Knowledge (XXG):Categories for discussion/Log/2011 July 18

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determined by the software as dictated by consensus, but the field metatag "values" directly editor-determined like any other. Every biography, for instance, would have field types for sex, birthdate, and deathdate, and fields that can handle multiple values for religion, ethnity/race, places of residence, educational institutions, occupations, military ranks, awards, etc.; and then you could search from any article for others that shared however many fields you want to check off, or from within a field index. There would be a centralized process for creating or removing fields, so that way individual editors could not decide that "shoe size" or "breast size" should exist as fields, and field values could be tagged as equivalent so we wouldn't have arguments about whether British or American spelling should be used. Then and only then would we not have arguments over whether we should have categories for women but not men, intersection categories for religion and a particular occupation, or whatever. Another editor said it can be done through

296:, but I never thought there might be location confusion until someone suggested it here. The stard with all US cities except about the 20 largest is to virtually always pair them with the state name, so I do not think there is any reason to expect any confusion. The current name also helps show that this is place of origin location and not a type of commedy identifier. The potential for confusion here may be low, but I think it helps if we keep these two concepts clearly distinct. I understand why Shawn made his comment, but I think he ignores the general ambivalence I have about making categories that excessively subdivide the real world based on what fictional things were set there, in part because I never was able to understand it enough to express it in the discussion that caused him to think I have a vendetta against Candian sub-cats. 2090:

only quit when we got married anyway. Then I was the first woman hired into a group of 40+ male engineers at a large aerospace company, and my male colleagues who worked in other buildings used to come around to my desk to gawk at me as if I were some sort of freak. So, I know first-hand that women have fought a hard battle to be accepted in technical professions and that the issues of subtle discrimination in the workspace are real and ongoing. OTOH, supposing I were notable enough to be listed in Knowledge (XXG), I would object very strongly as being ghettoized as a "woman engineer". After all, I do exactly the same work as my male colleagues, and I'm a mechanical engineer or a software engineer, not a "woman engineer".

2151:, rather than a scheme for categorizing people by gender. Those type of overview articles seem to me to be the right place to discuss the historical and cultural background, how/when different careers opened to women in different countries, provide links to articles about women who are notable for being pioneers in those careers, present current statistics about the number/percentage of women in such fields, etc. That kind of material is clearly encyclopedic. OTOH, it is still not clear to me what useful purpose it serves to categorize individual engineers, economists, physicians, etc by gender when there is no difference in the actual work they do; there's no "woman engineering" or "man engineering", so why do we need 1452:: With a set of categories by year or by country/state/province it is accepted that there will be some with many articles and some with few but because they are part of a categorization scheme it is accepted that every year or country with an article will be in the appropriate category even if there are only one or two members for some years/countries. There is a tag referring to the page where this is explained but this is not referred to anywhere on the so-called “Help” article on categorization. But what seems unnecessary is to create year categories for each state (back to 1861), see 2429:. From what I know, concubines have several definitions, depending on what country this woman was in, etc. etc. That's my only issue. I prefer myself not to work on issues that I don't have a lot of knowledge in. But by definition a concubine is a position that was only held by women so having women in a category called concubines seems a little redundant. Again I know very little about the history of concubines so... I just don't feel comfortable editing this category myself. But I do agree with the other suggestions like renaming to 2557:

view. So I that's why I'm suggesting we take more time to brainstorm and think about how we would make these categories better and find a way to do it that is much more than just labeling people as this or that. We want to do two things: make research easy, and reflect women's contributions. That is our goal, so we have to seriously think about how to do that. If there are particular women who are in an occupation and have especially contributed, they should be noted. I am not sure how to do that.--

2011:"Female" is currently a disputed term between women. Some women are offended by it because they feel it dehumanizes them. Some women are not offended by the word. This is a real, current issue of dispute in the women's community, at least on the internet. Many people on Knowledge (XXG) have shown to prefer not causing controversy. While I don't feel categories already named "female" should be changed, those that are named with the word "women" being changed to female might be taken as an 2163:? WP guidelines already say gender-based subcategories are inappropriate, and modern writing style guides pretty much all point out that such qualifications are in fact sexist or patronizing. I'm sure that's not your intent in wanting to recognize women's achievements, but to me the real achievement for women in my field was when I started to feel like we were being treated the same as our male co-workers rather than singled out because of our gender. :-P 2658:

Would suggest that the articles in these categories be improved and make sure people are included in them only if their gender is a NOTABLE characteristic related to that profession. Beyond that, supporting women's articles, and content featuring women, supporting female contributors is a WMF goal and deleting/merging articles like this one appears to actively work against that goal. --

