Talk:Outline of ancient Rome

The following paragraphs are the Talk of a previous page, that hosted the proposal from the directory

Muriel

Muriel, I have two comments (I'd write more, but I have an appointment I need to prepare for):

1. I know there's a couple more people working on the Ancient topics than Stan, you & me. John is one, Adam Bishop, is another, I think ktsquare has made some contributions, & Menchi still another. How about letting them now?

2. The entire Ancient History/Culture section badly needs something like this, not just Rome. Heck, looking over what you've done alerted me to the fact that there is an article already writen about Roman Triumphs. (Now if someone would do the same for ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, & the Near East.) -- llywrch 18:03, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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I've pondered this a bit more, and have a couple suggestions. The Empire article should go later than 476 - one of my textbooks has 565, another 602. The status of Rome the city in the 5th century were relatively unimportant. I lean towards 565 because Justinian was in many ways the last gasp of the old system. The list of people should be List of ancient Romans, because presumably they're all famous enough to justify articles, and we don't want to have any modern Romans added to the list by accident. :-) Presumably Ancient Rome will siphon off some of the historical random bits currently in Rome; I think that Rome should be more like the London or Paris articles, focusing on what the present-day city is like. Stan 17:44, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

About the date when the Roman Empire article should end . . . Adam Bishop & I have discussed this at least once, & ended up agreeing on little more than it should fall on 476 or after. On one hand, there is enough continuity between the Later Roman Empire & events in the Mediterranean as late as 600, to make that year a sensible boundary. On the other hand, many Byzantine Histories start as early as Constantine the Great -- 307 -- & make just as much sense.

Whatever conclusion we eventually come to, I believe, should not be an exclusive one: these three centuries should be discussed under both articles & their related topics. -- llywrch 23:05, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Oh yeah, we could also use something like Ancient city of Rome or some such to discuss the layout of the city in ancient times - seven hills, Lacus Curtius, all that fun stuff. Stan 17:53, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Your proposal looks pretty good to me. The current situation seems pretty messy. As far as the date, 476 sounds fine to me for History of the Roman Empire. The history of the Eastern Empire after that can be covered in History of the East Roman Empire, or what not. john 20:07, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)

476 is kind of a superficial dividing point - "western emperor" had been a meaningless title for years already, and after 476 the eastern emperors spent much of their energy on the west. Justinian for instance retook Africa, Italy, and Spain as part of his program to restore the whole empire. It's not a crucial issue, just don't want readers to get the impression that everything ended suddenly in 476 - it was more like history's biggest whimper-instead-of-bang ending. :-) Stan 04:50, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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I've made some slight modifications, to include reference to Byzantine Empire and List of ancient Romans, which i'll start to compile during the weekend. I also removed the link to colonies in the Roman culture section because is not related directly to the Roman colonies. A new link for Roman provinces i think it's best. Cheers all Muriel Gottrop 10:13, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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To get a map of ancient Rome, just find a pre-1923 book on the city with a map and scan it in. Won't have latest archaeology, but still useful. Older university libraries probably have a bunch of books in this category (I have a 1915 book on Athens with some good scan fodder that I'm experiementing with). Stan 17:51, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I just changed 476 to 554. An historian i like very much (A. Goldsworthy) suggests this date as the end of the Roman Empire. It's the last attempt to conquer Rome from the barbarians. After this is Byzantine Empire only.

About the map: I have a very nice one in my edition of The Twelve Caesars. I can scan it and copy it in Corel, adding things from other maps.

About the Roman legions: thanks a lot to Stan, for the cleaning up, nice suggestion for opening sentence.

I'm compiling a Timeline of Ancient Rome

Muriel Gottrop 09:51, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't 568 (Lombard Invasion) be a better year than 554, which represents the triumph of Justinian over the Ostrogoths? 568 was really the end of any true attempt at restoration. john 01:50, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

• But after 554 the Byzantines didnt nothing for Italy! I'm also changing the beggining of the Empire from 31 to 27 BC, year that Octavianus was turned to Augustus. I also made some changes in the Political Institutions and Military History sections. Cheers, Muriel Gottrop 13:40, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)
• I'm going away for five weeks in thursday. If there are no major objection i'll move this to wiki space tomorrow. And this Talk Page too. Muriel

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New directory created! In October I plan to do the same thing for other civilizations. Meanwhile i'm off to Namibia! Created new link End of the Roman Empire to discuss the several possibilities. Cheers, Muriel Gottrop 09:59, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)

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I would have liked to discuss this big change. And when i return to base camp, i will. Muriel 14:42, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I received the following message from Muriel:

Dear Great, thnk you for the time invested on Roman subjects, always neglected around here. About your change in the Ancient Rome directory, i dont agree with a series of things. Now, i am out of my base camp but in another two weeks i would like to discuss my ideas with you. Meanwhile, i ask you to explain in the talk page your basic motivation for changing the page, so i can see your point. Normally, thats how things work (or should): discuss first, change later. All the best, Muriel 14:46, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My original intention was to create a List of Ancient Rome related articles. When I found that the Ancient Rome article only had a few references to other articles, I put the list that I had created there. Since my list included the ones in the original article, I considered it a legitimate enhancement to an existing article.

