Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/WHEELER

While his articles on classical subjects have their fair share of flaws, they are almost entirely accurate, well-researched, and extremely well-cited; I speak from about seven years' worth of education in Latin and Greek. I don't see why the deletionist push against his articles has been so strong. Any problems with his articles are problems that can be fixed and edited. For the most part I would not call his articles on classical antiquity original research; what he says is generally stuff that is widely accepted in the field. While I've seen that things have gotten messy when he starts "turf wars" and tries to shoehorn classical definitions into modern articles without proper context, when he writes on classical subjects his work has been very good. I'd much rather see an edit war (although I'd hope for that not to happen) than an article with a lot of good information deleted. I'd rather see articles on encyclopedic topics fixed rather than deleted.Kevin M Marshall 19:15, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I've not looked at Classical definition of republic before, but, from my scant knowledge of classics, the most recent version before deletion [1] looks pretty good (well, it seriously needs pruning and thinning down, but there is the core of a decent article on what the Ancient Greeks and Romans meant by the word "republic" - surely a proper topic for an encyclopaedia, I should have thought.)

The problem, it seems to me from the bits I have seen on the Village Pump, is WHEELER's rather forceful reaction to others trying to add their own input. But I don't know enough to comment properly. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:06, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Both of you sum things up well. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:43, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While I have found WHEELER somewhat aggravating, I don't think he has violated our policies in any significant way. What would be great is if the arbitration committee could say something about whether it is appropriate to add external links to deleted articles, this is what is at the heart of the current conflagration. - SimonP 23:38, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Again, good point. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 14:25, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC

I disagree in part with Kevin M Marshall; WHEELER is inaccurate and ill-researched. Whether this is grounds for wholesale deletion is another matter.

I come to this discussion from banausos, which Wheeler is insisting is pronounced, in Attic Greek, 'vanavsos'; and which now has as first sentence: "Ancient Greek Βαναυσος (banausos, plural βαναυσοι, banausoi) was a term coined to describe the bias of the warrior class against the values of the commercial class and in the Greek republics, established a "psychological distance" between the citizens and the traders."

From this follows that Periclean Athens was not a republic (and I must suppose) that Athens of the Thirty Tyrants was. (The psychological difference between true-born Athenians and metics is another question).

The bald statement that "Roman Republic" is a Renaissance usage is either seriously misleading or in error; IIRC "Resp. Rom." appears on Roman coinage.

He appears to be deriving his claims from a single, very dated, quite controversial, source - including copying that source's footnotes. I hope for Rahe's sake that WHEELER has misunderstood some of the things he is citing him for. Septentrionalis 00:25, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request

I am moving, and am without home interenet for about a week. Ergo I formally request an extension of the evidence period, or at least some understanding that charges will be answered slowly. Cheers, (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 14:24, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)