Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies/Archive 7

message: Each of the following should have at least two signed supporters.
If you vote oppose, please move the nominee to the "Contested" section below. 
===Acting, directing and related===
# Orson Welles
## Support. Maurreen 15:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition candidates -- unopposed

message: # Orson Welles
## Support. Maurreen 15:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Acting, directing and related

message: #Igor Stravinsky
##Support Rcpaterson 01:10, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Musicians

message: #Ludwig Wittgenstein
##Support – Listed in at least two related published lists. Maurreen 09:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Philosophers

message: # Marie Curie
## Support Kaldari 07:13, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Science

message: ; English language
# Joseph Conrad.  The great author on European colonialism.  Heart of Darkness possibly the most influential work of the 20th century. john k 10:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Writers

message: The rest have been archived. Maurreen 06:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maurreen 06:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Leave Du Fu and Hegel. I'm still considering them. Kaldari 07:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rontgen should be archived also. Maurreen 10:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Maurreen 05:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Addition candidates – contested or unsure

message: # Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - western philsopher (as a replacement probably)
## Support Rikurzhen 06:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Philosophy

message: * Columba
# Support. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 15:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Religion

message: # Du Fu - Chinese literature
## Support Rikurzhen 06:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Writers

message: I'll archive the following unless anyone says otherwise:
*Actors: Brando, Lee
*Philosopher: Hegel
*Politics: De Gaulle
*Writer: Du Fu
:Maurreen 06:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Leave Du Fu and Hegel. I'm still considering them. Kaldari 07:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rontgen should be archived also. Maurreen 10:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Maurreen 05:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive?

message: # Babe Ruth
##Support Not sure what kind of impact he's had outside of baseball and in a majority of countries plange 17:59, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Candidates for deletion

message: Once we reach 200 and the list becomes relatively stable, I would like to propose 2 subprojects:
#Going through the entire list and making sure every article has a WPBiography template and has been evaluated.
#Contacting other WikiProjects and asking them if they agree with our choices of who to include. For example asking WikiProject Germany if we have, in fact, listed the most important German political leaders. Alternately, if we could contact experts in certain fields, such as European literature, perhaps they could give us feedback on our choices.
Kaldari 21:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree on #1, but not on #2, since every project is going to have what is their Top, which is fine, and they'll submit their Top as recommendations for the encyclopedia for their field, but since ours is so broad, it'll be hard for less broad subjects to be objective. After all, we weren't supposed to go about this with the measuring stick of "let's fill in the top x political leaders from country y" but instead we evaluated people individually and then categorized them. In other words, the categories did not come first and so got filled accordingly. If that was the case, then #2 would make sense... That's why I'm having a hard time accepting some of the sports and music people over people like Queen Elizabeth I as it seems like people are seeing the categories and thinking they need to be filled. We don't actually have to have any sports people or dancers or singers if none of them meet our Top criteria. plange 21:39, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you're right. It might be too much of a can of worms to invite other WikiProjects to weigh in. I just want to make sure we've had enough knowledgable eyeballs involved in crafting this list. If anyone knows some good librarians or history professors, it might be worth getting their opinions at least. Kaldari 21:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Once we reach 200... 

message: The book 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium (1998) ranks the 1000 most influential people of the past millenium. Of their top 100, here are the 8 highest not on our list:
39. Francis of Assisi
47. William Harvey
55. Alexander Fleming
57. Toyotomi Hideyoshi
59. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (also seems to be on a lot of lists)
60. Chu Yüan-chang
62. Geoffrey Chaucer
Kaldari 00:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: let's register a vote from you and I and move these to the discussion section above. want to do the same with the other lists? --Rikurzhen 01:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  One More List 

message: Interestingly enough, some of our candidates are current nominations for collaborations. Here's the ones I could find. Might be good for us to go ahead and add our names to the ones we'd be interested in now, so they won't roll off and will hopefully get picked:
#Pele - voting ends August 26
#George Washington - voting ends August 17 (short by 3 votes only)
#Martin Luther King, Jr - ends Aug 20
#Confucius
::Oops, just assumed he was on here and just saw he wasn't on our list. Should he be? 
Anyone know of any others? plange 04:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had thought Confucius was on the list also. I'll check on it. Thanks. Maurreen 04:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Looking ahead 

message: I removed him from the list. Maurreen 06:08, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why Kaiser Bill? 

message: I added and archived most that were listed here. They were added as part of the “free picks” of the win-win proposition. Maurreen 06:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rehashing contested entries that have been removed

message: # Support. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 15:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Columba]]

message: I would like to re-suggest that we each get one or two "free picks", unless there is overwhelming oppositon to any of them. 
No list like this is going to make everyone happy. But with this suggested method, we can all get something we want, and do it fairly efficiently.
Plange can get Queen Elizabeth, Calgacus can get Columba, and so forth.
If you think the list is now missing one or two major people, please list them here, and people can make any comments they think are needed. 
If you think this is a bad idea, please say why or suggest a better way to handle the above case. Maurreen 03:33, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maurreen 03:33, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: plange 04:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Kaldari 04:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: VegaDark 06:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: john k 10:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: That was cute. :) Maurreen 15:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Rikurzhen 19:22, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: And Calgacus' picks. Maurreen 19:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Win-win proposition

message: In case we need them, this is a holding area for potential nominees. Or maybe even renominees also. Maurreen 08:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Contenders

