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April 24

Category:Formula One magazines

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.
The result of the discussion was: Delete. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:17, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose deleting Category:Formula One magazines - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: Underpopulated category with only two articles (one of which is up for deletion), and unlikely to expand as most publications that pass WP:GNG are included in the more broad Category:Auto racing magazines. QueenCake (talk) 21:30, 24 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.

Category:American women novelists

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.
The result of the discussion was: The result, by a fairly large margin in both numbers and arguments, is in favor of merging the categories back together at Category:American novelists, while keeping the women novelists separate Category:American women novelists because it is a recognized field of study in the literature. ((All included)) and/or ((Distinguished subcategory)) should be kept on the latter so that this does not happen again. Can someone with AWB or a similar tool do this soon, given the frighteningly large amount of media coverage focused on these categories and related discussion? Thanks, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: As per gender neutrality guidelines, gender-specific categories are not appropriate where gender is not specifically related to the topic. This subcategory also creates the unfortunate side effect that Category:American novelists contains only male novelists. neilk (talk) 19:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to register my objection to the striking out of the two votes. These are people who have bothered to get involved. By pushing them out of this conversation, you are contributing to the continuing inability for newcomers to feel comfortable here. Especially women. Which is of course, the subject of the article being discussed. These are primarily contributions from new editors who were outraged by the sexism implicit in removing women from the novelist category. This move went viral on Facebook, and of the hundreds posting on Facebook, these are the three or four who have taken the time to try to take part in the Wikipedia process. By summarily negating their voices, you are just making it worse. --Theredproject (talk) 23:25, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, who took this to facebook? If this was raised there, then the votes are probably a result of WP:Canvas violations and that would support pointing this out and discounting those !votes. In the end, the closing admin will determine how much weigh each comment merits in the decision. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In the end what needs to be done is what is right. Now what stubborn anonymous editors think they can get away with Gem-fanat (talk) 23:13, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Huffington Post or Twitter may be the reason for this being on Facebook. jonkerz ♠talk 23:58, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, this one started on FB, with Elissa Schappell's wall post, which has now been shared many many times. Huffpo is doing what they do best: repackaging someone else's story. Why or how people got interested in getting involved isn't important. What is important is that they are engaged in this question, want to make a contrib to wikipedia, and are being pushed away. And regarding Canvas, there were many many links to the talk page, and this discussion, telling folks that the way to engage with wikipedia is not to "contact the authorities" but to engage in a discussion.--Theredproject (talk) 00:19, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is also on Facebook via NY Times article. New York Times. It is a pretty polarizing subject that has caused outrage among female novelists. 75.142.205.47 (talk) 18:00, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When first thing you do after joining Wikipedia community is voting (!) on discussion page, it is not contributing, it is meat puppetry. Know the difference. Netrat (talk) 10:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An article about a problem on Wikipedia which does not ask people to vote (or !vote) is not canvasing. Wikipedia is not a silo and articles which get people more involved are a good thing. RoyLeban (talk) 05:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll agree with RoyLeban here. If you have an objective of getting more people to participate in Wikipedia, striking out the opinions of people new to Wikipedia is the wrong way to go about it. Belittling and devaluing the contributions of new editors is pretty much guaranteed to make sure that they'll never contribute again. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 12:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I know Bloomcity and Ojeffs, they are real people who each have only one account. Is there a way I can provide evidence of this? --Jmcdon10 (talk) 14:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Knowing them is nice. As noted in the analysis here, those accounts have been blocked as socks. Given this and the likelihood that at least one other account could be a sock, the closing admin will have to deal with these issues and not you. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:03, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The point, as discussed in the New York Times, is that women are being removed from the category of "American Novelists" and placed into Category:American women novelists. Geoffrey.landis (talk)
The "point" is a foolish one, as a subcategory is part of the parent (and is found as a subcategory on any search for the parent, another silly point). I don't see anyone complaining about Category:Pulitzer Prize for the Novel winners being subcategorised. Oculi (talk) 11:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The "point" is that women are being removed from the category of American Novelists and men aren't. This is explicit sexism. Not even a borderline case: it is completely unambiguous sexism.
You are wrong. You are welcome to move all the biographies of male novelists to Category:American men novelists Netrat (talk) 07:07, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your "point" is missing the point. If all the novelists had been removed from "Category:Pulitzer Prizes" but every other prize winner was still listed there by name, yes, that would have been discriminatory against novelists. When you remove women, but not men from the category, that's pretty clearly discriminatory.Geoffrey.landis (talk) 12:42, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The idea that the women were removed or somehow relegated is false. Sub-categories belong to their parent categories and are listed at the top of the category page. The use of categories is not done in a normative or prescriptive manner, only for the purpose of simplifying navigation. - Shiftchange (talk) 11:48, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How can this be made more clear to readers, some of whom clearly have a different understanding, based at least in part on how we present our categories? -GTBacchus(talk) 13:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We seem to have a template whose wider, consistent application would have prevented this whole thing. Daniel Case (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The women novelists should all be merged; as for the other women by occupation categories, that needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis. There are a few discussions in the history where it was decided to keep actors and actresses in separate categories, for instance. As a general principle, if there is a "female X" category there should be a "male X" category, rather than "women X" being a subcategory of X. neilk (talk) 01:30, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you have it right when you said "case by case" rather than generalizing "if there is female X, there should be male X." There is a legitimate academic interest here in the "women X" subset; for other topics the legitimate academic interest might relate to nationality, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Categories must make sense on an intellectual level. There is no "one size fits all" general principle for these things. Carrite (talk) 16:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Partially agree This actually touches on a very good point that I didn't consider. The necessary difference between this categorization and others like ethnicity is that this is based on a binary. Short of a category containing nothing but subcategories, exploiting a binary like gender requires that one take precedence over another. The method by which one category takes significance over another, no matter how it is decided, is highly troubling when applied to gender. Inarius (talk) 02:24, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That said, is it better to leave the subcategory as-is for now and let a bot do the cleanup (assuming such is necessary) after the discussion wraps up? There are editors adding the "American writers" category to every article in "American women writers". —C.Fred (talk) 01:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Mundart, FYI the comments on the talk page, and this thread began after Filipacchi's Facebook post, but well before the Huffington Post article, or her own NYT article were published.--Theredproject (talk) 01:51, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whether, after this is done, this category should then be deleted is a separate issue, on which I have no opinion. Geoffrey.landis (talk)
Addendum: Actual example of this that I went and found, very relevant to this discussion: Eminem is categorized both under American rappers and one of its subcategories, American rappers of English descent. Daniel Case (talk) 18:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is not bad faith to start with one problem rather than trying to attack every single similar problem on Wikipedia at the same time. Yes, other categories should also be fixed. RoyLeban (talk) 05:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note to closing Admin - that comment let's the cat out of the bag. This is clearly a strategy to try to delete an entire category system by a concerted attack on a single member. This has become far too common over the past year at CFD, and must be nipped in the bud by Sysops.--Mais oui! (talk) 07:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Objection: This is the Slippery Slope Fallacy. Fixing this case is, if anything, a precedent for fixing other cases of discriminatory sexism (splitting an evenly-distributed binary such as gender into a "normal, no need to state which it is" and "the other one" implies inferiority). It does not provide precedent for getting rid of any and all categorisations, even on gender, where those are both neutrally done (calling out both explicitly, rather than just one) and merited by the subject matter. For writing in general, where gender distribution is itself an area of sociological and literary study (which is at least an indicator of relevance), it is; for novels, I understand that no such indicators exist, and thus it is not - Merge. If there are, "Merge and Keep", by creating an "American Men Novelists" sibling category. 2620:0:1040:203:BAAC:6FFF:FE86:1ADE (talk) 10:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note to closing Admin It's clear that Mais oui is has a strategy to use fallacious arguments to continue a sexist practice. By attacking the nomination as bad faith, by accusing me of having some hidden strategy, they have assumed bad faith. In fact, I have no strategy whatsoever, and I have no relationship to the nominator. When I become aware of problems, especially really bad ones like this, I speak up. There are a million problems like this on Wikipedia. The fact that other problems exist does not mean we shouldn't fix this problem (hopefully that sounds familiar). In fact, we should work to fix all the problems. But we can't fix them all at the same time. RoyLeban (talk) 06:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not the one who didn't read WP:Cat gender. The very first line says "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic" (emphasis mine). Where is that specific relationship here? Their chromosomes? If a specific relationship exists for women, then I would contend it also exists for men. If there is no specific relationship for men, then there is none for women. Period. There is just as much a specific relationship for women as there is for American novelists over 6' tall. Obviously, tall people have a different perspective which affects how they write. Should we move them out too and remove them from the American novelists category? Of course not. If you want a category for novelists who write about women's issues, or men's issues, or write mysteries, etc., that would make sense, because what novelists right and what they write about does have a specific relation to the topic at hand. And guess what? Those categories already exist and they overlap with lists of novelists by country. Of course they do. You wouldn't say someone isn't an American novelist because they write mysteries. RoyLeban (talk) 06:40, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you sure you read it? It says, "As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest, though it does not need to be balanced directly against a 'Male heads of government' category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male." Maybe this is different, but there's no need to be hostile. AgnosticAphid talk 08:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wasn't trying to be hostile, just emphatic. The earlier poster accused me of not having read certain guidelines because I disagree with them. That's not good faith. Is your argument that Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, etc. should be excluded from regular lists of political leaders because they're in the Female heads of government category? Because that's the argument that's being made by some people here. RoyLeban (talk) 23:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Um, RoyLeban, as you probably know, lots of our decisions about what to include in Wikipedia are based on real-world notability. In the real world, I'm not aware of anyone writing about or studying the topic of "tall writers", whereas there is considerable academic energy put into studying women writers. Should we ignore this state of affairs? Shouldn't we implement categories that are proven to be of interest to large segments of our readership? -GTBacchus(talk) 08:26, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You missed the point. I deliberately chose something a bit ridiculous to make a point. Substitute whatever you like for "tall". Tall, short, blonde, one-armed, Christian, Jewish, etc. Pick something that somebody is writing about. Should anybody in that subcategory be removed from the main category? Of course not. What if it's about what they are writing? E.g., writers who write about Christianity or write Christianity-themed literature (as opposed to being Christian). Certainly there are people discussing that. Should we remove all those writers from the list of novelists? Of course not. RoyLeban (talk) 23:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, maybe I missed the point; maybe I didn't. Did I suggest removing anyone from a list of novelists, ever? No, I didn't. Does saying we should implement a specific category mean we should also depopulate its members form the parent category? Hell, no. Are women writers a topic of interest? If so, we should have the category, but the women writers should stay in the parent category, as well. Are men writers a topic of interest? That's a valid question. Are tall writers a topic of interest? Are blond writers a topic of interest? These are all empirical questions, but none of their answers begin to suggest that large categories need diffusing.

