Category talk:British people by descent

Untitled

what is the point of trying to delete all ethnic identity of people who have immgrated from another country to the United Kingdom? Thanks Hmains 01:01, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Merger

I suggest that we consider merging the sub-state level categories in this category tree Category:English people by ethnic or national origin, Category:Scottish people by ethnic or national origin and Category:Welsh people by ethnic or national origin (and their sub-categories) into a single British category tree. Britishness is much easier to define than Englishness or Scottishness because there is British citizenship but not English, Scottish, and Welsh citizenship. At present, article subjects seem to be categorised depending on birthplace, but that isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of whether a person regards themselves as English/Scottish/Welsh. Thoughts would be welcome on this. Not sure about Category:People from Northern Ireland by ethnic or national origin since a large minority of Northern Irish people do not consider themselves British. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree Completely - It would also significantly cleanup the current mess of categories. Stevvvv4444 (talk) 11:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree - Arbitrary placing of subjects into English / Scottish / Welsh categories simply because of where they were born is utterly unreliable. This essay questions it and strongly discourages it unless a sufficient connection exists between a subject and England / Scotland etc. Birthplace is not a sufficient connection. Bretonbanquet (talk) 13:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Strong support: It seems that the reality of these categories are based purely on accent or worse, whim. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone know how I might go about formally proposing this? Presumably I need to do so at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, but would I have to add templates to each and every category that needs merging? Cordless Larry (talk) 22:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Before you do.... I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a backlash; there are strong opinions (in my experience) on this matter, albeit, opinions. There are also misconceptions, even amongst reasonable and intelligent editors (User_talk:Parrot_of_Doom#English_or_British?). Can I suggest that a full(er) proposal with all the advantages is made. We need provision too, for categorising people before the Acts of Union 1707, and how we categorise the Welsh people once subsumed into the Kingdom of England (are they "English"? - probably not). I believe it would be Wikipedia:Categories for discussion and a template added to each category.

Also, I believe the reality of this categorisation is a hotch-potch of birthplace, self-identity, whim, and accent, with no consistency and no formal criteria. Incidently, David Hume identified as British, but is categorised as a Scotman... --Jza84 |  Talk  22:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The size of the mess seems to make it all the more difficult to fix. Even thinking about arranging the nomination is getting me confused, since it seems I'd have to tag each and every article in Category:English people by ethnic or national origin, Category:Scottish people by ethnic or national origin and Category:Welsh people by ethnic or national origin, and then match them all to the corresponding categories in Category:British people by ethnic or national origin. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)