Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people

Academics, writers and scholars
I just came across the article on Alida Anderson. She is an academic/scholar who has published work in multiple scholarly venues. For now I moved her from American writers to American non-fiction writers. I am not sure that is where to place her. This is getting into messiness. Most academics publish at least some written works, you literally have to create a PhD with a published dissertation, and you need to publish more to gain tenure. I think though we want something more than a dissertation to make someone a "writer". Historians are under writers. I remember one of my professors at Easyltern Michigan University when I was working on my masters there mentioning that historians were one of the few if not the only academic disciplines where they still regularly wrote works aimed at the general educated public and not specifically at people deeply skilled in the discipline. John Thornton's works on the history of West Central Africa and other topics clearly make him a writer. Of course we eventually also get into antiquarian and chroniclers, the later writers, the former often writing works. Most scholars and academics write and get published, but not all get published in broadly available venues. With historians the tendency is enough get published in enough places that to treat writers of history as distinct from scholars of history would lead to Category clutter and require us to make distinctions not often made in reliable sources. With science writers, I think there is a distinct group that writes books aimed at the general public, as opposed to those who write technical papers. The scholars/academics mess aldo comes up.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:57, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Our article on English literature insists it is the body of literary ture in the English language, but admits this can be confused with "British literature", the body of literature created in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has only existed since 1801, Great Britain since 1707. William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer and many others would fall into Kingdom of England literature. Our "English writers" Category is gor writers from England, we use English-language writers for those who write in English (with rules to exclude some to avoid Category overlap). So English writers is not the group producing English literature per categories and articles. That is confusing to say thd least.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:21, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Literary scholars
Are "Swedish literary scholars" a group by nationality, or by subject? Are "English literature academics" studying the literature of England, or literature written in English?John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * So it turns out "English literature" the article insists it is literature written in English. This ignores that our standard usage elsewhere says "English" us gor things/people connected to England and "English-language" is for things/people connected to the Enfmglish language.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:24, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Per usage "Swedish literary scholars" should be scholars who are Swedisgmh by nationslity who study literature. Which begs the question, why do we not have Category:American literary scholars? It looks like we only have 4 such categories. I am thinking we should rename them Literary scholars from Sweden, and purge any people who are not in some way nationals of Sweden. We already have a similar set up for Linguists, because Swedish Linguists is also ambiguous.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * So it turns out my view of literary criticism was too narrow. What I am totally lost on is if anyone knows how to distinguish a literary critic, a literary scholar and a literary historian. We do not have an article on literary historian, a search for the term redirects to history of literature. I am beginning to wonder of all the Fooian literary historian categories, or at least the ones using names of languages should be renamed to Literary historians from Foo. In some cases we almost have to. Since English literature says the term meansliteratilure in the English language and says that if you think it means Literature written in England or by nationals if England you are confused, than per that Englush literary historians are those who study the history of English literature, not people who are English who study the history of literature.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:42, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * With the literature academics, the English, Spanish, French and German are by language, but do not say language, the Chinese, Korean and Japanese are sub-cats of those academics categories, so they are posing as by nationality. There is also an Arabic and a few others where there is no nationality.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:03, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * However "Arabic" could be confused with "Arab" which is an ethnic designation. There can be Arabs writing not in Arabic. Then there is the African literature, which is neither a language nor a nationality. Does African literary scholars include people who are experts on the writings of Tunisian nationalists? "Africa" is a huge continent where most of the countries have dozens if not hundreds of languages. Much of the literature produced on the African continent has been written in colonial languages, primarily French and English, or in Arabic, but there is literate in other languages. Amheric liturature. Maybe Ethiopian liturature. John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I am sure there is Swahili literature. There is also KiKongo liturature.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:11, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Why the Swahili literature article has a bias against the work of Swahili writers in Lubumbashi or other parts of DR Congo is a good question we should ask of it. We might as well start the English liturature article with "Englishituature is literature written in the English language, particularly by those who live in England". Although there are other biases in the attempts to exclude those of Lubumbashi. The Swahili language was brought to Lubumbashi and other parts of DR Comgo by slavers from the coast. There are huge POV pushing issues with the way the article is currently worded.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As I suspected our assumption that X literature means Literature in X language is wrong. Here https://brill.com/view/journals/jwl/6/2/article-p123_1.xml?language=en is a detailed article on "Congolese" literature. It treats the term as grouping nationals. Most mentioned write in French, but it does mention a work in Lingala. The grouping us eorks by people who are nationals of X country. Much is written by expatriates and published in other countries. I did not get all the way though.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:27, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

People from the Kingdom of Prussia
Despite the parent Category being People from the Kingdom of Prussia, and the next layer down being People from the Kingdom of Prussia by occupation, the next level down uses a mix of things like Scientists from the Kingdom of Prussia and Writers from the Kingdom of Prussia, but Prussian physicians and Prussian musicians. I think we should use from the Kingdom of Prussia for all. We want to be clear we are referring to the Kingdom of Prussia, not to the Province of Prussia. The Free State of Prussia was not functional enough that it only existed in law and not in fact from about 1934 to 1936. We do not hold to a strong this category ends in 1871, but it has more meaning before that date. Pre-1701 the issue is messier. The political unit is called is historiography Brandenberg-Prussia, but it is multiple geographically distinct units. We do have People from the Duchy of Prussia to cover pre-1701 articles. The Kingdom that existed 1701-1918, although from 1871-1918 it was the controlling power within the German Empire, is one of the Great Power of Europe. The fact that some of that time it is the Kingdom of Prussia containing the Province of Prussia is also confusing.

John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Categorisation dispute at Max Mallowan (and other biographical articles added at )
Please see the RFC at Talk:Max Mallowan -- wooden superman  14:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)