Wikipedia:Featured article review/Roman–Persian Wars/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by User:Marskell 07:31, 31 July 2008 [1].

Roman–Persian Wars

Notified Wikiprojects Greece, Iran, Classical, MilHist, and Middle Ages, and User:Yannismarou.

My own fault, really; this should have been a strong do not promote. If I had done more than glance at the points about which I was specifically consulted during the FA nomination, I would have objected then; but as it is, the second paragraph of the lead manages to violate 1a, b, c, d, and e. The present text (and I must say present, hence 1e) runs:

Occupation of enemy territory was usually local or brief and almost always reversed by force or negotiation. Durable cessions of territory in the border zone were made in Mesopotamia in 299 and 363 AD and in the Transcaucasus in 591 AD, but these were not the result of land being seized by force. Rather, each was the product of negotiations in which a ruler's negotiating position was severely weakened by his personal circumstances. The only lasting conquest by force was Septimius Severus' annexation of northern Mesopotamia in 195–198 AD. The last of these wars seemed to end the territorial inertia when Khosrau II's Sassanid forces occupied huge swathes of Roman territory for many years and brought the Roman Empire close to destruction. However, a counter-offensive led by Heraclius enabled the Romans to regain their lost territory in a final peace settlement.

  • 1a: The last of these wars seemed to end the territorial inertia when. The last war mentioned is from 195 AD; the occasion now mentioned is from 591 AD. Bad writing; not that territorial inertia is a clear metaphor to begin with.
  • 1b: This omits all Roman successes except Septimius, including Trajan's conquest of Mesopoptamia, which was voluntarily abandoned by Hadrian
  • 1c: The final peace settlement here lasted eight years before the Sassanian empire ceased to exist; other settlements has lasted for a century.

It would be nice if this could be resolved - this edit by Yannismarou would be acceptable; but I have made lengthy efforts to do so, in vain. If we must have a bad article because of group pressure, can we at least keep it off the main page? But it would be preferable to fix it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:53, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My first and final comment on this issue. Seeing this article being here just one week after its promotion is for me a bad joke. It is obviously another Sept's attempt to create wiki-drama, but I have no intention to follow his path. Therefore, I'll comment once and then I'll remain silent. Some things about the background of Sept's full of rage reaction:
  • On June 28, Sept commented "I deplore the frontier remained remarkably stable as a half-truth", (see here), and although he received a well-grounded and analytic response by both me and Zburh he temporarily kept his silence and decided to reinstate his arguments (without actually answering to me and Zburh) on July 8 (see here). After a brief response of mine, he added this draft, extending the lead, changing its structure, and inserting a series of historical inaccuracies, which were pointed out by both me and Zburh here. Zburh proposed a compromise version, insisting on territorial changes (this one close to the current version), and restoring historical accuracy Sept's draft had compromised. This is important because later Zburh faced the accusation of "Iranian nationalism". You can compare Sept's draft and argumentation, and then Zburh's draft and supporting argumentation, in order to make your own judgment. I want to emphasize on two things: 1) Sept stated during this discussion "Added a draft. If you disagree with the specifics, feel free to tweak again. If you dispute largely (he meant the particular word, which was thus in italics) we have a problem." This statement of his contradicts most of his arguments in the current FARC, which focus on "the specifics". 2) After Zburh introduced his compromise draft, Sept remained silent for twenty days! He did not respond to Zburh's arguments (maybe because he couldn't; see again here in fine), and did not comment on the draft. In the law school they told us that such a long silence entails acceptance, but this is no law school, and I'll let the reviewers again to make their own judgments here. One thing you should also check is Zburh's civility and politeness during all this time. This is important for the next episodes of our story!
  • Sept does not express any objection again about the lead; he waits; he does not say anything during FAC; he keeps silent, and suddenly on July 27 he introduces unilaterally and after no discussion this confusing and historical inaccurate change. On July 28 I revert him back, trying to be polite, and asking him to discuss the issue in the talk page (see my edit summary). And then we have the beginning of wrath! His "mature" response was to start tagging the article (the same version he hadn't tagged for 20 days, and although he had said that his main problem was "largely" and not "the specifics"), and to address threats towards all directions (I have gathered them at the end of this intervention). His vengiful tactic of tagging the article has been repeatedly criticized by third-party editors and subsequently reverted by third-party editors. The ensuing discussion is deploring but if you have the patience read it till the end. I do not have the appetite to repeat all the details here; the point is that Sept suddenly realized that now all the details are important to him, and if he is not satisfied:
  • He will ask for an RfC for the article.
  • He will initiate an RfC against particular users who do not agree with him.
  • He will report almost everybody to AIV.
  • He will initiate a FARC (oups! He already did it! He is a man of his word!)
  • He will keep tagging the article till the end of the world.
  • He will regard all of us as Iranian nationalists (although I kindly asked him to label me as Greek, therefore Byzantine nationalist, which I may deserve!).

