's better: copypaste + dummy edit approach and let the Draft (talk subpage) die, or the round-robin pageswap with redirect-wrinkle? Or something else? Mathglot (talk) 08:35, 26 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Listed: at WT:Requests for history merge    Mathglot (talk) 09:09, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Post-script: I just read WP:Parallel histories, and apparently, you *can* leave a page as a Talkspace subpage, as one option in that scenario. So, maybe that's variant (b) of the pageswap scenario. But, I think I prefer the copypaste + dummy edit approach. Mathglot (talk) 09:26, 26 September 2020 (UTC)


 * (from ping at histmerge requests) With only two editors editing the draft, I think it is far simpler to do a copy/paste TNT than any sort of pageswap - copy the content over, citing the permalink and the two (or more) editors who made the edits, and call it good (e.g. ). There is no possibility of any technical merge due to parallel histories, as has been mentioned. As a note on page swaps - for pages with huge histories like this it actually makes the providence of the page harder to determine, though I do suppose with a TNT you could also argue that a WP:G6 delete-move would also be appropriate. Copy/paste, in this particular circumstance, is just easier overall (and a lot less paperwork). Primefac (talk) 10:56, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , yup, previous back and forth plus your comment has pretty much persuaded me that this is the right way to go. Thanks to all who responded, I feel better now that we are doing this the right way. Will do a once-over on the Draft tomorrow to make sure everything looks okay, and then implement the copy-over. I think it won't hurt to move the Draft talk subpage to a plural-to-singular redirect page, and that will provide the step-by-step history from that piece of it, for anyone that is curious where the draft came from. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 11:46, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

TNT implementation
Okay, everything is in place; here goes... Mathglot (talk) 01:23, 27 September 2020 (UTC)


 * ✅. The former content of Talk:Roman diocese/Draft structure draft page (now a red link) has been pasted to Roman diocese in rev. 980529119‎. The draft page has been moved to and turned into a redirect.  This completes the TNT operation.  Thanks to User:Furius for building the draft, and to all who helped regarding the . Mathglot (talk) 01:41, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Convenience list of refs from last version
In looking ahead to a future development of the article from a leaner starting point, we may wish to have a list of sources and references from the earlier version at our disposal. All references are preserved in the history, of course, but having a list makes it easier to access them: Note that an even longer list of references is preserved in section, above. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:52, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * /Saved refs from rev 980262288‎ - in numerical order: from rev. 980262288‎‎ of 2020-09-25
 * /Saved refs from rev 980262288‎ - sorted, for easier access

Additional suspicious activity
There has been additional, possibly suspicious activity at this article by two new editors and. Also, the one-month block on just expired, and the minute it did, here they are again. Please remain vigilant, and thanks to for being the first to notice, and being proactive on this. Mathglot (talk) 10:59, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Update: these are blocked now. Mathglot (talk) 01:00, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This dude blazed through 50 edits before we could block him. Elizium23 (talk) 01:49, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Sheesh! Appreciate it, . Hopefully, it will stay relatively quiet, other than genuine non-sock improvements for the forseeable future. Thanks again. Mathglot (talk) 08:57, 9 October 2020 (UTC)