Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 October 29

October 29

Category:Political prisoners and detainees of China

• Propose merging Category:Political prisoners and detainees of China to Category:Prisoners and detainees of China

Nominator's rationale: Merge, as a followup to CfD September 12 discussion on 3 similar categories.
There is no neutral and objective way of determining whether a prisoner is a "political prisoner"; the concept has a long history and is widely used in many contexts, but its application is frequently subjective. There are some extreme cases where such categorisation may appear straightforward, but there are many more where the application of the "political" label is POV.

That is why Category:Political prisoners has been deleted at two previous CfDs (2008 September 17 and 2006 November 22), and by-country categories have been deleted on many occasions, most recently at CfD September 12.

If any editors are inclined to argue for keeping this category, please may I ask that they first take the time to study the previous lengthy discussions, and explain what has changed since then or why they think those discussions were deficient. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:23, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• Merge per my close of the 9/12 discussion.--Mike Selinker (talk) 17:07, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• Keep Political prisoners—people detained solely for their ideas—are different from people detained for other crimes, and there are loads of reliable sources that use this term and list these people (and thousands of others) as political prisoners. As such, this is a useful category, supported by good sources, and it aids in the navigation for a number of interested projects. And there is a neutral and objective way of determining who is a political prisoner: if a perponderance of reliable sources describe them that way and/or if they were charged for political crimes. This may be difficult for those born and raised in liberal democracies to grasp, but in China, there are laws criminalizing certain political positions and ideas. People charged under those laws are political prisoners. Ditto people detained without trial for being "counterrevolutionaries," etc. I don't think there is any dispute in reliable sources that the people listed in this category are anything other than political prisoners. Homunculus (duihua) 17:12, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

  Hmomunculus, it sounds like you are trying to have a re-run of the CfD September 12, where similar arguments were rejected. The general principle is decided; at this point the question is the narrower one of whether China should be an exception.

  I think you would do better to avoid suggesting that other editors have difficulty grasping things. The points you make about China are not unique to China: the liberal democracies" (as you call them) also criminalise some positions (e.g. racial hated in the UK, Nazism in the UK) and they also detain people without trial (e.g. at Guantanamo Bay and in Northern Ireland). Using your own turn of phrase, can you grasp that?

  As to a lack of reliable sources, are you really trying to claim that Chinese media describe these people as "political prisoners"? Or are you just reading "counterrevolutionary" as "political"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

First, don't assume that my comment above was directed at "other editors". It wasn't; it's a general observation about the attitudes of people who never had the misfortune of living under authoritarianism. Your comment was personalized, however, so I will address you now. I don't think it was at all obvious in the previous discussion that my arguments were rejected by anyone other than yourself. You've argued repeatedly that the labeling of these individuals as political prisoners is subjective and thus violation of NPOV, and it appears that you believe this consideration trumps all usefulness for the people who actually edit in this topic area. Yet neither you nor anyone else has produced evidence of reliable sources debating the application of the term to the Chinese prisoners listed. Similarly, I don't think any reliable sources could be found arguing that China's anti-sedition law—let along the labels "reactionary" or "counterrevolutionary"—are something other than political crimes. But you're welcome to try to prove me wrong—perhaps you can find a reliable source saying that Liu Xiaobo was incarcerated for something other than his political positions.Homunculus (duihua) 19:32, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Homunculus, you are discussing things with other editors, so the the plain reading of your comments is that this is where they were directed.

Your suggestion that I "believe this consideration trumps all usefulness for the people who actually edit in this topic area" is significant, because it displays two very basic misunderstanding. Firstly, please do read WP:ITSUSEFUL. And secondly, Wikipedia is created for readers, not for the convenience of some its editors. WP:NPOV is a core policy, and cannot be set aside simply because some editors find it convenient to do so. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:54, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

My apologies if offense was caused. I have read WP:ITSUSEFUL. It states: "There are some pages within Wikipedia which are supposed to be useful navigation tools and nothing more—disambiguation pages, categories, and redirects, for instance—so usefulness is the basis of their inclusion; for these types of pages, usefulness is a valid argument." As to NPOV, you keep insisting there's a violation here and that the labeling of these individuals is subjective, but have still not produced any reliable sources that would support your position. Meanwhile, loads of reliable sources call them political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. The category represents the views of the reliable sources, so I see no problem. We're just going to have to agree to disagree. Homunculus (duihua) 20:08, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

As above, navigational utility does not trump the core policy of WP:NPOV.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying what I have not produced RSs. What are you trying to do? To have a blow-by trading of references on a string of individual cases?

