Talk:Rome/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Why "Rome, Italy"?

What's the use of putting this page at Rome, Italy, and having Rome redirect to it? Rome, Italy should only be necessary if there's more than one Rome (I can imagine there's some US towns called Rome), but in that case Rome should be a disambiguating page, and not redirect to Rome, Italy. As I don't know about any other Romes, I'll leave it like this for now. jheijmans

Zundark, the link that you removed:

Pages that link here: [1]

was meant to keep available the list of pages (you counted more than 350) that contain a link to Rome, I would guess the majority of which referring to the italian town. I had put it to be able to see those pages and not the recent pages that I can see if I click on the ordinary system link.

I think that it could be useful (for the many that are looking for the pages that link to the town's article, however named) to put it again in the article, perhaps with a better description than mine.

About the renaming of the article, recently Venice, Italy was reverted to Venice (even if there should be another one in California, I think) and the change was presumedly made for an obvious simplicity purpose. I agree with that change, IMHO it is too much "taxonomic" to call it this way, because it produces by paradox that the correct form for Wikipedia is not the one (quite) universally and immediately used by everyone (at least in english-speaking world), but another one, in atlas or dictionary style: yet, we all think of Rome as Rome, and even one who is eventually looking for Rome, Georgia would look for Rome at his first attempt. Also, it would be a heavy complication to adapt all the future edits regarding Rome, specially for newcomers (I besides imagine that the work of correcting all the existing 350+ links would be a longlasting passtime for the eventual volounteer).

I read your addition to the disambiguation page, and I can tell you that I had also read the mentioned example of Paris _before_ disambiguating, but since the article had been renamed, I considered it appropriated to just leave the possibility to edit Rome if someone wants to add about Rome, Georgia or about the third one or about new eventual voices. A disambiguating page would have also contained other related topics such as Roman Empire, Roman Triumph and similar entries. Moreover, after a Rome, Georgia (of which I'm becoming very curious :-) is eventually edited, how can it be found apart from specific exact search? It wouldn't have much sense to say in Rome, Italy that another place is called Rome; but it would be appropriated if an article existed named Rome.

Honestly I find that it could be better to go back to the previous situation, and maybe much more simpler. --Gianfranco (o Roma, o morte :-)))

When there is one meaning which is far more common than others, then it's probably not a good idea to make it into a disambiguating page. (Someone already explained this in Wikipedia:Disambiguation, using poker as an example.) This is certainly the case with Rome, so I think it ought to be moved back to Rome. As you say, we can easily add a line to the Rome article pointing to Rome, Georgia and suchlike. Even if someone changes all 350 links, this wouldn't stop people accidently linking to Rome in the future - after all, they have a right to expect that Rome is about the Rome. --Zundark, Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Here, Here Zundark. Rome the article should be on Rome the page. People look at you weird when insisting on calling the overwhelmingly most famous Rome, "Rome, Italy". In this case, a disambiguation page is not appropriate, in the same way as a disambiguation page is not appropriate for the Paris article. Just have a list of the other Romes of the world at the bottom of the article. And when that list becomes too large, then create a link to a page called Romes of the World. However, Rome, Italy does need to be a redirect to Rome --maveric149, Wednesday, April 10, 2002

With all due respect to the residents of Paris, Texas; Athens, Georgia; and Moscow, Idaho; I'm with Mav here. The choice of whether to make a simple term into a disambiguation page is a flexible one. It's entirely appropriate for a page like "Rome" to be full coverage of the overwhelmingly most well-known city, and have a few links to the others at the bottom. It might also be appropriate to do it the other way in some cases. That's a judgment call, and we shouldn't be afraid to make those judgments. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

