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.
Merge I was going to merge them the other way since there's only 4 articles in it, and then optionally use a bot to rename, but it makes no difference.
GliderMaven (
talk)
00:50, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:Health care markets
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.
Nominator's rationale:delete Not clear on the purpose of this category, it has only one member, which is itself better classified in other places already.
KarlB (
talk)
22:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment given the category was created in 2006, it doesn't look like it's going to be populated. Why not delete, and then if there are sufficient articles in the future, recreate. --
KarlB (
talk)
13:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:Unionism
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 to
Category:British unionism. There is clear consensus that the category has to be renamed to avoid connection with organized labor. There is unsurprising conflict about what it should be renamed to, so I'm matching the article title.--
Mike Selinker (
talk)
14:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Nominator's rationale: There is an existing disambig page for
Unionism, which is broadly used term by many social movements. Thus, this category, which is exclusively about Unionism in the British isles, should be thusly renamed.
KarlB (
talk)
22:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename to disambiguate. No strong opinion on what form of disambiguation is best, though "(British and Ireland)" seems weird to me. (Shouldn't the suggestion be "(Britain and Ireland)"?) "British Isles" is commonly used in the real world and I would not have a problem with it, but I know many users do.
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I had meant to write "Britain and Ireland". Now corrected.
I understand the complaint about "British Isles", I just have always had the impression that it's a tad contrived or pedantic—in reverse, kind of like a Canadian complaining that U.S. nationals should not be permitted to have exclusive use of the term "American".
Good Ol’factory(talk)01:13, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Well, I wouldn't say "yes" to the exact question asked by BHG; I think the Canadian government regards the issue as pedantic and contrived. Some other governments in the Americas do not, however.
Good Ol’factory(talk)03:24, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment The category ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism has described itself as "Articles and sub-categories relating to Unionism in the British Isles" since 2006, which is why I made the nomination I did. BHG is unfortunately throwing a wiki-trout in the face of this nomination because of this hated, odious word, which nonetheless appears all over the wikipedia categories, like this one
Category:British Isles and about 20-25 others. Allow me to suggest the following - BHG and any other interested editors are welcome to join the fascinating discussion here:
Talk:British_Isles/name_debate. As soon as the consensus on Wikipedia is to rename that article and all of the attendant categories, I would happily support a rename of this one to whatever formulation is proposed. But until then, going to war over this little category, and fighting the same fight, and working to come up with some *other* consensus name, just seems silly. If we're going to come up with a new formulation for the British Isles, I suggest it be done on the aforementioned talk page, *not* in the category renaming board. Thanks. --
KarlB (
talk)
02:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
ok that made me laugh. cheers. but to the point, I think British is not sufficient, because the category is also about unionism in Ireland (i.e. *all* of Ireland) and Scotland as well. --
KarlB (
talk)
05:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Soft oppose and comment: This doesn't really affect the British Isles per se (e.g. unionism has never really been an issue on the Isle of Man or Channel Islands and is less of an issue affecting the southern portion of Ireland after 1922). It is an inherently political concept and relates directly to the United Kingdom and not the archipelago in which the UK is located. Therefore, I suggest
Category:Unionism in the United Kingdom. "British unionism" feels wrong because, more-often-than-not, what is being referred to is Irish unionism and Scottish unionism and Irish unionists and Scottish unionists. This is also more in line with the (true) main articles:
Unionism in Ireland and
Unionism in Scotland. Indeed, I would suggest that the
British unionism article be renamed Unionism in the United Kingdom in line with these. --
RA (
talk)
09:42, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I quite agree with RA's explanation of why "British Isles" is inappropriate. Unionism is an issue only in Britain and Ireland, not in the rest of the so-called "British Isles". However, "United Kingdom" doesn't quite work either, because it is not solely an issue confined to the current boundaries of the United Kingdom; there was a Unionist majority on Rathmines Urban District Council until it was abolished in 1930, and if/when Scotland gains independence I'm sure that Unionism will continue to be some sort of political force within an independent Scotland.
It seems to me that this is one of the rare occasions when the adjective "British" is actually appropriate, because a distinguishing feature of such Unionism it that accepts the political concept of "Britishness". --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
11:06, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
That crossed my mind too. My thinking was that "unionism", regardless of whether it was "in" the United Kingdom at any given time, is always at least "in" relation to the United Kingdom i.e. the Rathmines unionism was a desire for all of Ireland to remain "in" the United Kingdom (even after it had left). --
RA (
talk)
12:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose RA explains it well. Since Unionism is a political concept, it fits better to refer to the political entities involved, such as Ireland or Scotland or the United Kingdom. --
HighKing (
talk)
09:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Unionism in UK doesn't work either, since all of Ireland is included, including the southern part, especially before after 1922. That's why a geographic works better in this case, rather than more ambiguous political terms which refer to shifting boundaries and identies; British Isles has the virtue of being static and clear, and capturing the landmass of all of the areas where this sentiment has been expressed. --
KarlB (
talk)
11:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The before 1922 point is a bit silly, because all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and the issue at stake in unionism is the desire to become or remain part of the United Kingdom, whatever its current boundaries.
Sigh. The name UK was only official around 1800, but at least one of the articles refers to the acts of Union 1707, at which point the name was 'Great Britain'. And while unionism today may indeed refer to a desire to remain part of UK, in the past it may have referred to whatever entity was in charge (i.e. Great Britain, etc). Unionism (and nationalism) in Ireland also has deep roots: from
Irish home rule movement: "The movement drew upon a legacy of patriotic thought that dated back at least to the late 17th century." - if there was patriotic thought, there would have also been its inverse. One of the other articles in this category is about the
Crown of Ireland Act 1542, so clearly this stuff has a long history, and predates the formation of the UK. As to your point on the Isles, I hate to correct you but you may be wrong there as well:
Scotland's Northern Isles Might Stay With The UK If Scotland Breaks Away: Report - there are also murmurs for greater independence in Isle of Man and Guernsey, so there are likely to be 'unionist' sentiments on these islands as well
Call for greater distance from UK for Channel Islands. I feel like we're bending over backwards to avoid a reasonable geographic term, already used by consensus in Wikipedia, when it makes most sense (like talking about 'European history' or 'SE Asian history'). I do agree with RA, Unionism is certainly a political concept, but because it endures over so many centuries and governments, a geographic descriptor may be the most clear way to capture the contents of this category. And I'm quite happy to see RA suggest my original formulation
Category:Unionism (British Isles) --
KarlB (
talk)
12:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The crown dependencies will never have "unionist" movements - since they were never part of the "Union" in the first place. The general consensus on many "British Isles" debates is to use refer to the smallest relevant area. So if we are to use a geographic area, this should be "Great Britain and Ireland". If we are to use a geopolitical area, we could select
Category:Unionism (United Kingdom). --
HighKing (
talk)
14:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Sigh. The choice between "United Kingdom" and "British Isles" is quite simple.
United Kingdom is accurate in geographical scope, because the issues here relate solely to the
United Kingdom and to its predecessor and successor states. In some cases, there will be an anachronism, but it is a minor anachronism because the
Kingdom of Great Britain was referred to contemporaneously as the "united Kingdom" (see article II, II, IV etc of
107 Articles of Union . It is therefore no more than an anchronism of the capitalisation of one letter.
OTOH, British Isles is inaccurate in geographical scope, and unnecessarily introduces a entirely avoidable political view of geography. There is currently a consensus to use British Isles as a geographical term, but that does not mean that it is appropriate to extend its use to political topics where it is demonstrably inaccurate. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
For me, using it in this context (Unionism in the British Isles) attempts to transform usage beyond geographical into geopolitical, and for no obvious reason. It's bad practice and sloppy misuse of a term. --
HighKing (
talk)
14:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
calling the use of the term 'British Isles' sloppy is uncalled for. Perhaps you'd consider this book title, which addresses many of the concerns in this discussion, to be 'sloppy'?
A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, C1750-c1850. Another work on exactly this subject used the term 9 times, like this: "As the Union was the cornerstone of a state based on the incorporation of the whole of the British Isles [...] vital to the formulation of a new 'nationality' - British - not merely English, Welsh, Scottish, or Irish."p.93 Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism Since 1801 By David George Boyce, Alan O'Day. In addition, the title of the book points out why 'British Unionism' is not sufficient; because it excludes Irish actors, which as BHG is fond of pointing out, are not British. So to get it right, it would probably have to be ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (British and Irish and Scottish and Welsh and English. Another useful quote can be found here: "The passage in 1800 of the Act of Union, which in 1801 inaugurated the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, brought an unprecedented constitutional clarity to the government of the British Isles and can be seen as the culmination of a thousand-year process of political evolution that led to the creation of a unified 'British' state." Nationhood and Identity: The British State Since 1800, David Powell. In other words, while our POV editors decry the use of this term, sources upon which wikipedia relies continue to use it, and use it to describe politics, unionism, nationalism, and many other things that happen in the archipelago. BHG's initial comment was telling - she didn't object to the term because it was inaccurate, she objected to it because it just rubbed her and others the wrong way. Now there is an attempt to backpedal and justify that 'United Kingdom' is sufficient to explain complex issues of identity and nationalism that predate the UK and include countries which are not part of the UK. Unfortunately, if you start drawing venn diagrams, you'll soon find that any of the other formulations besides the archipelago proposed to date do *not* capture the extent of articles currently classified, nor the potential for this category in the future.--
KarlB (
talk)
15:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
It's not uncommon for the term "British Isles" to be used in geopolitical contexts in the past (downright common actually), or even used totum pro parte for Britain or United Kingdom or Britain and Ireland, up to relatively modern times. But times seem to have changed. Usage of the term British Isles in such a context is rarely seen today. The book you linked to above published in 1997, for example, makes no mention of any crown dependencies. There are far more books on Unionism that make no mention of British Isles in their title. Even the quotes you've used above support the contention of totum pro parte usage - for example brought an unprecedented constitutional clarity to the government of the British Isles. Simply wrong. Let's not propagate mistakes like that into WP. --
HighKing (
talk)
16:35, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
@Karl.brown, Venn diagrams or no Venn diagrams, the facts are simple. 1) The
Isle of Man is not part of the
United Kindom, has never been part of the
United Kingdom, and AFAICS there has been no significant pressure from unionists to make it a part of the
United Kingdom. 2) The Isle of Man is part of the so-called "
British Isles".
So why do you want to drag the Isle of Man into this by using "British Isles", when there are several simple formulations such as "Britain and Ireland" or "United Kingdom" which cover all of the relevant territory, and only the relevant territory? --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
15:54, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
@Karl.brown, for some reason I read "Unionism in the British Isles" as the first proposal. I proposed the above as stab at compromise thinking it hadn't been discussed already. I've struck it now since it has been discussed.
I hope you don't mind me saying but your comment above is not convicing. It mixes, unionism with nationalism, islands that are a part of the UK with islands that are not a part the UK, a narrative past with speculation about the future, and the quotes you cite are not about unionism.
You do have an argument - but you are over playing it IMO. And because of that, you have convinced me further that the correct context is "United Kingdom" (something the term specifically relates to) and not "British Isles". --
RA (
talk)
14:16, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment If people really want to duke out how this should be named they should go to the article talk page. For now we should have the category match the article name, and if they rename the article we can rename the category.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
17:46, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose. I agree that "Unionism (British Isles)" would be incorrect, and to me "British unionism" sounds bizarre, with heavy overtones of the
British Union of Fascists. Unionism is a political concept, and to mean anything it needs to have a particular political aim.
Unionism in Scotland aims to keep Scotland in the Union, whereas
Unionism in Ireland aims to keep some (previously all) of Ireland in it. Unionism in England was much the same as Irish Unionism and is now a spent force. There are few swing voters in England for whom the future of Northern Ireland is an issue now. On the whole, the status quo seems to me to be more liveable with than any of the alternatives suggested so far. No other kinds of Unionists seem to be complaining about it.
Moonraker (
talk)
00:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Strong rename to something. Clearly the existing name is inappropriate, considering the disambiguation page. Since the current head article is "British unionism", it appears to be the most appropriate title, though "Unionism (British Isles)" works quite well as well. "Unionism (Ireland and Britain/Britain and Ireland)" works less well, since the other island is called "Great Britain" (as opposed to "little Britain", or Brittany). I suppose you could use "Unionism (British archipelago)".
70.49.124.147 (
talk)
05:50, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I updated the header in the category to list
British unionism,
Unionism in Ireland and
Unionism in Scotland as the three lead articles for this category (especially since the British unionism article itself does not capture the sentiments expressed by unionists in Ireland). Also, for more evidence on why Unionism (United Kingdom) is insufficient, take a look at this:
Reform Groups:Ireland for a new generation - this is a group based in RoI, but their goals are "Rethinking Ireland’s relationship with the United Kingdom. This should reflect the deepening social, cultural, and political bond between the two nations." and promoting rejoining the commonwealth - are these 'unionist' sentiments? You'd really have to ask them, there is a spectrum and continuum here. There is a recent book which may also be of use: "Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture [Hardcover]. Richard English (Editor), Graham Walker (Editor)". So just using 'United Kingdom' to describe activities and feelings that are going on within RoI today is inaccurate. Finally, even BHG proposed that 'British' was a perfectly acceptable term here, but for some reason is opposed to the addition of the word 'Isles' to the end.--
KarlB (
talk)
15:46, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I fully accept that "British" is an appropriate adjective to apply to Unionism, a political doctrine which seeks political unity of Great Britain and/or unity of Ireland with Great Britain.
I do not accept that "British" is an NPOV adjective to apply in a geographical or political sense to the Island of Ireland, for reasons set out length elsewhere.
I wondered how long it would take you to find
Reform Groups:Ireland for a new generation. They are a tiny fringe outfit, but even if we take them seriously, look at what their aim is: unity (or at least a closer relationship) with The United Kingdom. Not unity with France or Japan or Tonga, but The United Kingdom. So "Unionism (United Kingdom)" includes them very neatly. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
16:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I'm confident that with all of your experience here you know that wikipedia is not about 'whether we take them seriously', there is an article about them and thus the community considers them to be notable, that is all. I personally have no feelings about them, and I'd suggest that you keep your own feelings about them out of this debate, as they are quite irrelevant. As per your other points, I also found an editor who disagrees with you:
BrownHairedGirl, a few days ago: "However, "United Kingdom" doesn't quite work either, because it is not solely an issue confined to the current boundaries of the United Kingdom; there was a Unionist majority on Rathmines Urban District Council until it was abolished in 1930, and if/when Scotland gains independence I'm sure that Unionism will continue to be some sort of political force within an independent Scotland."
So, if "United Kingdom" won't work, because it will apply to Ireland and (eventually independent?) Scotland, and "British" won't work because it's "an NPOV adjective to apply in a geographical or political sense to the Island of Ireland, for reasons set out length elsewhere.", then what will work? Do you really think that when Ireland signed the
Crown of Ireland Act 1542, it was about the "United Kingdom", or "British" identity? The ideas of union in the history of the British isles are much more complex than a black and white picture or a particular set of positions held by actors today. You're taking a revisionist, modern perspective on this naming discussion, instead of choosing something that is neutral and inclusive. And yes, the crown dependencies are not part of the UK, that is why I brought them up. There are currently independence movements in almost all of them, and if these debates come to a head, there may be articles about people on those islands who oppose independence - calling those sentiments unionist is reasonable.--
KarlB (
talk)
17:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I would have hoped that you would have read
WP:WEIGHT, which cautions against giving undue weight to fringe views, and explicitly warns that "generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all".
