Template talk:History of Greece

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I think "Ottoman Greece" is really out of place as a sub-division of "medieval period". As I commented on my edit (just re-edited by someone), a period (that is, of Ottoman rule in present-day Greece) lasting until the early 20th can hardly justifiably be categorized as "medieval". Neither would I call Greek society in the 18th century medieval. This is an anachronistic, ideological notion that i find completely out of place in a project like wikipedia. (Mx2006 20:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC))

I would suggest that this is displayed in a horizontal style, looking like a timeline. --dionyziz 13:38, 7 April 2006 (UTC).

I agree, entirely because it will allow us to move the template from the top to bottom of the articles, where it is more relevant and useful and much less constrictive of the page layouts. -Silence 13:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Similar infoboxes for other nations' histories are all in a vertical format and changing the one for Greece alone would seem uneccessarily peculiar. Also, the bottom of the page is the less noticable part, so placing the infobox there would greatly reduce accessibility and trafficing to its links, which is against the point anyway. Keeping it at the top where the eye goes first would be the best solution, as is already the case for other historical articles. Colossus 19:27, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

"Similar infoboxes for other nations' histories are all in a vertical format" - That's because the similar boxes are all wrong. They will all be changed too in time. Progress is inevitable. This seems as good a place as any to start.

"Also, the bottom of the page is the less noticable part," - How is that a bad thing? A general "history of Greece" template is only relevant to the top of the History of Greece article. For all other articles, what's important is discussing the specific events covered in that article, not immediately shoving in users' faces a huge list of dates and links to totally irrelevant articles. That's just plain awful organization: any user who reads through several of the History of Greece series of articles will quickly be disgusted by how uniform and redundant their upper-right corner is, when the original and best purpose for all articles' upper-right corners is an important illustrative image, not a generic, only vaguely relevant, and poorly-formatted timeline! Impractical and unhelpful, limiting and restrictive, and just plain horrible.

"so placing the infobox there would greatly reduce accessibility and trafficing to its links," - When someone goes to an article, they go there to read about THAT topic, not to be immediately confronted by a massive list of vaguely-related articles. Whether they went to that article because they searched for it or because they clicked on internal link, we should always assume, except, possibly, for the History of Greece article itself (which can have a custom-made, higher-quality vertical timeline, perhaps, though even that may not be necessary if we simply write the article well enough and don't waste time with the bells and whistles), that they didn't go there just because they wanted a long list of other Greek-history-related-articles to browse through. Rather, they went there for as much information as possible on that topic. So, if they go to the page and decide they want to read about related topics, then what should they do? Well, the answer is quite obvious: they should scroll to the bottom of the page, to where "See also" links are always kept. See the beauty, the magnificent utility and consistency and freedom provided, all at the same time, by moving what essentially amounts to a "see also" list of links in the format of a timeline, to the part of the article where there already will be "see also" links, or where one would expect to find them? It's perfect in every way: the best of all possibilities. We put the internal links to other, related topics, in this case in the form of a timeline, exactly where any Wikipedia reader would expect: near the bottom, around where the "See also" or "Related articles" links go. In this way, not only do we avoid crowding and restricting otherwise-good articles by forcing them to design their layout around a rigid, bloated, largely-useless box at the very top of their article, but we also establish a consistent article formula wherein all lists of related articles are provided at the article's bottom, not the top. For comparison, see articles like Mercury (mythology) and Poseidon, which one can easily see are infinitely better off for having the template at the bottom than at the top. Hell, such templates are even easier to read in horizontal than in vertical format!

I don't see how this could possibly be any more ridiculously clear: horizontal is better than vertical in every way when it comes to large, loosely-related series of articles that should be left room to grow and form their own diverse layouts. The same pseudologic that claims that it's better to have the template at the bottom would, if applied consistently, require us to put every "See also" section and external link at the very top, rather than the very bottom, of every Wikipedia article! If you can see why that idea would be absurd, you can see why this one would: what is of immediate relevance in any article is that article's specific topic, not the dozens of articles which are categorized with it. -Silence 23:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The template is only as usefull as the amount of traffic it produces between articles. Historical templates provide necessary links between articles in the guise of usefull information, in this case a timeline. Reducing traffic in the name of aesthetics render the template irrelevant and you may as well delete it then. Its primary purpose was and is to provide an intersection between "History of Greece" articles (and not just the main page) in a readily viewable position. Placing it at the bottom where few will see it or use it is just an easy alternative to deletion altogether. And since there's already a precedent for templates from other historical series, you should at least give some credit to Wikipedia for homogenity, in that positioning at the top has worked for years now. Nobody claimed that all links should be placed at the top, but using already existing models for article layout is better than trying to unilaterally reinvent the wheel.

