Merge proposal

Turns out there's an article by the name Battle of Masada. Both cover the exact same subject and should be merged. Poliocretes (talk) 16:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - I couldn't find any distinction. ~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree - Clearly an accidental duplication. Zerotalk 04:46, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done, I've merged the two articles, rewriting several sections of this one and dropping WP:OR from the other. Poliocretes (talk) 13:05, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Opening sentence

"The siege of Masada was among the final accords of the Great Jewish Revolt, " Accords?? Midgley (talk) 17:11, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

REPLY: Accords as in a music piece. Seems rather obvious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.173.217.52 (talk) 07:00, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Siege in current day Israel

Baatarsaikan reverted an edit - and insists that the sige is in current day Israel. I may be missing something in the meaning there, but the geological feature, the hill/mesa/top is where it used to be now, but what occurred on it is very past. The comment "this is correct" is not as enlightening as some comments, particularly when it is applied to something which manifestly is not correct. Except perhaps metaphysically. Further and better detail about why the introduction should say the sige occured in the present day and present state, please. My first language is English. Midgley (talk) 16:24, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You might also ask why "a large hilltop" needs to occur twice in the introduction. Careful reading before reverting is desirable, don't you think? Midgley (talk) 16:29, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The meaning seems perfectly clear to me: the siege occurred on a hill which is in modern day Israel. IdreamofJeanie (talk) 17:40, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Where was it previously? The hill doesn't move. The location is specified as that of the siege, or not separated from it. The user was a sock-puppet, and has been blocked. Midgley (talk) 20:26, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly is the problem? The siege occurred on a hill. If one of our readers feels inclined to visit the location of the siege they will have to go to modern day Israel. The meaning of the first sentence is quite clear. What are you suggesting needs changing? and as for your sarky comment "Careful reading before reverting is desirable", please note that it was you who duplicated the phrase with your first edit of dec 14th. Thanks for pointing out the error, I will remove one instance. IdreamofJeanie (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

famous rock in a wasteland by a poisoned sea quote

The Roman General, Lucius Flavius Silva, was supposed to have sent back the message to Rome, ""The victory? We have won a rock in the middle of a wasteland on the shore of a poison sea." This is a very famous, oft-repeated quote. If it is made up, or comes from the Masada TV series, or really is historical, it would be a great service to readers to give the correct attribution. All I could find is "quotes" in articles related to the TV series, which are not very reliable. Thanks, -BTP 71.198.184.44 (talk) 03:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Grand rolling prose but it sounds far more like Peter O'Toole than the real Flavius Silva. Roman generals just didn't express themselves in such terms if they wanted a Triumph back home. Josephus composed similar stirring sentiments for Eleazar, which covers several pages of The Jewish War but doesn't quote Silva at all. Buistr (talk) 06:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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The usual anti-Israel bias on the hard left shown again in Wikipedia

The entire article is obviously biased. It stresses only one side of a disputed subject, and conveys very strongly the usual anti-Zionist, anti-Israel leftist agenda to de-legitimise Jewish solidarity and Jewish claims to Judea/Israel. It presents the critical findings or rather claims of a few scholars as the evident truth behind the whole story, which is that the defenders of Masada were simply cruel extremist fanatics whose illegitimate and immoral resistance can only be justified by falsehoods, ignoring the extreme cruelty of the Romans themselves both at the time and before it, actually causing the conflict to begin with. No mention is made of that aspect of the Masada resistance, nor even of what fate awaited any left alive when the Romans overran the citadel. Mockery runs through the article, as in the supposedly erroneous admiring as Jewish victims the allegedly Roman soldiers who might have been captured and cruelly killed by the defenders. This hard leftist and strongly anti-Israel bent is shown in almost all articles on Israel topics in Wikipedia, just bearing out once again the result at that website of systematically hounding out of its editing all non-leftist editors on any current relevant topic. This is just one instance of a much more pervasive syndrome at Wikipedia, and makes it a highly dubious source for any contemporary topic with political relevance. Wikipedia cannot be trusted. 175.39.122.144 (talk) 09:25, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Scientific investigation must be banned and all articles must be purely based on nationalist myths. Zerotalk 10:53, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You must remember that the sources disputing Josephus are pure speculation - they are just alternate theories. HammerFilmFan (talk) 05:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed dates

