User talk:Jayen466/Archives/2013/April

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The Signpost: 01 April 2013

Lifting the Gibraltar DYK restrictions

A couple of months ago, you opposed a proposal to lift the restrictions on Gibraltar-related DYKs, which were imposed in September 2012. Could you possibly clarify (1) under what conditions you would support a lifting of the restrictions, and (2) when you think it would be appropriate to lift the restrictions? Prioryman (talk) 20:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

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Nomination of List of Wikipedia controversies for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of Wikipedia controversies is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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The Signpost: 15 April 2013

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The Signpost: 22 April 2013

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Talkback

Hello, Jayen466. You have new messages at The ed17's talk page.
Message added 19:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I have one, possibly two, people who are willing to work with you on ITM, to lessen your workload. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Please refrain from accusing people of sexism and racism

The argument for not putting Rochelle Alers in Category:American novelists focused on the fact that she was in the sub-category Category:American romantic fiction writers. This is similar to how James L. Nelson is in Category:American historical novelists and not in any of that categories parents, such as Category:American novelsits. The issue is not about the sex or race of Alers, but that she fits in a by genre suvb-category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

As long as the system results in different treatment for men and women, and for Caucasians and non-Caucasians, it is racist and sexist. Why don't you write a little letter to the New York Times, Guardian, Independent, etc., and tell them to refrain from accusing Wikipedia of sexism? You might be surprised how ineffective it is: because they are right, and you are not. [1] Andreas JN466 17:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
You toss those terms around rather lightly Jayen466. if you read the intentions of the person who created that category (he commented at the CFD), it was for the opposite reasons you suspect. The separate african-american categories also do not exist to perpetuate racism. I suggest you holster your guns and join the community of editors and if necessary help reform the category guidelines for race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality, but just tossing around terms like sexist and racist just makes you look daft and causes people to ignore your other thoughts.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:14, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
And you, Obi, keep edit-warring to keep a disruptive and controversial state of affairs (in Amanda Filipacchi). Anyone with half a brain would realize that in a controversy one should not default to the controversial state. Jayen, I don't know if JPL is sexist. I do know that this was terribly ill-conceived and really quite ridiculous, since he's now forced to start gendering everything. But as long as he has gnomes on his side who do the categorizing without knowing jack-shit about gender studies, essentialism, third gender, and what not, he'll keep those categories populated. Drmies (talk) 20:44, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
One man's edit war is another man's edit war. It takes two to tango. And IMHO, we should toe the line on this, and not give in b/c of controversy. Anyway, this is off topic, take it to Amanda's page if you want to discuss further.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Try using "person" instead of "man". It's not off-topic: Jayen spoke their mind, and JPL came crying to you, and then you came hereto insult Jayen, who knows a hell of a lot more about these issues than you do. "Toe the line"? I'm not toeing your fucking gender-division line! What do you think this is, a football locker room? Show me once, just once, that you're not just some robot typing in categories: explain to me how your line-toeing would account for Third gender. Do they get categories? Seriously, answer that to show me that you're even worth talking to. Drmies (talk) 21:00, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
What I meant by "toe the line" was "follow wikipedia policies". Sorry if I confused you, you sound easily confused, and are clearly angry leading you to make lots of logical mistakes. Third gender is a very interesting point, as you know we already have cats like Category:LGBT writers from the United States but I'm not sure if the 'T' really captures all of the variation of other genders (it could be LGBTI, etc, but that project apparently decided against it). In fact I was one of the earliest ones who posted in the CFD that gender was not binary. So I don't have any easy answer for how to categorize those authors, except to say that if there are topics and books and articles about them, we should go by what those sources say, and if we created a third category of Category:American intersex novelists and had reason to believe it was a useful cat, I would defend its creation. But that whole intersex area is not one I'm that familiar with, so I would like to hear others thoughts of course.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
(ec) Lightly? LIGHTLY? After dozens of press articles in the most respected papers and web media – finally! finally! – criticising Wikipedia's sexist category system? Yeah, if the entire intellectual establishment calls Wikipedia a bunch of sexist idiots, Wikipedians should not give in. :) Because, Wikipedians are right! They're Wikipedia! They know AGF and NPOV and what do those professors of literature know? You see, Drmies, that's what happens when you let Star Wars characters run a purported educational resource. :) Jokes aside, Obi-Wan (I am missing an emoticon here ...), you said one smart and one stupid thing the other day. This was the stupid thing: There are zillions of examples of this so-called ghettoization: Category:American film directors by ethnic or national origin is another one, which has Category:African-American_film_directors and as another parent, Category:African-American directors, which is a child of the (presumably) paler Category:American directors. Why people are up in arms about this one particular case quite boggles me. You need to spend less time reading Wikipedia policies. This was the smart thing: Part of me thinks that the cat system is hopelessly broken especially with respect to people - most articles have a few cats, but bios have dozens. If we could implement category intersection - even in a stupid, simple way - that would be a massive help - then we could just assign each bio as {m/f/etc} {writer/actor/politician} {gay/straight/bi/etc} {armenian/greek/russian/etc} {catholic/jewish/muslim/etc} - it would be much easier to maintain, there would be no more tedious debates about whether we should create cats for Category:Catholic authors from San Francisco of Chinese descent, and everyone could easily find the intersections they wanted. Wikipedia, can you do Wikipedia:Category_intersection for us please?? So many of these arguments and endless debates would just go away in a puff of smoke if we had good cat intersects. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC) Andreas JN466 21:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi Jayen - I know you said we were done here, but I'm hoping to get a clarification on your comments above on this edit of mine - as it's rather rare that I'm both stupid and smart in the same edit (usually I'm fully one or the other :) ). Perhaps to clarify, my intended point was that the ghettoization (and non-presence-in-the-parent-cat) of bios happens all over biographies in wikipedia, has been this way for years, and there is massive inconsistency in the application of WP:EGRS, given that it is actually non-trivial to implement in a fully correct fashion (it requires subtle understanding of the tree structure to know when and where one should "bubble" up to), and WP:EGRS goes against the standard convention in general of always diffusing to the most specific sub-cat, it's a special case that confuses people. Further, what I meant by it "boggling" me is that it is not as if April 2013 was the first time this sort of thing happened, and it's not even the first time it has happened at scale, so I was expressing confusion that this particular instance garnered so much publicity and press when perhaps much worse ghettoization has happened in the past, persists to this day, and no-one is talking about it at all. If you wouldn't mind detailing what came off as stupid I'd appreciate it - as I certainly don't like posting stupid things to WP, esp not to Jimmy's page...