Now, I agree that the current template is visually rather appalling, but there are solutions more discreet. We can improve the appearence of the template to a level that is acceptable in order to maintain it at the top. Personally, I preffered the older smaller colored one by far, and infact cannot understand the reasoning for the switch in the first place. It was smaller, much prettier and occupied much less space. Perhaps switching to the older one can provide a basis from which we can build? Colossus 11:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Horrible infobox - changed

Looks a lot nicer now without that overused Acropolis pic, more official and more user friendly not to mention more aesthetically pleasing.

On the contrary, you made it horrible, and it was everything but user friendly, let alone "aesthetically pleasing". Give a look at the other country history series infoboxs (Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Albania, Spain), and you'll see that they are made like the present infobox and not like yours.--Aldux 11:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Aldux, please remember that nobody "owns" this template, and saying "look at the other templates" is not a satisfactory explanation for reverting. Try to reach some sort of compromise here and to avoid attacks on others' work, e.g. calling it "cumbersome". I personally don't mind the other version. Isopropyl 17:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CULTURE

since i massively expanded the culture of greece page, i see no reason why it cannot be included on the history template, it is arranged in a chronological way itself.

OK, no problem.--Aldux 18:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greek history != history of a region

First of all, I'm sure that everyone agrees that "history of Greece" doesn't refer to the history of the Greek peninsula and the islands that form today the Greek state. It has to do with the history of Greek peoples who were spread far beyond those borders up until recently. The listing of the Ottoman Greece under "Medieval Greece" is simply out of order. 'Medieval Greece' should by no means be restricted to the Greek peninsula, since there's no single political or cultural difference between Greeks from Greece and from Asia Minor; it's not accurate to differentiate them. The medieval section should be renamed to "Byzantine Empire", and "Ottoman Greece" should have its own placement, and maybe renamed to something else "Greek (Rom) millet" maybe? Miskin 19:20, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, with such silly articles the template is hopeless. The article Medieval Greece for instance, what connection does it have to a nation's history? This is simply about a minority of the nation in question, that was found the Greek peninsula. Unlike other european nations, Greek history is no defined in terms of geographical borders. Miskin 19:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi miskin, i made the infobox, i am not trying to defame greece, i am a british born greek cypriot who is a nationalist and hates turks as much as the next greek. you need to add to the kingdom of greece article and history of the hellenic republic. 14/88

I wasn't talking about any defaming nor Turk-hating, I referring to a common misconception. Miskin 00:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's gonig to be easy to come up with a consistent scheme. The easy part is dropping Prehistory, Cycladic, and Minoan, which apply to the geographic region, not the people (who hadn't arrived yet). The harder part is renaming the other periods to something sensible. "Greeks under the Byzantine Empire" (which was of course ruled by Greeks, but not uniformly Greek) and "Greeks under the Ottomans" are accurate, but don't trip off the tongue. Even worse would be "Greeks in the period of the first Kingdom of Greece" (after all, most Greeks did not live within the borders of the Kingdom until later). --Macrakis 00:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Currently, the main problem with this template is that its periodisation doesn't match that of the main articles it links to, especially that of Roman and Byzantine Greece. As for the "ethnic" versus "political" versus "geographic" definitions of the topic, for better or worse we currently have a series of articles based on the geographical space, Roman and Byzantine Greece among them. They are pretty good articles, and there's no reason not to link to them in some form from this template. The current sequence of links is not optimal, but mainly just because of the time periods being cut up differently. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Fut.Perf, on the edit summary you said "Byzantine Empire need not be included twice". I say, why included at all?!? Please comment. Mursili 14:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

There's no need for an article's subject matter to be exactly co-extensive with the subject matter of this template to warrant inclusion. The overlap between "Byzantine Empire" and "Greece", even if it's not total as Miskin might want us to think, is certainly large enough to warrant inclusion here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course there is, but I still have the feeling that this template's inclusion into the Byzantine Empire article pertains to emotion, rather than to "laic" historiography (not to mention that on the "see also" section, the link to History of Greece appears yet again). It`s like having the "history_of_Italy" template inside the Roman Empire article, or "history_of_germany" template inside the Holy Roman Empire article. Now there`s some German cold-blood. Mursili 15:03, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't want you think anything absurd Future, just the fact that "Greek history" != "history of the Greek peninsula". I don't see a policy restricting us having a series of articles depending in a geographical region (see the History of the Turks or History of the Jews as counter arguments). The fact is that the history of the Greeks differs from the history of the Italians for instance, which is indeed strongly linked to or even defined by their territory, and there's no reason to pretend that all cultures should be treated in the same manner. This has nothing to do with articles on the histories of regions, such as Roman and Byzantine Greece. Miskin 15:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Plus, just think that the western coast of Asia Minor and the region around Constantinople were formally part of the modern Greek state at some point in the 20th century. Miskin 15:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion continued at Talk:Greece in the Middle Ages. You're right, "Greek history" != "history of the Greek peninsula". But: "Greek history" != "history of Greece" = "history of the Greek peninsula". Easy. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)