The infobox contains a set of "proposed dates" but there's no real explanation for them. Despite this, the introduction uses the proposed dates (73–74) but the article body still states that the fortress fell in 73, so this needs to be expanded/clarified. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 16:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reference does not support statement for the year of the siege

A 2010 article by Campbell is cited in reference [17] to support a claim that the Romans breached the wall of Masada in April 73 CE, with the body of the reference stating: "Campbell, Duncan B. (2010). 'Capturing a desert fortress: Flavius Silva and the siege of Masada'. Ancient Warfare. 4 (2): 28–35. The dating is explained on pp. 29 and 32." (emphasis mine).

However, pp. 29 and 32 of that article refer to the adlection of Silva as a patrician in early 73 and to his assumption of a new command that summer to "tie up the loose ends" of the Jewish-Roman war. Campbell writes on p. 32 that Silva would have wanted to delay the siege until after the heat of summer and begin toward the end of 73. Campbell then explicitly criticizes the rationale underlying the traditional siege dates of 72-73 CE on p. 35.

This is consistent with his 1988 proposal that the siege occurred in 73-74 CE which is currently cited as a source of the proposed date in the InfoBox as reference [1]. Campbell 2010 then shouldn't be used to support a Roman breach of the fortress in April 73 but rather the proposed date of 73-74 CE. Mercaedion (talk) 18:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

C'mon people

[whole section I wrote redacted, as it was misposted here.] Herostratus (talk) 15:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the tone of this article is off. I cannot take the deep dive to evaluate the factual statements or sources used, but the wording conveys a sense of bias. I have no political dog in this fight and I usually enjoy a good mythbusting article, but from the first paragraph it was obvious that the writer had an agenda. LAMerryman (talk) 15:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh man, I meant to post this over at Masada myth where it belongs, instead of here. Sorry. I'll moveit over to there. Herostratus (talk) 15:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Archaeology

Shouldn't there be a section after Josephus and before historical interpretations that gives a concise factual account of the archaeological work? I might try and do this, but it's not really my area of expertise. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Use the Ehud Netzer and Jodi Magness sources. Andre🚐 09:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Merge Masada myth into the "Masada myth" section of this article?

Should the the article Masada myth be merged into the "Masada myth" section of this article? Herostratus (talk) 06:00, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

  • Support as OP. Masada myth was made as POV fork and this is pretty slam-dunk obvious to my mind. I have more to say below. Herostratus (talk) 06:00, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Brought here by the bot [1]. I've thoroughly digested our WP:POVSPLIT guideline and, comparing it against the article, as well as our treatment of the founding myths of other nations (e.g. Romulus and Remus, The legend of Sloven and Rus, etc.) don't see any real difference, other than the fact that the mythological elements of this one may be of much more recent origin. Ergo, I'm failing to comprehend the idea that this is a POVSPLIT, as opposed to a bifurcation of two articles on different, albeit slightly related, topics. The sourcing in Masada myth is robust and significant enough that the topic clearly crests the WP:N threshold. From a readability standpoint, I feel like having the historic details of the actual event intertwined with an article about a fictional treatment of the same event would be jarring and, frankly, somewhat WP:OOS. We currently keep the Knights of the Round Table its own article rather than just making it a section in History of Anglo-Saxon England.
Query, though -- is an RfC the right approach for a merger proposal? I'm registering this either way so if the discussion is translated to a conventional merge proposal it can be carried over to it. Chetsford (talk) 07:54, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Threaded discussion

ArbCom did some thinking on Isreal-Palestine subjects in general, it is summarized here: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-02-07/Arbitration report. Among other things it says "The community was encouraged to run a request for comment (RFC) on POV forks." So here we are.