I'll illustrate the point with one example, that of Liu Xiaobo. He is described by the Chinese embassy in Washington as having been "convicted of the crime of inciting subversion of state power"; by Xinhaua as "a convict from China". I don't read Chinese, so I don't have access to the rest of the Chinese news media, but it's quite clear that there is more than one significant view here.

Categorising him as a political prisoner chooses one of those POVs to the exclusion of the other; but omitting from Category:Political prisoners and detainees of China wholly excludes the other POV. That is a flagrant breach of the principles of WP:NPOV ... and that's an internationally-reported high profile case. For every example of such prominence, there will be many more where there are fewer western sources, leading to a less clearcut balance ... and if the category exists, every single one of those cases becomes a POV battleground. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:00, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• You seem to think that being a "convict" and being a "political prisoner" are mutually exclusive. They are not. Liu, and others in this category, was convicted of a political crime. He is thus a political prisoner.
• The consensus in reliable sources is clear that these people are political prisoners. NPOV means representing the opinions in RS in proportion to their weight and prominence, and that's what's happening here. There is no problem. Homunculus (duihua) 21:14, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• This is getting worse all the time. It seems that unless the sources specifically says "not a political prisoner", you count that as having no weight against a source which says that someone is a political prisoner.
  By that logic, if twenty sources say "X is a criminal", and two say "X is a political prisoner", then the lack of denials means that you will claim that balance of sources label this prisoner as political.
  It seems that your version of NPOV amounts to sources which don't address the question in your terms. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:00, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

For the third and final time, calling someone a "criminal" and a "political prisoner" are not mutually exclusive. If someone is convicted under a political crime, they are both convicted criminals and political prisoners. Homunculus (duihua) 07:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

• Keep If the article shows substantial RS discussion of the person as a political prisoner or detainee, it would clearly qualify for this category--and I think almost all of the articles in the section seem to be quite clear about the matter. The most recent of the previous discussions asserted to be precedents discusses only one Chinese example, Liu Xiaobo, and asserts him without any opposition to have clearly been a political prisoner. The Sept 12 discussion did discuss China, but, as BHG said, it was asserted that China was a clear exception-- Hence this CfD. So I don't see how a mere referral to the arguments there is meaningful. We need arguments for deletion specifically based on the possible ambiguity for this instance. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC) .
  • DGG, if I understand your position correctly, it is a very odd one.
    You appear to be arguing that for one country only we should have a category political prisoners, but that we should not have similar categories for people imprisoned on allegedly-political grounds elsewhere. Is that really what you want? Or are you trying to reopen the wider question? It has to be one of the other, so which is it?
    Your claim that the question of the Chinese example was not addressed is wrong. I specifically addressed that question of high-profile individual examples, but noted that

    It's very easy to find extreme cases such as Aung San Suu Kyi or Alexander Solzhenitsyn where there is overwhelmimg agreement, but for every one of those high-profile hardcore examples there are hundreds of others where use of the term causes a huge POV dispute. For example, take any one of Bradley Manning, Leonard Peltier, Bobby Sands, Nicky Kelly, Mordechai Vanunu, Jonathan Pollard, Archbishop Makarios, and you will find that there is a consistent and reasoned set principles labeling their imprisonment as political ... and similarly consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them that label.
    The category system, with its unqualified binary choice between inclusion or exclusion, cannot present these different views in accordance with the core policy WP:NPOV, which explicitly requires us to present opposing views in a balanced way.

