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Starts GA Reassessment. The reassessmment will follow the same sections of the Article. --Whiteguru (talk) 12:29, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Instructions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment

Observations

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

• The first paragraph in Background links to common terms. This section is overlinking common terms such as Near East, Syria, Arabs, Greeks and Jews.

1. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

• Reference 10 link should be https://www.livius.org/sources/content/appian/appian-the-mithridatic-wars/appian-the-mithridatic-wars-15/
• Reference 11 link should be https://www.livius.org/sources/content/appian/appian-the-mithridatic-wars/appian-the-mithridatic-wars-17/

1. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

• This is a robust article, well referenced in many histories of this period: from Appian and Plutarch to modern historians and revionsits of Armenian history.\
• Reference 28 and note is excellent.

1. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

1. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

• Page created 20 June 2005
• Page has 225 edits by 117 editors
• Page nominated for reassessment by User:Catlemur 18 May 2021
• Page creator is not active since 2009
• 90 day page views = 3,938 with a daily average of 43 views
• Page history indicates no edit warring - steady history

1. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

• Hpa-tigranakertbattle69.gif = Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

1. Overall:

• There has been a lot of discussion about ^{[citation needed]} tags applied to articles nominated for Good Articles status, with the discussion ranging from mandatory repair (or fail assessment) to application of common sense.
• For GA Reassessment, more recently the community consensus has been that presence of these tags does not cause an article to fail GA status.
• Reference errors (10,11) have been corrected
• GA Reassessment completed, article retains GA status.      --Whiteguru (talk) 12:22, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Passed

@Whiteguru: I disagree with your reassessment. The article is not only not fit for GA, its not good enough even for for B class.

• The article currently contains numerous sections which are tagged with Wikipedia:Citation needed. In fact even the archived GA from 2008 contains several unreferenced sections which means that the reviewer was less than thorough in his review.

• The article also heavily relies on primary sources such as Plutarch's Life of Lucullus and Appian's The Mithrdatic Wars. Such sources are not necessarily reliable when they are not contextualized and/or evaluated by modern scholarship.

• "Tigranes refused Appius Claudius' demands, stating that he would prepare for war against the Republic."

"Tigranes, who was residing at Tigranocerta in the summer of 69, was not only astonished by the speed of Lucullus' rapid advance into Armenia but by the fact that he had even launched such an operation in the first place."

These two sentences clearly contradict each other.

• Refs 26 and 28 should probably be converted into a notes.

• "Many scholars, however", "Some historians, most notably Plutarch" - I don't know if this qualifies as MOS:WEASEL, but it can certainly be worded better. In the second case only Plutarch's opinion is mentioned.

• The article is written in British Engvar but there is some American English here and there.

• A lot of the information in the infobox is neither referenced, nor found elsewhere in the article. E.g. Roman Legates, Adiabenians, Corduenians, Iberians, Medians.

• The lede is also referenced while it is supposed to simply summarize the content of the article.--Catlemur (talk) 12:29, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]