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And here's a response from Robert Young: "That you made a mess of things is not indicative of 'race' being the problem, but rather your editing. If you would simply quote reliable, outside sources, instead of making things up to suit your own personal whims, this wouldn't even be an issue." Neal ( talk) 20:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC).
I should also mention we don't know the names of all the supercentenarians. Some of them are named "name withheld." This is the case where we get information from a country's government. They'll disclose their name, and only give out a date of birth, date of death if dead, gender, and such. But no name. And sometimes, correspondents like Belgium correspondent (user Bart Versieck) will disclose the names because such supercentenarians want to remain private. That it would be against their will to have fame. I could argue against Bart that disclosing their names is useless, since there's no harm on their side. But at the same time, I really don't care to know their names. Their age, date of birth, gender, and such, is all I really care about. Obviously if I wanted to make statistics that people who's first name begins with the letter M has a higher probability of becoming the oldest person in the world than someone who's name begins with the letter Y, then those names will be signigicant to me, but that isn't the case.
And then gender. Like names, there is an objective truth out there. Not many people are of mixed genders.
The interesting thing about race is, there is a non-determinant factor. A half Chinese half-White person can be 50% White and Asian. Infinite sig figs (as my understanding). They could still be 50.00000% White and Asian. But if such a person married into someone who was 50% Black and 50% Hispanic, then their children cannot be exactly 25% of each.
So from what I learned in biology, you are exactly 50.00000...% of both your parents. However, this does not mean you are exactly 25.000...% of all your grandparents. It is possible that you have more genes from 1 grandparent than the other. Which means someone of 4 equal races is not exact. So no doubt, there is very negligible confusion abotu races when all 4 of your grandparents are different races. But I still agree that the races (and ethnicities) should still be to the best of their accuracies.
As per having a race and ethnicity column, obviously, if we know the race of *1* person, and the other 99 are unknowns, then such a column could be meaningless. And removed. So basically it comes to where do we want to draw the line, so as long as we know more than 50% of the races/ethnicities of the supercentenarians? I would vote that so long as we know more than 50 or 75% of the supercentenarian races, we should have it. But I'd probably give an ethnicity column a less standard - since it could be there when we already know the ethnicity of the supercentenarian. Neal ( talk) 18:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC).
What a quaint US-centric discussion. You do realize, I hope, that this discussion about someone being 25% white or whatever only goes on in the USA? The rest of us gave up on that long ago. Everybody is mixed. For example, essentially everyone whose ancestors have lived in British cities for several generations has some African ancestry, because the freed slaves settled and had children with British mothers. The black colour of the skin died out in a few generations. What is it about "they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity." that you do not understand and why do you not address this point from DerbyCountyinNZ above? Also why should we trust GRC as a source when you are now asking Robert Young to change GRC to agree with Wikipedia? You do realize, I hope, that doing that completely destroys GRC as a valid reliable source?
In this discussion alone four editors have called for the removal of "race" from this article and only two have argued for retention. I need to find time to go back to the previous two (? three) discussions on race, but I recall there were similar ratios but with different people arguing for removal and an overlap between the editors there arguing for retention and those doing that here. There is no consensus to retain the column on race. Can we now delete that column? -- Bduke ( talk) 23:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
So to summarize - if the race is not known (which so far isn't the case for anyone over 110 on the list) - we leave it blank, hyphen, or question mark. Same thing when we don't know their gender. And you can argue that GRG is our source or the government census is our source. The GRG uses the census. If we find the census is wrong, we can't change that on Wikipedia as that would be original research. We could only put it as a footnote. If we find that less than 50% of the race column is blank, then we should remove it. We only have 8 choices: White, Black, Asian, Mestizo, Indic, Pacific Islander, Native American, and Middle-Eastern. But we only have 4 of them on the table. 5 in the GRG. Too confusing? Neal ( talk) 21:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC).
I think the above debate shows quite clearly that Neal is completely US-centric and believes that this list can be referenced and supported by material only from the USA. It is of course a world list and it needs support from concepts that are acceptable to people across the world and not just in the US. The only way to do that is to remove any reference to race from this list and the other international lists. There are two US lists of old people. I leave Neal to have his POV there, but he can not have it here. I've had enough with trying to discuss this with Neal. Please give you opinion in the section two below. -- Bduke ( talk) 01:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
This raises a wider issue. In any taxonomy, there is a split between "lumpers" and "splitters", with the first having few categories and the later having many. I do not accept the concept of race in any sense, but I much prefer the "splitters" view to the "lumpers". fchd gives a UK view which is more "splitters" than "lumpers". Lumping "Melanesian" and "Polynesian" into "Pacific Islanders" is not helpfull. A scheme that does not have "Australian Aboriginals" as separate is useless, although sadly they are not going to be included in this list any time soon. There is a clear difference between sub-Saharan Africans and North Africans. Thus we have no consensus on what races to list. GRC uses one way, but that is just one POV. -- Bduke ( talk) 00:35, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The sorting function fails. This issue seems to have been ignored. Any visitor coming to the page will put the page into a mess and regard this as substandard. The comment that it is fixed if columns are merged will only work if someone merges the columns. I believe we should remove the function. So unless there is decent, I will do so in the near future - but I certainly invite discussion for those who think otherwise. Alan Davidson ( talk) 08:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
And here's a response from Robert Young: "That you made a mess of things is not indicative of 'race' being the problem, but rather your editing. If you would simply quote reliable, outside sources, instead of making things up to suit your own personal whims, this wouldn't even be an issue." Neal ( talk) 20:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC).
