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

[Carcharoth]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Charles
Matthews<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

<snip>

Nice example there of where en-wiki's classification systems are better.

Some people would, of course, create a K-theory navbox template.

Does de-wiki have those navboxes?

> More comprehensibly (perhaps) [[Category:Puritanism]] was bugging me, as
> a fairly unverifiable concept in numerous cases. So I created 15 or more
> subcategories in the hope of having verifiable historical information
> the predominant factor in 17th century English religious history. I'd
> like to think I wasn't wasting my time on that.

It can be worrying to create lots of  subcategories and then have
people who have different views on categorisation come along and
propose to tear down the structure. The most annoying thing is being
unable to point to what a particular area of the category tree looked
like before you spent a few days overhauling it. People only really
see the end result, not the work done to produce that result.

A while back, I overhauled this category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic

I was most pleased with this category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_research

Mainly because I hadn't realised we had so many articles on Arctic research.

Other ones I felt were interesting creations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Industry_in_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_in_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transportation_in_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Environment_of_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Culture_of_the_Arctic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Protected_areas_of_the_Arctic

Admittedly, this one might have been a step too far:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_in_fiction

But people have been adding to it, so there is demand there.

A similarly offbeat category is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_challenges

One bugbear of mine is how terminology articles get mixed up with
specific place and event articles, so I created this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_geography_terminology

A different perspective on Arctic exploration is possible here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_exploration_vessels

This all led to a portal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Arctic

An excellent protal, in my view (though not created by me, I hasten to add).

There was even a WikiProject started, which may hopefully gather steam
again at some point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arctic

I'm particularly pleased that someone has taken on the task of
tackling this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arctic_expeditions

But to get back to categories, there was, at some point fairly soon
after that big overhaul of the Arctic category, a discussion on how
precise "Arctic" needed to be.

The discussion is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_August_23#Category:Settlements_in_the_Arctic

At one point, there seemed to be serious consideration given to
deleting all the newly created categories because it was unclear what
"Arctic" meant.

"there [are several definitions to what constitutes the arctic, which
in itself is a ground for deleting this category" [...] "there is
Category:Arctic with a host of subcats so the problem (if any) is
widespread"

Some countering views were:

"The Arctic Circle demarcates a very real physical phenomenon, and as
such is not, in fact, an arbitrary line. (Remember the "Land of the
midnight sun", etc.?) The fact that they're all categorized according
to their countries doesn't address the fact of their extreme northern
latitudes. So I think it's quite useful to have a catalog of all the
settlements in this unique region." [...] "I'll give the Arctic a good
talking too and tell it to stop crossing national boundries."

I made the rather pointed comment: "It would be good if those skilled
in categorisation could help out with constructive comments on how to
organise Category:Arctic. A centralised discussion would be preferable
to having numerous categories put up for deletion in separate
debates."

Then someone suggested a solution that led to this template being used
on the categories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:The_Arctic

I would hope that the reason the categories were saved was because
they were useful. But I fear it was only because the template
satisfied those who wanted precision in category names and
classification. And the rather obsessive need to subcategorise
everything by country, even in a category that clearly is intended to
be a trans-national, regional one, is something I still don't
understand.

The response to the queries I left at WikiProjects was varied, from
nothing, to brief, to some very useful suggestions (I've only given
three examples below):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Arthropods/Archive3#Arctic_bumble_bees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Lepidoptera/Archive3#Arctic_butterflies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Archive25#Category:Arctic_flora_and_Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arctic_and_Portal:Arctic

But the response to queries about a polar map was good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:GeoGroupTemplate/Archive_1#Polar_co-ordinates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Polar_map~

Unfortunately, the Antarctica map seems to have broken, and it seems
the template never got further than the design stage. I hope someone
chases that up at some point.

Carcharoth