Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cleomenean War/archive1

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

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 20:11, 15 December 2009 [1].

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Cleomenean War

Nominator(s): Kyriakos (talk) 23:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Cleomenean War/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Cleomenean War/archive2

• Featured article review/Cleomenean War/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets the Featured article criteria. I created the article in 2007 and since then it has passed a GAC become an A-Class article on WikiProject Military History. Kyriakos (talk) 23:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. 1b/c: Inappropriate use of PRIMARY sources to demonstrate points, this amounts to OR in a historical field. Inappropriate use of Tertiary sources (no specialist authors indicated). Inappropriate use of sources out of date (Classics has moved on since 1873/1875). Lack of expected specialist secondary works, including media formats where expected articles would exist (book chapters, journal articles) which puts a massive independent doubt in my mind that 1c has been met. Some 2c fiddle about correctly citing chapters contained in other works, missing locations, volume number of a work in the title. Niebuhr's lectures miscited, and they're 1875. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Reply. Unfortunately, as is the case with the more obscure conflicts of the Hellenistic era, secondary sources are hard to find leading to a reliance on primary sources as is the case with this article, with has a reliance on Plutarch. The lack of specialist comtempary sources had caused me problems throughout the creation of this article and I have tried to use as many secondary sources as possible (such as Peter Green, who is a prominent historian on the era). I will try and find more secondary sources but as I have stated above, there are very few on this topic and thus I don't think I will find many. Kyriakos (talk) 05:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment: There are modern sources.

• N. Hammond, A history of Macedonia/volume 3 (Oxford 1988) p.349-362 (contains footnotes to other sources)
• Hölbl, Günther. 2001. A History of the Ptolemaic Empire. Translated by Tina Saavedra. London: Routledge Ltd.
• [German] G. Hölbl, Geschichte des Ptolemäerreiches (Darmstadt 1994) p. 50-53 (contains footnotes to other sources in English, German and Dutch, look above, the book has been translated) Wandalstouring (talk) 15:04, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Reply. ONce again Wandals thank you very much. You always seem to find great sourcres. Kyriakos (talk) 22:35, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Will be more than happy to review again if you can appropriately incorporate these sources to demonstrate a majority of points. (Occasional stuff verified out of primary in a difficult, small, area of study is tolerable, but working these through an Oxford history in volumes, and an explicit history published by Routledge would be best). Fifelfoo (talk) 23:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:27, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
• Reply. I've fixed all the dabs. Kyriakos (talk) 00:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Comments

I read through the article and overall it looks good; specific issues I had are noted below. I'm not sure about the article's accessibility and background and will come back later to have another look at that.

• Images are all missing alt text.
  • Alt text is present for most (though not all) now, but I'm afraid it's not yet sufficient. As you can see at WP:ALT, alt text"summarizes the image's appearance, not its meaning, and typically has little in common with the image's caption." How would you describe the image itself when you would describe it to someone over the phone? In particular, the alt text should generally not repeat the caption. Ucucha 12:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
    • I've redone most of the alt texts. Kyriakos (talk) 23:22, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
      • Looks pretty good, but someone more experienced with alt text may be should confirm that it's sufficient. Ucucha 00:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
• The map in the infobox contains unreadable text. I think you should change it to a map that clearly indicates the parties of the war.

Lead

• Please tell us who Aratus is before mentioning what he was doing.
• "failed revolt" - what failed revolt? Against Ptolemy, the new rulers of Sparta?

Prelude

• "the translator of Plutarch on Sparta, Richard Talbert and historian N. G. L. Hammond, says Cleomenes took them at their own request." - somewhat vague. Did they both translate Plutarch or is only Talbert a translator?
• Somewhat odd that you refer to the Achaean League as "she". Is this usual?

No it is no usual. It must have been a typo but I could not find this reference in the article. Kyriakos (talk) 23:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Early years and success

• Whose success?

It was the Spartan success and I have changed the title iof the section. Kyriakos (talk) 23:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• Again, map has unreadable text.
• "Initially, Cleomenes made only minor requests of the Achaean delegates; the Achaeans continued to send ambassadors, however, and Cleomenes eventually demanded that leadership of the League be surrendered to him; in exchange, he would return to the Achaeans the prisoners and strongholds he had seized." - this goes on a little too long, please split the sentence. Also, the part about the ambassadors makes little sense to me.
  • It's better now. However, it still seems to be saying (or, at the very least, implying) that Cleomenes made more demands because the Achaeans send more ambassadors, which makes little sense to me.
    • I've rephrased the sentences. Kyriakos (talk) 01:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Domination of the Peloponnese

• "When he heard what had happened at Corinth, Aratus expected the city to fall to Sparta." - do you mean "When he heard what had happened at Argos, Aratus expected Corinth to (also) fall to Sparta."?

Macedonian intervention

• Now that is a good map. The other maps should be like this in legibility.
• League of Leagues - why did the Thessalians acquiesce to this when they had opposed Antigonus a short time before?

  It was the Aetolian Leahue that had occupied some parts of Thessaly that opposed Antigonus.

  Fair enough then. Ucucha 12:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Ucucha 02:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Reply. By unreadable text do you mean the writing is too small? Kyriakos (talk) 08:31, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I do. Another point: only the reviewer is supposed to strike comments. Ucucha 12:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

SOrry about that. I have removed the strikes. I'll try find some more maps, I but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. Kyriakos (talk) 23:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I kept the strikes I was satisfied with. I may be able to help with the maps, but can't guarantee. If not, there are other possibilies: User:MapMaster may be kind enough to help, if he's around, and there is some other place where you can request maps. Ucucha 23:28, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I've gone over all the points now except for the maps. Kyriakos (talk) 23:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

There's a few more left. As for the map, I would prefer the first one to show clearly the parties in the war and the essential places where battles occurred during the war. The first map has a lot of information that is not necessary to this article and the scale is such that it's impossible to see where Sparta actually is, which is one of the essential pieces of information it should give. Ucucha 00:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I contacted MapMaster as you suggested and I am going to have a simpler map generated of the combantants, battle locations and cities. Kyriakos (talk) 22:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That looks good. I'm confident he'll do a good job, so I'm striking my map comments. Could you have a look at the two (very small) remaining issues I raised? Ucucha 23:11, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. Alt text done; thanks. Alt text is mostly present (thanks), but it's missing for File:Lechaeum.png. The alt text for File:Macedonia and the Aegean World c.200.png conveys mostly useless info (such as colors): it should give the gist of the image, such as the way that Macedonia covers the northern half of Greece; see WP:ALT#Maps for guidance. The phrases "The diagram depicts", "shows", and "A drawing" should be reworded and/or removed, as per WP:ALT#Phrases to avoid. Please check the punctuation; there's a missing period after "drapery" and an extra comma after "shows". Eubulides (talk) 08:17, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I've done some work on the alts. Hopefully they are better now. Kyriakos (talk) 12:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it looks good now. Eubulides (talk) 17:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.