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Category talk:Dialogues of Plato

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Contents
1 Naming conventions for Biocrawler articles on Plato's texts

1.1 Update - Francis Schonken 12:23, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
1.2 The proposed scheme

2 Remarks of Savonarola

2.1 Remarks
2.2 Replies

2.2.1 Francis
2.2.2 Savonarola
2.2.3 Francis

2.3 New scheme by Savonarola & comments by others

3 Objections to renaming
4 Incomplete introduction of new renaming scheme
5 Survey Proposal
6 I'm lost - what is the issue?

6.1 Mel Etitis's objections
6.2 Further discussion
6.3 The possibilities
6.4 Further discussion

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Naming conventions for Biocrawler articles on Plato's texts

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Update - Francis Schonken 12:23, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The new scheme has been implemented as fair as I could, note however:

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The proposed scheme

Naming of articles treating Plato's dialogues seperately is confusing, I propose following renamings (per tetralogy):

note 1: Since
works marked (1) (scholars don't generally agree that Plato is the author)
and
works marked (2) (scholars generally agree that Plato is not the author of the work)
might lead to discussion if marked "(Plato)", I'd mark these "(dialogue)", except where these works are no dialogues.
note 2: This proposition is on Talk:Plato too – I propose to have the discussion here

--Francis Schonken 12:56, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Remaining works (most of them considered spurious already in antiquity):

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Remarks of Savonarola

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Remarks

I don't understand why you have created this convention which seems to me both unnecessary and contrary to the conventions already in use. Works should be named by their title when there appears to be no other usage of the name (eg Phaedo), and by standard naming convention otherwise [eg Laws (book) or Laws (Plato book) only in the case that Laws (book) already refers to another work which has higher priority]. That being said, I would imagine most any work named as "Title (book)" would likely have the name priority, being a Platonic work. But this "Title (Plato)" convention in my opinion smacks of bad form and largely unnecessary disambiguation. I respect your work in the Philosophy section, but I beg you to reconsider on this matter. Thank you. --Girolamo Savonarola 23:25, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

Using this quote: "there is no written work of my own on my philosophy, and there never will be. For this philosophy cannot possibly be put into words as other sciences can. The sole way of acquiring it is by strenuous intellectual communion and intimate personal intercourse" (Plato's Letters, No. 7, 341 B-E.), it would be hard to assign the term "author" or "authorship" to any works of Plato, seeing authouship implies writing. Nobs 16:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

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Replies

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Francis

Sorry I didn't know about the naming convention for literary works (had been looking for it but didn't find at the time I proposed the Plato scheme). Note however that the scheme you mention somehow has difficulties for these writers from antiquity (and beyond - I think even till about 19th century):

  1. Writers from Antiquity: there's not always uniformity as to the translation of the title in English - for Latin (etc.) writers, using Latin script, there's not so much of a problem (one can give the title in the original language, e.g. De re publica) - Greek script for article names in English wikipedia doesn't seem all that obvious - or would that be an option?
  2. Because those antique writers were not inhibited to use the same title for their works, this means the "... (book)" method does not always disambiguate properly, e.g. Republic (book); Apology (book); Histories (book), Letters (book), Lives (book), etc... would be quite meaningless, referring to several authors each of them.
  3. For writers from antiquity (and later) a single work can be subdivided in several books: Tacitus' Annals; Bodin's Republic, Plato's Republic, etc... all have this structure - makes e.g. "Republic (book)" seem a bit odd for someone acquainted with antiquity, even if reffering to the work of a single author.
  4. For Plato nearly each of his titles has another meaning: most of his titles are names of persons which already have (or soon might have) a separate article; other works by Plato mostly share a title with works of other authors (Laws; Letters; Republic...)
  5. Note that the scheme I proposed borrows from naming conventions in classical music (e.g. Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)) - which was the nearest naming convention I could find to solve most of the issues relating to Plato.

For the dialogues which are not in certainty to be ascribed to Plato, I had proposed "... (dialogue)" (instead of "... (book)") as a naming scheme (note that at the time I proposed that, there were already some Plato dialogues marked "... (dialogue)").

