Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:1555 in law

The following discussion comes from Categories for deletion. This is an archive of the discussion only; please do not edit this page. -Kbdank71 17:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vote Count:


 * Keep (6) : Gene Nygard, Wincoote, Pharos, Neutrality, Juntungwu, Postdlf
 * Delete (10) : Wahoofive, Rick Block, Radiant!, Saifu, Eugene van der Pijll, VivaEmilyDavies, Grutness, Pharos, Laura Scudder, Kbdank71


 * Replace with "1550's in law"

Moved to Resolved.

Category:1555 in law
There's probably going to be exactly one entry in this category forever. --Wahoofive 00:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep. That category is a subcategory of Category:16th century in law (and others in the tree above it as well) which has other entries.  If any change is made, it should be a more comprehensive organization of related categories.  As is, it should be kept.  Gene Nygaard 00:48, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep Wincoote 01:01, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep.   Perhaps the nominator is so well versed in the year 1555 that he was able to determine within the eight minutes it took him to list this for deletion after I created the category that no other treaties were signed that year, no treatises were written, and no laws passed.  Obviously part of a comprehensive structure to organize all legal topics by their year of enactment.  Postdlf 01:05, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep I've already added a few. There was an bull from the Pope, Cum nimis absurdum, which created the Roman Ghetto and otherwise restricted Jews, in Britain the upkeep of roads was devolved to the parishes as statute labour, the Muscovy Company was granted a charter giving it a legal monopoly on trade with Russia, and the Heresy laws enacted in December of 1554 came into effect leading to the trials and executions of many leading Protestants called the Marian martyrs, a treaty was signed between a Siberian Khan and Moscow promising a yearly tribute of a thousand sables etc.  Not an inconsequential year in the history of jurisprudence, I think.  I may have been a little generous with some, I wonder what the guidelines are for this project.--Pharos 03:02, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * No consensus on which years to include articles in yet, because it's been up until now the work of only one or two people. I would think that an article should be included in no more than one year's category.  I would place a law drafted in 1985, passed in 1986, taking effect in 1987 and amended in 1988 should be in "1986 in law"; a treaty written in 1946 that entered into force in 1992 should be in "1992 in law", and an article on the history of telecommunications law shouldn't be in any because it can't be tied to any one year.  The year a court case is decided is pretty clear.  Basically the question for me is, when was the law actually changed?  When a law is written is often rather indeterminate, and when a law takes effect is permanently set in motion when it is passed&mdash;the key moment for me.  That a law is later amended shouldn't also place it in that year in law category; make a separate article for the act that amended it if that was such a key moment.  Anyway, those are my thoughts.  Maybe we should make a project page to work it out?  Postdlf 03:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Those were the same criteria I was working from for court cases and treaties, but I was putting laws under the year they were passed rather than the year they took effect. I suspect probably not a significant difference in most cases, I don't recall coming across any where a difference between those dates was mentioned. I also put the "years in organized crime" articles in "years in law" categories, since I figured those were directly relevant to legal issues. Should articles on specific crimes go into these categories too? There must be an existing WikiProject on legal articles somewhere that we could parasitize for this. :) Bryan 07:33, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I must not have been too clear&mdash;I agreed with the year the law was passed as the integral year. Postdlf 20:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, the italics on effect threw me. Never mind then. :) Bryan 23:51, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete. Category ~= index. It's bad enough to have categories for births/deaths/films/novels/music/sports by year.  Should every topic have a "by year" category?  How about category:wikipedians who used to think categories were a useful feature but got totally totally turned off by overuse of categories, by year? -- Rick Block 04:01, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete - but create Category: 1550s in law (or Category: Law, 1551-1560 if you prefer). Having individual year categories for law from a historical period is overkill - it is likely that many of the related traties will not have been made in the same year exactly, but one or two years either side. It also does restrict the size of the category. There may have been a handful of treaties and bulls in any one year, but we're still not going to get a big, active category. Dividing the century up into more palatable bites will make for easier location of particular legislation and will enable larger categories to show what else was going in in law at around the same time. Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]] 05:49, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete as too narrow, per Grutness. Radiant_* 08:36, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Part of me agrees with Rick Block, part of me looks at Muscovy Company and wonders what exactly that has to do with law in 1555, and then I think since there aren't that many articles in any of the subcats of Category:16th century in law, why can't we just get rid of all of them and move the articles up one level?  -Kbdank71 14:50, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Should we also delete Category:15 births because only two people seem to have been born then? It's part of a system.  Chunking it up into larger pieces will only prevent the year in law categories from being linked with individual years, and will glut the more recent periods of time with too many articles (Category:2004 in law presently has 30 articles, Category:2003 in law has 20...).  Postdlf 16:39, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. In the 20th century every year should have its own category, but not the sixteenth. Categories shouldn't be an end in themselves; how will they be useful to encyclopedia users? If someone needs to know exactly what year the Muscovy Company was chartered, they can read the article. If they want to know what the legal environment was around that time, a decade (or century) would be much more useful. And yes, I have the same opinion about Category:15 births, in part because birth dates that far back are often uncertain. &mdash;Wahoofive | Talk 17:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I can see your point. I disagree, but I still see your point.  ; )  But as long as the individual years for the 18th century onward are left alone, I won't get too angry...  Earlier than that, I can chalk it up to a reasonable disagreement over necessity.  Postdlf 20:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Too narrow. siafu 17:44, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Of the 9 articles now in this category, 7 should not be in a "year in law" category at all; Imperial Reform should be in Category:1495 in law; only Peace of Augsburg is more or less in the right place. It seems that the existence of this category leads to too much miscategorization, and so its disadvantages outweigh its advantages. Category:16th century in law would be the proper category, or Category:1550s in law, depending on the size of the categories. Eugene van der Pijll 21:49, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 1550s in law may well make more sense (but I think 16th century would definitely be too broad), but I think you are at least partly wrong about miscategorization. The Reichsexekutionsordnung (Imperial Execution Order) was in 1555, and this is said to have marked the end of the Imperial Reform.  The Cum nimis absurdum was quite significant in the history of European Jewry, just because there isn't a separate article for it yet does that mean it shouldn't be included?--Pharos 04:20, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I would think, actually, that the lack of a separate article means that it shouldn't be included. Would you include an article on the history of slavery in every year that the article notes a legal change was made?  I was hoping these categories would be used narrowly&mdash;only when the article as a whole only dealt with the specific legal topic for which the year was integral.  The description I've applied to all these through the template is aiming at that.  Could you write an article on the Cum nimis absurdum?  Postdlf 04:25, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * You (Pharos) are probably right, 1550s in law would have enough articles to make it a useful category. There are several problems with including subjects that do not have their own article:
 * It clutters up the articles itself. Pope Paul IV for example refers to several subjects that do not have their own article. Each of these subject could fit into one or more categories. This would mean that his article could end up with a large number of only tangentially related categories.
 * Conversely, there is more than one article that refers to cum nimis absurdum. Why did you (or someone else) choose Pope Paul IV? You could also have added the articles History of anti-Semitism, Ghetto, Roman Ghetto, and Yellow badge to Category:1555 in law. (Except that according to Roman Ghetto, it was 1556.) This leads either to arbitrariness, if one article is chosen at random, or duplication, if all articles are added, which means that the least important subjects get multiple entries.
 * It makes the category itself unclear. You can't annotate category entries, so it is totally unclear on the category page itself why Pope Paul IV is there.
 * About Imperial Reform: the Reichexecutionsordnung is said to be about details only. The Reform itself started in 1495, with possibly a number of reforms in years after that. If only one year is to be selected, it would be 1495. If the Reichsexecutionsordnung is important enough to be mentioned in a category, an article about it should be possible. Eugene van der Pijll 08:46, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete 16th century in law or 1550s in law makes more sense than 1555 in law. --Laura Scudder 22:50, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Categorising by decade will make it far more useful. --VivaEmilyDavies 23:04, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, obviously. Neutralitytalk 21:07, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. JuntungWu 06:43, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)