[[:file:DermO'N.jpg]] has been nominated for deletion -- [[Special:Contributions/70.24.250.103|70.24.250.103]] ([[User talk:70.24.250.103|talk]]) 03:51, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
[[:file:DermO'N.jpg]] has been nominated for deletion -- [[Special:Contributions/70.24.250.103|70.24.250.103]] ([[User talk:70.24.250.103|talk]]) 03:51, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
==Category:People by city in Ireland==
'''[[:Category:People by city in Ireland]]''', which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for merger. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at '''[[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 April 12#Category:People by city in Ireland|the category's entry]]''' on the [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion|Categories for discussion]] page.<!-- Template:Cfd-notify--> Thank you. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span>HairedGirl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 10:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
I've recently been expanding the Ulster loyalism article. As part of this, I added a section on collusion with the security forces. However, one editor has removed it several times. We have been discussing it on the talkpage but with only two editors involved the discussion is going nowhere. We need input from other editors. ~Asarlaí14:43, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Despite putting my points on this matter to the contending editors a number of times, and explaining them with the help of WP essays, they offered no argument or response beyond "I think it should be in there" and now seem to be ignoring me.--Shipyard Special (talk) 12:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Associating modern administrative counties with pre-1994 topics
One editor, User:Laurel Lodged, who has a long history of controversial edits in relation to the modern administrative counties, has recently recommenced edits that seek, for example, to identify Irish sportspeople as being "from" the modern administrative county that they would have been born in had they been born many years later. The rugby player Cecil Boyd, for example, who was born in County Dublin 119 years before Fingal was created, has been designated by Laurel Lodged as being "from Fingal". Does anyone out there support this anachronistic rewriting of Irish articles? Brocach (talk) 22:22, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Irrelevant. Ireland is not Palestine. Stekelis lived more than half of his life in Palestine, to where he emigrated in 1928. He agitated for the creation of the state of Israel and lived in its territory from its creation in 1948 until his death in 1967, as a citizen of that entity. Wikipedia therefore describes him as a Russian Israeli. Cecil Boyd, on the other hand, died decades before Fingal was invented. He did not advocate the creation of Fingal, never lived in a place called Fingal and died without ever imagining that the county of his birth would be partitioned for administrative purposes in 1994. Brocach (talk) 22:55, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not true. The pointless category "Sportspeople from Fingal", created by Laurel Lodged, has become empty only because Laurel Lodged's edits to existing articles in order to shunt them into that category were corrected at source. Brocach (talk) 22:55, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now that this cat has been nominated for deletion, you should not be removing people, but should feel free to add people if they were indeed born within the boundaries of current Fingal.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're basically asking if categories should ever be anachronistic? My answer would be, absolutely. Also, please note, her change is not to say "Cecil Boyd was born in Fingal in XXXX" - this is just a category change, not an article change. Articles can be subtle about these things, but categories are a blunt tool.
For example, take Category:People from County Mayo, which is chock full of people like Walter Liath de Burgh, who was born 200 years before the county boundaries were fixed. Yet, the official website has no issues with this anachronism, happily discussing what was happening in neolithic county mayo [1], and noting only as follows: "To speak of the 'history of County Mayo' before the latter part of the 16th century is in a sense anachronistic. For the county, as such, did not exist before Queen Elizabeth's Lord Deputy in Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, and his subordinates undertook the shiring of Connacht about the year 1570." Thus, note the anachronism, and move on!
