User talk:Scoughla

Clothing in ancient Rome
Hi, Scoughla, and thanks for the useful comments at the article's talk page. Yes, it's a more challenging article than it might seem at first glance -- whether one is an editor, or reader, or both -- and has proven quite difficult to organise (yes, "organise", rather than "organize", because I'm a Brit). You've raised some useful suggestions.

I've also "stalked" your contributions and comments, though in the nicest possible way, and was struck by one or two you made in your sandbox but didn't post at the article talk page. At the risk of unwelcome butting in on an educational project, I thought I'd offer a comment or two.

If a source is based at the end of a paragraph, it might (and in this article, does -- or so I hope) support the whole of that paragraph.

Yes, one might think that primary sources are somehow more "authentic" than secondary or tertiary sources; but when dealing with ancient history at Wikipedia, we actually prefer secondary sources. The primary sources, few and unevenly dispersed at best, are also often contradictory and implausible, or open to differing translation, interpretation, and ancient copyist errors. Ancient Roman history is "mostly gaps" -- meaning that what we know is enormously outweighed by what we don't know. Almost all that was written was produced by wealthy old guys who could afford the time to write highly selective histories, preoccupied with the doings and privileges of their own kind, class, and gender, and (with some notable exceptions) little else. That's where modern scholarship comes in, backed by primary, and other secondary sources when possible. Modern scholarship questions and interprets the meanings and significance of primary sources, and helps fill in the gaps. That's why Wikipedia prefers secondary sources, and is, like any encyclopedia, a tertiary source. Have you read WP:PRIMARY yet? It's a must. Haploidavey (talk) 12:47, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Haploid,

Thank you for your comments. I figured I'd preface by mentioned that my comments in my sandbox are for a course, and I completely understand why most of them were invalid or unrealistic, though I listed them purely on a nitpicking level for my course assignment. This is why I picked really the only meaningful suggestion I could come up with to actually post on the page, the rest I kept on my sandbox. Scoughla (talk) 00:07, 31 March 2017 (UTC)