Hrmmm... you all have valid points; I debated with myself for quite a while on whether or not to move it. I seem to have a different perspective from the rest of you - while I certainly agree that when I hear "Rome", my brain automatically tags it ", Italy" unless otherwise indicated, in an encyclopedia I'd look under either Italy or Rome and still expect to find the article in an index of headings (or search engine in the case of Wikipedia). But then, I grew up visiting Europe on a regular basis and learned to automatically tag a city with its location (try looking up "Frankfurt" in Germany sometime). But I may be unusual (or unique) in that. Either way, I apologize for creating extra work on you-all's part, and will bear this exception to standard Wiki article nomenclature in mind. pgdudda

After much discussion on the wikipedia mailing list and elsewhere, a new consistant wikipedia naming convention was developed for cities. For the US it is City, State and for all other cities of the world it is City, Nation. --maveric149, Monday, July 8, 2002

Roma (goddess)

about redirecting Roma (empty): I saw it was linked by several articles, all pointing to the town, and vainly mentioned in the complete list.

Honestly I don't know about this god, but if it doesn't deserve a separate entry, we could perhaps redirect Rome to Roma.

hi
Gianfranco

Found what's about: it is an allegory rethorically representing the symbolic personification of the State, first appeared in 269 BC in ... money (nummus - is it coins in english?), just like in Locri (Calabria) in 204 BC. I am now reading that external peoples might have given Roma divine attributes, but in my text this is only an hypothesis. Emphasising this allegory, temples were erected in Smirne (195 BC) and some sort of cult is reported in Ephesus, Sardi and Delo.

A confusion might be caused by the divinity of emperor: being Augustus a sort of demi-god, what was dedicated to him was a kind of religious celebration, partially directed on town's personality.

So Roma is not a god, but only an allegory.

I'm aware I make a huge use of your patience... :-)

"Roma" was a god decreed to exist by Augustus Ceasar early in his career as "Princeps Civitatis" (1st among citizens -- i.e. Emperor) as part of a propoganda campaign. In this way he deified the concept of Rome. Brilliant idea actually. Augustus built many temples with his Res Gestae (resume telling his subjects all his deeds) along side of inscriptions that popularized the new god Roma. Gypsies also call themselfs the "people of Roma" which does not have a connection with the Roman god. We will have to wait until the bug is fixed to make an article about it. maveric149

Origin of the name Roma

The origin of the name "Rome" is unknown. The Greek origin, met with in some ancient writers, is not one of the favored ones currently. Among the theories, the root "Rum-" (as in "Ruminalis" for example), meaning "breast" and connected with the ROM-ulus/REMus story (and note, along with some ancient authors, that the word for wolf, "lupa", also meant "prostitute": the word survives, for example, in Lat. "lupanar", whorehouse).


It would be better either to ignore the name origin, or to lay them all out in detail. Bill 21:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some criticisms

What a mess. This article seems to have an awful lot of overlap of history stuff, and rather little about the city today. Like for instance, nowhere in the article does it tell us important things like what the population is.

All of the history should be consilidated into one section, or possibly put into its own article, Im sure the history of Rome could easily fill its own article. G-Man 22:27, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Zotvo and Favoald

Who are these people? Chalk it up to my ignorance maybe, but I've never heard of either one, and no Zotvo or Favoald (Favoaldo, Favoaldus) is mentioned by Bury, Gibbon, or Cotterill; they make no independent appearance online, either.

I frankly suspect a copyright trap in the original article -- what was the source of that article, anyway? I hope we don't have a copyvio here.

Bill 13:45, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)


