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Category trimming
Mike, Could you please reevaluate your practice of removing redudndent categories. Or, if you want to remove them, how about adding the category as a subcategory of the base category. That way pepole searching for someone can still find them by browsing the category. Although, now you are forcing them to know the nationality.
Michael L. Kaufman 14:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Hi Michael. I'm not sure what you meant about adding the category as a subcategory of the base cat in your note. All the
Category:Linguists placements that I changed were either in already in national subcategories of
Category:Linguists, or they were in Linguists only and more specific categories existed.
As for whether they should be in both, I believe that one of the main reasons those categories were split off in the first place was to limit the size of the main category and to avoid redundancies. If everyone in all the national linguist categories were listed in
Category:Linguists, that category would have a few hundred entries and be less browsable. Are you proposing they remain in both? I did at least add a note at the top of the
Category:Linguists page pointing out that many linguists are in the national lists, and I believe this sort of splitting is standard practice. I'll hold off for now and stop if you can point me to a guideline that says otherwise.
Mike Dillon 14:49, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
I happened to see this interchange. Personally, I am very dissatisfied with the way our categorization scheme works. However, we have to work within its limits, and according to the policies and guidelines of the community. The community has decided that articles should not be categorized in both a parent and child category. See:
wikipedia:categorization, "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory..." Hopefully, someday, the category scheem will be improved. -
Willmcw 17:17, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with the
wikipedia:categorization statement, the problem with what you are doing is that
Category:American linguists is not an actual subcategory of
Category:Linguists. COnceptualy it is, but there is no way to find it there unless you know it exists. If you added the national categories to the parent category, then they would be subcategories, and at least people could find them. THis also ignores the problem of multiple sub-category inclusion. SHould - for example - Einstein be in category physicists, Category Theoretical physicist, or category Nobel Prize winning physicist. My own opinionm is that a category physicist that doesn't include Einstein is somewhat imcomplete. I don't know anything about Liguistics, but perhaps a category Linguists that doesn't include Deborah Tannen (or at least a way to find her) is incomplete as well.
Michael L. Kaufman 00:14, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Here's my take on your example of Einstein. First, he would belong in
Category:Theoretical physicists (if it existed). This would not preclude being in
Category:Nobel Prize in Physics winners because that category represents a formal designation on top of being a theoretical physicist (whereas theoretical physicist is a kind of physicist). For someone who isn't world famous or at least extremely prominent in the field, I would leave it at that. However, it does seem reasonable to add Einstein to the supercategory
Category:Physicists as well, just because he is so notable. I could see
Noam Chomsky,
Benjamin Whorf,
Ferdinand de Saussure and a few other linguists being on that level, but I've never even heard of
Deborah Tannen and I was a
Linguistics major. As for putting national subcats directly into the occupational category, it seems inconsistent with the other occupational cats.
Mike Dillon 01:52, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
(Since I've barged in, don't mind if I stick around.) A better example of the problem that MLK has identified is
Category:Scottish economists and
Adam Smith. If you didn't already know that Smith was Scottish, you'd never find him under
Category:Economists (if the editors of economists' bios followed the guideline). According to the guideline, an article can be in "sister categories". So he could be in
Category:Scottish economists and
Category:18th century economists, if there were such a category. In my opinion, the ideal system would allow categories to be general attributes, like "Scottish", "economist", etc. Articles with those attribute could then be searched using common
boolean terms. In the meantime you are free to
wikipedia:ignore all rules, like the economists. (though others might, just as freely, revert your work and bring you up on charges). Cheers, -
Willmcw 05:51, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Willmcw: In general, I don't like to revert other people's work except for obvious vandalism or for small "fixes". I reverted the
Deborah Tannen article, but when I saw that Mike had made a bunch of those changes, I went and left a message for him instead. If I can convince him, then I will go and revert the others, otherwise I will just leave them. Mike: The problem with putting the less famous linguists in subcategoryies, is that they are they ones who are least likely to be findable if they are not in the main category. Everyone knows about Chomsky, so for the prupose of "finding him" it is not really necessary to put him in the main branch. FOr the purpose of Completeness, it wouldn't make sense to have a main category without him. How do you feel about adding the national categories as sub-categories of the main one? That way they are findable by people looking to read up on linguists. Plus, it has the added value that they are actually sub-categories.
Michael L. Kaufman 13:12, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
I think a simpler way would be to simply change the category page for
Category:Linguists to have a blurb about the separation by nationality and a list of links to the national categories. It isn't automatic, but people also aren't frequently creating subcategories anyhow. The only problem I have is letting the number of articles in a category pass 200 entries with the current Wikipedia software. I actually think that
Category:Mathematicians is pretty usable, just by its organization. It has mathematicians by
nationality,
century, and
field. There is also
List of mathematicians, comparable to
List of linguists.
Mike Dillon 03:03, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and changed the
Category:Linguists page. I think the results make it more usable. It might be nice to start a
Category:Linguists by century, like
Category:Mathematicians by century, but I'm not going to take that up soon. If someone does do it, it is easy enough to expand the text on the main page. I feel that linking to
List of linguists and
Modern linguists is the best way to find a linguist in the circumstance you're trying to accommodate by moving categories or adding people to subcategories and supercategories.
Mike Dillon 03:29, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I suggest separate categories for phoneticians and phonologists, as the two often regard themselves as quite distinct. There will be some overlap for some linguists, but then that will also happen with every other conceivable category of linguists suggested. For example, phonologists working in Optimality Theory almost always consider themselves morphologists as well, or alternatively deny that there is such a thing as a morphologist! And syntacticians, believe it or not (!), often work on semantics and phonology as well. I suppose this overlap isn't really a problem.