Reform Groups:Ireland for a new generation is just that: a tiny minority. That's why I question whether we should be paying hem any attention in the context of this discussion.
As to my previous comment, thank you for reminding me of it. Having looked at the issue further, I reckon that my earlier objection to it on those grounds was mistaken, because as I noted more recently all the Unionists involved -- even those in Rathmines -- seek to be part of the United Kingdom. They either want to stay there (as with current Ulster Unionists), to join it (as with Irish Unionists pre 1801), or to rejoin it (as with the fringe "Reform Groups" or any remaining Scottish Unionists if that country becomes independent in 2015).
I suggest you read the intro to
Unionism in Ireland: "Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. Since the independence of the Irish Free State, which is now the Republic of Ireland, unionism has focused on preserving the place of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom." In other words, since the creation of RoI, unionism in Ireland has become about keeping NI within the UK - no arguments there. (though read this for a different unionist view, which is much more 'British Isles wide' in its scope and meaning:
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/organ/docs/vanguard72.htm). But to state that the focus of unionism before then (and to group all of the parties across all the Isles and their various views under the banner) was "they just wanted to join the UK" is oversimplification in the extreme, and does not become you - the types of union, their forms, functions, and purpose aspired for by all of the different actors do not all converge on a single idea: the modern nation-state of the United Kingdom. Finally, by naming it with (United Kingdom), we are going against the convention in this field, and the multiple sources cited, whereby Unionism is not categorized by what it is about, but rather by where the actors are from. We have Irish Unionism, Ulster Unionism, British Unionism, Scottish Unionism, Welsh Unionism, which each have their reasons and arguments. This is why I feel an umbrella geographic term, rather than a political term, would make more sense here, as this category covers unionism as an evolving concept in this area of the world, and not just a particular set of unionist arguments trending today. I suppose ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (Great Britain and Ireland) might be another, more wordy, option, although the lack of Scotland may bug some, and it also has a bit of historicism to it, in that Great Britain itself did not exist until 1707 or so. It's funny that you call the categorization of the 1542 act an anachronism, since your use of 'United Kingdom' is also, of course, an anachronism - allow me to remind again that the history of Unionism (whether it was called that or not is not that relevant, it is the desire for union that is important) in the British isles goes back way further than 1801, and before 1707.--
KarlB (
talk)
20:01, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Karl, I am historian, so I too could write screeds on history, and I have long since read the article
Unionism in Ireland. But what we are trying to do here is devise a brief title for a navigational device rather than spout verbiage, so I deliberately simplified as much as possible. The varieties of closer relationship sought were many, but they led in 1801 to the creation of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Our objective here is to find a succinct category name to assist navigation, not to write a thesis on the history of unionism.
If you want an purely geographic term to describe where the actors are from, the relevant term is "Britain and Ireland". "Great Britain" is a newer term, but dates back at least to
1604, not 1707. (Britain or Great Britain did of course exist long before 1604, at least since the place became an island about 8,000 years ago ... but for navigational device, we use the most common name for it which will be understood by our readers).
If you want a political term, use "United Kingdom", because it all crystallised in the UK.
If you want a term to describe the unionist vision of that national identity which unionism sought to construct, use "British". Outside of the island of Great Britain, it is a POV term, but since it a unionist POV term, it is accurate in this context.
OTOH, "British Isles" does not describe where the actors are from, because it includes places where unionism has never been a serious force. Your continued advocacy of a POV term which is also geographically inaccurate is becoming silly. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
21:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Your continued description of 'British isles' as a POV term is itself POV, BHG. You yourself said there is consensus to use the term to describe a geographic area, and that is how I am proposing it be used, so please stop with the POV shots across the bow. Until Wikipedia consensus changes its tune, 'British isles' is not POV; if you call it POV, that is an opinion, not a statement of fact. Secondly, I have provided multiple sources, by Irish, Scottish, and English authors, that indeed use the term 'British isles' to refer to the area where this form of unionism has been an issue, and I'm not going to bore you by providing more. So this is not my own little invention or crusade, real historians have actually used this "geographically inaccurate" term, to discuss the issue at hand, so I'd suggest you take up your argument with them. My assumption is, they were also willing to accept a small inaccuracy, in that perhaps the unionist movements of Jersey were not boiling over, but it was a convenient, and understandable, shorthand. So we're left with many choices, none of them perfect. But you calling my proposal POV or inaccurate is unfair; it's no more inaccurate than stating that unionists are all 'British' (when, for example, one of the important recent pieces of scholarship on this issue explicitly spoke of 'British and Irish Unionism'), or even that they were all driving for 'British' national identity (provably false), and no more inaccurate than the gross simplification that since UK is the default/biggest union, that all the 'unionists' were all leading towards that the whole time, after all. Without making it personal, let's just accept that we disagree on the most clear way to categorize this; I think both of us have said enough, and I'm done...--
KarlB (
talk)
23:03, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename to
Category:Unionism in United Kingdom. Unionism is the converse of Nationalism, which seeks to fragment UK. It is not necessary to use "British Isles" or "Britain and Ireland", because unionism has not been an issue in the Republic of Irleaqnd since its creation in 1922. Before that, UK included the whole of Ireland. It is mainly a live political issue in Northern Ireland. It has been to some extent in Scotland, but mainly among Scottish Presbyterians supporting their Ulster co-religionists. (Note I am English).
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment per this: "unionism has not been an issue in the Republic of Ireland since its creation in 1922", I'd just point to this:
Reform_Movement_(Ireland). BHG has called this a fringe group, which it may indeed be, but it does exist. --
KarlB (
talk)
23:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The Reform Movement is not quite "unionist". They are fringe, but notable in that they lobby for the "British" tradition in the Republic of Ireland. However, to use "unionist" with regard to Reform Movement would be inaccurate. They don't have an aim, for example, for the Republic of Ireland to rejoin the United Kingdom. They belong to a political tradition in southern Ireland that before 1922 would have been "unionist" but to call them "unionist" today would be inaccurate (even a slur). --
RA (
talk)
19:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Well, you just made my point for me :) I was going to say: "It all depends on how you are defining 'unionist' - by today's standards, or by historical standards?", and then you went and made the same point. So, what is this category about? A specific political movement today? Or a general movement towards greater political unity within the isles over the past 500 years of history, with many possible forms permitted? The current category membership suggests the latter.
Reform Movement (Ireland) has been in ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism since as long as it's existed, including many edits by yourself (RA) - the category was never challenged/removed AFAIK. If they're not valid members of the category, why didn't you remove them? As I've mentioned before, the history of unionism in the Isles is rich and varied, and even though today it tends to mean one thing (i.e. keeping NI and Scotland part of the UK), historically it has meant other things - i.e. pursuit of some form of political connection between the isles. What Reform is pushing for (i.e. British citizenship, joining the commonwealth, etc) are all forms of unionism, even if we may not label them in that way, and follows very much in the general tradition - just read their blog posts, you will see they tie themselves to previous unionist movements/thinking in RoI. I don't want to overplay this particular point; if these guys didn't exist I'd still make the same arguments, for the same reason - the venn diagrams on 'United Kingdom' and 'British' just don't capture the diversity. --
KarlB (
talk)
19:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
"...a general movement towards greater political unity within the isles over the past 500 years of history, with many possible forms permitted?" That is not unionism. Like the Reform Movement organisation, it is relevant to it. But that is not unionism. Unionism has a very narrow and specific definition (
OED):
a person, especially a member of a Northern Ireland political party, who is in favour of the union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain. historical a member of a British political party formed in 1886 which supported maintenance of the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland.
In recent times, unionism has come to refer to a similar political stand-point towards the union in Scotland too. But that is, relatively speaking, quite new. So, because of the intertwined nature of the two ("unionism" and "United Kingdom"),
Unionism (United Kingdom) is a superior option. --
RA (
talk)
20:53, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
This to me is the central crux of the debate. Are we defining Unionism (and this category) according to today's OED, or according to how scholars who study this field use the term - for example, applying it to Scots in 1700, or Irish in 1798. Per your point above, I can send you many references of how unionism was applied to sentiments in Scotland and England. Here is one describing a king from 1603 as 'unionist':
[3] - but a perusal of other literature will demonstrate my point - scholars describe Scottish Unionism, Irish Unionism, Ulster Unionism, Southern Unionism; I'm sorry but the limited OED definition given above does not begin to capture the many ways in which this term is used by scholars in this field. --
KarlB (
talk)
21:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Karl, I get the impression that you think that you are dealing with editors who don't know the history. If so, that is grievously wrong in my case, and from my experience of watching RA's contributions over the years, it is wrong in his case too.
Sorry if my impression is misplaced, but however you intended it, your paragraph of potted history comes across as a bit patronising, and -- crucially -- of little relevance. Yes, of course the term "unionism" has been used in many ways, and if it was of any relevance I could several more flavours of unionism to your list. However, it's not relevant, because what we need to do here is to choose one overarching term which encompasses the full scope of unionism in these two islands. As RA says, "unionism" and "United Kingdom" combines the two relevant concepts which will allow the reader to identify the scope of the category, without adding any POV.
I didn't mean to be patronising, and I wasn't implying that eds didn't know history; I was implying there is a disagreement on the scope of the category, which may explain the divide between our positions. You and RA (and others) seem to suggest that this category should be about Unionism as it's defined today in the OED, and then everything else that happens to be in the category is just tangential to it (compare ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Liberalism in the United States for a broader historical category). My feeling (which came from reading the history, and perusing the contents) is that Unionism in the Isles is a trend that has manifested itself in many ways over the centuries, and that the category captures all of that as a continuous strain of thought, which leads to today's definition but isn't constrained by it. Again, I'm not sure why my description of the diversity of approaches of Unionism isn't germane here, unless it is your position that the category is *only* for unionism today, and isn't meant to capture historical attitudes and approaches.--
KarlB (
talk)
00:49, 25 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I don't see any significant disagreement on the scope of the category. It contains a few pages which I regard as a poor fit, but those are marginal points.
My concern is simply that a lengthy discussion of the historical development of the various flavours of unionism and its antecedents is not going to get us any nearer to the goal of finding a succinct category name which assists readers to navigate between related articles. What we need here is a broad term which will be recognisable to readers, and one which reflects current usage is more likely to be recognisable than something designed to reflect all that one editor has learnt in a few hours reading Wikipedia's coverage of a series of political discourses panning several centuries. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
05:11, 25 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose/comment I oppose the use of "British Isles" because of the
British Isles naming dispute, because of the inescapable and inbuilt POV of it, and because using "British Isles" incorrectly includes the Isle of Man or Channel Islands, as stated above. I offer no opinion on whether the category needs some other new name as I have no time to consider the question.
— O'Dea (
talk)
02:23, 25 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose the opposition of the opposition If you imagine that I have the slightest intention of reading the 4,932-word
American_(word) article to find out what you are thinking, then you have another think coming, Charlie B. Do not be absurd. I hereby declare this debate resolved and closed (
justification) and await the arrival of the man with the keys to affix the padlock so we can all retire to a house of refreshment.
— O'Dea (
talk)
09:29, 26 April 2012 (UTC)reply
hehe. at least you have a sense of humor. I didn't put the full link sorry:
American_(word)#Political_and_cultural_views. The point is, just because some people don't like a word, does not make the use of that word POV - American being a case in point. In fact, calling it POV (as you and BHG continue to do) is therefore POV, especially given wiki-consensus to date is use of "British isles" is acceptable in a geographic sense. if you want to continue arguing this point, please go to the other discussion page on the naming dispute and duke it out there.--
KarlB (
talk)
10:42, 26 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment These are the main ones that keep being proposed:
Category name
Arguments for
Arguments against
British Unionism
Unionism is about 'British' identity; Some feel it does not exclude Irish/Scottish unionists as they see themselves as both Irish/Scottish and British. One of the head articles is
British unionism
Title of the category for 6 years has been Articles and sub-categories relating to Unionism in the British Isles, so this seems like the consensus description of the cat. Used in dozens of books on the subject. Catch-all for the islands. Wikipedia consensus is use of this term is acceptable as a geographic descriptor.
Some small islands that are part of 'British Isles' do not have documented unionist movements (e.g. Channel Islands), so it is a geographic inaccuracy. It applies the label "British" to Ireland, which some disagree with. The fact that the hatnote used 'British isles' may just mean no-one scrutinized it over 6 years.
Unionism (United Kingdom)
The long term goal of all unionism is the United Kingdom; Unionism today is about union *with* the United Kingdom The goal of all unionists has been for some degree of political integration with or within the state currently known as the "United Kingdom", or its predecessor states (the united Kingdom of Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, which de facto include Wales).
Historical anachronism; unionism existed long before the UK did, and still exists outside of the UK. Goal of unionists is not uniformly "join the UK", but much more varied. Category should contain historical and modern notions of unionism.
Unionism in the United Kingdom
The long term goal of all unionism is the United Kingdom; Unionism today is about Union *with* the United Kingdom. The goal of all unionists has been for some degree of political integration with or within the state currently known as the "United Kingdom", or its predecessor states (the united Kingdom of Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, which de facto include Wales).
Historical anachronism; unionism existed long before the UK did, and still exists outside of the UK. Goal of unionists is not uniformly "join the UK", but much more varied. Category should contain historical and modern notions of unionism.
Unionism (Acts of Union)
avoids geography completely
geographically neutral, and focuses on 2 government acts (Acts of Union), as opposed to a long-term political movement.
Unionism (Britain and Ireland)
captures full geography, including Scotland (which is part of Britain)
May seem to be only about the Britain/Ireland union, could be seen to exclude the union of England/Scotland (forming Great Britain).
Unionism (Great Britain and Ireland)
captures full geography, including Scotland (which is def part of Great Britain)
May seem to be only about the Britain/Ireland union, could be seen to exclude the union of England/Scotland (forming Great Britain).
Karl, if you are going to make a table like that, it should be a neutral summary of the arguments rather than attempt to summarise your views. Your table gives undue prominence to your own views, and amounts to a warped summary of the debate. A few exanples from what could a long long list:
The fact that the categ hatnote has included the term "British Isles" does not mean that there is a consensus for it. It may also mean that the hatnote has never been scrutinised.
Your comment that "Some people don't like 'British Isles' on principle" misrepresents the opposition to that term; it it is not a matter of "like" or "dislike", but of the fact that it applies the label "British" to Ireland, even tho the dominant political strand in Ireland has never accepted that adjective, and spent centuries contesting it militarily and politically.
Your comment 'British Isles' is a "slight geographic inaccuracy" is an attempt to downplay the central flaw in your verbose advocacy of that label. It is a geographic inaccuracy, without qualification, because it includes areas where Unionism is not an issue.
Your comment that the goal of unionists is not uniformly "join the UK", but much more varied is a grotesquely misleading attempt to muddy the waters. The goal of all unionists has been for some degree of political integration with or within the state currently known as the "United Kingdom", or its predecessor states (the united Kingdom of Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, which de facto include Wales).