488:) is sufficient in this case. Most of the songs in the category are listed as being written by the band, not by an individual member, and AFAICT none of the band members are individually notable as songwriters. Having separate by-songwriter categories for each band member would not really give any additional value since the band's songs are already grouped in the by-artist category. 1682:. Modern style guides consistently recommend parallel treatment for male and female professionals, rather than qualifying their professions by gender ("woman engineer", "male nurse") as it enforces traditional gender stereotypes: with no gender qualification, all engineers are assumed to be men, and nurses are all women. Note that Knowledge (XXG) has no parallel 2105:

answer. Perhaps you and I, and other women of WP can work together to find a way to recognize women's achievements in the working world without making some people like yourself feel singled out as an oddity. I feel like the category should be evolved rather than deleted, and maybe we can work on that together? We could talk about this on the

3290:, so seeing such a category on those articles would be grossly anachronistic. The same issue exists with all other Croatian counties vs. towns - the former are all a 1997 invention. I understand the desire to avoid having too many tiny categories, but having articles tagged in a wholly incoherent manner would be worse. -- 3308:

A very good point that I failed to notice. WP has a long way to go in having categories accurately reflect geopolitical shifts over time - it is hard work and cannot be done perfectly, but here there seems no reason to be misleading purposefully when it can be avoided. Notes giving some explanation

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without actually labeling individual people as "women engineers." Some people might want to do research on the history of the actual topic. If a category is created like this, related articles could be written about the contributions women have made in engineering. To me this doesn't single women out

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I don't question that articles that are specifically about issues of discrimination against women in the workplace, the historical background of women in various professions, etc are legitimate and encyclopedic. Likewise some individuals may be notable primarily for breaking gender barriers in their

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ethical for a world where everyone is equal and treated fairly at all times in every situation, the truth is we are not in that world, and because of that certain adjustments have to be made to reflect women's achievements accurately. It is not "abnormal" to be a female doctor, there is nothing weird

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this category has existed since December of last year, but only has two categories, Texas and Nebraska. While expecting it to have categories for every state would be a bit excessive, if it was a useful cat one would expect the state with the highest percentage of African-Americans (Mississippi) and

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kind of per Henriettapussycat's excellent explanation (although I do not agree with the proposed rename to "Women in the workforce"). My opinion is basically that while there do exist categories here for which, in Our Modern Age, it's no longer necessary to treat women in those fields as unusual, to

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I understand your point: you would prefer for the category to not point out women who work in these fields as an exception to the rule. I work in a career where women happen to be the majority--and that is actually very rare in my opinion. But I think that deleting the category altogether is not the

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As a personal note, let me point out that I am, in fact, an engineer who happens to be female, and one old enough that I can recall being told to my face by my male fellow students in university that women should not be allowed to study engineering because we were taking jobs away from men and would

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I agree with you entirely. Feminism will have reached its goal when there is no noticed difference between genders (or other groups who are stigmatized). When we don't have to make a big deal out of women for achieving a certain goal--I think this will take longer than just 100 years though, due to

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What I am proposing with the idea of these other Women in (whatever occupation) articles, is that we expand on them and note particular women important to the history in the articles. Much like a history book. I'm of the view that any woman is notable for being a woman. I realize that's an extreme

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would change the perspective--maybe these would just be articles, but I think there would end up being legitimate groupings for a category like this. Then we could start to re-invent the category (and other occupation categories like it) to inform people about women's contributions to these areas.

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Note. I did put a note on the creator's talkpage. I note, if I remember correctly, of the 5 entries, 2 are credited as written by "New Found Glory," one as Steve Klein, and 2 are silent as to who wrote the song. I have no problems with deletion, if somebody wants to verify and create categories by

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Women can be notable as women for their occupation in ways that men may not. The first male doctor is probably not notable. The first female doctor in this country, that state, of that race probably is given some of the historical boundaries put up to keep women from some of these occupations.

934:. As the creator of this category I intended it to be wholly inclusive the experience of African Americans in Nebraska, as you said. It is far from a list. However, the singular form of the word is inappropriate, as it does not capture the pluralistic perspectives contained within the category. • 2216:

There are many related discussions going on about categories being necessary for research, but the way categories are currently structured is not very useful. This suggestion was proposed: to convert categories into a series of database-searchable fields of metatags, with the "types" of fields

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This has 61 subcatgories, most/all of which are not going away any time soon. The purpose of categories is to help readers find articles. The articles are not going away either. It does a disservice to WP to delete high level categoies like this. It makes the category system a mismash.

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My suggestion is that you try expanding articles like women in (whatever occupation) to note more about the history and particular contributions made by women. I intend to do this myself with articles in these categories. I think this is a project that should be further discussed on

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That way it's not simply categorizing us as "women engineers." I understand your aversion to being called a woman engineer. I mean, if we got a president who happened to be a woman, I would not want her to be called a "woman president." She's the president! Plain and simple. --

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a provincial split from the Canadian comedians cat. I have a feeling our colleague John Pack Lambert will think not, and I may agree with him on this one. Quebec is a distinct culture and nation within Canada so there may be an argument for some exceptionalism in that case...

