User talk:Noleander/sandbox/6

Mentioning category:Freemasons

It is never a good idea to use ongoing issues as examples in an RFC... .. doing so opens the door to accusations of "stealth canvasing" and/or "editing policy to win debates elsewhere", even when that is not the intent. Category:Freemasons and thes various sub-cats associated with it are still the subject of ongoing CfD discussions, so we should probably not use it as an example in the RfC. Blueboar (talk) 16:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense. I'll try to find some other, less active, examples. Or maybe college alumni and EagleScouts are sufficient? --Noleander (talk) 17:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Another issue

Another issue that you might want to raise in your RFC is the lack of clear guidance as to what constitutes "Standard biographical information" (and what does not). I think most would agree that birth/death dates and ethnic/national heritage would qualify as "Standard biographical information"... but I think that there is a lot of disagreement once you start to go beyond that. For example, does membership in civic/fraternal groups qualify as "Standard biographical information" or not? I have seen comments saying both yes and no on that question. And then there are the joined-together cats... Category:Jews would probably qualify as "standard"... Category:Country music performers probably would not... but there seems to be a grey zone when it comes to something like: Category:Jewish country music performers. Blueboar (talk) 17:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe it would be best to proceed in to steps: (1) this RfC which should be fairly benign; and (2) a 2nd RfC which tries to refine the definition of "standard biographical information". This hypothetical 2nd RfC would probably be more controversial, so if it were merged with (1), the whole thing might get bogged down in a mire, and nothing would get accomplished. Also, the comments provided by editors in RfC 1 might provide insight into the best way to proceed with RfC 2 (or whether RfC 2 should even happen or not). --Noleander (talk) 17:23, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that all these things are intertwined. You can't really talk about one aspect of categorization without getting into all the others. Blueboar (talk) 17:29, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. Maybe I can start the RfC and mention the "standard biographical information" as an ancillary issue, and see if the community wants to go down that path. --Noleander (talk) 18:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Wider issue

Hi Noleander, looks like this is a sterling effort in detailing some of the issues with current guidelines and practice; however, I wonder if a taking a slightly wider view might help. One thing that strikes me is that OCAT has a significant role in defining the category system, and yet, from reading CAT and in particular CAT#Overview, it's not obvious why OCAT exists. CAT#Overview states that the central goal is etc. etc. but it doesn't mention any other goals, or give any indication of how differing categorizations could be compared regarding the extent to which they meet (or otherwise) the central goal. Editors often assume that the category system is an attribute database, with the more attributes in the database, the better: while the 'defining' requirement implies that this is not in fact the case, it might be better if it were stated more explicitly. The cat. FAQ asks "What is the purpose of categories?"; unfortunately, the given response goes no way in actually answering this question. If CAT were to lay out a clearer set of goals (or pillars, etc.), then I'd expect that CFD traffic, and the need for other guidelines (such as COP and perhaps even OCAT) would be much reduced; OTOH, trying to fine-tune the details of the system, without clear goals in place, might not be a satisfying experience. One possible outcome of raising the question at a higher level is that it might be seen that there is benefit in distinguishing between categories and attributes, but allowing both. Cheers, Aquegg (talk) 08:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. Yes, I agree that the relationship between CAT and OCAT could be clearer. It is obvious that at some point in the past, too many trivial or unreasonable categories were getting created, and the WP community fabricated OCAT to slow things down and limit the categories. So, yes, there is some high-level policy that categories are only to be used for important, encyclopedic indexing, not for every "attribute" a reader can think of. On the other hand, this RfC has a very limited purpose of addressing the inclusion of persons into categories, and the confusion that often results when the person just happens to be in the category (e.g. college alumni) ... this is an apparent exception to the DEFINING rule (and to COP#N). This RfC is limited to addressing that focused issue. Maybe after this RfC is finished (and it goes well) we can consider other RfCs related to OCAT. If an RfC gets too broad, it is more likely to fail to accomplish anything. --Noleander (talk) 10:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)