    
    In the specific case of Liu Xiaobo, the article says that he was imprisoned in the 1990s for "for disturbing public order” (a charge which exists in most countries) and in 2008 for "suspicion of inciting subversion of state power", a charge similar to those which exist in many other countries. Make what you will of those charges, but labelling them as "political" is just as POV as labelling it as "criminal". There is more than one view on these matters, and whichever view we personally hold, we should use the category system to apply an unqualified label of "political prisoner".
    DGG appears to be arguing that in China, none of these problems of nuance exist; that China is a unique case of a country where, unlike Russia or the Soviet Union or the United States or Chile or Argentina or South Africa or Egypt, there will rarely or never be any POV dispute as to whether someone is or is not a political prisoner. That's a weirdly extreme position to take, and a highly implausible one. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Liu Xiaobo is not exceptional among political prisoners; he's just very well known. About half the people in this category were charged under the same anti-subversion law as Liu. Many of the others were imprisoned for even more overtly political crimes. Where are these "consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them" the political prisoner label? Again, we're talking about China, not about Bradley Manning et al. Homunculus (duihua) 20:40, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

You seem to reckon that because it's China, it's fine to exclude certain POVs, and to rely on the preponderance of non-Chinese sources. This logic is a million miles from WP:NPOV.

The principles for denying the Chinese prisoners the political label is simply that per my refs above they were convicted of charges such as trying to overthrow the state, which is a crime in many countries (I wish it wasn't a crime, but that's my POV) ... and the Chinese media and govt do not agree that they are political prisoners. We have already decided, in repeated discussions, that "political prisoner" categories should not exist either in general or for other for other specific countries because of the category systems... so why exactly do you want to make China an exception? What precisely is it that makes you think that it is acceptable for us to have "political prisoner" categories for some countries but not for others?

Homunculus, you come across as someone committed to a set of political values that places a high priority on freedom of expression. That's fine, and it's a widely-held POV which I happen to share ... but it it is not a neutral POV, and in this case it is leading you down a path of trying to use the category system as a vehicle to trumpet one political perspective. If you were genuinely seeking a neutral approach to categorising this people, there is a very simple solution: categorise them according to the charge under which they were convicted, rather than by a value-judgement. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I am not at all opposed to having this category for other countries where appropriate (the Soviet Union is a good example). But I generally don't like staking positions on topics that I don't know too much about, so I'll leave that debate to the editors active in those topic areas. The point I'm making—and what I think DGG was trying to convey—isn't that China is exceptional. It's just that we should assess things on a case-by-case basis, and this discussion is about China.Homunculus (duihua) 21:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

You are trying to have it both ways.

If China is not exceptional, why are you arguing for it to be treated as an exception to the 6-year-old principle that we do not categorise people as "political prisoners"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:52, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

There is no such principle. Wikipedia is not governed by precedent, and consensus can change. Actually, It already did: in the previous CfD, there were 3 votes to delete the categories, and 6 votes to keep them.[1] Right or wrong, the closing admin's decision to delete related categories for other countries did not reflect consensus. Homunculus (duihua) 00:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like you are vote-counting, but WP:NOTAVOTE. The keep arguments included the editor who asserted this argument also applies to people sent to Gulag on official political charges, like "spies, terrorists, saboteurs". If we go down that route, then every convicted spy would be categorised as a political prisoner, as would everyone convicted of an offence related to terrorism. That's gonna go down really well with our American readers, isn't it?

The question of exceptionalism is not complicated, so let me spell it out simply. There are two possible approaches here:

1. We take a view on whether or not we have a global category for political prisoners, which may be sub-categorise as appropriate by country. That way either a) no prisoners anywhere get categorised as political, or b) any prisoner in any country can be categorised as political depending on the sources. Whatever the merits of either approach, that allows us to categorise prisoners from all over the world according to the same consistent set of principles.
2. We decide that some prisoners of some particular countries may be categorised as "political", while prisoners of other countries may not.

Which approach do you support? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I support the first option, but I don't think this discussion should be a referendum on the broader question. These categories should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.Homunculus (duihua) 01:23, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Reply That's a self-contradictory response. Either you support a general decision on whether we allow the categorisation of people as political prisoners, or you support a case-by-case approach to the by-country categories.

