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Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 March 6

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Timrollpickering (talk | contribs) at 00:12, 14 March 2011 (Category:Isle of Man geographical coordinates: close - delete). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

March 6

Category:Films considered box office bombs

Category:Hidden Champion

Category:Isle of Man geographical coordinates

Category:Black peoples in art

Propose renaming Category:Black peoples in art to Category:Black people in art
Nominator's rationale: Rename. People is already plural. TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rename. While there are instances where such double plurals are correct (for instance, to refer collectively to two or more societies of "black" people) the category in question is not such an instance. —Stepheng3 (talk) 19:47, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That might reflect a systematic bias of editors. I suppose indigenous Australians and Melanesians in art should be in a separate categories, because the art is not closely related. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Limbu family names

Category:Disputed biographies of living persons

Category:American military personnel by war sub-category standardizxation and proper inclusion

Relisting for further discussion on the remaining categories Previous discussion here

The result of the discussion was: A mix. There's consensus and convention to rename:

However the American Revolution and (especially) the American Civil War categories are more problematic because of inconsistent use of the term "American" in the structure. They are best relisted for further discussion. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:32, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As long as the current name of the ex-parent category exists there is a high likelyhood someone else will return the CSA soldiers category there, and the civil war category is currently named to make the return of CSA soldiers likely. My new plan is actually to remove Category:Military personnel of the American Civil War from this tree and create the category Category:American military personnel of the American Civil War as a subcategory of the category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I feel Category:Military personnel of the American Civil War should be at the top of a tree, with primary sub-cats for Confederate military personnel and Union/American/United States (pick one) military personnel. I just browsed around a bit and decided the entire ACW hierarchy is a gigantic cluster-f**k, exacerbated by the ambiguity of the term "American"; in particular, "American Civil War foos" can be taken to mean the all-inclusive "Foos of the American Civil War", or the more ambiguous "American Foos of the Civil War". Check the parent categories of Category:Confederate States Army officers for an example of why I described the situation as I did. Fat&Happy (talk) 05:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Confederates should not be eliminated from this category structure, any more than the Confederacy is to be eliminated from the History of the United States. There was a rebellion, some Americans joined the rebellion and later they stopped. They were still Americans, regardless. Hmains (talk) 03:48, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"later they stopped"? No, later they were defeated and surrendered, but during the war they were not part of the "American" (United States) military, any more than during the Revolutionary War, the United States military personnel were a sub-group of Category:British military personnel of the American Revolutionary War, even though they were British, there was a rebellion, and some of the British joined the rebellion. Agree with nominator. Fat&Happy (talk) 04:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "American military personnel" is being used to mean "people in the military forces of the United States". If an American goes and joins the Taliban forces they may still be an American but they are clearly not "American Military personnel". This is also the case with the CSA forces.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fat and Happy, I was also getting the sense that there is an unjustified non-distinguishing between sides. We could try to avoid some confusion by calling one side Yankees, but that would probably be a bit much for members of US (Colored) regiments who in many cases never marched north of the Ohio/Potomac. The same could be said for many of the more of less white residents of Louisiana and Arkansas who supported the Union cause.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Various -- Unionist and Confederate personnel of the American Civil War should be kept separate. Care should also be taken that British (and American loyalist) personnel of the American War of Independence do not get merged into an American (seceding states) category. More Generally, WP uses "United States" as an adjective, because Canadians and Mexicans are also Americans. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Category:American people by occupation and its myriad subcats would tend to disagree! -- Necrothesp (talk) 19:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. As, of course, are Guatemalans, Tierra del Fuegans, and everybody in between. As well as, if we follow the British – European example, Cubans, Haitians and a host of other islanders. But for whatever reason (historical dominance; brashness; the difficulty of pronouncing "Unitedstatesian"?), "American" is understood pretty much worldwide to apply to the U.S.

