User talk:UndercoverClassicist

Question from Henry Zimoch (15:55, 3 September 2026)

Note: Henry Zimoch's mentor Dot.py is away.

Hello. I have previously made edits to the Boston Custom House page. I am currently trying to edit the page for the Custom House Tower to make them consistent with each other. However the Tower citation does not give me an "Edit" tab. It does offer an "Edit Source" tab which is not a useable format for me. How can I get to a simple Edit tab? --Henry Zimoch (talk) 15:56, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

When you hit "Edit Source", you should see an icon at the top right that looks like a pencil. Click on that, then select "visual editing", and it should take you back to the "normal" WYSIWYG editor. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 05:51, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

ITN

Hi UC - just as a note, re this, it was actually my fault... I fixed the issue by removing the middle name, but then forgot to note that I had done so at WP:ERRORS. Sorry about that! Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 11:49, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Aha -- thank you! UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 12:51, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Question from Henry fx (10:25, 13 September 2026)

Hello --Henry fx (talk) 10:25, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Referencing question

Hi, UC; if you have a minute I'd like to get your opinion on a referencing question. This is for an article I'd like to bring to FAC; you're one of the most thorough reviewers we have, so I'd appreciate your thoughts. The article cites Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, edited by Marshall Tymn and Mike Ashley, extensively. That book is an encyclopedia with several hundred individual articles. Perhaps 75% are written by Mike Ashley, but the rest are written by scores of other people. I started citing each article individually, but that's going to lead to a gigantic list of sources since this is a survey article. For the two list sections I've put in a note saying, essentially, "See Tymn & Ashley (1985)" at the top. I'm now tempted to do the same thing everywhere one of the articles in the book is cited: there would be a footnote explaining that there are individual articles by divers hands in that book and that the reader can locate the source material by the name of the magazine discussed. Or perhaps a compromise: rather than a separate list of sources, give details in the footnotes but not the hundred-odd article listings in the source sections. That's still going to be unwieldy though. Anyway, if you have any input I would really appreciate it. And as ever I'd be glad to return the favour if you are ever looking for an extra reviewer at PR or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:31, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Hm -- interesting! I suppose I'd have a few thoughts:

• If you're going to stay with the c. 20 articles you currently have, you might wish to group the chapters in the source list under a reference for the book itself. I haven't got much experience of doing this, but others do it very well -- see for example the citations at Roman Republic, with the nested bullet-point lists. In that article, they combine the method with the 30em columns I mention below. But if it's going to get much above 26, this will still be pretty unwieldy.
• On the other hand, if you're literally talking about hundreds of discrete articles that all absolutely have to be cited, you could consider doing the standard academic practice for citing encyclopaedias: something like "Tymn and Ashley 1985, s.v. "Batman", p. 56", and having only the volume itself in the bibliography. In that case I'd personally be tempted to modify the citation to Tymn and Ashley (ed.) 1985, using the |ref= parameter, to make clear that Tymn and Ashley are not necessarily the authors. You could also do a sort of homebrew solution, like e.g. "Mike Ashley, "Ant-Man", in Tymn and Ashley 1985, pp. 1–25".
• It might also be worth looking at how the reference list is displayed. I note you're using the "large" view of the reference list: using {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} with the 30em parameter would considerably cut the amount of screen space it takes up (see e.g. Homeric Hymns, which has a considerably longer list of sources). But doing the second option above would make this moot anyway.

UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:05, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks; that's helpful. The sub voce version seems like it would be the most concise, but that would not cite the individual authors of the articles, correct? And it sounds like you're not endorsing the short cut I'm currently taking -- a footnote at the head of the list sections that tells the reader that that book's articles are the source for every row in the table? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:45, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

That's correct on both counts. Most academic publications don't cite the individual authors in an encyclopaedia directly -- but then it's common in academia to have abbreviated formats for citing reference works (e.g., in classical archaeology, you might see something like Docs² or CAH² VI). That's quite unusual on Wikipedia, so hence my suggestion of a slightly modified approach that does acknowledge the author. Personally I think the headnote approach is a little broad-brush, and I'd be cautious about breaking the principle of providing page numbers where possible. I suppose you could have a column headed "Entry in Tymn and Ashley 1985", cite the book in the header cell, and then populate with e.g. "Mike Ashley, 'Batman', p. 34"? But the usual rule at FAC is that you can do just about anything, as long as it's sane and consistent. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:50, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

There will be 70-80 citations to that volume, at a guess. My OCD makes me want to keep the individual authors names in, so perhaps refbegin/end to shrink it, with the nested bullets to identify the authors, and an s.v. approach to shorten the citations themselves, might be the best combination. I will see what that looks like. Thanks again. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:46, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Parthenon's public and scholarship

Hi @UndercoverClassicist. It has been a while (you may have noticed I changed my account name) and I hope you are well. I am not sure I had a chance to congratulate on your adminship yet—it's well deserved! A rather unusual ask—I am trying to find more information on who would have regular access to the Parthenon in the century or so following its completion (let's say 432 BCE onward) and how that's changed over time. Am I right to assume that it had no daily public function, other than serving as a treasury and when used as a temple for the Panathenaic procession? Or is that too broad of a claim?

I am interested in the everyday life of the Parthenon and who its broadly construed public would be—and beyond access to the Acropolis in general, which I understand would be denied to thieves, runaway slaves, and those Athenians would deem unclean. I realize these are pretty broad questions, but that's a big part of why I find it be quite challenging, and my modernist training is obviously of no help here. Given your expertise in the period and your fluency in its historiography, I figured you may be in a position to offer some guidance. Any clues, including scholarship (Hurwit, Barringer?), will be appreciated. Thank you dearly. Per Exemplum 16:55, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Hello! This is a bit of an interesting question, and I'm not sure we have a totally definite answer. You're right that the Parthenon is often considered not to have strictly been a temple, since it didn't have an altar associated with it -- though it was very near to the Altar of Athena Polias. As you say, its main use was to store treasure, which included the famous cult statue of Athena, and the tribute paid by Athens's "allies"; related to that, it was (sometimes/probably/probably sometimes) the endpoint of the Panathenaic Procession, which delivered a new robe to that statue.

It is often written that people didn't generally go inside, or weren't generally allowed inside, Greek temples. There's some basic truth to this in that the focus of religious activity, particularly sacrifice, was predominantly outside the temple -- religious rituals didn't generally take place inside (admittedly, this may be only somewhat true), and there was no equivalent of Friday prayers or a Sunday service -- but for various reasons I'm not sure it really holds up. Peter Corbett wrote an article in 1970 (JSTOR 43646263) arguing the case that it doesn't: among the evidence he cites is the work of the traveller Pausanias, who often gives detailed accounts of the artwork inside temples which must have been based on seeing them for himself. Josephine Shaya has a good article from 2005 (JSTOR 0026120) which points out that we sometimes have good evidence for the display and conservation of objects inside temples in a manner that is clearly predicated on their being a human audience for them. There's another, more recent, article by Jenny Wallenstein (here) which suggests that there certainly were locks on temple doors and controls on when they could be accessed, but that people regularly went inside them more or less casually, more or less frequently. She argues that we see more evidence for worshippers going inside temples as we enter the Roman period, towards the turn of the Common Era, but as there's variation of geography as well as time here it's difficult to say confidently that this would equate to "more people went inside the Parthenon".

