The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Oppose -- It is appropriate to keep both, as historical articles on the two institutions. However by convention we merge the alumni categories. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
keep I came here ready to delete, but actually this is a good case of WP:DEFINING - in many articles about these men, they start with "So and so, a confirmed bachelor, did the following" - in other words, in many works about them, they are often described as bachelors. However, to avoid clutter, we should purge and keep this only for men who have truly been known as bachelors - a 20 year old actor who isn't yet married (thus technically a bachelor) should not belong. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:56, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, old Quentin was actually the subject of a published article about the 10 most eligible gay bachelors in NY: [1]. Articles about the older guys use "confirmed" bachelor, but the younger guys it's just "bachelor" - just use google, you'll see what I mean - many of these guys, in the bulk of articles about them, are described as bachelors... --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My question was which Wikipedia articles use the expression? I cannot find any. I searched Google and I don't see what you mean. Why don't we have a category of men who haven't walked on the moon? It would be just as useful. Graham Colm (talk) 22:35, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
DEFINING: a defining characteristic is one that reliable, secondary sources commonly and consistently define, in prose, the subject as having. Y'all need to look up what that means. My point was, for many of these bachelors, especially the well/known famous ones, every single article you read about them will call them bachelors. I agree with BHG that this category scope may be too expansive, but arguging that it's not DEFINING implies you don't know what DEFINING means. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is far too common to make a useful category. (With an adjective) it can be a euphemism for homosexual. However the common meaning is "not yet married". Peterkingiron (talk) 17:48, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The point about not for those who hold a bachelors degree and that the title is confusing is a valid one. I actually expected that to be what this category was covering when I first saw it. on the other hand, while some people might be defined by their being unmarried men, many others would never be so defined. In most cases it is not defining.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:22, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - I don't believe I've ever seen this mentioned in a lead. WP:DEFINING says "If the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead portion of an article, it is probably not defining". William Avery (talk) 16:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale: The head article is at Western (genre), and per WP:C2D, the categories should speedily renamed to match. This also removes ambiguity, because there are film of the Western genre, rather than those from the Western world, or from the western parts of the countries listed.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
This actually would fit better with the rest of the naming scheme. I also would like to ask folks to add additional similar categories that I might have missed. --Nlu (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could you explain what you think is gained by the addition of the word "people"? Is this not understood as is, or is there some ambiguity I'm not seeing? Cynwolfe (talk) 19:06, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see. In all the above examples, the name of the people is a substantive formed from an adjective, and each readily forms a plural. The problem arises when the name of a people doesn't readily form an English plural: you can say "Thracians" or "Greeks", but not "Frenches" or "Englishes". Although I myself am not wedded to consistency when it produces unnecessary wordiness, I thank you for the explanation and see the logic. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:12, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale this category violates our rules against gheotization. Categories are never supposed to be by gender or ethnicity at the bottom rung. Since the only other sub-cat of Category:American essayists is a gender cat, this rule is clearly being violated here. We should thereforce upmerge.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:38, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
upmerge per nom While I'm not convinced that gender and ethnicity markers should be avoided, I noticed that few of those included have an output limited to essays. Elizabeth Alexander (poet) has published a decent number of poetry books, James Baldwin published both novels and short-stories, etc. I think "Category:African-American writers" should serve just fine for diverse writers. Dimadick (talk) 16:50, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale The biggest reason for this rename is that Category:American novelists is not getting diffused in large part because the sub-cats are not named clearly enough to be recognized as sub-cats. Actually, that might be second to the fact that what these people write are called romance novels. For example, Rochelle Alers (who was not in any category that used the word "novelists" until I just moved her from Category:American women writers to Category:American women novelists, has as the opening sentance of her article "Rochelle Alers (b. August 7, 1963) is an American writer of romance novels". So if these people are writing romance novels, I think we should call them "romance novelists".John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Many romantic fiction writers write in short, medium, and long (novel) forms. To me it makes more sense to not separate by long and short forms for this category. The defining attribute is the romantic fiction, not the length of the work. --Lquilter (talk) 14:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment In explaining why they insisted on putting a person in this category also into the parent category Category:American novelists someone stated "WP:Cat/gender (and yes, I know romantic fiction writers are - currently - a subcat of American novelists). That's too arcane an explanation for our reading public". I am not 100% sure what they mean, but they may mean that it is too much to expect readers to realize that a category named "fiction writers" has as a parent a category named "novelists". If so we should do a rename. Alternatively we could split the category, but as far as I can tell all the people in this category were novelists, so I am not sure we will gain anything by doing that.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:03, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, FWIW. This should not be a subcategory of American novelists at all. It should just be a subcategory of romantic fiction writers and American fiction writers. AndreasJN46605:18, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose -- Not all romantic fiction is a novel. I think the problem is that novelists should ber a sub-cat, not a parent of fiction writers. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominators rationale This move is supported by two provisions on categorization by ethnicity, gender etc. One is that if by having a nationality/occupation/gender grouping in a category you overly ghettoize, you should not do it. Thus, since this overly cuts off the women from the men in [[:Category:American essayists], this is a bad move. The other rule is that we should not subdivide by gender etc at the bottom rung of a category tree, and since the only sbudiviisions of Category:American essayists are by gender or ethnicity, this rule is clearly being violated here. Now I have to explain why we should consider this lone nomination, and not along with all other sub-cats of Category:American women writers or Category:Women essayists. Well, the bottom rung applies to a specific tree, so in other cases there may be a lower rung than essayist, but there are not for American essaysist. At the same time Category:American poets does have other sub-cats, so it might work. The issues are at least different enough that we should discuss them seperately.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:59, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Johnpacklambert, gender/ethnicity/sexuality/religion identity subcategories are not a "bottom rung". Think of them as additional categories rather than diffusable subcategories. They are additional because they are topics of interest to readers and defining identities to the subjects of the category. You are absolutely correct that we have to not ghettoize. The way we avoid that is by not diffusing into those subcategories, but simply applying them as additional categories. --Lquilter (talk) 14:19, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's the whole problem. Why is there an exception to this diffusing rule? Do we really expect editors to follow it? And what if the subject is not in the main cat, but in a subcat (e.g. woman X is not in Category:American novelists but rather in Category:American mystery writers or whatever. Are you still proposing a forced upmerge to the parent? And which parent? How high up the tree do you go? The current system is hopeless and cannot be rationally dealt with.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Look, a diffusion of a generic category of, say, Category:Writers into Category:Writers by nationality is a fairly non-controversial diffusion because most people have a nationality that is important to them; writers by nationality is something that many users of the encyclopedia want & will expect to find; and there's no reason to treat, say, US writers differently from Canadian writers. But gender isn't the same sort of category as nationality. Everybody has some kind of gender that's important to them, and let's just accept arguendo the binary. But users of the encyclopedia do not always use gender, because there are some instances in which they perceive gender to not be useful, and other instances in which they perceive everything by a gender, and yet other instances in which they perceive gender along the ideas of a "default" and pay special attention when the gender is non-default. In other words, because women and men historically have had different gender roles in different places, readers have different expectations of gender. "Women writers" historically and today has a significance to readers, academics, & writers themselves, that "male writers" doesn't have. "Women athletes" similarly -- but note that within sportspeople, sometimes female is the default, as in gymnasts, and males are the exception to the rule, and need a specific dedicated and gendered category.
The "why" is because Wikipedia categorization is not an equal protection matter. It is a finding tool. Readers who want American writers need access to both male and female writers. Readers who want American women writers need to be able to find that. And when there is a demand and need for American male writers, we should make it. Maybe that's now, I don't know, but it should be created out of a need for the subject, not out of some perceived correction for gender bias. --Lquilter (talk) 10:40, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These kinds of arguments are just too closely nuanced to work at a global policy level for categories. I've read over the ethnicity/gender categorization guidelines, and I'm pretty sure that they are perhaps 75-90% not followed in practice - they are just too complex, and there are too many different ways to interpret. Again, you haven't addressed the issue of where in the tree you bubble up to? At what point in the tree do you split by gender? If a woman is a romantic novelist, does she also belong in Category:American novelists?
If we had a rule that said "ok, we're going to split by gender, but only at the very highest level - say "Women writers" or "Men writers" - e.g. gender + high-level job - and we didn't have further gender slices lower down the tree, then it becomes a lot easier to manage, because we can then get as specific as we want in the jobs. Those who *really* want to know all of the female mystery writers can simply do a category intersetion. However, today, people want to create job+nationality+gender, then subjob + nationality + gender, and so on, and the result is an absolute mess.
Finally, your argument that "male writers" are not a category worth of study is rather silly - try googling "male writers" you will see hundreds of books on the subject. Not as many as for women writers, true, but it is now (and has been for some time) a subject of study.
I agree it's not about equal protection, but if we want to avoid future nasty uninformed NY times articles, we'd best get a bit more equal otherwise the wolves will come out again - even if the intent was the opposite.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What's so difficult about simply viewing gender and ethnic categories as additional categories, like Lquilter says, rather than categories for diffusion? Right now, for example, James Baldwin is not listed in Category:American novelists. The man is one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century. Can't you see how bad this makes Wikipedia look, and how easy it is to fix? AndreasJN46600:29, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing at all; it's great in theory, it just doesn't work in practice - long winded answer posted on your page. Very hard to create generic guidance on which parent one should bubble up to, and how far.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:36, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Upmerge per nom. Category "women essayists" is already small and underdeveloped. We don't need subdivisions for small categories. Dimadick (talk) 16:35, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - It's clear that this is part of a larger conversation that cannot be resolved on any one category discussion. I'd like to refer folks to a relevant proposal for "Category intersection" searching (at Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection) that could resolve this issue to everyone's interests. Really. --Lquilter (talk) 14:20, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The whole rule that these should not be created as "bottom rung" categories suggests that if created inproperly they would be bottom rung categories. If we have a rule against something it clearly suggests that it is possible to break the rule if we incorrectly create categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)----[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