Note that the global Category:Political prisoners and detainees has already been deleted here, and has not been taken to DRV.

If we believe the first part of Homunculus's reply -- that zie supports a decision on the principle whether or not we have a global category for political prisoners, which may be sub-categorise as appropriate by country -- then Homunculus should be !voting to deleted this category in order to be consistent with the global decision.

This is a central point in this discussion, and it needs to be answered. C'mon, Homunculous -- which is it? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:00, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I favor a global category, and believe that it should include sub-categories by country when the reliable sources support that classification. The reason I've been reluctant to allow myself to be dragged into the expanded debate with you is that it allows you to go into lengthy, off-topic theoretical debates without having to answer for the undeniable fact that there are political prisoners in China. You got the category for political prisoners in the USSR deleted (along with the global category) by pointing to the controversial status of American political prisoners. Those things should have been assessed separately.Homunculus (duihua) 14:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Homunculous, either you have not been reading what I have written, or you are trying to misrepresent me. I have never disagreed with you that there are political prisoners in China. There are also political prisoners in many other countries. However, the reason that there has been a consensus to delete every other category of political prisoners which has ever existed on Wikipedia is that there is no neutral and objective test for what constitutes a political prisoner, so the term is WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. Individual cases will be considered from different approaches in reliable sources. Those differing approaches and conclusions can be explained and attributed in body text, and contradictory view stated. That cannot be done in a category.

So we're back to the central issue. You say that people should be categorised as PPs if that is supported by a balance of reliable sources. I disagree, but let's take your view.

If prisoners can be categorised as political according to the evidence in the reliable sources, then I say that the only NPOV way of doing this is that the same reliable-source test should be applicable to any prisoner anywhere, whether in Belfast, Beijing, Brisbane, Banglaore, Boston, Buenos Aires, Baghdad, Bilbeis or wherever.

Do you agree with that proposition? Yes or no? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:24, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Merge "political prisoners" is inherently an NPOV statement. Governments rarely if ever will describe their own prisoners in this way, so this is always going to be disputed. We should categorize by what is beyond dispute, that people are prisoners or detainees, not be the disputed question of whether they are part of some amorphous and undefined group known as "policial prisoners".John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
• Merge. The artificial and arbitrary distinction between the "political prisoner" and those detained for other crimes is an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the "political" prisoner's detention. That's why the term and its variations are primarily used by advocacy groups who campaign for certain prisoners' release. Some people are trying to create a "common sense" where we can all agree that Bradley Manning's imprisonment may be justified, but that Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment is never justified. But this is just a veiled appeal to Wikipedians' purported liberal politics and a codification of systemic bias. Subversion is not the only crime that advocacy groups call "political" in China: Amnesty called Tenzin Delek a "political prisoner" although he was accused of setting off a bomb; likewise Rebiya Kadeer although she was accused of leaking internal government reports to a foreign government agent.

  There is no neutral or systematic standard for determining whether somebody's imprisonment was "political" or not.There are cases where people are imprisoned "solely for their ideas" - or more accurately, their expression of them - such as Holocaust denial in Europe and inciters of racial and religious hatred in Malaysia and Singapore. The distinction between these crimes and that of subversion is blurry in those countries, because those laws are also designed to stifle the rise of political opposition - but from illiberal groups. Again, these people are only considered "political prisoners" by groups who agree with the ideals for which the prisoner was charged. If Wikipedia categornizes any prisoner as a "political prisoner", it makes a value judgment against or (by omission) for the imprisoning authority. That's not neutral. Shrigley (talk) 02:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

