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Unfair implied criticisms in citation requests

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On August 14, 2022 @Nederlandse Leeuw added a number of "citation needed"-tags to the text of the Precursors section of the article. I have only today become aware of these tags. That was because this apparently gave a new rating-bot used in the Military History Wikipedia Project occasion to rate the article as "Start-class". The criticism implied in these tags is that I used Original Research (first tag) though what I said in the contested clause is only that the title of the work cited there contains the year "1568" as start date for the Dutch States Army; hardly something that requires original research. The other tags contest the way I paraphrased passages from Erik Swart's 2006 dissertation "Krijgsvolk", mentioned in the sources section. Nederlandse Leeuw helpfully added an external link to this source, so everybody who is able to read Dutch may check what was actually said. It is my contention that I paraphrased Swart's assertions correctly. I have copied certain sections in the regions in the text I commented out. The contested citations are mainly in the Dutch Summary (pages 201-206). But Swart repeats this section in a (somewhat rephrased) English Summary pp. 207-212. So the reader is able to judge for himself. If I had been in Nederlandse Leeuw's shoes I would have first discussed his criticisms on this Talk page, That is what talk pages are for, isn't it? That way the discussion could be conducted in a more civilized way. For the time being I stand by the correctness of the citations I originally provided. I think the "citation needed" tags Nederlandse Leeuw put in are not justified. Ereunetes (talk) 23:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Ereunetes, I am sorry to read you do not like the way I pointed out potential issues in the Precursors section. I assure you this is nothing personal, I always place tags in this manner regardless of who the author is (I didn't know you wrote the article until you told me recently, and I must say you generally did a great job). But in hindsight, I can appreciate that I could have better indicated why I suspected there might be 'original research', as it is not for the reason you appear to think I meant. So I'll explain in detail.
@Nederlandse LeeuwLet me stop you here for a moment. Like I wrote before, you entered your "citation needed" tags on August 14, 2022. Two weeks before that (on July 30, 2022) you opened your new section Talk:Trial of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and Hogerbeets#Improvements needed on the talk page of one of my other articles. The day before that (July 29, 2022) you finished slicing and dicing Eighty Years' War, another article I once started as will be clear from the revision history (the part that needs to be accessed via the template on the Talk page, and then scroll to the oldest revisions). What is Ereunetes to think of all of this? Is this all really just coincidence? In such a short timespan? To me it looks more like what in the words of the Universal Code of Conduct is called "hounding", to wit "following a person across the project(s) and repeatedly critiquing their work mainly with the intent to upset or discourage them." Of course, it did not work right away, because at the time I was not active on Wikipedia. That must have been frustrating. When I caught up with it last December, I of course was not aware of this and at first naively fell for your lure. But now I have wised up. Fortunately, Wikipedia is a hobby I can easily abandon (like I have done before). So I'll leave you to your harassing pass time. (I won't reply to your other criticisms below. It is not worth the effort). Maybe you could do a bit of your own work, instead of predating on other people's effort? Start with reading Jonathan Israel's The Dutch Republic, my main source for Eighty Years' War, which you have still not read according to your own admission. I think a number of references to this work have disappeared from the texts you used to rearrange the articles split off from the Eighty Years' War article. Those need to be replaced. I hope that you will take care of that chore, as I am not about to do that. I wish you much success in your future efforts. I only hope that you will desist from "hounding" other Wikipedians, because I notice that they are about to tighten enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct.--Ereunetes (talk) 20:23, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Ereunetes: All I can say is that I honestly did not look at who the authors of said articles were as if trying to pick on a specific user in particular. I generally don't look at who wrote them before I start looking at how the contents can be improved. These articles were just related through the theme of the Eighty Years' War. This has always been an interest of mine, but every now and then my interest in the topic spikes, and last summer there just so happened to be a spike in my interest. If you think I'm "hounding" you, sorry, but you're trying to find a pattern that isn't there. Quite frankly, I resent the baseless accusation. You should assume good faith.
Besides, that these edits can't be a "coincidence" because two weeks is "such a short timespan" is rather surprising to me. Two weeks is nothing for me; if you look at what kind of edits I usually do in just one week, you will notice I tend to write about like 5 different and completely unrelated topics. In those same two weeks, I also wrote a lot about stuff like
Last I checked, you didn't create or edit any of these articles, did you? (As a matter of fact, 4 of them were created and written (almost) entirely by myself, so yes, I do do a bit of [my] own work, thank you very much). Nor do they have anything to do with the Eighty Years' War whatsoever. So you can take your baseless accusations some place else, and return when you can assume good faith again. I am sure you are able to do that, because you have demonstrated it over the past several weeks.
I've enjoyed our cooperation very much, and would like to resume it in the future when you are ready for it as well. :) Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:20, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The only source cited for the entire first paragraph (Despite the fact that the standard work...that type of mercenary.) is Swart p. 30, which page doesn't mention anything about:
  1. Ten Raa and De Bas (fails verification, WP:FAILV)
  2. let alone their book being a 'standard work' (WP:FAILV). One might claim that based on Swart p. 14, but it's still a bit of a stretch ('systematisch onderzoek' and 'uitzonderlijk' doesn't mean it's a 'standard work'). According to Wiktionary, a nl:wikt:standaardwerk is a (boek)werk waaraan voor een bepaald onderwerp altijd wordt gerefereerd, but Swart noted: professionele historici namen er slechts beperkt kennis van. So if anything, Swart is saying it was not a standard work, even though perhaps it should have been.
  3. let alone the title of their book (WP:FAILV)
  4. let alone '1568' being in the title of their book (WP:FAILV).
Therefore, one cannot claim, purely based on that year in the title alone, that Ten Raa and De Bas are (pro)claiming the Dutch States Army was founded in 1568 (WP:SYNTH), let alone that they did so 'proudly' (WP:SYNTH). Incidentally, the title of Swart's own work is Krijgsvolk. Militaire professionalisering en het ontstaan van het Staatse leger, 1568–1590.; yet you don't seem to criticise Swart for this, but instead apparently try to cite Swart in order to criticise Swart, which I find quite interesting. Especially given that your explanation is: 'The work of De Bas is listed in the sources. The title is clearly stated there "Ten Raa, F.J.G., and F. de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger 1568–1795". To see this did not require Original Research.' If the title of Swart alone does not 'prove' that he took 1568 as the founding date of the Dutch States Army, why would the title of Ten Raa and De Bas 'prove' they did take 1568 as the founding date of the Dutch States Army? I hope that this makes clear why I think this passage is WP:OR.
The statement the first year of the Dutch war of independence, 1568 is problematic for all the reasons you will be familiar with due to our recent discussions at Talk:Historiography of the Eighty Years' War. Assuming/claiming the war was primarily about independence is debatable, not mentioned by Swart p. 30, and also kind of irrelevant in this sentence. The same goes for assuming/claiming the war started in 1568. This section is not discussing when the war started or what it was about, but when the Dutch States Army was founded, so let's focus on that. Incidentally, how about we change the section title from 'Precursors' to 'Origins'? 'Precursors' assumes there were precursors, even though many historians (who may or may not be wrong; according to Swart they are wrong) are claiming the Dutch States Army was a new creation without precursors. By renaming it 'Origins', we're not taking a stance on that issue in the section title, but let the section text speak for itself.
The lengthy quote you've given at the end of the sentence (after ...exact date.) doesn't really solve the issues. Swart doesn't mention any of the three years the text mentions, namely 1568, 1576 and 1588; he mentions 1567 and 1706. Therefore, these years fail verification (WP:FAILV). All that can be supported through Swart p. 30 is the statement there is no definite agreement on an exact date [when the Dutch States Army was founded]. And actually, that seems like a fine sentence to open this section with. If we want to criticise the year 1568, then Swart p. 29 is something we could use. If we want to claim the real foundation date was 1576, then we could probably best look at Swart p. 41–42. It's not that Swart is a bad source; page 30 is just a bad page to support all the claims made in this paragraph.
The same applies to the later passages I tagged as failing verification when reading Swart p. 201–206; Swart says lots of things, but not everything mentioned in the text. E.g. That army only took shape after the Union of Utrecht was formed in 1579 cannot be supported by Swart p. 201–206, because he doesn't mention the foundation of the Union of Utrecht in 1579 as a factor. The only thing that comes close is Nadat Oranje tussen eind 1577 en begin 1578 een machtsbasis in de Staten-Generaal wist te verwerven, implementeerde hij de veranderingen op generaliteitsniveau., which is clearly different: it happened earlier and due to Orange, not the Union (which he incidentally initially opposed).
To summarise, we just should not claim something which the source that we cite doesn't say explicitly. In cases like these, the issues can usually be fixed easily by correcting the page number. Swart discusses a lot of relevant things we could cite (and I just added a few), just not all on page 30. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:09, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I see there are a lot of unsourced statements in this article. Is it okay if I tagged those with [citation needed], or are you willing to provide citations for them yourself? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:47, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Rating WikiProject Military history