Matve12:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)reply
This category is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to
join the project and
contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the
documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
This category is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics articles
Category trimming
Mike, Could you please reevaluate your practice of removing redudndent categories. Or, if you want to remove them, how about adding the category as a subcategory of the base category. That way pepole searching for someone can still find them by browsing the category. Although, now you are forcing them to know the nationality.
Michael L. Kaufman 14:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Hi Michael. I'm not sure what you meant about adding the category as a subcategory of the base cat in your note. All the
Category:Linguists placements that I changed were either in already in national subcategories of
Category:Linguists, or they were in Linguists only and more specific categories existed.
As for whether they should be in both, I believe that one of the main reasons those categories were split off in the first place was to limit the size of the main category and to avoid redundancies. If everyone in all the national linguist categories were listed in
Category:Linguists, that category would have a few hundred entries and be less browsable. Are you proposing they remain in both? I did at least add a note at the top of the
Category:Linguists page pointing out that many linguists are in the national lists, and I believe this sort of splitting is standard practice. I'll hold off for now and stop if you can point me to a guideline that says otherwise.
Mike Dillon 14:49, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
I happened to see this interchange. Personally, I am very dissatisfied with the way our categorization scheme works. However, we have to work within its limits, and according to the policies and guidelines of the community. The community has decided that articles should not be categorized in both a parent and child category. See:
wikipedia:categorization, "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory..." Hopefully, someday, the category scheem will be improved. -
Willmcw 17:17, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with the
wikipedia:categorization statement, the problem with what you are doing is that
Category:American linguists is not an actual subcategory of
Category:Linguists. COnceptualy it is, but there is no way to find it there unless you know it exists. If you added the national categories to the parent category, then they would be subcategories, and at least people could find them. THis also ignores the problem of multiple sub-category inclusion. SHould - for example - Einstein be in category physicists, Category Theoretical physicist, or category Nobel Prize winning physicist. My own opinionm is that a category physicist that doesn't include Einstein is somewhat imcomplete. I don't know anything about Liguistics, but perhaps a category Linguists that doesn't include Deborah Tannen (or at least a way to find her) is incomplete as well.
Michael L. Kaufman 00:14, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Here's my take on your example of Einstein. First, he would belong in
Category:Theoretical physicists (if it existed). This would not preclude being in
Category:Nobel Prize in Physics winners because that category represents a formal designation on top of being a theoretical physicist (whereas theoretical physicist is a kind of physicist). For someone who isn't world famous or at least extremely prominent in the field, I would leave it at that. However, it does seem reasonable to add Einstein to the supercategory
Category:Physicists as well, just because he is so notable. I could see
Noam Chomsky,
Benjamin Whorf,
Ferdinand de Saussure and a few other linguists being on that level, but I've never even heard of
Deborah Tannen and I was a
Linguistics major. As for putting national subcats directly into the occupational category, it seems inconsistent with the other occupational cats.
Mike Dillon 01:52, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
(Since I've barged in, don't mind if I stick around.) A better example of the problem that MLK has identified is
Category:Scottish economists and
Adam Smith. If you didn't already know that Smith was Scottish, you'd never find him under
Category:Economists (if the editors of economists' bios followed the guideline). According to the guideline, an article can be in "sister categories". So he could be in
Category:Scottish economists and
Category:18th century economists, if there were such a category. In my opinion, the ideal system would allow categories to be general attributes, like "Scottish", "economist", etc. Articles with those attribute could then be searched using common
boolean terms. In the meantime you are free to
wikipedia:ignore all rules, like the economists. (though others might, just as freely, revert your work and bring you up on charges). Cheers, -
Willmcw 05:51, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Willmcw: In general, I don't like to revert other people's work except for obvious vandalism or for small "fixes". I reverted the
Deborah Tannen article, but when I saw that Mike had made a bunch of those changes, I went and left a message for him instead. If I can convince him, then I will go and revert the others, otherwise I will just leave them. Mike: The problem with putting the less famous linguists in subcategoryies, is that they are they ones who are least likely to be findable if they are not in the main category. Everyone knows about Chomsky, so for the prupose of "finding him" it is not really necessary to put him in the main branch. FOr the purpose of Completeness, it wouldn't make sense to have a main category without him. How do you feel about adding the national categories as sub-categories of the main one? That way they are findable by people looking to read up on linguists. Plus, it has the added value that they are actually sub-categories.
Michael L. Kaufman 13:12, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
I think a simpler way would be to simply change the category page for
Category:Linguists to have a blurb about the separation by nationality and a list of links to the national categories. It isn't automatic, but people also aren't frequently creating subcategories anyhow. The only problem I have is letting the number of articles in a category pass 200 entries with the current Wikipedia software. I actually think that
Category:Mathematicians is pretty usable, just by its organization. It has mathematicians by
nationality,
century, and
field. There is also
List of mathematicians, comparable to
List of linguists.
Mike Dillon 03:03, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and changed the
Category:Linguists page. I think the results make it more usable. It might be nice to start a
Category:Linguists by century, like
Category:Mathematicians by century, but I'm not going to take that up soon. If someone does do it, it is easy enough to expand the text on the main page. I feel that linking to
List of linguists and
Modern linguists is the best way to find a linguist in the circumstance you're trying to accommodate by moving categories or adding people to subcategories and supercategories.
Mike Dillon 03:29, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I suggest separate categories for phoneticians and phonologists, as the two often regard themselves as quite distinct. There will be some overlap for some linguists, but then that will also happen with every other conceivable category of linguists suggested. For example, phonologists working in Optimality Theory almost always consider themselves morphologists as well, or alternatively deny that there is such a thing as a morphologist! And syntacticians, believe it or not (!), often work on semantics and phonology as well. I suppose this overlap isn't really a problem.
Matve12:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)reply