User:Motmit/Unwarranted interference

Thanks to these busybodies, I have ceased the exercise for which I set up this category.

Category:Riparian boroughs of the River Thames

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: Rename Category:Riparian boroughs of the River Thames to Category:Local authorities adjoining the River Thames. --Xdamr^talk 23:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Propose renaming Category:Riparian boroughs of the River Thames to Category:Local government districts on the River Thames

Nominator's rationale: Rename. Not all members of the category are boroughs (City of London, South Bucks). I can find a variety of definitions of riparian and terms such as "riparian borough" and "riparian district" have been used to denote specific sets of districts. The renaming will remove any doubt about the contents of the category. MRSC (talk) 08:23, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Keep Riparian is a useful term which emphasises that they are on the river. Riparian authorities are referred to as such in many contexts and boroughs is broad enough to cover them (City of Westminster?). "Local government districts" - how boring and bureaucratic. Categories are set up by editors with an interest in the subject and wouldn't exist otherwise - so why do other people come along and want to rename them - usually with something longer and more tedious to handle? Motmit (talk) 09:30, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

There are of course riparian boroughs on other rivers and canals, and as for London, there is a super category of Riparian boroughs of London which includes those on the Lea and Wandle. If you want to be pedantic about names then the City of Westminster should not be in the category of London Boroughs but that is not the point - the word borough applies to a level of local government that has responsibilities. And it doesn't help to pile in higher and lower levels for the sake of it. Motmit (talk) 14:51, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Motmit, I dunno what you mean by "pile in higher and lower levels for the sake of it". The category already includes several local govt districts: Dartford, Elmbridge, Gravesham, South Bucks. South Bucks is one of several non-borough district councils, so we have two options: either rename to reflect the actual scope, or remove all the non-borough councils from the category. I think that the category will be more use of readers if it includes all the councils which adjoin the Thames ... but would you prefer it to be restricted only those districts which have borough status? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:15, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Rename to Category:Local authorities on the River Thames. The current name is inaccurate, because there are three types of local authorities which border on the River Thames:

London boroughs, e.g. Royal Borough of Greenwich
County councils, e.g. Kent County Council
District councils (see Districts of England), e.g. Gravesham)

Riparian is a lovely word, but it's un-needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:58, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

If kept, Rename to Category:Local authorities adjoining the River Thames. However most will have little responsibility for managing the river, which is probably the responsibility of the Environment Acgency above Teddington Lock and the Port of London Authority below it, making this a relatively trivial category, which might accordingly be deleted. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
This category was created for a purpose which is that a particular editor made a complete mess of one of the Thames articles, and one of the problems seemed to be that he/she did not know what the adjacent boroughs were. (Counties are not such a problem) This will hopefully help me sort out the mess and will be indispensible for a number of other Thames articles that need improving. Responsibility for managing the river itself is down to the EA and PLA - no "probably" about it if you know the subject you are talking about, but that is not what this category is about. If you google you will find countless references to Riparian boroughs particularly from those in this category that proudly identify themselves as such and for a purpose. You will find references to Riparian Boroughs in Hansard for both houses of parliament. One of the best bits of writing I have seen on Wikipedia is currently on the Cricket Project talk page with reference to the completely "broken and useless" state of the Category system thanks to the participants in this CFD process.Motmit (talk) 14:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that's a clearer rename than my suggestion, so if kept then I'd support that. But I think Peter is right about the triviality, so I have no objection to deletion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:01, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't see anyone is accusing you of coining a neologism, but I don't see why this obscure term is needed. WP:MOS#Clarity says "Plain English works best: avoid jargon, vague phrases, and unnecessary complexity". A search throws up only 335 non-wikiedia hits for "riparian boroughs", which is not quite the "countless" references you talk of. As for Hansard, there are only 9 uses of "riparian boroughs" on the Parliament website, compared with 42 for transubstantiation

Your abuse of participants in the CFD process might be a better justified if you had paid a tried to assume good faith and paid a little more attention to the concerns raised, rather than sneering at them as "boring and bureaucratic". (Not all local govt districts are boroughs, and some boroughs are not local govt districts; the two terms have precise meanings which overlap but are not synonymous).

