Wikipedia talk:Category names/Archive 3

message: While we're on the subject...
#Economy of Russia
#Economy of the Soviet Union
#Economy of the USSR
...which? Radiant_>|< 09:50, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
This one is a little more difficult. Are we speaking in histortic titles, (before or after the fall/break of of the "Soviet Union"), or the current name? (Which I can't recall atm). ∞Who?¿? 09:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Russia?

message: There is a little subtlety to this one. Continents are so broad a categorization that it is tantamount to categorizing by ethnicity or race, but on a grand scale. On the other hand, there are only 7 such categories (within each field) so we don't lose much not-paper for having them. To deprecate cats by continent would seem to be Wiki attempting to deprecate continents which would be....odd.
What would call the cat that contains the various bits of the Americas? -Splash 13:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continents 

message: I think it will be hard to suppress cat'ing on these grounds. Whether a particular case would be 'overcategorization' or not is probably best left to case-by-case analysis in CfD. It will cause fights over locals thinking the area warrants a cat and non-locals disagreeing, but there are just too many possible subtleties to decide with a blanket policy, imho. -Splash 13:20, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  States and provinces 

message: I'd like to suggest that we not try to standardize things unless there is either a clear need or clear consensus. In other words, although I named this page "Category titles", I think it's best to try to keep it mainly on any needed countries or nationalities for the time being. 
Part of the reason I called the page "Category titles" was that I figured other types of categories would need to be decided eventually and it might as well all be together. Unless there is something else compelling, I think it would be best to at least wait until the current issue has been at least relatively settled. Thanks. Maurreen 14:17, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Case by case

message: So if :Category:American people is changed to either :Category:U.S. people or :Category:People of the United States, what then to be done with the likes of :Category:African Americans or :Category:Irish-Americans (which should be de-hyphenated, btw)?  I personally never wanted to see these created in the first place, but presuming that ethnic/racial categories will exist, the naming inconsistency will be a problem, but there really is nothing else these can be moved to.  
Considering how such ethnic identifications are largely a matter of self-identification, the terms that people actually use for these and for themselves are even more important than how someone labels their own nationality; nationality is by contrast an objectively verifiable fact that can be expressed by anything that just identifies the country (whether linguistically accurate or not), compared to the subjective and ultimately borderless categories of race and ethnicity.  I also think we're really going to make Wikipedia look moronic (and likely offend, if that's a relevant consideration) if we create categories like :Category:United States black people (really bloody stupid looking), or :Category:Black people of the United States (the color-based label is really inaccurate and disfavored) or :Category:People of African ancestry of the United States (really awkward).  Keep in mind also that the article titles are African American, Irish American, etc., and you're going to have tons of people screaming bloody murder if an attempt is made to change the content of those.  Plus usages of hybrid racial/continental identifications have to be exceedingly rare, if not non-existant, so the "ambiguous" argument used to justify generally not using "American" in category names to mean "of the U.S." isn't going to apply here.  Thoughts?  Postdlf 03:45, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Being that we have these categories, I think the only thing that makes sense is "African-American", "Irish American", etc. And these are compound modifiers, so they should be hyphenated. Maurreen 04:24, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Just to weigh in, these need not be deleted.  Of course they should be "Foo-Americans". This is the common, indivisible term (not a real adjective-noun phrase).  At least, that's my linguistic argument - it's different from "Irish of the United States" (who are immigrants from Ireland?).  There is also no feasible alternative. "People of the United States of Irish ethnicity"?  That's just too long, even for me.  It sounds like it's bending over backwards to be...PC?  Snooty?  I'm all for hyphens, because I reflexively type them, but redirects are going to be necessary either way, so whatever. -- Beland 02:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnic subcategories 

message: I don't think Google should be relied on absolutely, but it can be useful as a rough guide as to how common things are.
*"U.S." -- 2,230,000,000
*"United States" -- 457,000,000
*"USA" -- 421,000,000 Maurreen 04:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Google's not terribly reliable for jobs like that, I'm afraid. Because of the way it handles punctuation and capitalization, I think those "U.S." links include a lot of pages inviting you to "contact us", etc., to say nothing of Toys R Us. Similarly, the USA pages include a whole bunch donde alguien usa algo. I don't know if there's a way to make it more exact.  –Hajor 04:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Good points made above.
*"artists of America" -- 24,000
*""artists of the Americas" -- 755 (There are two contintents with the word "America".) Maurreen 15:05, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Google test

