Wikipedia talk:Category names/Archive 3

Russia?
While we're on the subject...
 * 1) Economy of Russia
 * 2) Economy of the Soviet Union
 * 3) Economy of the USSR

...which? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:50, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

This one is a little more difficult. Are we speaking in histortic titles, (before or after the fall/break of of the "Soviet Union"), or the current name? (Which I can't recall atm). &infin; Who ? &iquest; ? 09:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Option 1. I think that they should all come under the current name of the country (else we'll have to abolish the UK categories, because that's only about 150 years old or something). Using any historical name would be like calling the "Economy of Iraq" the "Economy of Mesopotamia". The articles, or the blurb in the cat page can indicate that it also covers historical names. I think we'd look a bit silly if we called the cat "Economy of the USSR" that having been disposed of 15 years ago! Also, it would be effectively arbitrary over which historical name we chose: always choosing the current name avoids that. (With some possible arbitraryness over which is "the most common form", but we can probably agree on that most of the time.) -Splash 13:01, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we shouldn't have it. Some people may want to read about what the economy of the old USSR was.  Besides, if I'm not mistaken, there is a category for economy of east germany, probably for the same reason.  --Kbdank71 13:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * East Germany is still a place though, much like the North of England. I just think the history related articles belong in the cat for the current country: they deal with the history of that country. However, per Maureen's request below, I suggest we simplify: for now, the historical cats can remain as long as the naming format is Thing of Foo (with/out abbreviation), whether Foo is historical or not. -Splash 16:42, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Where is East Germany today? Certainly there is an "Eastern Germany", but the former East Germany has been broken up and parts absorbed by states of former West Germany.  Germany is now really just one country and not the divided beast it was during the Cold War.  For that matter, what do you do about East Prussia?  That isn't even a part of Germany anymore (it is a part of Russia and Poland now), but it still was historically a part of Germany.  The whole point is to put it into a historical context if appropriate.  --Robert Horning 12:04, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * In this case distinction between Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and modern Russia should be kept - there were /huge/ changes in economic structures. Pavel Vozenilek 02:37, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Arcane adjectives of nationality
Standardize on the "Foo of Country" format. What are the adjectives of nationality of Guinea-Bissau, Kiribati, Saint Lucia? I have no idea. –Hajor 18:42, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Whilst clarity is important, the only problem with the examples you cite is, as you say, not knowing. They can be looked up though: Guinea-Bissau people are Guinean (and in several other places, too), Kiribati people are I-Kiribati and Saint Lucia people are Saint Lucian. I still prefer the format you recommend however, with abbreviations if appropriate. -Splash 18:55, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the site; duly bookmarked. And you make a good point about "Guinean" applying to more than one country -- very strong point in favor of this format. And OK, Saint Lucia was a giveaway. How about their neighbors in Saint Kitts and Nevis? Huh? Huh? –Hajor 19:29, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Your new bookmark gives either Kittitian or Nevisian (another reason for going with country names). Sorry, couldn't resist :) Splash 19:38, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem is exactly with not knowing. If many people don't know the correct adjective, they are likely to miscategorize their articles, or not being able to find what they're looking for. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 07:53, July 21, 2005 (UTC)


 * Did anyone else notice this (ironic, don't you think)? If we're going to use indexmundi as the authority on nationality naming I think we're back to the original issue.  -- Rick Block (talk) 03:17, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Did you notice the source?: CIA Factbook; not exactly neutral. Double Blue  (Talk) 17:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Continents
There is a little subtlety to this one. Continents are so broad a categorization that it is tantamount to categorizing by ethnicity or race, but on a grand scale. On the other hand, there are only 7 such categories (within each field) so we don't lose much not-paper for having them. To deprecate cats by continent would seem to be Wiki attempting to deprecate continents which would be....odd.

