First of all naming a category Criminals violates NPOV. Change it to something like People convicted of crime by a court. Then create any (objective and NPOV) subcategories you like and categorise articles into these. However we do not restrict categorisation into a parent category, such articles have to be manually recategorized.
Molu
On Wed, 10 May 2006 12:35:37 -0700, jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
I would like to hear your opinion on these categories and their compliance with [[Wikipedia:Categorization of people]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people)
My concern is that people are using Category:Criminals // Category:American Criminals as a way to push negative POVs aginst such persons (regardless if the person is alive or dead). The reason for my concern is that it indiscriminately group people as diverse as person that was convicted from stealing a pair of jeans at Wal- Mart with serial killers, rapists and the like.
See for example the bio of [[Ron_Karenga]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Ron_Karenga). In his biography it is described that "in 1965, and in 1971 was convicted of felony assault of two of the group's female members, for which he spent time in prison", so he was added to the Category:Criminals. That IMO, is not acceptable.
One possibility would be to restrict the addition to people to the main category "Criminals" and request that people are added to a specific sub-category of[[:Category:Criminals]]. And if such sub- category does not exists, either to create a new subcat, or simply not adding a category.
I am interested to hear what other editors think on this matter, and what can be done to curtail abuse of this category.
-- Jossi
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On May 11, 2006, at 12:19 AM, Molu wrote:
First of all naming a category Criminals violates NPOV. Change it to something like People convicted of crime by a court. Then create any (objective and NPOV) subcategories you like and categorise articles into these. However we do not restrict categorisation into a parent category, such articles have to be manually recategorized.
Molu
Would you be kind enough to suggest moving [[:Category:Criminals]] to [[:Category:People convicted of crime]]?
-- Jossi
On 5/11/06, jf_wikipedia@mac.com jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
Would you be kind enough to suggest moving [[:Category:Criminals]] to [[:Category:People convicted of crime]]?
-- Jossi
And likewise renaming all the subcategories, and sub-sub-categories?
What about people who were never convicted? Was Lee Harvey Oswald ever posthumously convicted of murder? If not, do we have to take him out of [[Category:Murderers]], now renamed to [[Category:People convicted of murder]]? Or maybe it should be renamed [[Category:People who either were convicted of murder or who otherwise are believed by the vast majority of people to have committed murder]]?
Sometimes I wonder whether categories were ever a good idea to begin with. They were certainly implemented horribly.
Anthony
On 5/11/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Sometimes I wonder whether categories were ever a good idea to begin with. They were certainly implemented horribly.
I have my own reservations, but mostly because they are used to both categorise and tag. "Countries in Europe" is a category, in everyday parlance. "Living person" or "Scientology" are not - they're tags, or descriptors, or classification codes but you would never browse "living persons", and you would be hard pressed to define the edges of what should or shouldn't go into "Scientology".
OTOH, what would be great about categories would be being notified when new items were added to them - but that doesn't seem to be possible.
Steve
On May 11, 2006, at 12:26 PM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Sometimes I wonder whether categories were ever a good idea to begin with. They were certainly implemented horribly.
Categorization of things and places work most of the time.
Categorization of people by their trade, their nationality, etc. work most of the time.
Categorization of people that add some kind of value judgement, do not work, are open to abuse, vilification and POV pushing.
I would argue that Categories and Lists in Wikipedia, are incubators of POV. I tried with other editors to make sense of lists at [[WP:LISTS]]. maybe we need something similar for Categorization of people.
-- Jossi
On 5/11/06, jf_wikipedia@mac.com jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
I would argue that Categories and Lists in Wikipedia, are incubators of POV.
At least with lists you can explain things. With categories it's either in or out.