[WikiEN-l] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist

[Carcharoth]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Andrew Gray<andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
> 2009/8/9 Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>:
>
>> So all the biographies of women could be tagged "woman"? That would
>> work, but only if the "woman" tag wasn't applied to other things as
>> well. Maybe you would have to have "woman" + "biography"? Even then,
>> it might not be exact. And then you would have "adult", "boy", "girl",
>> "child", "male", "female".
>>
>> Tags and categories are different. Ideally, you would have both, or a
>> clear of idea of what would be "primary" tags (what we call
>> categories) and what are descriptive tags.
>
> This is similar to what de.wp use, I believe:
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman
>
> [[Kategorie:Literatur (20. Jahrhundert)]]
> [[Kategorie:Literatur (Englisch)]]
> [[Kategorie:Autor]]
> [[Kategorie:Pulitzer-Preisträger]]
> [[Kategorie:Journalist]]
> [[Kategorie:Person im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg]]
> [[Kategorie:US-Amerikaner]]
> [[Kategorie:Geboren 1912]]
> [[Kategorie:Gestorben 1989]]
> [[Kategorie:Frau]]
>
> Note that in English, we'd consider most of these very high-level
> categories, and indeed:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman
>
> [[Category:1912 births]]
> [[Category:1989 deaths]]
> [[Category:American Jews]]
> [[Category:American military writers]]
> [[Category:Historians of the United States]]
> [[Category:German-American Jews]]
> [[Category:Jewish American historians]]
> [[Category:Morgenthau family|Barbara Tuchman]]
> [[Category:Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners]]
> [[Category:Radcliffe College alumni]]
> [[Category:World War I historians]]
>
> Almost all of those are *much* more specific categories - you wouldn't
> get a "Historians of the United States" or "American military writers"
> category in German, and you wouldn't get "Authors" or "Women" in
> English.
>
> Though, that said, it's very interesting to note that they each
> reflect entirely different aspects. In German, being a writer is
> emphasised. In English, the writing is dealt with more by subject
> matter (...military writers / ...historians), and the Jewish
> background is emphasised as much if not more than the nationality. A
> German reader finds out about the Spanish Civil War; an English reader
> finds out about Radcliffe.

Very interesting. Particularly that the German Wikipedia uses "Woman"
as a category. It looks like my idea isn't so crazy after all.

Carcharoth