Disputatio:Homines clari

E Vicipaedia

The current system of dividing the list into Westerners and Asians doesn't seem too logical with the list we have. Perhaps it would make more sense to divide by time period? --Iustinus 07:32 iul 24, 2004 (UTC) I suggest to divide by alphabet.Gbust 12:24 iul 25, 2004 (UTC)

That's how it was originally: straight alphabetical, with no east-west division. Somebody added that at some point. Honestly it doesn't seem necessary. But now that I've thought of it, I do like the idea of adding time periods- having Romans mixed in with renaissance scientists and victorian poets just looks silly to me. --Iustinus 15:09 iul 25, 2004 (UTC)

That's right, how it was originally. Still we can overview them all. What concerns the old Roman, there is already a separate article; our list is linked to it (by Me). Perhaps you can make it again first straight alphabetical. Later on I suggest homini antiqui - mediaevalia (since ca. 350) - temporis novi (since 1492). Best greetingsGbust 21:51 iul 25, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 13:54 iul 27, 2004 (UTC): Hello! I agree that the current scheme isn't really ideal. We shouldn't precipitate matters, however. A new scheme should be able to cope with large amounts of articles, and it shouldn't be necessary to change it later on. As more and more articles are being written, the more difficult it will get to change the "system". What about using categories like en.Wikipedia (qv. this page)? A slightly more detailed discussion, albeit in German, can be found here. Using categories would be a huge undertaking, however, perhaps too much so right now. On the other hand, we could concentrate on biography-related categories for now. What do you think?

I really like the category system on en:, and would love to see it here, but it would have some major drawbacks for us. The problem you mention of the scale of the project does not bother me: we can do it bit by bit, just like we've been doing with everything else; what bothers me is that it might render any page that is just a list of things obsolete. The advantage of having a list page is that I can mark down the "official" Latin word for something (or name for someone) for future reference, without having to write a whole entry on it. Given that the consensus usorum seems to be that stubs should be avoided at all costs (despite the difficulty of writing a full article, even for advanced Latinists!), this use of lists is very convenient for me (that is why, e.g., I just added a couple of English poets to Homines clari. Keeping this would be another obstacle to comprehensiveness. Honestly, though, I don't think we're anywhere near the stage en: is at, where consistency and comprehensiveness are truly important. We don't have the quantity for that kind of quality ;) --Iustinus 18:09 iul 27, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 10:28 iul 28, 2004 (UTC): Hm, you're probably right, Iustinus. Well, we should use a chronological list in that case. Which periods should we use? In my opinion this should be consistent with the ones used in the article Historia. Those needn't be sacrosanct (one could change the Historia-periods as well), but la.Wikipedia should strive for a bit of consistency as that makes orientation easier. Right now the main periods used in Historia are:

• Praehistoricum Aevum (not really relevant for a list of persons)
• Aevum Antiquum: till 476 p.C.n. (last emperor of the Western Empire)
• Medium Aevum: 476 - 1492
• Novum Aevum: 1492 till today

This system of periods is rather problematic as far as people from non-European cultures. By the way, to me it's not the "stubs" that should be avoided at all cost but the not-even-a-stub articles like Zincum. Instead of these, one should really use lists or main articles.
But what about the following, at least for the time being:

Hic index homines magni momenti conservatis notisque temporibus continet.

• Aevum Antiquum: spatium temporis usque ad finem Imperii Romani occidentalis anno 476.
• Medium Aevum: ab 476 usque ad ad Christophori Columbi navigationem ad Americam anno 1492.
• Novum Aevum: spatium temporis ab anno 1492.

---

Index aevorum: Aevum Antiquum - Medium Aevum - Novum Aevum

[recensere] Aevum Antiquum

• Homo illustris 1
• Homo illustris 2

[recensere] Medium Aevum

• Homo illustris 1
• Homo illustris 2

[recensere] Novum Aevum

• Homo illustris 1
• Homo illustris 2

The last is a nice and workable proposal. We should do it. Gbust

Yes, this is good. Two reservations:

1. I'm thinking we should either say homines or viros feminasque (rather than mulieresque) for reasons I don't really want to get into here.
2. These categories are obviously intended to be quite broad, but maybe we're going to need more of them. At the very least, I should like to be able to distinguish the "Modern Era" (which I tend to think of as beginning simultaneously with the 20th century, but if we want to base it on important cultural events, WWI seems the logical demarcation.)