      This part of the discussion, though, makes me support keeping "United States Military" as the prefix for these categories in preference to "American Military", since as a corollary to U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, etc. it is less ambiguous in its reference to the military itself rather than the nationality of individuals.
  • Note there are only four wars mentioned. The Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, WOrld War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq Wars and maybe some other conflicts all use "American". Beyond this there is Category:American military chaplains and a whole set of other subcategories of the overall Category:American military personnell. I made a nomination to rename the whole category to use United States instead of American, but it was opposed (by one person, but no one else said anything), and since American was already the majority position in the categories, I just went with the change. The name of the country is "the United States of America" sort of like there was "the United Provinces of the Nethelands". Both assert that they create a union of the identified land. To make things worse in Brazil they are the United States and so insit on calling the country that includes Detroit and Chicago to "United States of the North". In the United States people sing "I love my land America" and "America the Beutiful" and do not intend to include Mexico, let alone Canada, in the purvey of the song. However, as I hope I have made clear, I really do not care what the result of this discussion is, we just have to agree on a univeral set of terms for all the subcategories. The Civil War and the American Revolution are a bit tricky, but the War of 1812 and the Boxer Rebellion should not be. It should also be remembered that a man born in Japan who served in the US military during World War II belong in Category:American military personnel of World War II (or whatever it ends up being named) while a man who graduated from high school in Hawai'i but then went to join the military in Japan which his parents had not been to since they were little children and subsequently was involved in the bombing run on Pearl Harbor (I know there was at least one case that specificly fits this description) belongs in Category:Japanese military personnel of World War II. The question is what military were the people in, not what their "ethnicity", "nationality" or even "citisenship" was. Thus, this is not exactly an analogous sub-category to most Fooian fooers categories. This is technically Fooers of the Fooian Foo. That is people who were x in the Fooian Thing. Thus maybe Personnel of the American military during Conflict X would be a better form. However Category:Personnel of the American military during World War II just seems a bit akward. It might eliminate some of the ambiguity. Thus Category:Personnel of the American military during the American Civil War would be fairly clear that CSA Soldiers do not belong. Some may say "is not the double use of American redundant", I would say "no more than Category:Spanish military personnel of the War of the Spanish Succession or as we would not have to make it Category:Personnel of the SPanish Military during the War of the Spanish Succession.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:13, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Timrollpickering (talk) 12:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC) [reply]

Drainage systems of Australia

Category:Possible bogus articles

Category:WikiProject Massively multiplayer online games templates

Category:WikiProject Massively multiplayer online games templates - Template:Lc1
Nominator's rationale: This WikiProject is gone. Its category contains only a template which belongs under the watch of WP Video Games, and a template which is at TfD. This category is no longer needed. — This, that, and the other (talk) 03:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alumnae of women's universities and colleges

Propose renaming either
Or
(Note that Hollins University, St Hilda's College, Oxford, Trinity Washington University, Vassar College and Wheaton College (Massachusetts) all admit men to at least some courses so "alumnae" would be inaccurate. Note also that different country categories use different approaches for Alumni of Foo and For alumni.)
There's never been any consistency on whether to use "alumni" or "alumnae" for the former students of all-female universities and colleges. In Latin "alumni" is the plural for either all male or mixed-gender groups, "alumnae" is the plural for all female groups. However English generally doesn't have such a distinction and incorporated words tend to take English rules.
There's also no consistency by country with these categories; both lists contain institutions in India, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Since there are more alumni than alumnae categories, and we can't say for sure that all alumns of a women's university/college are still female, my preference is for Or - Rename to alumni. Timrollpickering (talk) 01:04, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to "alumni". In a way, using "alumnae" for some categories creates an additional burden on users (who are adding the category to an article) to know which schools are all-female and which are not. I don't think creating or maintaining the distinction is worth the hassle. (Whichever is chosen, we should use category redirects on the alternative forms, which should help.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:48, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to "alumni". As an alumnus of Wellesley College, of course I have a personal stake in this: using "alumnae" for graduates of a historically women's college that also has graduated male students renders me and others like me invisible. Since it is impossible to determine which putative women's colleges have students and alums who are men (presumably trans men in most cases, like my own), and which don't, the simplest solution is to use the gender-neutral "alumni". SparsityProblem (talk) 01:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to "alumni". Schools change their decisions on whether they're single gender. Let's use a word that doesn't.--Mike Selinker (talk) 19:51, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the existing tag of "alumnae" on Calcutta's women's colleges.The Kolkata based colleges, Bethune College, Lady Brabourne College, Loreto College have always been all-women's colleges, and there is not the slightest possibility of their being gender neutral institutions any time soon. Thus, existing nomenclature is appropriate. Patoldanga'r Tenida (talk) 09:02, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to "alumnae of ..." as per first suggestion when it is an all-female intake. Alumna/Alumnae =accurate for females. Alumnus/Alumni = inaccurate. The definition is clear in both Websters & Chambers dictionary. An encyclopaedia should reflect terms accurately and not fall for the temptation of being illiterate for the sake of simplicity. If we have problems using borrowed Latin terms then we should use an English term where one exists. E.g. Graduate is equally good and does not need declining. Ephebi (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]