288:. While the category currently seems small, I think it could be expanded. People by X occupation from Y subnational entity is an established format at least for countries that are large or culturally diverse in their various locales. I have had multiple friends from both 795:. The high migration from state to state in the US makes this and sister cats potentially overlarge. It works when we have politicians by state, because the person actually has had to run for an office there, but this category just invites to many people being subcated. 628:

seems to be defined by his work as a Proustian scholar. The rest are relatively trivial mentions and if this trend is allowed to continue, Stefanomione will create a myriad of such categories, I'm certain, which seem to me to be a sort of academic version of

415:. Songs are written by people, not by people who are then associated together in some other way. Making categories of songwriters by band member affiliation is a huge headache and not at all helpful to navigation. This has been discussed before in respect of 2270:

article is basically just a stub -- how about filling that in before declaring we need a whole category for this topic? On top of that, I'm highly skeptical that we'll ever see such a number of articles written that would justify converting categories like

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Sigh. I am not proposing we delete any articles, only that we follow WP guidelines for not pointlessly subdividing other categories for grouping people by topic (economists, engineers, poker players,...) by gender when gender is irrelevant to the topic.

2340:, etc. Categories must specifically say in description they are not to have specific people, or some editors might start listing people in there. I agree, we should not label people as "female/woman" of their occupation. That defeats equality. -- 1152:

the state with the most African-Americans (New York at least as of 2000) to be included. The fact that neither of those states have this category suggests that it is not a category that can get enough attention to be made useful at present.

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I think this is a presumed difference between men and women when it doesn't exist. For example, we have a subcat category:Female economists. I think this is unnecessary, as the gender or sex of the employee does not change the quality of

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In addition, please note that "woman" is a noun and "female" is the correct usage as an adjective in those cases when a professional's gender is actually relevant to their notability. E.g., some references from style guides I found

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get rid of the category tree - or even to get rid of those categories, because of category members from longer ago - would do a disservice to the encyclopedia, making it more difficult for readers to learn about historical women.

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That's the exact point.... I know little to nothing about Concubines, so I wouldn't want to do anything to that category. I think it would be best to only work on categories that we have knowledge of and understand.

1985:, and this should be reflected (to not address it on Knowledge (XXG) is to pretend it's not true). In many work-places, women are still not paid the same salary as a man. Women are criticized if they choose to 2301:

some subjects that do have enough articles to warrant a category of their own I believe--like women in writing types, etc. They are already created, all they would need is to be placed in the parent category.

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there are a sufficient number of articles on that topic that it's confusing to keep them in the parent category. It's not necessary to create a subcategory before writing those articles. Heck, the current

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profession. What I question is the legitimacy of categorizing professionals by gender when gender is irrelevant to their work. Please note that WP already has a policy about such over-categorization;

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I think that this will take lots of thought rather than simply making broad deletions.... There are certain categories I do not want to touch, because I don't know enough about them, for example

272:. I support an upmerge of this to the parent categories for the reasons discussed. But if kept, I oppose the renaming because the current name matches the standard format of the subcategories of 193:

to match Quebec or that one should be changed to match this one. Oh, and from the introduction for the category, 'Comedians from Ontario, Canada.' So someone realized that the name is ambiguous.

2406:) from the parent category. There are probably different arguments about whether or not those categories are really needed or appropriate, so let's not try to lump them in with this discussion. 3243:

In most cases, these hold only one article (the largest has three). Each is for a small settlement - in some cases, a place with a population of fewer than 1000 people. Upmerging them all to

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Can you see a significant difference between categorizing words that are borrowed from another language versus categorizing names of things that have English names that are idiomatic?

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Non-sexist language is free of sexual stereotyping and treats men and women equally.... Avoid gratuitous adjectives or qualifiers that create an unnecessary distinction between sexes.

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very likely, and actually encorage these types of categories. I think it would be best to accept that it is never really useful to put people in to categories based on their gender.

1698:...the unnecessary use of such modifiers subtly implies that there is something abnormal about being a woman doctor, or a black one, and that the norm for doctors is white and male. 42: 37: 446:

Makes no sense to have it by band. What if they had an ever-changing line up that leads to dozens of drummers, bassists, etc - it implies they all were credited in writing songs.

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Do not create categories that are a cross-section of a topic with an ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, unless these characteristics are relevant to the topic.

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There really is no point to this category. There was one page in it, and it was unlikely to gain a second page, so that one page should just be in left in the parent category.