As another example, I've pointed out elsewhere that guys in Category:American male prostitutes are also not present in their non-gendered parent cat Category:American prostitutes, this has been this way for quite some time, and no-one is speaking up for these fellows... (and not being one myself, I probably won't go to the mat for them either :))--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:33, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Finally, though we do disagree on some things, I'm quite glad we do agree that category intersections, if implemented, would be a wonderful fix for all of these issues, so let me know how I can help bring that about - I welcome your suggestions.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:33, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
See [2]. Lquilter was absolutely right, as was Newyorkbrad, making the same point on Jimbo's talk: gender and ethnic categories should never, ever be seen as diffusable categories the way categories like "Canadian novelists", "Mexican novelists" and so on diffuse people out of the generic "Novelists" category. So that means that you apply both the main category and the subcategory to the article, and the problem is solved: James Baldwin can be an American novelist as well as an African-American novelist. We should write that as a clear(er) rule into WP:Cat/gender and into the corresponding section on ethnicity. Secondly, I would love to see en:Wikipedia follow the model of de:WP here. As Wikid77 points out on Jimbo's talk, the incategory search argument plus the CatScan utility (which is linked on every category page in the German Wikipedia) can be used to enable readers to find category intersections like Woman + American + Novelist. This means Wikipedia can save itself the whole contentious category tree structure, with categories combining three or four attributes like "African-American women poets", because the reader can freely combine the individual attributes in a CatScan query. A slightly improved version of the CatScan could also be linked from the generic Wikipedia search page. This is something we could suggest at the relevant Village Pump. Thoughts? Andreas JN466 00:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Listen, I think we got off to a bad start, and frankly I'm a bit miffed now I've just seen that someone in your org has been tweeting disparaging things about me, which doesn't help in our discussion. I actually think we see eye to eye on a number of items, and I may just have been expressing myself poorly, so let's start over. First, let me apologize for coming to your page to attack you - it probably wasn't fair, and it put you on the defensive. Second, apologies in advance for the wall of text below. :)
Re: LQuilter's point: Yes, I've read and discussed this with her before. I think frankly it's a fine idea in theory, but it doesn't seem to have worked in practice. The point I was trying (but obviously failed to make) on Jimbo's talk page is that editors, even very experienced editors, don't understand this idea of non-diffusing gender categories and find it confusing, and the result is INCONSISTENT APPLICATION of the standard, resulting in massive ghettoization - it goes way beyond a few American novelists, it is in fact endemic. We even had BrownHairedGirl, who knows more about cats than anyone I know, making edits that didn't follow the guidelines in place per WP:EGRS. (As a side note, AFAIK, I haven't violated these guidelines in any edits I've made in the past few days, I've tried to carefully hew to the extant standard - if you disagree, please show me diffs)
My problems with the guidance, which may also be linked to why it is so inconsistently applied, are several:
  1. In the full implementation of non-diffusing ethnic/gender/sexuality/religion cats, this still maintains a perception of gender norming - since men can only be found in the main cat, while women would be in a sub cat + the main cat. (or vice-versa for the prostitution category for example) So even if women are in Category:American novelists, one could argue that they are still being ghettoized by also being tagged with a gendered sub-cat, while men are not so-tagged.
  2. the issue of sibling/niece cats is a major bugbear, over which there is much confusion and debate. If someone has been diffused to a sub-category of Category:American novelists, say to Category:20th-century American novelists, and they are also in Category:American women novelists, should they now be placed in the parent? What if they are a man? Do they also get put in the parent? We can't have unequal treatment of men and women in this case, so if 20th century women get bubbled up, so should the men (i.e. it wouldn't make sense for a man to just be in 20th century novelists and his peer to be in 20th century novelists, women novelists, and american novelists) - and this leads to another problem - as we now have "undiffused" a category which was previously diffusing - remember, the bulk of wikipedia categories are diffusing - to undo this would be a massive change. So, IMHO, the solution is, leave them in the sibling cat - eg Category:20th-century American novelists and Category:American women novelists - (and ignore the people throwing rocks at you because they're not in the magical parent). The alternative, to make *all* such categories non-diffusing, is for practical purposes impossible, it leads to recursion up the tree, you wouldn't have a clear place to stop (e.g. do you diffuse up to Category:American writers and Category:American fiction writers, or even further, etc.
    One result of this sibling cat issue is that editors are now faced with a tricky situation - they add Jennifer to the Category:American women novelists cat and are about to add her to Category:American novelists, but then they realize that she may already be in a diffused category of Category:American novelists and thus should *not* be bubbled up! And that diffused category may be a sub-sub-sub category of Category:American novelists, so our intrepid editor may have to pull up a graph of the whole tree just to find out what's going on. If the structure ever changes - for example if Category:American romantic fiction writers gets moved out of the Category:American novelists tree, then you've just instantly "ghettoized" people based on a change which might be invisible to you!
  3. Finally, the "theory" of non-diffusing gendered or ethnic cats causes another problem, which is the question of, which parent(s)? One, several, all? Let's take Category:African-American science fiction writers as an example - it has the following parents: Category:African-American writers and Category:American science fiction writers. There is no guidance on this situation that I've found - should they be bubbled up to both? Neither? Or should they also skip a few steps, and hop up to Category:American novelists or Category:American writers (or both) which are (a few of) their grandparents? Can you ever jump higher than a grandparent? More importantly, how can you easily explain to editors the rules here - for example, do you bubble up only if the gender/ethnicity cat changes - in other words, if gender/ethnicity stays the same, it acts as a diffusing cat?? What if you have a combined gender/ethnicity, and then you go up a level and the ethnicity goes away? What then? Here is a great example: Category:African-American women in politics, which is a child of Category:African-American politicians, Category:American women in politics, Category:African-American women - to which of these parents should you bubble up, and how far up? You'd need a pHD in set theory just to sort out the intersections and logic - it's a gendered category of one, and ethnic category of the second, and a job title category of the third! So depending on which tree you are considering, you have to apply different rules for diffusion - even for the same category! Clearly, these women are politicians as well, so maybe you try to send them all the way up the tree to Category:American politicians and then realize - shit - this is a top-level diffusing category, it doesn't contain any people! So now we're back to the issue of sibling/more specific cats.