message: :::::The issue with using non-obvious names (not presuming an answer to what form is most obvious, nor even whether any form is "obvious") is not limited to searching.  At least some users (if not most) tend to add categories to articles without checking whether the category exists (see :category:orphaned categories).  If our rule ends up with category names that are even a little bit peculiar, I'd be willing to bet users will add articles to the "natural" category names without regard to our rule or the existence of categories matching our rule.  If this is done and no soft redirect exists, either the user creates the category and, hence, an issue for CFD (perhaps speedy due to "name rule violation") or an orphaned category.  If the soft redirect does exist, the user will likely think they've done their thing and all is well (when, in reality, they've created an issue that needs to be fixed).  I've asked user:Beland if his offline analysis can detect articles added to soft redirected categories, but I believe we presently have no automated way to either detect or fix this issue.  I'd like to be clear about our respective priorities.  I've said my #1 (and pretty much only) criteria is "most natural (least astonishing)".  Reading very slightly between the lines, I'm guessing user:Splash's criteria is "uniform scheme is most important" (in particular, more important than common usage or "least astonishing").  Is this accurate?  Can others weigh in on this?  If we disagree about the criteria I see little chance we'll agree on a solution. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:59, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
I think we are split on the criteria, although what the division is, I don't know. I agree with "most natural" and I also favor being concise. Maurreen (talk) 02:47, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Natural" names and criteria

message: :This is a great debate.  It is great because it has, I believe, gotten to the crux of the problem.  Without a redirect for categories we are forced to choose between being concise and consistant, or with being natural and more user friendly.  Obviously we should strive for both.  All good reference books tell you where to look if you try the wrong entry.  I'm all in favor of clear guidelines that promote consistancy.  I also think we can create a stop-gap measure to make things more natural and user friendly.
:I propose that we create dummy categories that have a single dummy article in them.  The article might be List of redirected categories.  So when you looked up :Category:German Painters, you'd find a category that only contained one article.  The heading of the category would say "See: :Category:Painters of Germany.  It might also have a note saying that if there are any other articles in the category, they should be moved.  I'm guessing a bot could frequently make these moves on a regular basis.  With such a scheme, we'd be able to have our cake and eat it too.  As a bonus, when, category redirects become a reality, all the dummy categories will be there waiting to be turned into redirects.  But the really big bonus will be all the time we gain by not arguing and debating so much about deleting and renaming categories! -- Samuel Wantman 11:11, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's pretty much exactly what the  template does (see for example :Category:Authors). It also adds all the categories using the template to theyr own category so Pearle or some other boot could easily be set to "patrol" the list on reguar intervals and move any wayward articles to theyr proper place (not sure if this is already beeing done or not, I notice the Authors category does have a couple of articles). I'm sort of hoping that the Wiki software itself will at some point become "smart" enough to automaticaly "fix" links to redirects when it renders a page, but for the time beeing bots will have to do. --Sherool 11:43, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I know (see above), we currently have no automatic detection of articles misplaced into "redirected" categories nor a bot to fix them.  There is an open bug report on category redirects (which has been open for many, many months) - I'm guessing this is easier said than done and the length of time this has remained open leads me to think it won't be changed any time soon (and I think there may be edge cases that are ill-defined).  If category redirects were already implemented, or were coming sometime soon, I think we could pretty much make any rule we wanted to.  Pragmatically, I think we shouldn't be counting on this, which leads me to think the rule needs to be as natural as possible - even if we create a bot to recategorize articles misplaced into redirected cats. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:13, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
This idea has merit. But ... 
#We would apparently still neeed to decide on the primary names, where things would be redirected to.
#I don't think being concise stands in the way of using more natural and more user-friendly expressions. Maurreen (talk) 15:28, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Having our cake and eating it too