--Iustinus 17:50 iul 29, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 06:55 iul 30, 2004 (UTC): Hello, Iustinus. I concur with your suggestion to use homines (changed that in the above template). As far as the different periods is concerned I suggest reading the en.Wiki-article about problems that arise in periodization. I agree that at least something like a modern age should be added. What other periods do you suggest? The finer the division is getting, the more difficult assigning people to them is getting. Also, problems due to cultural differences would become more prominent. This scheme IS euro-centric after all, no way to get around that. Perhaps it would be wise to include the years birth and death and a short comment about the person in the list to make sorting a bit easier if any changes are to be made later on, e.g.

• Gaius Iulius Caesar (100 a.C.n. – 44 a.C.n.): dictator Romanus

You know, there's no real reason for this page to exist. It only serves a possible purpose to Wikipedia editors, in that it provides a quick list of important topics to keep an eye on and expand (which Vicipaedia:Articuli quos omnes Vicipaediae habeant already exists for); to readers, all it does is provide a ridiculously distorted, glossed-over, meaningless and supremely arbitrary list derived from the whims of Vicipaedia's editors, which can only cause contention and disagreements and massive amounts of time-wasting (think about how many of these individual articles you guys could have been working on instead of wasting time on discussing and editing this page!) and not any education or learning. I thought at first this article would be the Latin version of a page on "celebrities", since that's an encyclopedic and researchable topic (unlike the original research and impossible task of trying to neutrally determine the relative "fame" of every person in history!), but instead it's just an amazingly biased and hilariously Eurocentric (I can see why you guys are so anxious to reorganize the page by a system other than location, since the page's current organization makes so painfully obvious what the perspective of the writers is! only eight people out of the entire list are not American or European?!) listing of random historical people who editors happen to be interested in. The list serves no purpose for readers except to mislead them and misrepresent human history, and it serves no purpose to editors that is not already served by the Vicipaedia:Articuli quos omnes Vicipaediae habeant page. Plus the page name is poorly-formatted: it should be either "Index hominum clarorum" or "Homo clarus". A page like this is an embarrassment to any encyclopedia it appears on, so right now it's an embarrassment to Vicipaedia. -Adamas 03:31, 5 Martii 2006 (UTC)

I agree, Adamas, though with a bit calmer perspective...it is certainly ethnocentric, without doubt, and to me doesn't make much sense either. It begs POV by its very nature, clari is a qualitative adjective, not something with which we normally find ourselves writing. Further the list is a bit absurd, what need have Pythagoras, Helen Keller, Voltaire, Osama bin Laden, Anne Frank, Nezahualcoyotlis (whoever in the world that is), Beda (Whoever in the world that is, either), Plautus, JFK, a few random popes/saints, Hirohito, etc, on the same page? None, certainly that I see. I support drastic rearrangement, if not outright deletion.--Ioshus Rocchio 03:29, 8 Iunii 2006 (UTC)

Beda — the venerable en:Bede, "father of English history"; en:Nezahualcoyotl is an ancient Mexican king depicted on the 100-peso bill, it seems. —Myces Tiberinus 11:26, 8 Iunii 2006 (UTC)

As a new user, I agree that the present order is somewhat unhelpful; so as long as the list of famous persons is not altogether abolished it seems fairly reasonable to me to give it a different structure. The time span of the Middle Ages is sensible. Concerning the problem of proper names (e.g. Martin Luther is listed two times, under Martinus as well as Luther) I would not be too dogmatic - after all we are being anachronistic, so having two entries directing to one article is quite all right.

--Iovis Fulmen 11:28, 14 Iulii 2006 (UTC)

I repeat that the nature of this article itself is a journey into the very depths of POV. I also repeat, we have such a thing as Vicipaedia:Articuli quos omnes Vicipaediae habeant, which should thoroughly negate the use of this page. I further repeat my vote for deletion.--Ioshus Rocchio 03:00, 19 Iulii 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the POV assesment. Perhaps the current list betrays the interests of the authors, but that is no surprise. For a person to have an article on any Wikipedia, there has to be some consensus that he is "clarus" - noteworthy - hence the adjective is not a problem, either. The greater difficulty, in my mind, is that a simple list of every biography on Vicipaedia is a better job for a category than a page. However, it seems that this page could serve as a general introduction to all of the biographies on Vicipaedia - first by speaking about the phenomenon of human greatness - as it has been defined and recognized in different cultural contexts, and then by providing links to the relevant categories - or articles for ancient Romans, philospohers, saints, or rock stars. Certainly it needs work, but that applies to almost all of our articles. Thoughts? Disagreements? --Tbook 21:54, 17 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to have taken so long with a response, Tbook. If you feel that way, will you undertake to improve it? It has been delenda for months. It either needs comepletely rehauled, or deleted.--Ioshus ^(disp) 05:11, 8 Octobris 2006 (UTC)