Talk:Swordsmanship

merge?

see Talk:European dueling sword. dab (ᛏ) 16:06, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

list

the "list of swordsmen" seems a bit arbitrary, without any context. Any fencer may be considered a swordsman, at the very least, the list should be organized by period or tradition. dab (ᛏ) 14:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yeah that should probably be its own article with at most a link in the see also section of this article. - Taxman ^Talk 17:19, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

I guess that's true. It is quite arbitrary. I thought I was doing a favor to merge Swordsmen based on suggestions, but now it does seem odd. Please do what you think it should be. - Aree

no, I quite agree with the merge. The list was out of place even before. I'll just remove it for now, we have categories for that (lists only add something if they are sorted or annotated in some way). dab (ᛏ) 09:36, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with dab. Just make sure all those articles are in a sane category. If not, it's no waste to create 'list of swordsman' as an article. - Taxman ^Talk 12:31, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Two Weapon Fighting

this article lacks the idea of havin a sword in each hand Dudtz 8/5/05 1:26 Pm EST

Wiki contradictions

The Zweihander section of the article, when discussing historical use is inconsistant with the Zweihander article.

It is my personal belief that the Goliath manuscript does not infact protray zweihanders but longswords that are illustrated in a distored way. And as far as I know the historical fencing community agrees with my view.

Zweihanders are used more in the fashion of a polearm than a langschwert from my experiments with them.

I can cite a swordforum thread that supports my arguement if asked.

It is not a controversy over the use of any given sword. It is a matter of terminology what we want to call a Zweihander. If we take Tobler's definition, I think the Goliath swords would qualify; please collect as many citeable definitions of the term as you can and we can match them against each other here. I would be interested in the pike-formation-attacking "myth". Do we have any citation of the assertion, and do we have any citeable debunking of the assertion? dab (ᛏ) 20:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

This article should be revamped: WMA Bias

As it currently stands this article serves as a patchy overview of reconstructed Western Martial Arts. While that is all well and good, it needs to be in a seperate WMA article, not in an article on generalized swordsmanship.

The term "swordsmanship" applies equally to all sword arts, and it has a great deal of cultural baggage chained to it that should also be dealt with. The article should be revamped into an overview of the world's many traditions of swordsmanship (with links to more detailed pages), and perhaps their philosophical baggage. Claiming the "swordsmanship" article for reconstructed WMA is simply biased and unrepresentative of actual traditions of swordsmanship and the meaning of the word, and serves to give an incorrect impression to the inexperienced. Kensai Max 23:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I assume that the term "swordsman" is mainly applied to western swordsmen, while other cultures have other terms such as kensei. Of course we should reference these, but I see no problem with having this article focus on western traditions. dab (ᛏ) 20:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason why this article couldn't include both, and then perhaps be split later on? Or more asceticly pleasing might be to write the other articles seperately and incorporate them. I think that the article exists the way it does is because only WMA-ers have added to it. Sethwoodworth 21:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

sure, do go ahead and expand its scope. you can cry bias once people try to stop you from doing this. So far, I suppose just the most obvious connotation of the term is covered, it's the "principle of least surprise", meaning, the article covers what people are most likely to expect under this title. There is nothing to be said against a wider coverage of "non-western" swordsmanship at all as long as it is done informedly and encyclopedically. dab (ᛏ) 20:18, 28 May 2006 (UTC)