Category talk:Scottish television people

Mais oui!

Mais oui! seems to be reverting my edit to this page purely because of personal reasons. See edit summary "very unwise to continue this pattern of behaviour; take a very, very close look at your own edit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dryden_v_Greater_Glasgow_Health_Board&diff=471287026&oldid=459710276 " Tim! (talk) 08:07, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of that edit summary is to point out your blatant double standards: you remove certain supercats, but then go round adding supercats elsewhere. You cannot have your cake and eat it. --Mais oui! (talk) 09:58, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

You have taken that edit out of context. The context was an unhelpful series of edits by you on House of Lords cases, an example such as here, where you removed the category 1920 in the United Kingdom and replaced it with 1920 in England despite the case of being of UK-wide importance. Tim! (talk) 05:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

We all know what the "context" is here: your six-year long WP:POINT campaign to remove Scotland-related categories from their country/nationality parent cats. Which has basically involved you "following around" (there is actually another Wikipedia word for that) after me, usually within 48 hours, removing parent cats from cats I have newly created.

The big give-away is your modus operandi: you have never, to my knowledge, used the logical, clean, professional approach, which would be to notify WikiProject Scotland, and then go through the entire set of Scotland-related categories, starting at the "headline" categories, like Society, Culture, Transport, Politics, Geography, etc, systematically removing the country/nationality cats. Instead you follow silently around after me (a main creator of Scotland-related cats) quietly altering the cats so that the only person who would ever notice is me. The only logical conclusion for this pattern of behaviour is that you lack the courage of your convictions, or to put it another way, you haven't got a leg to stand on. --Mais oui! (talk) 06:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

You are making allegations here that seem to fall under the heading of WP:HOUND. Whether or not Tim! wishes to reply, if you are unable to assume good faith this is not the place to further this aspect of the discussion - that would be WP:DNR. Ben MacDui 17:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Quite a serious allegation made here, I am wondering why it wasn't reported to WP:ANI if genuinely believed. Tim! (talk) 20:43, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Initial attempt at dispute resolution

It seems that this is may be a long-running dispute. I suggest that as far as possible we attempt to stick to the policy issues in the hope of finding either some common ground or an approach that will lead to resolution. I am not at all practiced in the various dispute resolution procedures available. In the event that this discussion starts to become unduly personal it is likely that I will post a comment at the Dispute resolution noticeboard.

The revision history of Category:Scottish television people suggests that, whatever else is going on, there is a difference of opinion about the appropriate use of higher-level categorizations with:

• Tim! Removing Category:Television people by country Category:Television people by nationality followed by
• Mais oui! Replacing it with the edit summary "per official Wikipedia policy WP:VERIFY" and then
• Tim! reverting this here with the edit summary "rv per widely accepted categorisation principles".

It would I think be helpful if:

• Mais oui! could identify the verification he thinks is pertinent and
• Tim! could enlarge on the widely accepted categorisation principles he is referring to.

I realise this may be difficult but please try to "focus on content" and familiarise yourselves with WP:DR if you have not already done so. Ben MacDui 16:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The categorisation guideline is at Wikipedia:Categorization. Here is as edit of another editor making a similar to edit to my own but without being reverted Tim! (talk) 06:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Please note that Wikipedia:Categorization is only a guideline, whereas WP:VERIFY is official Wikipedia policy. And official policy always trumps guideline.

And, as a guideline Wikipedia:Categorization is routinely ignored by, for example by WikiProjects (eg. WikiProject Tennis, who decided to "double- categorise" all British tennis players in both their Eng, Scot, NI, Welsh cats and the British cat)), by individual editors (eg. see User "double-categorising" here), and even WP:CFD itself, which sometimes even stipulates "double categorisation" in its findings.

The relevant list of reliable external refs, to satisfy WP:VERIFY, is here: Talk:Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom/refs. If anyone wants more refs proving that Scotland is a country and that the Scots are a nationality, they are extremely easy to supply. If User:Tim! wants to use Wikipedia to make his WP:POINT then I suggest that he proposes renaming "country" cats to "sovereign state" cats, which I would never add any Scotland-related article to.

