Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 June 29

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: reverse merge. – Fayenatic London 22:00, 26 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose upmerging Category:World War II memoirs to Category:Personal accounts of World War II

Nominator's rationale:: to my best understanding, memoirs and personal accounts are the same in this context. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Reversed merge: We already have Category:World War I memoirs, Category: American Civil War memoirs, and Category:Vietnam War memoirs. Stefanomione (talk) 20:10, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • By double-checking I found that 'Personal accounts' seems to be a tiny bit broader than 'Memoirs'. The category also contains for example a literature/art project and a diary. By reversing the merge we would have to remove these articles from the category, that wouldn't have my preference. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Reverse merge -- The diary would be a memoir (unless we have a more specific category. If we have to purge a few articles inot something else; so be it. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:19, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alright. Marcocapelle (talk) 16:50, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: merge. – Fayenatic London 07:12, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose upmerging Category:Biographies of Adolf Hitler to Category:Books about Adolf Hitler

Nominator's rationale:: to my best understanding, books in the parent category are equally biographical, so there's no need for this subcategory. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• merge per nom, this is a fine lever of detail not needed. Any book about Adolf Hitler will have important biographical aspects, and we don't have so many books that subcategorization of them is needed.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:33, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep both: Both functioning as an integral part of, respectively, Category:Biographies about politicians and Category:Books about politicians. Stefanomione (talk) 20:17, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could you explain the difference between the two? Marcocapelle (talk) 17:47, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • According to Category:Books about politicians, I see only have memoirs and autobiographies as alternative genres next to biographies. However, in the Adolf Hitler case, neither memoirs nor autobiographies occur, so it is not a good argument for this case. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:49, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment "books" has no indication of non-fiction, so the name of the category is equally appropriate for fiction. -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 05:33, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep both - a biography is an attempt to portray the subject's true life; a "book" about the person could easily be fictionalized intentionally. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:24, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree on these definitions. A book is the umbrella category that includes both biographies and books with fictionalizations. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:39, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per nom. If necessary, we might have a subcategory for fictional books about Hitler. The scope of the category being for non-fiction can usefully be dealt with in a headnote. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:23, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge Here the difference is not fiction vs. non-fiction, but covering Hitler's life vs. covering only a small aspect of it, his thought, his administration or something else.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:27, 12 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, per JPL. Clodhopper Deluxe (talk) 04:39, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: rename to Category:Wikipedia European Space Agency task force, following precedent at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_June_5. – Fayenatic London 07:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose renaming Category:TF ESA to Category:European Space Agency task force

Nominator's rationale: Although this is part of WikiProject space, category naming must be clear. SFB 14:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename to Category:WikiProject task force European Space Agency, as this category is not for taskforces set up by ESA in the real world. -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 05:35, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I support this given that the ESA does have it's own associated real world task forces. SFB 16:44, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: keep existing categories; no consensus on split i.e. whether "Owners of land in Foo" would be WP:OCAT. I suggest as a way forward that some e.g. Category:Owners of land in Scotland‎ and Category:Owners of land in Ireland be created and populated as test cases. Then, when we have something to look at, re-nominate the others for a discussion on splitting. – Fayenatic London 09:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)‎[reply]

Propose renaming:

• Category:Landowners by nationality to Category:Landowners by country‎
• Category:American landowners to Category:Owners of land in the United States‎
• Category:British landowners to Category:Owners of land in the United Kingdom‎
• Category:English landowners to Category:Owners of land in England
• Category:Scottish landowners to Category:Owners of land in Scotland‎
• Category:Welsh landowners to Category:Owners of land in Wales
• Category:Danish landowners to Category:Owners of land in Denmark‎
• Category:Estonian landowners to Category:Owners of land in Estonia‎
• Category:Hungarian landowners to Category:Owners of land in Hungary‎
• Category:Irish landowners to Category:Owners of land in Ireland
• Category:Norwegian landowners to Category:Owners of land in Norway‎
• Category:Polish landowners to Category:Owners of land in Poland‎
• Category:Swedish landowners to Category:Owners of land in Sweden‎
• Category:Turkish landowners to Category:Owners of land in Turkey‎