I am not going to edit the table, because that will simply lead to a long series of unstable versions, which won't help discussion. I am sorry to say that discussion is going nowhere, and AFAICS most of the reason for that has been Karl appears to have been approaching the topic for the first time and splurging out the latest factoids which he has read. This is not quite a
Randy in Boise situation, but it is an example of how an enthusiastic and thoroughly well-intentioned newcomer to a topic can impede consensus formation by being insufficiently versed in the historical and political complexities of the topic. Digging out a few googled references and saying "look what the sources say!" is a thoroughly useless approach to a meta-topic such as this, where there are thousands of deeply scholarly works approaching the topic from a variety of national, political, and historiographical perspectives. It all reminds of the
Hospitals in Ireland CfD earlier this month, where Karl enthusiastically expounded his view at greater length, before eventually announcing that "
or lack of will to fight, I hereby withdraw this nomination" and only then
posting at WT:IE to try clarify his understanding of the status quo.
I am quite sure that if this topic had been left to British and Irish editors to resolve, it would have been resolved quite easily. But at this point, it's a "no consenus" swamp. This discussion would be best closed now, and the issue reopened at some later date. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
07:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I've tried to update the table with your suggestions, and welcome you to make further edits to summarize this discussion. I agree the original table was a bit slanted, but it's not always easy to neutrally summarize, which is why I asked others to make edits as well.
Also I'm sorry that you have found this discussion tedious, while I have found it educational. In the future, you are of course welcome to not join such discussions, or simply vote and walk away as others have done - I don't want you to feel obligated to educate me! Also I do apologize for not being sufficiently versed in the historical and political complexities of the topic, as you clearly are, though I'm not sure if that suggests one should not edit or suggest changes in areas where one is not a professional (if so, there are some cats on Healthcare and software you'd best stay away from...)? In any case, when a veteran editor like RA makes a statement like "In recent times, unionism has come to refer to a similar political stand-point towards the union in Scotland too. But that is, relatively speaking, quite new.", I guess this newbie editor has an instinct to point out the fallacy of that statement, unless "quite new" means "300 years"
[4]. Also I'm not sure what this discussion has to do with Hospitals in Ireland??
Karl, XfD is a mechanism for reaching consensus decisions on the fate pages. It is not a mechanism for you to fill gaps in your education. When you are approaching a complex topic for the first time, you would do a lot better to ask questions rather than to post at great length and with great forcefulness about what you have learnt in a few minutes on Google. The misconceptions you being have been posting take a lot of time for others to explain away.
The similarity with the Hospitals in Ireland CfD is that it was another discussion where you posted at great length and with great forcefulness about something you had a limited grasp of. I am not asking you to apologise for your limited knowledge; just asking you not to expound at such length and with such stridency on the basis of that limited knowledge. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
09:30, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I have embedded comments in blue text within the table above. Also, in a toss-up between "Unionism (Britain and Ireland)" and "Unionism (Great Britain and Ireland)", I choose the former for brevity, succinctness, and economy ("brevity is the soul of wit").
— O'Dea (
talk)
07:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment thanks, I updated the table above with your suggestion. If you have any references that demonstrate your assertions that a) all Irish/Scottish unionists see themselves as British or b) secondary sources, when discussing Irish/Scottish Unionists, use the word 'British unionists' to describe them - please provide them (I've provided links that demonstrate that sources do differentiate) --
KarlB (
talk)
21:47, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
There is no simple answer to that, and those looking for simple and clear answers to these issues here will be disappointed. To clarify my comment, I should have said that many (or most) Northern Irish unionists also see themselves as British, this from personal experience meeting many of them over a long lifetime. There are numerous sources but here is one: A 2007 survey on identity by NILT
[5] showed that :"18% - Irish not British, 17 - more Irish than British, 17% - equally Irish and British, 24% - more British than Irish, 19% - British not Irish". As you can see from those results, this is a very complex issue and I doubt it will be resolved here.
Snappy (
talk)
22:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Thanks. It is because of those complex issues of identity that I have been pushing for a geographic (rather than political or ethnically-focused) category name. While I don't doubt that many unionists you've met see themselves as British, there may indeed be unionists who do *not* see themselves as British, either today or in the past - in other words, I think it's fair to say that having unionist sentiments is not equivalent to feeling British, even if they may overlap - which is I suppose why in many sources I've seen, they usually call out 'Scottish unionists' or 'Irish unionists', which led to my disagreement with that category name with only the word 'British'. best regards --
KarlB (
talk)
00:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment I have no objection to abandoning the discussion, as suggested by BrownHairedGirl, as the status quo seems to have worked satisfactorily for several years. However, I still suspect a consensus might be formed around defining the nature of the unionism in question. After all, the geographical-only approaches leave the word "Unionism" in the proposed category names just as ambiguous as it is now. ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (Acts of Union) doesn't altogether work for present-day Ulster Unionism, which is based on Northern Ireland's secession in 1922 from the Free State, but it was only my first thought. Would ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (union under the British crown) be nearer the mark?
Moonraker (
talk)
03:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Requesting removal of for/against table Hey Charlie B, I removed my alleged "vote" from your table as I voted for nothing. I merely objected to the use of the phrase "British Isles" and commented on removing "Great" from one of the alternatives. It is a very bad idea, as
User:BrownHairedGirl has already pointed out, for you to attempt to summarise other people's positions in your table. You are not reliable as you have your own view. You have misinterpreted peoples' remarks in your table, and inviting people to change the table is an insufficient post hoc corrective. People have stated views in their own words which is the only legitimate version. Your table queers the pitch even if you don't mean to. I amended the table yesterday and now my remarks are gone. Let whichever administrator who decides on this question make his or her own mind up based on what people actually say, not on what you say they say. Allow people's remarks to speak for themselves. We do not need you to appoint yourself as our interpreter. The table is superfluous and potentially misleading. And, most importantly, Wikipedia debates are never settled by counting votes, as your table implies, but by study of the arguments; two or three very good arguments may overpower thirty less well considered arguments. I ask you to remove your distracting and illegitimate table as it does not speak for people directly and none of us has authorised you to interpret our comments and votes.
— O'Dea (
talk)
03:56, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I've removed the votes - and I do realize that it is not a popularity contest, I just made it for convenience to show what various people had proposed, in summary form. I removed your amendments because they were no longer relevant to the changed wording - the confusion around (Britain and Ireland) was not about whether Scotland was part of Britain, but whether it was about the Britain/Ireland union only. Those weren't my words, they were Moonraker's - you can read them above. "‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (Britain and Ireland) is misleading if the category is to go on including both of these forms of Unionism." In any case, I made the table to help us get out of the no-consensus swamp. I do think there are workable options, I don't know why everyone just wants to throw the towel in... and as you can see from the votes (whether that matters or not) the majority seems to be for British Unionism, which I happen to disagree with but its better than no label at all.--
KarlB (
talk)
04:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Karl, the reason that editors want to abandon the discussion is that it has become an unwieldy mess, thanks to your verbose pursuit of tangents, and your failed attempts to summarise the views of others.
As Moonraker points out, the status quo seems to have worked satisfactorily for several years, so there is no pressing need for a change. The issue can always be revisited at a latter date if needed. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
09:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:American people of Jewish descent by occupation
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.
delete do you know how much time and space and energy category intersections would solve? can we just put more pressure on wikipedia to just implement it? where do I vote for that? --
KarlB (
talk)
05:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Upmerge all as
Mayumashu. There is a sibling tree for American Jews, to which some of the articles could be transferred. Some of its occupational categories are well populated, and the possibility of merging there should not be ruled out. However, doing this wholesale might result in some people who are of Jewish descent, but are not Jews beign miscategorised.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:Online commenting available through Facebook
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.
Nominator's rationale:Delete I have no idea what this category means, nor what inclusion of the websites in question implies. Again, I don't think we should categorize things by web services they happen to use. What's next, websites using the facebook 'like' button?
KarlB (
talk)
15:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment. I presume that this refers to sites such as
http://www.thejournal.ie/, where identification of commentators is done through Facebook. I have an open mind so far on whether this is a defining characteristic of the sites concerned, and am open to arguments either way. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
16:03, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Delete Widely used with American and British publications enough not to be notable. Also, I'm not sure about categorizing web sites by software packages in general since they change regularly.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
21:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I realized the comment above is facetious; Ottawahitech actually created this category. But I suppose we can still take his vote as a 'delete' vote. FYI, there were two previous CfDs on this both ending in delete
Disqus,
commenting--
KarlB (
talk)
13:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:Facebook groups
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.
Nominator's rationale:Delete Similar to
yahoo groups! nominated. Which social media tools these groups use (and many of them use twitter, youtube, reddit, facebook, etc etc etc) is not
encyclopedic. Even if a group 'started' on facebook, I still don't agree that this is a reasonable categorization.
KarlB (
talk)
15:40, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Shabab Libya, also known as the Libyan Youth Movement, or LYM for short, is a Libyan Facebook group...
I note that
Things Bogans Like is a
blog, and Wikipedia has a
Category:Blogs, so as it seems possible to distinguish notable blogs from non-notable blogs, it should also be possible to distinguish notable Facebook groups from the non-notable variety. However, if it is possible to re-write the above article leads so that Facebook group is not a
defining characteristic for these organizations, then maybe this category could be reconsidered. Disclaimer: I am the category creator. -
Wbm1058 (
talk)
14:57, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Internet activism and its parent ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Social networking services already exist for these sorts of websites. As I argued before, the fact that they may have started on facebook is not notable, especially given that many of these services branch out into using many different social media tools once they get started, and any social movement who knows what they are doing is likely to have a facebook group or facebook page or facebook like button or whatever.
Shabab Libya is a great example - they use facebook, twitter, youtube, and many other services to reach out. We should not be categorizing groups based on the technologies they use. --
KarlB (
talk)
16:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I should give some background on why I created this category. At the time,
Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement was
proposed for deletion. Arguments for deletion were made such as "this is a Facebook group, and these are almost never notable in their own right." Clearly the person taking that position was framing this organization with "Facebook group" as its primary
defining characteristic. I then decided to look to see if I could find any notable Facebook groups on Wikipedia. The logical first place to look for Facebook groups (in my mind, anyway) was
category:Facebook. Failing to find anything, I resorted to a Wikipedia-wide search for all articles containing the term "Facebook group". From that, with the goal of saving the next person to come along looking for the same thing some time, I created the category. Now, I have just added
Category:Internet activism as a subcategory of
category:Facebook. By following this path, I can find the activist type of Facebook groups that I was looking for. –
Wbm1058 (
talk)
19:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Thanks. Although I'd suggest you undo the category change you just made. By doing that you are saying that
Category:Internet activism is somehow part of facebook. A redirect at the top of the facebook category, like {cat see also|Internet activism} might be better. --
KarlB (
talk)
19:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Also another quick note. From the
interesting deletion discussion on
Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement I found the following, from one of the founders of the group: "As he who helped start and helps maintain the CREWE effort, I want to be very clear that CREWE is a group of people who are interested in exploring the ways that PR and Wikipedia and work together for mutual benefit, defined narrowly as cooperation toward more accurate and balanced entries. The fact that it's on a Facebook group is circumstantial." That quote to me that illustrates that facebook is a tool, one of many, used for collaboration on the internet, and is seen that way by people who do the work. If people do describe things as 'x is a facebook group', it nonetheless seems wrong to call out the use of a particular technology by a particular company as a navigational category - such information about what technologies they specifically use is really better held in the article itself. We have a category for "youtube videos", but we don't have a category for "Artists who release their videos on youtube" or "companies that use youtube to put up training videos" etc. As for subcats, a reference is the appropriate path here, you don't need to make something a subcategory just to point out that they may be somehow related. Internet activism is many things, but people never say "internet activism *is* Facebook.--
KarlB (
talk)
20:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep -- I was dubious about this at first, because there are free-standing organisations that have a facebook presence, but the activists of the Arab Spring were largely orgainsised as facebook groups. If a facebook group is prominent enough to have a WP article, we need a category to deal with that.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:23, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment "the activists of the Arab Spring were largely orgainsised as facebook groups" - actually, that is a common misperception. While the activists in the Arab spring did use facebook and it certainly had a very important impact for organization and especially dissemination of information, they also used a number of other tools including in-person meetings, cell-phone/sms blasts, flyers, posters, marches, etc. - in addition to all of the social media tools they used - facebook, youtube, twitter, etc. Since you are suggesting keep, could you suggest some criteria for inclusion? How do we know the thing that is notable is the 'facebook group', and not the organization *behind* the facebook group? For example, one very prominent facebook page from the Egyptian revolution
http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk also has a separately hosted website. Clearly they belong in
Category:Online activism, but do we really want to start a policy of classifying online activists by the tools they used first, or most successfully? --
KarlB (
talk)
00:05, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep, this reflects a real phenomenon and change in the way organizations form and maintain themselves. Although it may be unclear and a bit ambiguous at present, I believe the most constructive way to take this on is to leave this for now and revisit the issue at a later time as a clearer picture of the phenomenon emerges. __
meco (
talk)
12:41, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Activists is for people, activism is groups. Tha'ts how it seems to be, and it makes sense to me. We often have special categories for people involved in X. I'd suggest just updating the lead sentences accordingly.--
KarlB (
talk)
15:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Delete – it is far too vague; any school or university alumni group will have a facebook group. There are plenty of facebook groups which are nothing to do with activism. Renaming to 'Online activist groups' might work.
Oculi (
talk)
14:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)reply
only
WP:NOTABLE Facebook groups have articles on Wikipedia, and currently there are insufficient notable Facebook groups to merit breaking
category:Facebook groups into subcategories. I disagree that the category is vague, the concept of "Facebook group" is fairly well-understood. Heck, I think I know basically what one is, and I've never used Facebook! While currently most members of
category:Facebook groups engage in
category:Internet activism, not all of them do (e.g.,
Secret London), and in the future it's possible that a majority of notable
category:Facebook groups will be engaged in other activities. I suppose it's possible that Facebook itself will fade away in the future (remember 1980s-90s online services?), but for now, I say, keep and monitor...
Wbm1058 (
talk)
20:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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.
Old Carthusians, Salopians, and Wykehamists
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.
Nominator's rationale: Rename, to a standardised descriptive format (see
WP:NDESC and note below) which combines a
plain English phrase with the title of the head article. This clarifies the purpose of the category to the non-specialist reader for whom Wikipedia is written, by eliminating obscurity and ambiguity.
These three "Old Fooian" terms share three common charcateristics:
They relate to a very prominent school, whose prominence is reflected in a high number of seach hits for the school name. All of them are among the 9 schools investigated by the
Clarendon Commission in 1864 and reformed by the
Public Schools Act 1868. All are now members of the
Rugby Group of leading public public schools
Their "Old Fooian" terms are massively less widely used than the school names
Old Carthusians
Charterhouse School is one of the most prominent
public schools in the United Kingdom. Wikipedia has articles on 358 notable alumni of the school, which is the 6th highest tally for any school in the UK (although only about 1/8th of the number of
Old Etonians and half the total of
Old Harrovians).
