CZ:Classics Workgroup Guidelines/Section about original sources

This is a proposal by L. Sanger, a non-classicist. Please discuss below. If classicists go for it, we can move the discussion to the talk page and put a more formal policy proposal here.

For articles about Classics (and about ancient philosophy), I propose that we require or strongly encourage an annotated list of classical sources. Actually, I am not so much interested in having a briefly annotated list of classical sources, as a full-bodied prose discussion of where in each source one can find what details contained in the article. This is supplied by footnotes, obviously, with many classical topics, it's just one or two sources, ultimately, that are summed up. It seems to me (a nonspecialist) that when reading about Boudica, for instance, it's just as interesting to any reader interested in the historical personage to know what the source of the info is, when the person wrote, who the person's sources were, what chapters of what book, how much info there is, whether the writer is considered a biased source, etc. --Larry Sanger 17:12, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

As the writer of the Boudica article, I'm very gratified you're taking an interest. When writing a Classics article, I do my best to make sure it's fully annotated with sources, chapter and verse, and links to them if possible. The majority of the best-known classical works are online somewhere, and I hope if I've done my job properly readers will be interested to read the originals, and follow the links. As for a discussion of the sources, this was relatively straightforward on Boudica because there are only two sources, and could be expanded if necessary. On an article like Julius Caesar, the sources are so many and so disparate that this might prove a little more tricky, but certainly not impossible. --Patrick Brown 11:47, 21 April 2007 (CDT)

Workgroups are no longer used for group communications, but they still are used to group articles into fields of interest. Each article is assigned to 1-3 Workgroups via the article's Metadata.