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Link Pulitzer winners here?

It is strange that this list article does not include a hyperlink to

Pulitzer_Prize_for_the_Novel_winners

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pulitzer_Prize_for_the_Novel_winners,

and I cannot figure out how to add it. It is apparent that this as been purposely made difficult to do, because I know how to edit other Wikipedia articles.98.67.102.118 (talk) 20:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Aristophanes68 (talk) 06:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Group ethnic novelists into one category, like a genre?

I can't decide if the ethnic categories need to be delinked from this page all together, or if they should be grouped under an "Ethnic novelists" heading, treating ethnic novels as a genre akin to mystery novels, etc. I know the parallels aren't exact, but for purposed of organization, it might make more sense to keep the subcat list mostly to genres. Just a thought. Aristophanes68 (talk) 06:35, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria?

Should this be for professional novelists? Or anyone who has written a novel? Even if only one? Mystylplx (talk) 23:30, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sexist and other discriminatory subclassifications

See the New York Times op-ed by Amanda Filipacchi, pointing out that relegating women novelists to a subcategory removes them from immediate visibility and thereby lessens their prominence. (See Amanda Filipacchi, "Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists", The New York Times, April 28, 2013 (online April 24, 2013).) It seems clear that content-based subcategories like "mystery novelists" are very different from subcategories like "black novelists". I suggest that the authors in categories of the latter type not be removed from the main list. On the other hand, putting mystery novelists in a separate list seems fairly reasonable to me. Zaslav (talk) 01:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The solution to this seems simple. Create an "American Men Novelists" subcategory. SteubenGlass (talk) 01:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This solution assumes gender binary.. what about novelists who do not identify as either gender? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.148.198 (talk) 19:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Make an "Other Novelists" subcategory then... 64.134.47.57 (talk) 22:07, 25 April 2013 (UTC) Heterosapian[reply]
I'm amazed not to see more discussion here. Thanks for the post, Zaslav! Until/unless someone provides a reason not to do so, I'm gonna participate in putting American female novelists back on this list. I realize there's a category-merge proposal, but until that's resolved, it seems clear that it's discriminatory to move all the women off into a separate list (and remove them from this one) while not doing that with the men. --Elysdir (talk) 01:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: The note at the top of the category page says "Pages in this category should be moved to subcategories where applicable. This category may require frequent maintenance to avoid becoming too large. It should directly contain very few, if any, articles and should mainly contain subcategories." If the decision is therefore made to remove all the American male novelists into their own category, then I'm fine with also removing the female ones. (I guess that would leave only those of indeterminate or non-binary gender on this page, unless we make more categories for them.) But the current situation, with female authors removed but not male authors, is clearly untenable. --Elysdir (talk) 02:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As pointed out in the New York Times op-ed www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism-toward-female-novelists.html, removing women (bur not men) the category of "American Novelists" on the basis that women (but not men) should be in a subcategory is rather blatently sexist. I suggest going through the Category:American women novelists files and putting back every instance of a woman deleted from this category. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 02:25, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, that's what I've been doing. It turns out to be easy to add a category: just log in, go to the author's page, scroll down to the category list at the end of the page, and click the "+" button. Then type in "American novelists" and click OK. --Elysdir (talk) 02:39, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, regardless of the desire to keep the size of these huge categories down, it seems like American Women Novelists needs to be a subset of American Novelists. I'm guessing this is coming about, though, not through a systematic purge of "American Novelists" (though I could be wrong) and that people editing women writer's pages are adding them to only one category. Can American women novelists be an automatic subcategory of American novelists? Sammermpc (talk) 03:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It really does seem to have been an attempt at a systematic purge; see below about user Johnpacklambert. Here's an example from the history for Kay Boyle: "00:04, 12 April 2013‎ Johnpacklambert (talk | contribs)‎ . . (11,416 bytes) (+6)‎ . . (removed Category:American novelists; added Category:American women novelists using HotCat)". Note too that on the American women novelists page, there are a lot of authors listed with last names starting with A and B, but very few for most other letters; it appears that Johnpacklambert started going through alphabetically but didn't finish. --Elysdir (talk) 17:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've notified User:Johnpacklambert that he's being talked about here. He may want to weigh in. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is a significant problem not just for the category "American Novelists", but any other categorization in Wikipedia that segregates out women or those in a minority demographic group, but keeps the non-minority males in the main category. There should be some guidance put in effect to correct all such cases. Suw7 (talk) 04:09, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is unsurprising that she could find a number of female American authors who were not included in this category... there are also many male American authors not included in this category. This appears to be a simple case of false dichotomy. It was and is entirely possible for an author's article be in both or neither of the categories of 'American novelists' and 'American women novelists'. Her description of what is happening as being that articles are being 'moved' from one category to the other simply doesn't reflect what is actually being done. An author can be added to or subtracted from each these categories entirely independently, but that op-ed makes it