"... (Plato book)" appears to me as a very unelegant way to tackle this - at least I'd prefer "... (Plato dialogue)" in most cases but don't think this particularly elegant either; but if this is the agreed naming convention, no problem to change to it.

See also above on this page: this might make you understand better why & how I proposed what I proposed.

--Francis Schonken 08:03, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

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Savonarola

The points you have raised are technically interesting and curious. However, I believe that much of this may have precedent, so I'm going to do a little digging around the policy and style pages... I've edited your bullets into numbers so as to make responses more clear.

I concede the book vs. dialogue point - I was writing quickly and thus wrote book. Clearly dialogue is the more accurate term.

Before all else, I should like to point out that Biocrawler:Naming_conventions has created specific specialized conventions for particular naming quandries. That being said...I do believe that most of these problems mentioned are not native to this particular instance, and come down more to disambiguation decisions and language style preferences which already are in effect for most articles on creative works. In any case...

  1. Biocrawler:Naming_conventions_(use_English) very clearly seems to point towards English titles unless the vernacular is overwhelmingly used. I'd simply say that the transliteration of the vernacular should be a redirect to the main article. As for the Greek alphabet - leave that to the Greek version of the Biocrawler. I'm not saying it shouldn't be rendered in the opening paragraph - that's standard style - but if someone's searching the English version, they generally would be searching with a Latin alphabet.
  2. I would argue that most titles have a dominant point of reference. See Biocrawler: Disambiguation, but if several have an equal claim to dominance, then a disambiguation page (eg Mercury) would be the article, which could be further clarified within the established conventions - "Republic (book)" and "Republic (dialogue)" or "Republic (Plato dialogue)" and "Republic (Smith dialogue)". You certainly don't need to shackle ever Platonic dialogue with a parenthetical, though - I am certain that many of the titles are more or less unique. If a title has clear dominance over others, then the article for that dominant title should occupy the space, along with a link at the top for diambiguation of the other titles (eg DNA). I would posit that "The Republic" predominantly belongs to Plato's work, while "Republic" clearly should discuss the form of government at large, but possibly link to Plato's work as a diambiguation.
  3. I concede the point of using another term than book for parentheticals - I should indeed be a more specific form or genre of literary work attributed.
  4. I believe that the article "Parmenides" should refer to the man. And "Parmenides (dialogue)" should refer to the work. I am not familiar with the number of works which can fit the title "Republic (dialogue)", "The Republic (dialogue)", or "Laws (dialogue)", but I am confident that it is nothing that cannot be handled with either disambiguation or a moderate usage of (Plato dialogue) where there truly are several well-known dialogues acknowledged as having that title.
  5. The classical music scheme is biased, however, to work around a difficulty posed by the previously established naming convention of classical music. It would be superfluous to clarify "Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)" as "Symphony No. 1 (Mahler symphony)". It is not usually as obvious that a title refers to a dialogue.

It does seem to me silly, however, that we're content to have "The Apology" as an article as it is, and then encumber "Euthyphro" to be "Euthyphro (Plato)", when clearly there is no need to; nothing else needs that name except the dialogue. And so on.

I am not familiar with the rest of the community here who are working on the philosophy sections, but I would imagine that there are many titles which require some degree of disambiguation. It would be curious to see what strategies were adopted. Absent of that, I propose sticking with the established conventions, which seem to me more than able to handle these titles.

Thank you.

--Girolamo Savonarola 08:38, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

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Francis

Thank you too... I worked on my scheme proposal some time ago, trying to trigger reactions from other wikipedians (by posting links to this page on several talk pages) - glad finally someone takes the thing at heart too.

I'm aware I should do some effort w.r.t. to the "literary works" naming conventions guideline too - I'm glad you have the intention to dig in that - since this "Plato" naming conventions is quite far out of my usual competences I agree to whatever this results in.

I only started this because the names of articles related to Plato were a complete mess when I arrived here first (... when working on Satie's Socrate ...) - Some were "Plato's Title" others were "Title (dialogue)" and what not...

