Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies/Archive 5

message: #Queen Elizabeth I
##Oppose Not important enough. Leaders should be kept to those who have had a huge historical significance outside one country. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 00:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Support - perhaps the most famous Queen in history, well, besides the band. Kaldari 08:02, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: There's plenty of powerful female rulers before Elizabeth.  Eleanor of Aquitaine, for instance, just to take another Queen of England.  john k 12:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: erm, that's like comparing Calvin Coolidge to FDR plange 16:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Support A significant figure in British and European as well as English history.  Certainly the greatest of the queens of England, and at least equal to the best of the kings. Rcpaterson 22:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't feel strongly about it one way or another but at this point I think we might as well add her.  We can always do a vote to remove her later on down the road. There are still a fair amount of spots left.  We could also go back to 250 people if that is an issue. VegaDark 03:26, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Queen Elizabeth I 

message: ===Acting===
# Marlon Brando
## Support. Often called the greatest American actor, or the greatest film actor, ever.  Several highly iconic roles (Stanley Kowalski, Terry Malloy, Vito Corleone, Col. Kurtz). john k 20:48, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Addition candidates – contested or unsure

message: # Marlon Brando
## Support. Often called the greatest American actor, or the greatest film actor, ever.  Several highly iconic roles (Stanley Kowalski, Terry Malloy, Vito Corleone, Col. Kurtz). john k 20:48, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Acting

message: # Charles de Gaulle
## Support. Maurreen 15:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Politics

message: # Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
## Support. Maurreen 08:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Science

message: Just throwing this out as a possibility, but Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Mellon? studerby 00:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well maybe not Mellon... studerby 00:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Rockefeller was #51 on Life magazine's list, BTW. Kaldari 00:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Maurreen 05:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Business?

message: I made a few mistakes trying to coordinate all this.
*Igor Stravinsky is now back up in the "uncontested" section.
*Anton Chekov should also be placed up there, but I guess I should maybe dig up the votes.
I interpreted Plange's doubt about Bruce Lee as opposition. If I was mistaken, please feel free to fix. Maurreen 03:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Chekov now fixed. Maurreen 06:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Where'd they go?

message: of particular note is the "combined science" category, which is not given in the associated WP article. i have the book, however, which I used in compiling my suggestions. as you might expect, this category combines all of nat. science, math, medicine, and technology. --Rikurzhen 05:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  about murray (2003) 

message: This is just food for thought. We have no African-American writers. Here are some contenders:
# Maya Angelou 
# Gwendolyn Brooks 
# Frederick Douglass
# W.E.B. DuBois 
# Alex Haley
# Langston Hughes
# Toni Morrison – Nobel Prize winner
# Walter Mosley 
# Alice Walker
# Booker T. Washington
# Richard Wright 
:Maurreen 06:24, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Out of that list, I would most want to see Frederick Douglass included. He was not only a prominent writer, but a great orator and activist both for African American rights and Women's rights (and long before most of the other people in the list). Kaldari 06:36, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Plus he has 4 support votes and no opposes, so I'm going to go ahead and add him. Langston Hughes might also be worth considering. Kaldari 07:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I would say Hughes or Wright would be the most obvious candidates, besides Douglass, who I agree with Kaldari is the best.  Ralph Ellison is another possibility.  But I might prefer an actual African writer, like Chinua Achebe.  john k 11:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: African-American literature

message: About eight people have made more than two edits to this page of the past 500. I'm thinking we could each add one or two more. Maybe unless there is overwhelming opposition to them, we just take them. Then we still have about four left to work out. This plan is not intended to discourage anyone new from joining in, but it's a way to move things along. How's that sound? Maurreen 16:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds a bit arbitrary, but probably much more efficient than dealing with the dozens of nominations that are still outstanding (which seem quite heavy on writers). So basically each person must determine who they think are the two most important people who are still absent from the list (while keeping an eye for breadth of representation). Then what do they do? Post them below and ask if anyone objects? Kaldari 19:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's what I had in mind. Maurreen 03:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Comments? Maurreen 04:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: New idea -- about two for each of us?

