Category talk:Gens Caecilia (Nova Roma)

Listing of Stirpes?

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Given that this happens to be one of the gentes in Nova Roma whose familiae are modeled on the known ancient familiae, would it be desirable to include a listing of the stirpes (there's only one at present) of the Caecilii, as well as a history of them, in their own category pages (listing, then, each individual in its respective stirps)? Q. Caecilius Metellus 18:32, 28 October 2006 (CDT)

I would suggest trying without a separate category for each stirps to begin with. The biography-links should be listed alphabetically by cognomen on the category page, so the members of each stirps will be listed together. Perhaps it will turn out in due course that some or all of the stirpes merit their own categories, but I think it would be better to start without.

Incidentally, this raises an interesting general point. At the moment our policy of putting "(Nova Roma)" at the end of all articles on modern Roman matters creates an absolute dichotomy between modern and ancient Roman history. In some ways that makes sense (it makes it easier to tell the difference between an article on L. Sulla cos. 88 and L. Sulla cos. 1999), but it also puts an obstacle in the way of any feeling of continuity between old and new. If we regard you, Metelle, as a member of the same gens and stirps as the ancient Caecilii Metelli, then shouldn't you be listed in the same category as they? And if so, should it be in "Gens Caecilia (Nova Roma)" or "Gens Caecilia"? Or should one page redirect to the other (if indeed that can be done with category pages)? Hmm. It's worth thinking about. I wonder whether we should rethink the whole policy of distinguishing between the two. Would it be so difficult just to have a disambiguation page saying "there are several people in Roman history called L. Cornelius Sulla: one was consul in 88 and dictator in 81, another was consul in 1999..."?

- Cordus 20:25, 28 October 2006 (CDT)

Categories as Disambig Pages

I was thinking of using a table like the following to help disambiguate between myself and the earlier Caecilius Metellus:

Thoughts, anyone?

Q·CAEC·MET·POST 03:34, 7 January 2007 (CET)

I personally don't see the value of all of these category pages. If I want to see the list of Caecilii in Nova Roma, I go to the Album Civium and do a search. Individual civis pages there link to the bios in the wiki. If I am looking for a bio of someone in particular (citizen or ex-citizen) I can use the wiki search function. I think the simplest thing would be to disambiguate at the top of the two bio pages in question. This is already done on Quintus Metellus. That said, these cat pages do no particular harm, except perhaps in that they might keep people from turning to the search function. Since we no longer have heads of gentes, I could see the logic behind one big cat for "citizens" and another big cat for "ex-citizens", BTW. Agricola 04:24, 7 January 2007 (CET)

I think you see the value of the category pages when you start from pages in the category rather than from the category page itself. One of the crucial things about Roman culture, as you know, is the large variety of networks and categories which bind people together. That's why I think it's important, when looking for example at a biographical article, to be able to see instantly to which tribe, province, gens, &c. that person belongs or belonged. The categories are a convenient way to do this. It's true that one can tell which gens the person is in by looking at his name, but it is nonetheless a category of equal importance to the others and is worth using even at the risk of some redundancy. Also, as well as telling you which networks a person is in and therefore how he fits into society, the categories provide an easy way to find other people to whom that person is linked through those different networks.

It's true that people could find most of this information through the album civium, but the problem is that they would not necessarily think of asking the question. By providing the answer, we remind people of the questions they should be asking when researching any Roman, ancient or modern.

Finally, it strikes me as convenient to have the category pages double as substantive articles. This is more efficient than having one page containing a list of all the Caecilii and then a separate page containing information about the gens, especially since someone seeking the latter will often find the former useful and vice versa. This is why I tend to think that text from separate articles about gentes should be moved onto the category pages. Whether it is better to have ancient and modern members of a gens in the same category or in separate ones remains an important question.

- Cordus 16:04, 14 August 2007 (CEST)

I see your point, Corde. For classes with dynamic membership (e.g. "citizens") a category with an ample top end may be a good choice. For classes with fairly static membership (e.g. "Roman poets") a non-category index page may work as well. See Lucretius for an example. Agricola 18:00, 14 August 2007 (CEST)