The term "Old Carthusians" derives instead from the
Carthusian Order of monks,
Charterhouse School having been located for its first 260 years at the
London Charterhouse, the site of a former Carthusian monastery in London. The connection will be obscure to anyone not already familiar with the school's history, and since the category is used for biographical articles where the school will usually receive only a passing mention in the "early life" section, we cannot assume that readers will know the connection. (I checked all the articles in the category a year ago, and found that
only 3 of the 314 biographical articles then in the category included the term "Old Carthusian")
The "Old Carthusian" term is also highly ambiguous. A plain English reading of it is "old
Carthusians", i.e. aged or historical members of the religious order. It has a further possible meaning for anyone familiar with the terminology of Christian churches, where the word "Old" is used to refer to those who reject reforms in the churches: e.g.
Old Catholic Church and
Old Believers.
Old Salopians
This term does not include the English-language name of the town where the school is located, nor even of the county of
Shropshire.
Instead it is based on "Salop", an old name for the county of
Shropshire.
A plain English reading of it is "old
Salopians", i.e. aged or historical people from Shropshire. Even if the reader is familiar with the "Old Fooian" style of terminology, they can only assume that it refers one of the
two dozen secondary schools in Shropshire ... but which one?
Old Wykehamists
This term derives from the
Winchester College's foundation in 1382 by
William of Wykeham. The "Old Wykehamist" term no doubt makes great sense to those familiar with the schools's history, but not to anyone else.
These problems of ambiguity and obscurity are reflected in the relatively rare incidence of these terms in common usage. The table below shows comparisons with other prominent public schools:
In previous discussions, some editors have expressed a preference for retaining "Old Fooian" category names for prominent schools. However, there has been a consensus to rename such categories where the "Old Fooian" terms is obscure or ambiguous:
21 renamed categories for Old Fooians from prominent schools
Note that in previous discussions of "Old Fooian" categories, some editors who appear not to have read
WP:NDESC have claimed that the full phrase "People educated at Foo School" must be sourced. This is incorrect:
WP:NDESC explicitly says that such titles "are often invented specifically for articles", and that is the case here, where a
plain English phrase is combined with the
WP:COMMONNAME of the school. (A further paragraph of NDESC refers to the use of non-neutral terms in titles, which does not apply here).
Oppose. The only purpose of a category is to categorize. The names of these three are based on the correct, and indeed the only, names for the groups of people in question. The names are unambiguous and in my view are better-known than the nominator suggests, and there is no good reason why a massive uniformity should be imposed on all such "former pupils" categories. It is, of course, no part of the role of a category to educate Wikipedia readers, but whether BrownHairedGirl and others like it or not Old Carthusians, Salopians, and Wykehamists will go on being described in those terms, and in some walks of British life not knowing the meaning of a Carthusian, a Salopian, or a Wykehamist is a handicap. Seeking to reduce the use of such terms on the English Wikipedia is not egalitarian, as some of BHG's supporters plainly believe, it is foolish, iconoclastic, and counterproductive.
Moonraker (
talk)
22:24, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Only one of the three category names is unambiguous; the other two are highly ambiguous, as set out in the nomination. All three of the "Old Fooian" terms bear a non-obvious relationship to the name of the school, and they will be utterly opaque to the non-specialist reader for whom Wikipedia is written
I am quite sure that Old Carthusians, Salopians, and Wykehamists will go on being described in those terms, in the limited circles where those terms are currently used. However, it is untrue to imply that they are in general usage: the evidence is set out clearly above that they are not used more widely.
If it is true (as Moonraker asserts, without evidence) that "in some walks of British life not knowing the meaning of a Carthusian, a Salopian, or a Wykehamist is a handicap", then have no fear: the terms are already explained both in the articles in the schools themselves and in hatnotes in the categories. There is also a comprehensive list in the article
Old Boys so that prospective staff of the
Bullingdon Club can continue to use Wikipedia to swot up for their job interviews. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
23:42, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
As usual, I am not going to reply to all of the above, but I cannot allow the suggestion to pass without comment that the category of "old Carthusians" is being misunderstood as meaning "aged or historical members of the religious order" or else refers to a completely fictional group of "Old Carthusian" anti-reformists; likewise that "Old Salopians" could or should be read as "aged or historical people from Shropshire". Such claims are as preposterous and far-fetched as ever and ought to give the closing admin some pause for thought.
Moonraker (
talk)
21:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
"preposterous" to think "old Salopian" could mean "old
Salopian"
A "Salopian" is a person from Shropshire,
[6][7] and a
Carthusian is a monk ... but Moonraker seems to want us to believe that our readers should know to expect words to lose their dictionary meanings whenever they are applied to English
public schools.
If Monnraker wants to try the bizarre claim that putting the word "old" before an adjective referring to people cannot refer to aged or historical people of that group, then please let's see his explanation of what a phrase such as "old Londoner" or "old Glaswegian" or "Old Parisian" means.
If Monnraker is making a narrower claim, and is merely trying to argue that neither of these terms can be read by their
plain English meaning of aged or historical people of that type, then please let's see some evidence of the exceptional nature of these terms.
Moonraker's contribution to this CfD would be more useful if he tried offering evidence for his outlandish claims rather than merely harrumphing that something is "preposterous". I share his hope that the closing admin will take note of this, because CfDs on this topic have been blighted by far too much of this sort of nonsense. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
14:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose (with caveat) per Moonraker.
As this opposition is likely to be over-ruled anyway (many categories have already been renamed) then we should at least take it to its logical conclusion and do all UK schools, no exceptions - including Eton & Harrow.
Andy Dingley (
talk)
23:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
If you want all the remaining Old Fooian categories to be renamed, then don't oppose the renaming of these ones.
Rename. These schools are at the uppermost end of the recognizability scale, and yet their derivative forms appear to be complete gibberish to outsiders.--
Mike Selinker (
talk)
23:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename per nom. I definitely do not agree with Moonraker's logic, especially the first two points. These renames will deal with ambiguity issues and will make the category system easier to use and understand, as well as bring these into conformity with now the vast majority of other similar categories.
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:38, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose -- In the case of Shrewsbury, "Salop" is not merely a version of the county name but the Latin name for the town. The table above shows that these (and Harrovian) are in regular use, though far less so than Old Etonian.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
16:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
It is quite clear that both of your links refer to articles not categories. We are not inventing new names. We are just making the categories clearer to readers. --
Bduke(Discussion)23:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)reply
You are reading too much in to that. The words following do not indicate anything of the kind you are suggesting. If "In particular, do not capitalize regular nouns .." is the most important point that clause deals with, you are really stretching a point here. The rules for naming articles are not the same as conventions. Clarity is the key feature for naming categories. Come on. I fought your side for a long time, until I came to realize that it made no sense and that it was not the end of world as we know it if we did something that was clearer and intrinsically less contentious. It is time you made the same decision. BTW, what "Old Fooian" are you? I'm still an "Old Edwardian" whatever we name the categories. --
Bduke(Discussion)12:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:RT (TV network) programs
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I hardly find the link you provide helpful as to which convention to go by. The US category uses the name series instead of program. Also,
Category:Organizations by country clearly suggests that no standardization is necessary and that WP:ENGVAR should be respected and interpreted cautiously. __
meco (
talk)
12:54, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment. Is this not an
WP:ENGVAR issue? Americans (and many Canadians) spell the TV thing "program". (Mind you, an American is probably more likely to refer to a "show" than a "program" on television.)
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:41, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
OpposeWP:ENGVAR, renaming for the sake of renaming between English dialects for a subject that is not tied to British English (arguably, it is more closely linked to American English, because of the two Superpowers of the Cold War)
70.49.124.147 (
talk)
07:26, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Yahoo! Groups
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Nominator's rationale:Delete. This is a random assortment of groups that may (or may not) have a mailing list somewhere on yahoo. Not encyclopedic, and I think there are many millions of groups on yahoo groups, and it's quite possible given the breadth of that service, that many many organizations on wikipedia have used yahoo's services at some point in the past. We don't have a category for 'websites hosted by BigDaddy', so this category should not exist either.
KarlB (
talk)
14:16, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep but purge. This category should be reserved for a) articles on individual yahoogroups which are themselves notable (i.e. have a standalone article), and b) article on topics directly related to YahooGroups (e.g.
ONElist and
EGroups). It should not contain articles on other topics simply because there is a related discussion grouo at yahoogroups, because use of these groups is so widespead that it is non-defining. It may be that once purged, the result will fail
WP:SMALLCAT, but let's start by doing the purge and seeeing what's left. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
16:00, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Neutral on deletion, but purge if kept (changing my !vote). It seems that once purged, this category is likely to fail
WP:SMALLCAT, so I won't oppose deletion ... but I would prefer if more checking was done first about how many articles would belong in a renamed caegory. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
14:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Purge - this seems to be the result of a gross misunderstanding, where a category about Yahoo Groups has been misinterpreted as being a category for any topic about which there is a Yahoo Group. --
Orange Mike |
Talk18:51, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Actually, I don't think its a misunderstanding - the person who created this category, today, is the same person who
populated it. So their intent in creating the category and filling it up seems clear. Now, if there are arguments from other editors why this category, which never existed before, should now be kept (and not just be upmerged into ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Yahoo!) then that is another matter, but the contents of the category as it stands now are per the desire of the category creator.--
KarlB (
talk)
20:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename/Merge Same as my comments about Facebook. While I don't think the involvement with Yahoo is defining, I think the fact that the article is about an online, socially networked group is and I would favor a different category to capture that.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
21:28, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment I think this category may illustrate why our free-for all system of creating categories has drawbacks. On the other hand if we had to go through special processes to create ever X emigrants to Y category and evey Z year establishment in Y category we might also have problems.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
08:23, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep but purge -- The category should be limited to groups that exist solely as yahoo groups. Freestanding clubs which use yahoo to publiciuse their activities should be purged.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment could you take a stab at a more precise definition, since you are proposing keep? For example, what defines a 'freestanding club'? And what defines a group 'that exists solely as a yahoo group' _ for example, if a separate website exists, does that disqualify them? What if they also have a youtube channel, or a twitter account? --
KarlB (
talk)
23:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep and purge. Only groups that use Yahoo! Groups as their main membership forum should be here. Then, if what remains isn't viable we'll have it back here for a new round. __
meco (
talk)
13:49, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Cruel Intentions
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Sigh. As with many of this editor's CfD nominations, no action is proposed. Please state what action you want taken, to save other editors guessing whether you want to merge this category to another, or just delete it. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment: This comes down to a user interface issue with twinkle. If you ask twinkle to delete a category, it will ask you for a rationale; most people won't repeat 'delete this' because you've already selected 'delete this' in the drop down. Then, when the category shows up here, for delete, the word delete is not mentioned. I don't think you should blame the user, I think we should jsut make a simple UI change to Twinkle, to add the words 'category should be deleted' to the end of any deletion nom (for merges, twinkle correctly mentions the word merge for example). --
KarlB (
talk)
14:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Fair point -- this coild easily be solved by a fix to Twinkle's output.
Keep Just brought up to 5 articles (not counting the template) so it escapes
WP:SMALL in my book. It's true they (and some other) articles are linked with the template but I don't see that precluding a category.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
21:39, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Reply The standard is "small with no potential for growth" but, oddly, small is never defined. My definition is 4 or fewer real articles (excluding templates, redirects, images). With 5 articles, I think this category is "medium with nor room for growth".
RevelationDirect (
talk)
19:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Delete Moonraker is right. There is no real potential for growth here. 6 is not enough to keep a category unless it is clearly part of a regularly established pattern.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
08:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Wikipedians who like X
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I am shocked too. I added myself to that non-existent category in 2009, as a sarcastic comment on what was then a sprawl of user categories. I had never noticed until now that someone had actually turned it blue in 2010, but mercifully it only lasted for 2 days. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
11:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Delete and listify. I supported keeping the people category, but since they are gone, let's be consistent. However, let's also preserve the info in these categories, by listifying them. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Children of national leaders
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Oppose The parents of national leaders cat was deleted because there was not really a shared caracteristic. Here we are grouping a bunch of categories where the people share a caracteristic. Also, parents of national leaders who are notable are generally notable for some other reason. The children on the other hand can never escape the shadow of their parents.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
07:06, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose I know it is not the same in every country, for example in the United States where I live, the children of Presidents are not that big of a deal, but in my native country of Colombia, the children of former Presidents are viewed with a special interest because they are often proppelled into public life and often rise in politics much faster than the rest (those who are not children of former presidents), and according to many critics, with far less merit, it is because of this that they (children of Presidents) are often referred to as
dauphins by the media for their privilaged background, clout, and popularity before they jump into politics, so in Colombia's case, this category does serve a purpose to categorize those people who because of their fathers' achievements have gained recognition. I know that in other countries like India, Pakistan, UAE, and Thailand, children of former presidents get favourable treatment and are often seen as the successors of their parent's rule, hence the term dauphin.
mijotoba (
talk)
16:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment I doubt Mrs. Hager would be notable if her father had not been president, but that is a counter-factural possibility so not proveable. Unlike with parents, msot of these people were alive during and after their parent's terms in office and so had their life course effected in significant ways. Many (if not most) parents of national leaders died before their child becaome a national leader. In fact in a large number of cases there two events are directly connected.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
03:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose and Keep Per BrownHairedGirl and JPL. There are a number of people who are notable for being children of national leaders. I see this categorisation system as entirely appropriate. Mar4d (
talk)
15:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep -- This is clearly a notable characteristic. If the subjects are notable enough to have an article, they should be categorised accordingly. Conversely however, the existence of the category must not be allowed to encourage the creation of articles on NN children of leaders. I beleive we deleted or redirected articles on
Tony Blair's children, for example.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:35, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Rosarians
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Nominator's rationale:Merge. These categories are essentially duplicates, and "Rosarian" is an ambiguous term. As defined by the OED, it can mean: "(1) A member of any of the Confraternities of the Rosary, spiritual associations whose members try to pray the Rosary weekly." or "(2) A person interested or engaged in the cultivation of roses." This category is currently being used for (2), but is liable to be confused as meaning (1). The target category is clear and unambiguous in meaning.
Good Ol’factory(talk)05:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Merge per nom & JPL. I see no point in renaming. What to? Another category for rose breeders, since all members are rose breeders. Or a category for members for a spiritual association when we have no articles to go into it? __
meco (
talk)
16:14, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Matsu
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Upmerge one article to parent categories, upmerge township cat to the parent townships cat. There is no reason to have this category as it stands now.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
07:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Quemoy
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Nominator's rationale: To match the lead article,
Kinmen. There are 2 other articles wth "Kinmen" in the title for a total of 3 versus only 1 article in the category with the spelling "Quemoy". Kinmen represents
the preffered translation format by the Republic of China while Quemoy is a long-standing but poorly translated Anglicized name. Alternatively,
WP:COMMONNAME could be used to argue Quemoy is more common in English (400K hits on Google vs 271K for Kinmen), in which case the lead article should be renamed.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
02:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Merge I was going to merge them the other way since there's only 4 articles in it, and then optionally use a bot to rename, but it makes no difference.