message: We need to find closure here and move on to actually improving the articles on our list. My picks: Queen Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc plange 02:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Looking better

message: I complied the data from 
#"A list of "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History" , chosen by Michael H. Hart.
#100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, from book by Martin Seymour-Smith
#Either of:
#*Life magazine's list of the Top 100 people who made the Millennium, ranked in order of importance. 
#*Time magazine's 100 people of the century
the list below are all those with 2 or 3 hits out of 3. those in bold/linked are not currently on the list. --Rikurzhen 20:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI -- looks like i missed a few b/c of spelling differences. --Rikurzhen 21:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a good idea. But I'm confused. You say "2 or 3 hits out of 3", but aren't you working from four lists? Maurreen 03:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That must have taken some time to compile, thanks. But how can both these lists add up to only 80 people? Maurreen 03:31, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I treated the two lists under #3 (above) as one, since they covered overlapping but distinct time periods. After I noticed the spelling-differences problem, I only updated with those that required discussion. The actual list might be closer to 90. I used software to do the hard part. --Rikurzhen 04:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If you have an interest in seeing these comparisons done is a more rigorous fashion, we could hand curate the names on a scratch page and then I can repeat the comparisons. Let me know. --04:15, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It appears that a great number of the names are unique to each list. --Rikurzhen 05:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, putting aside the "supplmental list", are you saying that "The list" are all those who are included in at least two of the source lists? Maurreen 06:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. There might have been even more if I had done the calculation different, but there at there are at least this many that are found in at least two of the source lists. --Rikurzhen 06:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I like this direction. I appreciate the energy you put into it. Maybe we could split the alphabet and pursue this idea further together? Maurreen 06:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: found +3 b/c of spelling differences. but two have already been seconded. JFK? --Rikurzhen 22:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  compiled list 

message: # Aquinas, Thomas
# Aristotle
# Bacon, Francis
# Beethoven, Ludwig Van
# Bell, Alexander Graham
# Bolivar, Simon
# Bonaparte, Napoleon
# Calvin, John
# Columbus, Christopher
# Confucius
# Copernicus, Nicolaus
# Curie, Marie
# Darwin, Charles
# de Beauvoir, Simone
# Descartes, Rene
# Edison, Thomas
# Einstein, Albert
# Queen Elizabeth I
# Euclid
# Fermi, Enrico
# Fleming, Alexander
# Ford, Henry
# Freud, Sigmund
# Galilei, Galileo
# Gandhi, Mohandas
# Gorbachev, Mikhail
# Hitler, Adolf
# Homer
# Jefferson, Thomas
# Kant, Immanuel
# JFK -- missed previously
# Kepler, Johannes
# Keynes, John Maynard
# Leonardo da Vinci
# Lincoln, Abraham
# Lister, Joseph
# Locke, John
# Luther, Martin
# Magellan, Ferdinand
# Marconi, Guglielmo
# Marx, Karl
# Maxwell, James Clerk
# Mendel, Gregor
# Michelangelo
# Newton, Isaac
# Pasteur, Louis
# Peter The Great
# Plato
# Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
# Shakespeare, William
# Smith, Adam
# Tolstoy, Leo
# Vasco da Gama
# William The Conqueror
# Wittgenstein, Ludwig
# Wollstonecraft, Mary
# Zedong, Mao
:found +3 b/c of spelling differences. but two have already been seconded. JFK? --Rikurzhen 22:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The list 

message: cross checked those with only 1 vote from the 3 sources above against Murray (2003) gives each of these and extra vote: --Rikurzhen 22:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  supplmental list 

message: We don't have to finish the list in the near future. We could just leave it for now. Maurreen 04:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Easy way out -- room to grow

message: These candidates are contested. Does anyone feel strongly about keeping these nominations alive? If not, we can archive them. Maurreen 08:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive? More contested

message: # Adi Shankara - Indian philosophy
## Support Rikurzhen 06:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philosophers 

message: # Jöns Jakob Berzelius - chem/physics
## Support Rikurzhen 06:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scientists 

message: # Ahmad ibn-al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi - Arabic literature
## Support Rikurzhen 06:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Writers 

message: #Phineas T. Barnum
##Support – Listed in at least two related published lists. Maurreen 09:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Miscellaneous