  • I've been looking, but been completely unable to find independent reference to them on or off the Web. I've removed them. The history of the High Middle Ages, to which Zot and Fav are said to belong, is so obscure, that I suspect copyvio even more; and some of the English is such that I suspect translation from some other language as well. The person I thought was the original poster says he knows nothing about the subject, but did not address the question "Where did the text come from?": which further disturbs me. — Bill 18:42, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Terrific detective work, Chardon, and some great side benefits. I didn't trust the details of that webpage since it's full of typos, but of course went to my copy of Paul Deacon (a Latin-Italian bilingual edition that I pounced on in Italy a few years ago, precisely because, as the website says, the English translation is indeed rare), and in III.13 found the full passage, and note that the webpage skips "Faroald" and indeed other words (it may have been scanned in such a way as to skip the last words of each line, I've seen this type of scanning error elsewhere), bringing up the name only in connection with Hartmann:
"In that time too Faroald, the first leader/dux of the Spoletans, invading Classis with an army of Lombards, left the wealthy city despoiled and bare of all its riches." (my translation)
Despite the scan errors, that page's quote of Hartman "Zotto" Googles as if correct, and matches names of the period, so we can consider this SOLVED.
Now here's where I get back to thanking you for the side benefits. (1) You've alerted me to a public domain English translation of Paul Deacon, which I will probably put online on the Roman Texts section of my own site. Dumb dumb dumb of me, though, not to have seen it on Camden's site that I routinely and constantly go to, and whom I've been helping for years; (2) I've been meaning to put Hodgkin online as well, now that I have Bury: this just about seals it.
In sum, win-win for everybody, and thanks again. The only remaining problem is that copyvio, or unattributed material, is now almost certain. It might be fun to find the original text — a candidate now is an English translation of Hartmann? — I've tried, and will probably keep on trying: will you do better? (Yes, probably!) Best, Bill 12:07, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • No luck I'm afraid. According to the library of congress hartmann hasn't been translated. Fav and Zot where added on april 17 this year by a non-member with a Greek ip adress. So it could be Greek spelling. German names are often mangled by Greeks (disclaimer: I don't speak Greek). There hasn't been a new post from him/her since may. Btw ζοτωο and φαωοαλδ don't show anything on Google :)

Can anyone identify this site?

I took this photo two years ago and now I can't remember what it is. It's somewhere near the Pantheon, I think. Adam 07:27, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is the Largo di Torre Argentina, containing among other the remains of Pompey's Theater on the Campus Martius, the place where Julius Caesar was stabbed. It's a little south of the Pantheon, Rome. Check out Roma Online Guide for more information. In fact, this could use a bit more info in the Wikipedia. --Reiner Martin 22:18, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Grazie, signore. The photo is public domain so if there is an article it can be attached to, feel free. Adam 02:00, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Peoples of Early Italy

I restored this section because it provides a context for much of the rest of the Early history section. It is impossible to write and informative and effective history of Rome without providing at least a small amount of the history of areas around Rome. Without this section the section on Etruscan Dominance is difficult to understand and later reference to the Gaul's sacking Rome and Rome gaining control over the Greek territory in Southern Italy come out of nowhere.--Heathcliff 21:00, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I completely disagree with you. Reporting how the Etruscans called themselves, or the discussion around their origin, does not help understanding their relationship with Rome.--Panairjdde 12:15, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposal of splitting

The article is currently (25 May 2005) too long. Maybe it would be nice to move the History part to a new page, afterall, if there's a History of Toulouse there could be a History of Rome as well!--Panairjdde 16:01, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I said that ages ago, but no-one took any notice. G-Man 00:36, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Its not really too long, 31kb is perfectly fine. However I think it would be nice to get rid of part of it then expand on the monuments and other sections. Right now it is just one big history article Falphin 03:02, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Well if nobody objects within the next few days then I will split the article. G-Man 20:56, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree.--Revas 13:55, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Moved

Why was this paged moved to Roma(city)? Falphin 22:59, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This move appears to contravene the naming policy, which states that cities should be given their English name. This should be put back asap. G-Man 23:13, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Improvement Drive

The article Culture of Italy has been listed to be improved on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. You can add your vote there if you would like to support the article.--Fenice 14:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Credit for model photo

The credit under the photo of the model must remain there, otherwise the photo must be removed per the terms of the photo's owner (with whom I corresponded; please see the talk page for the image). He requires that this text appear on every page where the photo is visible. I've restored the credit; I apologize if it should go elsewhere on the page. Dppowell 15:03, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Mention of Cats?