sound as if a given author is in just one category and the author's entire article was demoted because it was added to the category 'American women novelists'. The op-ed fails to mention that most of these pages are in a dozen or more categories each! As to the deeper meaning of the absence of a particular author from the 'American Novelists" category, if I wanted to make the argument that Wikipedia discriminated against male Science Fiction authors I could cherry pick a bunch who aren't included in this category - George R. R. Martin, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Vernor Vinge, Frederik Pohl, E. E. Smith, Larry Niven, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Scalzi, for example. Does this demonstrate a bias against male Science Fiction authors? Is Amanda Filipacchi more quintessentially an 'American novelist' than any or all of these authors? I'd answer no to both questions. --Noren (talk) 06:07, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In general it's not degrading to dual-categorize a given page, but when the second category is applied inconsistently (e.g. only to women and not men) there's a problem. The solution is to dual-categorize all these authors in their gender-specific category, or actually replace the category with the more specific one, or just put everyone back in the single main category. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The single main category includes over 3000 articles and probably needs more articles moved to subcategories, not more articles added to it. And the "segregation" that Filipacchi complains about derives from us having Category:Women writers which actually aims to provide an easy way to look for detailed information on the subject. Subcategories separate these women by century, historical period, literary movement, and nationality. I find it very useful when searching for writers otherwise overlooked. Dimadick (talk) 06:42, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is not having a subcategory for those who are "searching for writers otherwise overlooked." The problem is deleting writers from the main category. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 12:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, it wasn't a false dichotomy. It appears to have been one Wikipedian trying to move a lot of authors out of one category and into another. See notes about Johnpacklambert elsewhere on this page. As for the authors who are missing, please add categories for them too! --Elysdir (talk) 17:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So what is the consensus? Split the category by gender, or not? A status quo of separating out the women and not creating a distinct list for men is not acceptable. Avt tor (talk) 06:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I made a poll below that lays out the different options. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So create the male novelist category. Don't move the female ones back if you're going to have to move them all out again later. Don't let one drive-by columnist who evidently made no attempt to understand how wikipedia works create busywork for everyone just because she found a soapbox to stand on. --Quadalpha (talk) 06:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If there was some deliberate decision made to create the current categorization scheme please do link to the page where it was discussed. Otherwise, this seems to have been an arbitrary decision made by one or a handful of editors without consensus, which very much goes against Wikipedia guidelines. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've done minimal research, i.e. I looked at one page that was edited. I found that the editor who changed to the "American_women_novelists" category was anonymous, i.e. just an IP address, and for the one author I looked at, also added the category "Housewives". Anonymous and political just looks like vandalism to me, i.e. calling for relatively quick resolution (Undo) without a lot of hand-wringing. Avt tor (talk) 07:14, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Point taken. Though it seems a very odd and terribly inefficient way to espouse sexist views. 'I'm gonna anonymously go on Wikipedia and change the sub-categorisation! That'll learn'em.' --Quadalpha (talk) 14:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting that a single user, Johnpacklambert is responsible for the vast majority of these edits. He has made thousands of edits, removing African Americans from the category "American Television Actors", and erroneously placing female authors of young adult fiction into the American Girl Authors category (intended for books in the American Girl series). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.9.227.42 (talk) 16:18, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is somewhere between being a manufactured crisis and Catch-22. If it's important to separate out women novelists as a special group (and the insistence that this is so is how we got here), then the rules about sticking a page in one level of a hierarchy dictate this separation. Something has to give, and this rule shouldn't be it. Mangoe (talk) 20:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why we have two tasks here: first, do something to placate those we've inadvertently offended, and second, revisit our overall categorization system to find a way to present our information in a useful AND non-offensive way. -- LWG talk 20:11, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
...which is likely impossible, because offensiveness is literally subjective. I could even argue that WP:NOTCENSORED means that we don't have to overhaul our category system just because someone takes offense at it. Mangoe (talk) 20:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have to, but if we can without great harm to the project, we should, and I think this is one of those cases. -- LWG talk 20:42, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
False reasoning on several points. It's not just "someone", it's the New York Times (and other media). "Offensiveness" is not the question, discrimination is the issue. WP:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality says "Also in regards to the "ghettoization" issue, an ethnicity/gender/religion/sexuality subcategory should never be implemented as the final rung in a category tree. If a category is not otherwise dividable into more specific groupings, then do not create an E/G/R/S subcategory." So this is not a new problem, it is a situation where an established guideline exists. Not to mention the common sense value of avoiding discrimination via ghettoization. Avt tor (talk) 21:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just looking at the History for Harper Lee, the American Novelists category was deleted by User:BizarreLoveTriangle with Revision as of 01:16, 22 February 2013. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Edit war

