User talk:J. Van Meter/Archive 2

Replaceable fair use Image:Rochlittletheatre.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:Rochlittletheatre.jpg. I notice the 'image' page specifies that the image is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed image could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this image is not replaceable, please:


 * 1) Go to the image description page and edit it to add, without deleting the original Replaceable fair use template.
 * 2) On the image discussion page, write the reason why this image is not replaceable at all.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace the fair use image by finding a freely licensed image of its subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or a similar) image under a free license, or by taking a picture of it yourself.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified how these images fully satisfy our fair use criteria. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on [ this link]. Note that fair use images which could be replaced by free-licensed alternatives will be deleted 7 days after this notification, per our Fair Use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You should ask him to release the picture under a free license. Either GFDL or CC-BY-SA is acceptable. The issue is that since someone else could take a free picture, if this one is not released as a free image then we can't use it per WP:NFCC. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Ask him if he will release the image under the Creative Commons license "CC-BY-SA". This license says that anyone else may use the image and make new version from it, but they have to give him credit as the original author and they have to release their changes under the same license. If he agrees, send a copy of the email to me, including his email address, using the "email this user" link from User:CBM. You have to do that because only signed-in users can send email to other users. I'll take care of the rest, and I should not need to send him more email, although having a contact address is helpful. Thanks, &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Sure, I removed the deletion tag to make sure the image isn't deleted. The goal, really, is to get an image licensed under a free license, and it would be great if it's this image. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:33, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The photographer can choose any license to give us, but we don't consider a noncommercial-only license to be a "free" license (see the section on "Downstream use" in WP:NONFREE for an explanation). So if the photographer grants us a noncommercial-only license, we will not consider the image "free".  In the case of irreplaceable photos, we could continue to use the photo as a "nonfree image" in places that require it.  Unless I misunderstand, however, the Little Theater is available for anyone to photograph in Rochester.  Therefore a free photograph of this theater could be made.  We don't allow ourselves to use nonfree images that can be replaced per WP:NFCC. So unless the photographer is willing to release this image under a license that we consider free, we will not be able to use this photograph in Wikipedia.


 * One courtesy we are glad to provide to the photographer is attribution of the photograph on the image description page and contact information for him. One requirement of the CC-BY-SA license is that all other users of the image must also give attribution to the photographer, and cannot add limitations to the license. So for example if they sell his photograph, they cannot prohibit others from making copies of what they sell. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Removing the email address is OK - once we get a reference number (ticket number) for the email, people will be able to use that if they need to verify the permission. Thanks again for getting the permission letter. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Sardi's caricature subjects
Category:Sardi's caricature subjects, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page.

Please note that this is not an attack on the notability of Sardi's. Rather, it is a discussion about the appropriateness of this topic as a classification. The guidelines for categories are at WP:CAT and WP:CATFAQ. WP:OCAT talks about overcategorization, and WP:CLS talks about the differences between categories, lists, and series infoboxes.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia's category system is not the same as "tagging", and it simply doesn't work to create a category for various interesting aspects of people. For a variety of reasons, the category system works best when there are a limited number of categories on an article -- only those that are "defining" of the subject of the article. If you have questions beyond the policies, please feel free to ask on my talk page, and do please feel free to join in at the "Categories for Discussion" discussion.

--Lquilter (talk) 23:23, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * BTW, you put George Grossmith into this category, but I suspect that you meant George Grossmith, Jr., who was sometimes credited without the Jr.? Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductees
Just want to thank you for your support here in front of a mob of zealous fanatics. I really appreciated it. Jazzeur (talk) 04:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

User.
The IP address user was already blocked. I'm too slow, apparently. :( · AndonicO  Hail!  21:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

More thinking about award-winner categories
Working with awards and award-winners and CFDs -- and now TFDs! -- all this time it occurred to me that perhaps the best solution is a single compressed template. So, I drafted Template:Awardwinners; other editors' thoughts would be appreciated. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but I thought I'd at least ping some other folks involved in award-winner discussions for their opinions and thoughts. --Lquilter (talk) 19:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello Pandora, may I offer you a box?