• Keep. As previous. Should we now expect to see Alexander Solzhenitsyn listed as a prisoner of the Soviet Union? Benkenobi18 (talk) 05:25, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Reply. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is categorised as he has been for years: in Category:Soviet prisoners and detainees and various related categories such as Category:Sharashka inmates. His time as a Soviet prisoner is a well-sourced and uncontested point of fact, unlike the value judgements as to whether he was or was not a political prisoner. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Comment. His arrest and imprisonment for political reasons is also well documented. As for this particular category I think it is a useful way to group people who share things in common with each other. If there are people that you believe should not qualify, the correct response is, "Keep, but prune", and go through on a case by case basis. That there are legitimate political prisoners is a reason to keep this category. That some listed are not legitimate political prisoners is not sufficient justification to warrant deletion. Benkenobi18 (talk) 06:09, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: sourcing and false assertions. In the discussion above, User:Homunculus asserts in several places that this category is viable because it supported by "good sources". As above, I don't think that any number of sources overrides the essentially POV nature of the category, but I checked this assertion.

The are currently 16 pages in this category. I divided them into 4 groups:

Group	Count	Current version of articles
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with multiple supporting references	0
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with one supporting reference	0
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, but with no supporting references	2	Harry Wu, Liu Xiaobo
Pages which do not use the phrase "political prisoner" in body text	14	Zhou Decai, Hu Jia (activist), Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Xianliang, Yang Chunlin, Wei Jingsheng, Tan Zuoren, Shi Tao, Guo Quan, Jean Pasqualini, Lin Zhao, Zhao Lianhai, Li Zhi (dissident), Huang Qi

So, it turns out that Homunculus's assertions are false: not one of these articles is has a direct ref to a reliable source for the assertion that they are a political prisoner. As the articles currently stand, the category should be empty. The category was created by Humunculous and appears to have been populated entirely by Humunculous, so zie should have been well aware of the chasm between assertion and reality.

There are several possible explanations for why a category has been populated in this way, including; a) failure to cite available sources which confirm the assertion; b) synthesis (X was convicted of Y, and Y is cited elsewhere as a political crime); c) original research (X was convicted of Y, and an editor thinks that is political); d) POV-pushing.

I don't know which of those reasons apply in these 16 cases, but these 16 miscategorisations illustrate clearly how such a category can be abused. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm quite confident that for every one of those 16 individuals (and for many more), there are multiple reliable sources that are a) already cited in the articles or b) that could be cited in the article to support the classification as political prisoners / prisoners of conscience. Admittedly it's not standard for each article to contain the phrase "x is a political prisoner," but if desired, someone could add that sentence to each page and then stack it with sources. It wouldn't be hard. For instance: Liu Xiaobo[2][3][4][5] ; Hu Jia[6][7][8]; Huang Qi[9][10][11][12][13]; Lin Zhao [14][15][16][17](note that the library also uses 'political prisoner' as an indexing term); Jean Pasqualini[18][19][20][21]; Shi Tao[22][23][24][25]; Tan Zuoren [26][27], etc.

Another note on the utility and appropriateness of this classification: in addition to libraries and news websites like the New York Times that use this same classification to aid in indexing and searches, there are several books and studies that make a point of examining the changing composition of China's labor camps and prisons in terms of the ratio of political prisoners. This indicates not only that these sources recognize the difference, but they even study it longitudinally.[28][29][30][31]Homunculus (duihua) 07:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Here's an updated table, by the way. I didn't spend too much time on this, and didn't finish updating all of them. Point is, these sources exist.

Group	Count	Current version of articles	Updated versions of articles
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner with multiple supporting references	0 11		Hu Jia, Huang Qi, Zhao Lianhai, Liu Xiaobo, Jean Pasqualini, Guo Quan, Tan Zuoren, Wei Jingsheng, Shi Tao, Yang Chunlin (*note: including cases where people are described as prisoners of conscience, as they are a subset of political prisoners).
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with one supporting reference	0 3		Li Zhi (dissident), Lin Zhao, Zhang Xianliang
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, but with no supporting references	2 1	Harry Wu, Liu Xiaobo	Harry Wu
Pages which do not use the phrase "political prisoner" in body text	14 2	Zhou Decai, Hu Jia (activist), Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Xianliang, Yang Chunlin, Wei Jingsheng, Tan Zuoren, Shi Tao, Guo Quan, Jean Pasqualini, Lin Zhao, Zhao Lianhai, Li Zhi (dissident), Huang Qi	Zhou Decai, Zhang Zhixin