GliderMaven (
talk)
00:50, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Health care markets
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Nominator's rationale:delete Not clear on the purpose of this category, it has only one member, which is itself better classified in other places already.
KarlB (
talk)
22:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment given the category was created in 2006, it doesn't look like it's going to be populated. Why not delete, and then if there are sufficient articles in the future, recreate. --
KarlB (
talk)
13:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Unionism
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The result of the discussion was:rename to
Category:British unionism. There is clear consensus that the category has to be renamed to avoid connection with organized labor. There is unsurprising conflict about what it should be renamed to, so I'm matching the article title.--
Mike Selinker (
talk)
14:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Nominator's rationale: There is an existing disambig page for
Unionism, which is broadly used term by many social movements. Thus, this category, which is exclusively about Unionism in the British isles, should be thusly renamed.
KarlB (
talk)
22:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename to disambiguate. No strong opinion on what form of disambiguation is best, though "(British and Ireland)" seems weird to me. (Shouldn't the suggestion be "(Britain and Ireland)"?) "British Isles" is commonly used in the real world and I would not have a problem with it, but I know many users do.
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I had meant to write "Britain and Ireland". Now corrected.
I understand the complaint about "British Isles", I just have always had the impression that it's a tad contrived or pedantic—in reverse, kind of like a Canadian complaining that U.S. nationals should not be permitted to have exclusive use of the term "American".
Good Ol’factory(talk)01:13, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Well, I wouldn't say "yes" to the exact question asked by BHG; I think the Canadian government regards the issue as pedantic and contrived. Some other governments in the Americas do not, however.
Good Ol’factory(talk)03:24, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment The category ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism has described itself as "Articles and sub-categories relating to Unionism in the British Isles" since 2006, which is why I made the nomination I did. BHG is unfortunately throwing a wiki-trout in the face of this nomination because of this hated, odious word, which nonetheless appears all over the wikipedia categories, like this one
Category:British Isles and about 20-25 others. Allow me to suggest the following - BHG and any other interested editors are welcome to join the fascinating discussion here:
Talk:British_Isles/name_debate. As soon as the consensus on Wikipedia is to rename that article and all of the attendant categories, I would happily support a rename of this one to whatever formulation is proposed. But until then, going to war over this little category, and fighting the same fight, and working to come up with some *other* consensus name, just seems silly. If we're going to come up with a new formulation for the British Isles, I suggest it be done on the aforementioned talk page, *not* in the category renaming board. Thanks. --
KarlB (
talk)
02:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
ok that made me laugh. cheers. but to the point, I think British is not sufficient, because the category is also about unionism in Ireland (i.e. *all* of Ireland) and Scotland as well. --
KarlB (
talk)
05:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Soft oppose and comment: This doesn't really affect the British Isles per se (e.g. unionism has never really been an issue on the Isle of Man or Channel Islands and is less of an issue affecting the southern portion of Ireland after 1922). It is an inherently political concept and relates directly to the United Kingdom and not the archipelago in which the UK is located. Therefore, I suggest
Category:Unionism in the United Kingdom. "British unionism" feels wrong because, more-often-than-not, what is being referred to is Irish unionism and Scottish unionism and Irish unionists and Scottish unionists. This is also more in line with the (true) main articles:
Unionism in Ireland and
Unionism in Scotland. Indeed, I would suggest that the
British unionism article be renamed Unionism in the United Kingdom in line with these. --
RA (
talk)
09:42, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I quite agree with RA's explanation of why "British Isles" is inappropriate. Unionism is an issue only in Britain and Ireland, not in the rest of the so-called "British Isles". However, "United Kingdom" doesn't quite work either, because it is not solely an issue confined to the current boundaries of the United Kingdom; there was a Unionist majority on Rathmines Urban District Council until it was abolished in 1930, and if/when Scotland gains independence I'm sure that Unionism will continue to be some sort of political force within an independent Scotland.
It seems to me that this is one of the rare occasions when the adjective "British" is actually appropriate, because a distinguishing feature of such Unionism it that accepts the political concept of "Britishness". --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
11:06, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
That crossed my mind too. My thinking was that "unionism", regardless of whether it was "in" the United Kingdom at any given time, is always at least "in" relation to the United Kingdom i.e. the Rathmines unionism was a desire for all of Ireland to remain "in" the United Kingdom (even after it had left). --
RA (
talk)
12:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose RA explains it well. Since Unionism is a political concept, it fits better to refer to the political entities involved, such as Ireland or Scotland or the United Kingdom. --
HighKing (
talk)
09:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Unionism in UK doesn't work either, since all of Ireland is included, including the southern part, especially before after 1922. That's why a geographic works better in this case, rather than more ambiguous political terms which refer to shifting boundaries and identies; British Isles has the virtue of being static and clear, and capturing the landmass of all of the areas where this sentiment has been expressed. --
KarlB (
talk)
11:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The before 1922 point is a bit silly, because all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and the issue at stake in unionism is the desire to become or remain part of the United Kingdom, whatever its current boundaries.
Sigh. The name UK was only official around 1800, but at least one of the articles refers to the acts of Union 1707, at which point the name was 'Great Britain'. And while unionism today may indeed refer to a desire to remain part of UK, in the past it may have referred to whatever entity was in charge (i.e. Great Britain, etc). Unionism (and nationalism) in Ireland also has deep roots: from
Irish home rule movement: "The movement drew upon a legacy of patriotic thought that dated back at least to the late 17th century." - if there was patriotic thought, there would have also been its inverse. One of the other articles in this category is about the
Crown of Ireland Act 1542, so clearly this stuff has a long history, and predates the formation of the UK. As to your point on the Isles, I hate to correct you but you may be wrong there as well:
Scotland's Northern Isles Might Stay With The UK If Scotland Breaks Away: Report - there are also murmurs for greater independence in Isle of Man and Guernsey, so there are likely to be 'unionist' sentiments on these islands as well
Call for greater distance from UK for Channel Islands. I feel like we're bending over backwards to avoid a reasonable geographic term, already used by consensus in Wikipedia, when it makes most sense (like talking about 'European history' or 'SE Asian history'). I do agree with RA, Unionism is certainly a political concept, but because it endures over so many centuries and governments, a geographic descriptor may be the most clear way to capture the contents of this category. And I'm quite happy to see RA suggest my original formulation
Category:Unionism (British Isles) --
KarlB (
talk)
12:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The crown dependencies will never have "unionist" movements - since they were never part of the "Union" in the first place. The general consensus on many "British Isles" debates is to use refer to the smallest relevant area. So if we are to use a geographic area, this should be "Great Britain and Ireland". If we are to use a geopolitical area, we could select
Category:Unionism (United Kingdom). --
HighKing (
talk)
14:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Sigh. The choice between "United Kingdom" and "British Isles" is quite simple.
United Kingdom is accurate in geographical scope, because the issues here relate solely to the
United Kingdom and to its predecessor and successor states. In some cases, there will be an anachronism, but it is a minor anachronism because the
Kingdom of Great Britain was referred to contemporaneously as the "united Kingdom" (see article II, II, IV etc of
107 Articles of Union . It is therefore no more than an anchronism of the capitalisation of one letter.
OTOH, British Isles is inaccurate in geographical scope, and unnecessarily introduces a entirely avoidable political view of geography. There is currently a consensus to use British Isles as a geographical term, but that does not mean that it is appropriate to extend its use to political topics where it is demonstrably inaccurate. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
For me, using it in this context (Unionism in the British Isles) attempts to transform usage beyond geographical into geopolitical, and for no obvious reason. It's bad practice and sloppy misuse of a term. --
HighKing (
talk)
14:03, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
calling the use of the term 'British Isles' sloppy is uncalled for. Perhaps you'd consider this book title, which addresses many of the concerns in this discussion, to be 'sloppy'?
A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, C1750-c1850. Another work on exactly this subject used the term 9 times, like this: "As the Union was the cornerstone of a state based on the incorporation of the whole of the British Isles [...] vital to the formulation of a new 'nationality' - British - not merely English, Welsh, Scottish, or Irish."p.93 Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism Since 1801 By David George Boyce, Alan O'Day. In addition, the title of the book points out why 'British Unionism' is not sufficient; because it excludes Irish actors, which as BHG is fond of pointing out, are not British. So to get it right, it would probably have to be ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (British and Irish and Scottish and Welsh and English. Another useful quote can be found here: "The passage in 1800 of the Act of Union, which in 1801 inaugurated the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, brought an unprecedented constitutional clarity to the government of the British Isles and can be seen as the culmination of a thousand-year process of political evolution that led to the creation of a unified 'British' state." Nationhood and Identity: The British State Since 1800, David Powell. In other words, while our POV editors decry the use of this term, sources upon which wikipedia relies continue to use it, and use it to describe politics, unionism, nationalism, and many other things that happen in the archipelago. BHG's initial comment was telling - she didn't object to the term because it was inaccurate, she objected to it because it just rubbed her and others the wrong way. Now there is an attempt to backpedal and justify that 'United Kingdom' is sufficient to explain complex issues of identity and nationalism that predate the UK and include countries which are not part of the UK. Unfortunately, if you start drawing venn diagrams, you'll soon find that any of the other formulations besides the archipelago proposed to date do *not* capture the extent of articles currently classified, nor the potential for this category in the future.--
KarlB (
talk)
15:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
It's not uncommon for the term "British Isles" to be used in geopolitical contexts in the past (downright common actually), or even used totum pro parte for Britain or United Kingdom or Britain and Ireland, up to relatively modern times. But times seem to have changed. Usage of the term British Isles in such a context is rarely seen today. The book you linked to above published in 1997, for example, makes no mention of any crown dependencies. There are far more books on Unionism that make no mention of British Isles in their title. Even the quotes you've used above support the contention of totum pro parte usage - for example brought an unprecedented constitutional clarity to the government of the British Isles. Simply wrong. Let's not propagate mistakes like that into WP. --
HighKing (
talk)
16:35, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
@Karl.brown, Venn diagrams or no Venn diagrams, the facts are simple. 1) The
Isle of Man is not part of the
United Kindom, has never been part of the
United Kingdom, and AFAICS there has been no significant pressure from unionists to make it a part of the
United Kingdom. 2) The Isle of Man is part of the so-called "
British Isles".
So why do you want to drag the Isle of Man into this by using "British Isles", when there are several simple formulations such as "Britain and Ireland" or "United Kingdom" which cover all of the relevant territory, and only the relevant territory? --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
15:54, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
@Karl.brown, for some reason I read "Unionism in the British Isles" as the first proposal. I proposed the above as stab at compromise thinking it hadn't been discussed already. I've struck it now since it has been discussed.
I hope you don't mind me saying but your comment above is not convicing. It mixes, unionism with nationalism, islands that are a part of the UK with islands that are not a part the UK, a narrative past with speculation about the future, and the quotes you cite are not about unionism.
You do have an argument - but you are over playing it IMO. And because of that, you have convinced me further that the correct context is "United Kingdom" (something the term specifically relates to) and not "British Isles". --
RA (
talk)
14:16, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment If people really want to duke out how this should be named they should go to the article talk page. For now we should have the category match the article name, and if they rename the article we can rename the category.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
17:46, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose. I agree that "Unionism (British Isles)" would be incorrect, and to me "British unionism" sounds bizarre, with heavy overtones of the
British Union of Fascists. Unionism is a political concept, and to mean anything it needs to have a particular political aim.
Unionism in Scotland aims to keep Scotland in the Union, whereas
Unionism in Ireland aims to keep some (previously all) of Ireland in it. Unionism in England was much the same as Irish Unionism and is now a spent force. There are few swing voters in England for whom the future of Northern Ireland is an issue now. On the whole, the status quo seems to me to be more liveable with than any of the alternatives suggested so far. No other kinds of Unionists seem to be complaining about it.
Moonraker (
talk)
00:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Strong rename to something. Clearly the existing name is inappropriate, considering the disambiguation page. Since the current head article is "British unionism", it appears to be the most appropriate title, though "Unionism (British Isles)" works quite well as well. "Unionism (Ireland and Britain/Britain and Ireland)" works less well, since the other island is called "Great Britain" (as opposed to "little Britain", or Brittany). I suppose you could use "Unionism (British archipelago)".
70.49.124.147 (
talk)
05:50, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I updated the header in the category to list
British unionism,
Unionism in Ireland and
Unionism in Scotland as the three lead articles for this category (especially since the British unionism article itself does not capture the sentiments expressed by unionists in Ireland). Also, for more evidence on why Unionism (United Kingdom) is insufficient, take a look at this:
Reform Groups:Ireland for a new generation - this is a group based in RoI, but their goals are "Rethinking Ireland’s relationship with the United Kingdom. This should reflect the deepening social, cultural, and political bond between the two nations." and promoting rejoining the commonwealth - are these 'unionist' sentiments? You'd really have to ask them, there is a spectrum and continuum here. There is a recent book which may also be of use: "Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture [Hardcover]. Richard English (Editor), Graham Walker (Editor)". So just using 'United Kingdom' to describe activities and feelings that are going on within RoI today is inaccurate. Finally, even BHG proposed that 'British' was a perfectly acceptable term here, but for some reason is opposed to the addition of the word 'Isles' to the end.--
KarlB (
talk)
15:46, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I fully accept that "British" is an appropriate adjective to apply to Unionism, a political doctrine which seeks political unity of Great Britain and/or unity of Ireland with Great Britain.
I do not accept that "British" is an NPOV adjective to apply in a geographical or political sense to the Island of Ireland, for reasons set out length elsewhere.
I wondered how long it would take you to find
Reform Groups:Ireland for a new generation. They are a tiny fringe outfit, but even if we take them seriously, look at what their aim is: unity (or at least a closer relationship) with The United Kingdom. Not unity with France or Japan or Tonga, but The United Kingdom. So "Unionism (United Kingdom)" includes them very neatly. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
16:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I'm confident that with all of your experience here you know that wikipedia is not about 'whether we take them seriously', there is an article about them and thus the community considers them to be notable, that is all. I personally have no feelings about them, and I'd suggest that you keep your own feelings about them out of this debate, as they are quite irrelevant. As per your other points, I also found an editor who disagrees with you:
BrownHairedGirl, a few days ago: "However, "United Kingdom" doesn't quite work either, because it is not solely an issue confined to the current boundaries of the United Kingdom; there was a Unionist majority on Rathmines Urban District Council until it was abolished in 1930, and if/when Scotland gains independence I'm sure that Unionism will continue to be some sort of political force within an independent Scotland."
So, if "United Kingdom" won't work, because it will apply to Ireland and (eventually independent?) Scotland, and "British" won't work because it's "an NPOV adjective to apply in a geographical or political sense to the Island of Ireland, for reasons set out length elsewhere.", then what will work? Do you really think that when Ireland signed the
Crown of Ireland Act 1542, it was about the "United Kingdom", or "British" identity? The ideas of union in the history of the British isles are much more complex than a black and white picture or a particular set of positions held by actors today. You're taking a revisionist, modern perspective on this naming discussion, instead of choosing something that is neutral and inclusive. And yes, the crown dependencies are not part of the UK, that is why I brought them up. There are currently independence movements in almost all of them, and if these debates come to a head, there may be articles about people on those islands who oppose independence - calling those sentiments unionist is reasonable.--
KarlB (
talk)
17:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I would have hoped that you would have read
WP:WEIGHT, which cautions against giving undue weight to fringe views, and explicitly warns that "generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all".