message: Having, so to speak, knocked Urban II out of consideration might I make an appeal for at least one Pope?  There are a number of significant candidates, but the most obvious are probably Leo the Great and Innocent III, the most significant of the medieval popes.  Inevitably there would be a problem of categorization: I personally would see these men as politicians rather than 'Religious figures' as such.  They cannot, however, be 'nationalised' like the other figures in this category.
Rcpaterson 08:53, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Pius IX and John Paul II are other major candidates. ♠ SG →Talk 20:27, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Would personally nominate Pope Gregory VII and Pope Gregory I. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 21:07, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Alright, how about we list all of the aforementioned popes, and then each of us must pick one. Whichever pope has the most at the end of the vote will get added in. Sound good? ♠ SG →Talk 19:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  One Pope at least 

message: Once Calgacus's suggestions are added, I believe that leaves us with 4 slots. Personally I would like to see those slots used to broaden our coverage a bit. Here are my suggestions to cover 2 areas we currently do not have represented:
*Du Fu (Eastern literature) - although his impact outside of China has been relatively small (Kenneth Rexroth and Matsuo Basho are mentioned in the article), we have no non-Western writers in our list. Concensus among literary scholars seems to be that Du Fu is the most important non-Western writer in history. And even if his influence was mostly limited to China, that is 1/5 of the world's population! Kaldari 18:48, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the fact that there are currently no non-western writers is a little bit of a problem, esp. as there are 29 western writers, 14 of whom write in one language (i.e. English). Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 18:51, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I've said before, this is the English wikipedia.  There is nothing wrong with an English language encyclopedia having more discussion of writers who used the English language.  This is a bias, sure, if we're trying to compile a list of the "200 most important people who ever lived(!!)," but I think such a project is complete nonsense anyway.  Focusing on biographies of articles that people are likely to look for seems justifiable to me. john k 19:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  What's it being English wikipedia got to do with it?! Poor excuse if you ask me. In reality, lists such as these do little more than reveal the prejudice and ignorance of the people composing it. Doubtless a list written in 17th century China would contain 190 Chinese people, most of whom lived in the 17th and 16th century. This page is entitled "Core biographies"; it implies that those not on it are more important than those not. "Such a project is complete nonsense anyway", you say; well why participate? Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 00:30, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see nothing absurd in having a list of biographies of important people that readers are likely to look up, which we will try as a group to improve.  The idea that such a list could possibly comprise the "200 most important people ever" is ridiculous nonsense.  Do you really think that such a thing is possible?  With literature in particular, the fact that this is a written medium makes it completely relevant to focus more on works in the language we are writing in.  For one thing, our readers are more likely to look up, say, Yeats than Rilke, or Byron than Heine, or even, say, Dickens than Balzac.  This has nothing to do with the inherent merits of Yeats, Byron, and Dickens over those of Rilke, Heine, or Balzac.  It has to do with the fact that in the english-speaking world, English-speaking writers are more important.  Inherent importance is nearly impossible to arrive at.  To try to figure out the level of importance within a particular culture seems like a more plausible task, and the obvious culture to use in the English wikipedia is, um, that of English-speakers.  john k 02:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Ostensibly, I agree with you. In fact, I brought up the same point the last time he was nominated. However, I'm not sure I feel entirely comfortable having a list with no non-Western writers whatsoever (although arguably Sun Tzu could probably be considered as such). Kaldari 19:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And Confucius.  But I wasn't necessarily criticizing putting Du Fu (although I'm not a big supporter), just criticizing Calgacus' apparent position that there's something wrong with having half the writers be English language writers.  To me that seems like about the proper balance for an English language encyclopedia.  Now, that all of our English language writers are white, and most are men, is probably not good, and that 
I agree with John. Maurreen 03:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If we want to take Rockefeller, that's fine with me. But business is not completely nonrepresented; we have Henry Ford. Maurreen 19:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, good point. I didn't think about him. Kaldari 19:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: So obviously I think Curie, Fermi, and Fleming should get added unless there are good reasons not to. --Rikurzhen 20:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, that's what I was trying to say about Curie, Fermi, and Fleming. Maurreen 20:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: doh! short-term memory problem there. --Rikurzhen 20:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I understand where you're coming from, but I like to have a number to keep it from bloating. Maurreen 20:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking more a time limit to keep from bloating.  Just add people, then close it down. john k 21:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The last four 

message: Several popes have been suggested. These two appear to be the current leading candidates:
# Innocent III
# Pius IX 
The following are on at least three related published lists but not on ours:
# Marie Curie
# Enrico Fermi
# Alexander Fleming
Areas with little or no representation, leading contenders:
# African-American literature, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes
# African-American music; nominees were shot down earlier
# American Indians - Cochise, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Russel Means, William Least Heat Moon, Sequoyah, Sitting Bull, Jim Thorpe
# Business, John D. Rockefeller (added this afterward, I meant to include intitially Maurreen 20:02, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So obviously I think Curie, Fermi, and Fleming should get added unless there are good reasons not to. --Rikurzhen 20:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recapping, and similar lists

message: Question Have we missed any that have 3 or more hits (out of 6) from the previously published lists? They would be strong candidates for immediate consideration. --Rikurzhen 20:01, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's what I was trying to say about Curie, Fermi, and Fleming. Maurreen 20:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: doh! short-term memory problem there. --Rikurzhen 20:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I understand where you're coming from, but I like to have a number to keep it from bloating. Maurreen 20:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking more a time limit to keep from bloating.  Just add people, then close it down. john k 21:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ignore this 

message: The following are on at least three related published lists but not on ours:
# Marie Curie
# Enrico Fermi
# Alexander Fleming
;Should we include the three as as set?
#Support: 
##Maurreen 20:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Straw poll: Curie, Fermi, Fleming