I do not have much to say about the FA criteria. Just read the article and see for yourself! It is thoroughly researched, properly cited, copy-edited by Dank55, Ceoil, Casliber, and Finetooth (last copy-editing after Tony's comments in FAC). The only person who regards it as POV is Sept. The only person causing edit-wars is again Sept (and it is hillarious to use his own edit-wars for evoking violation of criterion 1e!) What else can I say?! Oh, yes, some brief answers to Sept's aforementioned arguments:

  • "The last of these wars seemed to end the territorial inertia when Khosrau II's Sassanid". If you think the prose is not perfect, tweak it (by the way, your prose skllls as presented in all the drafts you proposed are much inferior, and all your versions worse than the current one!), but how can you say that the reader may not understand that we speak about Heraclius' war, when there is the "when ... " part of the sentence, and since "the last of these wars" refers to the Roman-Persian Wars as a whole. The solution here, in case you want to introduce an improvement, is a minor tweak like a better paragraph-splitting I just did; not all this fuss you caused.
  • Really? And 591 or 195-198 were done by whom? Not the Romans?! And, after all, the paragraph speaks about "durable sessions". All the ones mentioned: two Romans (195-198 and 591) and two Persians (299 and 363) were "durable", and one of them, the one achieved in 195-198 was "permanent". Trajan's was neither durable nor permanent. As the article accurately says: "Trajan died in 117, before he was able to reorganize the effort to consolidate Roman control over the Parthian provinces." Now, where is the POV or the historical inaccuracy again? And, by the way, in your own edit of July 27 (the ideal one for you!), which I initially reverted, I see no Trajan. So, on July 27 Trajan's omission did not violate 1b, but on July 30 it does violate it!
  • "in a final peace settlement". As far as the Persian-Wars are concerned, it was permanent. We had no other! Yes, we could have had, if the Arab "tsunami" wouldn't occur. But the statement is not inaccurate. This was the last peace settlement in a series of wars lasting approximately 700 years. Nevertheless, if this is a problem, personally I have no problem to remove this particular thread, and leave the sentence like that: "However, a counter-offensive led by Heraclius enabled the Romans to regain their lost territory".
  • Ok, no comment! Howard-Johnston (among others) is PEACOCK and Iranian nationalist! The Empire was on the verge of destruction and this is a fact! By the way, I and Zburh could also accuse you of true Iranian nationalism, when you argued that Shapur "held" Roman East, which never happened! And whatever you say you are not convincing at all, arguing that Shapur's and Khosrau's threats were of the same or similar importance.
Maybe redundant, but in order to have a broader prespective of the whole issue and Sept's tactics, I thought I should collect and expose here all the threats he managed to articulate within some hours:
  • For a start, as far as the article itself is concerned, if we do not agree with his drafts FARC and dispure resolutions are the only solutions.
  • Concerning personal comments, Sept declares that some users are in general dishonest.
  • Zburh in particular is "semi-literate" and an "Iranian nationalist". I honestly believe and I have to voice my opinion loudly here, that this was the worst of all comments. The person who has worked that much in this article, has attempted to promote compromises, the person who never offended anybody, and was always civil, the person with the profoundest knowledge of the topic among all of us, this person to be called "semi-literate", and "Iranian nationalist"?
  • Here another "offending" editor is threatened by the (later temporarily banned for edit-warring) Sept with an RfC, because he removed one of the two repetitive threads Trajan was mentioned!
  • And here everybody not agreeing with him is reported to AIV for vandalism of course!
I close this long comment, apologizing for its lentgh and for obliging you to read it (whoever of you managed to do that deserves my humble admiration!), but I thought I had to give a comprehensive presentation of the events, at least in the way I see them. In order to be fair, I have also to say that all this story is not just Sept's fault; CreazySuit and Larno Man wanted honestly to help but sometimes they achieved the opposite result. But I also have to recognize that at the same time they were provoked by Sept's bitter comments (see above).
Oh, and something else: Obviously all the reviewers here are passing a test of Sept, in order to see whether FA is worth anything at all. So, be careful; if you don't agree with him FA is worth of nothing. Thank you again for your patience!--Yannismarou (talk) 08:40, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • This article was promoted nine days ago. Per WP:FAR instructions, Three to six months is regarded as the minimum time between promotion and nomination here, unless there are extenuating circumstances such as a radical change in article content.. FAR is not dispute resolution. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I know that I should have opposed this article during FAC - if I had seen the problem, I would have done so; I have been trying to fix it since, only to have been completely reverted by a couple of editors with severe ownership problems; they have even reverted Yannismarou's tag acknowledging that the article is in dispute. It should not have been promoted with this text; it should be demoted now. (Nor do I insist on my own text; I am perfectly happy with the edit by Yannismarou linked to here, and many other alternatives are possible. Merely not this confusing, biased, and inaccurate text.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove - Bad faith nomination made way too soon to be seriously considered. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 17:06, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove nom Per Judgesurreal. ( Ceoil sláinte 23:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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