The thing is that if someone is in a subcategory they are then taken out of the category. So, if the subcategories are applied, nearly everyone should be removed from the higher category such as American novelist. Obviously this was not thought through well. If there is to be a female novelist category there must be a male novelist category. This will become more and more evident as time passes and situation equalizes.
Obviously we need to quit arguing and change it. Either a man or a woman mystery writer would be in both a gender category and a genre category, if we are to have gender categories.
Fred
That doesn't necessarily follow. Surely female American novelists
should appear in both categories.
On 25 Apr 2013 23:14, "Sarah" slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net
wrote:
What subcategories would American men novelists go into? of course
women
would also go into them. By centuries would be one set of
subcategories;
and genre: mystery, western, adventure, fantasy, etc.
Hard to see this as a deliberate slight.
Fred
Fred, the point is that, if "American women novelists" is to be a
subcategory, then "American male novelists" would have to be a subcat too.
Otherwise the "American novelists" category would be default male,
which is
apparently what happened.
Sarah _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 26 April 2013 05:19, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Obviously we need to quit arguing and change it. Either a man or a woman mystery writer would be in both a gender category and a genre category, if we are to have gender categories.
The German Wikipedia does these things differently, and I once met a German who thought our approach is plain "wrong". I.e. we should have categories like Male, Female, and presumably XYY and so on (let's not not be pedantic). Then, and this is the killer, if you want to research "American female novelists" all you have to do is intersect the category Female with the category "American novelists" (or the categories American and Novelist, who cares, Venn diagrams are good). To do that, run the Catscan 2.0 tool on the toolserver...
Sadly the toolserver these days is down more often that it should be. But wait, the cavalry is coming. Real soon now Wikimedia Labs will be available.
I suggest, seriously, that the tech side could be taken into account here as driving what people can get out of the category system, and so what we want to put into it. It is part of a research resource, not a place for attitudes.
Charles
On 26 April 2013 05:19, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
The thing is that if someone is in a subcategory they are then taken out of the category. So, if the subcategories are applied, nearly everyone should be removed from the higher category such as American novelist. Obviously this was not thought through well. If there is to be a female novelist category there must be a male novelist category. This will become more and more evident as time passes and situation equalizes.
This is normally the case, but there's an explicit exemption for gender: at least in theory, single-gender categorisation (where we have just "female" without a corresponding "male" category) should not be "exclusive", and people should be categorised in both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_rel...
Removal from the main category should (again, an aspirational "should") only occur when we are completely splitting it into gender subcategories.
"Do not create separate categories for male and female occupants of the same position, such as "Male Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom" vs. "Female Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom"." would seem to cover not creating such categories as women mystery writers.
Fred
On 26 April 2013 05:19, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
The thing is that if someone is in a subcategory they are then taken out of the category. So, if the subcategories are applied, nearly everyone should be removed from the higher category such as American novelist. Obviously this was not thought through well. If there is to be a female novelist category there must be a male novelist category. This will become more and more evident as time passes and situation equalizes.
This is normally the case, but there's an explicit exemption for gender: at least in theory, single-gender categorisation (where we have just "female" without a corresponding "male" category) should not be "exclusive", and people should be categorised in both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_rel...
Removal from the main category should (again, an aspirational "should") only occur when we are completely splitting it into gender subcategories.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 4/26/13, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 26 April 2013 05:19, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
The thing is that if someone is in a subcategory they are then taken out of the category. So, if the subcategories are applied, nearly everyone should be removed from the higher category such as American novelist. Obviously this was not thought through well. If there is to be a female novelist category there must be a male novelist category. This will become more and more evident as time passes and situation equalizes.
This is normally the case, but there's an explicit exemption for gender: at least in theory, single-gender categorisation (where we have just "female" without a corresponding "male" category) should not be "exclusive", and people should be categorised in both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_rel...
Removal from the main category should (again, an aspirational "should") only occur when we are completely splitting it into gender subcategories.
Yes, but if you try and explain the concept of something being in two categories at the same time to people not familiar with Wikipedia's categorisation system, and who are only looking at one of the categories and getting all upset, it can be difficult. There is a valid point that those looking at one category based on gender (let's say female) will think that the 'main' category won't contain male and female.
Unless the category page explicitly states at the top in the 'description' part of the page, and in a prominent fashion, that the main category does and should contain both genders, and that the female subcategory is a convenience when a particular area has been studied in gender terms.
Personally, I think the de-wiki way is the better way, and the categorisation system needs to adapt to intersection possibilities.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_intersection
That's an old proposal, but is it becoming more feasible now?
Carcharoth
On 26 April 2013 12:15, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_intersection That's an old proposal, but is it becoming more feasible now?
As I vaguely recall, the main barrier to treating categories as tags in the past was that MySQL was terrible at it and it would have crippled performance. (I have no idea if MariaDB is better, but I have no reason to think so.) Hence the workaround with sending the functionality off to the toolserver. It's really annoying because cats-as-tags would be perfect for Commons.
- d.
If only there were some kind of editable data store project being worked on that could store this kind of metadata in a centralised location… <grin>
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
On Friday, 26 April 2013 at 13:07, David Gerard wrote:
On 26 April 2013 12:15, Carcharoth <carcharothwp@googlemail.com (mailto:carcharothwp@googlemail.com)> wrote:
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_intersection That's an old proposal, but is it becoming more feasible now?
As I vaguely recall, the main barrier to treating categories as tags in the past was that MySQL was terrible at it and it would have crippled performance. (I have no idea if MariaDB is better, but I have no reason to think so.) Hence the workaround with sending the functionality off to the toolserver. It's really annoying because cats-as-tags would be perfect for Commons.
On 26 April 2013 15:24, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
If only there were some kind of editable data store project being worked on that could store this kind of metadata in a centralised location… <grin>
Quite a good if cryptic comment about Wikidata. I suppose it is encouraging to think that the system as a whole is far from optimised yet.
I have read a couple of blogs now by experienced women Wikipedians advising a sense of proportion here.
Charles
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 6:18 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 26 April 2013 05:19, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
The thing is that if someone is in a subcategory they are then taken out of the category. So, if the subcategories are applied, nearly everyone should be removed from the higher category such as American novelist. Obviously this was not thought through well. If there is to be a female novelist category there must be a male novelist category. This will become more and more evident as time passes and situation equalizes.
This is normally the case, but there's an explicit exemption for gender: at least in theory, single-gender categorisation (where we have just "female" without a corresponding "male" category) should not be "exclusive", and people should be categorised in both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_rel...
Removal from the main category should (again, an aspirational "should") only occur when we are completely splitting it into gender subcategories.
That makes sense. It's not how categories are always handled, however. And when there is only one gendered category, it is predominantly female. For instance, looking at the subset of these where the category name starts with "male" or "female": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sj/Gendered_categories
The rare exceptions are categories whose members are predominantly female. For instance, you can see the reverse gender bias with beauty pageants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Male_beauty_pageants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Beauty_pageants
SJ