      To make my point quite clearly: Whether or not a subcategory is of interest is precisely the question we should ask regarding the creation of that category, but it has absolutely no bearing on whether it should be a diffusing subcategory or not. Do you disagree? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I do disagree. In my opinion, at the moment, we can't separate the issues. We should merge the categories, period, to undo the huge mistake that was made. And, yes, we should do the same many places on Wikipedia, anywhere where sexism, racism, or any sort of bigotry or exclusionism has cropped up. After that point, we can talk about whether certain non-exclusive subcategories should exist. In this particular case, I don't think such a non-exclusive subcategory should exist. My wife happens to be an American female novelist. The environment in which she is writing is very different from the environment that Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton, and Louisa May Alcott wrote in. When people study the history of women writers, when and who are they studying? I don't pretend to know the answer, but Wikipedia should reflect that with articles and/or subcategories rather than an arbitrary category which is essential self-sourced and/or original research. Same goes for Writers of the (name a time period) categories. RoyLeban (talk) 17:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge I agree does not conform to gender neutrality guidelines, and creates the side effect of a Male Only main page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ktsetsi (talk • contribs) 12:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say you're categorically mistaken. It's a category, not a list; and they're still listed as american novelists, as you can see at the bottom of this page. AgnosticAphid talk 08:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge It would actually be okay IF it was a subset of the Category:American novelists but removing them from that category is a clear violation the gender neutrality guidelines, and is also bizarre. --Jmcdon10 (talk) 14:16, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It IS a subset of the Category:American novelists. Netrat (talk) 11:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When J. K. Rowling first published, she choose to use her initials, instead of her full name, reportedly because of concern that sexism would affect sales. If she wasn't so successful, many would not know if she was a man or a woman. Putting her only in a "woman's" list, would make it impossible for someone to find her in a male only novelist's list.
Saying that the category is too long, and some entries that fit some sub-category should be moved out is absurd. There is nothing wrong with keeping a subcategory for women authors, or black, or American or whatever, but they should not be moved out of the main category. EricKent (talk) 14:38, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is something wrong with categorizing articles both under a category and its subcategory, it ruins the very concept of categories. Netrat (talk) 11:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If there were an article American Presidents Who Died in Office, is it inappropriate to leave those presidents in the category American Presidents? Jodie (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for this example, Jodie! Netrat's comment seems to assume that we have categories in order to satisfy some abstract notion of categorization and order, when in fact we have them for one reason only: readers' convenience. If readers find it convenient for categories to feature a certain amount of redundancy, then that's precisely what we should do. We're not trying to make a point about categorization, only to serve readers. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that an "American Men Novelists" category solves the problem. The more general category is necessary precisely because people do not look for novels by the gender of the author. They look for novels. To split and empty the larger category in favor of two gender-based categories implies that the gender of the author is the single most important distinction in a work of fiction, which is simply not so. Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The issue relates to the exclusion of those included in the American Women Novelists category from the American Novelists category, a really bad decision by somebody. The answer isn't to remove the subcategory, it's to reinclude those falling in the subcategory into the larger category. Carrite (talk) 16:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge I agree does not conform to gender neutrality guidelines, and creates the side effect of a Male Only main page. --Lexinatrix (talk) 16:51, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is unfortunate that Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality no longer has the clear guidance regarding diffusion that it used to. But basically, the problem is that (1) inclusion within ethnic, gender, religion, & sexuality intersectional categories is appropriate, where those categories are "recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right" -- for instance, women writers, African American scientists; but (2) diffusion into those subcategories is inappropriate, because it serves to ghettoize. So the appropriate solution is that for those folks who have relevant cultural identities (like "woman writer") have that intersectional category as well as the appropriate super-category. --Lquilter (talk) 22:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC
The argument posed by John Pack Lambert is an example of throwing barriers of technicality. An example of confusing people with machines. And 'limit the discussion to "those who 'understand these things' ". All that is missing is a 'pat on the head' and holding out a dish towel. And a whiff of 'ownership'. Neonorange (talk) 02:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We actually do have Category:American men novelists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now we do. It was only just created, in response to all this. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are confusing a list with a category. They are not the same.
I don't think John Pack Lambert is confusing a list with a category. From his comment here, it looks like he is very Wikipedia-savvy and knows what he's doing. It's NYTime author who's confusing a list with a category. Netrat (talk) 11:40, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the category you mention dates to 25 April, while the discussion here dates to 24 April, for most of the period of this discussion we in fact did not have the category mentioned.
An example of this is Hailey Abbott who is in Category:American women novelists and Category:American romantic fiction writers, the later is a sub-cat of Category:American novelists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
John, just because you've been categorizing some of these articles, no one is saying you were being "sexist" despite the drama of the NYTimes op piece, it was just well-intentioned category creep. Filipacchi's whole point is that subcategorization of only women is ghettoization, and not what is permitted per Bearcat's comments.--Milowent • hasspoken 19:09, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
LWG, do you mean the talk page for American Women Novelists or the one for American Novelists? Is there an official priority/hierarchy between discussions on talk pages, versus discussions on CfD pages? Especially as this thread seems longer and in ways, more robust than the other two.--Theredproject (talk) 20:07, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion at American Novelists is addressing the overall issue of male/female subcats and how to address them, and the outcome there will affect individual cases like this one. I have no problem moving that discussion here or whatever, but we shouldn't decide on action here if the opposite action is going to be decided there. -- LWG talk 20:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problematic article is Category:American women novelists This is the proper place to discuss the problem. To move the discussion would raise barriers to participation. Neonorange (talk) 01:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • That discussion began after this one did. If anything, the discussion there should be put on hold pending a consensus here. Just because people at the main category didn't notice there was already a discussion here isn't a reason to uproot this discussion and move it somewhere else. AgnosticAphid talk 08:48, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Categorization_and_subcategories#Subcategorization:

A page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category (supercategory) of that category (however, see directly below). For example, the article "Paris" need only be placed in "Category:Cities in France", not in both "Category:Cities in France" and "Category:Populated places in France". Since the first category is in the second category, readers are already given the information that Paris is a populated place in France by it being a city in France.

Note also that as stub templates are for maintenance purposes, not user browsing (see #Wikipedia administrative categories above), they do not count as categorization for the purposes of Wikipedia's categorization policies. An article which has a "stubs" category on it must still be filed in the most appropriate content categories, even if one of them is a direct parent of the stubs category in question.

Hope this helps. Netrat (talk) 12:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is more specific discussion of this problem at the Wikipedia guideline page Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality, which I've quoted below (labelled "Relevant Guideline).--Carwil (talk) 13:16, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Relevant Guideline" is relevant to entirely different topic than rised by Wichitalineman. What Wichitalineman asked was where "don't include an article into partent category and child category at the same time" policy comes from. Netrat (talk) 15:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I also agree with those who have pointed out that gender, unlike nationality or ethnicity or genre, is a binary." Seriously? Perhaps you should visit the ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Gender category - it might blow your mind. You're the second or third person in this argument who has called gender a binary variable. There's a lot more than just "men" and "women" in this world...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitrary break
This is a good idea, although people at Semantic Mediawiki have been working for years on an interface and backend that would make this possible. It is a very complicated technical problem, made all the more difficult by the massive size of Wikipedia, the number of potential categories and category members, the speed at which editing takes place, and the relatively small number of servers that Wikipedia runs on (compared to Google, Facebook, etc.) The current system was designed on a shoestring budget almost a long time ago, and it isn't ideal for sure. Stu (aeiou) 00:20, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you - even the 'but'. Two days ought to be enough to correct the most egregious problem. And then the universe. As to the length argument raise by some comments above - at 4000 entries, the list is mostly a roster; subcategories will end up more used. But subcategories should not be created that result in an exclusive men's club at the top of the hierarchy. ...there are too many of those as is. Neonorange (talk) 02:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We have Category:American men novelists, so you are ignoring the situation we actually have.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02
57, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
On a broader note - the obvious misunderstandings demonstrated above of the intent of wikipedia's gender classification schemes in categories suggests that a broader conversation should be started after this closes, perhaps at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality and notifying Wikipedia:WikiProject_Gender_Studies.
Nonetheless, for those who have repeatedly said "having one for female is silly when you don't have one for male", I point you to WP:Cat gender, which states "As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest, though it does not need to be balanced directly against a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male by default." Wikipedia is chock *full* of categories where there is a female category without an equivalent male category, which to me makes "male" seem like the norm. And even though the guidelines state that females should not only be diffused but rather included in both cats (to avoid the ghettoization problem), this contraindicates every other categorization guideline, by which we always diffuse and don't keep cats in the parent - having a special exception for gender is just confusion (as you can see above) - and in any case people don't follow that guidance.
If you look at a similar discussion I started a little while back for Women and death, which I also felt seemed to indicate some sort of special relationship with death that women have whereas no-one had bothered to create ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Men and death, you'll also notice that no-one is calling for a merge up to ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Death. Here's another example: ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Murderers_by_nationality - which has ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Female_murderers_by_nationality - although I seriously doubt such a category would merit a NY times article nor the accusations of sexism and bias shown above - but such sub-categorization does reinforce the "male" as normal and the female as "exceptional" - so I do hope that this guideline will be rewritten, and that we (almost) never ever again create a female cat in the absence of a male one.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:50, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Category name contains Number
"women" 8,177
"men" 6,006
"female" 1,946
"male" 1,201
And I just found another category to debate: ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Male prostitutes by nationality but we have no equivalent ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Female prostitutes by nationality. Oh dear...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:17, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, adding back removed "American novelists" categories was not helpful. It's double categorization what should be avoided. In any way you should have waited until this discussion is closed before changing actual articles. Even if there's a consensus on not having males in parent category and females in child category, there are more than one solution to do so. And JPL seems to be the most reasonable person in this whole discussion, please don't attack him. Netrat (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The nomination has not closed. There is no consensus to do anything. Anyway the specific cases involved not only reversions of this specific category but other categories, and the total removal of this category. Categories that still exist should not be removed from people who clearly fit in the category. In fact what was done in those cases was an out-of-process, backhanded deletion of the category which is clearly against the norms of wikipedia.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:38, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"The nomination has not closed. There is no consensus to do anything." John, that's precisely when you should most of all refrain from making edits. Focus on the discussion - in particular, focus on listening to others, until a consensus emerges. THEN, act. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:41, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, bud, but this is really your (compatriots'?) bad. You (all?) should never have "added back all of the removed 'American novelists' categories" when we were in the middle of a discussion about whether to delete or merge or keep the American Woman Novelist category. You don't get to unilaterally decide the consensus mid-discussion. So it was a mistake to add the categories back before the discussion was closed, and you should probably have known better even if you weren't aware of this discussion. Now, does that excuse JPL re-removing the categories? I'm not sure. Obviously edit wars are unproductive and undesirable, but at the same time it was premature to re-add the categories. But regardless, I don't think the righteous tone is super helpful. AgnosticAphid talk 09:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
comment Not sure if I would agree with a wholesale merge of the women by occupation cats. I just think that if we *ever* create a woman-specific cat, we should create a male specific cat, and always diffuse. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why "always diffuse"? What about the heads of state example? Being a female head of state is notable. It doesn't, however, mean that one should not be browsable as a generic head of state as well. -GTBacchus(talk) 09:59, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support While I don't agree with all of JPL's arguments, I think his reasoning here is sound - people are massively misunderstanding the purpose of the ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists category - it is really a holding ground for people who have yet to be categorized into a more specific sub-cat. I do think not having a ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American male novelists category is problematic and leads to the ghettoization problem, but if you have an author already in ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American fantasy writers there is absolutely no reason to bubble them up to ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists also - it's not some sort of club that you have to be part of - if you are in a sub cat, you are by definition a member of the main cat - that's what sub-category membership implies.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:46, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is one for American male novelists, though not with that specific name, and John's been working to add articles to it. Someone has nominated that one for deletion too (see the log for April 25).--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 04:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the sub-cats is that people aren't properly diffused into them. There are 4,000+ authors in the main "American novelists" category. You can't say with any amount of honesty that the majority of them don't belong in a genre sub-category. So it comes back to the point that several people made earlier - either merge or completely diffuse. I like the idea of diffusion, as a list of 4,000 people is useless from a navigational perspective. But maintaining a parent category that has any substantial number of articles is wrong if you're removing people to put them in a sub-category. Either everyone belongs in a sub-category (genre first, gender secondary), or everyone belongs in the parent category. Your arguments throughout this whole conversation have ignored that problem. --SlowWalkere (talk) 05:15, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would question the dogma that a list of 4,000 people is useless from a navigational perspective. I've seen in the course of this very controversy someone talking about how they have wanted to search for an American novelist based on nothing but a vague idea of their last name. What this person wanted was precisely a list of all the American novelists covered by Wikipedia so they could go through it and try to jog their memory. I'd say in general that people may use the category system in ways that we don't always foresee. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In actual practical terms, as pointed out on Jimmy's talk page, cross categorization by intersections is the way to resolves all the sub-categorization dilemmas; then those who wish to look for any arbitrary group of anything can find what they are looking for. In the meantime, all divisions by sex or nationality or religion should include everybody in reciprocal groups. (and to deal with those in more than one group, to list them as many times as necessary, and, if needed perhaps because of lack of information, to have a group of unclassified.) The basis of censorship is to not include or to deemphasize information that we think might be put to a bad use. DGG ( talk ) 05:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, you missed the point. You wrote: We have List of novelists from the United States that covers everyone in an alphabetic list." But this discussion is about categories, not about lists--your comment about lists is irrelevant. The point here is that the category in fact did not "cover everyone in an alphabetic list"-- it had been a category from which women writers had been removed. If you remove women novelists from the category "American novelists," it is very hard to escape the conclusion that, in Wikipedia's view, women are not novelists. Those who are objecting to this do not understand that if you leave some people (but not others out of a category), that implies that according to Wikipedia they are not in that category.Geoffrey.landis (talk) 13:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, Geoffrey, *you* missed the point. Several of the newspaper articles and blogs have called ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists a list, and have mixed up lists and categories, and have implied that wikipedia has a master list of novelists and women are being removed from it. As your comment above shows, even you - a seemingly experienced editor, massively misunderstand categories. From whence do you get this notion that "it is very hard to escape the conclusion that, in Wikipedia's view, women are not novelists."?? The wikipedia categorization system is meant to aid in navigation, it is not meant to be the end-all/be-all of who someone is. Let's take a different example - I'm going to use your same words: "If you remove mystery writers from the category "American novelists," (to diffuse to ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American mystery writers it is very hard to escape the conclusion that, in Wikipedia's view, mystery writers are not novelists." Do you see how ridiculous that sounds? It's simple diffusion to a more specific sub-category. By moving them down, you are *not* removing them from their claim to membership in the parent. I could come up with 100 other examples but I won't bore you - just take a browse around the wikipedia category system, and read the guidance on categorization, which explicitly states that you should not put something in the parent and the child. There may be an exception proposed here for gender and ethnicity cats, but even that IMHO is problematic and way too prone to error.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:00, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Both gender categories would still be huge. All can be kept in "American novelists" even if women also had a separate category for women. As someone who writes and researches novelist articles, the gender split would be nonsensical and disruptive to me.--Milowent • hasspoken 13:07, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I propose a change to the way categories are handled, which would avoid this and other similar issues. It would, however, require a change to the way WP handles categories.

