Disputatio Categoriae:Professores studiorum generalium

message: Me intellegere censeo. Sin autem id studere velim, ut illas categorias planiores faciam, necesse erit _omnes_ "professores" e (super-):Categoria:Professores in subcategorias movere. An haec potius sint categoriae secundum disciplinam an secundum civitatem, illic  quaeram! --Iovis Fulmen 19:20, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC) (sumpta e Taberna eiusdem diei) - in detail: Since categories are supposed to achieve some kind of order and to assist in searching, it is not satisfactory to have some professors directly in this category, some under their respective universities, some in :Categoria:Eruditi Germanici or whatever, some as philologi and so on... While I support the well-reasoned distinction between magistri and professores I think the other matter needs some cleaning up. Two and a half alternatives that come to my mind:
* Get rid of categories like :Categoria:Professores universitatum Berolinensium and have :Categoria:Professores as the lowest subcategory in this respect (categories like Auctores Neolatini etc. notwithstanding)
* Move all professores from here into relevant subcategories, which might lead to an explosion of subcategories with one or two entries each
* or _maybe_ find a new, imperfect way of categorizing designed for the supposed needs of Vicipaedia Latina: Perhaps :Categoria:Professores rerum Classicarum on the one hand and :Categoria:Professores Scientiarum plus a category for the non-classics arts&humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) on the other.
Dear me! Hope somebody will bother to answer! --Iovis Fulmen 19:37, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The rule here on the Latin vicipaedia, I think, is to create a new subcategory only if there is reason to believe that it will have at least five or ten members at least within a few weeks' time. So it would be perfectly acceptable to have some professors in subcategories according to their institution, where we have articles about at least five or ten professors at this specific institution, and have other professors directly in this category where we do not yet have enough colleagues to warrant a subcategory.

text: As to categorizing professors by field of study in addition to categorizing them by institution: Why not – just go ahead! --UV 19:44, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: :Thank you for your answer, which -incidentally- confirms my suspicion that the subcategories according to universities here are not really helpful. I just had a look through all of them, Here's the result: 4 subcategories have 1 entry each, 3 have 2, 1 (Harvard!!) has 3, 1 (Yale!) has 4, 2 have 5 - and these categories have existed for as long as I know Vicipaedia (roughly 3 years), sorry, not true. The only exception is Paris, with another subcategory that contains a lot of entries. So I'd rather get rid of them. They only lead to a lack of overview, if you know what I mean. --Iovis Fulmen 20:11, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: :: We might want to hear Ioscius' opinion on this as well. He has been working on some of the categories and articles in question as well. --UV 20:57, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: :::I guess I have started quite a few of these categories for professors of named institutions or in named places. Notice that they are linked on the pages that relate to those institutions or places (you can see how this works at Universitas Cantabrigiensis and at Berolinum, for example).

text: :::The reason why they have few members is that I only started them recently.

text: :::It may be unfair to judge, soon after their creation, that because they contain few members they will be of no use. Articles on academics and professors are quite frequently being added to Vicipaedia, and some editors do sometimes re-categorise, so that within a measurable time they will probably have many more members -- if we keep them.

text: :::I do not agree with the argument of a "lack of overview". I find categories that contain hundreds of members useless, and as they get bigger still, they only get more useless (in my view). Categories that contain one or two members are also almost useless, I readily agree, but, as they grow, they get more useful.

text: :::I find great value in lists and guides that help me to identify people who lived or worked in specific places. That's why I started some of these categories. I suspect I'm not alone in that; but I don't know ...! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:38, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ::::Since you raise the issue, I just added to the existing subcategories the few people in :Categoria:Professores who would fit into one or more of them (just taking evidence from the articles themselves). There are, of course, many other candidates, elsewhere in Vicipaedia, who are not currently even categorised as Professores. They are only caught if people think of categorising as they read articles! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:57, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: :::::No offense meant. To my mind, linking from a university page to professors of that university more than justifies creating these categories.  Still, I don't agree with you on the uselessness of more exhaustive categories, at least not on Vicipaedia Latina: They are more convenient for browsing and comparing, and I don't think there will be a danger of creating categories that fill several pages, as in the English version.

text: :::::You mentioned categorising: What would you have me rather do - create subcategories for all universities whose professors are currently under professors or just leave them where they are?--Iovis Fulmen 22:22, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ::::::Ha! Well, very good question. I guess originally I had (vaguely) in mind the kind of rule that UV mentions above. Admittedly I haven't obeyed it! -- but I have as yet only started categories for which I felt confident we had enough members theoretically, i.e. some of the bigger and more famous university centres (plus Athens, which is where I began, because I happened to be adding enough articles to get it going).

text: ::::::If you adopt your suggestion (a), you will encounter two problems: some categories will have only one or two members for the foreseeable future; and many of the articles are very stubby and don't actually confirm that the individual was a university teacher, or, if so, where! What then? Maybe best to glance through them critically, create all categories that seem likely to be worthwhile, but accept that some entries will remain under Professores for the present. It's your choice, really! But let's keep our eyes open. I have just added Tolkien to Oxford. According to Kingsley Amis, Tolkien as professor of Anglo-Saxon was a deadly bore. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 22:44, 8 Augusti 2008 (UTC)

message: Andrew, you changed a category (something like academici) that I'd envisioned for teachers who aren't professors—which will be fine as long as the category explains itself somewhere as including all academic teachers. In the United States, these will include personnel technically termed graduate assistants, teaching assistants, teaching fellows, lecturers, preceptors, teachers, coaches, trainers, artists in residence, and perhaps others. In this professor, you're implying a vague, general, and often technically incorrect sense, instead of a precise, specific, and sometimes technical one. As I said, that's fine, but only if the meaning of professor is made clear. For reference: the only classical meanings of professor in Cassell's are 'an authority, an expert'. One wonders if the best classical terms for 'teacher' (as in a university) wouldn't have been doctor or praeceptor, or even a term identical in sense & spelling in English & Latin, with obvious cognates in many other languages: educator. IacobusAmor 17:25, 31 Martii 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess we've used "professor" in the sense in which US students use it! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:26, 31 Martii 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: :... which is close, as I now see, to the sense given in Lewis & Short "a public teacher, professor, one who makes instruction in any branch a business". Hence I still think "Professores" works in Latin as a general term. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:08, 25 Februarii 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: The scope of the word ''professor''