Talk:Third Battle of Petersburg

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Needs references

Needs to cite references other than other websites.

In particular, neither source cited refers to this as the Third Battle of Petersburg, and it looks to me like it's just the assault ending the siege rather than a separate battle - is it really commonly called that? Cyclopaedic (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, virtually none of the Civil War battles that Wikipedia labels as First This and Second That are actually referred to in that way by historians or by contemporaries. There are a few notable exceptions, such as First/Second Bull Run (First/Second Manassas) and First/Second/Third Winchester. Almost all of the Wikipedia battle articles started from the taxonomy of the NPS ABPP, which uses the Roman numerals just to keep them separated in the battle summary. When these articles were turned into stubs in Wikipedia, the Roman numerals were retained. It would probably have been more logical to use parenthesized dates (year--as was done for Battle of Yorktown (1862)--or full date when two occur in the same year), but that is water under the bridge. About two years ago, someone decided that this was incorrect and started renaming some of them as First and Second. So this is simply a small discrepancy between Wikipedia and the world that needs to be tolerated or corrected. I am not volunteering to do the latter and I hope a real discussion will take place before someone charges off renaming articles because the redirects will be a nightmare. Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion of this going on at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Name. I think it would be really helpful if you reposted the above there and joined that discussion. Cyclopaedic (talk) 18:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First Dead Soldier Picture

Is that first dead soldier definitely a Confederate? It looks like his pack says "US". KevinLuna (talk) 03:25, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. See the discussion in the Commons about this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Deadconfederate.jpg Hal Jespersen (talk) 18:22, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

He's probably from the 53rd North Carolina, which defended Fort Mahone. Confederates did of course very often use captured/looted Union equipment, including US belt buckles (which they wore upside down) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.214.26.147 (talk) 16:04, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Too much information

This article is very hard and very annoying - despite an interesting subject - to read.

E.g. The need for not only mentioning the full names of the commanders down to regiment and brigade level but also their peace time rank E.g. " Colonel (Brevet Brigadier General) James M. Warner" makes reading this article quite annoying for - I believe - everyone, but people with a very detailed interest in the subject. Most of us could do with "Colonel Warner" or "Brigadier General Warner" and if needed there could be a link to an article on James M. Warner's biography.

E.g. I believe that a military unit is adequately identified by which ever system the relevant army used, it is not necessary to state the commander's full name and rank as well as the parent unit's commander - often with full name and rank.

Also in an article about a large scale battle, having to read through the full name and rank and unit and a battle account of some junior officer allegedly first over the defenses on some forgotten stretch of land is irrelevant to the subject of the article.

There is simply too much more or less irrelevant information in the article which makes it messy and cumbersome to read

It's an informational article on a battle - not a memorial to the soldiers who fought and died there. 93.161.80.130 (talk) 09:09, 16 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]