Talk:History/Archive 1

message: This article is the epitome of useless links on random nouns. For example, the word "historian" is used 21 times in this article. The 9th time it is used, it is linked to the "Historian" page. As if after reading the first 8 inclusions of the word "historian", someone will all of a sudden forgot what a "historian" is, or have some newfound desire to learn more about historians. Wikipedia is a piece of shit.
Funny, I used to think the exact sme way, then I became a member and try to make Wikipedia a smaller piece of shit.  That's much better than posting insults anonymously.  Until all idiotic articles are cleaned it will take some time.  But this is one of the better ones btw.  HyperrealORnot 02:29, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Internal-wiki links

message: :Guidelines for history on Wikipedia can be found at Wikipedia:History.
--hey man, this is cool, keep up the good work.
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History is a huge topic. It doesn't have to be limited to one top-level organization scheme. -- Stephen Gilbert
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Is the geographical indexing the only kind we will offer from this point? Should we offer any others (for example, History of X where X is an academic discipline, a persistent type of human behavior like religion or philosophy, or other cross sections of human history? -- Dick Beldin
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I dont really agree with this. your point you have made was good, but... your background information does not support your ideas as well as they should. anyways. keep up the good work.
User: Mike Ock 
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When I started the page I made a couple of time slices, but except for the very early ones (neolithic, bronze age, maybe iron age) they really don't work too well except in localized areas.  That's why the geographic overviews are at the top.  But histories of disciplines wouldn't hurt to add. -- Josh Grosse
Some typical ways to divide up history that I recall include: by geographical region; by nation-state or empire; by time period (or a region in a time period such as history of medieval Europe); by sector or function within society (history of the church, history of the state which is what much history is thought to be, intellectual history, social history, military history, history of exploration, etc.).  See http://dmoz.org/Society/History/ and http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/.  I'm not suggesting we replicate their category schemes (which wouldn't make sense for an encyclopedia), but just use that for ideas about how to expand ours.  I'd lend a direct hand but I haven't studied history in a long time. --LMS
Another possible organisational scheme might be by civilization; i.e. Meditarranean, East (sprang up from eastern Roman empire), West, China, Japan, etc.
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One of the things I'm beginning to perceive about wikipedia is its inherent organizational flexibility.  So long as the name of the article is clear enough it can be linked into any number of organizational schemes.  There's no reason the history page shouldn't end up as complicated as the home page - a geographical organization, a chronological organization, historiographic approaches organization (history of religion, history of technology) --- all of these floating over the same body of entries.  The hard part is letting go of an ideal top-level schema while composing new entries.  --MichaelTinkler
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Ain't it grand?  ;-) --Larry Sanger
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Historians, would you please look at  and offer opinions as to whether they have a good top-level category scheme for the history page?  This was suggested on a history newsgroup and it looks generally pretty good to me.  If you agree, perhaps what we have right now can be worked into that larger and more complete category scheme. --Larry Sanger
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the distinction between 'history' and 'archaeology' in the "definition" of history here is idiosyncratic.  Professional historians work with all kinds of materials, including the archaeological materials distinguished in this 'definition.'
True, historians use archaeology, but history is limited to the period of human written records, archaeology is not.  
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Hi Larry -- AHA member weighing in here.  I like the AHA's category scheme, but have always found the overlaps to be a pain.  Still, I think it's better than anything else I've seen. -- JHK
I'm not so sure about that biography link -- we have links to individuals, but Biography is no often NOT history 9or so often written as panegyric, or somewhat fictionalized, or, like that recent bio of Reagan, the author creates a fictional "fly-on-the-wall" character, that I'm not sure why there's a separate link.  Anybody else think this is redundant?  JHK
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Redundant because the 9 "historical figures" already have the field covered? :-)
Perhaps it's "fictionalized biography" that deserves an index of its own, outside
the main biography index.
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Still don't think there needs to be a bio section, we have individual entries, and these are not usually termed bios in other encyclopedia.  Also, that 9 was a typo...
More imporatintly, I think we need to change the title system for individuals.  Right now, we act as if we're doing dictionary entries.  For example, Henry VII  is 1) one person, and 2) another person.  Would it be possible to either make the entry, e.g., Henry VII of England? Putting the first names in their proper language might be another solution, I suppose, so we'd have Henry, Heinrich, Henri.... At any rate, I don't think what we have is going to work well in the long run -- it will be very cumbersome very quickly. JHK
:I think we should use *English* forms of the name as much as possible (this is English-wikipedia, after all) and in the case of monarchs the name of the nation.  For Emperors we should use 'Emperor Frederick I', 'Emperor Frederick II' on the model of the papal nomenclature.  I don't think ANY of the names will overlap between the Byzantine emperors, HRE Emperors, Chinese Emperors, etc. so they could all be called Emperor So-and-so the Numberth.  This means renaming all the Byzantine and HRE and Roman Emperors, but hell, we did the popes, and there are more than 200 of those. The Spanish are already handled this way (though some of those folks weren't really kings of SPAIN, per se. --MichaelTinkler
My 2 groats worth: This is definitely a problem. Henry I could be any one of perm one to fifteen. But hell, every time I want to reference Henry I, if we qualify by nationality, I have to do:  (where { = [ ). This can be a real pain in the neck where you might be referencing ten or twelve monarchs in an article, but highly necessary. The rule of thumb from my point of view is simple: if they're English, they don't need a national qualifier. If they aren't e.g. they're Scots, French, Martian, even Cornish (and we do have the names of some of our kings...) then they need to be qualified. sjc
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The tightening of the 1st para is a nicely worked revision. sjc
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Thought this might be a useful (non-public) source, if only for structure. -- Sam
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I vote for deleting the "herstory" bit, it is a trivialty that does not belong on this page.
-- zero
198... With some misgivings I am reverting your additions. They seem more like a personal viewpoint that encyclopedic information. In either case they do no belong in the header. Try making a new section for them. DJ Clayworth 19:59, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Early comments