If you go back to Category:American women novelists, this is also a subcat of Category:American women writers, but should we bubble all the novelists to the writers cat as well as the novelists cat? If so why, if not, why not - e.g. what is the logic? If we *do* bubble up, they should go all the way - to Category:American writers (because, of course, american women writers are also women writers!)? But that's strange, because wouldn't we then do the same with all of the Category:American novelists, and then we've just undiffused Category:American novelists. Perhaps you can you get around it by saying - well, don't bubble up if the gender remains the same but the cat scope changes - but I can point out myriad issues with that rule as well - for example, the issue of skipping up to a grandparent in some cases! Anyway, problems abound - and remember, we need something that is easy to implement, and that users can do on their own.
So, I'm sorry for the long winded response, but there are serious structural issues with this approach to categorization, and especially the idea of non-diffusing ethnic/gender cats. In some cases it might seem simple, but in the generic case, it's not at all. We can do the "easy" thing, and put all of the women in Category:American novelists and walk away and declare victory, but we haven't solved the problem at all, we've barely scratched the surface, and I can point to 1000 other instances of what you might call racism or sexism (and what I call simply inconsistent application of a hard-to-understand standard) that will persist until we come up with a more generic approach that is implementable.
I'm interested in deep solutions and guidance that would be applicable in all situations; I have several other ideas for solutions (besides cat intersects, which is #1) but I'll stop for now and I'd love to hear your reaction. I'll just leave you with one more thing - I added a link to a tool on Category:American authors that will give a full list - recursively - of all the American novelists - all 6700 of them - which means around 3700 novelists have already been diffused. So at least, now, no matter what subcat someone is in, we are assured that they are in the (dynamic) list of American novelists. If we had had this tool linked a week ago, I wonder if some of this might have been less dramatic... Best regards, --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
First things first: while several of us have access to the Twitter account, any tweets that mentioned an Obi-Wan Kenobi in relation to this story, made fun of your user name and speculated about your age, were mine. I apologise for hurting your feelings, and while I fully understand that you're miffed (I would be), I would invite you to look at it from an outside perspective: given the importance of Wikipedia, the strength of feeling issues like this one cause in the general public, and the amount of responsibility involved, does it really help anyone if these issues are seen to be decided by people who withhold their real names, and adopt the names of science fiction characters instead? It makes a frivolous impression, as though all of this were some game. I'll address your three paragraphs above in sequence.
  1. The English Wikipedia should, like the German Wikipedia, only use simple tags, like man, novelist, American, etc., and enable users to combine these into search queries. Until this is so (and the English Wikipedia may never get there), it is a tolerable drawback to me if women are additionally categorised in women's categories reflecting the interests of women's studies as an academic field (same with additional categories for African-Americans, reflecting the research needs of African-American studies). In areas where there is a similar interest in men's studies, men should likewise be double categorised. This is not so much an inequality imposed by Wikipedia, but a reflection of academic research interests. Again, the principle should be that no one should be removed from a neutral category because they are also included in a gender-, sexuality-, religion- or ethnicity-specific category. It can't be that people of a particular ethnicity, gender etc. disappear off the radar of anyone looking at the generic category.
  2. The whole category tree is a mess, and that is the English Wikipedia's own fault. Now yesterday someone has created Category:20th-century American novelists etc. and people are beginning to diffuse American novelists to their century categories. Much better idea than using gender!!! But really, categories combining three attributes should not exist. It's crazy, and nothing but a work-making scheme, because some people will be unaware of these century-based categories and put people directly in "American novelists", some will double-categorise in both "American novelists" and the century category, and some will only use the century category. The sane solution is to tag people for century, nationality, and occupation, and enable users to combine these fields in a search to arrive at the functional equivalent of a category listing, rather than creating a huge muddle that will keep everyone busy for nothing.
    As long as the English Wikipedia chooses to be insane though: If the current effort means Category:American novelists is emptied, so it contains neither men nor women, and everyone now ends up in one or two century-based categories, then it is perfectly fine for women to be categorised in Category:20th-century American novelists e.g. as well as Category:American women novelists, and for men to only be in Category:20th-century American novelists. In fact, that is more elegant than having women in Category:American novelists as well as Category:American women novelists. (Addition: I've just noticed that American men novelists is now being populated. A little idiosyncratic, but at least it's gender-neutral.)
    The principle you should hold fast to is that gender, ethnicity, sexuality and religion categories should never be diffusing. No one should because of their gender, ethnicity, sexuality or religion be removed from a category that others not belonging to their group remain in. That's quite a simple rule, really.
  3. Finally, you say, Let's take Category:African-American science fiction writers as an example - it has the following parents: Category:African-American writers and Category:American science fiction writers. There is no guidance on this situation that I've found - should they be bubbled up to both? Neither? You didn't think that through. Category:African-American science fiction writers is the ethnic subcategory of Category:American science fiction writers. No one should disappear out of Category:American science fiction writers because they are included in Category:African-American science fiction writers, and anyone who is listed in Category:African-American science fiction writers should also be listed in its non-ethnicity-specific parent, Category:American science fiction writers.
It's good to talk. I appreciate your apology above, and please accept mine; it is heart-felt. Regards. Andreas JN466 13:53, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks again. Just wanted to point out a nuance here: you stated above that Category:African-American science fiction writers should be bubbled up to Category:American science fiction writers. Fair enough. But you missed the point of my example - any writers in Category:African-American science fiction writers should also be bubbled up beyond their ethnic parent Category:African-American writers to their non-ethnic great-grandparent, Category:American writers - but in this case, we don't need to, since they are already in a sub-category (namely, Category:American science fiction writers). However, if Category:American science fiction writers was moved in the tree somehow, you would then end up with ghettoization. A better example of this is Category:African-American women poets, which according to the guidelines, should be carefully bubbled up the tree several times via several different routes, e.g. to Category:American women poets, Category:African-American poets and Category:American poets - and this same routing must be applied to each biography (and not just the categories). This again points out the complexity of this, and the potential for even very sharp editors to make mistakes.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Let's assume, at least until there is strong evidence otherwise, that our good-faith editors are neither racist nor sexist. Nonetheless, it has been pointed out by quite a number of people both on and off the site that our current category structure creates problematic distinctions based upon the race, ethnicity, or gender among our article subjects. The focus of the discussion should be on how these issues can be solved in a way that preserves relevant information for our editors and readers without perpetuating stereotypes or yielding the perception of bias. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:05, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

