Talk:Roanoke Colony

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 11, 2019	Peer review	Not reviewed

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on August 18, 2004, August 18, 2007, August 18, 2008, August 18, 2011, August 18, 2015, August 18, 2017, August 18, 2020, and August 18, 2023.

Lost Colony DNA Project was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 11:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC) with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Roanoke Colony. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Citation style

I propose switching the citation style to Sfn notes, which allow for citing different pages of the same work in separate citations, eliminating the need for the 'rp' template. I think the rp template, especially combined with the AMA style, makes the article hard to read, with unusual small parenthetical numbers between the regular footnotes and prose. UpdateNerd (talk) 11:41, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing summary

I'm reading the summary in the intro paragraphs without having read the rest of the article, and I find it quite confusing. It's filled with bad forms like "while awaiting... Lane abandoned"; it omits crucial information (I assume everybody abandoned the colony in 1586, not just Lane, otherwise it's unclear why they had to build a whole new settlement later); and it's vague about roles and cause-effect relationships. For instance, the sentence "During a stop to check on Grenville's men, flagship pilot Simon Fernandes forced White and his colonists to remain on Roanoke." Why was Fernandes checking on Greenville's men, who were only mentioned in relation to the previous settlement? What Greenville's men were doing at that point? How did Fernandes force White and his colonists to remain on Roanoke? Does that mean that the circumstances forced them (in what way, though?), or that Fernandes gave them an explicit order? This whole concept is immediately contradicted by the following sentence anyway, which describes White going back to England with Fernandes. And what authority did Fernandes have? He's only described as "a flagship pilot", which is an obscure designation if not expanded upon (and it's not even hyperlinked). Kumagoro-42 (talk) 05:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I tried reading the rest of the article, but gave up. Like the lead, it is a confusing mess. It seems to be simultaneously excessively detailed while also lacking critical context. CAVincent (talk) 08:50, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Navbox

Hello! I've created a navbox to group the various topics surrounding the Roanoke Colony:

{{Roanoke Colony}}

I'll leave it under construction for a week or so. Feel free to contribute! StevePrutz (talk) 14:50, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 16 February 2024

Peaceful and Lovely ABig Garden full of normal…just normal…ok!

Huh?

“The colonists may have possessed the resources to construct another seaworthy vessel, using local lumber and spare parts from the pinnace. Considering the ships were built by survivors of the 1609 Sea Venture shipwreck, it is at least possible that the Lost Colonists could produce a second ship that, with the pinnace, could transport most of their party.”

Can someone explain how survivors of a shipwreck 20 years after the disappearance built anything having to do with the colony? PacificBoy (talk) 01:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]