What I'd propose, if you care to work on this, is that you make a list too, like I did above, of all of Plato's works. Note that this list, if it is agreed upon, traditionally features on the Plato page, all of Plato's works hyperlinked - that's where the creation of new articles on Plato's works usually starts.

A last hint: indeed some of the English titles of Plato's works are particularily cumbersome. The most cumbersome I think the one that is now Republic (Plato) - if you'd have a good alternative for that article title I'd be more than glad - see e.g. politeia, Res publica, De re publica, Republicanism, Republic (disambiguation), Republic, and the 7 (sic) archives of the talk page of that last page of how confusing the usual English title of that dialogue by Plato is. Other (comparatively minor) issues include e.g. the present symposium (Plato) - symposium (Xenophon) ambiguity (note that both of these are qualified "socratic dialogue"); another the maybe yes-or-no by Plato "definitions" and "epigrams" (...which are no dialogues); the fact that some titles in classical litterature are about as "generic" as "symphony" is for a classical composer (e.g. Letters); etc...

--Francis Schonken 10:03, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

PS: The Apology presently redirects to a disambiguation page - indeed there are two Socratic dialogues most often translated as The Apology of Socrates (where Plato's is more a monologue) - only by intuition I suppose that when talking about "The Apology" without naming an author, the work by Plato is more often intended than the work by Xenophon (Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, a classic in the Catholic world, would, for some, be a good candidate too I suppose), but who am I to start a discussion on that; to disambiguate in a first step, as it is now, appears a very suitable option to me. --Francis Schonken 13:32, 13 May 2005 (UTC)


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New scheme by Savonarola & comments by others

I understand that you were the first on the scene to propose a reform; it's good that someone made the effort! Here is my revised list as I would like to see it. I have omitted links at the moment. Your Republic example is notable, but again, nothing that cannot be effectively and fairly dealt with via disambigs, redirects, and so on.

Note that I have made all these recommendations in the good faith that these titles are the agreed upon standards. If a work has several potentially dominant titles, please inform first. Non-English titles do not count unless overwhelmingly used over the English ones.

  • I.
    • Euthyphro
    • Apology - set page to Plato work, with disambiguation link at top of article, which should handle Xenophon fine. Make certain The Apology redirects to Apology instead of being slightly slimmer second disambig. (Though the Xenophon parenthetical is another matter altogether, and my mind is not clear about how to characterize it at the moment.)
    • Crito
    • Phaedo
  • II.
    • Cratylus
    • Theaetetus - merge with mathematician, given the lack of info for him found outside the work
      • According to French wikipedia ([1] (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A9t%C3%A8te_%28dialogue_de_Platon%29)), Theaetetus is also mentioned in Theodorus of Cyrene (but that appears to be a person not a work).
        • Yes, but it seems that the only attribution they give him is that he is mentioned in the work. I don't think that's enough to warrant a seperate page.
    • Sophist (dialogue)
      • Disambig, or at least "see also"-link at sophism - what happens with sophist page (which is presently redirect to "sophism")?
        • Agreed. I left this implied; should have specified.
    • Statesman (dialogue) - will need a disambig at Statesman page.
  • III.
    • Parmenides (dialogue)
    • Philebus
    • Symposium (Plato dialogue) - also revise Xenophon's accordingly
    • Phaedrus (dialogue)
  • IV.
    • Alcibiades (dialogues)|First Alcibiades
    • Alcibiades (dialogues)|Second Alcibiades
    • Hipparchus (dialogue)
    • Rival Lovers
  • V.
    • Theages
    • Charmides
    • Laches (dialogue) - add disambig to Laches top or make Laches a disambig page entirely
    • Lysis (dialogue)
  • VI.
    • Euthydemus (dialogue)
    • Protagoras (dialogue)
    • Gorgias (dialogue)
    • Meno
  • VII.
    • Hippias (dialogues)|Greater Hippias
    • Hippias (dialogues)|Lesser Hippias
    • Ion (dialogue)
    • Menexenus
  • VIII.
    • Clitophon
    • Republic (dialogue)
      • Cicero's Republic is also a dialogue! - so would need to be Republic (Plato dialogue) and Republic (Cicero dialogue), which would give new discussion between the factions that have their preferred translation of the title of the Cicero dialogue (see De re publica, "what's in a title" section)
        • Keep with conventions. The ambiguity of titles is adequately mentioned within both articles. I say leave De re publica as it is and Republic (dialogue) go to Plato, if only because that is the traditional English title. (Cicero's traditionally seems to remain in the Latin, since as you note, there is no traditional English title.)
    • Timaeus (dialogue)
    • Critias - merge with Critias (Plato), as article is minor
  • IX.
    • Minos (dialogue) - make disambig at top of Minos
    • The Laws - make disambig at top that sends them to Laws
      • This I think incoherent - would Plato's Laws be the only one with a "The", why not "The Republic (Plato dialogue)", etc - I'd suggest Laws (dialogue) instead
        • I have already moved this to Laws (dialogue), but thinking about it again, The Laws already redirects to the article. Apparently no one else does use The Laws! The Republic is only not used because of the plethora of articles which can legitimately lay claim to it. Laws refers to several things. The Laws does not. I'm not averse to moving the article again, but perhaps we should think about it.
    • Epinomis
    • Letters (Plato) - leave as is, only because the alternative is Letters (Plato letters). See my comments above about musical works' naming conventions.

