We ought to regularize the dates, including choosing either Before Christ (Ante Christum)/Anno Domini or Before Common Era/Common Era. (My own sentimental preference, as a Roman Catholic, Latinist, and traditionalist, is for the former, but I can readily recognize that many might prefer the more neutral method of dating, and it would probably be more generous here — especially bearing in mind that the dating of Dionysus Exiguus in probably inaccurate anyway.)

Dating of the the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Modern Era is tricky. Traditionally, the Mediaeval period lasted from the fall of Rome (474 A.D.) to the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485) or the discovery of America (1492). The Renaissance is particularly tricky to date, as it started much earlier in southern Europe than in northern Europe — and, of course, there was a great deal of overlap (e.g., as in the case of Chaucer, who is very mediaeval in some ways and very Renaissance in others). The end of the Renaissance is even more difficult to pin down — is John Milton a Renaissance or an Enlightenment figure? We might want to thrash this out.

Any volunteers for fixing up the index tags so we don't have works or random tropes popping up at the bottom of author pages? There are so many links that it'd be really really tedious, but I really don't want to cut it down to just a list of names since that would lead to a lot of "Who the heck is that?" Especially in the earlier eras. We already had one minor edit war because some git had never heard of Xenophon or thought the index was only for fiction writers but only cut him.

• Blink*

Ok... don't know what's going on, but it seems to work wonderfully for everyone nineteenth century and on. No links to works or anything. I know that the little index bar at the bottom of Gaius Julius Caesar used to have a link to Trope Namer because of the link in the Plautus entry here. Did something happen under the hood?

Someone should delete the Hedgi Naysomay Aisling and her linked page from 20th century literature. Having a few stories submitted as fanfiction does not entail being listed amongst world-renowned writers.

Old Man Ho Oh, while breaking them down by nationality is all well and good, stripping out every name that was redlinked was uncalled for. This is not, and never was, intended to be a index strictly limited to authors we have pages for, because our primary purpose is not to catalogue authors.