Talk:Crusading movement

Hey Remsense — thanks for your edit. Just to clarify, which English variant are we using for this article? I noticed the revert and want to ensure consistency moving forward. ChasetheDevil (talk) 15:25, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh this always happens. Top of the article has one ENGVAR tag, talk page somehow another. If I'm wrong in my recollection of which one is more ancient, feel free to switch everything over. Cheers, and thanks for helping out! Remsense ‥ 论 15:27, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Remsense — I see you've updated the tags to indicate Oxford English. That works for me, as long as we're consistent throughout. I'll go through and make sure any remaining American spellings that aren't part of Oxford usage (like defense or honor) are adjusted accordingly. Let me know if you'd prefer a different approach! ChasetheDevil (talk) 15:46, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Cheers! I just remember Oxford being the case when I first worked on this article, and have no preference otherwise than allowing others to focus on work they enjoy more. Remsense ‥ 论 15:47, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

@Borsoka, @’ChasetheDevil', ’Remsense', and any other editors who may have worked on this article, I've just completed the requested copy edit of the article made to the Guild of Copy Editors and I'll be happy to engage in discussion about what I did and why. I'll also make a few suggestions about further possible improvements or helpful things to do with the article. Usually, these are content-related, as I take care of proofreading and formatting issues during my copy edit ... but because I see that re-editing has already begun on the article, I'll add a few observations of that sort too, starting off with just three for now.

— I think it would be very helpful to readers to explain up front that the term "Crusading movement" is widely used by historians in referring to religious, political, and military campaigns during the Middle Ages, mainly those of the Roman Catholic Church to recapture the Holy Land from Muslim control. Not all readers would know this, including me — who majored in history in college — and so they'd find it a bit unusual.

— Long, chunky paragraphs should be broken up for the sake of readership. An informal but helpful guideline is to do so after 35 words, but at the same time keeping thoughts and lines of discussion together as much as possible.

— About the initial capitalisation format for Crusades/Crusader/Crusading, which I researched carefully because it's a little confusing:

• The "C" should be capitalised if it's part of the proper name of a specific historical event or movement like the Crusades, as is the case in much of the article. So whenever Crusades, Crusader(s), and Crusading were capitalised in the work I did on the article, it was with close attention to this rule.

• The "C" should be lower case when the words are used in a more general sense, when simply referring to a strong campaign or movement for a cause.

• It was a little tricky to decide what to do with terms like "popular crusades," which I think I left with lower case initial "C" even though that term and a few other similar ones were regarded as holy wars because they were not authorised by the Church. I'm frankly not 100% sure about that sort of term.

Augnablik (talk) 06:23, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you for your careful copy-edit and your suggestion. I expanded the lead in line with your comments but chose not to mention the Holy Land in the opening sentence, since the primary sources do not clearly show that Urban referred to it in his Clermont speech. Borsoka (talk) 03:51, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

  That greatly surprised me, Borsoka, so I did a quick query on Google about it and found something I hope you'll use as a reason to check further. AI-generated information is often a good springboard to finding strong supporting proof on further inquiry.

  "Yes, Pope Urban II explicitly mentioned and urged action regarding the Holy Land and Jerusalem in his speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095, calling for Christians to reclaim these sites from Muslim control and initiate the First Crusade. His appeal highlighted the suffering of Christians and promised spiritual rewards for those who participated in this effort to liberate the Holy Sepulchre and other holy places." Augnablik (talk) 05:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Against AI, I can only refer to the sources cited in the article. Most authors are convinced that Jerusalem was the proclaimed the First Crusade's ultimate goal, but several versions of Urban's Clermont sermon do not contain reference to it. What is clear from all sources that the Pope called for the liberation of eastern Christians. Borsoka (talk) 05:31, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Although I'd love to get more involved in this sort of discussion, I don't have that much time for it ... so I'll just suggest that you point out in the article exactly what you said above: that several versions of what Urban II said at the council do not contain reference to it. In this day and age of quick recording technology, we have to remember it wasn't available back then. Omission of anything he said could be due not only to his not having said it but also to choosing other things he said. And the "liberation of [E]astern Christians" that you're sure all the sources do support could, in the pope's mind, have been intended to include liberation of the Holy Land itself. I'm not a historical expert on this, just mentioning this.

Incidentally, toward making "Crusading movement" a GA, you might want to consider that going into discussion of conflicted information from supporting sources earns what could colloquially be called "brownie points".

By the way, please recall that my message of 05:16 was not based on AI in the sense of reliance on it for absolute truth ... but was merely suggesting that it's often a good place from which to begin a more detailed editing search. Having once been lambasted by an editor who thought I was actually suggesting reliance on AI when I made a similar suggestion — even though I think I clearly pointed out how AI could be useful, as I did here — I've come to tread carefully when touching on the topic. Augnablik (talk) 06:28, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@Borsoka, I was just about to pick up again on further comments, after a few days' delay, starting with content-related ones, followed by the more proofreading ones ... but then I noticed that a GA review is already underway. I wish I'd known how quickly you planned to start that, as I might have been able to speed up my further review comments a little more quickly, though for a day or so I wasn't well. I spent several additional hours preparing something further for you because I knew you were planning to get the article ready for GA review.

I also wish the explanation I already gave about the need for capital vs lower-case letters in several instances (notably C and E) had made more of an impact, as they are important in this particular historical article and as I indicated, I checked this issue very carefully.

At any rate, I wish you success. Augnablik (talk) 17:17, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I nominated the article soon after you finished its copyedit. I hope you are well by now. I would still be very grateful for any suggestions to improve the text. Borsoka (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

GA review