So, the basic history of the Masada myth article is:

  • The Masada myth article was spun off from this article on July 13 2024 as (IMO) a POV content fork
  • Immediately after creation, the Masada myth article was nominated for the "Did you know" section of the main page, accepted, and published. Objections that the hook was POV let to its being pulled after a couple days (which is unusual I think). [I don't have the diffs handy atm, can get if required]
  • The article was nominated for deletion on July 22 here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masada myth. The result was "No consensus".
  • There was much discussion at Talk:Masada myth, initiated by User:Herostratus (me), much of it focusing in just the lede, and much of it quite heated. No changes to the article resulted.
  • On October 14 2024, I initiated a request for comment (at Talk:Masada myth#RfC on the article lede) with the question "Is the lede for this article basically OK (except for maybe some minor tweaks)? or is it Not OK and needs some major changes?" Headcount is difficult to figure out, as the discussion spun off partly into the validity of the RfC itself. Let's say roughly even. The RfC has not been closed as of this date, (would probably be closed as "No consensus" IMO) and no changes have been made to the lede. (FWIW the RfC itself was taken to WP:AN (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive366#Talk:Masada_myth Procedural RfC Closure asking for a procedural close on grounds of being malformed. No admins responded, and the thread has not been closed).

On the merits, a lot of ink has been spilled. The there's hours and hours of text at Masada myth and the AfD to digest if anyone wants, so anything I say would be repeating myself. But it's a tough nut to crack and no mistake, cos:

  1. Most people at this article have strong emotional investment in the general area of Israel (and Palestine). Anybody can declare that they don't, or even not even realize that they do. Doesn't mean anything.
  2. Headcount won't matter much here IMO. Both "sides" might brigade.
  3. The arguments made at Talk:Masada myth re whether it is or is not POV have been quite involved, cogent, and often well sourced. Trying to figure out who has the strongest argument would take much time and research and might not be possible even then.
  4. Can't really decide based on who has the upper hand on following policy, I don't think, as much ink can be spilled lifting passages from a number of policies.
  5. The article's too long for a merge, normally, I think. Looks like this is not a "normally" situation.
  6. To be fair, Masada myth reads well and has lots of refs to professors and academic journals, with lots of quotes down in the ref. Looks good! There's no question that the article tenders are intelligent, dedicated, determined, and have acquired a good knowledge of the subject. (My take on that is that all that does not exclude being a POV editor; anyone can cherry-pick, misinterpret, spin, pound the table, and deny they're doing it. The Devil can quote scripture for his purposes. And being a professor writing academic papers doesn't mean you can't have POV; at least some of these sources do.)

But, so to cut the Gordian knot, you can forget all that, cos Masada myth is POV fork. It just is. How do I know this? I'll give just one example from the lede (emphasis added):

In the myth narrative, the defenders of Masada were depicted as national symbols of heroism, freedom, and national dignity. This narrative selectively emphasized Josephus's account, highlighting the defenders' courage and resistance while omitting the details of their murderous campaign against innocent Jews

The problem with this passage is:

  1. The campaign never even happened for all we know. We have no source that isn't miles short of meeting our reliability standard.
  2. If it did happen, the victims were probably collaborating with the Romans. "Murderous slaying of innocents" is not usually used to describe what happens to people who collaborate with ruthless invaders who are bent on suppressing your culture.
  3. More subtle, but "innocent Jews" and "innocent inhabitants" are identically true (or not), but I mean of course they were Jews; that's who lived there then, so why point this out. Using "Jews" gives a bit of a tinge of "look how monstrous these people were, murdering their own kin!". We avoid this construction generally unless there's a reason; "Jean-Baptiste Carrier ordered the drownings at Nantes" not "drowning of Frenchmen at Nantes", and so forth.)
  4. What do you expect a myth to say? Why are you even pointing this out? Of course its going to omit stuff that make the people passing down the myth look bad. That is how myths work. Show me a myth that isn't like that. Our other myth articles usually don't bring up front and center right off the facts of the matter or whether the mythical people in them were actually assholes. We discuss down in the text what actually happened to the extent we know (I checked, see Wild West for instance), cos the articles are mainly about the myth. Why should Masada myth be an outlier.