Nominator's rationale: Rename all, to remove ambiguity. These categories were nominated for deletion at CFD 2011 July 9, where there was a consensus to keep them. However, the current titles are ambiguous, because they are unclear whether the fact recorded is a) the nationality of the owner, or b) the location of the land.
The distinction will be moot in most cases, where a person owned land in their own country. However, in other cases people had significant land-holdings outside their own country. One example is Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, the Prime Minister of the UK for all but one of the years 1855–1865. The English-born son of an Anglo-Irish family, he inherited huge Irish estates in County Sligo. It is debatable whether he should be categorised as an "Irish landowner", but he was certainly an owner of land in Ireland, and noted for it: the management of his estate in Sligo is a notable part of the history of the area, and indeed of the Great Famine (see for example this account).
A renaming will remove the ambiguity. Some purging will probably required if the renaming goes ahead. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:28, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, the suggested name doesn't seem as feasible but I agree with you on the reasoning. Why not have both categories for landowners by nationality and then add that owner category if they're not actually from that country?♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:34, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Support The current arrangement is ambiguous between owner nationality and location of land. Proposed solution resolves this. SFB 14:26, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Support many people own land for holiday and retirement in foreign countries. And these names are confusable with ethnic categories. -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 06:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• hmm Do we really want to start categorizing people by where (some) of their interests happen to lie, vs based on their nationality? What woudl the parent of these categories be? People by occupation by place where that occupation takes place? I'm not sure this fine level of detail is needed. While I see your point about Palmerston, this can perhaps be better covered in an article; or, alternately, link from the Irish landowner cat to the British one, and note that X number of British landowners had significant holdings in Ireland.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • As any communist will tell you, land is unique as a form of property. There is no chance of this affecting the rest of the occupation categories, because we categorise people by their nationality and what they do, not where they do it. Needless to say, land is national (and static) by its nature and cannot be divorced from that. It is not something which the owner's nationality has real bearing on. For example, having Kjeld Kirk-Christiansen under Category:Danish landowners (i.e. a landowner from Denmark) doesn't really capture the fact that he owns an area of Scotland that is larger than the state of Andorra like Category:Owners of land in Scotland does. Landowning is defined by the location, whereas occupations are defined by the person. SFB 19:35, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose All Ambiguity is reduced at the cost of subverting the intention of the category. Each of these categories fall within the structures of Category:Landowners by nationality and Category:People by nationality and occupation. The intent is rather clearly to track the occupation of landowner as distributed by nationality. The proposed format of "Owners of land in Foo" completely undermines that purpose and creates the dreaded category clutter of listing every nation where any one landowner owns land. There is no threshold to determine if someone is notable for owning land in any list of particular nations, while it's much simpler to determine if some is defined as a landowner and to then associate that with their nationality. Isn't this also an example of performer by performance? Alansohn (talk) 22:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply. The intention is to track people who own land. Given the number of people who own land outside their own country, which is the more important attribute: the nationality of the owner, or the country in which hey own land?
    As in my example above of Lord Palmerston, or SFB's example of Kjeld Kirk-Christiansen, their ownership is a significant part of the history of the country in which he land is situated. It is not a significant part of the history of the country of which they are citizens. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:49, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply The intention is to track people who own land, but to do so by nationality, not to track the different nations where people own land. That's why the parent is Category:Landowners by nationality. Your issues might be addressed by creating a separate (though almost entirely overlapping) structure, but the proposal put on the table here subverts the entire purpose of the category for the sake of a handful of exceptions, as notable as they might be. People can own land in dozens of nations, leading to a real issue of category clutter, and there is no meaningful threshold to determine what makes someone a landowner in a particular nation, making it entirely arbitrary. If non-American owns a place in the Hamptons, do they belong in Category:Owners of land in the United States? Alansohn (talk) 18:19, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reply Not so. The intention is to track people who own land, and to break that down by country.
        There are two ways to do that country breakdown, and I see no evidence that there was any consensus anywhere this should be done by the nationality of the owner rather than by the location of the land. That just followed our conventional pattern of sub-categorisation, and the point of this discussion is to form a consensus on whether that is appropriate in this case.
