Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Ionian Revolt

Ionian Revolt edit

3 articles

I am nominating this as a good topic. It is intended as a sister topic to First Persian invasion of Greece and Second Persian invasion of Greece. There are only three articles, but between them these articles cover all the aspects of the campaign.

In the last nomination I had, there was a protracted debate about whether biographical articles needed to be included in the topic to make it complete. For this topic, I will repeat in advance the argument that biographies of the military commanders of this campaign will add little to the reader's understanding of the topic. This is mostly because it would be impossible to write a meaningful biography of any one of them, since so little is known of them. Furthermore, I note that two further military campaign topics have been promoted since then (Boston Campaign and Canadian campaign of 1775), without including any biographical articles. MinisterForBadTimes (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - OK so to make this topic, I think you merged in Siege of Sardis (498 BC) and Battle of Ephesus (498 BC) to create this topic. (The rest of the section redirects in {{Campaignbox Greco-Persian Wars}} never had articles behind them.) Were neither of these battles notable enough to merit separate articles?

That is basically what I did. There had, at some point in the past, been a massive proliferation of articles on ancient battles which were essentially non-notable/only known from a single line in an ancient source. I have been methodically removing these where possible, and folding them into larger articles. IMHO, Sardis and Ephesus were not notable enought to require their own articles. For instance, the sum of historical knowledge on Ephesus is Herodotus's two sentences: "It chanced that they found the Ionians no longer at Sardis, but following on their tracks, they caught them at Ephesus. There the Ionians stood arrayed to meet them, but were utterly routed in the battle." I don't think that dragging this out into a whole article is really a good use of anyone's time. Ditto Sardis, which wasn't even a siege as such. I'm not just trying to cherrypick by eliminating articles.

OK, I just like to ask. I can see that the bulk of both articles pre-merge (if you can call it the "bulk"?) was the background and aftermath sections which was just basically context - rst20xx (talk) 18:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also I'm not going to start this debate again because I'm fine with these topics not including individual participants, but to be fair the other battles topics that have been promoted are much more recent so it is likely the participants are notable for more than just their participation, or are notable for participation in several conflicts, unlike here, where they are only notable for this - rst20xx (talk) 12:07, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is a fair observation. I'm not suggesting that, for instance, George Washington should be included in Boston Campaign. MinisterForBadTimes (talk) 15:05, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support - rst20xx (talk) 18:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Good work. -- ThinkBlue (Hit BLUE) 21:11, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Seems comprehensive and all articles are good quality.Yob Mod 13:59, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Looks good. The leftorium 19:29, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Close with consensus to promote - rst20xx (talk) 18:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]