User talk:PocklingtonDan

Leave a message if you like.

Re: MILHIST reviews and FAC

Well, the most obvious place where all the current reviews are listed is {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}. :-) Kirill Lokshin 19:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

There's a bit more to it than that, actually:

• Peer reviews are generally (a) fairly long in duration and (b) fairly numerous, and thus need their own page.
• A-Class reviews are (a) quite short in duration and (b) quite rare; much of the time, we don't actually have any running. Given that they're basically a part of the assessment system, it seems logical to just have them on the assessment page (which is very low-traffic, and can reasonably be watchlisted) directly.
• FACs are a somewhat subtler issue. They're not a review internal to the project, but an "official" Wikipedia-wide one. Given that there have already been complaints that MILHIST members are too supportive of each others' articles on FAC, actually transcluding the debates onto a project page may be pushing things a little too far.

Kirill Lokshin 20:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, thinking about this some more: what if we had a single combined page (mockup) rather than separate pages for each type of review? That would give you a single place to watch, but also avoid the appearance of trying to stack a particular external process. Kirill Lokshin 20:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Structural history of the Roman military

I have a problem with the auxilia units. They could be anything that helped the Romans to win, including foreigners who fought for money = mercenaries especially Gallic and Germanic nobles as cavalry), but also for little money, but citizenship after surviving the onslaught (Iberians, Cretan archers, Rhodian and Balearian slingers, ...) Do you have an idea how we explain this. Especially I doubt that the nobles in Caesars (Germanic cavalry) and Crassus (Gallic cavalry) were cheap, while it is stated that the common auxilia soldier received half the pay. Any ideas? Wandalstouring 15:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Wandals, I saw a couple of your edits and that you'd noticed I'd turned my attentions to this article. It in a very early stage at the moment so a lot of the information might be questionable. With regards to the auxilia, I think you are asking why they were cheaper than the legionaries. I think the answer is that whilst their basic pay was perhaps as expensive or maybe even more expensive, the legionaries were granted donatives (eg when a new emperor came to power) as well as large pensions and land on retirement - I think it was this long-term cost of each legionary that made them so comparably expensive, not that their standard pay was any more. Also, legionaries were more heavily armed and armoured and their equipment was expensive, especially their armour. I'm not sure if auxilia received their equipment from the ROman state, but certianly the later numeri and foederati would not have done. I think it also seems that whilst legions were raised and kept at a state of full readiness (ie permanently funded) at least some of the non-legionary troops were raised only as required. There is also the mindset that auxilia troops were of lower quality - Luttwak argues that the Romans purposefully maintained "escalation dominance" - ie purposefully never armed their auxiliary troops in the most expensive ways so that the legions could always defeat them should the auxiliaries mutiny. - PocklingtonDan (talk) 15:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

So far I agree. That they had equal salary with the legionaries receiving some additional allowance makes sense for the esprit de corps. What makes me wonder is the pay for the auxilia cavalry. The whole argument about arming them not equally good as the non-existing Roman cavalry is a bit flawed. Could you do some research on them, because they were an essential part of the Roman rule: they were nobles and commanded the others to fight if they decided to become insurgents (Vercingetorix and the like) and there was no Roman armed unit that could match their speed nor quality (they had only feet to walk, mules to carry and some officers on horses). Wandalstouring 16:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Gothic armies

We have a newbee who is interested in writing the article about Gothic armies, however, he seems to need some help. Perhaps you can give him a bit of advice (literature, article structure, etc.) because these tribal armies have a bit to do with your beloved Roman military. :D Cheers Wandalstouring 22:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a look and see if I can help him out with article structure etc - PocklingtonDan (talk) 06:56, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

DeleteAsstBot

Hey dan I'm sorry to see your bot recently got turned down for approval. I coincidentally am pitching a very similar idea at Wikipedia:Bot requests at the moment and just now stumbled upon your bot realizing yet again someone beat me to the punch. Anyway, I think I have some ideas that solve the complaints about your existing bot idea, although it would result in a completely different front end. Rather than user's filling out your very pretty form, they'd have to write (paste) a line of jargon, but the benefit is you don't have to worry about the ip address issue, you get to see in the history which user added the tag and anon IPs can be ignored. My current suggestion which is already under fire is here, let me know what you think. Vicarious 12:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I can understand the objections to DeleteAsstBot, even if I felt that the advantages of the bot outweighed any possible downsides. However, as you say your proposed solution does seem to sidestep the objections to my proposed bot. I've posted a message of support at bot requests and would be able to help with coding if required. Cheers - PocklingtonDan (talk) 12:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

scans

I've uploaded the tables of contents of a few books listed at Talk:Structural_history_of_the_Roman_military. Tell me what looks most useful to you. semper fictilis 22:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Good work/idea

Good work with the bot creation articles, this will encourage others to learn about bots and hopefully eventually write one.--Andeh 17:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)