There certainly were temples that were specifically closed off (often except for one day per year), or off limits to fairly catholic groups of people (sanctuaries of Herakles often could not be entered by women, since his relations with them tended to end badly), these were exceptions. Some Greek temples had an adyton within the main chamber (naos), which was specifically reserved for a very small number of initiates, but the Parthenon didn't. The evidence for bans from the Acropolis itself is a bit scanty: there's a character in Aristophanes's Lysistrata who says that, if she has sex, she won't be able to return to the Acropolis until she's washed; there was also a decree in the 430s which ordered the defences of the Acropolis to be reinforced and guarded so that runaway slaves couldn't claim sanctuary at its temples. As far as I know, we don't know if that was creating a new prohibition (or even necessarily implying that slaves were religiously forbidden from entering, or that they wouldn't receive sanctuary if they did manage to sneak in) or enforcing an old one. There was a ban on Dorians entering the Sanctuary of Athena Polias (she of the altar): there's a story of the Spartan king Cleomenes I (who was invading the city at the time) being turned back from entry because he was a Dorian, but he must have been quite a long way onto the Acropolis at the time.

Most things with the Parthenon involve some degree of "we don't know" and guesswork -- even down to such apparently simple questions as "which thing were the Athenians talking about when they said 'Parthenon'?". I don't think I've ever seen a scholar definitively discussing who was allowed into the Parthenon when, but from Greek temples in general my starting point would be that it was generally open to most people, most of the time. At some point in Late Antiquity, a church was built inside it, which one assumes was fairly freely accessed; after the Ottoman conquest, that was turned into a mosque, which was demolished in the C19th. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:40, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

This is very thorough and extremely helpful—thank you! Per Exemplum 19:34, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm happy to see this is broadly in accord with the "Access" section of Ancient_Greek_temple#Function_and_design! Johnbod (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

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Question from Omar Ssekamate (06:28, 17 September 2026)

Hi! I’d like to learn how to create a new Wikipedia article completely from scratch. Could you please guide me through the entire process step by step, starting from choosing a suitable topic and checking whether it meets Wikipedia’s requirements, all the way to researching reliable sources, writing the article, adding proper citations, formatting it correctly, and submitting it for review?

I’d also like to understand how **Wikipedia drafts** work. When should I create a draft, how do I create and edit one, what should I include in the draft, and how do I move or submit the draft for review when it’s ready?

I’m still learning, so I’d really appreciate it if you could guide me practically, step by step, while I create my first article. Would you be able to mentor me through the whole process? --Omar Ssekamate (talk) 06:29, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Hello! The best way to get started with an article is via the Articles for Creation process. The advice and volunteers there can guide you through the process and provide you with feedback on your draft as it develops. The first step is to work out whether the subject is eligible for its own article ("notable", in Wikipedia-speak), and that usually means finding several good, reliable published sources (books, journal articles, reputable websites etc) that discuss it at length. It's also advised not to work on articles about yourself, your employer, or people and subjects with which you're involved in the real world. The AfC process itself will guide you and give you mentoring on most of the practical steps.

A draft is simply an article that hasn't yet been published in mainspace (the "real" encyclopaedia): it's a good way to work on something without it needing to be presentation-ready at every stage. When you go through the AfC process, the article will start out as a draft, and then be reviewed by a more experienced editor before it is moved to mainspace (which makes it accessible via the search bar, allows it to be added to navigation categories, and so on). Again, the AfC process will give you guidance as to how to move from a rough draft to a ready article, and will let you know when the article is ready to be published. Good luck and happy editing! UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:33, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Question from Ihsanzx (15:52, 17 September 2026)

Hello how to make my own article --Ihsanzx (talk) 15:52, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Hello! The best way to get started with an article is via the Articles for Creation process. The advice and volunteers there can guide you through the process and provide you with feedback on your draft as it develops. The first step is to work out whether the subject is eligible for its own article ("notable", in Wikipedia-speak), and that usually means finding several good, reliable published sources (books, journal articles, reputable websites etc) that discuss it at length. It's also advised not to work on articles about yourself, your employer, or people and subjects with which you're involved in the real world. The AfC process itself will guide you and give you mentoring on most of the practical steps. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:45, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Dawkins

