Talk:András Sütő

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Meaning no disrespect, but he is a Romanian citizen - I have referenced the categories as such, and I believe he belongs in a category "Hungarian-language writers" or one equivalent to Category:Ethnic Hungarian politicians outside of Hungary comprising writers. Dahn 06:57, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, he was a Romanian citizen, clear if he was born and lived in Romania. But he was one of the leading Hungarian writers (cause he wrote in Hungarian, not Romainan!) and that's more important. So don't take that cathegories out. Gepcsirke 16:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Look: you are repeatedly erasing mention of him being Romanian by citizenship, which goes against wikipedia conventions (as indicated). Not to mention that you choose to spell the word "Transylvania" in an anachronistic way. I suppose I could leave the categories: even though they are misnomers for someone who was not Hungarian (as opposed to writing in Hungarian and being an ethnic Magyar), I can only assume that he was also a Hungarian citizen in 1940-to-something. Dahn 16:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

If you consider this important, (I don't unedstand why) I suggest to indicate it somewhere down in the text. It is strange anyway. You can read he lived in Romania, why do you need to stress he was a Romanian citizen? --KIDB 16:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

KIDB, unlike you, I have read and care about Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies). That's why. (Note that this tell us that, lest for exceptional cases, ethnicity is not to be mentioned in leads - while I could be persuaded that this is an exceptional case, I could not possibly accept that there is some new rule especially made for Transylvanian-born Hungarians who spend virtually their entire lives as Romanian citizens and sat on the Romanian National Assembly, for all that is worth.) Dahn 17:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Let's see.

Nationality (In the normal case this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable. Ethnicity should generally not be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.)

Nationality, not citizenship. He was Hungarian, and his ethnicity is important in this case. But we can also note that he was a politician in Romania. Gepcsirke 19:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

In English, "nationality" is a variant for "citizenship", and "national" is a variant for "citizen", as opposed to "ethnicity" and "ethnic" respectively. In fact, you can read that in your own quote ("the country of which the person is a citizen or national"). Also note that the guideline clearly indicates that the mention of nationality is mandatory, while the mention of ethnicity is optional. Dahn 19:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Dahn, I suggest you to go and include in all the articles in Category:Romanian_essayists that these people were/are Romanian citizens. What is the reason behind your special interest in Hungarian writers? --KIDB 20:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

KIDB, I added "a Romanian citizen" instead of simply "Romanian" because I attempted to answer the exact type of concerns raised here, and establish that the link between his citizenship and culture in a neutral and informative way. All people included in the category you mention are listed as "Romanian", and not as "Romanian citizen(s)", precisely because there is/was no need for the nuance; everywhere, as clearly mentioned, the link directs to country, never to ethnicity (almost universally, ethnicity is detailed not in the first lines, but further down in the text). If anything, we should do the same here. In any case, in strict terms of nationality (which, I remind you, is the main attribute to follow in lead paragraphs), Sütő was Romanian. We could change it to "Romanian and Hungarian" (with links to "Romania" and "Hungary" respectively), add that he was "ethnic Hungarian" (with a link to "Hungarian people" or to "Hungarian minority in Romania"), given that this is a likely exception to the "no ethnicity" rule, but this only if you can point out to me that he was a Hungarian citizen at some point in his life.

If the remark about my "special interest" means to say that we should not follow the rules because they don't matter here for some reason, I take offense (especially since it is an allegation that relies on no proof).

Granted, the issue in general is more complex than this. For example, I would like us, in the future, to work out where to place Austrian, pre-1918 Hungarian, or Austro-Hungarian Romanians who have never been citizens of Romania ("Romanian lawyers" is a misnomer for Avram Iancu based on that, and "Hungarian lawyers" may not cover the entire scope - since he was primarily an Austrian subject, and then an Austro-Hungarian one). This would take some careful reflection: for starters, I wanted to suggest subcategorizing the "Austro-Hungarian people" category into ethnic subsets, but this would take a lot of work and is bound to spun controversy (can "Austro-Hungarian Hungarians" work as a category?). Additionally, for this case, I tried, in my first post on this page, to offer a solution to include people who were not Hungarian citizens but wrote their work in Hungarian (you may find categories similar to what I have proposed listed under Writers by language). I received no feedback, until someone up and reverted me in disregard of rules.

