Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 April 8: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:10, 9 April 2019

Revision as of 15:52, 9 April 2019

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**For whom is it a defining characteristic? It's still a secondary characteristic for, ''e.g.'', [[Isabel Priestley]] and [[Ambrose Appelbe]]. [[User:Bondegezou|Bondegezou]] ([[User talk:Bondegezou|talk]]) 22:15, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

**(ec) @[[User:Rathfelder|Rathfelder]], that is a broader problem with [[WP:DEFINING]]. Attribute X may represent the pinnacle of the career of person A, but they may have served alongside Person B who did so much else at a higher level that X is a mere footnote in their life. In such cases we have to make a judgement on X's definingness across the set as a whole. In this case I agree that being on the Fabian Exec was defining for most, even for Denis Healey. But other cases are much less clearcut, and the philosophical problem is irresoluble within our current framework. In an ideal world, we might able to rank the categories applied to each article, so that readers could choose to view only the most defining, but the software doesn't allow it and we haven't enough editors to do it.--[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span>HairedGirl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 22:46, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

:::I concur with {{u|BrownHairedGirl}}'s description of the fundamental philosophical problem that a category may be defining for some people, but not others. I think the approach one has to take is on an article by article basis. For this person, a particular category is not defining and should not be added. For that person, it is and it should be.

:::This leaves us with some categories that might apply to a lot of people, but which are actually defining for only a few articles. I see a lot of school alumni categories that rarely seem defining, so I chop them from articles, but I can see they might be in certain situations.

:::In this particular case, however, while I can see that being a Fabian may meet DEFCAT, and we have a category for that, I struggle to see that this category, "Members of the Fabian Society Executive Committee‎", or indeed a related category, "Treasurers of the Fabian Society‎", are ever defining. The broader category of being a member of the Fabians seems sufficient. It's [[WP:OC]] to split that into 5 sub-categories ("Chairs of...", "General Secretaries of...", "Members of the Fabian Society Executive Committee‎", "Presidents of..." and "Treasurers of..."). [[User:Bondegezou|Bondegezou]] ([[User talk:Bondegezou|talk]]) 15:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

[[User:Bondegezou|Bondegezou]] ([[User talk:Bondegezou|talk]]) 15:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

==== Category:Springs (mechanical) ====