Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 April 7

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April 7

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was rename --Kbdank71 18:15, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category:Botanists studying spermatophytes,Category:Botanists studying fungi,Category:Botanists studying fossils,Category:Botanists studying algae,Category:Botanists studying lichens,Category:Botanists studying ferns,Category:Botanists studying bryophytes

Voting results:

"Rename" (4): VivaEmilyDavies, Kbdank71, Uppland, Juntungwu

"Delete all" (2): Gene Nygaard, Postdlf

Consensus is to rename

Self-nomination. On reflection the following would be improvements (The more technical usage seems to be preferred; I am afraid that "mycologist" was pre-existent, I was confused by the current split between Category:Mycology and Category:Fungi)

Category:Botanists studying spermatophytes-> please delete (turned out to be too broad to be useful)

Category:Botanists studying fungi-> please merge into Category:Mycologists

Category:Botanists studying fossils-> please rename to Category:Paleobotanists

Category:Botanists studying algae-> please rename to Category:Algologists

Category:Botanists studying lichens-> please rename to Category:Lichenologists

Category:Botanists studying ferns-> please rename to Category:Pteridologists

Category:Botanists studying bryophytes-> please rename to Category:Bryologists

VivaEmilyDavies 17:34, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Delete all. Don't bother renaming. Why in the world would we need them? Aren't these categories supposed to be helpful as finding aids? They will only result in one of two possibilities:

Someone looking for a botanist can't find him or her for the forest of possibilities to look under, or
We get a half-page box of category listings including a couple of these as well as all the categories in the tree above it for each article dealing with some obscure botanist, so we just say to hell with trying to find the category most likely to include a colleague out of that mess.

Gene Nygaard 17:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Comment: One one hand, they'll be easy enough to find, being under Category:Botanists, but then again, I wouldn't know what a Pteridologist was if you showed me a dictionary entry and explained it to me in very small words. So I'm not sure how helpful it would be to people who don't already know the meanings. -Kbdank71 19:04, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment:Which is precisely why I picked those category names in the first place :) The downside is that they are too long, and also some biologists reckoned they'd prefer the technical terms. So long as there is a definition included at the top of the category page that will help! Categories are used for collecting related articles togethers and linking them, as well as for browsing and finding (remember: there is also "search" for finding people; along with lists; along with "foo-ologists by nationality" if you know the nationality... besides, if you did want to find an algologist, how would category:algologists not be a useful finding aid?). Compare with zoologists, for example, where "ornithologists" are a recognised subcategory; or "engineers" where there are civil engineers, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers. Subcategorisation by field provides a useful bridging link - it brings people "closer" in information terms with the object that they studied. If we classed all ornithologists only as zoologists, then the link in category space between Category:Birds and an ornithologist would not be straight between their categories but up via Category:Animals, then across to zoologists, and the ornithologists would be spread out unidentifiably in that category. Isn't that a loss of information?

Perhaps Category:Engineers should serve as a model? Engineers are broken down by both field (e.g. civil engineers) and nationality (e.g. German engineers)- a pretty good analogy for this. Isn't that the way to go? If/once "category intersection" is implemented, "X by nationality" is a useless categorisation scheme anyway (you'd just intersect "German people" with "engineers" to find German engineers). But categorisation by field will still be valuable - all civil engineers would be kept in the same place. Getting rid of a parallel subcategorisation can not make it easier to find somebody - consider the Category:Engineers example again. Why would scrapping "Civil engineers" and the like make it easier to find an engineer by browsing? It would just force you to look in "Engineers by nationality", even if you knew the person you were looking for was a civil engineer! Conversely, if you are looking for, say, an American engineer but you don't know quite what type of engineer he was, then nobody is forcing you to look him or her up by field - American engineers is the place to look! If you know neither the nationality nor the field, and you can't exactly remember the name (so you can't search for him) but you would spot it by eyeball search, then use the list of engineers (equivalent here is the list of botanists; the list of botanists by author abbreviation is also helpful if you know only the botanical abbreviation). Keeping such subcategories doesn't make it any harder to find anybody. If anybody else agrees with Gene that they should all be deleted, could you make it clear what you want to do with the proposed merger? Effectively we currently have two lists of mycologists. Why delete one and save the other? Surely we should either delete both or merge? VivaEmilyDavies 19:40, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Woah! I said small words. :) Ok, you sold me. Agree with proposal. -Kbdank71 19:48, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But Category:Engineers doesn't have Category:Natural gas petroleum engineers and Category:Township civil engineers, does it? Just because we can make a distinction doesn't mean we should make a distinction. Gene Nygaard 19:53, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment You also seem totally confused about how these things work. No, I can't necessarily just look in Category:Engineers if I don't know either the engineering specialty or the nationality, because there is no guarantee that the individual articles will be listed in the supercategory (and in most cases, they should not be). No, I can't just look in Category:Botanists if I don't know whether the botanist I am interested in should be in Category:Algologists or Category:Lichenologists, because there is no guarantee that she will also be in Category:Botanists. Somebody would have to put her in both categories for that to be true. So what are the guidelines on how many different levels of the category tree we are supposed enter these people into? Where are those guidelines published? Even if such guidelines exist and are perfectly clear (both highly improbable), how well is Joe Blow going to follow them in creating a new article? Gene Nygaard 03:06, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Delete all, but make list articles of each sub-specialization—those can then go in the botanist category as well as the categories for what they are studying. Having categories at this level of particularlity, however, are simply unnecessary and likely to be confusing to all but experts. Postdlf 19:57, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'd be prepared to put the time in to make a list, but the problem is maintenance. Keeping a bunch of lists up to date as more and more new articles get added requires more time and effort than keeping categories up to date. VivaEmilyDavies 20:50, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lists are the way to go. Gene Nygaard 21:06, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Support move and retaining of specialist categories. / Uppland 20:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Keep and rename. JuntungWu 14:55, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.