People are adding the "American novelist" category to these pages, which is good. Appear at least one editor, User:C.Fred is reverting these edits. I posted a comment on his talk page. Avt tor (talk) 17:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be best if everyone held off on the edits while we discuss below what we actually want to do with these categories? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The current situation is clearly wrong; the vast majority of commenters agree on that. Undoing the incorrect removals from the categories seems to me to be a worthwhile thing to do while we debate what the long-term best solution should be. --Elysdir (talk) 18:15, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so this is the 'R' step of the BRD cycle. I can work with that. My preference is to follow the zero revert rule, but I have to remember that makes me a minority. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:17, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Preferred gender classification style

See above for a discussion of the classification of American novelists by gender. I'm creating this separate thread to list out the possible options for moving forward. I'm hoping we can reach a consensus as soon as possible, because the current situation is inconsistent and perhaps unfair.

Here are the possible solutions as I see them (feel free to edit this list and add more as you see fit):

Please chime in with which route you prefer. This is not a vote. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think moving the women writers into the same category with the rest will render them invisible. The reason Women writers exists is because Women's writing in English is a specific area of literary study and the category scheme allows readers to search and study the subject. Ignoring these entire area strikes me as incredibly sexist. "Women's writing. What's that? Nothing important". On the other hand no "men's writing" exists as either an article or a subject of literary studies. Though I would not be opposed to a new category of "men writers" becoming a subcategory of Category:American men by occupation which currently only includes actors, comedians, dancers, escorts, models, monks, prostitutes, singers, and sportsmen. Dimadick (talk) 07:04, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would recommend dual-categorizing both genders. Reasons: There are three contradictory impulses in the area of gender equity. (1) Opposing the tendency to treat the male as the default (for example, always identifying men-only categories as the category rather than "men whatever category"); (2) countering the male-as-default or overwhelming emphasis on male activity by highlighting female participation in category whatever; and (3) harboring doubts about whether separating only women out, as if they're always a special case of category X, is entirely desirable. By being strictly equitable, dual-categorizing both genders actually responds to all three impulses, AND makes it harder for those who won't recognize the problem to complain about "special treatment." On a side note, the very absence of a category "men's writing" and existence of a category "women's writing," as noted by Dimadick, is another artifact of the male-as-default tendency and also a reflection of an assumption that women doing anything is a special case. One day, hopefully, undergraduates will be asked analyze this Wikipedia Talk Page and associated media items and try to explain what all the fuss was about (in a five-page essay, of course). HistorianK (talk) 10:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this as most balanced. BTW, the persistence that "women's writing" being based on an "assumption that women doing anything is a special case" is driven by feminists and sexist thinkers alike. Separating women out can be to celebrate or to marginalize and even Feminists wrestle over this one. Mattnad (talk) 11:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I also want to chime in in favor of this approach. This way, people that want lists of men or women for research purposes etc can have it, without one gender (or, as some solutions might have it, two) being removed from the default category. Lateralus1587 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:15, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this approach. It doesn't relegate any author to second-tier status (based on gender), but allows somebody looking for writing specifically by a man or woman to find it. Aonyx (talk) 20:33, 25 April 2013 (UTC)\[reply]
