Talk:Battle of Corbridge

message: There were two Battles of Corbridge in 914 and 918, see , but this article is called Battle of Corbridge and is about the 918 one. First Battle of Corbridge and Second Battle of Corbridge both redirect to this article, even though the First Battle is not mentioned. I am inclined to copy and past the text of this article to the Second Battle page (adding a mention of the first battle) and make this article a redirect to the Second Battle. However, I suspect this is against Wiki rules, so how should I deal with the situation? Dudley Miles (talk) 21:20, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That very definitely isn't against policy. Reading elsewhere on this talk page I suspect this may have had that problem for several years. I have placed a note on the top of Second Battle of Corbridge to that effect. I'll take care of the disambiguation/movement stuff; can I leave it to you to write an article about First Battle of Corbridge?--Launchballer 21:34, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I doubt whether there is much information about the first battle, but I have plenty of sources so I should be able to find enough for a stub. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Copy-paste moves are not the way it should be done because they break the page history. There once was content about both battles of Corbridge at this page, but it seems rather doubtful if there ever was a "first battle" distinct from the "second battle". Compare for example newer scholarship here: . Maybe the theory that there were two battles should be mentioned in this article? Huon (talk) 21:59, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It is certainly worth mentioning that there is a theory that there was only one battle, but it is not true that (as stated in the source you cite) it is just "some historians" who think there were two battles. The two battles are mentioned by all the leading sources I have checked - Stenton's, Anglo-Saxon England p. 333, DNB articles on Ragnall and Æthelflæd, Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain - cited above, Higham, Kingdom of Northumbria. Smyth in Scandinavian York and Dublin discusses the two battles at considerable length. It needs more than a casual phrase to dismiss the leading historians of the period. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:34, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: My advice to you is put an article together at User:Dudley Miles/First Battle of Corbridge.--Launchballer 22:42, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Sources are somewhat ambiguous, but there are plenty explicitly refuting the two-battle theory:  and , for example. Does any of the others explicitly dismiss the one-battle theory? Huon (talk) 23:10, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

text: User:Deacon of Pndapetzim, the editor who originally made this article discuss only one battle, may also want to comment. Huon (talk) 23:13, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: All the sources I have cited state that there were two battles, but you are right that there are more than I thought which argue that there was only one battle - particularly Woolf's From Pictland to Alba. It is curious that Walker and Woolf attack Wainwright's 1950 article, but do not discuss Smyth's detailed analysis of the two battles. At the present stage, I would accept that a single article which makes clear that until recently the consensus was two battles but this has been challenged is the best solution. Dudley Miles (talk) 23:33, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Having checked further, so far as I can see all sources before 2005 say there were two battles, all after then that there was one battle. I will add an explanation of the change of view to the article. Apologies for the confusion. Launcherballer I withdraw my proposal to move the article to Second Battle of Corbridge. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:04, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

text: If you say so, however I would have suggested that a fifty-year hoax is worth an article on its own.--Launchballer 10:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Very true, but it would take a lot of research to write a decent article, and I do not want to divert from the projects on my priority list. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:25, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two battles