Reform Groups:Ireland for a new generation is just that: a tiny minority. That's why I question whether we should be paying hem any attention in the context of this discussion.
As to my previous comment, thank you for reminding me of it. Having looked at the issue further, I reckon that my earlier objection to it on those grounds was mistaken, because as I noted more recently all the Unionists involved -- even those in Rathmines -- seek to be part of the United Kingdom. They either want to stay there (as with current Ulster Unionists), to join it (as with Irish Unionists pre 1801), or to rejoin it (as with the fringe "Reform Groups" or any remaining Scottish Unionists if that country becomes independent in 2015).
I suggest you read the intro to
Unionism in Ireland: "Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. Since the independence of the Irish Free State, which is now the Republic of Ireland, unionism has focused on preserving the place of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom." In other words, since the creation of RoI, unionism in Ireland has become about keeping NI within the UK - no arguments there. (though read this for a different unionist view, which is much more 'British Isles wide' in its scope and meaning:
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/organ/docs/vanguard72.htm). But to state that the focus of unionism before then (and to group all of the parties across all the Isles and their various views under the banner) was "they just wanted to join the UK" is oversimplification in the extreme, and does not become you - the types of union, their forms, functions, and purpose aspired for by all of the different actors do not all converge on a single idea: the modern nation-state of the United Kingdom. Finally, by naming it with (United Kingdom), we are going against the convention in this field, and the multiple sources cited, whereby Unionism is not categorized by what it is about, but rather by where the actors are from. We have Irish Unionism, Ulster Unionism, British Unionism, Scottish Unionism, Welsh Unionism, which each have their reasons and arguments. This is why I feel an umbrella geographic term, rather than a political term, would make more sense here, as this category covers unionism as an evolving concept in this area of the world, and not just a particular set of unionist arguments trending today. I suppose ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (Great Britain and Ireland) might be another, more wordy, option, although the lack of Scotland may bug some, and it also has a bit of historicism to it, in that Great Britain itself did not exist until 1707 or so. It's funny that you call the categorization of the 1542 act an anachronism, since your use of 'United Kingdom' is also, of course, an anachronism - allow me to remind again that the history of Unionism (whether it was called that or not is not that relevant, it is the desire for union that is important) in the British isles goes back way further than 1801, and before 1707.--
KarlB (
talk)
20:01, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Karl, I am historian, so I too could write screeds on history, and I have long since read the article
Unionism in Ireland. But what we are trying to do here is devise a brief title for a navigational device rather than spout verbiage, so I deliberately simplified as much as possible. The varieties of closer relationship sought were many, but they led in 1801 to the creation of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Our objective here is to find a succinct category name to assist navigation, not to write a thesis on the history of unionism.
If you want an purely geographic term to describe where the actors are from, the relevant term is "Britain and Ireland". "Great Britain" is a newer term, but dates back at least to
1604, not 1707. (Britain or Great Britain did of course exist long before 1604, at least since the place became an island about 8,000 years ago ... but for navigational device, we use the most common name for it which will be understood by our readers).
If you want a political term, use "United Kingdom", because it all crystallised in the UK.
If you want a term to describe the unionist vision of that national identity which unionism sought to construct, use "British". Outside of the island of Great Britain, it is a POV term, but since it a unionist POV term, it is accurate in this context.
OTOH, "British Isles" does not describe where the actors are from, because it includes places where unionism has never been a serious force. Your continued advocacy of a POV term which is also geographically inaccurate is becoming silly. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
21:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Your continued description of 'British isles' as a POV term is itself POV, BHG. You yourself said there is consensus to use the term to describe a geographic area, and that is how I am proposing it be used, so please stop with the POV shots across the bow. Until Wikipedia consensus changes its tune, 'British isles' is not POV; if you call it POV, that is an opinion, not a statement of fact. Secondly, I have provided multiple sources, by Irish, Scottish, and English authors, that indeed use the term 'British isles' to refer to the area where this form of unionism has been an issue, and I'm not going to bore you by providing more. So this is not my own little invention or crusade, real historians have actually used this "geographically inaccurate" term, to discuss the issue at hand, so I'd suggest you take up your argument with them. My assumption is, they were also willing to accept a small inaccuracy, in that perhaps the unionist movements of Jersey were not boiling over, but it was a convenient, and understandable, shorthand. So we're left with many choices, none of them perfect. But you calling my proposal POV or inaccurate is unfair; it's no more inaccurate than stating that unionists are all 'British' (when, for example, one of the important recent pieces of scholarship on this issue explicitly spoke of 'British and Irish Unionism'), or even that they were all driving for 'British' national identity (provably false), and no more inaccurate than the gross simplification that since UK is the default/biggest union, that all the 'unionists' were all leading towards that the whole time, after all. Without making it personal, let's just accept that we disagree on the most clear way to categorize this; I think both of us have said enough, and I'm done...--
KarlB (
talk)
23:03, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename to
Category:Unionism in United Kingdom. Unionism is the converse of Nationalism, which seeks to fragment UK. It is not necessary to use "British Isles" or "Britain and Ireland", because unionism has not been an issue in the Republic of Irleaqnd since its creation in 1922. Before that, UK included the whole of Ireland. It is mainly a live political issue in Northern Ireland. It has been to some extent in Scotland, but mainly among Scottish Presbyterians supporting their Ulster co-religionists. (Note I am English).
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment per this: "unionism has not been an issue in the Republic of Ireland since its creation in 1922", I'd just point to this:
Reform_Movement_(Ireland). BHG has called this a fringe group, which it may indeed be, but it does exist. --
KarlB (
talk)
23:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
The Reform Movement is not quite "unionist". They are fringe, but notable in that they lobby for the "British" tradition in the Republic of Ireland. However, to use "unionist" with regard to Reform Movement would be inaccurate. They don't have an aim, for example, for the Republic of Ireland to rejoin the United Kingdom. They belong to a political tradition in southern Ireland that before 1922 would have been "unionist" but to call them "unionist" today would be inaccurate (even a slur). --
RA (
talk)
19:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Well, you just made my point for me :) I was going to say: "It all depends on how you are defining 'unionist' - by today's standards, or by historical standards?", and then you went and made the same point. So, what is this category about? A specific political movement today? Or a general movement towards greater political unity within the isles over the past 500 years of history, with many possible forms permitted? The current category membership suggests the latter.
Reform Movement (Ireland) has been in ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism since as long as it's existed, including many edits by yourself (RA) - the category was never challenged/removed AFAIK. If they're not valid members of the category, why didn't you remove them? As I've mentioned before, the history of unionism in the Isles is rich and varied, and even though today it tends to mean one thing (i.e. keeping NI and Scotland part of the UK), historically it has meant other things - i.e. pursuit of some form of political connection between the isles. What Reform is pushing for (i.e. British citizenship, joining the commonwealth, etc) are all forms of unionism, even if we may not label them in that way, and follows very much in the general tradition - just read their blog posts, you will see they tie themselves to previous unionist movements/thinking in RoI. I don't want to overplay this particular point; if these guys didn't exist I'd still make the same arguments, for the same reason - the venn diagrams on 'United Kingdom' and 'British' just don't capture the diversity. --
KarlB (
talk)
19:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
"...a general movement towards greater political unity within the isles over the past 500 years of history, with many possible forms permitted?" That is not unionism. Like the Reform Movement organisation, it is relevant to it. But that is not unionism. Unionism has a very narrow and specific definition (
OED):
a person, especially a member of a Northern Ireland political party, who is in favour of the union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain. historical a member of a British political party formed in 1886 which supported maintenance of the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland.
In recent times, unionism has come to refer to a similar political stand-point towards the union in Scotland too. But that is, relatively speaking, quite new. So, because of the intertwined nature of the two ("unionism" and "United Kingdom"),
Unionism (United Kingdom) is a superior option. --
RA (
talk)
20:53, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
This to me is the central crux of the debate. Are we defining Unionism (and this category) according to today's OED, or according to how scholars who study this field use the term - for example, applying it to Scots in 1700, or Irish in 1798. Per your point above, I can send you many references of how unionism was applied to sentiments in Scotland and England. Here is one describing a king from 1603 as 'unionist':
[3] - but a perusal of other literature will demonstrate my point - scholars describe Scottish Unionism, Irish Unionism, Ulster Unionism, Southern Unionism; I'm sorry but the limited OED definition given above does not begin to capture the many ways in which this term is used by scholars in this field. --
KarlB (
talk)
21:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Karl, I get the impression that you think that you are dealing with editors who don't know the history. If so, that is grievously wrong in my case, and from my experience of watching RA's contributions over the years, it is wrong in his case too.
Sorry if my impression is misplaced, but however you intended it, your paragraph of potted history comes across as a bit patronising, and -- crucially -- of little relevance. Yes, of course the term "unionism" has been used in many ways, and if it was of any relevance I could several more flavours of unionism to your list. However, it's not relevant, because what we need to do here is to choose one overarching term which encompasses the full scope of unionism in these two islands. As RA says, "unionism" and "United Kingdom" combines the two relevant concepts which will allow the reader to identify the scope of the category, without adding any POV.
I didn't mean to be patronising, and I wasn't implying that eds didn't know history; I was implying there is a disagreement on the scope of the category, which may explain the divide between our positions. You and RA (and others) seem to suggest that this category should be about Unionism as it's defined today in the OED, and then everything else that happens to be in the category is just tangential to it (compare ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Liberalism in the United States for a broader historical category). My feeling (which came from reading the history, and perusing the contents) is that Unionism in the Isles is a trend that has manifested itself in many ways over the centuries, and that the category captures all of that as a continuous strain of thought, which leads to today's definition but isn't constrained by it. Again, I'm not sure why my description of the diversity of approaches of Unionism isn't germane here, unless it is your position that the category is *only* for unionism today, and isn't meant to capture historical attitudes and approaches.--
KarlB (
talk)
00:49, 25 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I don't see any significant disagreement on the scope of the category. It contains a few pages which I regard as a poor fit, but those are marginal points.
My concern is simply that a lengthy discussion of the historical development of the various flavours of unionism and its antecedents is not going to get us any nearer to the goal of finding a succinct category name which assists readers to navigate between related articles. What we need here is a broad term which will be recognisable to readers, and one which reflects current usage is more likely to be recognisable than something designed to reflect all that one editor has learnt in a few hours reading Wikipedia's coverage of a series of political discourses panning several centuries. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
05:11, 25 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose/comment I oppose the use of "British Isles" because of the
British Isles naming dispute, because of the inescapable and inbuilt POV of it, and because using "British Isles" incorrectly includes the Isle of Man or Channel Islands, as stated above. I offer no opinion on whether the category needs some other new name as I have no time to consider the question.
— O'Dea (
talk)
02:23, 25 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose the opposition of the opposition If you imagine that I have the slightest intention of reading the 4,932-word
American_(word) article to find out what you are thinking, then you have another think coming, Charlie B. Do not be absurd. I hereby declare this debate resolved and closed (
justification) and await the arrival of the man with the keys to affix the padlock so we can all retire to a house of refreshment.
— O'Dea (
talk)
09:29, 26 April 2012 (UTC)reply
hehe. at least you have a sense of humor. I didn't put the full link sorry:
American_(word)#Political_and_cultural_views. The point is, just because some people don't like a word, does not make the use of that word POV - American being a case in point. In fact, calling it POV (as you and BHG continue to do) is therefore POV, especially given wiki-consensus to date is use of "British isles" is acceptable in a geographic sense. if you want to continue arguing this point, please go to the other discussion page on the naming dispute and duke it out there.--
KarlB (
talk)
10:42, 26 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment These are the main ones that keep being proposed:
Category name
Arguments for
Arguments against
British Unionism
Unionism is about 'British' identity; Some feel it does not exclude Irish/Scottish unionists as they see themselves as both Irish/Scottish and British. One of the head articles is
British unionism
Title of the category for 6 years has been Articles and sub-categories relating to Unionism in the British Isles, so this seems like the consensus description of the cat. Used in dozens of books on the subject. Catch-all for the islands. Wikipedia consensus is use of this term is acceptable as a geographic descriptor.
Some small islands that are part of 'British Isles' do not have documented unionist movements (e.g. Channel Islands), so it is a geographic inaccuracy. It applies the label "British" to Ireland, which some disagree with. The fact that the hatnote used 'British isles' may just mean no-one scrutinized it over 6 years.
Unionism (United Kingdom)
The long term goal of all unionism is the United Kingdom; Unionism today is about union *with* the United Kingdom The goal of all unionists has been for some degree of political integration with or within the state currently known as the "United Kingdom", or its predecessor states (the united Kingdom of Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, which de facto include Wales).
Historical anachronism; unionism existed long before the UK did, and still exists outside of the UK. Goal of unionists is not uniformly "join the UK", but much more varied. Category should contain historical and modern notions of unionism.
Unionism in the United Kingdom
The long term goal of all unionism is the United Kingdom; Unionism today is about Union *with* the United Kingdom. The goal of all unionists has been for some degree of political integration with or within the state currently known as the "United Kingdom", or its predecessor states (the united Kingdom of Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, which de facto include Wales).
Historical anachronism; unionism existed long before the UK did, and still exists outside of the UK. Goal of unionists is not uniformly "join the UK", but much more varied. Category should contain historical and modern notions of unionism.
Unionism (Acts of Union)
avoids geography completely
geographically neutral, and focuses on 2 government acts (Acts of Union), as opposed to a long-term political movement.
Unionism (Britain and Ireland)
captures full geography, including Scotland (which is part of Britain)
May seem to be only about the Britain/Ireland union, could be seen to exclude the union of England/Scotland (forming Great Britain).
Unionism (Great Britain and Ireland)
captures full geography, including Scotland (which is def part of Great Britain)
May seem to be only about the Britain/Ireland union, could be seen to exclude the union of England/Scotland (forming Great Britain).
Karl, if you are going to make a table like that, it should be a neutral summary of the arguments rather than attempt to summarise your views. Your table gives undue prominence to your own views, and amounts to a warped summary of the debate. A few exanples from what could a long long list:
The fact that the categ hatnote has included the term "British Isles" does not mean that there is a consensus for it. It may also mean that the hatnote has never been scrutinised.
Your comment that "Some people don't like 'British Isles' on principle" misrepresents the opposition to that term; it it is not a matter of "like" or "dislike", but of the fact that it applies the label "British" to Ireland, even tho the dominant political strand in Ireland has never accepted that adjective, and spent centuries contesting it militarily and politically.
Your comment 'British Isles' is a "slight geographic inaccuracy" is an attempt to downplay the central flaw in your verbose advocacy of that label. It is a geographic inaccuracy, without qualification, because it includes areas where Unionism is not an issue.
Your comment that the goal of unionists is not uniformly "join the UK", but much more varied is a grotesquely misleading attempt to muddy the waters. The goal of all unionists has been for some degree of political integration with or within the state currently known as the "United Kingdom", or its predecessor states (the united Kingdom of Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, which de facto include Wales).