For the benefit of you and any other lurkers, my original comment was this: How about Maya Angelou; would you argue that she should only be in African-American women poets, and not American women poets, because the former is a subcat of the latter? And why shouldn't she be in Category:American poets? This is just disguised sexism and racism, and it is disgusting. Andreas JN466 11:49, 27 April 2013 (UTC). I stand by that. A category system whereby Walt Whitman ends up in "American poets" and Maya Angelou ends up in "African-American women poets" is sexist and racist. And the media seem to agree with me. Andreas JN466 21:16, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
On how to solve this, my thoughts are here: [3][4][5][6] In brief,
  1. For now we should double-categorise women and members of minorities, so they are both in the parent categories along with the men and ethnic majority members, and in their respective subcategories.
  2. Mid-term, we should create a category system that applies single attributes only, like "American", "female", "novelist", and build a search engine that enables users to look for any intersection of gender, ethnicity, profession, etc. that they are interested in.
The Foundation should begin this work right now, putting some of its record donations income gleaned this year ($40 million+?) to effective use. Andreas JN466 21:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
It might also be worthwhile to have a look at how other Wikipedias approach this. In the German Wikipedia for example, Walt Whitman and Maya Angelou have the following cats:
  • Walt Whitman: Author · Literature (19th century) · Literatur (English) · Literature (US) · Homosexuality in literature · Poetry · Diary · Essay · US-American · Born 1819 · Died 1892 · Man
  • Maya Angelou: Civil rights activist · Author· Literatur (20th century) · Literature (English) · Literatur (US) · Autobiography · Children's literature · Poetry · University teacher (Winston-Salem) · Acting · Dance · Singing · Script writer · Song writer · Women's rights activists · Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients · Grammy Award winners · US American · Born 1928 · Woman
The German Wikipedia's categorisation system is neither sexist nor racist. Andreas JN466 21:48, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, but the german wikipedia has evidently chosen to not create gendered categories. As I've noted elsewhere, we have over 8,000 gendered categories just for women - and around 6,000 for men - so this wiki has made a different choice. I would actually support that approach (e.g. just one top level cat for men/women/other genders/etc - then let people use external cat intersection tools.), but it would mean deleting 14,000 categories worth of work. Good luck - CFD is over here: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion.
More importantly, if you want to shift the approach here, it certainly won't be by slinging accusations of sexism and racism based on bogus NY times articles and uninformed tweets by people who don't understand sh*t about wikipedia, because the people who have developed these cats and WP:EGRS are not sexist/racist, but in many cases rather the opposite - I've followed their edits and arguments.
For example, take this: [7] - this was an edit (from October, mind you), made by a respected wikipedia admin who is also (presumably) a woman and has received a number of accolades for her work: User:Orlady/Barnstars. But, as you can see, she made the same kind of edit that you have applied the term "sexist" to, but as her comment shows, she was simply trying to apply more narrow/specific cats. For me, for an act to be sexist, it has to have a "sexist" intent behind it, and you (and others) have provided no such evidence - indeed much evidence points to the opposite - that the purpose of these (and many other) gendered cats is to help highlight the role of women in field X or Y.
The idea that putting someone in a gendered sub-cat (and not at the same time the parent) is somehow sexist has some believers behind it, but I must emphasize to you that this is only a perception, and not a reality. If, like me, you consider a sub-category a full member of the parent category, then sub-categorizing someone does nothing re: their membership in the parent category, from a mathematical point of view - so sexism doesn't come into it at all. Just remember:perception does not equal reality, and we all have different perceptions. So again, I ask you to put the brakes on your rash accusations of sexism and racism. This issue is a lot more complex than that, and your (unjustified) name-calling does not help in the slightest.
Finally, your recommendations above, about double categorization, is nothing new - it's already an established guideline that just wasn't adhered to in this case (see WP:EGRS), and your second point, about WP:Category intersection, is a pipe dream and technically very difficult and hasn't yet been solved (there are external tools which do this, but they are a bit slow) - perhaps this mess will incite them to solve it, but don't count on it - we need to deal with the system we have. I look forward to your future (civil) contributions to that debate.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I think people should just drop all the sexism talk. Some random rabble-rouser spewed out a misguided op-ed from her ivory tower and demonized some nobodies she obviously took no effort to understand, which then gets all of us to go at each other's throats over half-truths and distortions. People should seriously stop indulging this crap. Trying to change the current categorization system is a great idea, but it can happen without all the hostility and demonization.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 02:26, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
The idea that the English Wikipedia's present category system is racist and sexist is really not new, and not limited to NYT op-ed writers. It's not for nothing that the German Wikipedia eschews racial categorisation altogether. Andreas JN466 02:41, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Not being new does not mean being right, neither does your argumentum ad populum. There has long been an underlying presumption that any situation where there is a gender imbalance there will be sexism, but that is itself a misguided and sexist attitude. However, many of these news reports are just echoing what the original op-ed author said and that author showed a clear lack of understanding of the processes, as well as a hasty judgmental attitude. The argument that women are being categorized specially is not really accurate, there are a rather large number of categories for men as well, there was just not one in this particular case. The idea that it was done out of some sexist desire to demean women is just baseless character assassination. It could just as easily be done out of a desire to treat female authors as a special subject of interest, with male authors being seen as mundane and of little interest as anything other than novelists. You could say that is a patronizing form of sexism, but it is one widely adopted by the feminist left with their aims being opposite of what is claimed here.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 03:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I honestly don't care about motivations, just the result: Any category system, where ... (see below). Implementing such a system and not finding anything wrong with it betrays at the very least a startling lack of sensitivity. Andreas JN466 04:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I daresay you are not winning out very well in the sensitivity department yourself, perhaps the oversensitivity department. There is nothing particularly consequential about such categories existing on Wikipedia, but there is something very consequential about painting people as sexists or racists.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 04:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Saying that a system created by people is sexist or racist is not the same thing as saying that the people who created the system are sexist or racist. See e.g. structural racism. Same thing happens with sexism. "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?" — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 05:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Actually, that is the same thing. His claim that motivations aren't a consideration is mistaken as sexism and racism are all about motivation. Systems that are unintentionally unequal are not racist or sexist, just unequal. To say a system is sexist or racist is to say that such is its intended purpose and thus the architects of that system would be sexist or racist themselves.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 06:02, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