Instead of having to separately categorize an author into “American”, “Novelist”, “Women”, “Fantasy writers”, etc., create a sub-category for each permutation of type of writer, genre, nationality, gender, etc.

These categories should then automatically roll up to the parent categories, i.e. American Novelist, etc. This way the master lists don't need to be separately maintained. This would solve multiple problems with the current system. The parent categories would be very large, but that is a the way they should be. Adding a search by name, last initial, or something similar, would help navigate the category. EricKent (talk) 13:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic."
  • "Dedicated group-subject subcategories, such as Category:LGBT writers or Category:African-American musicians, should be created only where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created. Please note that this does not mean that the head article must already exist before a category can be created, but that it must at least be possible to create one."
  • "For example, LGBT writers are a well-studied biographical category with secondary sources discussing the personal experiences of LGBT writers as a class, unique publishing houses, awards, censorship, a distinctive literary contribution (LGBT literature), and other professional concerns, and therefore Category:LGBT writers is valid. However, gay people in linguistics do not represent a particularly distinct or unique class within their field, so Category:Gay linguists should not be created."
  • "As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest, though it does not need to be balanced directly against a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male by default. Both male and female heads of government should continue to be filed in the appropriate gender-neutral role category."
FYI—--Carwil (talk) 13:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot see why you are saying "Right now it creates the wrong impression that subcategory members are not part of the higher-level category?" when it does not create such impression (not to mention that any impressions are way too subjective to ever consider them - different people will have different impressions, just like tastes). Subcategories are clearly listed at the top of each category page. Any subcategory is a part of its parent category by definition. This is what sub- prefix means! If people fail to understand such basic things, they should get some education. They could read subcategory article at the very least. And by the way, making any change to MediaWiki software is waaaaay harder than anyone here can imagine. Netrat (talk) 15:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"If people fail to understand such basic things, they should get some education" is not one of the principles by which I understand Wikipedia to operate. We do our best to make it as transparent and easy to use as possible. People *are* widely misunderstanding, and it does a disservice to the users--including those trying to educate themselves by using Wikipedia--to suggest that they need some arbitrary level of education in order to use it. Yes, they need to read, etc., but the proper members of classes and subclasses (esp. when there is nothing directly on those pages to explain this) is not the philosophy of Wikipedia as I understand it (I think there are even some explicit principles regarding this but I'm rushing right now). Wichitalineman (talk) 16:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This has performance implications - because you're not just talking about subcats, if you're serious about capturing everyone, you'd have to recursively pull in all of the subcats of the subcats of the subcats. In any case, this CfD is not the appropriate venue for a technology challenge such as that - maybe to go village pump.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Saying that the category should not be merged because there are other sub-categories of writers that are not, is disingenuous. The problem came to attention with this specific category, but the solution should apply to all sub-categories. Not merging women is sexist. Not merging black writers is racist. Saying that this is the way that it has been done, is the equivalent of those who said that women shouldn't vote, or that slavery shouldn't be abolished. When something this egregiously wrong occurs, it will attract the attention of the general public. Saying that they don't understand the way WP works, and therefor should be ignored, is irresponsible. This will seriously damage the credibility of WP. EricKent (talk) 13:29, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why you're asking him - go ask over at the Village Pump or ask the media wiki developers. They're not going to add this because for higher level categories there would literally be millions of pages - it's not just direct sub-cats, it's their subcats too. If you want all members of a cat and subcats, there are external tools which allow this but they are slow - for a reason.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was asking him because his responses seem to depend on the availability of such a function--otherwise his continual references to the subcategories "being part of" the larger categories is not that useful, since users can't see that. If there was not some other goal in operation here I would think he would agree with my point about display, because display is the issue that people have been pointing to, whereas John Pack Lambert keeps pointing to the underlying "reality" of the categories. As a side note, if there are truly categories with millions of pages, that would seem to suggest that the top-level American Novelists (and even above that, American Authors, and above that Americans?) is never going to be too big, as it will never grow beyond hundreds of pages. However, I agree now with the solution below from Carwil that this problem is solved by making American Women Writers a "non-diffusing" "distinguished" subcategory. Wichitalineman (talk) 15:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, try this. Click on a category. See the bottom part of the page? That shows all the pages that are directly in the category. See the middle part of the page? The part labeled "Subcategories"? Those are all of the categories that are members of this category. That's what JPL means when he says the subcats are PART OF the larger cats - as they are, and are displayed that way on the screen, and can easily be navigated to from the category screen. Also I didn't say there are cats with millions of pages (though those also exist), my point was once you start adding subcategories recursively, many higher-level cats could end up with millions of pages from their children, and thus become basically useless.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:36, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I understand and had understood the subcategory point you are making and knew they are displayed on the higher-level pages; my point all along has been that it is not transparent to users that the subcategories available there mean that members of those are members of the top-level class (via set-theoretical commutation). On the second point, I see what you are saying about the "millions" issue. I'm still interested in the raw numbers: how big is too big for any given level of categorization? Who decides? Wichitalineman (talk) 15:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