message: Don't forget about groups that don't actually have countries, e.g. Kurds, Native Americans. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well etnicity and nationality are two completely seperate issues. I figure "people of Kurdish descent" would be a good pattern (theyr nationality would be either Iraqi or Turkish (or something else) depending on where they live), but what about the Jews? "people of Jewish descent" would not be acurate because it's also a religious identity... Although I suppose we could also add a "people of the Jewish faith" to seperate between etnic Jews and practisioners of the Jewish faith or something (ooh complicated). We could naturaly keep "Kurdish people" and such, but there can be confution if these groups ever get a nation. For example if the Palestinian people ever get theyr nation we'd end up with both "Palestinian people" and "people of Palestine" and people would no doubht get confused over what goes where. That's why I would suggest "people of Palestinian descent" for people belonging to the etnic group (is it a distinctive etnic group by he way?) regardles of nationality, and "people of Palestine" for people with a Palestinian citizenship (once such a nation actualy exist that is, currently it doesn't) regardles of entic afiliation. These things tend to get political though, many Kurds would for example argue that they are the "people of Kurdistan", but IMHO the "safest" thing to do is to reserve the "people of place" style for actual nations. --Sherool 11:38, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is extremely important to properly categorise category titles. What links the topics is what maters. Groups that dont have countries should be treated as such. Also, I really think people of Palestine, people of Kurdistan implies countries. Safest IMHO would be "Palestinian people" or "Kurdish people" or "Jewish people" (to define Jewish culture/data not necesarily linked to Israel). --Cool Cat My Talk 12:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering most of these categories will have "Foo by Country" as a supercategory, it won't matter if you use "Foo of Kurdistan" or "Kurdish foo", they will both imply a country.  To solve that, we shouldn't be categorizing either under "foo by country".  --Kbdank71 15:36, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text:  I sincerely believe each Native American tribe is quite uneque in its beliefes. So unifing them under one category is flawed. We could have a general category and sub categories for each "tribe" --Cool Cat My Talk 12:57, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: No not even that can be considered a country. NAtive Americans have some autonomy but not much. --Cool Cat My Talk 15:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Native americans each have their own Nation, so it would be the same as "Foo of country" but with nation instead of country.  Theses are recognized seperate entities of the United States, and are treated a such. So basically its another country.  ∞Who?¿? 04:51, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That is actualy cool. Is there a map showing which native countries are where? --Cool Cat My Talk 05:23, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yes, I have to dig some up though, as I haven't had used them recently.  ∞Who?¿? 14:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * If you can get me a generic map I can make good use of it. Can you get me a 50 states map which is similar to the generic map almost every country has. --Cool Cat My Talk 14:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Sorry took so long. Here are a few :Category:First Nations maps, the big yellow one shows what the US would look like w/o the territories, one is of Colorado nations and the other is Southern Ontario. Working on getting more.  ∞Who?¿? 18:14, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Still, Artists of the Navajo nation, Chiefs of the Cherokee nation, etc. sound mighty awkward compared to Navajo artists. Furthermore, if you even use the word Kurdistan anywhere in an article or category title you're going to stir up a huge hornet's nest. Do Basques have a "nation" name? Klingons? (Klingon cuisine is currently on VfD.) (Palestine is different since there's a more-or-less autonomous region with that name which at least is negotiating to become a separate state.) —Wahoofive (talk) 16:07, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Kurdistan is not a country yet. Palestine is not a country yet. Equally, the Basque region is just that — a region, not a country. Klingons do not have a country in the sense we are discussing them here. I doubt the Native Americans carry Cherokee (or whatever) passports, but I could be wrong, and I'm pretty sure they don't have seats at the United Nations. Countries are countries, not semi-autonomous regions within countries. There's a perfectly useful discussion to be had about ethnicity, but it should not be confused with countries. -Splash 17:36, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should regions defining ethnic minority pop be treated as if these regions are countries 

message: Please add to these lists as you see fit, but I think it would be good to keep each item short. Maurreen (talk) 15:45, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: added other improvements -- Samuel Wantman 04:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary 2

message: I disagree with the recent change made to the project page.
#Changing "U.S." to "US".
#Deleting "(present debate on talk page on whether it should be "US", "U.S.", "USA" or "U.S.A.")".
#For one thing, the style with periods is clearly preferred by the style guide, and there is no clear consensus here to go against the style guide. 
#I suggest that until a conclusion is clear, the project page not take any stand, but be a pointer to the discussion. 
Maurreen (talk) 17:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Project page

message: Here's an idea -- Why don't we each make a few short bullet points about the points we feel most strongly about? That could help give an overall view. I'll start.
;Maurreen's view
*Prefer "American foo" or "U.S. foo".
*Least preferred: "Foo of the United States of America" or "Foo of the United States".
*Standardization among categories is a low priority.
*Individual categories could just as well be standardized with the articles they are most closely related to.
*It would be very OK with me not to rename categories for the sole purpose of standardization.
*Strongly disagree with enforcing anything decided here with speedy renaming. Maurreen (talk) 17:54, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Summaries by individuals?

