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Allow me to copy some things I and other wrote on Talk:Bernard Madoff and Talk:Albert Einstein in an attempt to transfer the discussion here, as some think we shoul do.
On the Bernard Madoff talk page:
There is certainly an ethnic/religious angle here, but only because Madoff made something out of it, and exploited it. It doesn't seem necessary to me to classify his family in any given way in the introduction. As for the way he made others trust him because of their shared religion and of how they saw his origins - it is good that that is being treated, and perhaps it can be treated at greater length and more explicitly.
It's also a good thing that there are no tags of the "X Jew" and "Jewish X" at the bottom. At the same time, it seems to me that such tags are grossly overused all over wikipedia. If we are going to delete them from articles on objectionable characters, and insert them at the bottom of articles on laudable individuals, then we are introducing a rather crude kind of systemic bias into Wikipedia. Feketekave (talk) 07:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
As a previous user said: see the Modigliani, Heine, Michelson and Einstein biographies. Actually, this is as good a time as any to have a general discussion of these issues. Feketekave (talk) 08:23, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
(Comment: I was asked to come here by some of Feketekave's edit summaries.) I'm generally against such classifications unless the subject strongly self-identifies as such, or the religious classification played an important role in the subject's public life. I certainly agree that such categorizations are generally overused. So, I think that the Modigliani categorization should have been removed, as you did. However, the fact that Albert Einstein was an ethnic Jew, and identified very strongly with the Jewish people played a significant part in his public life, and so the Jewish-related categories should not have been removed. (Moreover, there are reams of discussion in the archives of the talk page about precisely this issue establishing consensus for inclusion in the category.) Removal of Heinrich Heine from the category is also clearly inappropriate, given that he is widely considered to be an important Jewish poet by both secular and Jewish scholars. In short, I encourage you to remove persons from inappropriate categories, but also to attempt to exercise better judgment in doing so. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 20:00, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Silly rabbit: I have made no attempt to remove the relevance of the Jewish question (namely, some) to Heine's life; I simply believe that (much like here) categories are an exceptionally bad way to go about it.
How Israelis think of Heine is really a matter about Israelis, not a matter about Heine. (Any human group tries to gets its hands on laudable men that arguably do not quite belong to them; witness some things written and done in Poland and Lithuania about Mickiewicz.) Still, I removed none of that material.
As for Einstein: to put things crudely, he was less "Jewish" than Madoff and more so than Heine. To wit, Einstein was not from anything anybody would recognise as a Jewish background - in part because his parents seem to have belonged to no religion, and in part because the so-called ethnic category "Jewish" is to some extent a U.S. ethnic construct based on the idealisation of certain cultural patterns that may have had some relation to Madoff's background of origin (New York, etc.) and none to Einstein's.
At the same time, Einstein was an early romantic Zionist, believed in something called the Jewish people - to the point of criticising people who thought of Judaism primarily as a religion - and stated those opinions publicly; all of that can go in such sections of his biographical article as treat the times in his life in which he took such positions.
There is one way in which these categories affected Einstein more than Madoff: Einstein experienced much more antisemitism than Madoff presumably ever did - not only, mind you, during the Nazi period. We should have a footnote somewhere mentioning some of the discussions that were going on in faculty meetings (recorded in writing!) when Einstein was a young lecturer getting hired.
As for Madoff: again, here there is the desire to categorise, though some of it comes from racist quarters rather than from ethnic patriots on ego trips. So much the worse. At the same time, Madoff did not just happen to spend a great deal of his social life in exclusive clubs associated to one particular sector of the upper class; he used the way he was seen - by people in the same environment and by people from different environments but of the same faith and having related kinds of self-perception - in order to con. Feketekave (talk) 01:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I should probably add that something particularly obnoxious about categories (or lists) is that non-inclusion or deletion of a category [X] tends to be taken as a statement that the subject is a [non-X]. These issues are not binary. Feketekave (talk) 01:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
---
On the Einstein talk page:
This angle seems to be exaggerated in Wikipedia, especially in the biographies of great men. At the same time, while Einstein was for all intents and purposes not from anything any reasonable person would call a Jewish background, he was involved in early Zionist politics, and advocated some sort of ethnic identity - almost a nationalistic one. His life was also affected by racism in some ways - of course, that is a separate issue, and does not necessarily go together with anything else, though it does here. All of that can be treated in the relevant place within the biography, with whatever importance each of these things had in this or that period of his life. What we should avoid is tagging a man or claiming him for (the Hall of Fame of) a group, as opposed to describing him. In general, we should prefer descriptions - the more nuanced and adjusted to the subject of the biography, the better - to definitions, many of which are unencyclopaedic. Feketekave (talk) 07:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
One more thing: I agree completely that the purpose of categorisation is to serve as an aid to navigation. This is a strong argument in favour of eliminating most categories as applied to subjects of wikipedia biographies. It is extremely unlikely that somebody would learn about Einstein by going through a list of Swiss Jews (or, say Amateur violinists who lived in New Jersey). Feketekave (talk) 11:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Sub-section Gender says, "Separate categories for actors and actresses are not needed ...". Is there an explanation for this, or can someone point me to a meta page or discussion or archive, where this was decided. Jay (talk) 07:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 April 13#Category:Female pool players. This is the third time this particular category has been up at CfD, as it keeps closing without consensus. This time it should close with a clear consensus, one way or the other, as it has high precedent value on the issues raised by this guideline. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
Category:People of mixed Asian-European ethnicity was deleted, so another example is needed, if there are any. Шизомби (talk) 05:25, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
We've a couple of related nominations, intended to help disentangle the many cross-categorization and category intersections that have arisen recently:
Should the first be successful, we must amend the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policies and related guidelines to clarify that "race" is not appropriate for categorization.
