Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people

message: I just came across the article on Alida Anderson. She is an academic/scholar who has published work in multiple scholarly venues. For now I moved her from American writers to American non-fiction writers. I am not sure that is where to place her. This is getting into messiness. Most academics publish at least some written works, you literally have to create a PhD with a published dissertation, and you need to publish more to gain tenure. I think though we want something more than a dissertation to make someone a "writer". Historians are under writers. I remember one of my professors at Easyltern Michigan University when I was working on my masters there mentioning that historians were one of the few if not the only academic disciplines where they still regularly wrote works aimed at the general educated public and not specifically at people deeply skilled in the discipline. John Thornton's works on the history of West Central Africa and other topics clearly make him a writer. Of course we eventually also get into antiquarian and chroniclers, the later writers, the former often writing works. Most scholars and academics write and get published, but not all get published in broadly available venues. With historians the tendency is enough get published in enough places that to treat writers of history as distinct from scholars of history would lead to Category clutter and require us to make distinctions not often made in reliable sources. With science writers,  I think there is a distinct group that writes books aimed at the general public, as opposed to those who write technical papers. The scholars/academics mess aldo comes up.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:57, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Our article on English literature insists it is the body of literary ture in the English language, but admits this can be confused with "British literature", the body of literature created in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has only existed since 1801, Great Britain since 1707. William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and many others would fall into Kingdom of England literature. Our "English writers" Category is gor writers from England, we use English-language writers for those who write in English (with rules to exclude some to avoid Category overlap). So English writers is not the group producing English literature per categories and articles. That is confusing to say thd least.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:21, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Academics, writers and scholars 

message: Are "Swedish literary scholars" a group by nationality, or by subject? Are "English literature academics" studying the literature of England, or literature written in English?John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: So it turns out "English literature" the article insists it is literature written in English. This ignores that our standard usage elsewhere says "English" us gor things/people connected to England and "English-language" is for things/people connected to the Enfmglish language.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:24, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literary scholars 

message: Despite the parent Category being People from the Kingdom of Prussia, and the next layer down being People from the Kingdom of Prussia by occupation, the next level down uses a mix of things like Scientists from the Kingdom of Prussia and Writers from the Kingdom of Prussia, but Prussian physicians and Prussian musicians. I think we should use from the Kingdom of Prussia for all. We want to be clear we are referring to the Kingdom of Prussia, not to the Province of Prussia. The Free State of Prussia was not functional enough that it only existed in law and not in fact from about 1934 to 1936. We do not hold to a strong this category ends in 1871, but it has more meaning before that date. Pre-1701 the issue is messier. The political unit is called is historiography Brandenberg-Prussia, but it is multiple geographically distinct units. We do have People from the Duchy of Prussia to cover pre-1701 articles. The Kingdom that existed 1701-1918, although from 1871-1918 it was the controlling power within the German Empire, is one of the Great Power of Europe. The fact that some of that time it is the Kingdom of Prussia containing the Province of Prussia is also confusing. 
John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  People from the Kingdom of Prussia 

message: Please see the RFC at Talk:Max Mallowan#RFC about categorisation --woodensuperman 14:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorisation dispute at [[Max Mallowan]] (and other biographical articles added at {{cl|Agatha Christie}})