• Keep Having read the foregoing I find the arguments in favour of keeping by all proponents of the keep !vote outweigh those of those who wish to take the category down. I recognise that one may be both an 'ordinary' criminal and a political prisoner and that the terms are not mutually exclusive. I find the categorisation of 'political' to be not hard to determine, and suggest a requirement of this category, as with all categories, is that members must be declared in WP:RS to be political. Ideally that should also follow through to a verified statement in the article. However, we are discussing the category, not the articles within it. The category is valid and should remain. The articles placed in that category may be imperfectly categorised, a thing which is remedied on a per article basis. Those matters are separate matters. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I wish these were separate matters; it would make the task much easier.

Unfortunately, this is not like Category:Living people, where there is an well-established set of objective criteria for whether people are alive, so we know that the RSs will be making the same assessment. Even for the theoretically more complex cases around brain death, most countries have a set of of procedures for determining whether someone is dead, so it is rarely a matter of dispute except for missing persons. If the RS assert that X is dead and Y is not, we know that they are talking about the same thing.

However, that is not the case for many other issues, which are subjective. That's why we have a long-standing guideline at WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE warning against the use of a subjective inclusion criterion, because the sources are call taking one POV or another.

In this case, we have a subjective category: there is no generally-accepted definition of what amounts to a political prisoner (PP), so when sources say that X is or is not a PP, we don't know that they are applying the same definitions. In a case such as this, where there is a clash of ideologies, the result depends entirely on which sources are selected. If we use sources from the liberal democracies, we will find often plenty of sources to say X is a PP ... but if we use Chinese sources, we will rarely find any which use that terminology.

The assessment here is even more complicated, because those who do not regard someone as a PP rarely go around trumpeting that fact. So we end up with the sort of position taken above by Homunculous, who demands sources to contradict the claims that someone is a PP despite knowing full well that such denials are rarely published.

There is a further problem here. We have repeatedly deleted the global category "political prisoners", and we recently deleted 3 similar per-country categories, so this is the only category for political prisoners on Wikipedia. If some RSs say that some someone is a PP in Russia or the USA, we can't categorise them as such, because there is no category for them.

That is blatantly and flagrantly biased. Can you imagine the outcry on Wikipedia if the situation was reversed, and we had a category system which was similarly biased against the United States? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I have read your thoughts with care and considered my response to them. I consider that the arguments depend upon your statement: I wish these were separate matters; it would make the task much easier.

To me it is black and white. Those with WP:RS references that they are PP and PD in China are included in this category, one I believe to be valid. Those without are removed. And we make the absolute decision to separate the existence or not of the category form the membership of the category. A WP:RS reference is simply the door key for inclusion. I fear the deletion discussion is more about membership and politics per se than about pure 'Wikipedianess'

Of course we, the editors, determine what should and should not exist. In discussing it we must be very careful not to divert from the matter in hand when we discuss.

Putative anti US bias is a red herring, I fear. We must stand on different ground from that of a nationalist, patriot, Chauvinist (in its correct usage). Ours is to run an encyclopaedia with zero bias while documenting biases that exist if we can reference them.

There are often areas where I agree with your arguments. So far this is not one of them. I remain opposed to the deletion. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 18:08, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Our job is indeed to "run an encyclopaedia with zero bias", as you say. So why exactly do you support keeping a political prisoners category for China, when they have been deleted for every other country on earth? What is taht about, other than bias? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Sorry to be dragging this out on other people's comments, your argument seems more appropriate as a reason to recreate categories for other countries than to delete this one. If reliable sources strongly support the concept of political prisoners in a given country, then the category should exist. There are some countries where the classification itself is controversial—not just in individual cases, but in general terms. Eg. plenty of reliable sources dispute the existence of American political prisoners, noting that the United States does not imprison people for the peaceful expression of their beliefs (though there may be politicized trials). But in the case of China, no such debate exists in reliable sources; the irrefutable consensus in independent, reliable sources is that this category of people exists. There are multiple databases tracking their existence, and there are thousands upon thousands of references to them in news article and scholarly works. The same holds true for some other states (North Korea and the Soviet Union spring to mind), and there should be categories for those people too.