No-one in their right mind would remove, for example Category:Football in Scotland, Category:Roman Catholic Church in Scotland or Category:Scottish criminal law from their "by country" parent cats, because FIFA and the Holy See do not organise their affairs in terms of the UK, but rather treat Scotland as a country, and the Scottish criminal law system constitutes a distinct country under the Conflict of Laws. Consider also Category:British saints, where, to my knowledge, the vast majority (if not all) lived pre-Union, and were not therefore British; therefore it is only plain common sense that readers find the Scottish saints cat within the "by nationality" parent cat (no harm the British saints being there too - I have no objections, as it simply aids navigation).

In summary, the very first line of WP:CAT is a crucial point to take in: "The central goal of the category system is to provide navigational links". Beautifully put. Categorisation is an aid to navigation. Scotland is WP:Verifiably a country and the Scots are WP:Verifiably a nation, and therefor anyone navigating from country or nationality cats should be able to click directly on the Scottish link without having to first go through a British container cat. If they want the British cat then they have that option too. --Mais oui! (talk) 06:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Tim! - could you be more specific about which categorisation guideline(s) you are referring to at Wikipedia:Categorization? Ben MacDui 17:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC) PS as you may have seen from my talk page Mais oui! is now on vacation.

Mais oui!, - as I am sure we all know the "Terminology of the British Isles" seems to be a case study in ambiguity and confusion, from which discussions few emerge without scars. The references you supply re country status are comprehensive. I am also aware that BBC Scotland regularly refer to their provision of the "national news" - but that the lengthy discussions at Talk:Scotland seemed to conclude that on a dicdef basis Scotland was not a "nation". Perhaps this is less relevant if the dispute is essentially about whether or not Scotland is a "country". Ben MacDui 17:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Ben MacDui, it is a generally held that where there is a category and a subcategory that an article is not present in both. I think it is not helpful in this discussion to concentrate only on Scotland, this is much more general. I have not treated Scotland categories any differently to England, Northern Ireland and Wales categories, or other countries which are composed of Constituent countries. I also think that simple statements such as "Scotland is a country" or "Scotland is not a country" are not going to progress the debate. The England and Scotland articles begin "England/Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom", and Wales a similar variant. The "part of" in each links to Countries of the United Kingdom rather than country so there is a nuanced statement which is hard to replicate on categories. Maybe Mais oui! can explain on his return whether there is something special about television people which would warrant an exception similiar to the football one he is using as an example. Tim! (talk) 21:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

The key statement would appear to be: "In addition, each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs. This means that if a page belongs to a subcategory of C (or a subcategory of a subcategory of C, and so on) then it is not normally placed directly into C. For exceptions to this rule, see Non-diffusing subcategories below." The obvious issues are that:

• As Mais oui! states this is a guideline rather than policy;
• There is a great deal that is not "normal" about the Terminology of the British Isles.

You are right that nuanced statements and categories may be hard to line up but, but equally I am sure you can imagine that it looks odd that there seems to be consensus that Scotland is not a nation but it is a country when it comes to articles, but that the same logic would not apply to categories. It is my suspicion that the three of us are unlikely to come up with a solution that suits us all and that if a long-term solution is to be found then an RfC of some kind would seem to be the way forward. However I suggest waiting until Mais oui! returns. Ben MacDui 18:31, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I think an RFC would be extremely helpful as I can think of several different ways one can categorise UK/England/NI/Scotland/Wales articles and categories. I notice there is discussion at Talk:Taiwan#Taiwanese_in_FOO whether Taiwanese categories are placed in Chinese parents, so it seems that is an issue that needs to be addressed to help resolve disputes. 06:11, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

An interesting parallel process re Taiwan. It would be polite to wait until Mais oui! returns to commence any RfC proceedings but in the meantime it might be useful to compile a list of places to advertise it and a venue for the same. The former might include:

• the talk pages of Great Britain; United Kingdom; Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales; Terminology of the British Isles; Country;
• Wikiprojects UK and Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales
• Wikipedia talk:Categorization, Category talk:Countries (which has a single related note from long ago).

As for the latter - Talk:United Kingdom? Ben MacDui 18:02, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd be happy with all of your suggestions. Tim! (talk) 20:09, 11 July 2012 (UTC)