Four strike on just that one short passage. This example's maybe the worst passage in the lede, but there are other pretty bad ones. That's just the lede, but the lede carries heavy weight in any article (first thing readers see, and last thing for a number of readers who just want a quick summary), and only summarizes material from the body text or is supposed to. And there's stuff like this in the body text too. If "murderous campaign against innocent Jews" is not egregious POV then nothing is POV and we can delete that policy. And believe me I have spent much time and effort trying to get the lede improved, and failed, and IMO it will never ever happen as long as Masada myth is a separate article. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why that would be.

Lot to digest. Take a good bit of time to make a proper close. Big job. So what I suggest is we cut to the chase, and so I call upon the closer to consider the following four basic key points, and do the right thing:

  1. Consider what ArbCom is saying (and implying) regarding these sort of articles.
  2. Note the one example I gave above and that there's plenty more of that. Those alone are enough to mark the article as slam-dunk POV. There's nothing that can negate that. Sure there's plenty of NPOV material in the article. Having plenty of NPOV doesn't wash away the POV. Neither does having lots of academic refs. Nothing does.
  3. Recognize that the article can probably never be made NPOV if it stays independent.
  4. Remember (as I'm sure you do) that we have a cherished and valuable reputation for neutrality here and we want to protect that. Herostratus (talk) 06:00, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requests for procedural close

I would request that editors wanting a procedural close (if any) or just generally talk about the meta-issue of the RfC itself contribute here where that can be discussed separately and not intertwined with responses to the question asked, thank you. Herostratus (talk) 06:00, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RfCs are not for proposing merges. Please use one of the processes described at WP:MERGE. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:11, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here to second that request--instead use the merge procedures~Malvoliox (talk | contribs) 20:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hear you loud and clear. Was expecting various technical objections based on past experience.

So, I also did do the merge stuff -- posted at Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers and put up the merge banners. However, the proposed-article-mergers board seems to not be all that well-used. Most of the requests there are from last year, and some are a year old (hard to tell, as apparently no one is maintaining date order on that board). Also, there's no template for a merge proposal on thread, so nobody outside the page watchers are going to see the thread. An RfC might attract some new eyes. And AFAIK the admins don't formally close merge threads usually. I've seen merge templates on articles that have been there for years.

Anyway, overly worrying about technicalities like this is just the sort of thing that the WP:NOTBURO policy is designed to discourage. After all, doing as you suggested would effect no material change on the process -- there'd still be "Survey and "Threaded discussion" sections with similar opinions given -- it'd just make it a bit less prominent, and maybe less likely to be resolved. I'd also have to advertise the thread on the Israel and Palestine wikiproject, and I'd rather not. (Anybody else is free to of course.)

But by all means anyone is free to ask the admins for a procedural close. It might be some heavy lifting tho, because as I noted above Arbcom has recently closed a a case regarding Israel-Palestine articles generally and among other things said "The community is encouraged to run a Request for Comment aimed at better addressing or preventing POV forks, after appropriate workshopping." Which was done. Granted, this covered only articles about actual Arab-Israeli conflicts and this's about a Roman-Israeli conflict... Arbcom did say "An article on a violent engagement within the Arab–Israeli conflict, broadly construed...may not describe the engagement as a massacre..." (emphasis added), which this article does describe the fight at Masada as a massacre right in the lede. You never know how the admins are going to interpret "broadly construed" or how tired they are of hair-splitting on this general subject. But only one way to find out I guess. Herostratus (talk) 07:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Allikas: Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Siege_of_Masada
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