Remaining works (most of them considered spurious already in antiquity):

  • Axiochus
  • Definitions (dialogue) - needs to be added to the disambig for Definition, too
    • I hadn't realised this was a dialogue
      • Do we have further information on it? I read somewhere that Apology was the only Platonic work not in dialogue form.
  • Demodocus (dialogue)
  • Epigrams (Plato) - leave as is for same reasoning as Letters
  • Eryxias
  • Halcyon (dialogue)
  • On Justice
  • On Virtue
  • Sisyphus (dialogue)

Furthermore, all links and redirects need to be conformed ASAP to point directly to the new agreed upon name.

Well, here is the crux of the issue, who's going to perform all that??? - please also respect talk pages to be moved coherently, check double redirects, etc, etc --Francis Schonken 07:28, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Opinions?

--Girolamo Savonarola 03:22, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

  • Most redirects now implemented. Three (Apology, Phaedo, and Theaetetus) require admin intervention and have been noted at WP:RM. I have responded to comments on particular names above. Redirects still need to be dealt with; I am happy to do that soon (but need sleep now...). --Girolamo Savonarola 04:27, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
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Objections to renaming

My worries fall into two categories: worries concerning the procedure, and worries concerning the policy.

With regard to the procedure, this has been pushed through very quickly by one person, with one other editor participating in the discussion. I, for one, was unaware of what was going on until a dialogue on my watch list was moved, with no reason given; it was only when I reverted the move and queried it that I discovered this page. That is surely not acceptable practice.

With regard to the policy: first, I frankly can't see the point. The existing names were perfectly clear, and the single style made it easy to refer to one of them in another article; now, one will have to check each link to discover whether it's a redirect or not. Secondly, Many of the dialogues are named after one of the main characters, some of whom warrant separate articles. The current change prejudges which of those articles will be written, for no good reason. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:37, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

  • To address your two concerns, I agree with you that the procedure was rushed, and concede the point. I will leave off any further changes until a fuller concensus is reached. (I guess I was a bit too bold!)
However, as far as policy goes, it is my opinion that while the existing names were clear, they were also unnecessary and contra to the standard and consistent formatting that one should be able to expect. Are we to name all works with parentheticals for their authors? That is quite silly and superfluous, in my opinion. I also vigorously disagree as far as the characters go - Plato's characters exist as foils to bounce ideas off of or represent other modes of thought. Those who have a significant attribution outside of Plato's works (eg Parmenides) should have their own pages, yes. But to use your example, Meno? Do we really need an article on the character Meno? It would seem to me that there is little to say that cannot and should not ideally be addressed within the article on the work. Just as I would oppose the idea of an having a page for the work Romeo and Juliet as well as seperate pages for Romeo and Juliet each (disambigs not included). Hence I do not understand why someone should be redirected to Meno (Plato) or Euthyphro (Plato) or Phaedo (Plato) when dropping the parentheticals is intuitive, clear, direct, and has no ambiguity with regards to the content. That's why I started all this - I was reading the first tetralogy and saw no good reason why each article a) needed a parenthetical (The Apology exempted) and b) the articles which did use parentheticals didn't use standard works ones. If we are not going to adhere to accepted standards and conventions with regards to naming, then why are we putting so much effort into defending an excessive non-convention? Again, to use the Romeo and Juliet metaphor, must we name every article on a Shakespeare play with the (Shakespeare) parenthetical?
If there are specific works to which you believe the proposed renaming to be inadequate or inappropriate, I would very much like to hear your objections and reasoning so that we can indeed come to concensus.
This all being said, the entire history of this page has consisted of two users prior to you. While that is not an excuse for my rushed actions, I hope you will understand if the lack of input led me to decide to shrug my shoulders and just get the ball rolling. At least it has allowed for someone else to bring their thoughts to the table! --Girolamo Savonarola 20:46, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
With regard to the last point, it's also mine — how would anyone have known that this debate was going on? people with interests in the dialogues won't always have the Category page on their Watch list (I didn't).
On the main points, I can only repeat my initial arguments. If the dialogues weren't named as they are, and the proposal was to change them, perhaps your arguments would have had some weight — but I don't see that it's a good enough reason to change them all, together with all of their redirects and the links from other articles. Wouldn't your time (and ours) be better spent working on the articles themselves, many of which are in need of work? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:56, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
That's merely argumentum ad antiquitam there. Just because things are as they are doesn't mean that they necessarily are properly in order. I don't see how that truly affects your work - we clean up the links and the article is otherwise the same. Biocrawler needs content writers as much as it needs editors; if you prefer to do the former only, then by all means do it. My knowledge of Plato is somewhat limited - I don't feel up to the task of editing a full-scale article. That does not, however, disqualify me from doing what I can to improve the naming standards, which are within my capabilities (I believe). But if you have a good argument for why the names are better as they are (beyond the fact that they are what they are), then I'm curious to hear it. I'd also like to note that Francis did put up a note regarding this discussion on the Plato page itself. Perhaps the error then has arisen from not properly posting it within all the articles to be affected. Again, I take responsibility for the mistake. But we're here now. --Girolamo Savonarola 00:32, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
Furthermore, I would like to refer to specific conventions - Biocrawler:Naming_conventions#Literary_works, where it clearly states that disambiguation priority goes to the general type of work, then to the author's name only if needed. Also see Biocrawler:Naming_conventions_(precision), where it states "The basic rule is that, unless you are absolutely sure that a related usage deserves or has an article, no disambiguation is necessary." This can be seen reflected in Biocrawler:Naming_conventions#Pieces_of_music, where the War Requiem does not have disambiguation, whereas the other two do. But note that the usage of the last name for disambiguation is due to the superfluousness of trying to disambig a Symphony No. 6 as Symphony No. 6 (Mahler symphony) instead of just (Mahler). Virtually all Platonic texts can either be freed of an disambig parenthetical or use (dialogue) at the end. Understand that I'm not trying to browbeat here, but rather to elucidate my methodology. --Girolamo Savonarola 00:43, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
  1. It is often the case that positions are finely balanced, so that while a certain argument would count against change it's not strong enough to justify change. I hold that your argument here is at best in that position
  2. General conventions are flexible enough to be adapted to different cases. Here, we have a body of work by a certain author, consisting of individual pieces often bearing the names of characters (who were often real people), and sometimes with titles duplicated by other works. The choice is between applying a unifying convention that takes into account the specific issues and adopting no such convention, instead treating each work separately. I accepted the original arguments for the former approach, and there was consensus for it (which is why it was implemented). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
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Incomplete introduction of new renaming scheme

Which of the schemes I think "best" is of minor importance compared to the general principle of "avoiding mess"... which was not avoided by the incomplete introduction of the new scheme:

Of course, Mel has a point there was no real need to introduce the new scheme, and most of all, there was a lack of drawing attention of the persons involved in working on the Plato articles to give their opinion.

Personally, I'd propose to revert to the scheme proposed on top of this page (which is coherent with the links in Plato#Bibliography); and then have a look at the Stephanus pagination article to be made conforming with that scheme too.

Anybody having a problem with that?

--Francis Schonken 07:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

PS - Funny quote (as I was re-reading Machiavelli's Prince lately, this is from ch. VI)

... as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe.

(Of course I have a very bad character to quote such unapplicable quotes just for the fun of it, pfui, shame on me, this is worse than BJAODN) --Francis Schonken 08:07, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal, and oppose the new naming scheme for the reasons that I've given above. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:49, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I've not moved the articles after considering the above opposition, making it one for and one against the move. violet/riga (t) 14:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

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Survey Proposal

:Consensus must be reached about the nature of the survey before it starts. Allow about a week for this process. You will need to resolve the following issues:

  1. What questions should be asked?
  2. What will the possible answers be?
  3. Where a question has three or more possible answers, are people allowed to select more than one answer?
  4. When is the deadline?
  5. How will the survey be totalled?
  6. Will there be a summary of arguments, or a series of mini-essays, or some other way to inform users prior to the survey.
So can we at least agree to hold a survey and put together an agreed format? --Girolamo Savonarola 20:51, 2005 May 23 (UTC)
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I'm lost - what is the issue?

I came here from the RFC, but after reading the whole talk page, I don't understand what's being proposed, or what the dispute is... There seems to be a proposed new naming convention for Plato articles, but I don't really see how this is a dispute requiring further input. I also don't exactly understand what the two (or more) sides are. Could someone clearly lay out the two(or more) suggested naming conventions? Then I (or other innocent bystanders) could more easily provide thoughts on their relative benefits. You all see to want the best for the 'pedia, which is always a pleasure to see in a dispute. Hope I can help. JesseW 10:01, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • The issue is whether the naming convention should be either a) every work's name followed by a Plato parenthetical - eg Phaedo (Plato), or b) every work's name followed by a class parenthetical, and then only if needed - eg Phaedo, since there is no disambiguation need, and Parmenides (dialogue), since Parmenides is also a famous philosopher. Basically, we're talking the first scheme at the top of the page (March 5) vs. mine at the middle (May 15). I'd argue that my proposal is much closer to the standards of naming conventions and the manual of style and that the counter-arguements are not compelling enough (all discussed in detail above), but that is of course my opinion... :) --Girolamo Savonarola 15:13, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

The RfC should now be removed, as there was a poll which gained no consensus, and so no change should be made. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:26, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I specifically messaged you, among others, Mel, so as to come to a consensus regarding the survey. You made no effort whatsoever to offer any opinions. If non-participation in a discussion is consensus, I'm boggled. What's more, you called out my original attempts to rename the pages because of lack of consensus. I thought I was being bold, but recognized that if someone was complaining, it was worth sitting down to discuss the issue. That you disagree with me is one thing, but wanting to bury the issue by walking away from it, as if that has decided the matter when clearly nothing was resolved, is completely unacceptable. Either participate or don't. --Girolamo Savonarola 16:57, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

(this section below moved to streamline discussion)

Thank you, that does help clarify things. My next question is which system (or combination of systems) is in place now? Where would the "no change" Mel refers to below leave us? JesseW 17:15, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, the problem is that renames have been performed on most of these pages at least several times - many of them long before this discussion. Therefore, at the moment there is no standard across the board, nor could there be without formal requests to the admins. I did attempt this recently, but Mel protested that it be decided here, where, to the best of my knowledge, he said nothing further on the matter, nor did he encourage anyone else to. I have carefully looked over the dispute resolution steps for many weeks now so as to at least give this entire discussion a clear closure, but every step I have tried (including, until now, RfC) has led to nothing. I believe that I have been bold when necessary, but also acted in good faith where objections were raised. The only other active contributor to this discussion was Francis, who I suppose has a position somewhere in between mine and Mel's. I originally came here with critiques of his proposal, which he seemed interested in at least discussing, even where he disagreed with particulars. --Girolamo Savonarola 17:28, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
  1. I said that there was no consensus.
  2. I'd expressed my objections to the proposed moves. I didn't see any reason to repeat them. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:29, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Which is precisely why there was a need for a survey - so as to elicit outside opinions to CREATE a consensus, because at the moment all we have is a deadlock between two people. I messaged all those involved in the discussion already to put forth their ideas for a survey. I could've easily just popped one together and placed it onto the Ongoing Surveys section, but I respected that there needed to be an agreement as to how such as survey was crafted, as set forth in the survey guidelines. Mostly, I'm honestly frustrated at this point, because I have tried to follow policy and guidelines throughout, while assuming good faith, and nothing seems to get resolved. I am more than happy to concede my position, but I refuse to do so without there being a clear decision which is within the lines of policy for resolution. If you disagree with me Mel, that's fine. I object to the attempts to block me through inaction, and then suddenly becoming active when I try to do things like RfC and the like. If you want this to be decided, why not just support the idea of a survey, and we'll both agree to respect the results of the outcome regardless of which way it falls? --Girolamo Savonarola 17:35, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

OK, it is getting clearer and clearer. Mel, I assume the objections you refered to are found here: Category_talk:Dialogues_of_Plato#Objections_to_renaming. And the "proposed moves" are here: Category_talk:Dialogues_of_Plato#New_scheme_by_Savonarola_.26_comments_by_others. If this wrong, please correct me. Assuming this, it seems that some of the "proposed moves" have been already done - does Mel (or anyone else) object to them? Mel, of the remaining "proposed moves"(it would be good to relist them so it's clear what the current status is), I assume your previously stated objections still apply to them? JesseW 04:08, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Mel Etitis's objections

I'm now going to restate Mel's objections (as I understand them):

  • minor: links will have to be checked to see if they are redirects or not.
  • the "proposed moves" "prejudges" which of the article titles may conflict with articles on characters(i.e. Parmenides)
  • the proposal has been insufficiently justified, considering how recently the article titles were changed

If I have mis-stated or left out any of your objections, Mel, please correct me. JesseW 04:08, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC) (edited 22:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))

[edit]

Further discussion

The first is a minor one, though of day-to-day editing concern. I'd add (I can't remember where I've said this before, I'm afraid — it's out there somewhere) that there needs to be good reason to change the naming system, especially when it has so recently been changed; the criteria are more stringent than if we were deciding in advance how to name a set of as-yet unwritten articles. As the original moves were made without proper consultation, I think that they ought to be reveresd.
Girolamo Savonarola's complaint seems to be that, once the issue was made more public, very few people showed an interest, resulting in a rejection of his proposal through "no consensus". Well, that happens; it would be more productive to go on to something else, rather than trying to rerun the debate (with an RfC that has attracted just one extra person, so that the result can't be altered no matter which side you favour). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to add that I honestly believe that should a survey be placed on Ongoing Surveys, there will be a substantial outsider interest. Therefore, what I'd like to propose is the following: I will set up a draft survey and place it here in discussions. If there are any objections to the content of the survey (not its existence), then we will work to come up with something within a space of no more than a week. If no objections are heard, nothing will be altered and the survey will go out unchanged. Either way, it allows a survey to actually be created and run within the community. Response to Ongoing Surveys tends to be high, so I believe that it will resolve the issue once and for all. I have no problems letting the issue go if there clearly is a substantial opinion against my proposal. --Girolamo Savonarola 14:50, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