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With regard to Military History Project criterion b1, the rule is that each paragraph should have at least one reference, with each set of references verifying the text since the previous set. Paragraphs in the article lacking references include the second paragraph of "Financing", the first, fourth and fifth paragraphs of "Top command"; the second of "Organisational structure"; the second, third and seventh of "Recruitment"; and the first, fifth, seventh and eight of "Highlights of its wars and campaigns". While you're at it:

  1. Footnotes require references too;
  2. I think the "de" is part of de Bas's surname, and not given name;
  3. "Cite journal" requires the name of a journal. Change ", in: BMGN Low Countries Historical Review, vol. 118 (4)" to "|journal=BMGN Low Countries Historical Review |volume=118 |issue=4"

Keep up the good work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:02, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll certainly endeavor to supply references for the paragraphs you mention. This will take some time. The footnotes that have no explicit references (8 thru 13 as far as I can see) refer to two tables. The reference for note 8 is in the table itself. Notes 9 thru 13 give explanations for cells in the table referenced. The main reference for the table is in note 7 (at the head of the table). "De Bas" is indeed a Dutch surname, consisting of an affix: the definite article "de". and a noun, "Bas". Surnames like these are usually cited in full (I followed the appropriate capitalization rules). You may be interested in the discussion that is currently going on at Capitalising or omitting words in Dutch surnames. I'll try to repair the cite journal error. Ereunetes (talk) 00:35, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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