message: i wanted to find out what people thought about the view that history is solely made up of interpretation. in most cases i agree, but with some historical facts (eg a volcano erupting) there is no room for interpretation, so how do you continue to argue the view?
a curious student...
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Is there any mention of comparative history in this article? I've tried looking and I can't seem to find it... I'm worried I've invented it... :-s Vanky 12:46, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  interpretation in history 

message: I see this is listed in sub-regions, but being in fact two 'regions' (Europe & Asia) combined, how can it be such? Grunners 01:39, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eurasia 

message: When, where, how did this word become part of the English language? And who the heck came up with it? Having majored in history I don't ever remember any of my professors using the word "historicity".
*as near as I have seen. the when was about 1875–80, the where was academia, and believe it was in grammatology in particular. Chance0 10:52, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Historicity

message: This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view.  In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  22:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  announcing policy proposal 

message: This article does not cite any source.  That will need to be done.  --ZeWrestler  Talk 14:24, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: The "By ideological classification" section is nearly redundant with a section near the bottom of the Historical classification page. Which is the more appropriate location? Thanks. — RJH 19:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historiography 

message: History is the term used in schools as a method of extreme torture. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the stupidity of human people, families, and societies. Knowledge of history is often said to encompass both boredom and historical disliking skills.
Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a mistake of the humanities. However, in modern academia, history is increasingly classified as a pointless subject, especially when pointless junk is the focus.
The word "history" is commonly used for the stupidity of humankind. The history of all life on Earth, including the period prior to the appearance of human ancestors, is generally covered under (who really cares). The history of the Earth is a component of the science of geology. (In actuality, the history of the Earth is irrelavent to our everyday lives). The history of the Solar System, the stars, and galaxies is a component of my bowell movements. The history of the Universe as a whole is studied in absolutely nowhere.
More historians limit their study to events that have occurred since the introduction of written records, or since the agricultural revolution and the appearance of civilizations (about 10,000 years ago)(I myself limit my studies to videogames). Others use the term "history" to include the entire hypocracy of humankind, including the blah-blah-blah who cares. The study of events before the first written records (which includes more than 99 percent of the time humans have existed) is sometimes called bullllshit.
Is this right?--86.129.93.39 20:29, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Umm... 

message: Is no one here taking this article seriously? History isn't junk. History is something to be learned from. This article needs some major help. I mean the word "fuck" is in the first sentence. -BIG BROTHER
:Welcome to Wikipedia.  A small number of childish people -- many of them children -- think dirty words are funny and put them in Wikipedia articles.  When you see an instance of this, just revert the article to the pre-vandalized version.  Check the Help page if you need isntructions on how to do this. Rick Norwood 13:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What? 

message: If this page wins the improvement drive, there ought to be a proper overhaul of the way its laid out. 
Firstly, a distinction should be made between the academic subject of history and the actual history of the world. 
The first page - say, "History (Academic)" - should contain information about the subject; historiography, practice, the history of the subject, the science or art debate, blah blah blah.
Perhaps the second section could take the form of a brief history of the world and the human race, but considering the ridiculous amount of petty nationalism this page has brought out in people, trying to limit it would be difficult.
I don't know about the details, it just seems like the page is a little confusing and the moment, and perhaps that's because its not properly defined. Something to think about anyway. - Richar4034
:Sounds like a good idea, but not an easy task.  I think even to get people to agree on how to order the section on a capsule history of the human race would be a major battle, but I'm willing to help if you want to tackle it.  I once wrote a history of Greece that read, "Socrates taught Plato.  Plato taught Aristotle.  Aristotle taught Alexander.  Alexander taught the world."  So you can see that very brief histories appeal to me.  I don't think "History (Academic)" ought to come first, though.  Last, surely.  I've got this page on my watch list, and will be interested to see how things develop. Rick Norwood 20:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure of the Page 

