Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality/Archive 5

Categorisations by descent (or "ethnicity" in the colloquial sense of the word)
Allow me to copy some things I and other wrote on Talk:Bernard Madoff and Talk:Albert Einstein in an attempt to transfer the discussion here, as some think we shoul do.

On the Bernard Madoff talk page:

There is certainly an ethnic/religious angle here, but only because Madoff made something out of it, and exploited it. It doesn't seem necessary to me to classify his family in any given way in the introduction. As for the way he made others trust him because of their shared religion and of how they saw his origins - it is good that that is being treated, and perhaps it can be treated at greater length and more explicitly.

It's also a good thing that there are no tags of the "X Jew" and "Jewish X" at the bottom. At the same time, it seems to me that such tags are grossly overused all over wikipedia. If we are going to delete them from articles on objectionable characters, and insert them at the bottom of articles on laudable individuals, then we are introducing a rather crude kind of systemic bias into Wikipedia. Feketekave (talk) 07:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

As a previous user said: see the Modigliani, Heine, Michelson and Einstein biographies. Actually, this is as good a time as any to have a general discussion of these issues. Feketekave (talk) 08:23, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

(Comment: I was asked to come here by some of Feketekave's edit summaries.) I'm generally against such classifications unless the subject strongly self-identifies as such, or the religious classification played an important role in the subject's public life. I certainly agree that such categorizations are generally overused. So, I think that the Modigliani categorization should have been removed, as you did. However, the fact that Albert Einstein was an ethnic Jew, and identified very strongly with the Jewish people played a significant part in his public life, and so the Jewish-related categories should not have been removed. (Moreover, there are reams of discussion in the archives of the talk page about precisely this issue establishing consensus for inclusion in the category.) Removal of Heinrich Heine from the category is also clearly inappropriate, given that he is widely considered to be an important Jewish poet by both secular and Jewish scholars. In short, I encourage you to remove persons from inappropriate categories, but also to attempt to exercise better judgment in doing so. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 20:00, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Silly rabbit: I have made no attempt to remove the relevance of the Jewish question (namely, some) to Heine's life; I simply believe that (much like here) categories are an exceptionally bad way to go about it.

How Israelis think of Heine is really a matter about Israelis, not a matter about Heine. (Any human group tries to gets its hands on laudable men that arguably do not quite belong to them; witness some things written and done in Poland and Lithuania about Mickiewicz.) Still, I removed none of that material.

As for Einstein: to put things crudely, he was less "Jewish" than Madoff and more so than Heine. To wit, Einstein was not from anything anybody would recognise as a Jewish background - in part because his parents seem to have belonged to no religion, and in part because the so-called ethnic category "Jewish" is to some extent a U.S. ethnic construct based on the idealisation of certain cultural patterns that may have had some relation to Madoff's background of origin (New York, etc.) and none to Einstein's.

At the same time, Einstein was an early romantic Zionist, believed in something called the Jewish people - to the point of criticising people who thought of Judaism primarily as a religion - and stated those opinions publicly; all of that can go in such sections of his biographical article as treat the times in his life in which he took such positions.

There is one way in which these categories affected Einstein more than Madoff: Einstein experienced much more antisemitism than Madoff presumably ever did - not only, mind you, during the Nazi period. We should have a footnote somewhere mentioning some of the discussions that were going on in faculty meetings (recorded in writing!) when Einstein was a young lecturer getting hired.

As for Madoff: again, here there is the desire to categorise, though some of it comes from racist quarters rather than from ethnic patriots on ego trips. So much the worse. At the same time, Madoff did not just happen to spend a great deal of his social life in exclusive clubs associated to one particular sector of the upper class; he used the way he was seen - by people in the same environment and by people from different environments but of the same faith and having related kinds of self-perception - in order to con. Feketekave (talk) 01:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I should probably add that something particularly obnoxious about categories (or lists) is that non-inclusion or deletion of a category [X] tends to be taken as a statement that the subject is a [non-X]. These issues are not binary. Feketekave (talk) 01:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

---

On the Einstein talk page:

This angle seems to be exaggerated in Wikipedia, especially in the biographies of great men. At the same time, while Einstein was for all intents and purposes not from anything any reasonable person would call a Jewish background, he was involved in early Zionist politics, and advocated some sort of ethnic identity - almost a nationalistic one. His life was also affected by racism in some ways - of course, that is a separate issue, and does not necessarily go together with anything else, though it does here. All of that can be treated in the relevant place within the biography, with whatever importance each of these things had in this or that period of his life. What we should avoid is tagging a man or claiming him for (the Hall of Fame of) a group, as opposed to describing him. In general, we should prefer descriptions - the more nuanced and adjusted to the subject of the biography, the better - to definitions, many of which are unencyclopaedic. Feketekave (talk) 07:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Feketekave, according to your talk page you have a strong personal feeling against categorizing people by racial or ethnic categories, so it doesn't make any difference to you whether Einstein was in fact Jewish, you would still object.


 * I think there is a strong consensus on WP that in certain biographies, such as Einstein's, his religion and ethnic background are relevant to his life, and should be included. If you claim that it isn't, that sounds like WP:OR to me. I think your changes should be reverted until you get consensus. Nbauman (talk) 09:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Nbauman - as I said below, I am completely uninterested in "whether Einstein was in fact Jewish"; that is to some extent an unencyclopaedic question.


 * One of the problems is precisely that there is not a consensus; there is a very strong tendency, which is not the same thing. A consensus would be applied consistently across the board. As it is, it seems simply that (good) famous men are made into Jews (sometimes on much slimmer grounds than Einstein). There is a thread on that (many, in fact) in Talk:Bernard Madoff; it would be good to take a look at that and perhaps go back and forth a little there. (If the discussion truly becomes general, the village pump might be best.) Feketekave (talk) 17:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

One more thing: I agree completely that the purpose of categorisation is to serve as an aid to navigation. This is a strong argument in favour of eliminating most categories as applied to subjects of wikipedia biographies. It is extremely unlikely that somebody would learn about Einstein by going through a list of Swiss Jews (or, say Amateur violinists who lived in New Jersey). Feketekave (talk) 11:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Actresses
Sub-section Gender says, "Separate categories for actors and actresses are not needed ...". Is there an explanation for this, or can someone point me to a meta page or discussion or archive, where this was decided. Jay (talk) 07:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Every CFD that's ever been conducted when somebody tried it. Bearcat (talk) 10:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The CFD log I found from the category history is of October 2006. There were 5 votes to delete and 4 to keep, but the outcome was reached on policy and not by votes. The policy incidentally, points back to this page's "Other considerations" sub-section, which in Oct 2006 had the same line I mentioned in my earlier post. It does sound like a Catch-22! Where can I get a real explanation, are there more CFDs? Jay (talk) 13:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, looks like I'm misremembering a bit: there should also be several CFDs on categories in the naming format "(nationality) actors and actresses". At the very least, I can assure you that CFD made the decisions long before anybody initiated the discussions that led to this guideline. Bearcat (talk) 19:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Bearcat, I went through the histories, the above line about actors and actresses was added by you after the proposed policy was reached on the talk page. The corresponding line in the talk page was added by you as an addendum to the proposed policy after summarizing a discussion. The comment was "(added per discussion below)". Can you point me to the relevant discussion, is it the post by User:Radiant!? Jay (talk) 09:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Everything under "Discussion copied in from Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people" on the same page, plus every prior AFD that had already taken place on the subject of gendered categories. Bearcat (talk) 23:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

CATGRS test case
Please see Categories for discussion/Log/2009 April 13. This is the third time this particular category has been up at CfD, as it keeps closing without consensus. This time it should close with a clear consensus, one way or the other, as it has high precedent value on the issues raised by this guideline. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

ethnic grey areas
Category:People of mixed Asian-European ethnicity was deleted, so another example is needed, if there are any. Шизомби (talk) 05:25, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Disentangling race & ethnicity
We've a couple of related nominations, intended to help disentangle the many cross-categorization and category intersections that have arisen recently:
 * Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28
 * eliminating race categories (leaving ethnicity only)
 * Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28
 * splitting ethnicity from nationality (leaving nationality only)

Should the first be successful, we must amend the Naming conventions (categories) and Biographies of living persons policies and related guidelines to clarify that "race" is not appropriate for categorization.

The second is somewhat dependent on the first. However, the inclusion of ethnic "origin" and "descent" is already against policy without notability, and these should never have been intermixed with the less contentious (more easily verifiable) nationality categories.
 * --William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:17, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * After Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28 concluded the years-long process of replacing Category:Race with Category:Ethnicity intersections with Category:People, I've made the few changes needed in the text here. Note that in several places, religion had already been referenced in the past. Therefore, religion was used to replace race, to continue using the shortcut "WP:CATGRS" initialism, used in many places.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Rename completed. Should a new shortcut be added, such as WP:EGRS and/or WP:CATEGRS? Or are folks happy with WP:GRS and WP:CATGRS?


 * No objection. But I would note that there's also no requirement to have only one shortcut per page; a significant number of Wikipedia policy and guideline pages have two or three different shortcuts because different people will remember different mnemonics, so adding the new ones doesn't mean we have to delete the existing ones. Bearcat (talk) 16:01, 10 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a maximum of 5 in the box, so I've added parallels to the current 3 (WP:GRS + WP:EGRS, WP:CATGRS + WP:CATEGRS, WP:CAT/GRS + WP:CAT/EGRS) and (WP:Cat gender + WP:Cat/gender), but dropped the oldest (WP:GRS) from the list. That should give folks enough choices to pick one and remember it.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:58, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Ethnicity subcategories that should not exist
Bearcat made some nice edits to "Special subcategories" the other day, and I wikified it today to use the actual categories. Of course, they exist! One even mentioned on its Talk that it is listed here. So, I've nominated them for deletion. Tally ho!


 * Categories for discussion/Log/2009 June 14
 * Categories for discussion/Log/2009 June 14
 * --William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Categories
In WP:BLP, there is existing text that parallels text in WP:CATGRS (or vice versa). I'm trying to harmonize these nearly identical sections (also was in WP:COP) by direct reference to a single standard text, rather than re-writing it over and over again.

Also, BLP refers to religious beliefs, while CATGRS doesn't yet have a Religion section.

I propose the following two sections. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Religion
Categories should not be based on religion unless the belief has a specific relation to the topic.

The requirements of Biographies of living persons are strictly enforced. For a dead person, there must be a verified general consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate.

... (Example?)

Comments? --William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The criterion you have highlighted seems to me to be very well put. Feketekave (talk) 14:45, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Sexuality
Categories should not be based on sexuality unless the sexuality has a specific relation to the topic.

The requirements of Biographies of living persons are strictly enforced. For a dead person, there must be a verified general consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate.

For example, while some sources have claimed that William Shakespeare was gay or bisexual, there is not a sufficient consensus among scholars to support categorizing him as such. Similarly, a living person who is caught in a gay prostitution scandal, but continues to assert their heterosexuality, cannot be categorized as gay.

... (existing final paragraph)

Comments? --William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Relevance
I'm not sure there's much value in simply linking to another policy instead of clarifying what that policy actually means in this particular context. I'm especially concerned about the fact that point #2 in the BLP version, the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources allows for significant subjectivity in what "relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life" actually means. I've seen it used more than once to claim that the sexuality of an openly gay figure becomes "not relevant" if their notable activities aren't exclusively gay-focused to the exclusion of any other interest — such as a musician whose songs aren't all only about gay topics, or a writer who happens to write a novel in which the main characters are heterosexuals, or a politician who happens to care just as much about the environment or taxes or stimulus spending or Iraq as they do about LGBT-specific issues like DADT and the Matthew Shepard Act.

Which isn't what it means, or what it should mean — but given that the whole point of this guideline is to provide context around issues like this, I'm not too sure what the value is in replacing that context with a barebones link to the basic policy that requires the added context in the first place. Linking to the BLP section is certainly a valid thing to do, but we should still retain the ability to expand on and explain it more thoroughly in this context. Bearcat (talk) 14:43, 10 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree wholeheartedly. But that sentence is currently exactly the same both here and there (other than different links), so there's no change in content or context.
 * There:"The subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources."
 * Here:"The subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources."


 * To ameliorate the past problems with the interpretation of "relevance", I propose a new paragraph in WP:CAT/EGRS:

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:32, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably too logic oriented. I'll make the earlier uncontroversial non-changes, while we wordsmith this new paragraph.

Categories that are unsourced or irrelevant
Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 6
 * Template:Category unsourced – has no verifiable, reliable sources.
 * Template:Category relevant? – both unsourced and irrelevant (unsupported by even a passing mention in the text)

I've nominated them for deletion, as they present an attractive nuisance. Editors may think it's a good idea to leave an unsourced or irrelevant category on an article, simply because these templates exist. Something like fact for categories, except these present a large block of text.

In both cases, the category should be removed entirely – especially in the latter case. These have been used on biographical articles. In one case, the unsourced WP:GRS category has been left on the WP:BLP article for nearly two years! When I've removed the category, was reverted with the edit summary (revert: the fact that a maintenance item has been outstanding for a long time is not a reason to remove it.)

Please join the discussion. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:40, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Ethnic politicians
User:Rjensen recently made the following change to the paragraph on ethnic politicians: Similarly, an "(ethnicity) politicians" category should only be created if politicians of that ethnic background constitute a distinct and identifiable group with a specific cultural and political context. The difference in between being a German-American politician and an Italian-American politician depends on the historical context. In American history Germans (apart from the 1917-18 period) were not a cohesive political group--they were split many ways especially on religion--but Utalians did form a cohesive political bloc, as hundredreds of scholarly studies have demonstrated. Thus, a Category:German-American politicians is problematical while Category:Italian-American politicians rests on actual expert opinion among scholars and journalists, and was highly apparent to voters at the time. The basis for creating such a category is not the number of individuals who could potentially be filed in the group, but whether there's a specific cultural context for the grouping beyond the mere fact that politicians of that ethnic background happen to exist.

As this is a significant revision to the existing text, and not just a simple wording change or clarification of the existing meaning, I've reverted it for the time being and am placing it here for discussion. I'm not fundamentally opposed to it if there's a consensus for it — but changes of this type really do need a discussion to establish consensus for them first. Bearcat (talk) 14:23, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:34, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Bearcat's revert accidentally went back to User:Hmains' "POV" edit on the same day, rather than my previous version of a month ago. I've restored my annotation of the category links, uncovering the existing categories that should not exist.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As to the Rjensen text, there are an awful lot of MoS violations and minor errors: "Utalians"? "hundredreds"? There is an existing List of Italian American politicians by state, but no article in the category verifying this "expert opinion" that "scholarly studies have demonstrated." Certainly, being an Italian-American politician was never anything special in Michigan.

Sportspeople categories
In general, how should categories for sportspeople be organized?


 * 1) Unbalanced:
 * 2) *Squamish players
 * 3) **Freedonian squamish players
 * 4) ***Freedonian female squamish players
 * 5) Balanced:
 * 6) *Squamish players
 * 7) **Freedonian squamish players
 * 8) ***Freedonian male squamish players
 * 9) ***Freedonian female squamish players
 * 10) Separate and unbalanced:
 * 11) *43-person sports
 * 12) **Squamish
 * 13) ***Squamish players
 * 14) ****Freedonian squamish players
 * 15) ***Female squamish
 * 16) ****Female squamish players
 * 17) *****Freedonian female squamish players
 * 18) Separate and balanced:
 * 19) *43-person sports
 * 20) **Squamish
 * 21) ***Male squamish
 * 22) ****Male squamish players
 * 23) *****Freedonian male squamish players
 * 24) ***Female squamish
 * 25) ****Female squamish players
 * 26) *****Freedonian female squamish players

-- Powers T 19:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

There is a fifth option, I suppose, and that is just to have "Freedonian squamish players" and not include any gender categories at all. But originally my question was limited to those in which there is consensus that the male and female versions of a sport are distinct enough to merit separate categories. Powers T 14:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

RfC on sportspeople categories
How should our sportsperson categories be organized? (Examples in section above.) Powers T 13:24, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd opt for #1, with the following caveats:
 * The gender default can be inverted if the sport is usually a female-dominated one (e.g. there could conceivably be a Category:Male netball players). There is no need to create a Category:Female netball players since netball is an overwhelmingly female-dominated sport.
 * Per WP:OVERCAT and WP:CATGRS a gendered category should generally never be created unless there's a very good reason for it, supported by consensus. Some good reasons include women's and men's versions of sports having different enough rules that they games are essentially different, women normally being excluded from a sport making any notable female players of it highly unusual, the "culture" surrounding the women's version of a sport being markedly different from the male equivalent, and so on. Just the fact that women play a sport doesn't mean we need a category for it (notice no Category:Female softball players), and neither do minor rules differences (e.g. somewhat smaller ball size or field length to account for differences in average female vs. male physique, or more sanctions for rough play).  There are already far, far too many pointless gendered sportsperson categories (e.g. there is no reason at all for Category:Female tennis players to exist); don't make the matter worse.
 * We definitely do not need these categories to be "balanced", with forking of every sport (and other topic) into male and female halves. The female (and rarely male) gender-specific splitoffs from the main category are abberrations, not norms. Many of us object strenuously to any gender-based categorization at all, and doubling it everywhere is just out of the question.  Category maintenance would become incredibly more laborious than it already is - every category like Category:American carom billiards players would have to be split into Category:Male American carom billiards players and so on.  It would literally take years just to fork all the categories, and we'd be left with empty and useless parent categories like the original Category:American carom billiards players. Then we'd have another year or more of cross categorization, e.g. the creation of Category:Male carom billiards players and the addition of every Category: Male NATIONALITY-HERE carom billiards players into it, and so on and so on.  All for no actually-encyclopedic purpose. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 20:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I certainly agree we don't need gendered categories for every sport. (In fact, I would argue that we probably use gendered categories far too often.) My question should be seen as addressing situations in which we do or should have gendered categories.  I do have a question for you, though: how does one determine whether a sport is "usually" dominated by one gender or the other?  Is basketball a male-dominated sport?  Certainly male professional and college basketball rakes in more dough in the U.S., but is the difference so overwhelming that the female categories should be subordinate to the male ones?  Powers T 20:41, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm the wrong one to ask, as I'm opposed to almost all gendered categorization. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 10:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * But you suggested inverting the "gender default" "if the sport is usually a female-dominated one". I'm asking how that would be determined.  Powers T 14:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably by reference to the article on the topic, and/or its sources (or other sources not cited by it yet). As the netball article makes clear, for example, there are some male players (none notable that I know of, but that could change, e.g. if the sport became Olympic), but it is largely a female game.  The number of female-dominated sports is low (and in some cases the divide is total - there are no male players of camogie or female players of hurling, which are basically the same game).  I wouldn't expect a male players of... debate to come up very often. Borderline cases would probably come down to case-by-case consensus (field hockey for example - mostly played by women/girls today, but there is organized male competition, and historically it was male-dominated). —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 19:29, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll tell you that this discussion was prompted by my attempt to create a "Brazilian male footballers" category to match the female category that already existed. One of the arguments against my suggestion was that football (soccer) is a male-dominated sport and so it makes sense to put the men in the base category and separate out the women.  Frankly, it seems absurd to me, so I was hoping to stoke a wider discussion and see if my view really was a minority.  Powers T 21:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Understood. Gender-based categorization is usually absurd to begin with (thus WP:CATGRS in the first place!), so I don't really see what point there would be in extending it all over the place. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 23:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, the original idea was to create a rule whereby the actual application of gender categorization would be extremely limited — for example, a category for Category:Female heads of state is certainly warranted as a topic of encyclopedic interest in its own right. But unfortunately the rule has already been reified into something it was never meant to be — which is that as things now stand, if you can come up with even a marginally plausible way in which there's even the slightest difference whatsoever between female and male holders of the same role or position or job, regardless of whether there's actually any genuinely sourced evidence that the female and male versions of that thing are actually treated as distinct phenomena in that realm of endeavour or not, a gender category becomes effectively unchallengeable. I'll acknowledge partial responsibility for this, since I actually wrote the final draft for much of this guideline as it currently stands — but I don't view the current profusion of gender-based categories as being consistent with the original intention that was established by participants here. I'm just not sure how to fix it, unfortunately. But as for the immediate choice at hand, "unbalanced" is still preferable to "separate male and female categories for absolutely everything". Bearcat (talk) 23:52, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed on all points. I know full well how tetchy and absurd the situation is, having been embroiled in WP:CFDs on crap like Category:Female pool players three times (only to have it narrowly survive three times despite all logic, evidence and reason; it was kept basically because a very, very, very vocal minority of whiners moaned endlessly and called me a sexist for not agreeing with them. As for what to do about this, I think its probably become a village pump matter now. Even WP:RFC probably can't resolve this at this point. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 00:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that choice is a false dichotomy. We certainly don't need male and female categories for absolutely everything.  But my thought is that if we have a female category, we should have a male category that matches it.  It's silly that female soccer players are "female soccer players" but the men are just "soccer players".  Powers T 03:23, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand what you mean, but this is really an argument against gender-based categorization at all. As I've explained above, doing "balanced" genderization of all (human) categories would literally take years of pointless effort and hopelessly complicate the category system.  As an example, something as simple as  and its subcategory  and its subsubcategory, with respective categorizations also in  and , respecitively – a grand total of 5 categories involved at all – would have to become a tangled mess of , ,  (both also in  and  respectively), , ,  (also in  and  respectively, under ), , ,  (also in  and , respectively, under ), and so on and so on – at least 16 categories.  This is actually a pretty simple example; there are more complex bio categorizations than "Welsh snooker player". —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 10:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone's suggesting doing it for all human categories. Powers T 12:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Unless I've misread you, you are suggesting doing it for all human categories that presently either a male or female subcat. While that's not quite as bad as doing it for all of them, its bad enough that some people would probably go hang themselves. :-/  —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 22:03, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, because I consider the current situation untenable. If, as you claim, the categorization would "have to become a tangled mess", I see no more or less reason for that to be the case under the current situation than under my proposal.  If we don't now have that complex categorization scheme you lay out in your example, then I see no reason we would need to add it just because we rename "Brazilian footballers" to "Brazilian male footballers".  (And, truth be told, I would actually prefer to see minimal category separation by gender, but given that said goal is not readily achievable, I think adding a single category per sport and nationality is not an onerous proposal.)  Powers T 04:40, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Anyone else have some thoughts on this? Maybe I should take it to the village pump instead. Powers T 14:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)