You mention "Riparian boroughs" which "proudly identify themselves as such", so I did some searching, and far from being a public proclamation, it's a term which seemed to be used by UK local authorities only in internal documents. If I have missed any evidence of "Riparian boroughs" which "proudly identify themselves as such", please supply some links.

Also, while the term is used to refer to boroughs adjoining other rivers, so far all the results which I have checked of a search for "riparian boroughs" thames -wikipedia refer to London boroughs. Have you any evidence of the term being used to include all local authorities on The Thames, including those which are not actually boroughs? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Keep as is - there doesn't seem to be a particularly good reason to rename or delete, and a bit of regional diversity doesn't go astray on this thing, especially when those likely to know what it means will find it useful. We in Australia use "local government areas" or LGAs as that is the term universally used in our legislation across a number of jurisdictions and we have no history of using anything else (hell, there were practically none prior to 1870 or so), but the London area has history going back hundreds of years. Orderinchaos 18:10, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
So being both inaccurate and unnecessarily obscure are not good reasons?

Note that this category does not just refer to the London area. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Delete or keep—whatever—but get rid of this "riparian" business. Categories shouldn't sound as if they were named by Wm F. Buckley Jr. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you all please leave me to get on with the simple business of improving articles relating to those local authorities in South East England that are situated on the banks of the River Thames. There are important matters such as fluvial flooding and floodplane management that need to be reflected in the articles and it is also valuable to identify the tributaries, crossings, islands, locks and riverside settlements that fall within the districts and boroughs. I cannot see a simpler way of doing it than by having the specific category which I set up. I see the name as perfectly adequate and it employs a useful term that states its precise significance for this purpose (which is to do with being on the banks of a river). It is annoying that someone has seen fit to lob it into this forum, without having the courtesy to discuss it with me first. It strikes me as odd that those who care so little about the category that they consider it trivial or would happily see it deleted are also so hung up finding different names for it. All I want to do is improve an encyclopedia without unnecessary interference. Can someone just close as "Keep" - it is really not big deal? Thank you Motmit (talk) 16:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The proposals here are to rename the category to a name which more accurately and clearly describes its contents. You can continue to improve the articles even if the category is deleted (which I hope it will not be) or re-named to something bizarre and obscure, and I hope that you will continue that good work. The hostility of your responses here do not suggest that a pre-CFD discussion with you would have been a fruitful exercise, and your latest response carries an unfortunate implication of WP:OWNership. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:14, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

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:Old King's

Here we go again - a simple two word category that is probably of interest only to the people for whom it is familiar is changed into a horrendous seven word monstrosity by a bunch of people who have absolutely no connection with the school.

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: rename. Some change is needed, and while no one idea predominated, the nominated rename gets the most support. And man, is Category:Former pupils by school in England a mess. We should try to build consensus around a structure and stick with it.--Mike Selinker (talk) 21:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Propose renaming Category:Old King's to Category:Former pupils of King's College School, Wimbledon

Nominator's rationale: to provide some clarity for readers, who will otherwise be have no clue what this category is about, unless they happen to be closely associated with the King's College School in Wimbledon, London.
If editors are really determined to retain in some form the schools' own-in-house jargon, then it could be renamed to Category:Old King's (King's College School, Wimbledon) (with "Wimbledon" included to disambiguate from King's College School, Cambridge) .... but that really seems like a horribly convoluted construct, and "Former pupils of King's College School, Wimbledon" is taken directly from the explanatory text on the category page BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:07, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose, I've never been a fan of the Former pupils of St Cake's construction, it seems to me to dumb-down our coverage. We use lots of words on Wikipedia that some readers will be unfamiliar with - but when they shew up in blue, readers can click on them to find out what they mean! DuncanHill (talk) 23:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Apart from overlooking the need for disambiguation, you are arguing for a change in the guidelines. Per WP:COMMONNAME, we name things by the name they are generally known as, even if that is not their formal title. This is not one of the widely-known schools like Eton (whose "Old Etonians" is a widely-known label), so the common usage in a case like this is the generic descriptive form rather than the in-house jargon. A reader encountering "Old King's" in a list of categories will have no clue from the article what it is about, and this hinders the utility of the category for its main purpose as a navigational device.