        The exceptions are not just a "handful" of people; far from it. For centuries, most of the land of Ireland was owned by people who identified as British. Most of the land area of Scotland is divided into large estates, a significant proportion of which have been owned for two centuries or more by English people, and a growing proportion of them are now owned by people who are not British. A large part of the history of colonisation is the ownership of land by people who are not nationals of the country concerned, whether in Africa or the Carribbean or Latin America.
        If we categorise land ownership by the nationality of the owner, then we create a situation where the notable owners of adjoining estates are in wholly different categories. That does not assist navigation, which per WP:CAT#Overview is the main purpose of categories.
        Your point about thresholds has merit, but it applies however we sub-categorise Category:Landowners, so it is irrelevant to this discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:27, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • If the current scheme is designed to delineate by the owner's nationality rather than the location of the land, then I think that is questionable as a defining characteristic. Being an "American landowner" who owns land in Texas is profoundly different from being an "American landowner" who owns land in the South Pacific – I would question the value in grouping these two people together. At the very least, the "Owners of land in X" should exist in tandem with the nationality category, if the latter is considered a useful one. SFB 13:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • I agree. The existing structure and the proposed rename suggestion are tracking two very different things. Alansohn (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose As always, those are two different categories. Polish nationality landowners may own land not only in Poland... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:31, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep As often the attempt to define a category over-precisely leads to problems. The nom could only be carried out with extensive purging, which we cannot expect the closing admin to undertake. Expatriate issues often create problems, but it is best not to try to have a category for every eventuality: that leads to fragmentation and over-categorisation. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:30, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The point of these categories is to group land-owners by nationality, not where they own land. A 19th-century British industrialist who owned who tracts of land in India, South Africa, the United States, or anywhere else is still just a British land-owned. An American industrialist who bought a huge hacienda in Mexico in 1905, is still an American landowner. The question is not where the land is owned, but the nationality of the person owning it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:30, 12 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Split into fooian owners of land and owners of land in foo. The first belong in Category:Landowners by nationality, and the second in Category:Landowners by country; both are completely unambiguous. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:37, 13 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • true, they are unambiguous, but I still wonder if the second is important enough. It is much easier to own land in 20 countries than to have 20 nationalities, so classifying by where the owned land is would seem to tend towards overcategorization. Beyond that, in many cases, these two will be overlaps, most American landowners only own land in the US and so forth, so do we really want to create two category trees that will in practice just lead to category clutter?John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:34, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment In cases where these names are "confusable with ethnic designations", we should rename all the by-occupation categories for that nationality, not just some and definitely not on a case by case basis.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: prune and rename. – Fayenatic London 15:55, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose renaming Category:Jewish views to Category:Jewish views on society

Nominator's rationale: Split: partly rename, partly delete

This category has been polluted with many child categories that have nothing to do with views as originally intended. For that purpose I propose to rename the category into something more specific and concrete, and to move only the single articles and a very limited subset of child categories to the category with the new name. In particular my proposal is:

1. All single articles and the following childcats Category:Gender and Judaism, Category:Judaism and peace, Category:Judaism and science, Category:Judaism and violence, Category:Judaism and warfare should be in the new Category:Jewish views on society.
2. For all other child categories the current Category:Jewish views can simply cease to exist.

Please note that there is one other clear 'view' subcategory, namely: Category:Judaism and other religions, but this one also has parent Category:Judaism already, so no harm will happen here.

Marcocapelle (talk) 09:30, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Support rename as an improvement form the current arrangement. There are clearly remaining questions about what distinction this category is supposed to make in reference to Category:Jewish belief and doctrine, Category:Jewish culture, and Category:Jewish ethics. The whole Category:Views by religion and Category:Religious views parents are subject to the same problem. The main parent Views was deleted for this very reason. SFB 14:41, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• In addition, Category:Judaism and environmentalism can also be put in the new Category:Jewish views on society. Marcocapelle (talk) 23:31, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.