For someone who calls people out on the fallacy ad populum you're pretty happy with the fallacy of division. Have you never heard of an emergent property? What do you think sociologists do if not study emergent properties of individuals organized into systems? And your idea that systems even have an intended purpose, let alone that their stated purposes are very much related to their functionality in reality, is naive too and suggests you don't know the meanings of the words involved in this discussion. Anyway, that's enough of this for me. Maybe they're actually solving the problem down below.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:25, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I am perfectly aware of what I am talking about thank you very much. All systems arise out of intent and thus have an intended purpose. To say a system is racist or sexist is to suggest that its intended purpose is to be racist or sexist and thus suggests that was the intent of those who created it. Unequal treatment is not inherently racist, sexist, or classist. The key is whether that unequal treatment is purposefully unequal and not simply incidental. Of course, I know full well that Andreas already thinks sexism is rampant among editors so I am not making a huge leap in suggesting he thinks sexism is their intent.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 17:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
You're saying... it's not possible for someone to create a system that is unintentionally sexist... because the actual property of the system is unequal treatment, and not sexism.... and the system can only be called "sexist" if it's sexist by intent? Am I understanding you correctly? This is a consistent way of using language, to be sure, but I'm not sure it's what everyone means when they say a system is "sexist". I think a lot of people would use the word "sexist" to mean unintentionally sexist. One could say they're wrong, but it wouldn't be fair to say that they mean what they don't mean. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Because there is no overall design the system favours any biases within the editing community and to some extent society at large. Categories are created, and people placed in to them, not due to encyclopaedic criteria, but based purely on the whim of an individual or group of editors. It is why you have a category of female murderers but not male murderers, its why categories on hate crimes fill up with instances of members of minority convicted of crimes against members of majorities. It may be that the instances of crimes are rare so they get more press coverage, but that just exposes the deeper bias within the system. Through the category system WP perpetuates biases rather than educating. John lilburne (talk) 07:00, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
this. everyone upset about being called racist/sexist should read this. and please, get un-upset. i don't like to be considered racist either, but if you are white in north america you probably are racist, simply because you grew up within a culture in which racism is pervasive, regardless of whether the entire system was designed to be so (parts of it certainly were). it's not common english usage to relegate "racism" to only conscious/intended actions, and it would make no sense to do so because people suffer from it whether or not it's consciously inflicted. growing up in such a system means taking a lot of things about race for granted that remain unexamined, and benefitting from the racist parts of the system which we don't even recognize. racism 101: what white people need to learn most is to LISTEN when somebody accuses them of racism instead of getting all defensive because some of their friends are black, and they'd never support the KKK, so how could they be racist? we can act in racist ways, even as race-conscious, card-carrying liberals, simply because we do not experience racism ourselves day in and day out and can remain untouched by it. but just because you don't notice it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. instead of doubling down (slinging back accusations of "rabble rouser", "ivory tower", and of "oversensitivity"), stop yourself, and then ask the accuser what actions of yours gave the impression of racism. same goes for sexism, etc. i always defend wikipedia in external arguments about racism/sexism because IME most editor racism/sexism is unintentional, and i'm pretty sure there was no intentional sexism at work in this case either -- but the editor in question wasn't sensitive to sexism, and that's something wikipedia editors need to learn because this is such a large, public-facing project. the solution is not to defend your intentions and a system that is broken for many of the people it purports to serve, but to search for solutions that fix it. thanks for pointing out the german wikipedia as an example, andreas, much appreciated. piranha (talk) 23:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
As I've just said elsewhere: Any category system where top-level, default categories come to be populated mainly or exclusively by Caucasian males is blatantly racist and sexist. And if Wikipedia is not prepared to abolish such racism and sexism, then it deserves to be bludgeoned to a pulp in the media. Now, if you want my help in abolishing that present system, then you are very welcome to it, and you need only ask. If you are intent on pontificating, defending or rationalising the present system, then you are wasting your time here: my mind is made up. Andreas JN466 02:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Question: Does the German Wikipedia have a good category intersection system that we could import to this one? LadyofShalott 02:52, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm enquiring about that and will get back to you. Andreas JN466 04:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Apparently, the best tool for the purpose is the CatScan tool, on the tool server. It seems to work beautifully. Andreas JN466 06:28, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
In the German Wikipedia, a link to the tool is present on each and every category page. The tool works for the English Wikipedia (and other Wikipedias) as well. So we already have the technology to do away with overdefined categories combining three or four attributes. Andreas JN466 06:54, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Cool. This sounds like something to mention at VPP, maybe with a big central RfC. This might be the solution we need. LadyofShalott 12:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, now would be a better time than ever before to get something done at long last. Wikid77 has just mentioned it on Talk:Jimbo as well. Andreas JN466 13:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I've been asking for that for days now, which is why I wanted that unholy CfD which will never go anywhere closed. Drmies (talk) 16:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Semi-arbitrary break