Thank you, Mel. I've now edited my re-statement of your objections above to include what you said. Again, let me know if there are any errors in my understanding of your objections. I think it would be good to revert the part of the "proposed moves" that has been completed (BTW, Girolamo, am I correct that this is the them?) until the dispute is resolved, since (AFAIK now) that would put them in a more organized place than the half-and-half position they are in now. Girolamo, please let me know if you agree with this, or have any objections. JesseW 22:24, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

The possibilities

Girolamo, I'm still somewhat confused as to exactly what your proposal is. I think a statement of the "old" way(Mel?) and the principle(not examples) behind "proposed moves" would clarify things. I'll take a stab at it, but please correct it! JesseW 22:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Old way 
All the dialogs of Plato are titled beginning with the word "Plato's" followed by the common english name of the work. Any other name is a redirect. (This was never fully implemented.)
"Proposed moves" 
All the dialogs of Plato are titled with their common english name, unless this is ambiguous (and the dialogue does not have priority for that common name), in which case the word "(dialogue)" is added to the end, unless that is ambiguous, in which case the phrase "(Plato dialogue)" is added to the end. Any other name is a redirect.
[edit]

Further discussion

So does this mean the dispute over whether the naming convention for Plato's texts should conform to Biocrawler:Naming conventions or have a unified naming convention independent of the conventions? If that's a fair summary, that seems a fairly straight forward poll to put to people. Steve block 09:35, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Responses: Jesse, I can't agree to a reversion at this point, largely because the whole point is that there was never (to my knowledge) a fully consistent standard at any point in time. The history of a lot of these pages is reversion back and forth and back and forth. I feel that the current situation is no better or worse than before - better that we simply resolve the issue and apply the reform across the board at once than continue to go back and forth. This very discussion's most recent iteration in fact occurred when I tried to apply a standardized move across the board (which was partially impossible without admin interface bc of prior article move wars making some moves blocked). What I'd like is to freeze the names of all Platonic Dialogues until this is settled. What I have been doing lately, and I don't think this is anything other than housekeeping, is making certain the "What links here" links all go to the name of the article, regardless of whose standard it is. I don't believe that biases anything one way or another, it's just standard editing background work and gives less stress to the servers.
The oldest standard was a lack thereof. Some things were just their titles, some were "Plato's blank", some were "Title (dialogue)", and so on. The two recent proposals were as follows:
  1. Old proposal (March 2005) - standardize all articles to "Title (Plato)". This was never fully realized to begin with, and had no consensus either. Some implementation, largely among the more important works' articles. This was not unopposed by editors, as can be seen by some articles being moved back and forth between two titles.
  2. New proposal (May 2005) - conform to naming conventions. Somewhat implemented as well. I'd re-edit Jesse's summary of that only to reflect the word "dialogue" not "dialog". I would also argue (as above) that certain works, like Apology, deserve first-order status among disambiguation, and thus no parenthetical.
Steve, you pretty much have summed it up. Can we please cook up a poll/survey? :) --Girolamo Savonarola 15:50, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

Ok, good. This is useful to know. Thanks, Girolamo, for your clairifications. I've changed dialog to dialogue above, and added a note about priority. I've also added a note about the old way never having been fully implemented. JesseW 03:59, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I assume everyone wants the articles names to follow a "fully consistent standard" (If anyone does not, please say so.) Mel, do you claim that the Platonic dialogue article names before the "proposed moves" followed a "fully consistent standard"? (If not, please let me know.) If so, please state that standard, in the form I did above, i.e. as a principle. If you like, you can also (or instead) suggest an alternative "fully consistent standard". Until I hear further proof that the old way was a "fully consistent standard", I oppose reverting the changes. JesseW 03:59, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Regarding Mel's objection that the "proposed moves" "prejudge" what articles may conflict with artices on characters - I don't fully understand this objection. According to my re-statement of the "propsed moves" (above), dialogues would be at their common english name until (if this happened) another article (say, one on the character) was created, at which time the dialog would be moved to "common name (dialogue)" and the character article would be at "common name". (Unless it was decided at the time that the dialogue had better claim on "common name" than the other article, in which it would go the other way.) I don't see any prejudging here. Mel, please explain that objection further. JesseW 03:59, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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