Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people/Archive 3

message: Maybe the software can be modified to respect a blank lines in the wikitext, displaying in one long line only those groups of category names whose tags appear together in the wikitext. And, say, alphabetizing only the last group of category names. For example, suppose the wikitext includes
 [Category:Irish Tees]
 [Category:Gees]
 [Category:Bees]
 
 [Category: 1812 deaths]
 [Category:1811 births]
and the wikitext also somewhere includes the all-too-familiar tags
 {really unlikely}
 {bio-stub}
The display would be something like this, where the last of two groups of categories includes the ones generated from editorial tags and is ordered alphabetically.
 Irish Tees : Gees : Bees
 
 1811 births : 1812 deaths : Articles so unreliable that no one should rely on them 
 until reliable editors do lots of work : Biography stubs
If the software respects any number of category separators (in my example, blank lines in the wikitext), then the hockey biographers and their baseball colleagues would be able
to effect something like this using three groups, two separators.
 Ice hockey goalies : Olympic gold medalists : People from Toronto
 Boston Bruins : Buffalo Sabres : Colorado Avalanche : Dallas Stars : Detroit Red Wings : 
 Edmonton Oilers : Hartford Whalers : Minnesota North Stars : Philadelphia Flyers : 
 Quebec Nordiques : St. Louis Blues : Tampa Bay Lightning
 1966 births : Articles needing blah blah : Articles needing even more than that and
 needing it worse : Articles needing something else too : Hockey biography stubs
Here four of the categories displayed in the last group of five are generated from editorial tags located anywhere in the wikitext, and they are displayed together with the last group derived from category tags (in the example, evidently, a single vital date tag). The display order of other groups of category names, and use of separation into groups, would be managed differently in different articles. The hockey project lists all major team affiliations alphabetically in one group of categories (the second of three groups, in the example); the baseball project might do it chronologically without the restriction to major teams; others might select only the most important affiliations without separation from other meaningful categories. --P64 18:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classes of categories 

message: Is there a good category for such people?  The closest seems to be :Category:Mysterious people, but even that still implies that the person actually exists.  :Category:Fictional characters would be better in a normal encyclopedia, but since WP is anyone-editable, that won't fly for people who think the person existed.  There should probably be a category that implies "doubtful existence, but some believe so."  Does this exist already?  If not, should someone create it, and what would it be called?
(For clarification, if I write a novel about a 4th century Roman Pompous Maximus, the article goes into Fictional characters.  But if I bald-facedly insist that Mr. Maximus actually exists based on my own "personal research" or "poetic inspiration" or whatever... what then?) SnowFire 00:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  People whose existence is questionable. 

message: A lot of the subcategories for universities involve people (academics, alumni, Chancellors etc...) but others do not - please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#University categories for discussion on how to arrange these. Timrollpickering 15:47, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Universities 

message: So, we have no consensus on schemes? Let's see if we can build one.
===Alphabetical order===
*This makes the most sense to me. "Relevance" is subjective at best, and one person's "relevance" fighting with another person's "relevance" can only lead to edit wars; alphabetical order is, as far as I can determine, the only way to avoid fights. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 00:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One example; I've seen others and I'd have to search... RadioKirk (u|t|c) 01:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your order makes no sense at all to me. What is more important about George W. Bush, the fact that he was born in 19XX, the fact he attended Yale of the fact that he became President of the United States? Obviously the last. Merchbow 15:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with your argument is that it starts and ends with importance, a subjective issue. The only way to remove subjectivity is an established norm, such as Unicode order. As for W., how about "First second-term Republican president to lose Congress mid-term"? ;) RadioKirk (u|t|c) 18:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a non-problem. Articles are subjective all the way through, but if one acts in good faith and with neutrality no problems will arise - that's certainly my experience. And if on the off-chance someone does decide to flatter Hitler by listing him as an artist first and a Nazi last, that can be changed just like any other bad faith edit. It really isn't hard to decide what the key characteristics are in most cases, and in any case no-one is suggesting that there is one "correct" version, it is just a matter of coming up with a good helpful order. If someone wants to tweak it a bit afterwards, that isn't a problem. Merchbow 23:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