If there is an issue with this, you can move the current article to my originally intended name and start a new Ancient Rome article (hopefully, this time with some significant content). GreatWhiteNortherner 06:13, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

I managed not to notice that this changed... The long list of topics should be its own list, list of Roman topics or some such, used to track everything, while I think of this article as the "Main Page" for everything in WP that's Rome-related; links to the major high-level topics, small amount of text to set context for people that arrive via "random page". Stan 06:21, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Its a pity to loose Great's (great) work on compiling the topics and Stan is right on suggesting a page move here to List of Roman topics. But!! There are lots of links to here, specially on the articles i have writen. Why link to a directory?, you may ask. Because i intend to follow Stan's suggestion of creating an article to the city of Ancient Rome. Then, if the move is to be made, please not now! About the list itself: It should be by topic, not alphabetical. As it is is a bit messy. Muriel 14:35, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If no one disagrees I will reorganize the list according to topics, not alphabetically. I will also move the page to List of Roman topics to clear away for the city of ancient Rome. Muriel 11:28, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Object. Anyone can add a new entry accurately to an alphabetical list. Adding to a list of topics means that you have to have exactly the same understanding of the topics as the list creator. For all practical purposes, I think that such a page would become Muriel's private property.

If you want such a list why not create it as a separate article. The alphabetical list would supply the raw material for the topical list as anyone could add to it.

There is also the question of whether the perceived problem with the organization of the list is a problem with the list or with the name of the article. Renaming an article say, from Roman Roads to Ancient Roman Roads or Roads of ancient Rome, would be another way of reorganizing the list while keeping it in alphabetical order.

The wiki name convention for lists of articles related to a country is “List of <country>-related topics” e.g. List of Korea-related topics, List of Egypt-related topics. These are alphabetical lists of articles. So the current article should be renamed List of ancient Rome-related topics. (Carefully ignoring the issue of whether or not ancient Rome was a country.)

Personally, I prefer ancient Rome rather than just Rome in article names to avoid any confusion with the modern city. GreatWhiteNortherner 13:20, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

First, i would like to invite you (Great) to visit the following pages:

• List of Ireland-related topics
• List of United Kingdom-related topics
• List of Sweden-related topics
• and many related others

This is just an example of what alphabetical listing does:

• Roman calendar
• Roman citizens
• Roman Colosseum
• Roman culture
• Roman currency
• Roman dictator
• Roman eating and drinking
• Roman emperor
• Roman Empire
• Roman festivals
• Roman Forum

And another

• Punic wars
• First Punic War
• Second Punic War
• Third Punic War

People dont have to agree on where a topic should be, thats why there are talk pages, thats why entries can be in more than one section. And if people dont know, they can always ask. Reacting to ignorance with over-simplification leads to even more ignorance. I agree with List of ancient Rome-related topics (if it was a country or not, thats a bit outdated discussion). I am afraid that i missed the such a page would become Muriel's private property joke. Muriel 13:29, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think the point was that if a list ordering is not algorithmic in some way, then it's hard to get it to stabilize; sooner or later somebody wants to come along and sort it in a different way, and one would be hard-pressed to defend a personal idea of a good order vs alphabetical or whatever. In this case I would suggest grouping by categories - military, daily life, politics, etc, which gets you some logic but lets alphabetizers go wild within categories. As for "Roman" vs "ancient Roman", 99% of the material is going to be about the ancients, since modern Rome info is mostly Italian (there's no "modern Roman currency" for instance). So our disambiguation rules let ancient Rome "own" nearly all of the "Roman xxx" titles, just as "London" gets to be the one in England, everybody else has to have a qualifier. Stan 14:29, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Since Great apparently doesnt wish to further comment on the subject i assume that he will not oppose to a hange to topic (instead of alphabetic) organization. I'll wait a few more days to see if nobody else disagrees and then i'll do it following the examl of List of Ireland-related topics. Muriel 22:32, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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I have been categorizing all the articles about ancient Rome that I could find into the Ancient Rome category and its subcategories. There are roughly 1956 articles in these categories, which I suspect represents the vast majority of articles in the wiki about Rome.

The page for the Ancient Rome category shows the current complete structure of the categories. In several cases, I created subcategories simply because there were a lot of articles on a specific topic.

To do:

• find any remaining articles about AR and bring them into the fold
• define how the structure should look
• define which articles should go into which category - e.g. who exactly is an ancient Roman.
• define how articles should be named considering that its only practical to file the articles by their name and there should be consistency between related articles.
• resolve weaknesses in the wiki brought out by collecting these articles together - e.g. there is relatively few articles under "towns and cities" because the Roman name (e.g. Brindusium) simply redirects to the modern city name (Brindisi) which mainly contains inappropriate information.

Let the games begin! GreatWhiteNortherner 12:02, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I wish to congratulate you, GreatUser, for the patience and efficiency wish you have shown on organizing these topics. I am about to grant you the title of Fourth (maybe fifth) Founder of Rome :) I'll have a look on the ac category and leave some suggestions in the tal page. Muriel G 15:42, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hi, Undid some vandilism on the page hope this is the right thing to do Spykid99 (talk) 01:43, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines

"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Wikipedia:Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:03, 9 August 2015 (UTC)