You got the previous categories deleted largely by arguing that the classification of American political prisoners was controversial and failed NPOV. China is not the same as the United States, and the circumstances here need to be assessed independently. Simply pointing to the deletion of other categories is not a valid reason to delete this one. Homunculus (duihua) 01:15, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, BHG, I support keeping this category because it is precise, defined to categorise member articles with precision, and precisely the class of category this encyclopaedia is intended to have, should have and does have unless there is a mistaken push to delete it. I will not rerun my comments about policing the article that are members. The category is distinct from its members. Your arguments do not convince me that you are correct. If the USA has no political prisoners, (a) good and (b) it does not require this category. If Foo has them then Foo needs this category. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 07:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is asserting that there are no American political prisoners. BHG's argument, as I understood it, is that the classification of political prisoners in certain cases is controversial and vigorously contested (she gave examples from the United States, Ireland, and Israel). Because categories offer only a binary choice—Foo either has political prisoners or it doesn't, x is a political prisoner or is not—they are not appropriate to represent issues where there is a wide spectrum of opinion. But even if one finds that argument compelling (I reserve judgement), what's true in Ireland, Israel and the United States is not true of China, the Soviet Union, Iran, or North Korea; in those cases, the consensus in independent, reliable sources is very clear: they have political prisoners, and lots of them.Homunculus (duihua) 14:48, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Delete - whether or not categorizing people as "political prisoners" on not is a good idea is not at issue here. What is at issue is whether China should have such a category when the rest of the tree has been deleted. The answer is no. If someone wants to initiate a discussion at an appropriate forum to discuss the larger issue of categorizing "political prisoners" then I'm sure it would be lively. This isn't that discussion. Delete the sole remaining outlier. Buck Winston (talk) 23:38, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

That's not an argument to delete this category. It's an argument to revive similar categories for other countries. I agree that, where supported by reliable sources, such categories should exist. A majority of editors in the last CfD discussion felt similarly, but they were deleted anyway.Homunculus (duihua) 23:50, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

• Big Strong Keep and I'll explain why. References to Chinese political prisoners are found extensively in government reports, major news organizations, and scholarly writings—even in library indexing, as has been pointed out. Several reputable research organizations keep databases of Chinese political prisoners, not to mention groups like Amnesty International, so there are plenty of sources that can help determine inclusion in the category. It is a categorization of crime (or "crime" if you prefer), just like any other type of categorization of crime. What's the difference?

The argument to delete seems based on the fact that the Chinese government denies that there is such thing as political prisoners. The Chinese government also denies the Great Famine and Tiananmen Square Massacre; they deny engaging in espionage or cyberwarfare, and all sorts of other things despite irrefutable proof to the contrary. These denials are so far from mainstream understandings that they constitute WP:FRINGE theories. Ignoring them isn't a violation of WP:NPOV.

