Talk:List of regicides

Table

What do you think about creating a table with the following columns?

• year
• monarch
• country
• place
• type (coup, murder, execution, battle)
• assassin
• notes

I propose removing the current sections, inserting a single table for all the centuries. Grillofrances (talk) 04:24, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Do you mean "all" or "each"? Because a single massive table would be awkward to navigate; better to have a separate table for each section. Additionally, "assassin" is only appropriate if the "type" is "assassination", so doesn't really work as a column title for every entry. "Perpetrator(s)" could work instead. It might be better to have only 1 location column, rather than both "country" and "place"; the list doesn't get that specific, and too many columns would stop the table fitting on 1 page. To be honest, I'm not sure what advantage a table would have over the current list. A table could be sorted, but I can't really see how sorting by columns other than "year" would be helpful. Lists are much easier to edit than tables and moving everything into a table would take a lot of work. – Scyrme (talk) 09:43, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I mean a single table as this article doesn't contain too many items as far. Besides sorting, IMO a table is more readable. Moreover, it would promote adding the missing info which is likely to be forgotten in the case of a list. As a country, I mean a given monarchy - it's totally separate from location as the location may be either within the given monarchy or outside it or possibly in some disputed area. I'm ok with "Perpetrator(s)". Grillofrances (talk) 16:15, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I can't say I agree at all. This list is several pages long; it's massive. A table would pad it out with column separators and such, which would make it even longer. It would have no subheadings and no TOC; it would just be a massive wall of data. I sincerely don't understand how that could be more readable than the list as it is now. The list is very readable and easy to navigate in its current format.

As a country, I mean a given monarchy - it's totally separate from location as the location may be either within the given monarchy or outside it or possibly in some disputed area.

Do you mean "monarch of..." vs "was killed in..."? Fair enough, in that case; I can see how two column headings might be warranted for that. – Scyrme (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I mean "monarch of..." and "was killed in...". Grillofrances (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree that such a list would be massive. It looks to be about 170 items which would be shorter than e.g. List of countries by GDP (nominal) with 216 items. Grillofrances (talk) 15:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

A massive list for me is e.g. this List of United States counties by per capita income with several thousand items. Grillofrances (talk) 15:33, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

They're all long lists, the US counties one is just especially so. I don't think especially long lists should be the frame of reference for length; it should be the number of pages the list fills, as that has consequences for scrolling, sorting, pasting into spreadsheets, and printing.

A major difference between this list and those examples you've provided is that the data are numerical, so readers might plausibly get something out of reordering the whole thing for each column. Since the table is largely all just numbers, individual entries are less important than the data set as a whole, so putting everything in 1 table makes more sense.

However, with List of regicides the only numerical data are the years, and each entry is unique and is of interest by itself. The most important thing is to make it easy to navigate to particular entries. Breaking the list up into short sublists that fit on a single page with chronological subheadings which can be selected from a table of contents makes navigation particularly easy. – Scyrme (talk) 17:34, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I can agree with multiple tables but IMO a separate table for each century isn't a good idea as sometimes, it'd mean only one or two items.

Maybe something like that:

• BC
• Between 1 and 1000
• Between 1001 and 1900
• Since 1901

Grillofrances (talk) 00:50, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Support Four tables for these periods seems a much better solution than the current setup. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

How about?:

1. 5th century BCE and earlier (400+)
2. 1st to 4th centuries BCE (1-399)
3. 1st to 4th centuries (1-399)
4. 5th to 9th centuries (400-899)
5. 10th to 14th centuries (900-1399)
6. 15th to 19th century (1400-1900)
7. 20th century onwards (1900+)

It would be more regular and consistent (5th, 10th, 15th, ...), while ensuring each table has many entries. – Scyrme (talk) 16:14, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Why units of 400 years? If anything, we should stick to units of 500, as the historical timeframes, at least for Western history and to a lesser degree elsewhere, are generally accepted as Antiquity c. 3000 BCE – 500 CE, Early Middle Ages 500–1000, High & Late Middle Ages 1000–1500, and Early Modern & Modern Period 1500–present. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:40, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Those timeframes aren't "generally accepted", as far as I know. Early modern period, for example, gives 1400-1800 for the "early modern period". It also doesn't seem appropriate to use a Western periodisation of history for a list that is very clearly global.

500 does not work if we want to have multiple tables that each have multiple entries, because it creates a table with only 1 entry (at the 21st century). Of the alternatives that don't create 1-entry tables, 400 works best; the other options are irregular tables (which will reflect editor's views on what feels like the right way to periodise the timeline, which may lead to arguments if editors don't share the same perspective), or very large tables like just 2 for BCE/CE (which I object to).

500 also breaks the 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 pattern, although it would create a different pattern of 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, but I don't really see how that's any better than using centuries; it's still multiples of 5. – Scyrme (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)