Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 March 7

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March 7[edit]

Category:Astronomical historians[edit]

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: rename to Category:Historians of astronomy. Kbdank71 13:22, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Astronomical historians (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Personally I think "Astronomy historians" is downright ungrammatical, and far more awkward. Maybe its a US/UK thing, but I don't think so. Unlike "public" and "legal", "astronomy" is a noun - would you say "Economy historians" or "Society historians"? Johnbod (talk) 19:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I went with "Historians of astronomy" simply because it's consistent with the parent, Category:Historians of science. FWIW, "Historians of astronomy" gets 11,000 G-hits, "Astronomy historians" about 260. Cgingold (talk) 20:26, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I'd say "astronomical", "economic" and depending on whether you're talking about societies or high society, "societal" or "social". I really don't think anyone is going to believe that this is a category for very large historians despite the tongue in cheek nomination and so have no problem leaving it as named but it seems apparent this will get renamed so "astronomy historians" is my preference. (ec) "Astronomy historian" singular gets 138,000 Ghits vs 233,000 for "historian of astronomy" so I'd call it a wash. "Historians of science" is also an awkward construction. What's wrong with "Science historians"? Otto4711 (talk) 20:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It tries to use a noun as an adjective, like "England historians", "war historians", "politics historians" etc. I'll admit there's "art historians". What's awkward about "Historians of foo" anyway? Johnbod (talk) 22:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The same word can certainly function as multiple parts of speech. "Science fiction novel", for example has two words normally used as nouns functioning as adjectives but I doubt anyone has any interest in renaming Category:Science fiction novels to Category:Novels of fiction about science. Otto4711 (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's very strange that there is such a disparity in the orders of magnitude between the singular and plural versions. In my experience, Google rarely differentiates so starkly between them. In any event, to the extent that any G-hit numbers are "real", it has to be noted that a substantial proportion of the supposed hits for "Astronomy historian/s" are invalid, because they include instances where the two words are not a conjoined term, but rather two unrelated words separated by either a comma or a period. In contrast, all of the hits for "Historian/s of astronomy" can be considered to be valid.
I ran the same searches using Google Scholar and found that "historian/s of astronomy" gets a combined total of 708 G-hits, and "astronomy historian/s" a mere 31, a great many of which aren't even valid, as I just explained. ("Astronomical historian/s" gets a total of 29 hits, presumably all valid.)
Lastly, I am going to ask for input on this question from the WikiProjects (science & astronomy). Cgingold (talk) 22:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out that we also have a WikiProject History of Science now. Is that cool or what? Cgingold (talk) 22:48, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Let's see what response we get first! Johnbod (talk) 22:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, in fact I did that just before I nominated it for renaming. Cgingold (talk) 21:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Italian British footballers[edit]

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete. Kbdank71 14:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Italian British footballers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete This is an inappropriate intersection of categories. A person's ethnicity has no bearing on their occupation. – PeeJay 04:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football related deletions. – PeeJay 04:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - it also makes the allegation via category inclusion that these all have dual nationality, which is not the case. (I suspect it is actually for British footballers with Italian surnames - Peter Bonetti has no connection with Italy.) I am supposing all these are already in a nationality category and a footballer one so upmerging is not required. Category:British footballers has no other 'by descent' categories. Occuli (talk) 09:41, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per above, though if there would be enough of RS etc it could perhaps be interesting with an article on Italian born footballers representing England(/Scotland/Wales/N. Ireland) or something... I don't know if we have one for Brazilians who represent other countries? ch10 · 14:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - Per nom. Hubschrauber729 (talk) 01:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Is this British footballers of Italian descent, footballers of Italian nationality playing in Britain, Italian footballers of British descent, footballers of British nationality playing in Italy? The latter would include David Beckham and Gazza. Unless there are enough people adequately to populate any one of these four possible meanings, it should be deleted as a triple intersection. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete meaningless, and apparently used as a race/ethnicity category. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Fortean writers[edit]

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Originally closed as no consensus, relisted on March 16 per request from nominator. Original close as follows:no consensus. Recommend nominating Paranormal writers for renaming per the problems outlined in the discussion. Don't know whether or not it would be worth merging both Paranormal and Fortean categories into a new, better-named-that-people-would-understand category (I'm just too lazy to find out what "Fortean" means this morning). Kbdank71 13:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Fortean writers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:American fortean writers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Rationale: Not only are these categories substantially redundant to the Paranormal writers categories, the problem is compounded by the difficulty in specifying who is to be considered a "Fortean writer", and how those writers might be distinguished from their Paranormal cousins. Equally important is the fact that "Fortean" is not a familiar term for most readers. The net result is that maintaining both sets of categories, far from being helpful to readers, merely introduces an element of confusion, imo. This is reminiscent of the problem that was created by the existence of both Category:Anti-war activists and Category:Peace activists, which was resolved by merging the latter into the former, because the similarities were deemed to be so much greater than the differences that it didn't make sense to maintain both. Notified creators with {{subst:cfd-notify}} Cgingold (talk) 03:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Category:Fortean writers actually existed before the Paranormal writer categories. I think the scope of the former is slightly easier to work with, since "Forteana" can include anything that could be considered paranormal, plus borderline-paranormal topics like cryptids (which are dismissed by mainstream science, but probably wouldn't necessitate a paradigm shift if they were found to exist). That said, I agree that many readers may not be familiar with the term "Fortean", so I'm not really sure what to do here. Zagalejo^^^ 08:20, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as Fortean investigations of "anomalous phenomena" are somewhat different from "the paranormal". AllyD (talk) 16:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It would be very helpful if you could elaborate on how they are "somewhat different" -- and then, please try to address the concerns that I laid out in my rationale. Thanks. Cgingold (talk) 20:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, I should have been less abbreviated. Picking up the "agnostic scepticism" characterisation of the Forteans (see the Charles_Hoy_Fort#The_Forteans section), I'm dubious about whether writers on the Paranormal could be so described? There has also been a breadth of interest in Fortean Times (for example, regarding the moral panics in social work circles around "satanic child abuse" 20 yrs ago) which goes well outside any Paranormal categorisation. So can F be a subset of P? AllyD (talk) 21:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for this reply, it helps to focus the discussion. What occurs to me is that, while most so-called "Fortean writers" deal with subjects that come under the "Paranormal" umbrella, and can thus be included in Category:Paranormal writers, there may in fact be a very few who only ever write about topics that clearly fall outside of that heading. Putting that together with the fact that "Fortean" is a specialized term that's not all that widely known -- along with the problem of overlap -- it seems to me that it would be much better to have a List of Fortean writers, rather than a Category. Cgingold (talk) 21:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Category:Paranormal writers seems a poorly named category, as "paranormal" is not a quality of the writers themselves (to my knowledge, unless one takes some of their more outlandish claims seriously). If anything, it would be better renamed to something like "Writers on the Paranormal" though that is so vague as to beg the question of whether it has value? AllyD (talk) 16:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that it's not a very well-formed name. I was so focused on the issues I outlined in my rationale that I overlooked that -- which is actually pretty amusing considering that I then went on to have some fun at the expense of Category:Astronomical historians! (see above) So yes, this one could use renaming, too. Cgingold (talk) 20:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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