QUOTE ... Also in regards to the "ghettoization" issue, an ethnicity/gender/religion/sexuality subcategory should never be implemented as the final rung in a category tree. If a category is not otherwise dividable into more specific groupings, then do not create an E/G/R/S subcategory. For instance: if Category:American poets is not realistically dividable on other grounds, then do not create a subcategory for "African-American poets", as this will only serve to isolate these poets from the main category. Instead, simply apply "African-American writers" (presuming Category:Writers is the parent of Category:Poets) and "American poets" as two distinct categories. ENDQUOTE

Let's fix this, but let's fix it in a smart way that doesn't downplay women novelists as a distinct group worthy of recognition, yet also doesn't force a "male novelists" category in useless pursuit of gender parity. And let's do it also in a way that lets Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, and Robert Heinlein be in the same category of American Novelists. (As a purely personal opinion, I'd mention that we don't have to include Gloria Tesch, John Ringo, or Joy Deja King; they can go in subcats). Mang (talk) 15:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The U.S. Government also supported slavery; its not the same thing. I'll volunteer to clean up any categories for every country, once we have the resolution straight, I am sure I can recruit others. But it better not including putting Dawn Langley Simmons in Category:British intersex novelists.--Milowent • hasspoken 15:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. I think you just won the Godwin award. Well done. I'm not quite sure how your deft logic works, but I remain stunned that you were able to link the library of congress categorization scheme to slavery, and using only 11 words. Awesome!
As to Intersex novelists, that's an interesting one. Why not? If there is a field of study around media/art/books/etc by intersex people, why wouldn't we create such categories? I guess we sort of do, since we have ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom - not sure if Dawn fits into the 'T' there.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, speaking of Godwin, this whole activity is akin to nazi soliders "just carrying out orders," glad to see you make the comparison. For my next trick I shall link Rebecca Black to the Justinian Code. As to Intersex novelists, its fine to have a "women's writers" or "lgbt writers" category, but not as a subcategory of novelist. Novelists are novelists, this division of all novelists by gender instead of using additional separate cats is arbitrary and stupid.--Milowent • hasspoken 17:46, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I second calls for lowering the wikistress on this. The major media coverage is clearly deteriorating the Assume Good Faith ethic. -Aerolit (talk) 08:37, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Another break
It is additionally hard to justifiy claiming I am "most responsible" since I have never edited the catgory itself.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:16, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Are you denying that you added and removed categories on dozens of female author's pages earlier this month? No one else has engaged in such a concerted effort to remove women from the category of "American novelists", so you are, in fact, the "most responsible" for this particular effort. It seems clear that it was originally a good faith effort and not a sexist purge, but you really ought to spend a little more mental effort trying to understand the issues of visibility that resulted -- and that people have explained over and over in these comments. Moving women to a subcategory while leaving men in the main category has the effect of making those women less visible to people browsing the main category -- that is just the way it is in the Wikipedia interface. And please don't respond by saying "we have a men's category, too!", as you already have multiple times. That category did not exist until after this controversy began, and YOU PERSONALLY made no effort to create such a subcategory as a complementary effort as you were moving women out of the main category earlier this month. JLeland (talk) 16:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are accusing me of being sexist when I followed the clearly existing at that time consensus that the intersection of women and writing is notable and having such an intersection is not important. The clear consensus is that having a category for men does not neccesitate on for women, nor the other way around. I have in fact created many categories related to men, siuch as Category:German male dancers. Anyway, the fact that I did not create the category, nor was I the first to put women in it and not in the parent you seem focused on (while not focused on how this makes women novelists less visible from the main category page of Category:American women writers) suggests that I was not the person who developed the scheme.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:57, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Where did I accuse you of being sexist? I specifically said, "It seems clear that it was originally a good faith effort and not a sexist purge". Regarding consensus, the gigantic discussion that is taking place makes it clear that if there is a consensus, it does not match what you thought it was. There are legitimate points being made about a lot of topics here, and whatever solution is chosen needs to take into account the very real issues of visibility vs. ghettoization vs. logical subgrouping by interest that commenters have brought up. JLeland (talk) 17:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The rhetoric of "purge" has no part. A purge is a systematic killing of people. No one was injured in this process, although with the amount of hullabaloo some have created you might think someone was.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest you look up the definition of the word "purge". It does not mean "a systematic killing of people". The point at which you willfully start misinterpreting the English language just to bolster your sense of persecution is the point where you really ought to step away from the conversation and calm yourself down. JLeland (talk) 15:10, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • All this just confirms you started doing something and really had no clue what you were doing. And now you're trying to make something out of nothing, hoping that this shit storm will blow away with a token effort and a lot of playing the victim (below--"I find it higly objectionable"). I find it highly objectionable that we're the laughing stock of the internet because you weren't thinking. And to everyone else who says "oh they just don't understand how Wikipedia categorization works"--that may well be true but it's pretty much irrelevant. Such big things should have been realized beforehand to be big things, and they should be discussed. Drmies (talk) 15:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was not the one who created this category. I was not the first person to move categories into it and out of the parent category. Even some of the editors above who have said this should never be done have actually done it. I think this points out that it is not workable to have categories be non-diffusing outside of award categories, because it creates too much category clutter. Your not seeing a problem with personal attacks as have gone on above is odd.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Drmies, your assertion that one ill-informed NYT op-ed makes us the "laughing stock of the Internet" makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously. I tend to agree with your overall point here, but the histrionics do you no service at all. Please calm yourself. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
GTBacchus, if you think the NYT is the only place/source/person/site/venue that has noticed and reported this Wikipedia gaff, then you are sadly out of touch., and it's impossible to take you seriously.
I don't. I've read about it in at least three different places, all of which referenced the NYT piece, and some of which criticized IT as failing to understand Wikipedia. None of that justifies your histrionics. "Laughingstock of the Internet" is a ludicrously over-the-top phrase, and I think you know that. This is a tempest in a teakettle, and I think you know that. -GTBacchus(talk) 12:07, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • JPL, religious attacks are out of line, but you have been an outlier view when it comes to come of these cats. I understand you think female presidents should be called "presidentess", as has been noted on twitter. That's far outside the mainstream.--Milowent • hasspoken 18:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • So much for truthful representattion of someone's views. To begin with, if what I think is being discussed her is what is being discussed here, than it does not relate to any opinion I have ever expressed on wikipedia. I have never favored we start refering to Vigdís Finnbogadóttir as a "presidentess". In fact if my statement so characterized is the one that is under review, it is my statement that people who are currently most commonly refered to as "mission president's wife" should be refered to as "presidentess". Few people refer to the wife of the mission preisdeent as a "president", she is most often refered to as "the mission presidents wife". More or less, this is like advocating that we should refer to Michelle Obama or Laura Bush as "presidentess" (although this would only really be analogous if Mrs. Obama was a regular member of the cabinet). Thus, while I might if I could get people to embrace this langauge refer to Bonnie Oscarson as having been presidentess of the Sweden Goteborg Mission, I would not say that she has such a title in her present postion. That said, Eliza R. Snow was refered to by some people as "presidentess of women" in the LDS Church (see [6] this Nov. 21, 2009 Deseret News article) so I did not invent the term. However it is disingenous to say that I "think female presidents should be called presidentess". The people I made this comment about are not at present normally refered to as president. That is a total misrepresentation of my views.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:56, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • To give you a feel for the language currently sued to describe the postion I mentioned we have this line in the biography of Susan W. Tanner, one of the 347 women who currently holds the postion most often refered to as "mission president's wife", "Tanner is currently serving with her husband, who is president of the church's Brazil Sao Paulo South Mission; this assignment began in 2011 and is expected to end in 2014." I think I made a comment along the lines of using the term presidentess to this article [7] in the Deseret News, which says "the Mission Leadership Council, which will consist of the mission president and his wife, the assistants to the mission president, the zone leaders, and sister missionaries holding a newly created leadership position called sister training leaders." Making it clear at least in this usage her title is "mission presidents wife". A few paragraphs down "They will work closely with the mission president’s wife, who is now being asked to play a bigger role — depending on individual and family circumstances — in training and caring for sister missionaries." Thus the people I advocated we refer to as "presidentess" are not currently refered to as "preisdent", so the above comment totally misrepresents my argument. My comment on the article that is relevant here was " I have see some suggest calling the mission president's wife the "mission matriarch", in fact I have done that. She is also at times called the "mission mom". I have also known people who refered to the time when they presided over the mission as being "mission presidents" in the plural, suggesting both the husband and wife is president. Personally though I think the best term is "mission presidentess", and think I will start using the term." Well, actually it is probably not at all relevant here, in any way, but since I was attacked for it, I felt I needed to explain the circumstances involed, which do not match the accusation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:34, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would actually argue that this category should survive, but Category:Haitian women novelists should probably be upmerged, although that would maybe have allowed the NYT to inflame even more knashing teeth. Of course why the New York Times did not deal with the many sub-cats of Category:Novelists by nationality that do not have a women sub-cat, like Category:Hungarian novelsits and Category:Brazilian novelists is slightly beyond me. Actually the easiest explanation is the person who wrote the inflamatory editorial went up to Category:Women novelists by nationality instead of to Category:Novelsits by nationality. At least64 novelsits by nationality categories do not have a women subcat. Of course some like Category:Afghan novelsits contain no one at all (and only four article), the same with Category:Cypriot novelists although it has only one. Category:Malagasy novelists does contain a woman (she is even in Category:Women novelists, but it also only has one article. Of course Category:Senegalese novelists has no direct contents, all articles involved there (also only one) are in the sub-cat Category:Senegalese women novelists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you really don't understand why the NYT (and every other media outlet in the world) has jumped on this, you clearly don't live in what we call reality. "Inflamatory editorial"--blame the messenger. Hey, JPL, where you gonna stick the transgendered people? And what if someone doesn't have a gender, or doesn't disclose it? Drmies (talk) 15:06, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is not "every other media outlet in the world". I have searched the Washington Post and the LA Times and found no mention. Just because one writer decides to turn this into a personal crusade and gets other people to react, does not mean we should act rashly and jettison our policies. It certainly does not justify religious attacks on other editors, or lieing about what they have said. Both of those have been done against me.