1993:. Women have long been given the rap that we work less than men (because we may choose to work at home or take care of family, and people do not consider this actual "work"). 2779:. The fact that the name of the things in this category are idiomatic is a feature of their names alone and has nothing else to do with the nature of the things themselves. 189:

Kind of got there in looking at the comedian tree and this one needs some kind of renaming. Even if you don't think that it is ambiguous, then if should be changed to

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of this fact, that the counties only came into existence recently, and therefore, though thinly populated, cats by town are necessary, should be put on each cat page

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and similar categories that have historical significance. Concubine may be a negative term today, but in Biblical time, wives gave concubines to their husbands.

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of this population. That is what makes it notable. What makes it notable to be a woman? Because of the documented history of women around the world. It is a

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For example, sportspeople should not be categorized by religion, since e.g. being Catholic or Protestant is not relevant to the way they perform in sports.

2328:, then subcategories can be explained on their category pages that they should not list individual people, but contain articles like those you suggested: 273: 145: 256:

I would not support upmerging the Quebec category, as it's a recognized national/ethnic entity within the Canadian federation. 00:21, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

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to list categorize individual people by ancestry/ethnicity by state within the U.S.; the supracategory for the experience of being African American is

467:. This is the consensus. Songs are normally credited by people who wrote them, not by a band, choir, ensemble or other musical group that wrote them. 3208: 2614: 2110: 3007: 2937: 1068: 725: 149: 3182: 3112: 3077: 398: 382: 144:

I'm a little surprised to see this one from you, Vegaswikian, as your noms are usually a default support for me but the master category is just

2972: 876: 386: 17: 1099:. Category tree that never developed, nor is there precedent to categorize individuals by their ethnicity/ancestry by sub-national location. 394: 1973:. To not note these women and their accomplishments is to ignore an important part of American culture which has changed over time, and is 756:. Not part of a category tree, nor should it be, as there is no precedent to list people by ethnicity/ancestry by state within a country - 958:

What does that last phrase mean? How does changing from plural to singular in one word eliminate a reference to pluralistic perspectives?

3173: 2998: 2928: 1059: 716: 1296: 1215: 3244: 3225: 3103: 3068: 892: 2437:, and removing individuals. I would like to hear some other WP women's ideas about it, too, and I hope they will speak up on this. -- 3147: 2599: 2501: 2412: 2284: 2164: 2106: 2091: 1851: 1779: 1647: 1545: 3042: 2963: 1236: 1240: 1925:. I do not think anyone has yet come up with a good explanation of why we have any of these categories. Our current rules make 1453: 3190: 977: 2543: 895:, but, as such, it should be about the experience of being African American and not a list of African Americans from Nebraska. 378: 106: 3015: 2980: 2945: 2776: 2187: 505:

individual songwriters at a later stage, they should be free to do so. It is only the format we are really discussing here. --

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continues to create "Fooian scholars" for bio articles where well-known authors are mentioned, even if only in passing. Only

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No problem, I didn't really do any research to see how many articles we have for this subject in particular. There

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because these categories usually contain people who did not live at a time when the Zagreb County as it is today

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I actually think that's an incredible idea, but I still think we should create categories or articles similar to

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By including a reference to sex, you imply that women or men are oddities in certain situations or occupations...

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Hmmm. I'd be open to the idea of keeping the parent category and turning it into a place to put articles like

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a

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is defined as a personal relationship, not an occupation. All I'm suggesting at this point is that we remove

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If you need to use an adjective, it is female and not "woman" in such phrases as female MPs, female president.

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That said, there is your larger question of FOOian comedians or Comedians from Foo. But also whether we even

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should be deleted entirely is a separate discussion and one I also don't want to enter into at this point.

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Similarly, being male or female is not relevant to the work one does as an engineer, economist, nurse, etc.

1982: 1908:. We have had many cfd discussions about 'female' vs 'women' (as adjective) without any obvious consensus. 1842:

is an occupation? Here I thought it was a type of personal relationship. :-S We might just as well have

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I have no objection to an upmerge, if that is where consensus is going to be, we probably should include

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being disambiguated, and I'm not clear on why you're choosing to depart from that branch structure here.

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our history. Anyway, I was thinking the same as you. I think renaming the engineering category to

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and fix the ambiguous nature of the current name. Of course if the reverse is deemed better...

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I think we're reaching convergence here. Here is a somewhat more specific revised proposal:

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As we don't have Category:American comedians by state (or some such) I do think we should

2794: 2723: 2012: 1799: 1440: 1279: 1118: 980:. That might work, but the current name just invites constant adding of new bio articles. 914: 779: 506: 428: 293: 1252: 1251:. Intended to be, or should be, about the experience of being African American in Omaha; 757: 630: 3310: 3270: 2535: 1990: 1905: 1560: 1318: 1260: 1100: 937: 896: 761: 625: 1748:

For clarity, careful writers use female as an adjective only and woman as a noun only.

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Actually, I think you've got it backwards.... we don't need a category like

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Remove categories that are about relationships or social positions (such as

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