Think about it like this - if you're serious about ridding the category system of anachronism, you can try to fix this problem, and spend years building up an incredibly complex and sophisticated category tree that correctly categorizes everything by the thing it was called at the time (so Walter would be in "People from X", whatever county mayo was called at the time), and then if the county gets renamed or the administrative boundaries shift, you would dig up the records and ensure that people who were born after the shift are thence correctly categorized. It's absolutely hopeless, and much better to accept anachronism and not get worked up about it, because if you saw the amount of anachronism just in the Ireland tree alone it would drive you batty. So, I agree with Laurel Lodged on this particular one - assign people to categories based on modern administrative boundaries, even if such boundaries didn't exist at the time the person was born. Another separate question is whether it's worth breaking down such categorizations (rather than leaving it at broader geographic areas), but I won't comment on that - once it is agreed that you will categorize people based on subdivisions X, Y, and Z, I would not worry in the slightest about what year they were born in.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:53, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is a different point here, which is interesting - which is that Category:Sportspeople from County Dublin still remains, as a sort of container category - even if County Dublin is no longer an administrative county. A fair argument could be made to say, keep the County Dublin category, but only as a container, and populate all of the people/things/etc in the lower-level categories. I guess again the broader discussion needs to be had - do you categorize people based on the "traditional" counties, the current "administrative" counties, a combination of both, etc? Again focusing on poor Cecil is useless here, we need to come up with a general rule.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Our friend Walter Liath de Burgh was born, raised, and died in a place which was never called County Mayo, and he never asked for it to be called County Mayo, and he never even knew such a terrible name would be foisted on his homeland in the future. Are you ready to fix that problem as well, or is there some other recency issue/bitterness at the dissolution of County Dublin? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:12, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
De Burgh was no friend of mine; but in terms of Irish county names, the place where he was from has only ever, since the invention of counties, been identified with the Irish county of Mayo. Boyd, by contrast, was born, lived and died while his place of birth was in an Irish county called Dublin. Brocach (talk) 23:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Or take Dorothy Dermody - as I understand it, North Tipperary was not a full county until ~2011, but she is still classified as being "from" there. Jack Dunne is from Category:Gortnahoe-Glengoole hurlers which is part of Category:Sportspeople from North Tipperary - and he was born in 1858! (long before the initial split of Tipperary.) If your are serious about your crusade to rid the tree of anachronistic categories for places people are from, you have a long road ahead of you. I didn't have to search long to find those examples, and could find hundreds more.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:23, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You were lucky to find the Gortnahoe-Glengoole example Obi as Brocach has been busy expunging all such clubs from North Tipperary and South Tipperary. Expect it to disappear soon as part of his campaign. Laurel Lodged (talk) 23:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The length of the "crusade" is largely due to reclassifications by Laurel Lodged of Tipperary and other Irish sportspeople. Feel free to check that. In general, anyone else creating or editing bio articles about Irish people uses the 32 traditional counties to identify the "from" categories; almost no-one uses the post-1994 new admin boundaries, or the 26 district council boundaries that were created in part of Ulster. Brocach (talk) 00:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it is truly a "crusade" To Quote Churchill "we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender"Finnegas (talk) 15:39, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
comment It seems there are several different arguments at play here, which I'd like to highlight:
Whether we can put someone in a category, eg People from X, where X did not exist at the time that person was born.
Whether in Ireland, the "new" administrative counties should be used in any sort of categorization scheme, or whether the "traditional" counties should only be used.
As to #1, I have given copious examples above of how such anachronism persists in all parts of wikipedia, and consensus seems to be to accept such anachronism, as attempting to fix it would lead to no end of complications (e.g. we would have to create categories for every possible "historical" name of a given place - which would complicate the category structure needlessly). Some exceptions have been made - such as Category:People from Constantinople, but these are the exception rather than the rule. Thus, I conclude that the argument that we must avoid anachronism in general does not hold any weight or consensus.
As to #2, this is a broader question for Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland and other editors to consider. To me, it makes sense to use modern administrative boundaries in almost all cases - otherwise, you risk a certain bias towards some "traditional" notion of regional divides, with a resultant drift from reality over time. I would thus argue that, if you are dividing, that you divide by modern administrative boundaries, as these are clearly demarcated. We would not want to have some arguments over categorization based on some boundary of a county that changed in 1624, and people saying "Well, X is *really* from Y, because the boundary changed 2 days after he was born" etc. Category:Sportspeople from Fingal is currently up for deletion, so we shall also see what consensus feels about that.
Finally, as to #3, this is really the last and best argument the supporters of "old counties" may have. In the case of historical figures, we don't have a choice - we have to put them in Category:People from County Mayo, as there aren't any other cats. In the current proposed structure however, we have a choice - we still have Category:People from County Dublin and Category:People from Fingal, so you could make the argument, why do an anachronism (even if permitted elsewhere) when you can just do the more accurate categorization. I've thought of this, and my mind still comes down on the side of diffusing to the modern day cats. Otherwise, you are making a special exception because of a recent modern shift - thus there is an inherent bias, whereas my friend Walter Liath de Burgh, born long before County Mayo existed, is given no such consideration. It is also simpler, and would avoid disputes and tendentious arguments (well, the county was "called" this by some, but it didn't become official until year X, etc), to always diffuse to the most precise modern-day geographical category, anachronisms aside.
