| Revision as of 10:04, 8 June 2009 editKotniski (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers40,317 edits →General naming conventions← Previous edit | Revision as of 13:11, 12 June 2009 edit undoDebresser (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers, Template editors110,467 edits agree but I'd hesitate took take responsibilityNext edit → | ||
| (10 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) | |||
| Line 83: | Line 83: | ||
| 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. | 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. | ||
| :--] (]) 16:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC) | :--] (]) 16:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC) | ||
| :: The first (about "race") was approved by the community, the second (about "ethnicity") wasn't. Changes should be made accordingly, if at all. ] (]) 02:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
| == Update administrative categories section == | == Update administrative categories section == | ||
| Line 114: | Line 116: | ||
| :::Scanning the tree is initially appearing infeasible because ] (for example) is a child of ]. This highlights the problem that categories should be able to be ''members'' or ''sub-cats''. But that isn't for here. ''] ]'', 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC). | :::Scanning the tree is initially appearing infeasible because ] (for example) is a child of ]. This highlights the problem that categories should be able to be ''members'' or ''sub-cats''. But that isn't for here. ''] ]'', 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC). | ||
| ::::Looks like somebody made that change . Two edits later, the same person , as it wasn't correct without it, but never fixed the older mistake. Reverted, it's not an administrative category, although several subcategories intersect with an administrative subcategory.<br />--21:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC) | ::::Looks like somebody made that change . Two edits later, the same person , as it wasn't correct without it, but never fixed the older mistake. Reverted, it's not an administrative category, although several subcategories intersect with an administrative subcategory.<br />--21:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC) | ||
| I agree with the formulation of ]. "Should be" is more fitting than "shall". This is a wiki and not a royal decree! Also, common use in Misplaced Pages seems to be "should". | |||
| I also agree with ] that the requirement that Misplaced Pages-related categories should begin with the word "Wikipdia" should be dropped. ] has made that point eloquently in ]. I might add that even a cursory look at ] e.g. will show that the pages with "Misplaced Pages" are about 1 out of 4. In ] e.g. this is 1 out of 6. QED. ] (]) 02:13, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
| Recent edits here pretended to reflect consensus , but in fact did not reflect consensus at all. In I changed that section to reflect consensus and good reason. ] (]) 02:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
| ==RfC== | ==RfC== | ||
| Line 146: | Line 154: | ||
| :And I'm going to mention here that your ''being bold'' on the policy page today wasn't appreciated. You may have gotten away with ''being bold'' the ] guideline in February (with only '''2 days notice''' on the talk page), but folks take categorization policy pretty seriously here. Changes usually occur here after months of CfD, not hours or days or weeks.<br />--] (]) 19:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC) | :And I'm going to mention here that your ''being bold'' on the policy page today wasn't appreciated. You may have gotten away with ''being bold'' the ] guideline in February (with only '''2 days notice''' on the talk page), but folks take categorization policy pretty seriously here. Changes usually occur here after months of CfD, not hours or days or weeks.<br />--] (]) 19:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC) | ||
| ::Folks clearly don't take it seriously enough to write it in a way that can be understood, unfortunately. Hence the total mess we have with categorization. Most people who have commented ''have'' appreciated my attempts to tidy it up, but we still have a lot of work to do. Now, what are your bullet points above supposed to mean? I'm sorry, but for me they are total nonsense.--] (]) 10:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC) | ::Folks clearly don't take it seriously enough to write it in a way that can be understood, unfortunately. Hence the total mess we have with categorization. Most people who have commented ''have'' appreciated my attempts to tidy it up, but we still have a lot of work to do. Now, what are your bullet points above supposed to mean? I'm sorry, but for me they are total nonsense.--] (]) 10:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC) | ||
| :::Or anyone? Can anyone explain the meaning of the above statements and/or what they are doing on a page on naming conventions?--] (]) 08:53, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
| :::: Hello, ]. I agree that the first version, quoted above, is indeed a little hard to understand, but it is possible. :) The version ] proposes sounds very nice and is a little easier to understand. The second half of it still needs some polishing, but the idea is clear. That categories should be named in such a way that a number of articles could be grouped in them. In other words, they should be specific, but not too specific. ] (]) 10:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Can we just say that in the policy, then, instead of what we have now? It isn't clear to me how the words above, even in William's improved version, lead to that conclusion.--] (]) 11:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
| :::::: I feel we need the input of more people here. I'll ask on ] that people should have a look here and add their ideas. ] (]) 13:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
Revision as of 13:11, 12 June 2009
Hyphenated Americans
The Americans cannot agree to follow the Heritage naming conventions of the rest of the world. There are two current CfR, each pointing to a series of old CfR decisions (the latter calling the most recent previous CfR "anomalous"). There has been surreptitious changing via category redirect contrary to previous consensus, and category duplication and other changes without any CfR at all.
Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 2#Category:Turkish Americans → Category:American people of Turkish descent
Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 3#Category:Americans of Polish descent → Category:Polish-Americans
- Proposed Compromise -- rather than debating these case by case, and Cydebot surreptitiously making changes without a CfD (as it did for Jewish-American activists→Jewish American activists), could we develop a comprehensive American guideline?
- All multiple word ethnicities in the now standard form: Category:American people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines descent.
- All generic ethnicity parent categories without hyphen: Category:African American people, Category:Native American people.
- All single word national ethnicity nouns without hyphen: Category:Turkish Americans.
- Any single word national ethnicity adjectives must have hyphen, even though the parent category and main article have no hyphen: Category:Polish-American musicians.
- Will folks enforce these in the future without exception? Otherwise, the bickering will continue.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
- Extended discussion at two more places:
Policy status
Apparently, without formal discussion, the header template was repeatedly changed and reverted from policy to guideline, always by the same user, and in the final instance with a misleading log entry.
Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions are formally policy, but are currently mistakenly listed in Misplaced Pages:List of guidelines.
In particular, this policy was formally approved by the bureaucrat on 2005-09-25 13:30:49 UTC. Category titles are impossible to move, and time consuming to rename. That makes correctly naming categories increasingly important.
Without objection, I'll restore the correct heading and listing.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Done. Upon further investigation, it appears the most recent confusion was the result of an ill-advised change to the wording of the header template that conflated all naming conventions. Better to eschew the subcategorization scheme, leaving this in Category:Misplaced Pages global policy together with Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions. Does anybody know of other naming conventions that should be similarly treated?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Special conventions for lists of items
There are a number of current discussions about the distinctions between singular and plural categories. They seem to be confusing folks.
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 16#American people and topics
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 16#Category:Tornado
We've used this convention for a very long time, since 2005-08-31 18:53:30, migrated from 2005-09-27 00:53:20. After researching the history, I've moved the existing note to the top, as it had become buried in the middle of the section list, and its lack of indentation was out of place. Maybe the more prominent location will help.
Should we change to add "topics" to the singular, as has happened in several instances over the past few years?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Disentangling race & ethnicity
We've a couple of related nominations, intended to help disentangle the many cross-categorization and category intersections that have arisen recently:
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28#Category:People by race or ethnicity
- eliminating race categories (leaving ethnicity only)
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28#People not by ethnicity
- splitting ethnicity from nationality (leaving nationality only)
Should the first be successful, we must amend the Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (categories) and Misplaced Pages: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.
- The first (about "race") was approved by the community, the second (about "ethnicity") wasn't. Changes should be made accordingly, if at all. Debresser (talk) 02:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Update administrative categories section
- All administrative categories used on main space, with the exception of stub categories, should be hidden and placed in the Category:Misplaced Pages administration tree. Rich Farmbrough, 19:10, 1 June 2009 (UTC).
- I'm not sure that this is an "update".
- At Special conventions for Misplaced Pages-related categories, it currently says:
All administrative categories should have "Misplaced Pages" (without a colon) as part of the name, and placed in the Category:Misplaced Pages administration tree.
- Obviously, "and placed" is poor grammar. How about "and should be placed"?
- Are there any administrative categories that aren't somewhere in the Category:Misplaced Pages administration tree?