I am not going to edit the table, because that will simply lead to a long series of unstable versions, which won't help discussion. I am sorry to say that discussion is going nowhere, and AFAICS most of the reason for that has been Karl appears to have been approaching the topic for the first time and splurging out the latest factoids which he has read. This is not quite a
Randy in Boise situation, but it is an example of how an enthusiastic and thoroughly well-intentioned newcomer to a topic can impede consensus formation by being insufficiently versed in the historical and political complexities of the topic. Digging out a few googled references and saying "look what the sources say!" is a thoroughly useless approach to a meta-topic such as this, where there are thousands of deeply scholarly works approaching the topic from a variety of national, political, and historiographical perspectives. It all reminds of the
Hospitals in Ireland CfD earlier this month, where Karl enthusiastically expounded his view at greater length, before eventually announcing that "
or lack of will to fight, I hereby withdraw this nomination" and only then
posting at WT:IE to try clarify his understanding of the status quo.
I am quite sure that if this topic had been left to British and Irish editors to resolve, it would have been resolved quite easily. But at this point, it's a "no consenus" swamp. This discussion would be best closed now, and the issue reopened at some later date. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
07:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I've tried to update the table with your suggestions, and welcome you to make further edits to summarize this discussion. I agree the original table was a bit slanted, but it's not always easy to neutrally summarize, which is why I asked others to make edits as well.
Also I'm sorry that you have found this discussion tedious, while I have found it educational. In the future, you are of course welcome to not join such discussions, or simply vote and walk away as others have done - I don't want you to feel obligated to educate me! Also I do apologize for not being sufficiently versed in the historical and political complexities of the topic, as you clearly are, though I'm not sure if that suggests one should not edit or suggest changes in areas where one is not a professional (if so, there are some cats on Healthcare and software you'd best stay away from...)? In any case, when a veteran editor like RA makes a statement like "In recent times, unionism has come to refer to a similar political stand-point towards the union in Scotland too. But that is, relatively speaking, quite new.", I guess this newbie editor has an instinct to point out the fallacy of that statement, unless "quite new" means "300 years"
[4]. Also I'm not sure what this discussion has to do with Hospitals in Ireland??
Karl, XfD is a mechanism for reaching consensus decisions on the fate pages. It is not a mechanism for you to fill gaps in your education. When you are approaching a complex topic for the first time, you would do a lot better to ask questions rather than to post at great length and with great forcefulness about what you have learnt in a few minutes on Google. The misconceptions you being have been posting take a lot of time for others to explain away.
The similarity with the Hospitals in Ireland CfD is that it was another discussion where you posted at great length and with great forcefulness about something you had a limited grasp of. I am not asking you to apologise for your limited knowledge; just asking you not to expound at such length and with such stridency on the basis of that limited knowledge. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
09:30, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
I have embedded comments in blue text within the table above. Also, in a toss-up between "Unionism (Britain and Ireland)" and "Unionism (Great Britain and Ireland)", I choose the former for brevity, succinctness, and economy ("brevity is the soul of wit").
— O'Dea (
talk)
07:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment thanks, I updated the table above with your suggestion. If you have any references that demonstrate your assertions that a) all Irish/Scottish unionists see themselves as British or b) secondary sources, when discussing Irish/Scottish Unionists, use the word 'British unionists' to describe them - please provide them (I've provided links that demonstrate that sources do differentiate) --
KarlB (
talk)
21:47, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
There is no simple answer to that, and those looking for simple and clear answers to these issues here will be disappointed. To clarify my comment, I should have said that many (or most) Northern Irish unionists also see themselves as British, this from personal experience meeting many of them over a long lifetime. There are numerous sources but here is one: A 2007 survey on identity by NILT
[5] showed that :"18% - Irish not British, 17 - more Irish than British, 17% - equally Irish and British, 24% - more British than Irish, 19% - British not Irish". As you can see from those results, this is a very complex issue and I doubt it will be resolved here.
Snappy (
talk)
22:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Thanks. It is because of those complex issues of identity that I have been pushing for a geographic (rather than political or ethnically-focused) category name. While I don't doubt that many unionists you've met see themselves as British, there may indeed be unionists who do *not* see themselves as British, either today or in the past - in other words, I think it's fair to say that having unionist sentiments is not equivalent to feeling British, even if they may overlap - which is I suppose why in many sources I've seen, they usually call out 'Scottish unionists' or 'Irish unionists', which led to my disagreement with that category name with only the word 'British'. best regards --
KarlB (
talk)
00:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment I have no objection to abandoning the discussion, as suggested by BrownHairedGirl, as the status quo seems to have worked satisfactorily for several years. However, I still suspect a consensus might be formed around defining the nature of the unionism in question. After all, the geographical-only approaches leave the word "Unionism" in the proposed category names just as ambiguous as it is now. ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (Acts of Union) doesn't altogether work for present-day Ulster Unionism, which is based on Northern Ireland's secession in 1922 from the Free State, but it was only my first thought. Would ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (union under the British crown) be nearer the mark?
Moonraker (
talk)
03:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Requesting removal of for/against table Hey Charlie B, I removed my alleged "vote" from your table as I voted for nothing. I merely objected to the use of the phrase "British Isles" and commented on removing "Great" from one of the alternatives. It is a very bad idea, as
User:BrownHairedGirl has already pointed out, for you to attempt to summarise other people's positions in your table. You are not reliable as you have your own view. You have misinterpreted peoples' remarks in your table, and inviting people to change the table is an insufficient post hoc corrective. People have stated views in their own words which is the only legitimate version. Your table queers the pitch even if you don't mean to. I amended the table yesterday and now my remarks are gone. Let whichever administrator who decides on this question make his or her own mind up based on what people actually say, not on what you say they say. Allow people's remarks to speak for themselves. We do not need you to appoint yourself as our interpreter. The table is superfluous and potentially misleading. And, most importantly, Wikipedia debates are never settled by counting votes, as your table implies, but by study of the arguments; two or three very good arguments may overpower thirty less well considered arguments. I ask you to remove your distracting and illegitimate table as it does not speak for people directly and none of us has authorised you to interpret our comments and votes.
— O'Dea (
talk)
03:56, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I've removed the votes - and I do realize that it is not a popularity contest, I just made it for convenience to show what various people had proposed, in summary form. I removed your amendments because they were no longer relevant to the changed wording - the confusion around (Britain and Ireland) was not about whether Scotland was part of Britain, but whether it was about the Britain/Ireland union only. Those weren't my words, they were Moonraker's - you can read them above. "‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Unionism (Britain and Ireland) is misleading if the category is to go on including both of these forms of Unionism." In any case, I made the table to help us get out of the no-consensus swamp. I do think there are workable options, I don't know why everyone just wants to throw the towel in... and as you can see from the votes (whether that matters or not) the majority seems to be for British Unionism, which I happen to disagree with but its better than no label at all.--
KarlB (
talk)
04:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Karl, the reason that editors want to abandon the discussion is that it has become an unwieldy mess, thanks to your verbose pursuit of tangents, and your failed attempts to summarise the views of others.
As Moonraker points out, the status quo seems to have worked satisfactorily for several years, so there is no pressing need for a change. The issue can always be revisited at a latter date if needed. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
09:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:American people of Jewish descent by occupation
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.
delete do you know how much time and space and energy category intersections would solve? can we just put more pressure on wikipedia to just implement it? where do I vote for that? --
KarlB (
talk)
05:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Upmerge all as
Mayumashu. There is a sibling tree for American Jews, to which some of the articles could be transferred. Some of its occupational categories are well populated, and the possibility of merging there should not be ruled out. However, doing this wholesale might result in some people who are of Jewish descent, but are not Jews beign miscategorised.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:Online commenting available through Facebook
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.
Nominator's rationale:Delete I have no idea what this category means, nor what inclusion of the websites in question implies. Again, I don't think we should categorize things by web services they happen to use. What's next, websites using the facebook 'like' button?
KarlB (
talk)
15:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment. I presume that this refers to sites such as
http://www.thejournal.ie/, where identification of commentators is done through Facebook. I have an open mind so far on whether this is a defining characteristic of the sites concerned, and am open to arguments either way. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
16:03, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Delete Widely used with American and British publications enough not to be notable. Also, I'm not sure about categorizing web sites by software packages in general since they change regularly.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
21:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I realized the comment above is facetious; Ottawahitech actually created this category. But I suppose we can still take his vote as a 'delete' vote. FYI, there were two previous CfDs on this both ending in delete
Disqus,
commenting--
KarlB (
talk)
13:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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
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Category:Facebook groups
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.
Nominator's rationale:Delete Similar to
yahoo groups! nominated. Which social media tools these groups use (and many of them use twitter, youtube, reddit, facebook, etc etc etc) is not
encyclopedic. Even if a group 'started' on facebook, I still don't agree that this is a reasonable categorization.
KarlB (
talk)
15:40, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Shabab Libya, also known as the Libyan Youth Movement, or LYM for short, is a Libyan Facebook group...
I note that
Things Bogans Like is a
blog, and Wikipedia has a
Category:Blogs, so as it seems possible to distinguish notable blogs from non-notable blogs, it should also be possible to distinguish notable Facebook groups from the non-notable variety. However, if it is possible to re-write the above article leads so that Facebook group is not a
defining characteristic for these organizations, then maybe this category could be reconsidered. Disclaimer: I am the category creator. -
Wbm1058 (
talk)
14:57, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Internet activism and its parent ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Social networking services already exist for these sorts of websites. As I argued before, the fact that they may have started on facebook is not notable, especially given that many of these services branch out into using many different social media tools once they get started, and any social movement who knows what they are doing is likely to have a facebook group or facebook page or facebook like button or whatever.
Shabab Libya is a great example - they use facebook, twitter, youtube, and many other services to reach out. We should not be categorizing groups based on the technologies they use. --
KarlB (
talk)
16:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment I should give some background on why I created this category. At the time,
Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement was
proposed for deletion. Arguments for deletion were made such as "this is a Facebook group, and these are almost never notable in their own right." Clearly the person taking that position was framing this organization with "Facebook group" as its primary
defining characteristic. I then decided to look to see if I could find any notable Facebook groups on Wikipedia. The logical first place to look for Facebook groups (in my mind, anyway) was
category:Facebook. Failing to find anything, I resorted to a Wikipedia-wide search for all articles containing the term "Facebook group". From that, with the goal of saving the next person to come along looking for the same thing some time, I created the category. Now, I have just added
Category:Internet activism as a subcategory of
category:Facebook. By following this path, I can find the activist type of Facebook groups that I was looking for. –
Wbm1058 (
talk)
19:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Thanks. Although I'd suggest you undo the category change you just made. By doing that you are saying that
Category:Internet activism is somehow part of facebook. A redirect at the top of the facebook category, like {cat see also|Internet activism} might be better. --
KarlB (
talk)
19:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Also another quick note. From the
interesting deletion discussion on
Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement I found the following, from one of the founders of the group: "As he who helped start and helps maintain the CREWE effort, I want to be very clear that CREWE is a group of people who are interested in exploring the ways that PR and Wikipedia and work together for mutual benefit, defined narrowly as cooperation toward more accurate and balanced entries. The fact that it's on a Facebook group is circumstantial." That quote to me that illustrates that facebook is a tool, one of many, used for collaboration on the internet, and is seen that way by people who do the work. If people do describe things as 'x is a facebook group', it nonetheless seems wrong to call out the use of a particular technology by a particular company as a navigational category - such information about what technologies they specifically use is really better held in the article itself. We have a category for "youtube videos", but we don't have a category for "Artists who release their videos on youtube" or "companies that use youtube to put up training videos" etc. As for subcats, a reference is the appropriate path here, you don't need to make something a subcategory just to point out that they may be somehow related. Internet activism is many things, but people never say "internet activism *is* Facebook.--
KarlB (
talk)
20:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep -- I was dubious about this at first, because there are free-standing organisations that have a facebook presence, but the activists of the Arab Spring were largely orgainsised as facebook groups. If a facebook group is prominent enough to have a WP article, we need a category to deal with that.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:23, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment "the activists of the Arab Spring were largely orgainsised as facebook groups" - actually, that is a common misperception. While the activists in the Arab spring did use facebook and it certainly had a very important impact for organization and especially dissemination of information, they also used a number of other tools including in-person meetings, cell-phone/sms blasts, flyers, posters, marches, etc. - in addition to all of the social media tools they used - facebook, youtube, twitter, etc. Since you are suggesting keep, could you suggest some criteria for inclusion? How do we know the thing that is notable is the 'facebook group', and not the organization *behind* the facebook group? For example, one very prominent facebook page from the Egyptian revolution
http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk also has a separately hosted website. Clearly they belong in
Category:Online activism, but do we really want to start a policy of classifying online activists by the tools they used first, or most successfully? --
KarlB (
talk)
00:05, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep, this reflects a real phenomenon and change in the way organizations form and maintain themselves. Although it may be unclear and a bit ambiguous at present, I believe the most constructive way to take this on is to leave this for now and revisit the issue at a later time as a clearer picture of the phenomenon emerges. __
meco (
talk)
12:41, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Activists is for people, activism is groups. Tha'ts how it seems to be, and it makes sense to me. We often have special categories for people involved in X. I'd suggest just updating the lead sentences accordingly.--
KarlB (
talk)
15:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Delete – it is far too vague; any school or university alumni group will have a facebook group. There are plenty of facebook groups which are nothing to do with activism. Renaming to 'Online activist groups' might work.
Oculi (
talk)
14:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)reply
only
WP:NOTABLE Facebook groups have articles on Wikipedia, and currently there are insufficient notable Facebook groups to merit breaking
category:Facebook groups into subcategories. I disagree that the category is vague, the concept of "Facebook group" is fairly well-understood. Heck, I think I know basically what one is, and I've never used Facebook! While currently most members of
category:Facebook groups engage in
category:Internet activism, not all of them do (e.g.,
Secret London), and in the future it's possible that a majority of notable
category:Facebook groups will be engaged in other activities. I suppose it's possible that Facebook itself will fade away in the future (remember 1980s-90s online services?), but for now, I say, keep and monitor...
Wbm1058 (
talk)
20:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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.
Old Carthusians, Salopians, and Wykehamists
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.
Nominator's rationale: Rename, to a standardised descriptive format (see
WP:NDESC and note below) which combines a
plain English phrase with the title of the head article. This clarifies the purpose of the category to the non-specialist reader for whom Wikipedia is written, by eliminating obscurity and ambiguity.
These three "Old Fooian" terms share three common charcateristics:
They relate to a very prominent school, whose prominence is reflected in a high number of seach hits for the school name. All of them are among the 9 schools investigated by the
Clarendon Commission in 1864 and reformed by the
Public Schools Act 1868. All are now members of the
Rugby Group of leading public public schools
Their "Old Fooian" terms are massively less widely used than the school names
Old Carthusians
Charterhouse School is one of the most prominent
public schools in the United Kingdom. Wikipedia has articles on 358 notable alumni of the school, which is the 6th highest tally for any school in the UK (although only about 1/8th of the number of
Old Etonians and half the total of
Old Harrovians).
