User talk:Aldus Marius Peregrinus

Revision as of 22:06, 13 August 2007

Amici dignitatis article

Thanks for adding that information about the name and the reasoning behind it. Does the article in general strike you as reasonably fair and accurate? If anything I tried to err on the side of being too positive about the group, on the assumption that there are fewer people around to stick up for it than there are who are likely to disparage it; but as for accuracy, I'm limited by not having been around at the time and being reliant on the public archives of the 'main list', which have holes in them at some important moments (in particular about four weeks of messages are missing between the middle of February and the middle of March 2001 - a rather crucial moment, I imagine!).

- Cordus 21:06, 16 July 2007 (CEST)

I thought the article was more than fair; I was quite impressed with it actually. I think it would have taken someone who was not there at the time to really pull it off. Being able to read our "statement" for themselves will really help those who hear the group mentioned and wonder what all the fuss was about.

I am actually rather concerned about the fairness (or NPOV, if you prefer) of anything I might contribute about events during my tenure. I don't rant about these things...but one must understand that it is impossible for me to be truly objective about them. I think this was understood when I was asked to join the Wiki project. Barring complete objectivity, then, I see my role as a clarifier, an explainer, a filler-in of missing pieces. I've been asked to remember things. To the extent possible, I shall do so without intentionally causing divisions in the community. But the events involving me were divisive in themselves. There's no getting around that. I suspect most of my stuff will still need to be reviewed by a neutral party.

Gratias ago for "putting us in our place"! <g> -- Marius Peregrinus 05:39, 17 July 2007 (CEST)

Article on the rixa Fimbriana

Sources

An interesting question. I'm almost certain that we have no policy. In my view there is no reason at all why you shouldn't use any material which is in your possession. That view stands on four legs.

First, I hold it as a general principle that a person who doesn't want it known that he has said something shouldn't say it in the first place.

Secondly, to give someone a veto over any attempt to quote words which he himself has said, even many years ago, would be totally inimical to a well-informed public, to a thriving academic life, and to a free press.

Thirdly, secrecy is essentially alien to the political and social culture of the ancient Roman republic, which was characterized by probably the most transparent government the world has ever known.

Fourthly, most modern legal systems of which I am aware, not to mention the ancient Roman legal system, place minimal restrictions on the publication of private correspondence, limited only to cases in which the correspondents have a right to expect privacy and there is a strong public interest in upholding that right, for example in confidential communications between lawyer and client or between doctor and patient.

So I say go for it.

(This does, however, raise an interesting practical point about whether, and to what extent, we should be publishing primary sources on the website itself. So far the tendency has been to link to primary sources off-site, except for the texts of leges and other documents which essentially belong to the people because the people, or the people's officers, made them in the first place. But now we're talking about primary sources which aren't available on other websites, and I can't see any reason why we shouldn't house them on this website, at least as an experiment. We may have to play around with how much quotation of primary sources we have in main articles and how much we keep on separate pages. Come to think of it, photographs are also primary sources of a kind, and we have quite a few of those on here already.)

- Cordus 00:05, 14 August 2007 (CEST)