Talk:Trajan/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: Zwerg Nase (talk · contribs) 13:29, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll review this asap. Zwerg Nase (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry that this is taking so long. You should have my review by wednesday! Zwerg Nase (talk) 14:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Dear, first of all, I am very sorry that this took so long. I have reviewed the text on paper two weeks ago, but did not find the time to put it all in here. Secondly, thank you for tackling this article, I find it very important that Wikipedia takes care of its vital articles, and I consider the Roman Emperors to be among them. Now for the review:


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:

General

 * At one point, the name of a legion is in italics, all other instances are not. This should be done consistently.
 * There is a large number of repeated links that you should remove. To find them all easily, you can use a tool that is linked on the page I wikilinked before.

Early life and rise to power

 * At the end of the second paragraph, the sentence The patria of the Ulpii was Italica, in Spanish Baetica,[8] where their ancestors had settled late in the 3rd century BC. seems like a repetition of something mentioned earlier.
 * Added a template there on paragraph four.
 * It does not become quite clear why Trajan was nominated as Consul. He is a guy from the province who had not held a magistrate in Rome. While clearly during the Dyarchy, these rules have softened, it would still be good to have explained why he was chosen for the highest office in Rome right away.
 * The way you introduce the possibility of his homosexuality reads very speculative to me. You should probably begin the sentence with something like Some authors have argued that Trajan had homosexual tendencies, although these accounts remain disputed. Right now it reads like he definitely was engaged in homosexual activity and we know that because he had no children, which is very presumptuous.

Roman Emperor

 *  If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to the role of virtuous monarch - this is quite a strong statement and you should add something like "Balot argues that...".

The Correctores: Greek/Roman relations

 * I added two templates here.
 *  As much as Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another - you should find a more neutral way of putting this.

Conquest of Dacia

 * and to some, shameful - who says that? A judgmental statement like that should only, if at all, included if it is directly sourced. The source that is given at the end of the sentence, to roman-emperors.org is also questionable. Can you point me to why this is a reliable source?
 * Again, I added some templates here.
 * whose embankments were still visible until recently - what does recently mean? You should try not to include phrases that can become outdated with time. It would be better to name a year when they were definitely visible.
 * in 106 conquered part of Dacia - either "a part" or "parts"
 * form of a gigantic spearhead - try to find a more neutral term here
 * Elaborate on what the "villa model" is.

Period of peace: public buildings and festivities

 * ferocious beasts - again, not a very neutral term, I believe it would be enough to write "thousands of wild animals killed alongside..."

War against Parthia

 * war hawk senators is not a neutral enough term. If an author describes them as such, write "senators, who XX described as "war hawks"..."
 * an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign - again, too judgemental for my taste

Death and succession

 * The first sentence of the second paragraph is a monster of Ciceronian proportions. You should divide it up into at least two sentences. I would recommend to cut of after Inferior.

Building activities

 * Again, I added a template.

Trajan's legacy

 * I have not bothered putting the templates here since almost the entire section lacks references. Please do so.

Close review
Going through the article again, I had to find that while the footnote style has vastly improved, the article still lacks in several areas, even if not considering the shaky nature of Bennett's book as the primary source of the article. Several things I outline at the beginning of the review are still left undone. Grammar and punctuation have actually suffered since the first time I read the article. Also, several statements lack proper citations. That being said, I sadly fail this review now. As I have said above though, I highly encourage the nominator to work through the article again, preferably working with Strobel's biography of Trajan (if knowledge of German is there) and improve the article. Thank you for all the work done up to this part, I hope this article reaches GA status soon. Zwerg Nase (talk) 13:12, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Bennett / Strobel
First of all, thank you for your work in the footnotes, it looks a lot better and more reader-friendly now!

I have now taken out the books by Bennett and Strobel from the library. It appears to me that the critique of Bennett's book is quite wide-spread: See here, here, here and here. German histiographers like Strobel, as was pointed out, seem to be even more critical than their English counterparts, whose general verdict is: A good overview from an archeologist, but with many errors stemming mostly from misinterpretation, misunderstanding or naiveté towards the sources. From an overview of these reviews of Bennett's book, I would not completely discard it as a reliable source, but be very careful on how to use it. For now, the article relies very much on Bennett and I would need to get deep into the subject matter to determine how much of a problem that is. My main concern is that Strobel asserts that Bennett was led to a general misinterpretation of Trajan's reign. If that is the case and that biased account finds itself here, it is highly problematic.

As far as I could see, it took you some time to get the formatting done, indicating that you do not have too much time on your hands at the moment? If I get into the literature more closely, it will take me a couple of days. For you then to implement changes, it will take even longer. It was righly pointed out above that this review has already taken far too long, which I have so far discarted, because you were never inactive in improving it and it is a vast topic to cover. However, with the prospect of so much work ahead, my idea would be: We close this review for now, and get to work together in making necessary improvements and then enter it for review again. What do you think?

As for the problem of citing articles from the congress collection, there are two possible options: 1) Not to use the sfn-template at that point and simply put in full references every time or 2) enter every article you use individually into the biblography, then you can use sfn with the author name again. I have met similar problems in the past, the whole reference-templates should get worked over to better suit the need of academic sources... Zwerg Nase (talk) 14:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, so I am facing a problem. I only have the 1997 original edition of Bennett's book, not the 2001 2nd edition you used, and they have different page numbers, so I am having a very hard time checking the references. I will nevertheless try to double-check the statements in the article backed by Bennett references against the work of Strobel to see if there are considerable differences in interpretation. I hope to get enough done today to make a first statement on wether we will be able to get this GA review to a pass this time round. Zwerg Nase (talk) 12:33, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

More to do
It appears that during the workover on the references, on very many places there is now no space after the reference in the prose. I took out several instances, but there are many more. Please go through the text one more time to get those all dealt with. Additionally, I have added some templates, where references are needed. Zwerg Nase (talk) 13:00, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, the claim that the Roman reception of Trajan was universally positive, does not appear to be true. Strobel writes about the works of Emperor Julian Apostata, who denounced Trajan as an "alcoholic on the Imperial throne". Zwerg Nase (talk) 13:05, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I forgot to put in the article a mention to Trajan's heavy drinking. It was public knowledge already during his lifetime, and is mentioned by Cassius Dio. I don't know wheter it marred his public image at the time - one must remember that Julian was a IVth. Century Emperor, a former Christian and a devout neopagan, writing about a IInd. Century Emperor with a completely different agenda and completely different mores. It appears that Trajan had devised an "Ulysses and the Sirens" arrangement with his staff - his request for wine were to be ignored after a certain amount of drinking.Cerme (talk) 23:28, 31 March 2016 (UTC)