Wikipedia:Featured article review/Slavery in ancient Greece/archive1

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 delisted by DrKay via FACBot (talk) 8:48, 3 April 2021 (UTC) [1].

---

Slavery in ancient Greece

Notified: Daimanta, various wikiprojects, January

Review section

I am nominating this featured article for review because the issues raised by RD in his talk page notification more than 1 month ago have not been addressed, primarily various sourcing issues including "heavy use of ancient, primary sources", lack of English language scholarship, etc. (t · c) buidhe 18:14, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I lack detailed expertise in this subject area but I have removed a couple of obviously-unreferenced comments. I agree with RetiredDuke, this article needs serious work or downgrading. But my thanks to the authors, it is good in the non-technical sense, and enlightening. Richard Keatinge (talk) 20:03, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by llywrch

I have no problem with FA citing primary sources, & I don't see an objectionably heavy use of ancient or primary sources here. (A discussion of the sources would be useful, though. Some facts about Greek slavery are obvious from the primary sources; some need to be deduced from evidence or analogy, & therefore need to be drawn from the secondary literature.) But that doesn't mean there aren't problems in this article:

• In the section "Sources of Supply", 4 sources for slaves are listed. I find it amazing that slaves giving birth wasn't listed. Another overlooked source for slaves was rescuing exposed infants. Both of these sources have the benefit that people enslaved in this manner are trained from an early age to be a slave & that freedom is not for them.
• I agree that the citation system needs to be made consistent. (This is probably the easiest problem to fix.)
• I also agree that the extensive number of items under "Further reading" means there is more material waiting to be integrated into this article. Or, in other words, it's clearly evidence that this article does not fully cover the subject.
• Towards the end of the article is a section "Views of Greek slavery > Modern views". I think the modern consensus opinion is that slavery is a bad thing; ownership of other people is immoral & justifiably illegal. And that succinctly sums up everything that needs to be said in that section. The only reason to discuss modern views is that some of our contemporaries may argue that Greek slavery "wasn't all bad", or something like that. That material better belongs in another article, say Modern views of slavery or Modern apologies for slavery. -- llywrch (talk) 19:45, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd take a rather more extended view of Modern - from the use of the printing press onwards is the usual extent. Your comment may well be valid as a summary of liberal views in 2021, but there is more to be said and the article at present does try to say it. Richard Keatinge (talk) 17:48, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I am dubious of its relevance in this article. -- llywrch (talk) 20:52, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments by Johnbod

• The main author, User:Jastrow, has only made 6 edits since 2017, so I doubt help can be expected from there. He translated what I think was his own article from wp:fr, hence the bulk of French sources. This is not a reason to deny or remove FA status.
• I don't agree, on a subject this broad, that "the extensive number of items under "Further reading" means there is more material waiting to be integrated into this article. Or, in other words, it's clearly evidence that this article does not fully cover the subject." Any big subject could have such a list, & the one here seems rather obsessed with piracy - rather a marginal aspect one might think. Much of it could probably be trimmed - all the items not in English perhaps. It would be useful to know if there has been any really major work since the article passed FA. But one good thing about this article is that the many sources (though admittedly often in French) are mostly pretty recent - by no means always the case.
• Slavery in classical Greek literature struck me as a missing section.
• I'm not very bothered by the primary sources, nor what the reviewer calls "unsourced notes".
• The "author needed" points seem to have been dealt with, or are trivial.
• All in all seems ok as an FA to me.

Johnbod (talk) 00:34, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Comment from Hog Farm

• I don't have time to do a full review, but the very first thing I glanced at in this article has some issues. I saw the sentence working leased land belonging to rich landowners and unable to pay their rents. In theory, those so enslaved would be liberated when their original debts were repaid. The system was developed with variants throughout the Near East and is cited in the Bible. This is cited to six verses out of Deuteronomy (I'm using the NIV for my comparison). However, most of this isn't supported by those six verses. The source passage is about people selling themselves as servants/slaves for debts, and does not specifically mention the land rent system in our article. In the biblical passage, the arrangement is said to be for a set period of time, and does not mention being freed due to debts being paid off. The verses also do not mention non-Israelite cultures. So almost the whole of the one statement I looked at in this article is not supported by the given citation. That does not bode well. Hog Farm _Talk 01:13, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Comment

• Move to FARC No significant improvements since RetiredDuke posted their concerns in January. (I created a new section to avoid the impression that this comment was made by Hog Farm.) Z1720 (talk) 15:57, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and coverage. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Google Scholar throws up about 72900 sources, most of which are too niche for a general article but I concur that we need more modern coverage. The thing about contemporary sources is that they are generally not sufficiently disinterested/have a too narrow point of view and cannot perform a proper synthesis/analysis without the benefit of hindsight. Plus there is often the question of reliability. I'd favour delisting an article that relies this much on ancient sources.

On the other hand, I think that the Odyssey and Iliad are reliable sources for their own claims and seeing as they are the major fiction (?) literature of the time mentioning them is OK, but only with intext attribution. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:26, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Sure but there are reliable sources, e.g. on slavery in the Odyssey:[2][3] which provide the proper context for representation of slavery in Greek literature. (t · c) buidhe 15:29, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Moved reply to talk Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:08, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

• Delist per above. (t · c) buidhe 15:26, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
• Delist per above. There are quite a few sizable chunks only sourced to primary sources. Which isn't great for the reasons listed above. It's also worth noting that when working with ancient sources, the ancient idea of history is not necessarily equivalent to what we would want from modern historical sources. See, for instance, the Antiquities of the Jews, which, although not used here, is a fairly standard ancient history in the sense that there's a good deal of legendary or otherwise unreliable accretion. Hog Farm _Talk 21:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. DrKay (talk) 08:48, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

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