Category talk:Midway video games

Split proposed

The initial post was moved here from User talk:SMcCandlish, since split proposals are discussed at the talk page of the split target, not the user talk page of the proposer.

SMcCandlish (talk · contribs), you proposed a split in January, I really hope you don't split them because the category itself is small and splitting it, would be depriving the smaller category. The smaller category may even be deleted, which I oppose. Maybe you could remove the tag instead. Sincerely Subzerosmokerain (talk) 00:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

They should still be split. A single category should not try to serve double (or in this case triple!) duty as multiple kinds of category. As long as there are multiple entries in each, there won't be any reason to delete any of the categories (and the only upshot of deleting such a category would be re-merging them all back into a single category, so no harm would be done anyway). I have no idea what you mean by "depriving the smaller category" and cannot understand your reasoning being based on "because the category itself is small". Size has absolutely nothing to do with anything in categoryspace, as long as there are multiple items in the category and the categorization makes logical sense, which would be the case here. A category isn't "deprived" because it has fewer but properly categorized entries; it is simply more accurate and useful to our readers.

The proposed category structure here is Category:Midway Games (note the capitalization) for the company. Any articles about the company and its employees, subsidiaries, platforms, etc., would be in that category directly, such as:

• Midway Games
• Atari Games
• Surreal Software
• Midway Austin
• Digital Compression System
• Midway T Unit
• Midway Studios – Los Angeles
• Sente Technologies

Two subcategories of Category:Midway Games would be Category:Midway video games and Category:Midway pinball machines, each respectively a subcat of Category:Video games developed in the United States by company/Category:Arcade games by company and Category:Pinball machines. This avoids the very bad practice of putting Category:Midway Games under those games categories, which are for games themselves not companies that manufacture games (note "games...by company", not "game companies", and "machines" not "companies"). By being in, for example, Category:Pinball machines, the implication is that Category:Midway Games is a category of pinball games in a genre known as "midway" whatever that would be, like Category:Sports video games is video games with a sports theme and Category:Star Wars pinball machines is pinballs based on Star Wars. The Midway category is not the only one that needs this kind of fix (see other subcats of Category:Pinball machines for several more), but the fix is needed, as this is very sloppy categorization. PS: I leave it to WP:WikiProject Video Games to clean up the increasingly useless mess that is the confusion between stuff categorized as "arcade" vs. "video"; I'm not going there myself.

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I understand what you mean, it is a bit ambiguous to have a category called Midway Games, because I myself didn't notice the capitalization. It had no idea that the category meant the corporation as a whole rather than what I thought was the games that the company developed. Earlier though in WP:VG we discussed the deletion of a category([[Category:Rareware Stubs]]), and because a category had less than 21 articles in its category, it was under consideration that the category was not needed. (Though, I say 21 articles off of the top of my head, don't take it for a fact). I don't think the pinball category will have the minimum amount. I'd support the split, as long as the Pinball article isn't deleted due to not reaching the minimum requirement. Sincerely Subzerosmokerain (talk) 00:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The pinball games should really be associated with WMS Industries anyway, not Midway. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)