Hiya. I see (because I am nosy) that you've been working on the other, slightly less famous Richard Dawkins. FYI, the photo in the infobox was taken in 1908; it's a crop from a group photo of the Sparta excavation staff of that year, in the archive of the BSA and available online here. (You will notice your pal Wace on Dawkins' right.) The photo appeared in a public exhibition of the work of the BSA at Burlington House in 1936, so it's now in the public domain in Greece and the UK, but unfortunately not in the US, where the copyright term on anonymous photographs is 95 years after publication rather than 70. It will be fair game for the Commons in 2031. If someone were feeling ambitious and wanted to perform an additional public service, that someone might crop out the image of J. P. Droop (standing, second from right) from this photo and add it to his WP article on a fair use basis, since it currently lacks an image of the man himself. I am of course far too lazy to do such a thing myself, even if I knew how. Choliamb (talk) 14:43, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Ah, nice one -- I don't think I'd actually ever seen a photograph of Droop, or for that matter of anyone in that little band apart from Dawkins and Wace. It's not the director's most flattering photograph -- I don't know if you saw the almost dashing one taken by Stoneman and held by the NPG -- but as far as I can tell it's the "least unfree" option; the NPG are notoriously pugnacious about defending their copyrights, even when those rights are completely imaginary. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:55, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Well...

It's been some time since we had one of your articles at FAC, so it was great to see Frantz's article on the Main Page today.

I hope you are doing well, and that you will be making a return in the near future. After all, you happen to be our classicist-in-residence... Best, MSincccc (talk) 05:58, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

TFA

story · music · places

Thank you today for Alison Frantz, about an "archaeologist and photographer of classical Greece. If you've seen a photograph of an ancient Greek artwork in a 20th-century book, there's a good chance it was one of hers. She also helped to reconstruct the only Byzantine building still standing in the Agora of Athens, played an important role in the decipherment of Linear B, and had an interesting and only-recently-uncovered turn as a spy during the Second World War."! - I have two topics in the OTD corner - check out story and music ;) -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:15, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Question from Deputy-Hazelnut (05:49, 23 September 2026)

Greetings mentor, I recently expanded the article on the Battle of Kirk Kilisse article quite a bit, and would like to have it reassessed for a higher quality class, as it is still listed only as a stub. What’s the best way to do that? --Deputy-Hazelnut (talk) 05:49, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

You can post a request for assessment on most WikiProject pages (e.g. WikiProject Military History). If the article's in really good shape, you might consider putting it forward for a Good Article Nomination (GAN), which overwrites the previous classification. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:25, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 11:45, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

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Email?

Did you get the email I sent through the system? Wehwalt (talk) 21:05, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

I did -- I replied a little while ago. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 22:02, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Question from Sinethemba Masinga (02:08, 24 September 2026)

What do I do when I want to write my own story not edit someone's --Sinethemba Masinga (talk) 02:08, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

Question from Deputy-Hazelnut (10:09, 24 September 2026)

Greetings, mentor, I'm afraid I have made severe mistakes with my big article expansions for Stefan Toshev, Ivan Fichev, Mihail Savov and the Battle of Kirk Kilisse. When I was writing them, I did all the necessary research and writing myself but also used ChatGPT to help me make it sound more Wikipedian and encyclopedic, as well as with structuring, or if I was using words and constructing sentences poorly. The AI did not do anything substantial to my texts, but still, I kinda used it as a "writing Wikipedia article teacher." However, today I have learned that, outside translation and copyediting, AI is forbidden on Wikipedia, and I don't know exactly what to do with my articles. Should I delete my text from them and start again? All the references there are correct and taken from actual sources, and deleting my hard work is a bit discouraging, but if necessary, then so be it. On another note, am I to be punished for these mistakes, like banned or restricted from editing articles? I promise not to use AI for anything but grammar fixes and translation from now on. I require your urgent directions on how to proceed. Best regards, Deputy-Hazelnut --Deputy-Hazelnut (talk) 10:09, 24 September 2026 (UTC)