Should this article mention Rome's colonies of cats? They're an interesting feature of the city and could fit under a Trivia heading. Impaciente 19:43, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The mention about cats is prominently in Largo di Torre Argentina; futhermore, if you speak about cats, why not about pidgeons and rats?--Panairjdde 08:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Cats are more noteworthy than rats and pigeons because most large cities do not have such a large number of roving packs of cats that seem to have found acceptance and even a small level of fame. When have you seen a calendar devoted to "The Rats of New York?" Impaciente 16:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Golly, the number of wonderful ideas on Wikipedia! What a good idea in fact for a calendar; but surely someone has done The Rats of New York, wouldn't you say? Bill 17:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Roman pidgeons (storni) are quite noteworthy, since they used several new methods to get them away. Furthemore, how many cities have such an old colony of rats?--Panairjdde 08:42, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Cats are indeed important to Romans. In fact, the cats of Largo di Torre Argentina have a voluntary organisation that exists to ensure they are fed. And local legend has it that the Comune di Roma replaces scrawny or tubby tabbies with more photogenic ones for the tourists.--FJY 00:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

For the record, Rome's cats have been declared a kind of "National monument" here in Rome (more specifcally: "biocultural legacy"). 151.32.28.38 18:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Paring down the lists and links

The "Churches" section: another case of list-and-link creep. Everybody adds a link or an item to a list, and before you know it, we have a long silly-looking collection of mere names on the page. That's one of the good uses of the Category system; I therefore removed as many list items as I could, to replace them with a single link to Category:Churches of Rome — which has the further advantage of making the links automatically update. Those churches for which I still couldn't find Wiki articles, I left: but commented out, a request that as those articles get written, those links be removed as well.

Frankly, the Basilica list seems silly to me as well, but I didn't dare undertake further surgery; if someone else does it, it's fine by me. . . . Bill 12:43, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, as they say, I did. The pomposity and pedantry of repeating "Basilica" is gone, and "Saint" is now replaced thruout by "St." The Italian forms Santa, etc. I kept since they're non-obvious information for the English-speaking reader. I deleted the subgrouping "Paleochristian basilicas" because (a) it suggests some kind of parallelism with "Major basilicas", when there is none; (b) many of the "Major" and "Other" are in fact as paleochristian as those. Furthermore, S. Lorenzo should have been placed, as the Category system indeed did place it, among the patriarchal basilicas.
The list is still imperfect, mostly, again, thru pedantry: no one ever refers to S. Maria sopra Minerva, for example, as "St. Mary over Minerva". While "St. Peter's Basilica", "St. John Lateran", etc. are in common use, past a certain level the English-speaker sufficiently savvy to know of the lesser churches will refer to them by their Italian names. Bill 11:21, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Continued.... Now someone, seeing only a small list, has started pumping it up again, with empty links. If you want to add a church, why not add the article too! I removed S. Andrea, since it has its article; and S. Maria in Traspontina, because, although physically large, it really does not qualify as important; there are quite a few very large churches in the city that are not really noteworthy, except to the specialist: S. Carlo ai Catinari, for example. There are also a number of small, even tiny, churches that are much more significant: I'm not mentioning them, for fear someone pick up on them and pump that list up further with more empty links. Bill 10:25, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Starting over again with the equally long, barren, pointless list of "Monuments and sites" (sic); put a single link to the Category:Monuments and sights of Rome instead. Same benefits as for the churches. (I'm going to get to the basilicas soon, which after all are just another group of churches; and most people, both visitors and Romans, call them and think of them as just plain churches. . . .). Bill 17:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

List and categories are not interchangeable. A list can point to empty articles, prompting for additions. A list can have a short description to orient readers on what they'll find there. --Error 01:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Is Rome a city or a town?