In any case, whether you agree with my conclusions or not, I hope we can continue this discussion with consideration of these three topics separately, as each one can be argued independently on its merits.
Finally, I'd like to ask if all participants can cease the edit warring which has occurred on numerous pages as a result of this - just put a stop to it, leave things where they are, and have the discussion here until we come to consensus - the edit warring is rather useless. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Adding a few examples of previous discussions on this topic, if interested
No to 1, Yes to 2, No to 3 for the following reasons (referring here to Fingal but this applies to all the newer admin counties): (1) putting in a "Fingal" category someone who died 50 years before Fingal existed is as absurd as putting Leo Tolstoy in a Soviet Union category; the more so because Fingal's existence is likely to end in the next couple of years, making it rather more transient than the USSR. Moreover, the County Dublin in which anyone born there before 1994 is "from", has continued to exist as a legal and cultural entity throughout the ephemeral existence of the purely bureaucratic construct of Fingal. (2) It would in principle be reasonable to categorise as "from Fingal" anyone born within that temporary administrative district's boundaries, i.e. from 1994 until about 2015. However it is very unlikely that a single person meeting WP notability criteria satisfies that condition. If there are lots of famous pre-teens in that part of North Dublin, I stand corrected. In either case, anyone born before 1994 in what is now Fingal was actually born in County Dublin, was not born in Fingal, and is therefore "from" County Dublin. (3) The fact of Fingal's existence doesn't mean that post-1994 births should preclude Dublin categories. County Dublin hasn't gone away, you know. The creation of Fingal and other administrative divisions did not abolish a single one of the traditional counties of Ireland, which - as the 1994 law explicitly states - remain in existence for all purposes except local government. Brocach (talk) 00:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that nobody should be in the Fingal category if born before 1994, as the county didn't exist then. County Dublin still exists are a traditional and cultural entity but was abolished in law and has had no legal basis since 1993 when the area formerly known as "County Dublin" was re-defined in legislation solely as the "Dublin Region" under the Local Government Act, 1991 (Regional Authorities) (Establishment) Order, 1993. The existence of Fingal is far from ephemeral, it is a legal entity, a county just the same as County Meath or County Kildare, check numerous Acts of the Oireachtas for this. No changes are planned to any of the Dublin Area councils in 2015/2016, on the contrary Fingal's existence will be promoted more when at the next general election the constituency of Dublin Fingal comes into being. Snappy (talk) 18:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note Brocach continues to de-populate Sportspeople from... categories even while this debate is on-going. What censure is appropriate for this behaviour? Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Response: probably the same censure as applies to those who ignore this discussion and add to the Fingal category people who plainly don't belong there, as in this edit or this one or this one. All by - need I say - Laurel Lodged. I don't quite get why it's OK to make controversial edits if you're Laurel Lodged, but wrong to revert them pending the outcome here if you're not Laurel Lodged. Brocach (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No actually It is correct procedure to populate a category which happens to be under CFD; it is incorrect procedure to de-populate it entirely, something that both Brocach and Finnegas have twice attempted. I am also amused at the co-ordinated withdrawal of the Fingal nomination from CFD. The ostensible reason was to centralise discussion. Call me cynical, but I think that it had more to do with the fact that apart from the two co-ordinators, nobody else supported the nomination. In the face of imminent failure, a late "withdrawal" offers hope for a reprieve here. I hope that members of this project will not reward such cynical forum shopping. Laurel Lodged (talk) 17:25, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Response: anyone interested should have a look at LL's recent edit history, which mostly consists of depopulating long-established "traditional county" categories to move people, or whole categories, into new "admin county" categories of his own creation, all while pretending to engage here in a discussion about whether such new categories should exist. This is an effort to create a fait accompli, just like the hundreds of controversial GAA edits by LL that had to be painstakingly reversed over a period of months. The cynicism is almost surprising. The "depopulation" complained of consists of editors correctly reverting bold edits made by LL without discussion. And for the record, I opened this topic here before the CfD discussion was started independently by another editor, so it is hardly remarkable that I should be glad to see the discussion focussed here. Brocach (talk) 18:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Response To Laurel Lodged:Yes you are incredibly cynical!! You would criticise me and Brocach if we got you a sainthood! You wanted to centeralise discussion and we withdrew our opposition to facilitate this. Finnegas (talk) 18:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Brocach and Finnegas, I rarely agree with LL about either substance or procedure, but on this occasion he is right. LL had a nasty bout a few years ago depopulating the categories for the traditional countries, but that's behind us and Brocach is wrong to say that LL has been depopulating categories; what LL has been doing is diffusing articles to more specific sub-categories, which is routine category maintenance. So long as the categories exist, they should be populated ... and if editors think they should not exist, then nominate them at CFD. And don't depopulate them just because you disapprove of them. If they are merged at CFD, the changes will be made by a bot ... and if they are kept, then they should remain populated.