text: "What is more important about George W. Bush"  "Obviously the last."  That's obviously your POV, plain and simple.  Who defines importance, you? --Kbdank71 22:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That really is ludicrous. You are making the sort of intellectual point that actually looks very silly. Sumahoy 23:10, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: How is alphabetical not user friendly?  --Kbdank71 22:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because if you don't know what is there you may have to read the whole list to see if there is anything worth navigating to, and then you might be disappointed. The category system is a navigation tool, and people are more likely to want to navigate in some directions than others. We can't be sure what any particular reader will want of course, but we can make reasonable assumptions about prevalent tendencies.  Sumahoy 23:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This isn't art, it's an encyclopedia.  --Kbdank71 22:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Edited by people, not machines. Some of us trust people to do a better job. Sumahoy 23:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: There is one established order: Unicode. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 03:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I don't see the connection.  That's a technical issue--obviously categories and allpages have to be ordered artificially, so they may as well be ordered alphabetically, and it makes articles easy to find in categories that have many of them.  But relatively few articles have more than a dozen categories, and some of those probably shouldn't.  Chick Bowen 04:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgive me but, speaking of not seeing the connection, you seem to be making a different argument. Unicode isn't just the characters, it's the order thereof. Did I miss something? RadioKirk (u|t|c) 18:49, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh?  You and I seem to have lost each other somewhere.  In any case, I think the point is made moot by those cited below.  Chick Bowen 00:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Schemes

message: *This makes the most sense to me. "Relevance" is subjective at best, and one person's "relevance" fighting with another person's "relevance" can only lead to edit wars; alphabetical order is, as far as I can determine, the only way to avoid fights. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 00:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One example; I've seen others and I'd have to search... RadioKirk (u|t|c) 01:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your order makes no sense at all to me. What is more important about George W. Bush, the fact that he was born in 19XX, the fact he attended Yale of the fact that he became President of the United States? Obviously the last. Merchbow 15:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with your argument is that it starts and ends with importance, a subjective issue. The only way to remove subjectivity is an established norm, such as Unicode order. As for W., how about "First second-term Republican president to lose Congress mid-term"? ;) RadioKirk (u|t|c) 18:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a non-problem. Articles are subjective all the way through, but if one acts in good faith and with neutrality no problems will arise - that's certainly my experience. And if on the off-chance someone does decide to flatter Hitler by listing him as an artist first and a Nazi last, that can be changed just like any other bad faith edit. It really isn't hard to decide what the key characteristics are in most cases, and in any case no-one is suggesting that there is one "correct" version, it is just a matter of coming up with a good helpful order. If someone wants to tweak it a bit afterwards, that isn't a problem. Merchbow 23:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

text: "What is more important about George W. Bush"  "Obviously the last."  That's obviously your POV, plain and simple.  Who defines importance, you? --Kbdank71 22:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That really is ludicrous. You are making the sort of intellectual point that actually looks very silly. Sumahoy 23:10, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Alphabetical order

message: *Reading the previous comments this issue has been argued to death, and the idea that alphabeticisation is a good idea has been totally demolished in my opinion. It looks messy, it is not user friendly and very few major articles currently have their categories in strict alphabetical order. Merchbow 15:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How is alphabetical not user friendly?  --Kbdank71 22:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because if you don't know what is there you may have to read the whole list to see if there is anything worth navigating to, and then you might be disappointed. The category system is a navigation tool, and people are more likely to want to navigate in some directions than others. We can't be sure what any particular reader will want of course, but we can make reasonable assumptions about prevalent tendencies.  Sumahoy 23:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This isn't art, it's an encyclopedia.  --Kbdank71 22:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Edited by people, not machines. Some of us trust people to do a better job. Sumahoy 23:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Order of importance

message: *Well-intentioned, but seems like this will add a lot of unproductive bot edits, and we already have too many of those.  Besides, there's no way to make it consistent.  A physicist who did a little math would have one order; a mathematician who did a little physics would have another.  And that's a good thing, isn't it?  Chick Bowen 02:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is one established order: Unicode. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 03:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I don't see the connection.  That's a technical issue--obviously categories and allpages have to be ordered artificially, so they may as well be ordered alphabetically, and it makes articles easy to find in categories that have many of them.  But relatively few articles have more than a dozen categories, and some of those probably shouldn't.  Chick Bowen 04:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgive me but, speaking of not seeing the connection, you seem to be making a different argument. Unicode isn't just the characters, it's the order thereof. Did I miss something? RadioKirk (u|t|c) 18:49, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh?  You and I seem to have lost each other somewhere.  In any case, I think the point is made moot by those cited below.  Chick Bowen 00:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: None

message: MediaWiki defaults to alphabetical order, unless people add their own sort keys for whatever reason, which may make sense to e.g. sort by a person's last name rather than their first. I wonder what the perceived problem is here, are there categories that are sorted in some other fashion? How and why? >Radiant< 08:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's a ref for the removal of the alphabetising option from AWB, after previous discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ASemi-bots&diff=60806373&oldid=60755434 --Francis Schonken 11:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What is the issue here?

