Talk:List of Dewey Decimal classes

Copyright issue?

Is this list a copyvio? Is this a trademark violation? Is Wikipedia at risk? See:

• Dewey Decimal Classification#Ownership
• Hotel Sued for Using Dewey Decimal System.
• How Dewey Classify OCLC's Lawsuit

Since the article includes live links, Wikipedia is actually using the Dewey as a classification system, something which the copyright owner requires websites to purchase a license for:

• May I use the DDC to organize information on my Web site?

I'm just pointing these things out because I noticed them, and I'm interested in learning what others know about this issue. The Transhumanist 11:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Dewey Decimal System. --Quiddity 20:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

From the main Dewey article's talk page:

Copyvio?

Is the list in the article (which might be better on a seperate list page) a possible violation of a database copyright (as the article itself says copyright is claimed on the system)? I think it could be fair use as it is difficult to talk about DDC in an encyclopedia without including a copy of the system. Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 12:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

OCLC has a PDF on its web site that gives the DDC numbers for the first 3 digits of DDC. In their contract, they say that libraries can display the first 3 digits to the public, but no more. So I think this is the allowed portion and therefore there isn't a problem. LaMona 01:54, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Regarding "OCLC has a PDF on its web site." What the URL of the PDF and of the contract? Is the OCLC the copyright owner and able to release some of all of the data under a less restrictive license?

At some point the OCLC people implemented http://dewey.info which allows for a drill-down past the first three digits and is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0. Again it's not clear if the OCLC is the copyright holder and is allowed to do this. It's still not a full public domain release meaning we can't use that data on Wikipedia. --Marc Kupper|talk 01:39, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

However, as of 1/3/2017, "http://dewey.info" no longer has any machinery associated with it -- it's just an empty page, so I guess the OCLC in their wisdom has take down whatever resource used to be there. Has anyone given any thought to the idea that the DDC should be a public world resource, freely available to all? (One radical's opinion.)Geodejerry (talk) 13:44, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Portal:Contents

Since this page is linked from Portal:Contents, shouldn't we link each class to a Wikipedia category? --Nemo bis (talk) 07:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Nope, per WP:Avoid self-references. Specifically, this page is an outlier for inclusion in the Portal:Contents list, and quite different from the pages like Portal:Contents/Categorical index. Hopethathelps. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Why is this a list and not an outline?

To have a full list is copyvio. This article is similar to Outline of Buddhism, etc. Shii (tock) 18:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Why do you think this list is a copyvio? If the article is a copyvio as a list, changing the name wont help. The outline project doesn't have consensus for its activities (see WP:OUTLINE), and this article was originally a list. As it was a contentious move without consensus it has been reverted while discussion takes place. Verbal chat 08:25, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I oppose the move from "Outline of" to "List of" - this has been called Outline of Dewey Decimal classes since last April! Moving it back so many months later without consensus is disruptive. The Transhumanist 04:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

CDS

Does the article use the right names? The pdf link seems to say that in e.g. 654. 6 is the class #, 5 the division #, and 4 is the section #; ten classes, hundred divisions, thousand sections. Tsinfandel (talk) 15:33, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Straw poll and discussion concerning what outlines should be called

A discussion is underway that may affect the name of this article.

See: Wikipedia talk:Outlines#Should articles named "Outline of x" be renamed to "List of x topics"?

The Transhumanist 04:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Should this outline be in Wikipedia?

Given that there is an [online version] of DDC that can be browsed, does it really make sense to have this list hard-coded in Wikipedia? Note that it is using DDC ed. 22, when DDC is now at ed. 23. I understand that work has been done to link from this list (or outline) to the Wikipedia pages, but to me that is a different function than a list of the classes. If one wants to "classify" Wikipedia it should be clear that it is a classification of Wikipedia, not a DDC outline page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LaMona (talk • contribs) 20:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the general idea is that lists like this acts partially as a navigation page, similar to lists of lists. A few of the similar pages are Library of Congress Classification, Bliss bibliographic classification, Universal Decimal Classification, etc (see Category:Classification systems and Category:Library cataloging and classification for example), plus Wikipedia:Outline of Roget's Thesaurus (which for-reasons-i-forget was relegated to the project-namespace). There are various pros and cons to following the [idealistic vs rigorous vs pragmatic] options available. I'm not sure what the 'best' direction to move in, is.. :/ –Quiddity (talk) 21:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Ampersands

