Article quality edit

This article has a lot of good content, but is plagued by bad English and bad layout e.g. no leading picture, and an introduction that simply runs through one elephant encounter. Unless anyone has any objections, I'll start cleaning it up and putting it into better form. I will not be deleting any content, unless asked. If I see fit to delete content, I'll pose it here first before actually deleting anything.

Canislupisbarca (talk) 18:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

I have edited persian war elephants article edit

Hi i am Secthayrabe (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)secthayrabe and I first wrote this the artical on persian war elephants I WOULD BE HAPPY IF SOMEONE would find imformation and edit the page please help us find out more imfomation thanks secthayrabe (persian war elephants has been helped and given the adivce of the books such as Rome's Enemies: Parthians and Sassanians No.3 (Men-at-arms) and Sassanian Elite Cavalry AD 224-642 (Elite) .Reply

To Secthayrabe/79.65.46.238 edit

Hello again. I am sorry to see that a) you seem to be offended and b) you do not seem to understand why I did what I did. OK, let's try to explain (again). Firstly, there is nothing personal here. Wikipedia operates on certain rules. Some of them are vital, some less so, some are sometimes annoying, but they all exist for a reason. One of these rules is that there is a procedure to be followed before declaring an article to be fit for GA status, which, mind you, would mean that the article is of fairly high quality. Having written a couple GAs myself, I can tell you it is not that easy to write an article that conforms to the criteria, but the effort is rewarding. The current article is simply not up to it. It fails even B-class criteria in terms of language use and, most importantly, use of sources and citations. If this disappoints you, I'm sorry, but that's true. The article won't become a GA if I "tell you if persian war elephants artical is a good artical and pass it", because it isn't up to it. I again offer to help you get it up to that level if you want. As for "leaving Wikipedia thanks to you", the only thing I have to say is: that's your decision. I strongly encourage you to stay. As long as you want to contribute here, there is nothing to stop you from doing so, but if you want to do so without problems, you'll have to play by the rules, like everyone else. For instance, claiming that you are an administrator while you are not, vandalizing my user page or deleting unfavorable comments by other editors in talk pages, is not helping you or Wikipedia. Cheers, Constantine

86.3.88.158 edit

I love this artical! thanks secthayrabe

Julian's Campaign edit

I deleted the following as it is incoherent and poorly written. Please edit it heavily and add a reference be re-adding.

In 363 AD Julian the Apostate collected an army of 90,000 Roman troops and with them marched to the sassiand empire their aim was to burn down the captial Ctesiphon the persian king Shapur knew the romans were to well trained ad armed to fight in hand to hand combat so they had to surpies them and they did will the romans were campig outside the walls the persians attacked leading an army of heavy infantry, cataphracts nad elephants unready julian foulisly came into battle with no armour his army fought harshy, but were deafted Julian was shoot with an arrow and thus,died later.

Thanks. Washburnmav (talk) 00:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Image copyright problem with Image:Elephantsrometotalwar.jpg edit

The image Image:Elephantsrometotalwar.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

  • That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
  • That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --10:50, 9 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

Irrelevant Image edit

The article contained an image of a nineteenth-century painting by Henri-Paul Motte (1890). It was, inexplicably, labelled "The Battle of Antioch", implying relevance to a Persian context. This famous painting is in fact "La Bataille de Zama", as one discovers by following the link; i.e. 202 BC, Second Punic War, and therefore irrelevant to this article (wrong species of elephant; wrong technology etc). In any case, even if it were the "Battle of Antioch", which battle of Antioch - 145BC, 218AD, 613AD ? Elephants are not documented at any of these engagements.

Bibliography edit

The article cites largely popular and/or general secondary literature. This might explain why it is currently very episodic and has substantial omissions. Contributors wishing to improve the article should consult specific scholarship on this subject, especially recent studies:

  • Michael B. Charles, ‘The Rise of the Sassanian Elephant Corps: Elephants and the Later Roman Empire’, Iranica Antiqua 42 (2007) 301-346
  • Philip Rance, ‘Elephants in Warfare in Late Antiquity’, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 43 (2003) 355-384.