message: I've amended countryish to nationality.  Since Radiant is the only one to have voted as yet I hope he doesn't object.  I'm also removing America and England as a suggestion for proposal 2, as no-one has suggested it here and England is such an incorrect term to use in this discussion. Hiding  talk 09:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with main page

message: Radiant, I find it objectionable you have added a vote for me which misrepresents my position.  Please allow people the opportunity to cast their own vote. Hiding  talk 09:25, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Voting Abuse

message: The contradiction is between "America" (spelled out) and "UK" (abbreviated). For consistency, it would make more sense to make it "America / Great Britain" or "USA / UK". Radiant_>|< 09:31, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
There is no analogous term.  Use United Kingdom or do not list the option.  I do not see what use it is anyway, if you want to present the option for American or British then use only those terms, otherwise don't use at all. Hiding  talk 09:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction? 

message: I might appear to ignorant, but what's the difference between British and English? While scanning some categories I found that some have both "British xxx" and "English xxx" (e.g. :Category:British writers and :Category:English writers). Should they be merged and renamed or should they stay as they are because I am totally not aware of some huge difference between them? Renata3 13:37, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this belongs here at present. Whether or not to have these cats is not affected by what they are named if we keep them. This discussion asks "English painters" or "Painters of England". We're planning to have an ethnicity and similar related discussion once this one is done. Whilst English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish is not an ethnicity question, it can be adequately thrown into the mix (along with the US states). Incidentally, the Northern Ireland question is another good example of why "Things of Northern Ireland" is the better form, since "Irish things" is just plain confusing in this case, and "Norther Irish things" is well...does that 'nationality' even exist? -Splash 21:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Northern Irish is the commonly used adjective to describe people from Northern Ireland by people in the mainland UK and the Republic.  I regret I do not know what term the people of Northern Ireland use to refer to themselves, it could well be either British or Irish depending on allegiance, which further confuses.  However the United Kingdom is a confusing entity and one that needs to be examined regardless of this poll, if you ask me.  However, I have no great problem with using Ireland for the Republic of Ireland and All Ireland when referring to the island, as that is common usage in sports competitions in Ireland, with Irish and Northern Irish denoting nationality for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively.  As the island of Ireland is not a nation, there is no national adjective to apply. I appreciate that issues such as Irish and American are confusing to people, but I think a quick explanation of what the category refers to on the category page should dispel any confusion, and should actually enrich our readership by familiarising them with the term used by a nation to describe their nationality, a goal I think we should embrace, it being encyclopedic.   Hiding  talk 20:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Now there you go, I didn't know there was such a term as "All Ireland" (I don't routinely follow sport). Learn something every day! So far as the UK is a composite country (kinda), yes, some separate consideration might be needed, much as I suspect the US states do. Interesting question you raise about "Ireland not a nation". I think (but am not sure) that Eire/Republic of Ireland is a nation with an entirely sovereign Government (the Crown aside, possibly). I would suppose that Eirelanders are properly Irish by nationality although I don't have one to hand to question! -Splash 22:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You get the All Ireland hurling and All Ireland gaelic footie.  Also note that the Ireland team in Rugby Union is an All Ireland team.  As for Eire/Republic of Ireland, yes, that is a sovereign state called Ireland.  My point was that there is no nation of Ireland which encompasses the entire island at the present time, therefore it shouldn't be seen as incorrect to apply the nationality Irish to those from the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland also owes no allegiance to the British crown, being independent. Hiding  talk 22:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Note also that the countries within the UK are different to the states in the US.  England, Scotland and Wales are still countries, due to the lack of a formal constitution.  Northern Ireland's status as a country is somewhat disputed. Hiding  talk 22:37, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: British vs English 

message: I'd like to see an analysis of the existing category names involving countries indicating how many (overall percentage) are of each general form ("things of x", "things in x", "things from x", "xian things" - any other possibilities?).  Taking a straw poll is fine, but I highly doubt the people voting are a statistically representative sample of wikipedia users (or editors).  Given my assumption that real category redirects will not be implemented soon, I think we must fit our rule to "most common" usage as much as practical (or we doom ourselves to an endless maintenance job of deleting "misnamed" categories and/or moving articles out of soft-redirected categories into the "proper" ones).  IMO any poll (straw or not) has little chance of determining most common usage, however there are enough categories that I think we have a reasonable amount of actual data. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:23, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
*People do generally put something in an existing category rather than create a new one. And we have bots to assist us; I do not believe this will be a big problem. Radiant_>|< 14:44, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
**As a long standing veteran of cleanup associated with :Category:Orphaned categories I disagree.  Every few weeks user:Beland's runs detect several hundred "orphaned" categories, of which I'd guess at least half are either obviously misnamed (according to the lax rules we currently enforce) or duplicate existing categories.  These take manual effort to analyze and fix.  The bot user:Pearle can recategorize, but takes manual effort to set up.  We could implement an automatic method for recategorizing articles placed into soft-redirected categories but we haven't yet (and we currently use soft-redirected categories sparingly).  I would like our rule to be as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:28, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
*The "endless maintenance" is also why we should make this a significantly strong guideline. It should be at least as citeable as WP:MUSIC, and preferably speedy rename-able under the prevailing two-day-rule. That is, it gets listed for speedy-rename rather than done on sight by an admin and, two days later, is dealt with like any other cat rename. And we do have bots (and Who!) and soft-redirects to help with this. -Splash 15:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  analysis of existing category names 