 * Wow, fairly huge question/topic.


 * Re: the proposed award winner-template: the info box in use for actors already has a collapsed award section-- see Peter O'Toole or Judi Dench for examples. This new template would be creating a duplication in those instances. Wouldn't it be simpler to just enhance the existing musical artist box with an awards section (for starters)?  NB: In the actors' pages however, the awards are listed both in the box AND as categories.


 * I didn't weigh in on the Template:Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductees because, in spite of the absolutely heroic efforts Jazzeur put into creating it, I think that particular information is very ill-suited for a template format - primarily because the recipient list is big and will continue to grow. At some point in the future, with the continued addition of honorees, the template could become larger than an article. It was far better off as a category. And while I certainly acknowledge the spirit of compromise and reconciliation in which you made the template suggestion to Jazzeur, short of a category, a simple: See also: List of Down Beat Hall of Fame inductees would provide the same information in one click rather than two, and would do so in a regular-size and more easy-to-read font, which the template format does not provide.


 * The very best use of templates, in my opinion, is for concise and finite groups or topics: Template:Impressionism, Template:Vitamin, Template:Shakespeare, Template:The Beatles, Template Solar System (<-- an especially nice one).


 * The new award template you're considering seems to be about camouflaging/hiding information to neaten up a page - a link to "categories that some people think should be categories, but others don't, so we’ll compromise and make them into lists, and then put the lists into a template instead." Seems like quite a bit more work and bother than necessary to just link to lists of other awardees.

The dam breaks, or, all my thoughts on category issues:

 * For the record, I fully understand the concept that categories are not '"tags”. I don’t understand the concern that there’s a confusion on that issue. Tagging would put “fish” and “guitar” together in “bass”, or “karate" and “lamb” together in “chop”.


 * Most would agree that a category, in general terms, is a means to gather like items.


 * I would guess that most people see Malcolm Forbes as a publisher; yet some know him as a member of the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. The beauty of Wikipedia is that he's shown to be both. And that occurs quite elegantly by way of categories.


 * But the category managers refer to categories as "defining characteristics". Fair enough. But then the section/concept should be called "Defining Characteristics" and it's not. It’s called Categories. So most everyone that ever paid attention in kindergarten (Billy, you put all the blocks in that basket. Betty, you put all the crayons in the drawer) or played around with Venn Diagrams in second grade (Hey, the apple is round AND red), will come along here and try, by definition, to collect like articles into categories with other like articles. They’ll want to put their astronaut article with other astronauts, their river article with other rivers and yes, their award winner with other similar award winners. That’s not "tagging", that’s seeing a commonality via a shared achievement, and grouping articles accordingly.


 * If people have shared the same honor, big or small, logically, they have something in common. But CfD frequently attempts to legislate which common things are important, and that’s where the trouble is. Is “people with green eyes” an important commonality? Probably not, but I suppose it really depends on whom you ask. Geneticist might like that category very much.

An aside:

 * I bet 99% of people would agree that Reese Witherspoon has more in common with Halle Berry than with Andrew Carnegie, and yet in the Wikipedia categorization scheme of things, Witherspoon and Carnegie are grouped together via an incorrect “tag” on Witherspoon of Category:Scottish Americans, when really it’s Carnegie who’s the Scottish-American and Witherspoon who’s an Category:Americans of Scottish descent. But that category doesn’t exist, (YEAH it DOES exist!)  even though Category:Americans of Irish descent does. Another example: if Gerald Ford truly was Category:English American as he is (inaccurately) categorized here, he could never have been president.  (i corrected that too.) Someone saw fit to create the distinction for some ethnic groups, but not all - and, in my mind, chaos ensues because of it. Yet, these categories all slip by the attention of CfD.