Let me touch on just a few points from the above. Devil's Advocate, your comment about some rabble-rouser spouting stuff from an ivory tower is wrong on more levels than I can here enumerate. The "tower" was the NYT, which we accept here as a reliable source (duh). The dissatisfaction with the system is widespread and covered reliably; saying that it's all the reader's fault is foolish and unproductive: " Blaming the readers is a losing game". Same with this stuff about "feminist left"--you're aligning yourself with the exact kind of essentialism that those readers are criticizing and, if I were a careless essentialist myself, I'd say it marks you as reactionary, sexist, right-wing. Fortunately I'm not so careless, haha. I am, I suppose, a cock-and-balls-carrying member of the feminist left.

I have mixed feelings about the German system: every time I edit on the German wiki (I used to translate German articles and then insert the en:wiki link in the German one, so I'd always see the categories) and I see "Kategorie:Mann" my heart sinks--the Germans ought to know better than to generalize like that. That all people fall apart into either Mann or Frau is foolish and essentializing--one needn't be Judith Butler to realize that the sworn virgins aren't men or women. What's necessary for being male? Football? or balls? In that case, where does the Castrato belong? We have him as Category:Male singers. (The Germans, in an oddly sensible move, have them under de:Kategorie:Eunuch; ours is maybe a mistake.) OK--what is "male"? Answer is given in Male: "A male (♂) organism is the physiological sex which produces sperm." Well, a eunuch can't produce sperm. Neither can, for the record, a male who's been snipped, at least not in any meaningful way. I don't want to get in an all-too detailed conversation, but I categorically reject the notion that somehow this is easy, or that this falls into two categories. Besides, there's another kind of genderism going on--I note that Category:Transgender and transsexual people is tagged {{Subjective category}} as a BLP matter. Well, the same ought to apply to the male and female people categories, as a matter of fairness (James Barry (surgeon) makes for good reading, and there's plenty of living people like Barry, no doubt).

