Talk:Demos

Cleanup

This disambiguation page was marked for cleanup per MoS:DAB. I removed/shortened the following entries because they are more suitable for wikt:demos, or because they weren't even mentioned in the linked-to articles (making them seem non-notable).

• The ancient Greek demos ([δῆμος] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) used to describe the population or the common people of an ancient Greek state. Demos or deme was also a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding ancient Athens. The ecclesia of demos was the principal assembly of the democracy and its main administrative body, consisting of all the citizens.
• In Byzantine Empire demos used to describe the four main chariot racing factions of Constantinople, the Whites, the Reds, the Greens and the Blues, each responsible of the organization of a chariot team

– sgeureka ^t•c 14:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Rhetoric

Why is demos considered a "rhetorical term?" -- JALatimer 08:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Page could do with restructuring

This page is a little bit odd in the way it's structured. Pretty much all of the things linked to here (except the people) are named after the Greek term. That's basically what the majority of people mean whenever it's brought up (e.g. in political science discussions). Yet when you type "demos" into the search bar on wikipedia you come to this page which doesn't really specify how the term is typically used and just has the Greek word referred to as a "rhetorical term" near the bottom of the page.

It might be worth adding a bit of text at the top of this page saying something like "Demos is a Greek word originally used to describe the population of an ancient Greek state, but which is also now commonly used to refer to any distinct population within a democracy" (or something along those lines). That's really what it is and why you have think tanks, books, albums and so on named after it. I'm not sure if you didn't know what demos means you'd really get that from this page - you'd just think it's some random Crosby, Stills and Nash album or the name of an obscure 1920s film.

I get the point. I think so also, but I'm not so sure. I did add such a sentence but it was reverted. By now there happen to be a lot of uses of Demos, and there is also deimos, not from the same Greek word. And finally, the acronymic uses have nothing to do with the Greek word. So, that would let out the possibility of an explanatory statement in the intro - it is not always "people." What bothered me at first is the lack of the ancient Greek use. However, that is more of an etymologic nature. There IS a reference to Wiktionary, which explains everything adequately. Considering that this is getting to be such a big topic I decided not to object to the reversion, even though no adequate reason is given for it. As for the rhetorical use of demos, I really don't know what that is supposed to mean either. Our rhetorical claims are not so rhetorical as the claims in many other languages. We all are democratic, it seems - I'm democratic, you're democratic, so are not we all. But, the meaning is reserved to the linked article, not to here. One should take it up there if one is going to. My feeling is, why bother? Extirpating propaganda from WP would be a huge job indeed. Not for me. Hope this helps.Botteville (talk) 16:46, 19 August 2018 (UTC)