User talk:Haploidavey

Please leave messages regarding articles on article talk pages. This page is for more personal stuff (friendly messages and queries, that sort of thing). Haploidavey (talk) 07:45, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Phew![1] NebY (talk) 16:19, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting some copy edit help

Greetings @Haploidavey

Hi, I am User:Bookku, On Wikipedia I engage in, finding information and knowledge gap areas in Wikipedia and promoting expansion of related drafts and articles. Came across your edit at Amphitheatre (Xtools).

Requesting you to visit Draft:Rabindra Rangshala (tentatively planned to release as stub) and help it's copy edit if the topic would interest you. Bookku (talk) 07:16, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources and classical history

From your edit message, no primaries as yet, and none offered as evidence in secondary. Do we really need them[?]. I'll explain for a moment what I think of the topic because I'm pushing for it. Using primary sources in classics is fraught with problems. But they are at the same time absolutely vital. There are a number of factors to balance:

Laymen aren't really equipped to interpret primary sources like scholars are
Wikipedia isn't the place for original research and even credentialed scholars must here justify what they say with external publications
Wikipedia has multiple audiences, however, which include experts that may want to know what the relevant primary sources are: this is important for research – experts especially want to read those primary sources and draw their own conclusions – and credibility

The way I think those factors should be balanced is by parallel citation. We can't use the primary sources themselves for us to draw conclusions with (WP:PRIMARY). But we can cite reliable secondary sources which use those primary sources to draw conclusions. When we do so, however, because just pointing to that secondary source isn't very helpful at a glance, the best affordance I think is to note the secondary source's citation to the primary source when it is available and relevant. Ifly6 (talk) 16:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]