The second is somewhat dependent on the first. However, the inclusion of ethnic "origin" and "descent" is already against policy without notability, and these should never have been intermixed with the less contentious (more easily verifiable) nationality categories.
Bearcat made some nice edits to "Special subcategories" the other day, and I wikified it today to use the actual categories. Of course, they exist! One even mentioned on its Talk that it is listed here. So, I've nominated them for deletion. Tally ho!
In WP:BLP#Categories, there is existing text that parallels text in WP:CATGRS#Sexuality (or vice versa). I'm trying to harmonize these nearly identical sections (also was in WP:COP) by direct reference to a single standard text, rather than re-writing it over and over again.
Also, BLP refers to religious beliefs, while CATGRS doesn't yet have a Religion section.
I propose the following two sections.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Categories should not be based on religion unless the belief has a specific relation to the topic.
The requirements of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Categories are strictly enforced. For a dead person, there must be a verified general consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate.
... (Example?)
Comments?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. The criterion you have highlighted seems to me to be very well put. Feketekave (talk) 14:45, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Categories should not be based on sexuality unless the sexuality has a specific relation to the topic.
The requirements of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Categories are strictly enforced. For a dead person, there must be a verified general consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate.
For example, while some sources have claimed that William Shakespeare was gay or bisexual, there is not a sufficient consensus among scholars to support categorizing him as such. Similarly, a living person who is caught in a gay prostitution scandal, but continues to assert their heterosexuality, cannot be categorized as gay.
... (existing final paragraph)
Comments?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure there's much value in simply linking to another policy instead of clarifying what that policy actually means in this particular context. I'm especially concerned about the fact that point #2 in the BLP version, the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources allows for significant subjectivity in what "relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life" actually means. I've seen it used more than once to claim that the sexuality of an openly gay figure becomes "not relevant" if their notable activities aren't exclusively gay-focused to the exclusion of any other interest — such as a musician whose songs aren't all only about gay topics, or a writer who happens to write a novel in which the main characters are heterosexuals, or a politician who happens to care just as much about the environment or taxes or stimulus spending or Iraq as they do about LGBT-specific issues like DADT and the Matthew Shepard Act.
Which isn't what it means, or what it should mean — but given that the whole point of this guideline is to provide context around issues like this, I'm not too sure what the value is in replacing that context with a barebones link to the basic policy that requires the added context in the first place. Linking to the BLP section is certainly a valid thing to do, but we should still retain the ability to expand on and explain it more thoroughly in this context. Bearcat (talk) 14:43, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
The subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources.
The subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources.
4. Inclusion must be specifically relevant to at least one of the subject's notable activities and an essential part of that activity, but is not required to be an exclusive interest. Moreover, inclusion is not transitive to any other activity. (For example: a notable LGBT activist is not automatically included in a corresponding LGBT musician category, unless also notable for one or more LGBT-related music compositions or performances.)
Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 6
I've nominated them for deletion, as they present an attractive nuisance. Editors may think it's a good idea to leave an unsourced or irrelevant category on an article, simply because these templates exist. Something like ((fact)) for categories, except these present a large block of text.
In both cases, the category should be removed entirely – especially in the latter case. These have been used on biographical articles. In one case, the unsourced WP:GRS category has been left on the WP:BLP article for nearly two years! When I've removed the category, was reverted with the edit summary (revert: the fact that a maintenance item has been outstanding for a long time is not a reason to remove it.)
Please join the discussion.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:40, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
User:Rjensen recently made the following change to the paragraph on ethnic politicians:
“ | Similarly, an "(ethnicity) politicians" category should only be created if politicians of that ethnic background constitute a distinct and identifiable group with a specific cultural and political context. The difference in between being a German-American politician and an Italian-American politician depends on the historical context. In American history Germans (apart from the 1917-18 period) were not a cohesive political group--they were split many ways especially on religion--but Utalians did form a cohesive political bloc, as hundredreds of scholarly studies have demonstrated. Thus, a Category:German-American politicians is problematical while Category:Italian-American politicians rests on actual expert opinion among scholars and journalists, and was highly apparent to voters at the time. The basis for creating such a category is not the number of individuals who could potentially be filed in the group, but whether there's a specific cultural context for the grouping beyond the mere fact that politicians of that ethnic background happen to exist. | ” |
As this is a significant revision to the existing text, and not just a simple wording change or clarification of the existing meaning, I've reverted it for the time being and am placing it here for discussion. I'm not fundamentally opposed to it if there's a consensus for it — but changes of this type really do need a discussion to establish consensus for them first. Bearcat (talk) 14:23, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
In general, how should categories for sportspeople be organized?
-- Powers T 19:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
There is a fifth option, I suppose, and that is just to have "Freedonian squamish players" and not include any gender categories at all. But originally my question was limited to those in which there is consensus that the male and female versions of a sport are distinct enough to merit separate categories. Powers T 14:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
How should our sportsperson categories be organized? (Examples in section above.) Powers T 13:24, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Anyone else have some thoughts on this? Maybe I should take it to the village pump instead. Powers T 14:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)