Talk:Marcus Terentius Varro
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Assessment comments
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Do all the citation needed signs really need to be there?
Reciting common scholarly knowledge shouldn't have to be footnoted, university's don't require it!!
I think you'll find that the citations are needed since the detailed lives of ancient figures are not just known by common knowledge but are usually found in a later writer's works, and those works should be cited. Furthermore, those who question the accuracy of Varro's chronolgy should be cited, just as those should be who support it, since Roman historiography is a much-debated topic. Finally, universities do require it, and you'll lose marks in a paper if you don't cite sources, and can even face accusations of plagiarism. This is true of all scholarly works! ste175
[edit] Partial fix
I came here expecting just to pop in a link to the de Re Rustica now online at LacusCurtius, then go away; but found the article a mess, so spent some time fixing it. It needs more.
I agree with the first writer above; common scholarly knowledge need not be footnoted or marked "citation needed"; it just looks very dumb.
Several things were said twice; I tightened up the article to say them only once.
One item was said three times, and the one time it was attributed, it was attributed wrong: to "Cicero and Augustine"; it was said by Quintilian, and the reference is now in the article. The danger of people who haven't read an author building an encyclopedia article on secondary works about him! In fact, not one of the secondary sources quoted was worth keeping in there, because they were either wrong, or I could insert the primary citation directly in the text, as in the case of the microbiology item. The Britannica reference I removed on different grounds: if we're building an encyclopedia, why do we then send people off to another encyclopedia? (Question answers itself: because we know this one is not very good, and that one is — but let's be optimistic, folks.)
If some really wants to fix this, they should read the literature out there; can't do any harm to start by reading the Loeb intro to the R.R., onsite at Lacus. I do plan on putting the L.L. up as well, and it has its own Loeb intro, providing Wikipedia more stuff to pillage. Those of you with access to JSTOR could use the articles in the journals there. Bill 18:28, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