The term "Old Carthusians" derives instead from the
Carthusian Order of monks,
Charterhouse School having been located for its first 260 years at the
London Charterhouse, the site of a former Carthusian monastery in London. The connection will be obscure to anyone not already familiar with the school's history, and since the category is used for biographical articles where the school will usually receive only a passing mention in the "early life" section, we cannot assume that readers will know the connection. (I checked all the articles in the category a year ago, and found that
only 3 of the 314 biographical articles then in the category included the term "Old Carthusian")
The "Old Carthusian" term is also highly ambiguous. A plain English reading of it is "old
Carthusians", i.e. aged or historical members of the religious order. It has a further possible meaning for anyone familiar with the terminology of Christian churches, where the word "Old" is used to refer to those who reject reforms in the churches: e.g.
Old Catholic Church and
Old Believers.
Old Salopians
This term does not include the English-language name of the town where the school is located, nor even of the county of
Shropshire.
Instead it is based on "Salop", an old name for the county of
Shropshire.
A plain English reading of it is "old
Salopians", i.e. aged or historical people from Shropshire. Even if the reader is familiar with the "Old Fooian" style of terminology, they can only assume that it refers one of the
two dozen secondary schools in Shropshire ... but which one?
Old Wykehamists
This term derives from the
Winchester College's foundation in 1382 by
William of Wykeham. The "Old Wykehamist" term no doubt makes great sense to those familiar with the schools's history, but not to anyone else.
These problems of ambiguity and obscurity are reflected in the relatively rare incidence of these terms in common usage. The table below shows comparisons with other prominent public schools:
In previous discussions, some editors have expressed a preference for retaining "Old Fooian" category names for prominent schools. However, there has been a consensus to rename such categories where the "Old Fooian" terms is obscure or ambiguous:
21 renamed categories for Old Fooians from prominent schools
Note that in previous discussions of "Old Fooian" categories, some editors who appear not to have read
WP:NDESC have claimed that the full phrase "People educated at Foo School" must be sourced. This is incorrect:
WP:NDESC explicitly says that such titles "are often invented specifically for articles", and that is the case here, where a
plain English phrase is combined with the
WP:COMMONNAME of the school. (A further paragraph of NDESC refers to the use of non-neutral terms in titles, which does not apply here).
Oppose. The only purpose of a category is to categorize. The names of these three are based on the correct, and indeed the only, names for the groups of people in question. The names are unambiguous and in my view are better-known than the nominator suggests, and there is no good reason why a massive uniformity should be imposed on all such "former pupils" categories. It is, of course, no part of the role of a category to educate Wikipedia readers, but whether BrownHairedGirl and others like it or not Old Carthusians, Salopians, and Wykehamists will go on being described in those terms, and in some walks of British life not knowing the meaning of a Carthusian, a Salopian, or a Wykehamist is a handicap. Seeking to reduce the use of such terms on the English Wikipedia is not egalitarian, as some of BHG's supporters plainly believe, it is foolish, iconoclastic, and counterproductive.
Moonraker (
talk)
22:24, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Only one of the three category names is unambiguous; the other two are highly ambiguous, as set out in the nomination. All three of the "Old Fooian" terms bear a non-obvious relationship to the name of the school, and they will be utterly opaque to the non-specialist reader for whom Wikipedia is written
I am quite sure that Old Carthusians, Salopians, and Wykehamists will go on being described in those terms, in the limited circles where those terms are currently used. However, it is untrue to imply that they are in general usage: the evidence is set out clearly above that they are not used more widely.
If it is true (as Moonraker asserts, without evidence) that "in some walks of British life not knowing the meaning of a Carthusian, a Salopian, or a Wykehamist is a handicap", then have no fear: the terms are already explained both in the articles in the schools themselves and in hatnotes in the categories. There is also a comprehensive list in the article
Old Boys so that prospective staff of the
Bullingdon Club can continue to use Wikipedia to swot up for their job interviews. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
23:42, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
As usual, I am not going to reply to all of the above, but I cannot allow the suggestion to pass without comment that the category of "old Carthusians" is being misunderstood as meaning "aged or historical members of the religious order" or else refers to a completely fictional group of "Old Carthusian" anti-reformists; likewise that "Old Salopians" could or should be read as "aged or historical people from Shropshire". Such claims are as preposterous and far-fetched as ever and ought to give the closing admin some pause for thought.
Moonraker (
talk)
21:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
"preposterous" to think "old Salopian" could mean "old
Salopian"
A "Salopian" is a person from Shropshire,
[6][7] and a
Carthusian is a monk ... but Moonraker seems to want us to believe that our readers should know to expect words to lose their dictionary meanings whenever they are applied to English
public schools.
If Monnraker wants to try the bizarre claim that putting the word "old" before an adjective referring to people cannot refer to aged or historical people of that group, then please let's see his explanation of what a phrase such as "old Londoner" or "old Glaswegian" or "Old Parisian" means.
If Monnraker is making a narrower claim, and is merely trying to argue that neither of these terms can be read by their
plain English meaning of aged or historical people of that type, then please let's see some evidence of the exceptional nature of these terms.
Moonraker's contribution to this CfD would be more useful if he tried offering evidence for his outlandish claims rather than merely harrumphing that something is "preposterous". I share his hope that the closing admin will take note of this, because CfDs on this topic have been blighted by far too much of this sort of nonsense. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
14:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose (with caveat) per Moonraker.
As this opposition is likely to be over-ruled anyway (many categories have already been renamed) then we should at least take it to its logical conclusion and do all UK schools, no exceptions - including Eton & Harrow.
Andy Dingley (
talk)
23:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
If you want all the remaining Old Fooian categories to be renamed, then don't oppose the renaming of these ones.
Rename. These schools are at the uppermost end of the recognizability scale, and yet their derivative forms appear to be complete gibberish to outsiders.--
Mike Selinker (
talk)
23:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename per nom. I definitely do not agree with Moonraker's logic, especially the first two points. These renames will deal with ambiguity issues and will make the category system easier to use and understand, as well as bring these into conformity with now the vast majority of other similar categories.
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:38, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose -- In the case of Shrewsbury, "Salop" is not merely a version of the county name but the Latin name for the town. The table above shows that these (and Harrovian) are in regular use, though far less so than Old Etonian.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
16:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
It is quite clear that both of your links refer to articles not categories. We are not inventing new names. We are just making the categories clearer to readers. --
Bduke(Discussion)23:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)reply
You are reading too much in to that. The words following do not indicate anything of the kind you are suggesting. If "In particular, do not capitalize regular nouns .." is the most important point that clause deals with, you are really stretching a point here. The rules for naming articles are not the same as conventions. Clarity is the key feature for naming categories. Come on. I fought your side for a long time, until I came to realize that it made no sense and that it was not the end of world as we know it if we did something that was clearer and intrinsically less contentious. It is time you made the same decision. BTW, what "Old Fooian" are you? I'm still an "Old Edwardian" whatever we name the categories. --
Bduke(Discussion)12:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)reply
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:RT (TV network) programs
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.
I hardly find the link you provide helpful as to which convention to go by. The US category uses the name series instead of program. Also,
Category:Organizations by country clearly suggests that no standardization is necessary and that WP:ENGVAR should be respected and interpreted cautiously. __
meco (
talk)
12:54, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment. Is this not an
WP:ENGVAR issue? Americans (and many Canadians) spell the TV thing "program". (Mind you, an American is probably more likely to refer to a "show" than a "program" on television.)
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:41, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
OpposeWP:ENGVAR, renaming for the sake of renaming between English dialects for a subject that is not tied to British English (arguably, it is more closely linked to American English, because of the two Superpowers of the Cold War)
70.49.124.147 (
talk)
07:26, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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:Yahoo! Groups
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.
Nominator's rationale:Delete. This is a random assortment of groups that may (or may not) have a mailing list somewhere on yahoo. Not encyclopedic, and I think there are many millions of groups on yahoo groups, and it's quite possible given the breadth of that service, that many many organizations on wikipedia have used yahoo's services at some point in the past. We don't have a category for 'websites hosted by BigDaddy', so this category should not exist either.
KarlB (
talk)
14:16, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep but purge. This category should be reserved for a) articles on individual yahoogroups which are themselves notable (i.e. have a standalone article), and b) article on topics directly related to YahooGroups (e.g.
ONElist and
EGroups). It should not contain articles on other topics simply because there is a related discussion grouo at yahoogroups, because use of these groups is so widespead that it is non-defining. It may be that once purged, the result will fail
WP:SMALLCAT, but let's start by doing the purge and seeeing what's left. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
16:00, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Neutral on deletion, but purge if kept (changing my !vote). It seems that once purged, this category is likely to fail
WP:SMALLCAT, so I won't oppose deletion ... but I would prefer if more checking was done first about how many articles would belong in a renamed caegory. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
14:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Purge - this seems to be the result of a gross misunderstanding, where a category about Yahoo Groups has been misinterpreted as being a category for any topic about which there is a Yahoo Group. --
Orange Mike |
Talk18:51, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment Actually, I don't think its a misunderstanding - the person who created this category, today, is the same person who
populated it. So their intent in creating the category and filling it up seems clear. Now, if there are arguments from other editors why this category, which never existed before, should now be kept (and not just be upmerged into ‹The
templateCategory link is being
considered for merging.›Category:Yahoo!) then that is another matter, but the contents of the category as it stands now are per the desire of the category creator.--
KarlB (
talk)
20:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Rename/Merge Same as my comments about Facebook. While I don't think the involvement with Yahoo is defining, I think the fact that the article is about an online, socially networked group is and I would favor a different category to capture that.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
21:28, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment I think this category may illustrate why our free-for all system of creating categories has drawbacks. On the other hand if we had to go through special processes to create ever X emigrants to Y category and evey Z year establishment in Y category we might also have problems.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
08:23, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep but purge -- The category should be limited to groups that exist solely as yahoo groups. Freestanding clubs which use yahoo to publiciuse their activities should be purged.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment could you take a stab at a more precise definition, since you are proposing keep? For example, what defines a 'freestanding club'? And what defines a group 'that exists solely as a yahoo group' _ for example, if a separate website exists, does that disqualify them? What if they also have a youtube channel, or a twitter account? --
KarlB (
talk)
23:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep and purge. Only groups that use Yahoo! Groups as their main membership forum should be here. Then, if what remains isn't viable we'll have it back here for a new round. __
meco (
talk)
13:49, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Cruel Intentions
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Sigh. As with many of this editor's CfD nominations, no action is proposed. Please state what action you want taken, to save other editors guessing whether you want to merge this category to another, or just delete it. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
comment: This comes down to a user interface issue with twinkle. If you ask twinkle to delete a category, it will ask you for a rationale; most people won't repeat 'delete this' because you've already selected 'delete this' in the drop down. Then, when the category shows up here, for delete, the word delete is not mentioned. I don't think you should blame the user, I think we should jsut make a simple UI change to Twinkle, to add the words 'category should be deleted' to the end of any deletion nom (for merges, twinkle correctly mentions the word merge for example). --
KarlB (
talk)
14:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Fair point -- this coild easily be solved by a fix to Twinkle's output.
Keep Just brought up to 5 articles (not counting the template) so it escapes
WP:SMALL in my book. It's true they (and some other) articles are linked with the template but I don't see that precluding a category.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
21:39, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Reply The standard is "small with no potential for growth" but, oddly, small is never defined. My definition is 4 or fewer real articles (excluding templates, redirects, images). With 5 articles, I think this category is "medium with nor room for growth".
RevelationDirect (
talk)
19:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Delete Moonraker is right. There is no real potential for growth here. 6 is not enough to keep a category unless it is clearly part of a regularly established pattern.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
08:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Wikipedians who like X
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I am shocked too. I added myself to that non-existent category in 2009, as a sarcastic comment on what was then a sprawl of user categories. I had never noticed until now that someone had actually turned it blue in 2010, but mercifully it only lasted for 2 days. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
11:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Delete and listify. I supported keeping the people category, but since they are gone, let's be consistent. However, let's also preserve the info in these categories, by listifying them. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Children of national leaders
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Oppose The parents of national leaders cat was deleted because there was not really a shared caracteristic. Here we are grouping a bunch of categories where the people share a caracteristic. Also, parents of national leaders who are notable are generally notable for some other reason. The children on the other hand can never escape the shadow of their parents.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
07:06, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose I know it is not the same in every country, for example in the United States where I live, the children of Presidents are not that big of a deal, but in my native country of Colombia, the children of former Presidents are viewed with a special interest because they are often proppelled into public life and often rise in politics much faster than the rest (those who are not children of former presidents), and according to many critics, with far less merit, it is because of this that they (children of Presidents) are often referred to as
dauphins by the media for their privilaged background, clout, and popularity before they jump into politics, so in Colombia's case, this category does serve a purpose to categorize those people who because of their fathers' achievements have gained recognition. I know that in other countries like India, Pakistan, UAE, and Thailand, children of former presidents get favourable treatment and are often seen as the successors of their parent's rule, hence the term dauphin.
mijotoba (
talk)
16:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Comment I doubt Mrs. Hager would be notable if her father had not been president, but that is a counter-factural possibility so not proveable. Unlike with parents, msot of these people were alive during and after their parent's terms in office and so had their life course effected in significant ways. Many (if not most) parents of national leaders died before their child becaome a national leader. In fact in a large number of cases there two events are directly connected.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
03:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Oppose and Keep Per BrownHairedGirl and JPL. There are a number of people who are notable for being children of national leaders. I see this categorisation system as entirely appropriate. Mar4d (
talk)
15:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Keep -- This is clearly a notable characteristic. If the subjects are notable enough to have an article, they should be categorised accordingly. Conversely however, the existence of the category must not be allowed to encourage the creation of articles on NN children of leaders. I beleive we deleted or redirected articles on
Tony Blair's children, for example.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:35, 21 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Rosarians
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Nominator's rationale:Merge. These categories are essentially duplicates, and "Rosarian" is an ambiguous term. As defined by the OED, it can mean: "(1) A member of any of the Confraternities of the Rosary, spiritual associations whose members try to pray the Rosary weekly." or "(2) A person interested or engaged in the cultivation of roses." This category is currently being used for (2), but is liable to be confused as meaning (1). The target category is clear and unambiguous in meaning.
Good Ol’factory(talk)05:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
Merge per nom & JPL. I see no point in renaming. What to? Another category for rose breeders, since all members are rose breeders. Or a category for members for a spiritual association when we have no articles to go into it? __
meco (
talk)
16:14, 22 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Matsu
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Upmerge one article to parent categories, upmerge township cat to the parent townships cat. There is no reason to have this category as it stands now.
John Pack Lambert (
talk)
07:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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Category:Quemoy
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Nominator's rationale: To match the lead article,
Kinmen. There are 2 other articles wth "Kinmen" in the title for a total of 3 versus only 1 article in the category with the spelling "Quemoy". Kinmen represents
the preffered translation format by the Republic of China while Quemoy is a long-standing but poorly translated Anglicized name. Alternatively,
WP:COMMONNAME could be used to argue Quemoy is more common in English (400K hits on Google vs 271K for Kinmen), in which case the lead article should be renamed.
RevelationDirect (
talk)
02:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)reply
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