What would call the cat that contains the various bits of the Americas? -Splash 13:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Category:Americas :) I have no problem with continent cats, just not placing the little things there that are widly different by region/country.   &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  13:19, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I suppose if we must categorize by continent, we call the category what the name of the continent is: North America, South America, Africa, Europe, etc.  Or, if we absolutely must get more specific than that, Economy of North America, etc.  --Kbdank71 13:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

States and provinces
I think it will be hard to suppress cat'ing on these grounds. Whether a particular case would be 'overcategorization' or not is probably best left to case-by-case analysis in CfD. It will cause fights over locals thinking the area warrants a cat and non-locals disagreeing, but there are just too many possible subtleties to decide with a blanket policy, imho. -Splash 13:20, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Don't forget cities. Yeah, I'm thinking we don't want to get involved at this point with states/provinces/cities/etc right now.  We'll have enough work to do with just countries.  Case-by-case sounds fine.  --Kbdank71 13:28, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree that countriest are more than enough work for now, but cities and provinces and what not could do with a polcy too, specialy for "people of" type categories. I know the "policy" is to use the terms people themselves use when refeering to themselves, but sometimes it can get a little "obscure" (IMHO), case in point "Liverpudlians" vs "people of/from Liverpool". But fair enough let's focus on countriest for now. --Sherool 19:35, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Community involvement and notification
So considering the widespread change this would wreak in a substantial portion of the category structure, how do you propose sufficient notice be given to ensure that enough participate in the discussion? There are what, a half dozen people who have been discussing this here? More than that often vote in individual CfD discussions. Postdlf 10:02, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * This is a good point, I believe Radiant had a plan for noting it on RFC, and some of the VP discussions were moved here. Would anyone oppose a "banner" (similar to a cleanup template) placed on the current Cfd headers, possibly a link on the Main Page to either the WikiProject categories or here, to notify people of the discussions?   &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  10:08, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Here is another example of what we could do. User:Who/Cfd. Temporarily modifying the templates, of course. Any comments or suggestions (feel free to edit the page)?  &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  10:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * That seems sensible, with the words at the bottom emboldened or coloured or something. That, along with giving notice on RfC, the VP, the CfD page and in the box at WP:VfD, (maybe over at TfD too, since this will probably apply there from time to time) there's not much more we can do. -Splash 12:54, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I think the final notice should set forth the arguments for each category naming alternative and then provide for commenting and voting on each. I guess the first issue is whether the people categories should be kept in adjectival form or changed to "People of...X." If kept adjectival, should "United States people," "U.S. people," "U.S.A. people," or "American people" be used. If changed to "People of," should "of the U.S.," "of the United States" (my choice) or "of the United States of America" be used. Postdlf 03:35, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * There may not be any need for an (evil) poll if we generate a consensus. I cannot help but suppose the discussion we are having will just be rehashed as soon as we go to RfC; I wonder what we have achieved. I would suggest setting out on the project page the version as suggested (i.e. whatever we wind up with here). Then we can preface the talk page with the pros/cons of the compromise we reach here as compared to the other options. At least that way the discussion has somewhere useful to start, might avoid too much repetition and we will have achieved something other than mulling it over and then pressing the reset button!
 * What do we do with this discussion when we go to RfC? Stick in an archive and give a link?
 * I don't think we're ready to go (more) public yet...we didn't quite settle which form of things we compromise on. Another day or so? -Splash 04:02, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * If only one alternative is set forth and it doesn't gain consensus support, then nothing has been accomplished and we still have an inconsistent category structure. All alternatives should be available so that one way or another, this issue should be resolved.  Postdlf 04:07, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * That's not quite what I meant: I mean start the discussion in a particular place seeing as we seem to be getting to a particular place here. Present the pro/cons of that, and then let the discussion go wherever it chooses; this might be somewhere else entirely or it might support what we agree amongst ourselves. By giving somewhere to start, and making the case for it in the first place I mean to avoid a simple rehash of what we did here. None of us would be bound to defend it necessarily as I imagine you will still prefer adjectival forms. -Splash 04:15, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * It's now on RFC, as well as VFDPC. It'll take awhile for people to trickle in and of course this is not a vote anyway. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 07:59, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * I've just added a note to the 'Special notices' section of CfD, too. -Splash 16:52, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Case by case
I'd like to suggest that we not try to standardize things unless there is either a clear need or clear consensus. In other words, although I named this page "Category titles", I think it's best to try to keep it mainly on any needed countries or nationalities for the time being.

Part of the reason I called the page "Category titles" was that I figured other types of categories would need to be decided eventually and it might as well all be together. Unless there is something else compelling, I think it would be best to at least wait until the current issue has been at least relatively settled. Thanks. Maurreen 14:17, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

In line with the above, I just deleted from the project page the sections on continents and states and provinces. I was going to copy them here, but then decided against that. Of course, you're welcome to disagree. Maurreen 03:33, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * No problem. As long as we're discussing things, it's best to cover them one by one, and we're in no particular hurry. If it would be necessary to put this to some kind of vote (as per e.g. WP:TS) then it would be easier to compile four or five votes simultaneously. But I'd prefer discussion. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 15:30, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Ethnic subcategories
So if Category:American people is changed to either Category:U.S. people or Category:People of the United States, what then to be done with the likes of Category:African Americans or Category:Irish-Americans (which should be de-hyphenated, btw)? I personally never wanted to see these created in the first place, but presuming that ethnic/racial categories will exist, the naming inconsistency will be a problem, but there really is nothing else these can be moved to.

