Talk:Troy: Difference between revisions

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 8 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ColeS777.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Ilium usage and inconsistencies

Ilium

in the first paragraph this is shown as an alternative name for Troy, and given a Greek spelling (in brackets), but in the main article section on the name Ilium is said to be the Latin, and Ilion or Ilios are the Greek names for Troy. This all seems very inconsistent and should be corrected.

On the Ilium disambiguation page, in reference to Troy, is listed as Ilion (using the masculine Greek) and not as Ilium (using the neuter Latin) - this again seems inconsistent and should be corrected.

Ilium is Latin, Ilion and Ilios are Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.24.1 (talk) 10:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks! Botterweg14 (talk) 15:59, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Wrong and inconsistent dates for the destruction of Troy VI

This article states: "Troy VI existed from around 1750 BC to 1300 BC", which is correct according to the current consensus (see Strauss 2006, Cline 2013 and others). But then is says "Troy VI was destroyed around 1250 BC, corresponding with the sublayer known as Troy VIh." This is inconsistent with the prior statement and does not agree with the current consensus (that an earthquake c.1300 BC is responsible for the damage to Troy VIh.) It ought to be corrected. 2600:1702:28E0:EE0:75E3:BDC1:F666:EEC4 (talk) 16:36, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Good catch! If there's other mistakes, you can be bold! Botterweg14 (talk) 07:33, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Restructuring the article

I was thinking of reorganizing the article and wanted feedback first. I worry that the current structure buries some of the more important points (e.g. the archaeology of Troy VI/VIIa) and lumps or splits some things that would be more natural for readers to encounter in one place (e.g. texts about Wilusa with the archaeology of Troy VI/VIIa). Here's my thought:

• Site (current “Site Conservation” plus “Archaeological layers”)
• Expanded lead that covers things in a little more detail (e.g. mentioning Troy VI's lower town, but not the murex shells)
• Early Troy (current Troy 0-Troy V sections)
• Late Bronze Age Troy (current Troy VI-Troy VIIb2 sections, plus “Hittite Records” section)
• Greek and Roman Troy (current Troy VIIb3-Troy IX sections, plus “Classical and Hellenistic Troy")
• Excavation History
• Troy in Legend

Another worry is that the article is currently too detailed for some readers but not for others. For instance, someone could care about Troy VI's lower town but not about the murex shells. My first thought was to address this with a somewhat more detailed lead, but I also had the thought of splitting the article. Botterweg14 (talk) 20:04, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, I really have only ever poked at the excavation history part of the article, the rest ie levels etc being the sort of contentious stuff I try to avoid. :-) So restructuring is fine with me. I would say that my sense is that the article is too long. Yes Troy has been excavated for maybe 150 years but I would say that there were only maybe 3 dozen actual seasons in that period. Anyway, a bit of tightening up would help the article I think, though I did just add a couple sentences so I guess I'm not helping things.Ploversegg (talk) 02:29, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Do you have a "dream edit" you've been restraining yourself from making? I'm certainly willing to kill some darlings if they make the article better. Botterweg14 (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll look it over. Though I do remember that the site conservation is just a big advert so while I'm thinking of it ...Ploversegg (talk) 20:58, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

My initial thoughts, some of which are minor

• the footnotes add basically nothing to the article. never have footnotes just to have them. anyway, can park stuff in refs
• no reason to have a Sources section here. Only maybe half of them are actually used in the article. I think this was from early Wiki days, now naming refs so you only have one entry is normal. so just have the usual References section
• the entire Additional Sources section needs to be completely redone, either as just a list or in some organized way that is actually helpful
• I think that the Historical Troy stuff should be blended in with the arch stuff. I agree with you that it is better to separate by periods vs levels. Levels make sense for archaeologists but nor regular wiki readers. you could either separate by periods Early Bronze, Middle Bronze etc or into the periods of the city that actually matter. really, could just call the section History or History of Occupation (old school wikipedia).
• be careful about making the led too long btw, its already not short. Some of the stuff there now can probably be cleaned outthough.

So I think I am mostly agreeing with your proposalPloversegg (talk) 02:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm on the fence about this. While I appreciate where you're coming from, I think this would need to be done carefully in order to avoid making it harder to find information and diluting the archaeological information. I'm not fond of the idea of subordinating the archaeology to the "history". This doesn't mean that a merge of the type proposed cannot happen, but e.g. if there is a Late Bronze Age Troy section, I think it is important that it retain separate subsections for each of the layers and especially for "Hittite Records". On the other hand, splitting the article into separate articles and reducing this article to WP:Summary style would be very good. I'm wholeheartedly on board with this (Sidenote: sources that aren't used in the article, but are worthwhile, should be moved to a "further reading" section; this is an aide to readers who want to use WP as the start of their learning and allows future editors to incorporate them into the main article.) Furius (talk) 09:42, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Caution is indicated especially on one of the top visited ANE site articles. And yes, I like Further Reading sections both for their usefulness and as an on deck circle for possible future use as inline refs. I think the main problem is that this is one of what I call ANE's dinosaurs, article like Babylon, Nippur, and Ur that were created in the early days of Wikipedia and reflected archaeology as it was in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. A lot of that has been weeded out over the years but you can still feel the leftovers of in varius site articles. And I always prefer an Archaeology section over Excavation History because it give you license to put some down in the weeds archaeology stuff so as to keep the History section readable but that is up to the editor. My base view on editing is to think of two wikipedia readers, the drive by reader and the serious reader. The former saw Troy on tv and was casually curious about it and the latter has to write a paper on Troy for a class. I try to make articles work for both of them.Ploversegg (talk) 14:45, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I think I agree with all of this, though this might be a case where we discover what works along the way. But thank you for the discussion and for the ongoing edits! Botterweg14 (talk) 16:25, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

If I was gonna create a new article to house the all of the current Troy 0-Troy V sections, any suggestions on what the title would be? "Early Troy" is a little vague, but "Pre-Late-Bronze-Age Troy" sounds terrible. Botterweg14 (talk) 16:24, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Dunno, but reading this [1] reminded me that Levels III to V were largely destroyed by the Classical foundations so a) they are barely worth too much mention and b) it is unknown whether the city was big or small because lack of stuff could mean it was poor or it could mean the greco-romans cleared away all the stuff.:-) Ploversegg (talk) 23:45, 18 March 2023 (UTC)