Specifically, to "more specific sub-categories" created in the last couple of days by Laurel Lodged while discussions here are ongoing about whether here is any need for those categories. (There isn't.) I am disappointed in you, BHG. Brocach (talk) 22:28, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Brocach, you appear have very little understanding of how categories are created and removed. A category can only be created by one editor (there is no WIkipedia:Categories for creation), and once created, articles can be diffused into it from its parent categories.
If other editor(s) believe that the category is (as you say) not needed, then the solution is simple: nominate it at WP:CFD for upmerger (using WP:TWINKLE, or by tagging the catregory with {{subst:cfm|categ-to-be-merged-to}}). If there is a consensus to do, then a bot will perform the recategorisation .... and if there is not a consensus to do so, then a the category will stay.
What you and Finnregas have been doing is to empty try to delete the categories (by emptying them) without seeking a consensus. That's disruptive, and that's why I warn you both that if you persist, it may lead to sanctions. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 02:19, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These are categories for people-by-place, not an exercise in historical geography
I rarely agree with Obiwankenobi, but on this occasion he gets it in a nutshell: "always diffuse to the most precise modern-day geographical category".
I want to set out at greater length why there are lots of good reasons for this:
Geographical names change.
Some examples from many across Ireland:
Queen's County (1556) → County Leix or Laoighis (1922) → County Laois (later 20th century)
This gives us two choices: a) split up all geographical categories so that we can categorise according to the names applied at the time, or b) accept the anachronism and keep the categories unified.
The alternative would disrupt navigation (which per WP:CAT#Overview is the main purpose of categories). The people concerned were all from the same area, so we categorise them together because they come from the same place rather than because they come from a place which was consistently named.
Anyone who wants to avoid anachronism in categorising people by county should start by setting out in full the category structure which avoids it.
So far as I can see it would be a huge and sprawling mess of confusion, with a mass of categories for each area depending on which era we were talking about. Even if someone was masochistic enough to try devising such a structure, that's only the start of the problem. How on earth are editors going to populate these categories without access to a detailed set of historical county maps, which show all the enclaves and exclaves which used to exist? Many editors will never have heard of these former counties or be aware of the boundary changes. To take just one example, how many editors know where the boundary between Counties Dublin and Carlow was before County Wicklow was carved out of them in 1606?
Is there really an anachronism?
An assertion repeated above is that we shouldn't categorise people "by places which didn't exist when they were alive". I think that this is at best simplistic, and at worse nonsense.
As a simple example, consider Glendalough. It's still much the same place as it was 900 years ago: valley, lakes, monastic ruins, etc. Since then it has seen roads and new houses, changes to field patterns and afforestation, but it's still the same place. It's a complete nonsense to say that at any given point in that history, the place didn't exist. It has existed throughout the last 1000 years and more.
All that has changed is the label we attach to the wider area around Glendalough: it was part of the Kingdom of Lenister until the era of King John, then part of County Dublin until 1606, when it became part of the new County Wicklow. Same place, packaged differently.
Or take, Daingean. Whether we call it Philipstown, King's County or "Daingean, County Offaly", it's the same place.