Considering how such ethnic identifications are largely a matter of self-identification, the terms that people actually use for these and for themselves are even more important than how someone labels their own nationality; nationality is by contrast an objectively verifiable fact that can be expressed by anything that just identifies the country (whether linguistically accurate or not), compared to the subjective and ultimately borderless categories of race and ethnicity. I also think we're really going to make Wikipedia look moronic (and likely offend, if that's a relevant consideration) if we create categories like Category:United States black people (really bloody stupid looking), or Category:Black people of the United States (the color-based label is really inaccurate and disfavored) or Category:People of African ancestry of the United States (really awkward). Keep in mind also that the article titles are African American, Irish American, etc., and you're going to have tons of people screaming bloody murder if an attempt is made to change the content of those. Plus usages of hybrid racial/continental identifications have to be exceedingly rare, if not non-existant, so the "ambiguous" argument used to justify generally not using "American" in category names to mean "of the U.S." isn't going to apply here. Thoughts? Postdlf 03:45, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Being that we have these categories, I think the only thing that makes sense is "African-American", "Irish American", etc. And these are compound modifiers, so they should be hyphenated. Maurreen 04:24, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Personally I don't like such ethnic categories (I consider them bordering on discrimation) but let's settle that matter at a later date, after we get consensus on the thing-by-country issue. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:01, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * I too dislike ethnic subcats, as I feel the cat'ing is too broad to extract any information of encyclopedic note. It is, however probably best to keep that discussion for later. -Splash 17:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Ditto. Don't like them, but push them off for later.  --Kbdank71 18:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * The issue of whether or not they should exist should be dealt with elsewhere, but changing the nationality naming system affects their nomenclature, and that should be dealt with as part of this problem. Postdlf 01:22, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree that it should be handled at a different time, after this issue is settled. It will just have to be a consession (sp) made to the outcome of this discssion, and it should be treated as an important note on consideration of this issue.   &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  01:30, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Between ourselves, we at least all seem to agree that these should be deleted. There's still some basis for Wikilove here... ; ) Postdlf 01:46, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm sorry to break up the love fest, but I for one, do not think these categories should be deleted. At least not for the reasons mentioned. If a category is useful to people using wikipedia and covers a legitimate field of research there is no reason to delete it. Clearly Category:African Americans fits those criteria. As for what to call people, I firmly believe that we should call groups of people by the names they call themselves whenever possible, and never use names that groups of people find offensive. I can understand the problems with calling citizens of the United States "Americans" and since there is a non-offensive alternative I'm all for it. In the case of "African Americans", I have only heard this term applied to US citizens of African descent and not to other countries of the Americas. I don't know of a good alternative that does not use "American", so I don't see a problem with leaving things as they are. If "African Americans" is the name used in other contries of the Americas, can't we just do what we do in other cases to disambiguate and say "African Americans (USA)" etc... -- Samuel Wantman 10:33, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Just to weigh in, these need not be deleted. Of course they should be "Foo-Americans". This is the common, indivisible term (not a real adjective-noun phrase).  At least, that's my linguistic argument - it's different from "Irish of the United States" (who are immigrants from Ireland?).  There is also no feasible alternative. "People of the United States of Irish ethnicity"?  That's just too long, even for me.  It sounds like it's bending over backwards to be...PC?  Snooty?  I'm all for hyphens, because I reflexively type them, but redirects are going to be necessary either way, so whatever. -- Beland 02:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Google test
I don't think Google should be relied on absolutely, but it can be useful as a rough guide as to how common things are.
 * "U.S." -- 2,230,000,000
 * "United States" -- 457,000,000
 * "USA" -- 421,000,000 Maurreen 04:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Google includes URL hits in the search results, and as "United States Army" came up bold faced when I did a Google search of "USA", it apparently will also read the letters as a TLA and include hits that include terms that resolve to that acronym. You'd need to narrow the search to actual uses; no one's talking about the terms in the abstract, but only in how common they are as used for specific purposes. Postdlf 04:39, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Google's not terribly reliable for jobs like that, I'm afraid. Because of the way it handles punctuation and capitalization, I think those "U.S." links include a lot of pages inviting you to "contact us", etc., to say nothing of Toys R Us. Similarly, the USA pages include a whole bunch donde alguien usa algo. I don't know if there's a way to make it more exact. –Hajor 04:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Here are my attempts at a proper comparison:

If we're talking about the form "Foo people", using artist as an example, "American artists" gets 528,000 (many of which may be "North American artists," "Native American artists", etc.). "US artists" gets 76,400 hits. "USA artists" gets 6,120 hits. "United States artists" gets 4,280, many of which appear to be false hits ("...United States. Artists...") rather than the actual singular term. The latter two shouldn't even be considered viable.

As for "People of Foo," "People of America" gets 183,000, "People of the United States" gets 607,000, "People of the US" gets 52,000, "People of the USA" gets 17,300. United States clearly wins in that form. Postdlf 05:05, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Good points made above.


 * "artists of America" -- 24,000
 * ""artists of the Americas" -- 755 (There are two contintents with the word "America".) Maurreen 15:05, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I think we're more important than Google, and we can set a new worldwide standard here if we want :) Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 15:11, July 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * Google battles are OK over at VfD where it's a not-completely-lousy index of minimal notability. But wondering how many times "America"-like terms appear just leans toward the Internet's systemic bias (which is probably worse than ours). It'll pick up every teenage blogger that says "Proud to be American" or "Good Bless the USA" or whatever. What matters more from the WP perspective is how to be accurate without being obfuscatory. Also, in terms of the numers cited up top, I don't feel there is much distinction among them once you reach the millions, particularly as U.S. has those periods in it (for obvious reasons, but I suppose most times that abbreviation is used it is US). -Splash 17:57, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Trying to sum up the problem
So basically, we are trying to sort between three possibilities for categories dealing with geographical entities, which are currently found in three format:


 * 1) foo things
 * 2) fooian things
 * 3) things of foo
 * 4) things in foo (locations and phenomenons only)

So far, it has been pointed out that the first might be ungrammatical and troublesome when related to the actual names of the countries. (although how less than option 3, I'm not sure...). Option 3 does avoid the problem of strange or lesser known adjectives that will arise if categories are uniformized on option 2. Option 4 is often found in relation to locations (subcats of Category:Mosques include British mosques, Jerusalem mosques and Mosques in Egypt...) but inconsistently, similarly, children of Category:Rivers of Canada include all three of #1,2 and 3 and a list of rivers in Canada.

The issue of abbreviations has been raised, which should not have to come into play AFAICT, until an option possibly involving it has actually been chosen.

I should add that "american football", while relevant as far as the use of "american" for "of the U.S." is concerned, it is not when the general format is concerned: American football is opposed specifically to Canadian football and football a.k.a. soccer, not to an eventual "Football of the United States" (which would be confusing with "Football in the United States" anyway...). *re-reads that* God, I think I've opened a can of worms here.

Some issues can be raised when the name of a country has changed over its history (e.g. Russia), in which case, the different names can be used to refer to different historic periods. Otherwise, they should be harmonized. The WikiProject categories will be happy to try and do the required maintenance work.