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:34, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Every other media outlet in the world"??? And you say I'm the one who can't be taken seriously? Rich. Keep it up. -GTBacchus(talk) 12:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I dunno; that guidance is a big ambiguous. For instance it says "As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest ..." Novel-writing was predominantly male for centuries ... women only became prominent after, say, 1900. For that reason, literary experts do often treat female writers specially (e.g. devoted essays & theses). WP categories should support researchers that want to study that gender-specific topic. --Noleander (talk) 12:38, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem (as I understand it) isn't that there is a catagory for women but not for men. Rather, the problem is that female artists are being removed from the main category and placed into the subcategory. As an example, look at the edit history for Harper Lee. Lee is the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, an extremely well known and highly regarded novel. Yet when she was placed in the female novelists catagory, she was also removed from the 'American Novelists' catagory. Which, given she's arguably one of the most famous American Novelists out there, is just silly. mrstu —Preceding undated comment added 21:20, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi John, I thought I explicitly named you when I commented on the issue of "category clutter" above. To reiterate, having a pretty filing system is not nearly as important as what our filing system says to our readers. Ghettoization (as mentioned and defined on Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender,_race_and_sexuality) is a problem for readers, where "category clutter" is a problem for editors. If you still don't get why this is a problem, please stare at these examples until you realize why they are offensive violate gender neutrality: [9] [10].
To zoom in onto these particular pages, having "American novelists" and "American women novelists" on the bottom of a writer's page doesn't take very much space, but does give readers the opportunity to click to one more overarching category. Neither "American novelists" nor "American women novelists" is going to be especially easy to navigate under our current software. Diffusing out half of it simply won't solve that problem (since there are still hundreds of pages on each), but will create a disturbing male default category. Moreover, diffusing the category by gender inhibits browsing for people of non-obvious genders, like an impressive number of novelists.
Now, if you want to argue that category clutter is more important than these issues, argue away, but please stop saying no one is arguing back.--Carwil (talk) 18:44, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Which directive? Can you give a link? It's always baffled me that we can't have entries in two categories, that somehow categories are mutually exclusive. But I said that above. How do the new categories differ from the existing? I'd like to know which categories to use going forward. Truthkeeper (talk) 18:41, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, spot on. This has been a problem for years. It's often really helpful to have names in the main cat and in subcats, and this is one of those occasions. We should have an American novelists category for everyone (in case we're searching for names regardless of gender), then in addition a male and female one, which are informative in a different way. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "but today the term is used for any historical work above a certain length" - not quite. A mystery novel is still a novel; a historical novel is still a novel; a romantic novel is still a novel; a science fiction novel is still a novel; a literary novel is still a novel and so on. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, that makes sense. Short stories and plays are fictional by definition. Novels are too. To be honest this is a huge mess that was bound to occur some day because not a lot of editors work in literature, fewer still in American literature, and the categories need work - obviously. Which goes to the point below. But we don't have the man/woman power for the maintenance to be honest. And no one has cared until a few days ago. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Another arbitrary break
How to do category intersections work
  1. Here is a link to show how many women are ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American women poets but not ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American poets: click here
  2. You can also do category intersection, by using the 'subset' checkbox, like this: (list of all ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American women poets who are also ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American_Poets_Laureate - note I recursed on the poets laurete tree, since it is multiple levels deep.: click here
  3. List of all ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:African-American women poets who are also ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American women poets: click here.
This particular one is interesting - should we bubble the African-American women up to the ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American women poetsand ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American poets category (and perhaps another parent, Category:American_women_writers? It's a good example of the complexities at play here - bubbling up one level may not be sufficient, and in this case only 7 of our African-American women poets have been so bubbled.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given the nature of this problem, and the challenges in correctly and consistently bubbling up to the parent to avoid the so-called ghettoization problem, I would guesstimate that anywhere between 70-95% of wikipedia biographies (esp those that are female, or of non-white ethnicity) are incorrectly categorized, at least according to our hopes and dreams.
If we really care about this, though, we should (a) come to a very crisp and clear agreement on the approach here, and for which notions is an exception to the diffusion rule given (e.g. gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race) - are there any other things where an exception should be made? How about nationality? or religion? etc. and (b) we should built bots - it would be trivial for a bot to go through and find all of the women poets and stick them in the american poets tree, but it might be a bit trickier if that bot was to avoid dual categorization of those women were already classified elsewhere in sibling cats, so we'd need to get very clear on the rules for that. But sitting around complaining about it isn't doing anybody any good - so go out and find ways to solve this, preferably with algorithms if you can create a solid-enough rule set.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:16, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like an important and exciting conversation to have. However, I'm pretty sure this isn't the forum for it. Where is the best place to get lots of input on this general question, aside from the current controversy about novelists? At the same time, I'd like to hear more about the feasibility of completely replacing categories with tags. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps start here WP:Category intersection, and maybe post at the village pump about it to get more eyes on your idea. I don't know what you mean by tags. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:33, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Tags are kind of like top-level categories. People could construct Boolean searches, for articles that have tags A, B and C, but not Z. It's really the same idea as category intersection. There would be no need for a category or tag for American Women Novelists, because those pages would be tagged as "American" , as "women" and as "novelists". -GTBacchus(talk) 03:39, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, that's cat intersections; I wouldn't call them tags, that may just serve to confused. That would be great and would solve many problems. But people have been asking for that for a long time, it's a hard problem. But suggest you add your voice to the chorus and let's get wikimedia foundation to put some dev resources to implement this.
Ok, here's a start: Wikipedia talk:Category intersection#American women novelists. First post to that talk page in over six months. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:08, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's basically what they're doing in the German Wikipedia. In the German Wikipedia, Man/Woman, Poet, American, etc. are individual categories applied to individual articles. They do not have categories like "American women poets". The CatScan tool http://toolserver.org/~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php is linked on every category page in the German WP. To find "American women poets", they simply do a CatScan search for Woman + Poet + American. This vastly reduces the number of categories, and vastly reduces the amount of arguments you can have about them, as you're leaving it to the reader to define categories like "American women poets". At the same time, no one is diffused or otherwise spirited out of any category. Female poets have Woman + Poet applied to their biography, Male poets have Man + Poet. Totally simple. Andreas JN466 08:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How hard would it be to implement that here? -GTBacchus(talk) 12:16, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It would be doable: it's been done before, even if never on this scale, and the technology exists. Wikid77 has just brought it up on Jimbo's talk, and further background is at Wikipedia:Category intersection (started in 2006 ...!) and Wikipedia:CatScan. Andreas JN466 13:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, as you know from the above, I've posted to the category intersection page just last night. This seems like the direction to focus our energy if we're looking for a long-term solution. Then maybe every single media outlet in the galaxy wouldn't be on our case, right? ;) Thanks for the Wikipedia:CatScan link; I hadn't seen that one yet. -GTBacchus(talk) 13:40, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. As I noted above, the concept of diffusing into subcategories is inherently flawed, because it forces you to pick a main attribute of an article to categorize it. In reality, almost nothing has only one main important attribute, and forcing it into a subcategory based on one's personal assessment of what is most important about it gives rise to situations just like this one. This intersection approach sounds like an elegant (if labor-intensive) solution that will pay huge dividends down the road. JLeland (talk) 15:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "incategory" option also works in the wikipedia search bar. See? No external site necessary.Greg Bard (talk) 03:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

