Category talk:Arbuthnot family

message: I am currently (late 2005) going through the Arbuthnot family articles and doing general minor cleanup on the excellent and extensive work done by User User:Kittybrewster. Mainly adding categories, formatting dates, etc. where needed. But I am also removing certain extraneous information (and moving it to each article's talk page), primarily:
*Information on non-notable spouses
*If marriage info retained, exact dates and locations of weddings
*Names of non-notable ancestors
*Names of non-notable offspring
*Occasional other non-notable info
On the principle that, while this information would be appropriate for truly notable people, it is overkill for not-very-notable people, which includes most of the entries in this category. I would much like to see  more details on the Arbuthnot's military, political, bureaucratic, and ecclesiastical service, and don't think the geneological information is as important.
A note: While many of the Arbothnots had distinguished careers and many honors, the reader should remember that, in the UK at this time, birth and connection had very much to do with one's advancement.
Herostratus 20:09, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Note

message: This note is for people considering deletion (via WP:AFD of any members of the Family Arbuthnot.
#I don't think any of the Arbuthnots should be deleted, on the principle of keeping a set together. Someone might want, for instance, to use these entries as a starting point for a paper on such as The Fortunes Of The British Empire As Reflected In One Family or something like that. You never know.
#There are, however, several Arbuthnots whose articles do not, of themselves, show notability. If you are going to delete them, they should not be nominated individually, but the entire set of non-notable Arbuthnots presented as a group for the consideration of the community. These are:
*(list to follow later)
Herostratus 19:46, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *"on the principle of keeping a set together" I don't understand what this means. If a family is non-notable apart but somehow notable together (which seems dubious in itself), then they should be merged into a single article. --Malthusian (talk) 11:59, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

text: **You make a valid point. However, this would make for a very long article. So I don't see why using a category rather than a single article as a way of grouping the info together isn't OK. That's just my opinion. Herostratus 15:50, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

text: ***People from several different Scottish families with things like paddle steamers thrown in (see below) don't make much of a set in my opinion. Bishonen | talk 15:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

text: **Can anyone familiar with the category system indicate whether we have other 'family' categories?  There is no :Category:Smith family, for example. EdJohnston 20:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

text: ****OMG yes. Take a look at this baby and its subcategories. /me shoots self.. Bishonen | talk 01:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Having toiled in the Arbuthnot mines for a while, I have mixed feelings about dropping the category. But having a category for every family is just too awful to contemplate. (Do peruse :Category:Families if you are tempted to keep the Arbuthnot category). As a substitute, I suggest you try typing 'Arbuthnot' into the search box at left and hit the 'Search' button. Those results seem pretty good, in spite of the general reputation of WP search. EdJohnston 05:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arbuthnot Retention

message: The name of this category needs to be changed. The names in the category are not members of one family but of several families who share the same name surname. Secondly, it seems to include roads and boats and anything else connected with the word Arbuthnot. Perhaps if such an ambiguous category needs to exist it should be "Things called Arbuthnot" or something of that nature. Comments below please. Giano 15:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree entirely. I think you should put it up for deletion on WP:CFD. Or possibly for renaming to "Arbuthnot-related stubs", as that is what they mostly are. The handful that aren't stubs (and are not about paddle steamers or something), can then get re-categorized as :Category:Scottish families, can't they?  Bishonen | talk 16:03, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Of course.  We'd need an etymological analysis, but I have every confidence that the occurrences of the name are not even always related to persons.  Now the Augustan era's John could be no closer than great-grand-nephew to any of the figures who produced kittybrewster's people (I'm sure someone into genealogy could... oh!), and his own children did not flourish, that I can tell, and yet there they are.  John Arbuthnot said, "Biography is one of the new terrors of death" only because genealogy was an old terror of death.  There is something sad about having one's whole, complex life, with romances and trials and sweat and pain, turned into "m. Person dau. Name Name Name s. Name Name."  Geogre 12:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (1)It could not be changed to "Things called Arbuthnot" as it is mostly people. Perhaps the inanimate material should be removed, although I personally don't see why. (2) By no means should the category be deleted; that would leave many Arbuthnott articles floating around with no common category to connect them. If you want to delete some of the articles, that would be a different matter. I don't think any of the article should be deleted, but if you want to delete some of them, the clearly unnotable should be grouped in one AfD, the probably unnotable into another, the marginal into another. All this would take a bit of work to do properly. Who wants to do this work? Not me for a kickoff. Herostratus 13:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing name of category