HistorianK speaks for me, except more lucidly. Serpyllum (talk) 22:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this makes sense as well Egret (talk) 00:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd say (in order of preference) one category, dual categorization of both genders, or diffusion of both genders. Just singling out women authors reinforces the assumption that authors are men by default. To make the category smaller, authors should be moved into subcategories based on characteristics of their novels (such as the genre subcategories that already exist) wherever possible. But moving authors into subcategories based on personal characteristics (gender, ethnicity, height, or whatever) isn't appropriate. Klausness (talk) 11:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd argue for dual categorization of both, for the reasons HistorianK lays out above. "American women writers" is a useful category, but it should not come at the expense of moving women out of "American writers," and there's no reason not to give men the same treatment here. 152.160.99.172 (talk) 11:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll go with dual categorize women novelists. There are people who have a scholarly interest in looking up women writers, so simply merging them back into the parent category and deleting the women novelist category will frustrate that search. Keeping the category makes sense: the point of an encyclopedia is to be useful, and if people find the category useful, it should stay. However, American women novelists are still American novelists, so they should stay on that category-- leaving them out would mean that somebody doing scholarship on American novelists would be missing all the women novelists. As for whether there should be another category American men novelists, that does satisfy a sense of symmetry, but as far as I can tell, there aren't people who have scholarly interest in looking up specifically male novelists, so I don't think it's actually a very useful category.
As for the option of splitting the category into two, male and female, and deleting the main category: meh. This would be useful only if single most important thing about American novelists is whether they are male or female, and that is so important that they need to be categorized separately. But I don't think is correct. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 13:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe dual categorization is best. I'm surprised to find so many defenders of the current schema here. Whatever the intention -- even if it is to make the female writer subgroup more visible -- it is clearly sexist for male writers to be the default. If a list of American Major League Baseball players only included white players by default, confining minority players to a separate subgroup, I think we would agree that's racist. The same goes for the exclusion of women from the default category of American writers. Perhaps this kind of thing is why Wikipedia editors are 85% male. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.173.25.74 (talk) 13:17, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Diffuse them all: All three of the categories "American Novelists", "American Women Novelists" and "American Men Novelists" are so broad that (if populated with every appropriate article) they would have many thousands of entries each. I don't see why such huge categories are particularly useful. If there's some use for gigantic categories that I'm not aware of then I'd instead agree with the arguments for dual categorization. All of the articles we are discussing already have many other categories that are more specific, and I think that's where the utility for adding categories lies. (As a postscript, I don't understand why the independent and uncorrelated decisions to keep of diffuse the non-gendered generic category and the gendered ones are treated as if they are an 'either or' decision above- in principle those should be in different polls.) --Noren (talk) 13:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll vote for dual categorization -- preferably of both men and women, but that will require someone making an ongoing effort to go through the men and tag them as male novelists. I want to put in a strong objection on the grounds of logic against the "diffuse" option for women and not men, which appears to have been the implicit choice behind the set of actions that led to the controversy. American women novelists is a subset of American novelists, just as 19th century American novelists, or American mystery novelists are subsets. There's no logical argument for excluding a group from the overall list just because the sublist exists. And while there might be an argument for removing all authors from this category and making this page just a list of overlapping subcategories, in practice, it's a lot of work to do, and my guess is that people would just keep adding names back in. If you think this page is too long-- tough, it's like complaining that there are too many kinds of insects -- your objection is to the world as it is, which is what the wikipedia page reprsents. Izbit —Preceding undated comment added 14:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also support dual categorization of both, and it should be clear that any solution that leaves a list of predominantly or entirely male "American novelists" is utterly unacceptable. I deplore the remarks about "hand-wringing" above; I'll repeat this from an earlier response because it's unanswerable and I don't want it to go unnoticed:

    I'm surprised to find so many defenders of the current schema here. Whatever the intention -- even if it is to make the female writer subgroup more visible -- it is clearly sexist for male writers to be the default. If a list of American Major League Baseball players only included white players by default, confining minority players to a separate subgroup, I think we would agree that's racist. The same goes for the exclusion of women from the default category of American writers.

    Languagehat (talk) 14:15, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given the current situation, I'd prefer the "One category to rule them all" solution suggested in the poll. But this controversy is merely symptomatic of a larger problem with Wikipedia's categorization system, which was never carefully designed in the first place but instead simply grew organically. A hierarchical system for categories is, IMO, all wrong. Instead we should be focusing on broad top-level categorizations, and the software should have automatic and easy-to-use support for category intersections. For instance, an American female novelist would be included in the categories of "Novelist", "American", and "woman" (as well as whatever other categories were applicable to her specific biography). Few people would pull up categories these broad directly, but if the software supported intersections, then readers who wanted a list of all American novelists could search for articles that included both "American" and "novelist". The gender breakdowns would still be available, but only for those who wanted them. And if someone wanted to view all female novelists (not just Americans), they could use that intersection as well. Such a system would be far more flexible and extensible than what we currently have, and would help avoid unintentional bias like we've seen here. *** Crotalus *** 14:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is an excellent suggestion, which I don't recall seeing before. Is there any possibility of implementation, or is this simply some very appealing wishful thinking? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're suggesting that instead of having categories, we have tags for each article. I like this idea, but speaking as a software engineer, am skeptical unsure of the feasibility of such a large change. But in anycase, it's a great idea. Is it possible to make a suggestion to the developers? Transcendence (talk) 18:17, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual-categorize both genders. Brought here in outrage at poor meta-journalism from the Guardian covering the NYT article (on their front page, no less!) Dual categorize, per most of the arguments above. If the main list is unmanageably long, so be it - flag the top of the page with links to the more manageable sublists. I also strongly agree with Crotalus above that some level of automation and intersection should be built into categorization on WP, but I guess that's an issue for another day/another forum. DanHobley (talk) 16:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - I'm reading the comment above by User:Noren, and I find myself wondering about the usefulness of enormous categories. Would we be better served if all of these articles were sorted into categories such as "American Male Novelists born 1700-1800" and "American Female Novelists born 1920-1930"? (I'm assuming here, by the way, that the twentieth century makes sense to break up into decades, not that female novelists should be grouped by decade and male novelists by century. Also, that assumption is totally beside the point.) I see the usefulness, for research purposes, of making it easy to find novelists of a particular gender, but I don't see why the parent categories "American Male Novelists" and "American Female Novelists" should actually be populated. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:33, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The long precedent is that the intersection of females and writing is notable and classificable, the intersection of men and writing is not. I actually would argue that in some areas the fact that a man is the writer is notable though. I think children's fiction is more heavily written by women than men for example (although I could be wrong on that line, and can think of a bunch of men who wrote it off the top of my head, so it is not like men don't write notable children's fictions). However the biggest issue I see here is that whatever we do, we should do it on a much broader level. We should not limit it just to the US and just to novelists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:08, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Diffuse both genders plus diffuse to genre specific sub-cats. This is what I think we really should do. Some will say "well, whu didn't you do that before" since I was the person who did a good portion of the diffusion (although the category was created by other editors months before I added anything to it), however that was because there was no precedent for "men novelists" categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:11, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual-categorize both genders I understand the concern with enormous categories, but Wikipedia isn't print, it can handle large categories. Diffusing both genders also sends the strange message that male and female American novelists don't have anything in common. Finally, any approach that treats genders differently seems indefensible. Fitnr (talk) 18:38, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This will not be the effect if we leave them together in the sub-cats like Category:American horror novelists. I think that is probably our best move forward. The three entries in American horror novelists are in specific by gender American novelists cats and that cat, so they are in Category:American novelists two ways. As it is the one woman in that category was not moved to Category:American women novelists from Category:American novelists she was moved from Category:American women writers, apparently because the fact that Category:American fantasy writers is a subcat of Category:American novelists was the reason she was not in both.