yes but it's not recursive. The tool I linked to is; plus it has a lot more options/flexibility. But that incategory tool is good for very basic questions that don't need recursion.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:31, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Having only male novelists on the "American Novelists" page implies that male novelists are the norm from which female novelists deviate. It would not be acceptable to have only white novelists on the "American Novelists" page, and it is no more acceptable to have only male novelists. I like the solution many have mentioned of having "American Novelists" which includes male and female and then separate "American Women Novelists" and "American Men Novelist" pages. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dh66dh (talk • contribs) 04:37, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Because someone created it as an OBVIOUS JOKE, populating it with 2 women with initials in their names to mask their gender. Outdated my ass.--Milowent • hasspoken 05:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit of an optimist, so I actually hope this will encourage more people to join wikipedia. To me, it's really rather useless when someone in the outside world throws rocks at Wikipedia and says "Wikipedia does this stupid thing" or "Wikipedia doesn't have an article about this amazing thing" - If you really care about what wikipedia does or how it behaves, there is one clear course of action open to you - open up an account, join the community, and learn how to edit. If we get a thousand new editors, eager to learn and improve the encyclopedia, then this controversy will have an amazing silver lining- and we do need a lot of work on our category system. But if it just increases the chorus of complainers without any of them signing up to help here, then good riddance, I have little patience for their complaints. WP:SOFIXIT --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitrary break 4
Let's tease that out. It's not that they're wrong, it's a question of, how do we best serve their needs? Currently, ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists contains 3795 articles. However, if you bring in all of its subcats (including novelists by century, and theme, etc), you have 6769 articles total. What you are suggesting is that we do a mass upwards-categorization of almost 3000 articles, just to fulfill a vaguely expressed need by a few editors to see "all novelists", and by the way, those same people apparently don't want to use the already provided List of American novelists. So we have a choice: (1) We can satisfy those few who really need to see the full, unadulterated list with this link that already works, today [13] (heck, we could even place this link at the top of the category so it's literally 1 click) or (2) we can edit 3000 articles to add a (redundant) parent. And let's not forget all of the *other* trees - how do we know someone out there doesn't want a list of all ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American writers or ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American fiction writers- shall we add all articles to those categories as well, so as to easily answer such questions for the users? I just think it's doing a lot of extra wiki-work, instead of asking someone who really wants to know an answer to learn how to use a simple tool. I'm all for bringing this stuff more into the UI, and making these tools as easy and braindead as possible, but until then, I'm really not convinced redundant categorization is the answer - especially for thematic or time-bound sub-cats like we have underneath ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists - cats for gender/ethnicity/religion/sexuality end up being a special case, which has had enough comment for now...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:04, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. That made a ton of sense, and you clearly put a lot of good thought into it. Thank you, Obi-Wan. I see your point. I also read what you wrote on the other page about CATScan. Now I'm thinking three things. (1) Category intersection would be awesome, and I'm willing to help in any way I can with that. (2) It would be extremely helpful in the meanwhile to code up a nice UI for CATScan so that people can use it without feeling they're leaving familiar wiki territory, and then put a link to that on each category page. (3) I'm now at a loss for the best way to handle this "American Woman novelists" situation. I think I appreciate the complexity better than I have until now, so thanks again.

Let's see... in lots of situations, splitting off subcats is uncontroversial. In a minority of situations, however, generally involving biographical articles, it leads to ghettoization. In those situations, the two options for restoring equity seem to be (a) creation of enough sister subcategories so that the entire parent category can be diffused, or (b) redundant categorization between the parent and daughter category. We could also do (c) a combination of the two. If we're not prepared to do either of those things, then it comes down to (d) continuing as if ghettoization isn't a problem because that's not what categories are about, anyway, and somehow communicating this to the people who see it as a problem.