I should also mention we don't know the names of all the supercentenarians. Some of them are named "name withheld." This is the case where we get information from a country's government. They'll disclose their name, and only give out a date of birth, date of death if dead, gender, and such. But no name. And sometimes, correspondents like Belgium correspondent (user Bart Versieck) will disclose the names because such supercentenarians want to remain private. That it would be against their will to have fame. I could argue against Bart that disclosing their names is useless, since there's no harm on their side. But at the same time, I really don't care to know their names. Their age, date of birth, gender, and such, is all I really care about. Obviously if I wanted to make statistics that people who's first name begins with the letter M has a higher probability of becoming the oldest person in the world than someone who's name begins with the letter Y, then those names will be signigicant to me, but that isn't the case.
And then gender. Like names, there is an objective truth out there. Not many people are of mixed genders.
The interesting thing about race is, there is a non-determinant factor. A half Chinese half-White person can be 50% White and Asian. Infinite sig figs (as my understanding). They could still be 50.00000% White and Asian. But if such a person married into someone who was 50% Black and 50% Hispanic, then their children cannot be exactly 25% of each.
So from what I learned in biology, you are exactly 50.00000...% of both your parents. However, this does not mean you are exactly 25.000...% of all your grandparents. It is possible that you have more genes from 1 grandparent than the other. Which means someone of 4 equal races is not exact. So no doubt, there is very negligible confusion abotu races when all 4 of your grandparents are different races. But I still agree that the races (and ethnicities) should still be to the best of their accuracies.
As per having a race and ethnicity column, obviously, if we know the race of *1* person, and the other 99 are unknowns, then such a column could be meaningless. And removed. So basically it comes to where do we want to draw the line, so as long as we know more than 50% of the races/ethnicities of the supercentenarians? I would vote that so long as we know more than 50 or 75% of the supercentenarian races, we should have it. But I'd probably give an ethnicity column a less standard - since it could be there when we already know the ethnicity of the supercentenarian. Neal ( talk) 18:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC).
What a quaint US-centric discussion. You do realize, I hope, that this discussion about someone being 25% white or whatever only goes on in the USA? The rest of us gave up on that long ago. Everybody is mixed. For example, essentially everyone whose ancestors have lived in British cities for several generations has some African ancestry, because the freed slaves settled and had children with British mothers. The black colour of the skin died out in a few generations. What is it about "they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity." that you do not understand and why do you not address this point from DerbyCountyinNZ above? Also why should we trust GRC as a source when you are now asking Robert Young to change GRC to agree with Wikipedia? You do realize, I hope, that doing that completely destroys GRC as a valid reliable source?
In this discussion alone four editors have called for the removal of "race" from this article and only two have argued for retention. I need to find time to go back to the previous two (? three) discussions on race, but I recall there were similar ratios but with different people arguing for removal and an overlap between the editors there arguing for retention and those doing that here. There is no consensus to retain the column on race. Can we now delete that column? -- Bduke ( talk) 23:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
So to summarize - if the race is not known (which so far isn't the case for anyone over 110 on the list) - we leave it blank, hyphen, or question mark. Same thing when we don't know their gender. And you can argue that GRG is our source or the government census is our source. The GRG uses the census. If we find the census is wrong, we can't change that on Wikipedia as that would be original research. We could only put it as a footnote. If we find that less than 50% of the race column is blank, then we should remove it. We only have 8 choices: White, Black, Asian, Mestizo, Indic, Pacific Islander, Native American, and Middle-Eastern. But we only have 4 of them on the table. 5 in the GRG. Too confusing? Neal ( talk) 21:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC).
I think the above debate shows quite clearly that Neal is completely US-centric and believes that this list can be referenced and supported by material only from the USA. It is of course a world list and it needs support from concepts that are acceptable to people across the world and not just in the US. The only way to do that is to remove any reference to race from this list and the other international lists. There are two US lists of old people. I leave Neal to have his POV there, but he can not have it here. I've had enough with trying to discuss this with Neal. Please give you opinion in the section two below. -- Bduke ( talk) 01:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
This raises a wider issue. In any taxonomy, there is a split between "lumpers" and "splitters", with the first having few categories and the later having many. I do not accept the concept of race in any sense, but I much prefer the "splitters" view to the "lumpers". fchd gives a UK view which is more "splitters" than "lumpers". Lumping "Melanesian" and "Polynesian" into "Pacific Islanders" is not helpfull. A scheme that does not have "Australian Aboriginals" as separate is useless, although sadly they are not going to be included in this list any time soon. There is a clear difference between sub-Saharan Africans and North Africans. Thus we have no consensus on what races to list. GRC uses one way, but that is just one POV. -- Bduke ( talk) 00:35, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The sorting function fails. This issue seems to have been ignored. Any visitor coming to the page will put the page into a mess and regard this as substandard. The comment that it is fixed if columns are merged will only work if someone merges the columns. I believe we should remove the function. So unless there is decent, I will do so in the near future - but I certainly invite discussion for those who think otherwise. Alan Davidson ( talk) 08:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)