Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Siege of Melos/archive3

Siege of Melos

 * Nominator(s): Kurzon (talk) 07:32, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

This article is about the Siege of Melos of 416 BC

"Some but not all citations to books include page numbers. Note 16 is especially bad, citing three books but giving a page number for only one of them." I have added page numbers wherever I could. A difficulty is that I almost exclusively used the ebook versions of the text (easier to search), and some ebook formats do not provide page numbers because the pages are formatted on-the-fly to fit your screen. "milos.gr is cited, and described in the article as the "official tourism website of Melos": what makes it a reliable source?" Removed. "The structure of the article is a little weird. For example, the section "Restoration by Sparta" is only three sentences long – if there's only 50 words to say about a particular aspect of an article, it probably doesn't merit an entire section." I thought this was a silly complaint. That section dealt with things that happened a decade later and was not part of the siege, so it deserved its own section. So what if it's just three sentences? But to please everyone, I moved a paragrah from the siege and renamed this section Aftermath. "There's also some clunky prose: the section summarizing the Melian Dialogue, for instance, has five paragraphs of the format "The Melians argue that[...]. The Athenians counter that[...]." (Interspersed with one paragraph where the Melians instead "believe" for variety!)" I know it's unconventional but I thought it fitting in this special case. Reading the Melian dialogue, it's clearly a classic point-counterpoint debate when you break it down. I thought my style of summary was the most clear and efficient way of communicating the essential ideas, stripped of all the fluffiness. "Still a very high proportion of citations to ancient sources, which was commented on in the previous review." My use of ancient sources was OK except for one bit where I used an interpretation of the writings of Isocrates. Nevertheless, I added some more modern sources to support the primary ones.
 * OK, I tried addressing some of the issues raised by Caeciliusinhorto in the previous nomination attempt.

Kurzon (talk) 07:32, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Comments by caeciliusinhorto

I have done some hopefully uncontroversial copyediting. Some further comments:


 * In §Melian Dialogue, the text currently reads "the contemporary Athenian historian Thucydides inserted a dramatization of the negotiations between the emissaries of the Athenian invaders and the rulers of Melos". "inserted" sounds odd to my ear, but I cannot articulate why; I would say "included" instead. And while I'm at it, I'd replace "the emissaries of the Athenian invaders" with the more concise "the Athenian emissaries".
 * "this dialogue only captures the substance of what he believed was discussed": Thucydides is not particularly my area, but my understanding is that what he is doing in his speeches is still the subject of controversy; "paraphrasing what he believed was discussed" is one position but not the only one. Indeed, Thucydides himself (Peloponnesian War, 1.22) says that he "put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the same time I endeavoured, as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what was actually said" [emphasis mine].
 * The citation formatting in the bibliography has various inconsistencies. Some I spotted:
 * Publisher locations: book cites should be consistent on whether or not to include them.
 * ISBNs: broken by hyphens or not?
 * Names of authors, editors, and translators are all given in "Lastname, Firstname" format, except for Thucydides, when Richard Crawley is listed in "Firstname Lastname" form.
 * The article is on the Siege of Melos, and yet the section on the siege itself is only 176 words long: surely there is more to say about the progress of the siege! We have, for instance, a tantalising mention of "traitors from Melos": who were they?  what did they do?  By way of comparison, the lead up to the siege gets 228 words, and the section on the Melian Dialogue gets 468.
 * I don't see this as a reasonable criticism. I can get around this just by shuffling the sections around.  I have included all the relevant facts about the siege that I could fin. Kurzon (talk) 05:28, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Even longer (599 words) is the final section, §Analysis, and yet the lead has barely a word to say on the topic – except for the brief note about the ongoing use of the Dialogue as an example of realpolitik.
 * The final section also seems a little bit grab-baggish to me: we have some discussion of the Athenian motivations for the siege (which perhaps we might have expected to learn before the siege?), with a brief digression into the modern influence of the Melian Dialogue mid-way through; then we have some discussion of the treatment of the defeated Melians, and the reaction to that in contemporary Greece (which might equally well go in §Aftermath); then a discussion of why the defeated Melians were so treated (which perhaps would make more sense before the reaction to said treatment)
 * I still think that the synopsis of the Melian Dialogue is neither "engaging" nor "of a professional standard".

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Gog the Mild - Fail
This is much improved since its visit here in January, but IMO still far enough from FA standard to merit a quick fail. I note that of the non-exhaustive list of points I gave then, several are still not addressed. If the nominator would care to go through them and address them, if only to explain why they don't apply, then I would, of course, be happy to reconsider. A number of points were subsequently flagged up on my talk page; several of these are also unaddressed. I agree with virtually all of Caeciliusinhorto's points above. Currently I do not believe that it meets criteria 1a, 1b, 1c nor 4. I also note the lack of alt text. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

T8612 Fail
It has improved since I saw it last year but there are some damning sections that make the article instafail the nomination. The main problem is with sections "Synopsis" and "The siege", which do not have a single citation to a modern source, while the latter is supposed to explain the battle (!!!). I suggest rewriting pretty much everything because the order of the article is confused and not clear. I suggest: 1. Background, 2. sources (mainly Thucydides), 3. the siege itself, 4. aftermath, 5. perhaps a section on the Melian dialogue. If the nominator has difficulties accessing modern sources, they can make a request here. I also suggest the nominator to read a good article on an ancient battle to see how much work is needed for a FA. I don't even understand how it passed GA. T8612  (talk) 23:20, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Fail by CPA-5
I'm sorry to tell you. But I believe this one isn't ready for an FAC nor A-class review. Per T8612 and Gog which they cover most of the issues of this article. As long those issues are not addressed and fixed we can't go further, I also recommend, if this article gets over the issues you can better have an AR than a FAC. Cheers. CPA-5 (talk) 12:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Coord note
The standard term at FAC is "oppose" rather than "fail", but the sentiment is clear. I'd echo CPA's recommendation that after addressing outstanding issues Kurzon considers a MilHist A-Class Review as the next step, before another try at FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:23, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 12:24, 26 June 2019 (UTC)