Am I missing anything? I don't think there will be consensus support for (d), at least in this case, although that's the default option for now in every other case that we're not currently staring at. Looking at (a), (b) and (c), I really don't know right now. I don't love any of them, and I can see why they're only being considered because of the ghettoization problem. None of them would make sense to apply globally. Looking back over your comments on this page, Obi, it would appear that you are against redundant categorization in most if not all cases, which would push you towards (a) or (d) here. Is that right? -GTBacchus(talk) 01:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks GTBacchus for your kind words. A few things:
  1. I've just posted a long-winded explanation of what I see as the problems inherent in non-diffusing ethnic/gender cats on Jayen's talk page, starting with "Thanks for the response". IMHO they haven't been implemented well b/c they are hard to do right - bubbling up the tree is tricky!
  2. For a great example of how tricky it can be, saunter over here and take my quiz: Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality#Correct_categorization_quiz.
  3. I think you've more or less enumerated the options. My gut/default would be (a), or (d), explained with tools. See for example ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists, where I've added a link to a tool which gives a full list of everything in the subcats - so if we could change the perception of what it means to be in a subcat (e.g. you retain full rights and privileges of the main cat), and somehow listed members of the subcats along with the parent, then a lot of the brouhaha would go away.
  4. I proposed originally above that if we ever create a cat for women, we should create one for men - and ghettoize each one (if everyone is in a ghetto, no-one is). This is the approach taken in france - for good reason, since their terms for various jobs are all gendered (e.g fr:Catégorie:Skieur and fr:Catégorie:Skieuse) We could certainly learn from the German wikipedia, as has been pointed out by Jayen466, which only has high-level cats for gender. However, I still haven't sorted what to do about LGBT and ethnicity - I'm not sure if I'd like to see ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Heterosexual writers alongside ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:LGBT writers, that kinda bugs me for some reason. But the more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that most alternatives are band-aids, and moving towards robust cat-intersect is the only way to get us there; in the meantime, the solution that is likely to gain most popular support is non-diffusing ethnic/gender cats, even though they are rife with challenges that I hope wikignomes will fix some day. I pointed out in the quiz that a given person could have 32 categories, covering all sorts of slices of their life, but if you leave out 1 particular parent - boom - you're a sexist or a racist. Take a look at this fine fellow: James_Baldwin - now, with only 30 seconds to stare at his various categories, can you say by looking which ones are missing (and could thus lead to accusations of racism?) Think of it as a pop quiz - you're a drive by editor, hoping to fix his cats - what would you change/add? It's another great example of the challenge of non-diffusing ethnic cats. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I see what you mean about ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Heterosexual writers. It most cases, I would think we have no idea about a writer's sexual preference, and we can't assume heterosexuality in all such cases. That leads to a situation where the main category consists of heterosexual writers and writers who don't talk about it, which is just bizarre. With gender, full diffusion is much easier to imagine.

It's clear at a glance that Baldwin is in several category ghettos, but to fix it would involve actual work, including an open sandbox, 2-10 other open tabs at a time, and possibly half-an-hour of my life. The more of this that could be done by bots, the better, but programming them seems a steep challenge.

I tried the quiz, and I hope others do, too. Now I'm off to read your post on Jayen's page. Cheers. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, giving you 30 seconds pop quiz on Baldwin wasn't really fair. Yes, it would take probably 30-40 minutes of thought to classify him correctly. It's cases like his that make me think a bot couldn't actually handle this - there's too much semantic meaning embedded, you have to really think about things, you can't just blindly assign up to the parent. Thanks for doing the quiz, but your results still caused bloggers dismay and made twitter aflutter. :( --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:54, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I see two big mistakes already, which might or might not be the ones you're thinking of. Tricky stuff. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unless they have already been diffused to a non-gendered, non-ethnic sub-cat of ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:American novelists - right?? Please confirm your vote.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 11:22, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You do realize that there are 397 categories devoted to various slices/dices of women writers. Are you really stating that you'd support deleting *all* of these? Link to all women writers categories --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
so what? Merge them all. If sexism is that prevalent, is that an excuse or even more urgency to correct? What about race? or age? Or sexual preference? or birthcity of their mother? Gem-fanat (talk) 23:13, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Categorization quiz

You're welcome to participate in a categorization quiz, as a way of understanding and teasing out the complexity of categorization, esp around gender, sexuality, religion, and ethnicity. The more participants the better! Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality#Correct_categorization_quiz.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break 5
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.

Category:African Development

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.
The result of the discussion was: Speedy rename (due to meeting critera & no objections raised within 48 hours) per rationale C2C ("A rename bringing a category into line with established naming conventions for that category tree") . Timrollpickering (talk) 19:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Rename to match parent category Category:International development and to remove ambiguity/capitalization. jonkerz ♠talk 18:52, 24 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.

Category:Gangnam Style

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.
The result of the discussion was: keep. Wizardman 03:39, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Is there a need to have an eponymous category of a song? Maybe this is a case where a navbox is more in order along the lines of ((Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)). There are a number of articles related to it due to its cultural impact but Category:Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was deleted in a CfD. If kept, the parent category needs to be changed to appropriately described its contents (they're not all songs by Psy). --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 17:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That would still bury them in an extremely overlong article. The article already has a See Also list which is 30 links long, and all of them are lists rather than songs or related items. Softlavender (talk) 05:15, 9 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.

Category:Lists of characters in Magic: The Gathering

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.
The result of the discussion was: Delete. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:16, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose deleting Category:Lists of characters in Magic: The Gathering - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: Only one entry in the category, and of that entry, the template I've submitted for TFD. Izno (talk) 15:27, 24 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.

Category:Equestrian commanders of vexillationes

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.
The result of the discussion was: Keep. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:10, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This should be an article (containing a list of examples), not a category. DexDor (talk) 06:14, 24 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.

American local politicians

This is a significant overlap. The two should be merged and renamed to "Local politicians in the United States" because A) there is an existing Wikimedia category: Local_politicians_of_the_United_States, and B) "politicians" is more general than "office holder." It is always possible that there are notable people who were never elected or appointed to anything (i.e. they are notable for something else.) and C) the name is consistent with others. Greg Bard (talk) 05:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • In fact, almost all of the people in these categories did hold local elective office. The argument that a "politicians" category is needed for non-office-holders is largely hypothetical. Additionally, almost all of the people in these categories are notable for their activity in government and politics (for example, a county commissioner who later became a congressman); I've only seen a few who are notable for some unrelated reason. --Orlady (talk) 05:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sure, it's possible for a person to unsuccessfully run for local office, but then go on to become encyclopedically notable for something entirely different (or to already be notable for something entirely different, yet fall short in a run for local office.) But that then raises the question of whether their unsuccessful run for local office was a sufficiently defining characteristic to warrant being categorized as a "local politician" — most of the time, the answer to that question is actually going to be no. Bearcat (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most sources define "local government" as encompassing counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts, library districts, etc. There is a user here who has been pushing the unorthodox view that counties are "arms of state government", based on extrapolations from sources such as a single sentence in 2003 report by the county executive of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, griping about state mandates on counties. I hope we can deal with these categories without getting into a full-blown examination of that user's theories, but that may not be possible. --Orlady (talk) 05:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I had to sleep on this one in hopes I'd understand your point. I'm still not sure what you are trying to say, but I'll try to respond anyway. The "office-holders" category is for people, not offices. Categories for some types of local offices, such as Category:District boards of education in the United States do include a separate, but related, people category (in that case, Category:School board members in the United States). Consistent with the way way categories are organized in Wikipedia That category also has a broader "people" category for another parent. Until 24 April, when you added that category to the newly created Category:American local politicians, the broad people category it was in was Category:Local political office-holders in the United States. Now it is in two redundant people categories. It appears to me that the question being addressed here is which of the two "people category" names should survive. --Orlady (talk) 13:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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