To me, and I believe to most rational people, Rome is a major world city. I bring up the question because there is a young resident of Rome who insists upon calling it a town. His reasoning is that the only "city" in the world is New York. He has, of course the right to any dilusion that pleases him, but he has been changing the word 'city' in the main Rome article here to 'town'. I believe this is wrong, but don't know what to do about it other than expose it here.

Nat —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.29.136.188 (talk • contribs) .

Truly major cleanup needed

With the exception of the current "Transportation" section, the article Rome is currently a glorified (though disorganized and poorly-Wikified/formatted) stub, artificially bloated by numerous trivial lists. The whole concept of creating sub-articles relies on the ability of editors to effectively, concisely, and thoroughly summarize all of the important information from those sub-articles when they are moved off into new pages. That doesn't seem to have occurred here, so we're left with a husk of an article serving mainly as an unnecessary list of poorly-formatted links. Also, where in Wikipedia's required "Cite sources" policy does it say that it's acceptable for articles to remain totally unreferenced and just say "see our sub-pages for the references to this article"? Clearly not acceptable: Rome needs to be cited exactly like all other articles do. Furthermore, most of Rome's sub-articles have little to no citation either. Don't believe me? Let's count all of this article's sub-pages: Province of Rome, a stub with zero references; Administrative subdivision of Rome, a stub-list with zero references; Churches of Rome, a giant, 10-page list without a single reference; History of Rome, a bloated, un-user-friendly, twenty-five-page mammoth of an article that somehow manages to have only three references, all three completely ignoring Wikipedia citation style and devoid of all of the details that are required for people to check up on them.

If all of this article's issues continue to be ignored while editors make only superficial fixes, I'll have to submit this article to Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week, the place for important stubs to receive community attention, so it can get the broader focus it needs to resolve these deeply-rooted problems. Though a good job has been done of polishing up this article and making it pretty and with many of the basic facts required, the core of the article, its content, has become rotten and full of trivial lists in place of real, solid, prose-based content. Major work is needed. -Silence 19:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

"[...]the article Rome is currently a glorified (though disorganized and poorly-Wikified/formatted) stub, artificially bloated by numerous trivial lists [...]" I completely disagree with you. I do not think it is disorganized, since it is clearly divided into sections. I do not think it is poorly wikified (could you make an example, please?). I do not understand what you mean with poorly formatted. I do not see trivial lists, apart, maybe, the basilica section. I removed (your?) stub-tag addition to history section, since we happily removed about 30kBytes of History of Rome, and the history section is fair enough.
As regards the references, note that the "see our sub-pages for the references to this article" is applied, among others to articles such as Italy and Austria. Furthermore, if the informations are taken from these sub pages and copied here, the sub pages should report the references, not this page.
You are, however, free to submit this article to Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week, if you feel.--Panairjdde 19:44, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, there's something to that, actually. Not very good, and at fault is Wikipedia's system itself, which over time tends to produce a patchwork of minute pieces. If someone invests the work and time needed to make something unified, within 6 months it'll be right back where we started.... Bill 20:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Transportation: get a ticket!

i had to remove the following from the transport section: "and can also be used free as the Italian ticket inspectors have not been seen since the early 90's." i wonder who wrote this rubbish. inspections are frequent and even if there were none, metros are not free. --J0mb 20:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

And I confirm that: inspections are frequent; to say nothing of the irresponsibility of inciting stray readers to go out and cheat the system. Bill 20:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Minorities

I mover this anonymous contribution here: "The largest foreign groups in the city are Romanians, Albanians, and Egyptians." It could be true. If it stands up to scrutiny or can be sourced, please return an edited version to the article. --Wetman 15:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

The article should be updated with the data from http://demo.istat.it/str2005/index.html . It should moreover mention that these are the figures about regular resident people. There are also clandestine foreign people. Laurusnobilis 10:20, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Population figure