I happened upon one more example of this ghettoization, which more and more I am beginning to think of as a valid charge: Category:Gods. If anything proves the accusation, it's that category, and it's "daughter" category Category:Goddesses (our categorization indeed makes Hera the daughter of Zeus as well as his sister) with its odd headnote. And see Category:Greek goddesses, with the headnote "For male Greek gods, see Category:Greek gods." We confirm that the general term, the default, the complete one, the non-derived one, is male--woman is sub, altered, descended, incomplete. That's the more basic problem here. And don't you all go and make like this isn't a problem, because it is. Gendering (at least gendering in two genders) is outdated; the train has left that station some time ago.Drmies (talk) 16:46, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The stuff about gods and goddesses doesn't appear accurate as those are both sub-categories of the deities category, which is a gender-neutral term. Same with the Greeks as there is a general "Greek deities" category with "Greek gods" and "Greek goddesses" as subcats.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 17:53, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
I note that you don't address the point of Category:Gods--"This is a list of the proper names of male gods." Drmies (talk) 21:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Not all beings called gods are male (some are genderless or dual-gendered) so it is apt to say the above if that is what you are suggesting is the problem. As I noted, it is not evidence of ghettoization, but an even gender split as both the gods and goddesses cats are subcats of the general deities cat not one a subcat of the other.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 22:04, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Just quickly defending the honour of the German Wikipedia here—they have four genders: female, male, unknown, intersex. What I like about the German system is not the specific number of genders they support—I wouldn't mind having a few more—but that the German category system eschews intersectional categories. Instead, German users are expected (and enabled) to define their own intersections of very simple categories like male/female/intersex etc. + born 1975 + German + writer. Keeping the categories simple and more stable reduces the maintenance effort for the category system and makes for more consistent application: the simpler the system is, the lower the chance of novices doing it completely wrong. It also reduces the churn of new categories being formed daily, of categories being categorised and recategorised, with a huge complicated tree that is forever changing and that no one editor has a complete grasp of. Andreas JN466 20:40, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment The specific edit was about whether the person should be in a by genre subcat while in the parent cat. It has nothing to do with whether race and gender cats should diffuse. That is why I objected to the accusation, because the actions had nothing to do with race and gender at all.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:31, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
    • Any accusation of sexism or racism in terms of intentions seems totally unnecessary and unsupportable. There is no need to impugn the motives of any editor here. The problem is that perfectly well-intentioned actions led to a state of affairs which treats women and men differently, in a way that appears sexist to many outside observers. In order to recognize and address this problem, there is no need to talk about editors' motives, any more than you need to establish malice on the part of a flu virus before you recognize that you're ill and take medicine.

