- 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: Move to Category:Male lovers of royalty. Reasons given below. Herostratus (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Quick summary of what people "voted" for:
Well for starters there were no "Keep" opinions, so that's off the table. So is "Delete" with one advocate. There was one advocate for "Split" and one for "Merge" but four for "Rename" so let's rename. But to what? Well, two advocates for "Male lovers of royal personages", one for "Male lovers of monarchs" and one for "Male lovers of royalty" (with that also being one editor's second choice; "Male paramours of royalty" also came up, but only as the second choice of one editor).
"Monarch" and "Royalty" are not the same, since "Royalty" means (or can be taken to mean) "Members of a royal family" ("A royal family is the immediate family of a king or queen regnant, and sometimes his or her extended family.") Using "Monarch" would narrow the category and require that John Conroy be expelled, for instance, and removing articles from the category was not really envisioned or addressed I don't think. So let's not do that as it's a more major change.
So then we have:
- Two in favor of "Male lovers of royal personages"
- One in favor of "Male lovers of royalty", but that was also one person's second choice, so call it one-and-a-half.
Not enough for headcount to much matter. (Also N.B. and FWIW: the two in favor of "Male lovers of royal personages" were the first two commentators and they didn't come back. So they didn't benefit from the later discussion where terms like "paramour" and "royalty" were brought up.)
So let's look at the rules. At Wikipedia:Category names the first general prescription is "Standard article naming conventions apply" pointing to WP:AT. Most all of the rest of Wikipedia:Category names doesn't militate for one over the other, I don't think.
So looking at WP:AT, it presents a five-point list, which I'll give and score below. The five prescribed virtues of a title are:
- Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize. -- Point in favor of "Royalty" over "Royal personage" IMO. "Personage" is a somewhat archaic and uncommon word and might be a head-scratcher for some ESL readers, I think, while "Royalty" is fairly common.
- Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for... -- Point in favor of "Royalty" over "Royal personage" IMO.
- Precision – The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects. -- Point in favor of "Royal personage" over "Royalty" IMO, since "Lover of royalty" could be taken to mean "people who spend all day reading People magazine for its articles on Prince Harry." as Nyttend cogently points out. (So could "Lover of royal personages" I suppose but maybe a bit less so.)
- Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects. -- Point in favor of "Royalty" over the more verbose "Royal personage" IMO.
- Consistency – The... title is consistent with the pattern of similar... titles... No point either way IMO. Looking at Category:Spouses of politicians for instance I don't see anything that really matches our situation closely enough to be taken as a standard. (I suppose you could stretch it to point out that it's Category:Spouses of politicians and not Category:Spouses of political personages but I haven't done that since there are complicating factors, one being that there's no term "a royalty" as there is "a politician" (there is an equivalent term "a royal" but 1) that's informal I think and 2) "Male lovers of royals" was not brought up and is not on the table).)
So... 3-1-1 in favor of "Royalty". Well there you have it. WP:AT is a policy and an important one and Wikipedia:Category names invokes it. We have to settle on something and so, with headcount not much of a factor, even a 3-1 advantage at WP:AT is sufficient to do so, it says here. Herostratus (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Propose re-naming Category:Royal lovers to Category:Male lovers of royal personages
- Nominator's rationale: Both "lovers" and "royal" are gender neutral. Apparently there is a need for a category to complement Category:Royal mistresses, in which case this category presumably caters for the male of the species. As the object of the males lover's devotions / services could be either male or female, "royal personages" allows for both. Either this or delete the category. Laurel Lodged (talk) 17:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- ooooh matron! Laurel Lodged (talk) 20:41, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Royal favourite tends to be used for this sort of thing. It is gender neutral (but the nomination suggests this is a problem) and also includes homosexual lovers. And, oh, we have a category Category:Royal favourites. I'm going to keep out of this because I suspect all sorts of LGBT issues could be raised. Thincat (talk) 12:04, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Royal favourite seems to be a rather broader concept, which may or may not involve a sexual relationship. This may not be a bad thing, because proving the existence of a sexual relationship may be difficult. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:46, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Rename per nom. The article on royal favourite makes it clear that the term covers a-people who had no sexual relationship with royalty, and b-people whose sexual relationship was with the spouse of a royal person.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:15, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Rename to Category:Male lovers of royalty or better split to Category:Male lovers of monarchs and Category:Male lovers of queens. We needn't worry about categorizing the lovers of princes and princesses I think. Keep Favourites right out of it. Johnbod (talk) 04:35, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Rename to Category:Male lovers of royalty or Category:Male paramours of royalty. I do not think we need a split. Homosexual lovers of kings tend to be euphomystically called "favourates". Peterkingiron (talk) 17:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Rename; don't bother splitting by the sex of the royals whom they loved. "Royal mistresses" works well for men and women, and this category will work equally well as long as we use "Male lovers of monarchs". "Lovers of royalty" sounds like the people who spend all day reading People magazine for its articles on Prince Harry. Nyttend (talk) 22:42, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Wait, what do you mean "royal mistress works well for men and women", mistress is a term that only applies to women, ever.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- And only women sleeping with men, in normal usage. Johnbod (talk) 20:39, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Actually, mistress is also used as the female equivalent of master in a lot of cases that have no direct relation to sex. However that is not really related to this discussion. I am pretty usre that people would not speak of "Queen Sophia's mistress", just to throw out a random case. I think the female sexual partners of a female monarch are most likely to be referered to as "lovers", but whatever the term there, I doubt it would be mistress. Although I am not sure we have any articles on such people, so such discussion might not be relevant. Could we conflate the whole category into "Royal Paramours" though, at least as a gender neutral parent category?John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:48, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment For what it is worth, Category:Mistresses of British royalty, the sister cat to this one, contains articles on multiple women who were mistresses of people who were not monarchs, including the former mistress and current wife of the present Prince of Wales (the fact he is likely to become king does not negate the fact that he is not yet king).John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:53, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete, possibly rename - As this is apparently the male counterpart to Category:Royal mistresses, has anyone checked to see if there is an actual term which has the same denotation and connotation that mistress in this sense does? So far of the above choices, I think "paramour" might be the closest. Lovers is just too vague a word. Is loving someone (or likely more the intent of this category, is having sex with someone) defining? So I prefer deletion, but merging this with Category:Royal mistresses and renaming the whole thing Category:Royal paramours might not be bad, presuming the question of defining is resolved. - jc37 07:38, 15 January 2014 (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.