Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Cirta/archive1

Battle of Cirta

 * Nominator(s): Gog the Mild (talk) 15:37, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

This article is about another episode from the Second Punic War. Carthage's position in North Africa unravels further as the Romans take out one of their main allies. This has recently been through GAN and I believe that it may reach the high standards of FAC. See what you think.

As pointed out at GAN, the article title may be better changed to meet the current content. This article includes all that is known, and probably ever will be, about the battle of Cirta. But that still makes it a minority of the prose. I believe that the whole episode is notable and worthy of an article, but perhaps "Masinissa's defeat of Syphax"? (Following the example of the FA Hamilcar's victory with Naravas.) Or perhaps I am wrong. Opinions on this, or anything else which catches your eye, are welcome. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:37, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Harrias

 * Quick initial comment: tidy up the distance measurements, there is a mix of "imperial (metric)" and "metric (imperial)". Harrias  (he/him) • talk 17:57, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Bleh. That's me taking them from different sources and not using my brain. Done. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:05, 27 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Overall, I definitely have issues with the scope of this article. You mention in your introduction to this FAC that you're not sure if the title is appropriate, given the relative length of the article and the battle, and I think that is an issue. To me, this reads like a campaign article. I note that below, contemplates a merge with Battle of the Great Plains and Battle of Utica (203 BC), and it is easy to see where that desire comes from. In my opinion, this level of detail would be more suitable to a campaign article for the closing stages of the Second Punic War taking place in Africa, then allowing the Utica, Great Plains, Cirta and Zuma articles to be somewhat more concise. At GA, discussions of scope are quite hand-wavy. At FA, in my opinion, this misses the mark, and fails Criterion #4, length. The main topic of this article as presented in the title and the lead is the Battle of Cirta, but that isn't what the tone and balance of the rest of the article focus on.  Harrias  (he/him) • talk 18:20, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Question (maybe comments) from Airship
This might be a somewhat controversial/silly question, but could this article be merged with Battle of the Great Plains and Battle of Utica (203 BC) to form one big article? For all three, the background/prelude sections are identical, and the dedicated battle sections are comparatively small; I note that in Second Punic War the entire episode is summarized in one and a half sentences. They seem more components of a notable campaign rather than three individually significant battles. Of course, feel free to refuse emphatically. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:11, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I see where you are coming from, but in my opinion no. Obviously with anything like this there is scope for difference between lumpers and splitters, but all HQ RSs covering either the campaign or the war treat the battles of Utica and the Great Plains as distinctly separate. Similarly for the wider Masinissa-Syphax conflict. And Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, especially when the bit you are referring to was written by an idiot. In so far as you are seeing a problem, it may be in my overdoing the background/prelude sections or not sufficiently individualising them, but that is one of the things an FAC is for. The two battles you mention were, of course, components of a notable campaign; as Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge were components of the Siegfried Line campaign ... I assume you would be lobbying to also roll Battle of Zama into this new campaign article? Gog the Mild (talk) 18:31, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I assume this reply is intended for both of us. I personally wasn't advocating for the merge; I think the Great Plains and Utica articles should definitely exist. It just seemed like the way this article was written was more like a campaign article than a battle article. If you want to keep this article to the Battle of Cirta, then the overall length of the Background, Prelude and Invasion of Africa sections needs to be reduced significantly. We've had this argument plenty of times before, of course. For example though, the Prelude section would typically provide information on the forces directly before the battle, but here it is being used to give that information prior to the invasion of Africa, which is part of what gives the appearance that the focus of this article is in the Invasion of Africa, rather than the Battle of Cirta. That section focuses quite heavily on Scipio, who didn't even take part in Cirta directly. Harrias  (he/him) • talk 08:47, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ^^ What he said. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:26, 28 February 2023 (UTC)


 * You raise good points. I have been looking at the article too narrowly.


 * Given that no reviews as such have taken place, would it be permissible for me to withdraw this article to continue discussing its scope off-FAC and to immediately nominate another in its stead? Gog the Mild (talk) 12:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Fine by me, Gog -- maybe a common-or-garden-variety battle with no potential scope issues...? (Yes, naughty corner time)... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:34, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 12:36, 28 February 2023 (UTC)