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual Categorize now, as there seems to be very little objection to this and it will remove the immediate source of ill-will towards the community. Once we've removed ourselves from the situation of defending a potentially sexist system, we can have a useful discussion about categorization in general and maybe implement some of the more novel suggestions above. -- LWG talk 19:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like to note that the root cause of the problem seems to be with how Wikipedia handles displaying members of categories. The Category system is hierarchical, which means that all members of a sub-category are ipso facto members of any parent category. However, Wikipedia doesn't display things that way, it only displays direct category members rather than displaying the full set of members. If a Category page always displayed the full set of members (both direct and sub-category), this controversy would likely never have occurred. And it would make good sense in a lot of ways. To think of another example brought up earlier, insects: if I'm looking for all members of "Insect", that should include beetles and butterflys alike, regardless of whether they are tagged at the Insect level or not. If the display and/or search by category were managed this way, the correct answer would be to always pick the most specific applicable category(ies). In doing so, the article would automatically appear in any parent category. However, given the way things currently work, I think dual-categorization is probably the best approach--it most accurately reflects what a hierarchy of categories means. eyrieowl (talk) 21:18, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual-categorize both genders, although I would be interested in the suggestion proposed above by Crotalus (although I also recognize the difficulty involved in implementing it). It just seems to be as if dual-categorizing is the fairest choice at this time.--Slon02 (talk) 23:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual-categorize both genders Based on the rationale of folks above, I think at this point the correct step is to dual-categorize. Meanwhile, we should continue the discussion on appropriate categorization. Also, since we're talking about novelists here, perhaps we should ask more members of WP:NOVELS and WP:BOOKS to chime in to this or follow-up discussions? Olegkagan (talk) 01:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Diffuse both Although I will point out that, for people who are rightfully concerned about forcing people into the gender binary, it theoretically could be American male or female novelists; male/female are sexes, men/women are genders. Also, as this could have potentially wide-ranging effects on categorization in general, there should probably be an RFC... ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual-categorize both genders -- in my personal opinion, this is the only solution that makes any sense at all. "Diffuse both" frankly reminds me of apartheid or other noxious practices. (Sorry! Just sayin' what I feel.) If the list is really too long (and it does look like it), I would much prefer to see it divided into centuries by the writer's date of death: "American ... novelists, 21st Century," "American ... novelists, 1901-2000," and "American novelists, 1900 and earlier." Those still alive at the time of writing obviously be 21st Century. If necessary, the 20th-Century Novelists could be further subdivided into "American... Novelists, 1901-1950" and "1950-2000," or even by decade if really necessary. --Potosino (talk) 02:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dual-categorize both genders - Whatever is done, it must be done equally to all listed articles. Honestly, a vote or an executive decision needs to be done here. We can't just edit war over it. EvergreenFir (talk) 02:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • ^Four categories 1) American novelists. sub-cat A) Male novelists, B) Female Novelists -- overcomes systemic bias, makes finding people easier and why not help users more easily find those they are looking for. C) Also, appropriate would be transgenderd category since gender is not exclusively a binary consideration. Calicocat (talk) 04:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancy to List of novelists from the United States?

This page seems to overlap substantially with List_of_novelists_from_the_United_States. Is there a reason for that? Should they be merged? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sinusoidal (talk • contribs) 13:24, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sub-category names

One of the oddest parts of this category is it has a lot of sub-categories, that might not work as sub-categories. We have for example Category:American mystery writers as a sub-cat. However were all mystery writers novelists? If so, than we should not have people in both categories. In fact, we already have a workable solution with List of novelists from the United States, which maybe we should rename List of American novelists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rewriting the policy?