message: Thanks, Anonuser, for an excellent rewrite.  The article is much improved thereby. Rick Norwood 13:31, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  thanks to Anonuser 

message: That collage of images at the bottom of the page is a bit US-centred. All the pictures show events in which the US was directly involved or in which they had great interest. And there isn't a single image of key events such as the First World War, the Russian Revolution, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, or of 20th-century themes such as the baby boom, computer technology, or the Third World. I don't think it's fair to shove in a few pictures of Iwo Jima, September 11th, or Ronald Regan, and claim they represent the 20th century! Why are images of 9/11 in there anywhere? Wrong century! Maybe we should change the picture? Rusty2005 22:41, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Or get rid of it entirely. Ashibaka tock 21:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Type their name in the little box on the left that says, "Search" and then click on "Go". Rick Norwood 20:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture

message: First of all, as this is the first time I have commented about an article, please accept my apologies if I press the wrong buttons or transgress against etiquette in other ways.
Moving to the substance, the Italic textLessons of HistoryItalic text Section strikes me as rather contentious.  Unfortunately, I do not have the time to rewrite it myself but I hope that someone, perhaps an undergraduate with GHP essays to hand, could help.
In general, partly because of the paragraph ordering and partly because of the comparative weights given to the opposing views, the section suggests that the consensus is that lessons can be learnt from history. Whilst, clearly, there are arguments for that view (in themselves about varying degrees of what can be learnt), I suggest that this is far from the consensus view.
In particular, the statement that, "historians often claim that the study of history teaches valuable lessons ..." seems to me to be questionable.  If one defines historians, as the context implies, as professional historians then I cannot think of many examples of this within the last fifty years (I acknowledge here that there may be examples amongst historians writing in languages other than English).  Even, to coin a phrase, latter day Whigs (from Churchill to Schaama) only make claims, of varying degrees, about historical progress and not about the ability to learn lessons from history.
In my observation, it is most often politicians rather than historians who make such claims, for example, the invocation of the spectre of pre-Second World War appeasement to help justify the recent Iraq War.
In this context, and because it is mentioned in the section in question, it is perhaps worth noting that appeasement is popularly derided precisely because Churchill succeeded in writing a history that was kind to him (see, in particular, David Reynolds' Italic textIn Command of HistoryItalic text).
Although which side I incline to over this matter is probably evident from my comments above, I am not saying that no lessons can be learnt from history, simply that the section reflects neither the debate over this issue nor the side that, in varying degrees, most historians lean to.
--CPB 12:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lessons of History 

message: Hi - the "See also" section of this article is pretty good and interesting. It overlaps with the Historiography article, which also contains a list of approaches to history. Both contain elements the other does not. It would be more valuable as a single list. I'm not sure how to integrate it, so we have a central place for "Approaches to history". Could it justify a new article (perhaps even "List of .." article)? Or perhaps a "See Main" header to keep it one place? Any thoughts or comments. --Stbalbach 02:44, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is not anything wrong, necessarily, with duplication between articles.  In fact, that can't be avoided.  It might be nice if the two lists were the same.  And moving the list to a page "Lists of historical subjects" would also be a good way to handle the problem. Rick Norwood 13:27, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  See also section duplicates [[historiography]] article 

message: would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:19, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, why not. Rick Norwood 20:55, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  publication 

message: Rm: "Historiography is the study and analysis of history through a belief system or philosophy. Although there is arguably some intrinsic bias in historical studies (with national bias perhaps being the most significant), history can also be studied from ideological perspectives, such as Marxist historiography." This is incorrect statement, replaced by the introduction of the Historiography entry (historiography is not the study of history through a belief system: any human being, including historian, has such a belief system. There are intrinsic bias in historical studies, which is not arguable (the first one being the belief on the importance of history and memory; see Friedrich Nietzsche for a full argumentation of this). A "national bias" is certainly a ideological perspective, just as much as Marxist historiography. Kaliz 16:31, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As an example of why I reverted your recent edit, consider your first sentence:
"Historiography is the study of the way history is written. In a broad sense, history refers to the methodology and practices of writing history."
I think you mean "In a broad sense, historiography..."  I started to edit rather than revert what you had written, but I came across so much careless writing that I thought you would prefer to fix it yourself. Rick Norwood 16:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historiography 

