On Jul 18, 2012 8:56 PM, "Carcharoth" <carcharothwp@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/18/12, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 18 July 2012 10:47, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> I remember it being referred to many years ago as long-standing
> >> practice, but I've dug around a bit in the discussion archives and
> >> can't seem to pin it down. It's probably pre-2004, maybe even pre-2003
> >> - anyone remember?
> >
> > As with almost all our category system, it's basically ad hoc. I
> > suggest if you can propose something not insane to relevant
> > wikiprojects and are prepared to do the bot work yourself, you can
> > have endless fun clicking "save" in AWB for a few hours.
>
> For 1,000,000 articles? I think it should be done, but it will take
> more than a few hours. I think it could be done very quickly, if lots
> of people got involved.

Laura and I did it for Australian sports people.  It is time consuming as category structures need to be created.

> And I don't think the cases where it is
> unclear or a matter of privacy (a vanishingly small number) should
> preclude the obvious cases being done. It doesn't seem quite right
> that the potential for arguments over edge cases and how to handle
> them sensitively, would preclude being able to search by gender.

When used in category intersections, its really useful info for gender studies.

--
JV