The name of an article can of course be explained in the body text. For example "British Prime Minister Tony Blair went skiing with his chum George Bush, the former US president, in the exclusive Alpine resort of Basingstoke" explains all three key terms to a reader unfamiliar with any of them ... but categories appear without explanation at the bottom of the article, so their bare names need to make sense to a reader who has no familiarity with the topic other than reading the article on that page.

The school's own jargon terminology can of course be explained in the text of the category and of the article, so the reader will get the same information without having to navigate a guessing-game constructed of navigational signposts rendered in obscure jargon. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:02, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
"Former pupils" is not common usage in England (it's a Scottish term). Schools have old boys and old girls. DuncanHill (talk) 10:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Some schools use that terminology, but not all. And the highly ambiguous "Old King's" doesn't use it either. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:56, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose If "We don't categorize band members by "Former" or "Current" status" (per above), then why should we make an exception for pupils of schools? Let them eat (St.) Cake. Laurel Lodged (talk) 23:47, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Rename, perferably per nom, but to Category:Old King's (King's College School, Wimbledon) as a back-up. But the current name is unacceptably ambiguous, in my opinion. (I won't even get into how as a pluralized collective noun, "Old King's" is hopelessly deficient because I have no doubt that that is the term that is actually used by alumni of the school.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:06, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Rename to the less convoluted Category:Old King's (Wimbledon). It will be seen that Category:Former pupils by school in England already has several similar subcats so a disamb is essential. Occuli (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Rename or delete If we are not supposed to categorize this way, then just delete it. If it is kept, it really needs to be renamed WP:JARGON and the ambiguousness of the current name. 76.66.202.72 (talk) 15:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Rename to Category:Former pupils of King's College School, Wimbledon, with a distant back-up preference for Category:Old King's (King's College School, Wimbledon). (Category:Old King's (Wimbledon) just doesn't offer the clarity aimed for.) Increasingly I agree that the Old Fooians form is more confusing than helpful and this can stand as a test case to get better clarity. Pupils is the most common term for people who go to schools and "former pupils" is the most descriptive. Pre-empting anyone who wants to suggest "alumni", that term in the UK applies only to universities not schools. Strong oppose deletion. The schools a person attended are a prominent and notable feature of British society. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:46, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

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.

Two comments (not mine) from a project page addressing another CFD

CfD is broken beyond repair and nothing except a total overhaul of the category policies and procedures will fix it. The CfD process has been captured by a group of like-minded editors who have written the policy and run the enforcement program and who take little note of those editors who actually have to work with the categories they mangle. They give no consideration to the idea that category names that may appear ambiguous in theory are actually quite intelligible in practice, given some context such as the wider category tree that they sit for example.
I think that the CfD clique genuinely think they can do the impossible - i.e. remove all ambiguity from category names - but even if this was possible, they give no consideration to other concepts important in a good naming policy, including conciseness and simplicity, and seemingly have no concept of "common sense". The basic idea driving their program is that if a category name can possibly be confused by some editor, somewhere - then no matter how small that risk of confusion is, the category must be renamed regardless of the ridiculousness of the category name that results. One of my favourites in Category:Football (soccer) in Victoria (Australia)!!
This will not change, ever. My advice is not to get hung up on categories and just accept that they are broken and next to useless.

I think there's been long term concerns about CfD and how it appears to operate like a clique of like-minded people from the UK and North America - my experience in 2008 was that a common sense outcome could only be obtained by engaging in open warfare with the clique and notifying as many people as possible of discussions. It would take days to win a discussion (often either found purely accidentally, or after the fact necessitating a DRV) in the name of common sense against the mythical beast of "standardization" (note the US spelling), and it was a rare win with much blood on the walls. Basically, any time one got regular Wikipedians in there, they were automatically accused of bad faith and subjected to sneering sarcasm and patronising comments in the hope they'd leave - most of them did after whichever particular CfD was in question, so it was conduct which probably met its purpose.