- Although hidden categories are relatively new, and are not mentioned in the naming conventions, quite a few are already hidden.
- Are there examples that are not hidden that should be hidden?
- --William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:56, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
There is a discussion of some category names already in the Category:Misplaced Pages administration tree that do not currently have Misplaced Pages as part of their name:
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
- In that case..
- All administrative categories used on main space, with the exception of stub categories, should be hidden and be placed in the Category:Misplaced Pages administration tree.
- "Should be" distributes, and so does "should" but really any of the three wordings are fine by me. And I am suggesting we update the section, hence use of the word "update". Whether there are any not in the tree I don't know but it seems a reasonable requirement, and worth advising would-be cat creators. There probably are not hidden that should be ISTR I fixed one yesterday. Might be worth scanning for. Rich Farmbrough, 23:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC).
- Disagree with run-on sentences. Splitting it to separate sentences:
All administrative categories shall be placed in the Category:Misplaced Pages administration tree. Each should have "Misplaced Pages" (without a colon) as part of the name; exceptions are granted through Categories for Discussion. Any used in main namespace should be hidden, with the exception of stub categories.
- --William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
- Actually looking at the "tree" this advise is that great but it's better than nothing. But we are side-tracking into grammar and layout. The substantive points are the removal of the need for the word "Misplaced Pages" and the suggestion that they should be hidden. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
- OK, given that both CfD have closed without "Misplaced Pages", and there is already parallel language about the hidden attribute elsewhere, it seems we have consensus on those points.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
- OK, given that both CfD have closed without "Misplaced Pages", and there is already parallel language about the hidden attribute elsewhere, it seems we have consensus on those points.
- Actually looking at the "tree" this advise is that great but it's better than nothing. But we are side-tracking into grammar and layout. The substantive points are the removal of the need for the word "Misplaced Pages" and the suggestion that they should be hidden. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
- Disagree with run-on sentences. Splitting it to separate sentences:
- Scanning the tree is initially appearing infeasible because Category:Categories (for example) is a child of Category:Misplaced Pages administration. This highlights the problem that categories should be able to be members or sub-cats. But that isn't for here. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
- Looks like somebody made that change last year without an edit summary. Two edits later, the same person put Contents back, as it wasn't correct without it, but never fixed the older mistake. Reverted, it's not an administrative category, although several subcategories intersect with an administrative subcategory.
--21:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
- Looks like somebody made that change last year without an edit summary. Two edits later, the same person put Contents back, as it wasn't correct without it, but never fixed the older mistake. Reverted, it's not an administrative category, although several subcategories intersect with an administrative subcategory.
- Scanning the tree is initially appearing infeasible because Category:Categories (for example) is a child of Category:Misplaced Pages administration. This highlights the problem that categories should be able to be members or sub-cats. But that isn't for here. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
I agree with the formulation of Rich Farmbrough. "Should be" is more fitting than "shall". This is a wiki and not a royal decree! Also, common use in Misplaced Pages seems to be "should".
I also agree with Rich Farmbrough that the requirement that Misplaced Pages-related categories should begin with the word "Wikipdia" should be dropped. Rich Farmbrough has made that point eloquently in Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_June_4#Category:Articles_to_be_split. I might add that even a cursory look at Category:Misplaced Pages deletion e.g. will show that the pages with "Misplaced Pages" are about 1 out of 4. In Misplaced Pages:List of monthly maintenance categories given month e.g. this is 1 out of 6. QED. Debresser (talk) 02:13, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Recent edits here pretended to reflect consensus , but in fact did not reflect consensus at all. In this edit I changed that section to reflect consensus and good reason. Debresser (talk) 02:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
RfC
For those who haven't yet seen the announcement elsewhere, there is an RfC going on about treatment of eponymous categories and their articles, at Misplaced Pages:Categorization/Eponymous RFC. Please comment there.--Kotniski (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
General naming conventions
I quote the first two points on this conventions page (which have been cited at the above RfC):
- For a pre-existing category, the article of the same or similar name and (rarely, or) on the same topic should be added to that category. When creating an article one should, only if appropriate (especially horizontally), create a category of the same or similar name on the same topic.
- Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible. Categories should be more or equally as broad as the articles they contain; articles should be more or equally specific as the categories they are in.
As a newcomer to this page, my impression is that (a) these statements are so opaque that it's hard to discern any meaning in them; (b) if anything, they seem to be about category creation and page categorization, not about category naming, so don't belong on this page at all.
Can these points be either rewritten so they make sense and so their relevance to the topic of this page is clear, or simply removed?--Kotniski (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
- These are two of the most basic principles for creating and organizing categories, and should not be removed. Category names reflect category contents, and vice versa. There are many other instances of restriction on the content of categories, as these reflect decisions about appropriately named categories to retain.
- Note that this is essentially descriptive, and is qualified by the more prescriptive specifications later in the policy page.
- According to the history (that should always be checked before making any substantial modification), these were "Taken verbatim from Misplaced Pages:Categorization#General_naming_conventions" at the time this policy was originally written, during many months of discussion. The language for the 1st bullet was written in November 2004. The language for the 2nd bullet was written earlier in August 2004. Note that even then, folks were discussing eponymous categories.
- While the language has survived hundreds of edits to this page, and is fairly comprehensive and comprehensible in context, perhaps dividing it into bullets and expanding slightly would help you:
- When creating an article, always check for an appropriate category.
- For a pre-existing category, an article of the same or similar name that concerns the same topic should be added to that category.
- Otherwise, create a category of the same or similar name as the (main) article, according to these naming conventions.
- Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible.
- Articles should be more specific than (or equal to) their categories.
- Categories should be more broad than (or equal to) their contents.
- Does that improve the description sufficiently?
- And I'm going to mention here that your being bold on the policy page today wasn't appreciated. You may have gotten away with being bold completely re-writing the Misplaced Pages:Categorization guideline in February (with only 2 days notice on the talk page), but folks take categorization policy pretty seriously here. Changes usually occur here after months of CfD, not hours or days or weeks.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC)- Folks clearly don't take it seriously enough to write it in a way that can be understood, unfortunately. Hence the total mess we have with categorization. Most people who have commented have appreciated my attempts to tidy it up, but we still have a lot of work to do. Now, what are your bullet points above supposed to mean? I'm sorry, but for me they are total nonsense.--Kotniski (talk) 10:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
- Or anyone? Can anyone explain the meaning of the above statements and/or what they are doing on a page on naming conventions?--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- Hello, Kotniski. I agree that the first version, quoted above, is indeed a little hard to understand, but it is possible. :) The version William Allen Simpson proposes sounds very nice and is a little easier to understand. The second half of it still needs some polishing, but the idea is clear. That categories should be named in such a way that a number of articles could be grouped in them. In other words, they should be specific, but not too specific. Debresser (talk) 10:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- Can we just say that in the policy, then, instead of what we have now? It isn't clear to me how the words above, even in William's improved version, lead to that conclusion.--Kotniski (talk) 11:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- I feel we need the input of more people here. I'll ask on Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(policy) that people should have a look here and add their ideas. Debresser (talk) 13:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- Can we just say that in the policy, then, instead of what we have now? It isn't clear to me how the words above, even in William's improved version, lead to that conclusion.--Kotniski (talk) 11:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- Hello, Kotniski. I agree that the first version, quoted above, is indeed a little hard to understand, but it is possible. :) The version William Allen Simpson proposes sounds very nice and is a little easier to understand. The second half of it still needs some polishing, but the idea is clear. That categories should be named in such a way that a number of articles could be grouped in them. In other words, they should be specific, but not too specific. Debresser (talk) 10:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- Or anyone? Can anyone explain the meaning of the above statements and/or what they are doing on a page on naming conventions?--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
- Folks clearly don't take it seriously enough to write it in a way that can be understood, unfortunately. Hence the total mess we have with categorization. Most people who have commented have appreciated my attempts to tidy it up, but we still have a lot of work to do. Now, what are your bullet points above supposed to mean? I'm sorry, but for me they are total nonsense.--Kotniski (talk) 10:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)