Here's a good example to make the point clear. We have a category for "LGBT people from Iran". By our friend BrownHairedGirl's reasoning, we should delete that category because the government of Iran denies the existence of LGBT people. That's obviously not how Wikipedia works. (Thank goodness.) TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 21:00, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Reply. The "LGBT people from Iran" analogy is nonsense, and exposes the fundamental flaw in the rest of TheSoundAndTheFury's rationale.
  Category:LGBT people from Iran is one of 84 subcategories of Category:LGBT people by nationality; it is a straightforward by-country subdivision of an existing category tree. So long as we have that parent Category:LGBT people by nationality, it would indeed be a horrendous breach of NPOV to delete the Iranian one.
  However, the situation here is the precise inverse of that. We have no general Category:Political prisoners and detainees or Category:Political prisoners, nor subcats thereof for any other country on earth, because they have been repeatedly deleted by consensus as subjective. Yet in this case, we have editors demanding we have a "political prisoners" category only for one country out of the 200 or so countries on earth.
  TheSoundAndTheFury cites Amnesty International, but Amnesty refers to political prisoners in many countries, including South Africa, Tunisia, Iran, Burma, Bahrain, Malawi & Kenya, (Spain, Uruguay, Rhodesia, Morocco, Algeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Republic of China (Taiwan), India, Indonesia, South Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines, Singapore, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, USSR, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
  There is one WP:NPOV to handle this. Either we allow a prisoner from any country to be categorised as "political" if the sources support it, or we allow it for no countries. Sadly, some editors here are supporting a structurally POV solution where we make some sort of grand editorial decision that prisoners may be categorised as political only in certain selected countries. Whatever the intention of the editors who support this sort of selectivity, the effect of it is to build in a political bias against some selected countries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:27, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Keep if Political prisoners don't exist, please delete that article then come back. Given that there are political prisoners, classifying them by country of detention seems the norm. We cannot dumb down the Wiki solely to give solace to dictators (which probably also don't exist under the logic espoused above). Carlossuarez46 (talk) 03:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Reply'. That's a straw man. AFAIK, nobody in any of the many CFDs on these categories has argued that there is no such thing as a political prisoner. The reason that such categories have been repeatedly deleted is that a) the classification of any individual as a political prisoner is subjective, and b) categories permit only a binary choice of inclusion or exclusion, which means that the category cannot reflect the divergence of views which exist in many cases, contrary to the requirement of WP:NPOV to present divergent views in accordance with their weight. We have similarly deleted categories for Sate terrorism and freedom fighters on grounds of subjectivity, despite having a whole article on state terrorism and a well-referenced section on freedom fighters. And one deletion of a freedom fighters category was supported by Carlossuarez46.
    Carlossuarez46 is also demonstrably wrong to say that "classifying them by country of detention is the norm". There is no other category of political prisoners, either globally or by country. If editors want to argue that case, it belongs in a discussion about a global Category:Political prisoners, not in a discussion about a unique category which exists for no other country. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:47, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

The majority consensus here, as with in the previous CfD, seems to be that the global category was valid. I support bringing it back. Homunculus (duihua) 14:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Comment wikipedia is not a democracy and not governed by majority rule. The problem is that "political prisoner" is a POV pushing term that is always meant to pass a value judgement on the inprisonment, while the fact that someone is held as a prisoner by a certain government does not pass any value judgement on the validity of the inrisonement, only state th fact that says it is done.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:17, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Currently Merge, but I have a suggestion that it would be less POV if one make a category based on whatever the dissident was convicted of, eg Category:Chinese people convicted of subverting state power --PCPP (talk) 04:18, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Australian rules biography, pre-1880 birth stubs

• Propose deleting Category:Australian rules biography, pre-1880 birth stubs - Template:Lc1
  

Nominator's rationale: Delete. Outlived usefulness. Propose migrating category and both templates up to parent (Category:Australian rules biography stubs) Dawynn (talk) 11:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• Keep Please explain how it's "outlived usefulness"? The parent cat is only used for people with unknown birth dates. We still have 100s and 100s and 100s of articles not yet created, a few hundred would be pre 1880s, and are likely to be stubs to start. The-Pope (talk) 11:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
• Keep. Didn't we just go through this a month or two ago? What's changed since then? Jenks24 (talk) 12:50, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment -- This has 20 articles, which is perhpas too small for a stub-category, but its sub-cat on 1870s births, has many more. This looks like a case for merger to me. However, categorising sportsmen by date of bith seems odd to me. Would it not be better to do it by the date when they became active in sport, or retired form it? Peterkingiron (talk) 15:39, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• I just realised that the nominator created the 1870s cat a couple of days before this nomination. Having done that, this cat should be renamed pre-1870s, not pre-1880s. As to why we use date of birth and not date of activity, I guess it's a nice fixed date, compared to the possibly contentious decision of when they become "active". Also remember it's only stub sorting, which is just a convenient way to split up big cats. And I'm not going to be bothered going through all of them and changing them away from decade of birth. The-Pope (talk) 12:54, 3 November 2012 (UTC)