message: Something missing from the article is a note that classification of living people is especially problematic and there is a strict policy about it.  --Zerotalk 13:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  living people 

message: There's a CFD for :Category:Animal rights activists; the members of an animal rights project don't want the subcat for "activists"; a couple of us who have been categorizing and diffusing various people categories (:Category:People by occupation" and :Category:Activists) think it's important to be consistent. Thoughts from other people-categorizers welcome, since this could set precedent for other movement pages. --lquilter 18:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I started discussion at Category Talk:Activists on the general subject. --lquilter 22:21, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Activists" and "movement" 

message: The change from "In categories dealing with peerage" to "In general" is a big one, and should be discussed before being adopted. It has far greater implications than the matters dealt with in the paragraphs that follow it. I haven't (yet) seen a consensus for title-based sorting outside peerage categories. I suspect that such a consensus will appear soon, but I haven't seen it yet. In the meanwhile, can we please return to the accepted text? --Stemonitis 12:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not a "big change"; it is a clearer description of what Wikipedia actually does, and has always done, for the vast majority of peers. See any article on a peer which uses his title in the article title; (that is to say, not the handful which resemble Eden, North, Bertrand Russell, or Francis Bacon.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't the point of a guideline that it says what should happen, rather than what does happen? Actually, I'm coming round to believing it is the best way (or is at least the consensus view), but I'm not aware of it having been specifically discussed for more general categories, and it is a large change to the guidelines, since it's now giving different advice about the sorting of peers in general categories. The fact that they're mostly already sorted that way is merely an advantage to making the change, but doesn't prevent it from being a change in the first place. --Stemonitis 18:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What should happen? No, absolutely not; you have an exaggerated idea of the importance of this page. Please read Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines; and, less formally but more coherently, WP:PRO. Guidelines are not legislation; they're not even policy; they record what most editors agree on so we don't have to discuss it again. The best evidence of consensus is what Wikipedia actually always does; much better than some poll of a dozen editors on some page somewhere. This is why m:Voting is evil. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peers 

message: I suggest to do some examples, in order to get a clearer view of this issue. I'll start with one example. Feel free to add others, but please also let us know what you think about this particular example:
Example:
* The article on William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne contains (among others) this categorisation: Newcastle, William Cavendish, 1st Duke of
* His wife, Margaret Cavendish, has categorisations in this format: Cavendish, Margaret
* October-December 2006, in Antwerp, there was an exposition about these persons: Royalist Refugees: William and Margaret Cavendish at the Rubenshouse (1648-1660). As you see the exhibition's title only mentions "Cavendish", the description of the exposition on the Rubenshouse website mentions "Newcastle" twice.
* I'm not sure whether Newcastle, William Cavendish, 1st Duke of or Cavendish, William, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne would be more appropriate in the William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne article. I'd tend to think the second (sorting on last name) though. --Francis Schonken 18:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: examples

message: I'm not sure what the dispute is about, but could Francis Schonken and Stemonitis please desist from edit warring and discuss the matter on the talk page? Perhaps requesting a third opinion would help. >Radiant< 09:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protected 

message: In Nov 16 2006 there was a CFD about the :Category:People by political orientation which, essentially, punted back here or to Village Pump.  I got triggered on this issue because in the last couple of days there have been a slew of :Category:American liberals cats placed on wildly inappropriate articles, like Howard Zinn and Ani DiFranco and other folks who would self-define as "radicals"; when I looked at the category I noticed a lot of people who would not self-identify as "liberal"; and the subcats Socialists and Democratic Party -- which are completely inappropriate, because socialists, even as defined in the US, are not "liberal", and the Democratic Party certainly does not include all liberals.  This is obviously a particular definition of "liberal", but it's not a universal one.  I suspect the same problem exists with "conservatives" category.  Unfortunately, these categories, while important if properly administered, are going to be a nightmare to maintain, because everyone has an opinion -- and a different one -- about what these terms mean.  Has this discussion happened somewhere? --lquilter 05:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  people by political belief 