message: A related topic, History of the world is currently a nomination on WP:IDRIVE. Support the article with your vote to improve its quality. --Fenice 14:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvement drive

message: Doesn't this article need to address the other significant history-writing traditions ? (Chinese and Islamic) Mountshang 16:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be good, but we need to attract experts willing to contribute their time. Rick Norwood 21:33, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Non European histories

message: In academic circles, is "history" usually synonymous with recorded/written history, or is the term also used often to refer to periods before the existence of writing? Shawnc 07:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is discussed at pre-history - the artificial notion of "written record only" is a 19th century artifact that is long out of style. -- Stbalbach 16:50, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  According to Amazon.com, over 600 books with the words "prehistory" or "prehistoric" in the title have been published in the past 5 years. --Sean Brunnock 17:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  History vs written history 

message: I noticed there has been a lot of vandalism here recently -   should we semi-protect? The Missing Piece 20:25, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Any article whose title is also the name of a subject in high school: history, mathematics, English, etc., is going to get a lot of vandalism, as teens bored out of their minds look for something, anything, to break the tedium.  Best just to delete without comment. Rick Norwood 19:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Vandalism 

message: Since  Wikipedia is not a link repository I think we should establish some criteria for external links so we can trim this list down a little? I would say, to start with, any forum related to a subfield of history should be removed. Any other suggestions? -- TheMightyQuill 08:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you mean by "subfield" here? Do all the links labelled "world history" qualify as subfields? I agree with the proposal, by the way. Katherine Tredwell 14:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's a good example. If the links are about the sub-field of history World History they should naturally go on the related page. And if they're about the History of the World they might be better on that related page? This is the real problem. How do we decide which page about history (such as History of the World should be included? Do pages about the history of historical study go here, or on Historiography? -- TheMightyQuill 17:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with the removal of forums.  However, I would not want to remove every site that had world history in the title. For example, the World History Blog is not really about the subfield of world history.  It is a general history blog.  Do you have examples of sites that you think should be removed?  List them here and we can discuss them.  LarryQ 03:57, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There aren't any in particular, but there must be thousands of "general history" websites on the internet. Should they all be listed on this page? I just think some kind of plan should be made, so additions and removals don't become arbitrary. Any thoughts? -- TheMightyQuill 10:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would only allow sites which are primarily non-commercial (few or no ads) and are well known in the history field. Internet History Sourcebooks Project, WWW-VL: History Central Catalogue, and the World History Blog would pass this test.  Many of the other links curently listed do not.  As most links added to promote sites have a heavy commercial emphasis (ads everywhere) and are new, they would fail and could be removed. LarryQ 11:10, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text: WP:EL is the guideline on this, and it lists blogs and forums under "Links normally to avoid". -- Mwanner | Talk 13:43, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for the pointer. I've removed the forums and some other sketchy links. I've left a lot that I think could be removed:
* How about a See Also: link to Historical drama film, and moving the History on Film link there. 
*I'm not sure about the quality of the World History Blog The May 27 entry, for instance, is more of a political commentary than historical work. Past entries seem to be more of a list of links than commentary on history. I'm not sure this is worth linking. -- TheMightyQuill 14:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text:  The World History Blog is rather famous.  It was featured in USAToday the newspaper as well as the Internet Scout Report. Just about every history blog out there links to it. I think it adds value to the article. However, this is not my blog and just my opinion as a historian trying to help with this article.  If the decision is to remove it, OK. LarryQ 15:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd vote for deletion. It may be famous on the internet, and in the blogging community, but that doesn't mean its "well known in the history field." It also doesn't seem to be an independent source of information, just a collection of references to other pages.
* I don't think History of Nations offers anything that competes with Wikipedia. Peraphs we can put a more prominent link to the Portal:History or History of present-day nations and states?
* The samething goes for Timelines of History. Is it any better than List_of_centuries?
* History Timelines is a little heavy on the advertising, and not particularly great on content.
How about we leave only Internet History Sourcebooks Project and WWW-VL: History Central Catalogue and remove the rest?  These are the best two links present.  The other links left are worthy and of about equal quality so it is kind of arbitrary to pick some for ejection and not others. And I see the value in having a short link list to discourage spammers from trying to slip questionable links in.  LarryQ 23:30, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay then, simple enough. -- TheMightyQuill 08:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, I am having second thoughts.  An area as important as history should have more than two links.  I lean towards readding the World History Blog based on its status as the top history blog.  Are there any other thoughts on this?  I think maybe a few other non-spam additions may be in order as well.  I will wait a few days before altering the links.  LarryQ 01:17, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: this article is a mess. it desperately needs some quality and tone worked into it. please, someone (or some people) work on clarifying this morass on the eyes. JoeSmack Talk(p-review!) 18:38, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  quality