User:Σ/Testing facility/TP/TpProt/156

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The Signpost: 28 August 2013

Please comment on Talk:Bangladesh Liberation War

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Please comment on Talk:Lucio Dalla

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Interview request: Your interactions with new editors

I'm contacting you about a study that I'm running with TheOriginalSoni exploring newcomer mentorship activities in Wikipedia. I'd like to ask you a few questions about your interactions with newcomers and to explore how a tool like WP:Snuggle might make your work easier. The interview and demo session will take 30 minutes to an hour depending on how much time we spend discussing things. If you're interested, let me know. If not, disregard this message and I won't bother you again.

Thanks for your consideration. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:53, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments

First, I thought you might be interested in taking part at the RfC at Talk:List of new religious movements. Also, if you have anything you wish to contribute to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#John Carter, feel free to do so. John Carter (talk) 21:16, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 September 2013

Wikidata weekly summary #74

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 22:40, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#A proposed tool for reducing backlogs

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#A proposed tool for reducing backlogs. APerson (talk!) 01:30, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Evidence phase open - Manning naming dispute

Dear Liz.

This is just a quick courtesy notice. You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute/Evidence. Please add your evidence by September 19, 2013, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Seddon talk 23:45, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, Seddon. I'm not sure what to do. I sort of said what I wanted to say in my statement and I wasn't an active participant in the discussion so I'm not presenting "evidence", just my opinion. What do you suggest? Liz Read! Talk! 23:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Parent categories

A number of your recent edits have added parent categories to articles. As a general rule, we avoid doing this. For example: Once Kel Mitchell is in Category:African-American male child actors, he should not be added to Category:African-American male actors[1] or Category:American male actors[2] as both of those categories are subcategories (or "daughter" categories) of Category:African-American male child actors. Similarly, we would not add him to :[[Category:African-American child actors, Category:African-American actors, Category:American male child actors, Category:American actors, etc. Please see Wikipedia:Categorization#Subcategorization for another explanation of the same issue. Thanks. - SummerPhD (talk) 15:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