Many editors seem to be shooting off, intent on reworking the whole way WP categories work. The guidelines say that categories are set up on a tree-based system: " each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs". That's the idea behind the system of categorisation. The 'American novelists' cat should fit in with the guideline - why should an exception be made here? Categorisation has its problems but focusing on one small corner outside the context of the cat system is daft and a knee jerk reaction to media coverage. Span (talk) 21:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Who decides what is the smallest unit of specificity to which articles should be categorized? Can you point out a policy with regards to that, or is it a matter of common sense and consensus? Transcendence (talk) 21:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The point of the policy is that if an article is in a sub-category of some category, it shouldn't also be in the category (because that's just repetitive, and useless). Noel (talk) 01:40, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • So, the guideline says to place a page "in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs". Super, but that doesn't address which categories should exist in the first place. If a "women" subcategory exists for some category of people, but no "men" subcategory, then we get a situation where the parent category is populated by all men. That's not an intended consequence, and a lot of people seem to be agreeing that it's undesirable. Isn't that the situation? -GTBacchus(talk) 22:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Perhaps we can also use this moment to discuss "ethnic" novelists being ghettoized into subcategories, while White novelists are listed under the primary category? groupuscule (talk) 22:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Agree with your points, GTBacchus (and Groupuscle). Good summary of current situation. I think this issue could do with feeding back up the chain to higher admin levels of WP, since as seems to be the coalescing view, the framework of how lists are assembled seems to be funneling us to outcomes that aren't really satisfactory. I lack enough of a knowledge of WP structure to do this myself, though. DanHobley (talk) 23:41, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I would submit that {{Distinguished subcategory}}, or else a new and more specific template, should be applied to all such subcategories. There are plenty of non-diffusing subcats on Wikipedia, and this really shouldn't be all that controversial. -- Visviva (talk) 01:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are few ways to tell that a category is non-diffusing. Also, I think people are ignoring that at some level if we do not difuse we end up with way to large categories. We also end up with lots of categories on some articles. Neither of these situation are helpful. John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:07, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • This problem has come up before. And this guideline addresses it: Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender,_race_and_sexuality. Among other things, it says, "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic." and "As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest, though it does not need to be balanced directly against a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male by default. Both male and female heads of government should continue to be filed in the appropriate gender-neutral role category."
Now, a few opinions: 1) "Overpopulated" categories aren't a bad thing. And it would be much easier to provide some navigational tools to work through the long categories than to deal with the divide-and-hunt strategy that users need to follow once a category is split. (Am I looking for writers or novelists? A woman or a man? What is C.S. Lewis? A.S. Byatt? George Eliot?) 2) The identity category groups (Women writers) probably don't need the same genre-related specificities as the generic categories. So while we may have American novelists/American short-story writers/American mystery writers/etc, we needn't replicate all of those divisions into the "women" and "men" categories. If there's a secondary literature on the category, then fine. And even then gender-plus-genre-plus-country is excessive: Women science fiction and fantasy writers doesn't need to be broken up by country.
And one process request: If your arguments are about our filing system, and not about how users access human knowledge, please get over it. Wikipedia is mostly visited by readers, not editors. It's our job to make their lives and visits easier, not to make ourselves happier about the simplicity of our filing system.--Carwil (talk) 03:29, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

*On thinking about this more, I think we should not subdivide novelists by gender. Instead I think we should subdivide fiction writers by gender. There is a large overlap in short story writers and novelists. I think a gender Category:American female fiction writers works, but divisions for novelists and short story writers is a step too far.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:36, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sub-category rename

I am wondering if people would prefer we rename Category:American romantic fiction writers to Category:American romantic fiction novelists or if we should create the later as a sub-category of the former. I am going to see if I can get an insight on whether any person in the category did not write a novel.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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