Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people/Archive 1

message: As I see no imminent danger any more for the categories I want to use re. the Bloomsbury group, I restarted work on some of these articles (postponed because of the "categorization of people" issues) - anyway through the discussions here I feel more confident of being able to do so in a way that is less prone to controversy. Nonetheless work regarding the general treatment of categorization of people is far from finished, so I start a "To Do" list here (please complete the list and/or volunteer for some of the described jobs) --Francis Schonken 06:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: * "atheists" - done (see Categorization of people article, see Laplace, see post on User Talk:Postdlf) --Francis Schonken 07:00, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Actions 

message: So, taking the todo list above as my inspiration, I'd like to try to approach re-writing the policy proposal with an eye toward the /unresolved CFD disputes.  
I think that there are actually several different types (or a spectrum, if you will) of people-related categories.  There is also a "toolbox" of mechanisms and standards.  I think that different policy tools are appropriate to different types of people categories.
With this approach, we would need to make two distinct decisions for each dispute - what standard should apply to the case, and which side of that standard a given inclusion falls.  The former may often be easier than the latter. -- Beland 05:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Spectrum-Toolbox approach (or: A sweeping proposal)

message: What tools are at our disposal?  (Please feel free to add more.)
* Include all possible members
* Apply normal Wikipedia "notability" standard
* Apply the "business card" standard
* Apply the "first paragraph" standard
* Apply the "What is this article about?" standard
* Restrict membership to non-controversial cases
* Categorize but post a general disclaimer on the category and in member articles
* Categorize but post disclaimers about specific people (with specific reasons given) on the category and bottom of relevant article pages
* Using lists instead of categories
* Segregating certain types of articles to certain parts of category-space
* Not classifying people by a given attribute by any means
Personally, I find the "first paragraph" standard to be better than "business card" or "What is this article about?", because disputes should be resolvable by simply pointing to the fact of whether or not a particular characteristic is mentioned in the opening paragraph(s).  Normal standards for articles can then be used to resolve the underlying issues.  Different people have different ideas about what they would put on their own or on other people's business cards.  I could ask "Is the Abe Lincoln article about a tall person?" and kinda-sorta reasonably answer yes, but that's obviously not what's intended by the standard.  That is to say, it's easily bent to one's own biases. I'm also in favor of specific disclaimers. -- Beland 05:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Toolbox

message: What types of people-related categories are there?  What tool or tools should be applied?  (Please feel free to add more types, examples, and recommendations.  Also feel free to disagree with these neat, tidy boxes.)
* Non-controversial, well-documented
** Examples
*** Athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics
*** Presidents of the United States
*** Candidates for President of the United States
** Tools
*** I recommend including all possible members that have articles, since the categories are sharply defined. Denote any factual disputes with specific disclaimers. -- Beland 05:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Spectrum of People-Related Category Choices

message: * By --Francis Schonken 16:40, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: General comments on the Spectrum-Toolbox approach (and "opening paragraph" principle)

message: Does this page still need to be listed for RFC? Maurreen 04:57, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC

message: We should not do categorisation by "race". At the moment, some people are categorised by "race" (Michael Jackson), while others are not (George W. Bush). It seems only "black" people are categorised by "race". This is a racist bias. To remove the bias, either no, or all, people should be categorised by "race". Since "race" is not clearly defined, it's better to do no categorisation by "race" than to try to define a "race" for every person in Wikipedia. Since "race" is not clearly defined, it is not possible to categorise by "race" at all. See User:Gerritholl/stupid categories for a list of race-based categories. Many should disappear. See also: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. Gerrit CUTEDH 28 June 2005 13:17 (UTC)
:If by "race" you also mean ethnicity, it is untrue that it is applied only to black people.  It is applied across the board, the only obvious gap being that we don't have :Category:WASPs.  See :Category:American people by ethnicity. These categories provide significant user value, and should be kept.  Some individual ones may be stupid, but that needs to be argued on an individual basis. -- Visviva 29 June 2005 03:43 (UTC)
:I say categorize by nationality and culture, not race. Michael Jackson is an African-American, so he should be classified as such. Robert Blake is an Italian-American, and should be categorized as such. To the best of my knowledge, George W. Bush has no strong ethnic ties to another culture, so he is properly termed an American. It is not POV to identify an African-American person as an African-American; some articles read rather ridiculously (Rosa Parks, for example) without the mention. --FuriousFreddy 8 July 2005 14:25 (UTC)
:I noticed that :Category:White people was deleted. I've been trying to wrap my brain around that decision. We have :Category:People by ethnicity/race, :Category:Black people, and :Category:European Americans. Not having a :Category:White people appears to create a gap. - Nat Krause 14:28, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorisation by race 

message: I've been spending some time going though writer stubs trying to sub-divide it a little, and I noticed something: There is an alarming number biographical articles that make no mention of the persons nationality (or they may say where they where born and then say that they have worked mostly somewhere else, wich makes it unclear what nation they are most asosiated with). I asume the editor simply takes it for granted or something. On the more fleshed out articles you can usualy figure it out by looking at where they have worked and what universities they graduated from but it's not always possible. Granted most of these are stubs, and will hopefully grow natuarly to include nationality in time, but the more generic a stub is the less likely it is to attract attention, and without a known nationality they can't be put in some of the more spesific stub categories where they are more likely to attract the attention of "locals" with some knowledge about the person.
So I was thinking, does anyone think something along the lines of :Category:Biographies with missing nationality, with a matching template, would be usefull? It would not be a "permanent" category, more like a "pseudo stub" category (except artuicles might not nessesarily be stubs, just missing one piece of importnat info) that would serve as both a strong hint to editors to explicitly state the person's nationality, and possebly a usefull tool for people looking for something to improve or research. Just something I've been thinking about ever since I found the :Category:Year of birth missing, :Category:Year of death missing and :Category:Biographies needing help categories wich seem to work along the same general idea. I guess the later could also do the job, but it's less spesific. --Sherool 10:19, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  People with "missing" nationality. 

message: Obviously we should have categories about feminism, race activists, LGBT liberalists etc. That is not being debated here. People who have made important contributions for equal rights should obviously be recognized as such. The issue here is whether it's appropriate to classify everybody as such, e.g. "scientists by race", or if it's more appropriate to combine those into "scientists" since that is the more important trait.
See Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality Hiding  talk 08:51, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality]]