The point is that I am actually thinking about applying the rules instead of relying on emotion. I suggest you do the same. Dahn 20:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I've not had the time to properly check what is going on here, but I do have some experience with the category system, so please allow me to stick very closely to that. In my experience, Dahn is correct in saying that the category tree is based on nations, not ethnicity. As an example: Category:Danish people is a child of Category:Denmark, it is not the other way around. The following is not the best example, but I think it will do for now: If I were to tag an article about a member of the Danish minority in Germany, say one of the ethnic Danish local politicians in Schleswig-Holstein, I would consider this person to be represented by Category:German people and—if we were talking about a politician—I would classify him under Category:German politicians. If it was relevant that the person also had strong contacts with Denmark, I would use both a profession category based on the nation the person is a citizen of (Category:German politicians) plus an ethnic category, but only if this was very relevant. Since, in this case, a "Danish Germans" category does not exist, I would look for a category under Category:Schleswig-Holstein. If we were talking about a Russian living (or born) in Latvia, I would use the relavant Latvian categories, but perhaps add the a "Russian-Latvian" category if such a category exists.

Last time I checked, the articles about Hungarians living in Romania generally do not use the Hungarian category tree but the Romanian tree, for the reason described above. You'll naturally already know the category called Category:Hungarian-Romanians. Would it be possible to tag i.e. an article about a Hungarian-Romanian scientist as Category:Romanian scientists and Category:Hungarian-Romanians at the same time, perhaps using something of the form "... is a Hungarian-Romanian scientist ..." in the introduction? Naturally, if either Category:German-Romanians or Category:Hungarian-Romanians is a child or parent of the any such category, the same should also apply for the other group.

If you guys find my first suggestion impossible, perhaps categories of the form Category:Hungarian-Romanian writers might be a workable solution. However, as far as I know, such a system has never been attempted in cases such as this, and I still prefer the first system since Wikipedia generally seems to follow WP:MOSBIO. I would find it non-standard to simply group Hungarian-Romanians into the Category:Hungarian people categories, and I would recommend some other type of solution.

These are just my thoughts. Please see them in good faith since this is my intention. Regards. Khoikhoi 05:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I must say I agree with Ronline's compromise for Sütő's case (since he did write his work in Hungarian), but I could not agree to "Hungarian-Romanian" replacing "Romanian" in leads in most other cases (just as I would not agree to any such form in leads -"Jewish American" instead of "American" etc. -, since they decrease the informative value by not linking prominently to the country: the reader needs to know, so to speak, "where the action takes place"). Categories do not, afaik, replace mentions of terms in articles, and are not to be understood as part of the actual text - someone being in a category would not make using links in the text less relevant (otherwise, we risk turning wikipedia on its head). I have my own objections to subcategorizing profession categories by ethnicity - not only is the "pool" in Romania and other Eastern European countries much smaller than it is in America, not only is it generally not relevant, not only is it potentially apartheid-like, but, even in the theoretically more relevant case of American categories, it creates an endless discussion about which subcats are relevant and which are not (as the archive of CfD will consistently show).

In my view, discussions as the one I generated here are applicable for only a number of other cases, where we can easily apply the same solution. We now have links to Romania, Hungary, the community, and the people in general. We have a cat for his language. The matter of the "Hungarian" cats may have already been sorted for us by a Mr. Horthy: I am pretty sure KIDB can find proof that Sütő was a Hungarian citizen in 1940-ca.1944; in case he does not (which would make Sütő a rara avis), I hope you will all agree with me that the categories are out of place, and, without complicating matters, the language and community categories will have to do. Dahn 06:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)