message: Just wanted to comment on SimonP's comment about Jim Carrey is a Canadian actor in that he is an actor with a Canadian citizenship, but he is quite clearly not an actor of Canada in that he does, and has never done, any of his acting in Canada.   I am a citizen of the United States.  I can move anywhere in the world and I will continue to be a citizen of the United States.  Why wouldn't Jim Carrey be an actor of Canada?  I can see him not being an actor IN Canada, but of?  He is a product of Canada, and all that goes with it.  Just my 2 cents.  --Kbdank71 14:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Straw poll comment

message: Would it be ok with those who signed in this section to attach a list of example suggestions to the preferred choice of the other two proposals? Presumably those signing in this section think that one or the other will be used most of the time, but would be wary of signing in favour of it without an acknowledgement of the exceptions. If we gave some common exceptions (and were quite willing to add to the list by way of precedent-setting), would those signing in "depends" sign one of the other two? The wording already lists battles, for example. -Splash 15:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would support the first option if more exceptions than battles were given. For instance the term "Canadian literature" is a universal standard. It gets 212,000 Google hits while "Literature of Canada" gets a paltry 836. The same holds true for other nations and other arts categories like :Category:Plays by nationality, :Category:Art by nationality, :Category:Films by country, :Category:Television by country, and :Category:Music by nation all of which have long been standardized to the adjectival form. The cause for keeping the people categories where they are is less concrete, but it would be a good idea to have separate votes on people and things. - SimonP 16:03, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
*I agree with Simon.  I notice that every example I can bring up is being claimed as an exception.  It is somewhat frustrating to have exceptions on one side of the fence but not the other.  However, could we at least agree that whichever way forward we take there will be exceptions, unless, of course, we take the common usage route that has served us well so far, and is not represented on the staw poll? Hiding  talk 17:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Depends on the situation 

message: There are apparently different opinions on what we're trying to accomplish here:
#A result that is the most acceptable to the most people (or looked at another way, a result that finds the least objection), or
#A result that can be used for speedy renaming.
In other words, which is our higher priority: standards or consensus? 
I bring this up because a couple of people have said something like "We will have achieved nothing if ..."
My understanding is that Postdf started this discussion because he disagreed with the common practice of renaming from "American foo" to "United States foo".
My view is essentially that we will have achieved something if all views have been considered appropriately. Maurreen (talk) 17:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Purpose of the discussion

message: The point of indicating the least preferred option is that it could tell which options have the least objection. 
A hypothetical example:
#70 percent like option A best, but 30 percent hate it.
#20 percent like option B best, but 70 percent hate it.
#10 percent like option C best, but no one hates it.
I think overall, the group would be happier with option C. The majority doesn't hate it, and the minority has been given consideration. Maurreen (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Least preferred

message: In the lines of US vs United States and UK vs United Kingdom. Renata3 20:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion is not intended to settle the question for only two of the countries in the world, despite its phrasing. -Splash 21:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree, but still voting people should be aware that at least these two cases need to be taken into consideration. Because when I voted I voted based only on UK/US totally not considering if it would also fit UN/EU. (this is only a suggestion to broaden the scope of the discussion) Renata3 02:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: UN or United nations?