That's the thing about the county names; they are just labels for places. The text of articles should use the historically appropriate terminology for that topic. But for categories, which cover a wide range of topics, why not just use the most up-to-date labelling system? It's clearly defined, unambiguous, and easily checked against current maps. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 08:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The basis of Wikipedia is that we follow the sources. I see no reason to try working out whether someone who has a source saying they were born in Tipperary was really from North Tipperary or South Tipperary. If the sports people want to say they played for one or the other based on some modern interpretation I'm not going to argue with them and I'll leave that to that other project. However here I see no reason to delete a Tipperary category and try moving people from it to one or other of the modern categories. We can have three categories and reference between them. This is getting as bad as the debate over a person who had a biography that said they came from Londonderry and there was one bunch trying to change that to Derry saying it was the city whereas there was no evidence saying whether it was the county or not before they went to America. If we follow what the sources say then that is enough as far as I'm concerned and stop trying to find 'the truth'. Dmcq (talk) 09:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the current setup is not to delete any Tipperary categories, but rather to keep Tipperary as a container (same as County Dublin), since the split was within the bounds of the county itself. And if there was someone, where one could not sort out whether they were "from" North or South, then leaving them in Tipperary would be fine. But if you know they lived their whole lives in Village X which is now in South Tipperary, then diffuse them down. I rarely agree with BrownHairedGirl, but on this occasion she gets it right - very well argued above. :) --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Obi is right. The categories for County Tipperary and County Dublin are container categories, which serve as parents for the categories by subdivision. I strongly opposed LL's attempt a few years ago to delete them, and would oppose it if tried again.
Nobody will be surprised to read that BHG and I agree on very few things. In this case, however, I entirely agree with her logic; it's cogent and compelling. Sadly, I think that it has now been the impetous to take the cause in an entirely contrary direction. Instead of deleting or upmerging to higher entities (E.g. Tipperary), Finnegas is now going to the opposite extreme - diffusing to micro levels (e.g. Category:Sportspeople from Clonsilla and Category:Sportspeople from Donabate). Extremeism, in either direction, is best avoided. Laurel Lodged (talk) 20:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is a long standing practice for diffusion in Ireland. The path is Ireland → Republic of Ireland → county. Occasionally one sees Province interposed between RoI and County, a practice of which I don't entirely agree. In any case, I have never created a "Foo in Town" or "Fooin Village" category. I have only ever created "Town" or "Village" categories. I have not engaged in the willy-nilly creation of sub-county micro-categories. Please desist in this practice. It can only land you in more trouble than you are in already. Laurel Lodged (talk) 21:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why would I be in trouble I have done nothing wrong. Please desist in your practice of creating willy-nilly categories of admin counties which does not follow "The path is Ireland → Republic of Ireland → county." Thank You Finnegas (talk) 21:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is not "classic WP:POINTy disruption". WP Pointy states"As a rule, one engaging in "POINTy" behavior is making edits which s/he does not really agree with, for the deliberate purpose of drawing opposition." It was my sole intention to demonstrate that there is an alternative to dividing the Sportspeople/People from Categories along admin conties. One can use the village or location from which they are from.I was hoping to gain support for this idea not opposition. What happened to assuming good faith?. In addition, BHG can you clarify why Laurel Lodged admin county categories are ok if the is Ireland → Republic of Ireland → county. Finnegas (talk) 20:48, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm quite sure you agree with these categorizations. Sheesh. Are you ready to divide all of Ireland, and Europe for that matter, into your people-from-a-village categories? Seriously? This is not standard practice, and you're clearly just trying to prove a point.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:07, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that this is over-categorization. Also, could Finnegas stop talking about "admin counties" as if they are some different class of county; they are not. There is no difference in Irish law between Fingal and Meath. Snappy (talk) 22:29, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously
How long do you all want to continue this? If we spend a few days here, I think we can come to a reasonable consensus - then we can go back to creating cats and categorizing things without reverts and edit wars. So please, until then, stop creating cats in this tree, and even consider to stop diffusing things until this discussion has run it's course. This stuff isn't so urgent that it needs to be rectified instantly - we can be patient.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:57, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I propose this as the basis for IMoS guidance: (1) People (& organisations, institutions, publications, etc.) who were from one of the 32 traditional counties before the creation of Fingal et al. should be categorised as from that traditional county. (2) No-one who died or left before the creation of the new counties should be categorised as being "from" such places. (3) Living people who are from an Irish county should be described according to whatever they, or reliable sources, identify as their county. Brocach (talk) 22:05, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That is not a compromise. That's just an expanded version of your original proposal at the top of the discussion.