message: I think specific mention should be made of surnames where the alphabetical indexing is different to the strict spelling of the surname. The three specific cases are mentioned in the section heading. I have in front of me a late 19th century Whitaker's Almanack listing the members of the House of Commons which includes:
Lyell, Leonard
M'Arthur, Wm. A.
Macartney, Wm. G. E.
M'Calmont, James M.
M'Cartan, Michael
M'Carthy, Justin
McDermott, Patrick
Macdona, John C.
Macdonald, J. A. Murray
MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.
M'Ewan, William
Macfarlane, Donald H.
McGittigan, Patrick
.. and so on. Were this expressed in our category indexing, anyone with a surname beginning in M', Mc, or Mac, would be indexed with their surname beginning "Mac". Another case is surnames beginning with O', and here the list goes:
O'Driscoll, Florence
O'Keefe, Francis A.
Oldroyd, Mark
O'Neill, Hn. Robt. T.
Owen, Thomas
This means that surnames beginning with "O'" should be indexed without the apostrophe. Likewise surnames beginning with "St." as an abbreviation for "Saint" should have "Saint" spelled out in the category indexing. I propose to make this addition to the policy, but would be interested to know if anyone wishes to object. As I see it, this is not a controversial issue. Sam Blacketer 09:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm with you on the O'Xxx issue, but the Mac variations may be more debatable. Sorting all of Macxxx, MacXxx, McXxx, Mcxxx, M'Xxx and M'xxx as Macxxx is bewildering for people unfamiliar with the practice. It would be more transparent, albeit perhaps less traditional, simply to sort by the letters included in the name, without punctuation, and without any internal capitals. Abbreviations like St. are somewhere in between "O'" and "Mc" in clarity, but are probably sufficiently widely understood to be sorted as "Saint Xxx" even when titled "St. Xxx". However, this does bring up the overlooked problem of spaces in surnames: "Saint John, Forename" sorts before "Saint, Surname", because space sorts before comma in ASCII, but I doubt that any reputable reference work (except Wikipedia) follows such a scheme. --Stemonitis 17:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On "St.", I have certainly seen alphabetical lists produced recently where "St. " was indexed at the beginning of ST, but presumed it was always an error caused by computer sorting not recognising the abbreviation. Certainly, a surname of "Saint" should be before "St. John". On the "Mc" problem, I wonder if this is a case of national variations? I have not seen any alphabetical list which has separated them which could not be attributed to a computer's misrecognition. Sam Blacketer 11:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wonder if it's possible to distinguish between the naïvété of a computer and a deliberate, conscious simplification. Sorting "McX" after "Mbxxx" could easily be someone's deliberate choice. I guess we can only mirror the practice used by Britannica and other encyclopædias, whatever that might be. The only solution I can see to the multi-word surname issue is to replace the spaces (ASCII 32) in the surname with a character that would sort after the comma (ASCII 44) but before any (lower-case) letters, and my recommendation would be either to use the underscore ("_", ASCII 95), so that Ian St. John would be sorted as "Saint_John, Ian", for example, or to simply run the words together so that Ian St. John would sort as "Saintjohn, Ian". I am not sure which approach I prefer. Again, it probably depends on the usage preferred elsewhere. --Stemonitis 17:36, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ordering of surnames in specific cases: Mc, O' and St. 

message: The child categories of :Category:Racehorse deaths by year are all intertwined into the :Category:Deaths by year subcategories, categories which are of course meant for people. Example: :Category:1789 racehorse deaths is in :Category:1789 deaths. The same mess is also present in the :Category:Racehorse births by year categories.
Does anyone here have the hour or two it would take to clean this up? Or, is there a bot out there capable of cleaning this up? --kingboyk 22:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I can try this with my bot.  Basically it's just going through all the subcategories of :Category:Racehorse deaths by year and :Category:Racehorse births by year, and removing them from subcategories of :Category:Deaths by year and :Category:Births by year, right?  I'll request approval if this is correct. —METS501 (talk) 03:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's it. Perhaps the people and horse categories should get a "see also" too? Then there's still a link, just not an improper categorisation of horses as people :) --kingboyk 11:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'll work on the request later.  I'm about to lose my connection as I'm upgrading to Verizon FiOS, so that will take a few hours. —METS501 (talk) 12:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Animals in the people categories 

message: There is an ongoing revert war going on at Matt Groening over whether he should be included in categories for The Simpsons and Futurama. The two sides argue that policy is against this type of categorization and that because he is notable as creator of the two shows he should be included regardless of this. I was hoping someone here could give a non-biased opinion on this matter or otherwise point me to an appropriate policy statement. I found two points in this page which could be used to argue either side so I was wondering if there was a better place to look. Thanks for any help. Stardust8212 16:04, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorizing people by television show 

message: There has previously been an attempt to create a temporal hierarchy based on date of birth in addition to the existing hierarchy based on year of birth. This initiative was however strangled in its birth about a year ago. I am now wondering if this is really such a bad idea. I have inquired whether there might be any support for a renewed initative from members of a few WikiProjects. On the Norwegian (nynorsk) Wikipedia such a hierarchy exists and seems to be both innocuous and well-functioning. __meco 13:26, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a terrible idea. There is absolutely no educational benefit in connecting people by the completely random co-incidence having been born on the same day. The Norwegian Wikipedia probably hasn't reached such an advanced stage of category clutter as we have here. Honbicot 19:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth by date hierarchy 

message: There has been a lot of debate recently around deleting lists of people grouped by ethnicity, race, religion, and other cultural groupings. Unfortunately, Wikipedia:Categorization of people deals with this issue from the point of view of categories; there is no guideline for the similar but distinct lists of people. As a result, there has been a ton of confusion on this issue. To counter this, I have created Wikipedia:Proposed guideline for lists of people by ethnicity, religion, and other cultural categorizations to clear clarify this subject. I hope people will comment on the proposed guideline. Best, --Alabamaboy 12:28, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed guideline for lists of people grouped by ethnicity and other cultural categories