Is there a compelling reason for the ampersands in this list not to be spelled out as per MOS:AMP? I can understand not spelling out ampersands used in trademarks (e.g. Arm & Hammer), but a list of topics is something different. If the philosophy is that the official source text uses ampersands and so that usage should be carried over to this list, I respectfully disagree--the substance isn't being changed by spelling out "and" for "&".JDL (talk) 20:11, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Class 002 The book

What's "The book" in class 002? Is this a classification for books about books (i.e. the history of books, the construction of books, etc.)? The phrase is annoyingly vague! WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 20:41, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

'No longer used'

Some of these could be used to reflect (perceived) changes in emphasis in eg society (education of women) or science (holography) - though something for WP's Department of Original Research. 193.132.104.10 (talk) 15:36, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

And some of these are subjective. Our library still uses 291, Comparative Religion, and this was a year ago. 208.90.137.5 (talk) 21:49, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

298

formerly Mormonism, is listed as "optional number" [1] here, but this is ignored in the article. Here explained further: provides options. --84.63.203.246 (talk) 15:51, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Shakespeare

As this article is not meant to be exhaustive, I recently removed the clutter from the 600s on yoga, etc. The only other instance of extra category details (involving decimals) is in the 800s, mentioning Shakespeare. This bit about Shakespeare was added by Punkboy3401 on 25 December 2019 (22 edits ago). This user has a mixture of helpful and unhelpful edits, so I wanted to ask the community before removing this addition. Indeed Shakespeare is the most prominent English writer and this is the English Wikipedia, but is this information going to be used frequently enough to warrant the deviation from the simple outline of the DDC this article aims to be? TiTJiL (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Ampersands (again)

The version of Dewey I have to hand is Abridged 13. It clearly uses ampersands in the three summaries. I notice that six years ago this was raised, but no changes were made until Ryubyss unilaterally changed then all to the word "and". This of course messed up the links in Dewey Decimal Classification which Skoskav~enwiki has had to fix. Should we use the headings that the source uses, or those preferred by Ryubyss? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:16, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Short descriptions

@GhostInTheMachine and Chicdat: Hey folks, this is starting to look a little like an WP:EDITWAR. Please discuss and resolve the issue here before continuing this repeated revert-revert. Much more and you'll be falling foul of WP:3RR and that leads to nastiness. Thanks, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:07, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Edit war? Good grief no. An edit war would involve name calling and a trebuchet loaded with burning acronyms — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:37, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

"a trebuchet loaded with burning acronyms" – nice turn of phrase! :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine: Direct me to the discussion which led to this consensus, and I will be much pacified. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 13:15, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Consensus? Sort of. The debate is old, but this one fractured and got stuck on using a bot to replace all of the "Wiki?edia list article" short descriptions with just "none" — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine: That doesn't look like consensus to me. I was hoping for a real RfC. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 10:12, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that those working on the project always knew that importing the Wikidata short description for lists was a short-term compromise that would be superceded later – when the "none" handling was enabled. It was so much taken for granted that nobody felt any need to codify it — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:29, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine: What is wrong with importing short descriptions from Wikidata? What is wrong with using the short description "Wiki[m/p]edia list article?" And why do thousands of lists still have the description "Wiki[m/p]edia list article?" — 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 10:32, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Short descriptions are meant to help readers understand what a page is about. I've had a go at a tailored description that does that. Feel free to hack it about a bit, but I would seriously suggest that "Wikipedia list article" doesn't convey a lot of information that the title "List of Dewey Classes" doesn't. Please always remember WP:RF. Cheers, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:38, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

 Bye, dispute! 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 11:04, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

English Question Bank

English Question Bank 1.186.106.103 (talk) 14:22, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

744

@173.230.105.14: I'm a little concerned over this edit. There are two points to consider:

1. The list reflects the last printed edition (DDC23 of 2011). Changing the basis of this ought to get consensus, particularly since it requires the use of WebDewey which makes in inaccessible except to specialists.
2. The major issue though is that the paper you cite is a proposal, not established fact: "helpful in guiding this proposal" (p2¶2 my highlighting).

Rather than revert, I've added "(proposed)" to the line pending citations to show that it is now substantive. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

308

Because I botched my edit summary, I just wanted to explain my edit here. The description for 308 linked to Polygraphy, but the use of that word here surely referred to Polygraphy in the sense of writings on multiple topics, rather than lie detecting. I've seen 308 defined as "Polygraphy, Collected Works, Extracts, etc" (see [2]). Zagalejo (talk) 03:49, 10 April 2024 (UTC)