I too have reverted to the 2,546,807 figure. I don't know where either that or the 2,800,000 figure comes from, but the official ISTAT site gives a 2003 figure of 2,540,829; an increase of 6,000 in a year is much more likely than an increase of nearly 300,000. Bill 10:21, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Have you realised that the metropolitan area says 4 million yet thet says 2,5 million ish?! I'M CONFUSED!
The city proper is 2+ million; the metropolitan area is the entire province of Rome, which includes heavily populated suburbs, exurbia, and lots of just plain non-Rome. Bill 12:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Population figure: Official Population 2005: 3.487.367 (ISTAT!!)
More Details soon! I live in Rome...
13:34 20.01.2006
You may live in Rome, but if the figures don't multiply, they have to be wrong. If you have a verifiable online source for the ISTAT figures you give, don't be coy — let us know. It is most unlikely, mind you, that Rome would have gained a third of its population in 2 years, leaping from 2.5 million to 3.5 million. Anyway, see next. Bill 12:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I restored the ISTAT population figure, and the area as found on the reliable DB Metropolis site, and adjusted the density to the figure I got by dividing one into the other. The figures that had been there before were completely out of whack, and didn't multiply: so it's clear they'd been vandalized. The latest person to do so has been warned. In future, those riding the article should check periodically that the area times the density equals the population figure.
I'm only going to do this once (actually I've done it once or twice before), because now I'm fed up; but for those of you with more time, here are the current official figures so you can fix future vandalism without having to redo the process: 2540829 inhabitants in 1,285 km2, make 1977 inhabitants/km2. Bill 12:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
"Secondo il nuovo censimento istat del 2005 Roma vanta 3.487.367 di cui 1.880.000 donne 1.607.000 uomini,nella provincia però si contano ben 4.347.000 che contengono paesi come Guidonia Velletri Ladispoli ecc ecc sempre nello stesso censimento si scopre che ci sono a Roma centro 1.850.000 abitanti e borgate 1.637.000 comprendono Ottavia e Prima Porta si scopre inoltre che....." http://www.istat.it/
OK, sappiamo dove si trova il sito ISTAT; invece, la pagina in quel sito quasi innavigabile? I dati del 2003 sono online a http://demo.istat.it/pop2003/index1.html. Ottavia e Prima Porta sono nei limiti della città? Forse vuol dire che, per le misure di Wikipeida, la popolazione sarebbe piuttosto caduta a "Roma centro 1.850.000"?? Bill 13:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
credo di no... se dicono centro forse voul dire "il centro-citta"... se lo trovo online lo metto dentro. Io lo letto sui giornali... scusa se scrivo strano, sto scrivendo dalla svizzera ed`o la tastiera svizzera.... :_)
Le cose che s' imparano sulla Wiki! Non sapevo nemmeno che ci fosse una tastiera svizzera... Bill 13:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
:-) http://www.language-keyboard.com/layouts-keyboard-1-language.htm#s
             Go to see the data the registry office of Rome can provide about its real population.
             Mention that Rome has many zones in which many people live being not registered. 
             Something like "bidon-villes" and this kind of stuff.

Streamlining, 21 Jan 06

Other than the curious misspelling "christian", the rest of those edits were fine. A link to Italy need not be repeated every time the word appears, and it's already linked in the first paragraph. The Romulus etc. bit doesn't belong here any more, now that there is a separate History article; and if it did, it would be in the History squib. Bill 02:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

AID

Let's get some more votes for this article. We met the last deadline already. Let's keep them going. Sicilianmandolin 17:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

The article is of low quality for a city such as Rome. I hope it is chosen as the AID eventually, because to be honest, it needs it. For now, I'm submitting Rome to peer review. —Eternal Equinox | talk 00:41, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

"Eponymous cities" category

For some reason the Edit summary box refused to take what I entered, so here it is instead: rv I can't imagine what the editor was thinking; I hope it wasn't that Rome was named after the goddess Roma!!! The origin of the city name is unknown, of which the goddess is a personification (i.e., it's the other way round). Bill 22:58, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

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