      For my money, JPL was acting in the purest of good faith, and just didn't see this mess coming. Fair enough -GTBacchus(talk) 20:06, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

    • John, Rochelle Alers was a complicated and untypical case, and my comments there related more to the perceived inequities of Wikipedia's system, rather than to you personally or that specific article. So let's please leave that aside for now. Let's rather try to find out whether and where we agree or disagree. To this end, could you respond to the following questions:
      1. Do you (now) support the principle that gender, ethnicity, sexuality and religion (GESR) categories should never be diffusing?
      2. Do you support the idea that no one should because of their gender, ethnicity, sexuality or religion be removed from a generic, non-GESR-specific category that others not belonging to their group remain in?
      3. Do you support the idea that anyone who is in a GESR-specific category should, as regards inclusion in the non-GESR-specific parent category, be treated the same, and have the same "rights" of inclusion and representation in the category, as anyone who is not a member of their GESR-specific category?
    • Let's get clarity on these points, and then we can move forward. Andreas JN466 20:40, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi Andreas. Thanks for your response above, and for your apology for the tweets - which I accept - and I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation. I think you've brought a lot of intelligent points to this debate, and I've learned a lot from you already. A couple of points to the above:
First to Drmies - I understand where you're coming from, and fully agree gender isn't binary - I was one of the first to point this out in the CFD discussion. I admit every time I read the Category:Gender category, it boggles my mind - and trying to categorize such diversity is impossible. I studied programming, and in our classes, sex/gender was always the classic example of a binary variable - now it turns out, that is a massive misunderstanding of humankind - but it still perpetuates through society, and our zillions of databases, and the architecture of our laws, our institutions, and even our bathrooms. Databases, categories, and laws are discrete; humans are continuous; sexuality is a continuum, but so, in it's own way, is gender. Any time you turn a continuous variable into a discrete one (e.g. so and so is gay, so and so is a man), you are likely to cause friction at the edges and borders - there are always exceptions, always those who spill over and bridge boundaries (think of the words intersex, or bisexual, or transgender - these are all bridge terms). But humans *always* categorize - it's one of our favorite pastimes - we classify, we group, we put like patterns together - perhaps it's our way of understanding the world and simplifying it. We've even divided the majesty of the natural world into a massive taxonomy which nature herself never created. I've always felt that race especially, which we know to be a social creation, arises mostly for one reason - skin color and facial features are easily recognizable, whereas the stuff that really counts (99.9% of your genome), who you are, is hidden. So, humans naturally group people with darker skin together with people with lighter skin because it's the easy thing to do, even if the inside, ethos, politics, attitude, etc of dark-skinned person A may be much closer (and even genetically) to light-skinned person B than they are to others with similar skin color! We're still tribal, all of us - and we're not yet color blind. In any case, I would certainly support, esp if we go this route of category intersections, having much more than male/female, but would leave it to others to determine that list or how it works.
Now to Jayen - as you saw from my post above, I believe there are real difficulties in implementing what you propose re: non-diffusing cats. I think, as noted, it's a good idea in theory, but difficult in practice, esp for editors who aren't PhDs in mathematics or taxonomy experts. I'd like us to sort out the specific algorithm of exactly how this would work - perhaps working on the quiz, and walking through that example, could give us a workable solution (James Baldwin would be another great example). If we could come up with a robust, and easily explainable algorithm for non-diffusion that would not lead to (a) differentiation between people w.r.t. categorization, except their specific gendered/ethnic cat and (b) can be performed by an average user without too much complexity, (c) deal appropriately with the issue of diffusing sub-cats alongside non-diffusing gendered cats, and how to deal with this, then it could be a useful bandaid I would support until we get cat intersection properly working. I would simply point you to the massive ghettoization in the tree today as evidence that the current guidelines are too hard to follow (or editors are too lazy to follow them).
Having worked through a few examples, for now I fear it will be quite complex. In any case, once we have the algorithm, we should all separately apply it to a new bio, and see if our results agree. In any case, I do hope we can use the momentum generated by this mess to get cat intersects working sooner rather than later.
Side bar: The other option I've proposed is to completely categorize by every slice (so if we have a woman cat, create a man cat, (and a 3rd gender cat, etc); if we have a LGBT cat, create a hetero cat, if we have an ethnic cat, create all necessary ethnic cats), and always diffuse fully. The french wikipedia does this - they always have a male and a female cat. The advantage here would be much simpler rules re diffusion - you *always* diffuse, and that would remove the "norming" aspect of the lopsided system today (e.g. that white/male/hetero is normal and not worthy of a label). But, I get the feeling no-one else would support this, so I'm not going to press for it...
Allow me to end with one final point, on sexism. Besides the fact that no evidence has been tendered re: sexist attitudes in our guidelines to categorization e.g. WP:EGRS, the problem with this charge of sexism is it is completely context dependent. For example, if the category screen of Category:American novelists included articles from the subcats (as it now does, through a link I added here), then it wouldn't be a big deal that people were diffused, because when looking at Category:American novelists, you'd see everyone - that's what category membership *means* semantically. So that means, an act of diffusion which was previously called "sexist" would all of a sudden cease to be sexist based on a software change. That doesn't make sense to me - how can a change in software display algorithms make something that was sexist into something that is not? To me, the word sexism (and certainly to the many bloggers and tweeters) implies some intent on the part of the actor. You can, as of today, click on a link and get a full list of American novelists, all side-by-side, no matter how they are categorized. Isn't this what people were asking for?
Another example: if you look at Category:American_politicians, it is today empty of bios - it has been fully diffused. So it would thus be ridiculous to say we are sexist because people in Category:American women in politics are also not in their parent, Category:American_politicians. Many articles in Category:American novelists are *also* in need of diffusion (e.g. to century cats), and laziness has led to them not being diffused yet, even though that cat is also tagged for diffusion (the guidelines state such gendered cats should not be created in any case unless the top-level cat can be fully diffused, so the guy who created the cat in October just didn't do it right).
So we have this strange situation, where the laziness of wikipedia editors to not diffuse results in charges of sexism, whereas as soon as full diffusion happens, the sexism goes away! So the editing act of removing a woman from Category:American novelists would at one point in time be sexist and at another point no longer be - similarly, the act of *not* putting a woman in Category:American politicians would start off non-sexist, but then become so if Category:American politicians started to be filled up with a bunch of new articles on politicians by newbie editors. If an act of categorization becomes sexist *after* you've done it due to forces beyond your control, then the word has just lost its discursive power.
I'll give one more example of "retroactive" sexism. Suppose I add a woman to Category:American romantic fiction writers, which is today a subcat of Category:American novelists. She doesn't need to be diffused up, since she's already in a child cat. Now, someone else comes along and decides Category:American romantic fiction writers is no longer a sub-cat of Category:American novelists - and POW - just like that, we've now ghettoized all of the women in this cat - without even thinking about it! Is that sexism? Who was the sexist actor - or what sexist structure led to it happening? The changing of the parent of a category (which is a 3 character edit)? Now we have an editor who changed parents, ghettoized hundreds of women with a keystroke, and he/she doesn't even realize it - because... surprise surprise, they are not PhDs in set theory. I'm just trying to point out that these so-called "sexist" outcomes can arise for many reasons, most of which are completely innocent of "sexist" motivations or even "sexist" guidelines or "sexist" infrastructure. Remember these gendered cats were created as a way to highlight the contributions of women in the first place!
If you want to try your hand and see how "sexist" you are (or aren't), please take my quiz - you might find it's harder than you think!
So it all goes back to the point which started this whole discussion - could we *please* stop parroting the terms sexist and racist, or at least agree to use them as follows: "To the outside world, this way sub-categories are displayed may at times give the appearance of sexism", rather than implying that this is an essential feature of our current system or a verified characteristic of the editors working on categorization or categorization guidelines. Sorry for the long-windedness, best regards, --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:54, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Obi--just a quickie, since it's gin and tonic time and then dinner time: I will read over this more carefully, but I do want to say that I appreciate the thoughtfulness you put into this, and I hope I have been using the language you propose--"giving the appearance of" etc. I certainly believe that our system does give that appearance, and I believe that the recent edits have only confirmed that appearance. I am not smart enough to fully understand what's being suggested about an intersection system, and I'd love to hear a layman's explanation (I'm sure that's helpful for more people than just me, given our media shit storm). But more generally I have some beef that no system will ever fix: that we divide in the first place. Today I learned that my daughter is given girl books at her school library. She's seven. We're talking books from the American Girl crap series. They won't give her boy books. This is a public school. For now, she wants to be a scientist, but give those librarians and teachers a year or two and all she'll want is to be a princess, like all the other nice white girls here in the American South. I asked my students in a lit class today about what comes to mind when they're asked to define "man". Guess what: noble, strong, dominant, honorable... Drmies (talk) 23:17, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

New Salon article

Note that there is a new article in Salon, Wikipedia's shame. Sexism isn't the problem at the online encyclopedia. The real corruption is the lust for revenge. Andreas JN466 20:51, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Sie haben Post

You have mail. Go Phightins! 21:08, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

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