 * The categories are valid, and have not "slipped by" the attention of CfD -- they have been discussed many times. Miscategorization happens all the time, and is very hard to catch. That is why categories are not a useful tool for many of the things which people would like to use them for, and why templates or lists (which are also indexes but are "policeable" indexes) serve better than categories for many things. --Lquilter (talk) 14:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Another place that ducks aren't in a row:

 * If a main concern is the reduction of category-clutter, there are plenty of places that cry for attention -- eg, is it really necessary for all the people in Category:People from Kansas City to ALSO be in Category:People from Wyandotte County, Kansas? Redundancies like that abound – particularly in the “People from” departments-- but those categories remain without being tightened up.


 * Point being: Existing inconsistent and excessive categories are a major problem - a far bigger problem to my mind than questioning the merits of grouping award winners together. The repeated creation of new award-recipient categories is some evidence of just how defining and important many people consider awards to be.


 * Actually, award-recipient categories are rarely recreated, FWIW. It's not worth much, because re-creation actually doesn't mean anything about the value or Wikipedia-guideline-following nature of a category. Some of the most inane and stupid categories have been created multiple times. Finally, people edit where they will, so your wish that fellow editors would turn their attention to things that you think are broken and should be dealt with, instead of things that they think are broken and are interested in dealing with, is only helpful to you. If you think something is broken, then, pretty much, you have to try to fix it. If you don't like the duplication of geographical categories, then please submit them to CFD as you think appropriate. You will probably have more success if you scan the CFD archives and CFD guidelines so you're familiar with the prior discussions on the topic. --Lquilter (talk) 14:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Back to the point:

 * As I said, editors look to existing categories to figure out the scheme of things. Existing categories set a precedent (whether or not a policy exists saying "don't go by precedent"). We have:
 * Category:International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor inductees
 * Category:Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Vocal Group Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Blues Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:National Women's Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Motorcycle Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Television Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
 * Category:Hollywood Walk of Fame
 * And even a Category:Halls of fame inductees! (if that's not redundant, I don't know what is)... to name only a very few.


 * So, it's a stretch to understand why Jazzeur was told the Category:Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductees had to go.


 * If Hall of Fame inductees and award winners don't merit categories here, fine. I strongly disagree with that point of view, but if that's the consensus, then they should ALL be consistently deleted, recreated as lists, and linked in a "See also" section. Eliminating only the new Halls of Fame and Awards categories, while the others remain, causes confusion and accusations of bias.


 * And that is the basis of the havoc that ensued around the Down Beat Hall category -- that next resulted in the clunky Down Beat Hall template -- that's now being discussed to be retooled/hidden in the new award winner template. Look at all the work, confusion, and in Jazzeur's case, extreme frustration that results when categories are judged and deleted based on standards that aren't consistently applied. (Jazzeur is clearly an editor that could make some excellent contributions here. And yet, after this incredible debacle over what really was a fair simple category creation, I fear he/she will run out of patience and we'll lose all that expertise.)
 * (1) Category:Halls of fame inductees is not "redundant"; it is part of the general category scheme for indexing subcategories. I added the hatnote "parent-cat" to it to make that more clear. (2) Thanks for pointing these out to me. I will probably take some of them on in my own good time. --Lquilter (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll wrap up/back to the template at hand:

 * I very much appreciate your attempt to solve problems and smooth feathers with this Award winners template, but I think it: (A) is a duplication of effort - at least in terms of actors (and perhaps with other info boxes that I’m not familiar with), as well as a duplication with the existing awards and honors categories; (B) reduces the listing of similarly awarded people into a ghetto of smaller font size that are two clicks away rather than one; and (C) actually creates more clutter in the body of the article (via the template banners) than does a category listing which appears outside the body of the article at the end of the page.


 * Again, your intentions are great, but I don't believe a new template is the way to go. The template is a band-aid. Probably what's needed is a tourniquet.


 * (And, if you've actually read all this, you, um, deserve an award...) J. Van Meter (talk) 02:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC)