Talk:Marcus Caeionius Silvanus

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Llywrch in topic About removed material

About removed material edit

A now-banned editor had the distressing practice of creating articles comprised of genealogical statements that he attributed to the research of Christian Settipani, citing the entire book not specific pages. Since not everyone can read French, & fewer have access to any of Settipani's books, these statements had been allowed to stand on en.wikipedia for a few years. Then I came along & tried to confirm these statements in one or two ways: either there is evidence that someone might argue these genealogical relationships are possible; or that Settipani had actually made them, & provided a page &/or footnote where he had written the words. Every time this now-banned editor cited Settipani for some assertion, it turns out that either no one ever proposed such a relationship, or that the evidence prevents the proposed reconstruction. The phrase "he made shit up" comes to mind concerning this situation.

As a result, I have removed all of the content previously sourced to Settipani in this characteristic vague style that could not be verified by other reliable sources, such as Ronald Syme & Werner Eck. From examining the fr.wikipedia article on Silvanus, it appears that Settipani actually made one assertion about him, which I kept in this article out of an attempt to be fair. Further, some related articles, such as Marcus Caeionius Proculus, should be carefully examined, &, if no reliable information can be found in them, deleted. -- llywrch (talk) 07:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)Reply