Talk:France, history

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Nice start! this will be a major article. Richard Jensen 17:08, 11 December 2007 (CST)

I'm thinking maybe a shortened rundown of the Third Republic is needed, and the longer version should become its own article. What do you think? Denis Cavanagh 09:46, 16 December 2007 (CST)

I agree. I think we should write everything here first, then spin off speratae articles, then shorten the treatment here. The first goal is to get a full history of France without worrying that it is too long. Richard Jensen 16:19, 16 December 2007 (CST)

Just added a little on the effects of WWI and the early 1920s. Chronologically working my way to 1940 :-) I bypassed the Treaty of Versailled because that in itself is a rather large section. I'll try and get back to it at some stage. Denis Cavanagh 08:21, 31 January 2008 (CST)

good work--keep plugging away! Richard Jensen 08:24, 31 January 2008 (CST)

Don't move

At least leave a message on the talk page before doing something as rash as that. Personally I don't mind if its called 'History of France' but Richard Jensen believes France, history (Corresponding with other general history articles) works better, and frankly, I'm willing to accept the opinion of a retired history professor over mine (A Second Year history student) Denis Cavanagh 08:58, 6 February 2008 (CST)

I agree that there should be a name convention for Citizendium articles. Some of the history articles here are named like Britain, history and France, history, but most are named like History of astronomy. We should take just one standard and stick with it. Has this ever been discussed elsewhere? I think we should take the example of History of astronomy because Astronomy, history could result in ambiguity. For example, should the article about the history of architecture in Europe be named Architecture, Europe, history or Europe, architecture, history? Why should we write the title like that, when we could have a normal sentence like History of European architecture? Just because someone is a professor doesn't mean he is infallible. Always take everything with a grain of salt. Here's some examples of the history articles on Citizendium:

• History of pre-classical economic thought
• History of astronomy
• History of biology
• History of computing
• History of cricket
• History of geography
• History of linguistics
• History of Homeopathy
• History of philosophy of science
• History of Nepalese journalism
• History of philosophy of science
• History of robotics
• History of processors
• History of scientific method
• History of the kilt
• History of the English language
• History of vitamin C--Christian Liem 14:14, 6 February 2008 (CST)

Egads! It seems like History of (thing), and Place, history. --Robert W King 14:16, 6 February 2008 (CST)

See also Demography of Bhutan and Culture of Japan --Christian Liem 14:19, 6 February 2008 (CST)

This is something that has been discussed before [1] but I am unaware of a formal policy being adapted as of yet. The reasoning behind France, history as opposed to History of France is that 1) the keyword people are looking for would be France, thus we should list it first and 2) the articles will be organized in the system by topic, ie (France, geography;France, culture;France, history). I personally think this makes sense, with of course redirects for the most common method of searching "history of france". --Todd Coles 14:26, 6 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks for the link to that discussion. I think this is quite a pressing matter because Citizendium is growing rapidly and we need to settle on issues like this soon or risk many problems in the future. Since the discussion seems to go nowhere, with each side not willing to compromise, maybe it's time to consider polling? --Christian Liem 14:41, 6 February 2008 (CST)

point well taken about naming conventions. There are two reasons for "XXX, history": 1) In the history profession in US and Britain in the last decade, "History of XXX" is strongly avoided by authors, publishers and editors. The counter-examples given are from workgroups outside of history. 2) "XXX, history" is much neater and more logical than any other convention. (Compare, US History, American history, history of the USA," etc). When we have lots of articles it will make it much easier finding what we want. (I actually once wrote a duplicate article not realizing CZ already had an article under a different name.) So let's agree on a History workgroup policy. Richard Jensen 14:40, 6 February 2008 (CST)

It's not a policy yet. The discussion did not come to a conclusion that was accepted by all sides involved. --Christian Liem 14:43, 6 February 2008 (CST)

I used to (and in some ways I still do) believe that histories and other topics that are "tied" to a main subject should be a subpage, but I guess because of their size that cannot be the case. --Robert W King 14:45, 6 February 2008 (CST)

Is there a size constraint when it comes to subpages? I wasn't aware of that. I would agree to that convention. If we have France/Bibliography, why not France/History? --Christian Liem 14:48, 6 February 2008 (CST)

Well it isn't that there's a size constraint, but the bredth of the topic is so large that my impression is that people feel it deserves it's own article, which I can't necessarily argue against. --Robert W King 14:53, 6 February 2008 (CST)

The subpages were not designed for that. The history of France is a huge topic, worthy of it's own article. And there will most likely be links within the France article, as well as on the Related Articles tab to navigate someone to more specific topics dealing with France. The subpages were designed to hold "extra" information, ie galleries, catalogs, filmographies, etc. --Todd Coles 14:55, 6 February 2008 (CST)

At any rate, this subject has been discussed here and on the other page for such a long time, and everything that has to be said has been said. So it's time to make a decision. How do we go about making a new policy? --Christian Liem 19:31, 6 February 2008 (CST)

policy on things like naming conventions get set by the editors. That's mostly me for history articles. We need a policy but before we set it I want to be sure any proposed alternative solution is on the table. Richard Jensen 20:05, 6 February 2008 (CST)

That's a first step. And the naming conventions should not stop at history articles, but all Citizendium articles. --Christian Liem 20:35, 6 February 2008 (CST)

Just for the record, I don't regard Richard to be infalliable (My mother would begin to question my catholic roots if I did :-) )but am willing to accept his opinion which at any rate seems to make a lot of sense. Denis Cavanagh 08:58, 7 February 2008 (CST)

well, I attended Notre Dame U. back in the 1950s (sic) when "infallible" really meant something! Richard Jensen 10:33, 7 February 2008 (CST)

It seems that no one is really interested in discussing this seriously, which I think is a pity. Citizendium is an encyclopedia, and therefore should have clear rules and conventions about article names. No one has addressed my question above "Should the article about the history of architecture in Europe be named Architecture, Europe, history or Europe, architecture, history?" --Christian Liem 15:51, 7 February 2008 (CST)

We're getting there. There's at least one forum topic open on the subject, which lead me to create a proposed "CZ:Proposals" page which I hope will get some feedback so these kinds of initiatives can be proposed and decided on a site-wide basis. Things are slow to move around here, sometimes you must be patient ;) --Robert W King 15:57, 7 February 2008 (CST)

on the question of "Architecture, Europe, history", that is the form I would recommend, with the most important keywords first. (but it's not in our history workgroup domain so we don't make policy there.)Richard Jensen 17:24, 7 February 2008 (CST)

Posted on the thingy Robert created; http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Proposals

Also, I would be opposed to moving these survey articles to a subpage; Just look at how much info is there for the Third Republic - seventy years of French history. And that in itself could easily be doubled. Denis Cavanagh 11:31, 8 February 2008 (CST)