tp stalker here - what SummerPhD said is correct if the category in question is diffusing. if it's non-diffusing, then you *do* need to add to the parent category, or, a sibling (which is the same thing as adding to the parent, then immediately diffusing). Read WP:EGRS for guidelines on such categories. The actor categories are a bit special as they seem to be fully diffused on gender (but should not be diffused on race - the race cats should be non-diffusing)). Once you're done with your PhD in set theory you might understand how this works - it's rather complex... :( --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:43, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
I'll try to digest this all, SummerPhD and Obi-Wan Kenobi but there are a lot of inconsistencies with categories.
For example, take Denzel Washington...he could be categorized (this is ONLY considering his acting activity and not including award categories):
  • American stage actor
  • American film actor
  • America television actor
  • American voice actor
  • American actor
  • African-American stage actor
  • African-American film actor
  • African-American television actor
  • African-American voice actor
  • African-American actor
  • American male stage actor
  • American male film actor
  • America male television actor
  • American male voice actor
  • American male actor
  • African-American male stage actor
  • African-American male film actor
  • African-American male television actor
  • African-American male voice actor
  • African-American male actor
  • 20th-century actor
  • 20th-century male actor
  • 21st-century actor
  • 21st-century male actor
  • Actors from New York
  • Male actors from New York
  • Actors from Los Angeles, California
  • Male actors from Los Angeles, California
And this is assuming that he doesn't have additional ethnicity to consider and, again, does not include all of the acting award categories that could be applied. So, which ones do you select? Liz Read! Talk! 18:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Categories are not like resumes - they aren't intended to capture everything you did, they are intended to capture things which are DEFINING. I'd thus say that Denzel is not a television actor, that's not defining for him, nor a stage actor. I'd put him in the following, based on your list above:
  • American male film actor
  • African-American male film actor
  • 20th-century male actor
  • 21st-century male actor
  • Male actors from New York
  • Male actors from Los Angeles, California
Not - I think we should get rid of the "ethnicity+ gender" categories in the acting section - I don't see a point for it really - I'd much rather use category intersects to deal with this. But, as always, not my decision.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:18, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, this all started this morning because I noticed that there was Category:African-American child actresses and although there is a Category:African-American male child actors most young male actors were in Category:African-American child actors which should be the parent category for both gender categories. So, I was switching the last two.
Now, some of these child actors have transitioned to adult roles and they frequently had Category:African-American actors and Category:American actors (no gender) so I changed their categories to show gender since all of these acting categories have an "Actresses" component. I don't think there's controversy that if the category has a female component, then it should have a male component (although some don't bifurcate and use the same category for both men and women).
But I'm not sure about race and ethnicity. Should an actor be known as an African-American male actor or just an American male actor? It's even more complicated with ethnicity. Suppose an actress is Puerto Rican...then they are not only a "Puerto Rican actress" but an "American actress" (since Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.) but there is also an "American actress from Puerto Rico" and an "Actress with Puerto Rican descent". And that is just considering ethnic descent, not nationality which is another set of categories. And of course, also "Hispanic and Latin American actresses" and then the sub-categories for whatever medium they perform in. It is Categoripalooza.
Personally, I think that film/stage/voice/TV distinctions should be done away with. The way it is (because mostly fans write profile), if an actor has ever done a play, they are a "Stage actor". Likewise, there are a lot of rappers who had a cameo in a movie and are categorized "Film actor". At this point, so many film actors have moved to doing TV shows (and vice versa) that you end up with far too many categories.
At this point, you probably are thinking, "Why don't you pose these questions at the Categorization Talk Page?" Well, it's because you two will respond and when I had a pretty important question about gender orientation categorization, I didn't get much of a response (I think one reply, a month later) and I posted the question at WP:EGRS! Liz Read! Talk! 18:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Generally, ethnicity categories are non-diffusing. Meaning, if you're african-American X, you should also be "American X". Gender categories are ALSO non-diffusing, unless they aren't - such as the case with actors. So it's bit confusing. Puerto Rican is a bit of an odd/special case, there are different interpretations of how to categorize puerto rican people, I generally just stay away as it's not worth the hassle. I think there could be an argument to get rid of film/stage/voice/TV - however it is clear there are some people who really are most known for one thing (e.g. stage acting, film acting, TV acting, etc). --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Okay, let me get this straight, Obi-Wan Kenobi, since I've reread SummerPhD's comment several times and I still don't understand her point (and I've also read Wikipedia:Categorization but found it unclear).
Hypothetical case: If Denzel Washington is in "African-American male actors" then he should also be in "American male actors". But, if there didn't already exist a category for "African-American actresses" and "American actresses", then he'd simply be listed as "African-American actors" and "American actors". But since the category of "Actors" already has been bifurcated by gender, these division is still observed.
The ethnicity categories are confusing because it can mean, a) the country one was born in, b) the country one is a citizen of, c) the country where one works and d) the ethnic heritage of ones family ("descent"). Allowing from a mixed ethnic background from multiple relatives, this can quickly lead to overcategorization. Liz Read! Talk! 02:19, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
If Denzel Washington is in "African-American male actors" then he should also be in "American male actors". - correct. If we take a different case, say "Heads of state", where there isn't a male category, then he'd be in "African-American heads of State" and "American heads of state", and a black woman would be in "African-American heads of state, American heads of state, and American women heads of state". The ethnicity categories are again, generally based on wp:defining - so if a source says "X is a french writer" (even if X was born in the US to french parents and then moved to france later), then we classify them as a french writer, and perhaps as an american one as well. Rather than tearing your hair out over this, come help me get category intersection working instead which will make this all MUCH simpler.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:24, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, this was my understanding, too, when I was sorting through categories this morning but it prompted the first note in this discussion so I'm still trying to figure out what SummerPhD's complaint is and how that differed from what I was doing.
"come help me get category intersection working instead which will make this all MUCH simpler"
Point me in the right direction! I've tried suggesting changes at CfD and found a) only 1-4 people comment on my listings, b) the final decision (keep, delete, rename, merge) doesn't always reflect the opinions of the 4 people who managed to voice an opinion and c) decisions are inherently conservative (that is, if some change looks like it will have far-reaching repercussions or involve some work, it's always turned down). 02:46, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
CFD is inherently conservative, but they are also rather brutal in getting rid of new categories that crop up if they don't fit in. I'd suggest just participating there for a few months to get a sense of things - there are a few people who dominate the discussions and things tend to go their way, they hold a lot of sway. You will get a sense of how to craft a nomination so that it goes through, and when you should/shouldn't do a mass nomination for example. I'll send you instructions for how to test the category intersections in a bit.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:06, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Oh, that would be so useful, Obi-Wan Kenobi, thank you. I really thought I'd found my niche in finding appropriate categories for articles and standardizing them. For example, sometimes there are identical categories and one category will have 334 articles assigned to it while the other has 12. Or, there will be a parent category with 9 child categories and then 4 articles that are just assigned to the parent category...I'll see if they are better assigned to a child category.
I worked for years in a library so re/assigning categories comes from a desire to organize rather than any ideological/theoretical bias on what categories should exist. Any way, it is more satisfying working with CfD than AfD where I was less successful and always felt like I was crushing someone's work.Liz Read! Talk! 15:29, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
If you are that special type of person who actually enjoys categorization, then you are most welcome. For most people, it is a tedious and depressing. You can read through my deghettoization algorithm here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_bias_task_force#List_of_categories_that_need_to_be_de-ghettoized - and if you understand that, you are well on your way to understanding why we should move to category intersection... :) --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:32, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
Depressing? No! It's bringing order to chaos, more accurate categorization helps people find what they are looking for more easily. No, what I find depressing is deleting articles or reverting people's contributions. I understand that those actions must be done (pruning away the unimportant and trivial), I just don't find that kind of work rewarding. I think it is far too easy to drive away new editors through speedy deletions and reverts.
On the other hand, dealing with categories has led me into a few unexpected conflicts (like the first comment in this thread) when I thought my decisions were pretty straight-forward. But I did recheck some of my work from early yesterday and replaced several categories that I had deleted to address her concerns.
Thanks for that link, I'm eager to read that page. It can be overwhelmingly to consider recategorizing thousands of "neutral" pages into gender appropriate categories so that the parent category can have both male and female child categories (if that is the way it's set up like for Actors and Comedians). That's the only depressing aspect I've found about categories but the work does go quicker with HotCat. However, the more I look at Categorization, the more work I see that needs to be addressed. Liz Read! Talk! 16:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
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