message: The poll did not specify approval voting or not. Some people added oppose votes to a couple of sections. Then an oppose section was added there. I added an oppose section elsewhere. The section and my vote were removed.
That is inconsistent at best. Either all proposals have an option to directly oppose or none do. Maurreen (talk) 15:21, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Poll:Oppose votes

message: Do people think it's OK to remove a votes? To allow oppose votes in for some proposals, but not all? Here are the diffs:
#Radiant! votes against my proposal (No. 3).
#Radiant votes to oppose part of proposal 4.
#I vote to oppose Radiant's preferred proposal, No. 1.
#Radiant removes my oppose vote.
#Radiant removes the 'oppose' section to proposal, saying it's "by Maurreen's request."
:Radiant neglects to mention that the oppose votes were not removed, but just mixed in with the support votes. Radiant does not address the removal of my oppose vote to a different proposal on the page.
:Comments, please? Maurreen (talk) 06:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not an RfC. This sort of thing belongs on a user talk page. -Splash 06:48, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: For one thing, I tried that already. Maurreen (talk) 06:59, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

text: What I object to is the inconsistent treatment of oppose votes. Either people can vote "oppose", or they cannot. Maurreen (talk) 09:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know a polite way to say this -- All this is because you say so? You decide the voting system, during the voting, in a way that favors you? Maurreen (talk) 09:29, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Regardless of of the issue of approval and binary voting, where is unilateral removal of votes established or accepted? Maurreen (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Selective removal of oppose vote

message: I'm having trouble keeping up with this debate.  There are too many things being discussed at once.   I think it may be time to start over.  
I'd like to propose a change in the process.  I think this should be a moderated and facilitated discussion.  The process I propose is a combination of structured problem-solving methodology and formal consensus decision making.  Many of these steps would be easy to accomplish.  As we proceed, the facilitator(s) would edit main pages to explain the process, summarize the discussions, and organize the results.  All discussions would be on talk pages, and as each phase of the process is completed the discussion about the phase would be archived.  So here is the process I propose: 
# Establish a page explaining what we are up to and explaining the process we hope to use.  Set a schedule for each step of the process.  Announce the project to the larger community and encourage participation.  Have people add there names to a list of participants in the discussion.  People who sign on would be expected to see it through and keep up with the debate.  Late-comers to the debate would be requested to read all the debate and archives before commenting.
# Solicit user contributions on concerns and critiques of current policies (without soliciting discussion on each contribution), also mine past discussions for the same.  At the same time do some research to find out the extent of the perceived problems.
# Use these concerns, critiques and analysis to create a list of criteria for establishing new policies.
# Identify which policies are, and which are not causing problems.
# Create a project statement that clearly defines the objective of the overhaul. This, with the list of criteria, should be used to evaluate any possible solutions.
# Brainstorm to generate different scenarios for possible solutions. While brainstorming, discourage discussion about the merits of each.
# Organize and compare the solutions generated. Evaluate each against the criteria and project statement.
# Select a scenario to pursue.
# Write specific new policies based on the scenario.
# Create a plan on how to implement the changes and educate users about the changes.
# Present as a complete package to the larger community. Ask for feedback and concerns.
# Try to adjust proposal to address valid concerns if possible.
# Present for approval.
# Implement plan.
# Evaluate progress and make adjustments as needed.
At any point we may need to back track a step or more.
This must seem like quite a bit of work and effort, but if we all start out with an agreement about what we are doing and how to proceed it makes all the work that follows easier.
I'd like to throw out one more suggestion while I'm at it.  I'd like to open up this discussion to Categories in general, and not just these naming issues.  Perhaps there are creative solutions to how we are doing things that would solve these naming problem and some of the other category frustrations as well . -- Samuel Wantman 09:06, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: For one thing, I'm not sure how much agreement there is one what we're trying to do here (acknowledging that I'm probably in the minority). And what are the other category frustrations? Maurreen (talk) 09:20, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  loosing steam 

message: I should have clarified this ages ago, but in proposal 2, are American/British tied to America and the UK, since many people seem to be preferring American and British as adjectives with differing noun preferences.  I think in the next stage of discussion we need to break it down a bit beyond the way it is presented here, depending on what the next step is. Hiding  talk 19:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: British/American

message: This was previously (January 2005) discussed on WP:CFD, and there is an archive at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:By country.  As a result of this discussion, many specific categories were renamed to fit the Foo of Bar model, though many people-related categories were not.  The discussion includes:
* Examples of bad adjective forms
* A proposal for how to standardize what each geographic entity should be called
* Discussion of prepositions
* Discussion of cases where countries have split/merged
-- Beland 03:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would just like to say that, regardless of how the consensus turns out, I would like to see it applied to the sub-cats of :Category:Battles by country in particular. Throughout the entire :Category:History by country discussion, consensus, and change-over, these Battle categories were left untouched. They are now in a state of disarray and disorder from different people (including myself) applying their favorite standards. Whatever consensus is reached, I would love to see some consistency applied to these subcats. Thanks. LordAmeth 15:57, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: This has all happened before; it will all happen again