That was my attempt at summing up the discussin so far. Circeus 12:14, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * Decent summary. I think we're all agreed that "American football" is the name of a sport and has no particular bearing on the country. As such, I could envision a Category:American football of Sri Lanka. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 12:45, July 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree with separating any discussion of abbreviations. For one thing, some of us disgree with "United States foo" but more readily accept "U.S. foo." Maurreen 15:11, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with Maurreen on this in the specific sense of country abbreviations &mdash; we're discussing how to name country cats fairly generally and so must really consider the abbreviation question too. (i.e. I don't think we're discussing DJs for example). -Splash 17:52, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Problem with "Fooian"?
I don't really understand what the objection is to "Fooian things". I don't think I've ever heard a reasonable explanation, only the argument that "we prefer Things of Foo", but "Fooian things" is preferable by far. It reflects common usage and avoids clumsy titles like "Painters of the United Kingdom". Before an attempt is made to change everything to "Things of Foo" it would be nice if someone could explain the general objection to "Fooian things" - and please don't say "we prefer Things of Foo", that isn't an argument in itself. JW 22:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The objection is that not all nations have a clear cut, undisputed or well known adjective form that can be used in the "fooian things" pattern. It's not just the USA and American issue, but other nations and territores as well. For example what is the ajective form to describe a person from the Ivory Coast? United Arab Emirates? Western Sahara? Antigua and Barbuda? Bosnia and Herzegovina? And then there are fun stuff like French Guinea, Guinea And Equatorial Guinea (3 different nations) that's likely to get mixed together. Yes most of these do have an adjective form, but what is least confusing? "Emerati people" or "people of the United Arab Emirates" (and wich are peope more likely to find when they search for info on the nation)? IMHO the "Foo of (the) &lt;Nation name&gt;" is best because it avoids all those problems. Additionaly using the name of the nation rather than the (sometimes less known) ajective form makes it easier to find these categories when searching for info on a nation. Sure thinkgs like "German people" or "Italian people" works just fine, but it's not a "one size fits all", so it's better to use the "Foo of (the) &lt;Nation name&gt;" form as the norm, especialy for category names wich is what we are discussing here. -- Sherool 15:39, 26 July 2005
 * It really is the rare country that has such a problem, however, and it seems kind of silly to let such an overwhelming minority of content dictate the form that the vast majority follows. We're not likely to have enough articles on people from Cote d'Ivoire or United Arab Emirates to be extensively subcategorizing them, for one thing, in the manner that the heavily populous categories are (by occupation, primarily).  Let the very few categories for which Fooian things is a problem follow the People of Foo format, as there is no other clear way to address those nationalities, but the most natural way for all other nationalities is the adjectival form.  Remember what Emerson said...  Postdlf 04:18, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * United Arab Emirates use Emirati as a nationality description, per the CIA, whilst Cote d'Ivoire use Ivoirian, per CIA again. Is it not possible to just adopt the CIA nationality definitions as a guideline in the Manual of Style?  I notice that consensus exists that Category:American football is not to be renamed, although I fail to see how this consensus has formed beyond the fact that it's a common usage phrase, and so am wondering how far this exemption applies, and at what point it becomes POV not to use it.  For example, Category:American Civil War and Category:American Revolution. I still also fail to understand why common usage of national identity as used by a nation should be disregarded, especially when categorising people, for which nationality is the traditional term. Hiding  talk 11:43, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * If you actually want to find the "official" terms for different countries a simple way to do it is to contact their embassies in the U.S. or Britain or Australia. This may be preferable to using the CIA factbook, though slightly more work. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:48, 2005 August 4 (UTC)


 * I don't think that "People of the United Kingdom" sounds clumsy, especially if you consider the alternatives. "British people" should technically include the Irish, as Ireland is one of the British Isles, while "English people" technically would not include the Scots or Welsh, not to mention all the other territories of the UK around the world.

I also agree that there are far too many countries whose adjective forms are not well-known, and would not come up as easily in searches. If I were searching for people of the UAE, I would have "United Arab Emirates" as my search term, and not "Emirati". It's just silly. Better to make things easy to read and easy to find than to use less well-known terms just to make things sound a little less clumsy. Finally, my main assertion is that, considering nations and nationalities of history, there are many many more nations that come up with awkward or non-existent adjective forms. Using the '.. of Foo' format, rather than the 'Fooian ...' format, we can much more easily distinguish between the histories, battles, governments, and people of different historical periods. 'American' could, arguably, refer to the entire continents of N & S America, while 'United States' or 'United States of America' is far more direct and specific. With this format, we can distinguish between 'History of the United States' and 'History of the 13 Colonies' and 'History of the Confederate States of America'... it may sound awkward to you, but to me it sounds academic, formal, and unarguably specific. Instead of 'Chinese history', we can have categories for 'History of the State of Qin' and 'History of the Yuan Dynasty' etc. For a more modern example, how about 'History of North Korea' and 'History of South Korea' instead of the awkward and possibly confusing 'North Korean History'... LordAmeth 17:38, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Consistency

 * IMO we shouldn't be talking about an absolute rule here, but more of a guideline. The guideline could perfectly well say "'fooian things' is preferred", but then explain that if there is no commonly understood adjectival form for a country name "things of foo" should be used (and potentially even list the countries which should use either form).  The point is to make the category names useful, not to impose a rigid order.  I believe category naming should follow the Principle_of_least_astonishment.  If I'm looking for the category "fooian things", I should be able to type category:fooian things in the search box, hit "go", and have a very good chance of arriving at the right place.  If our rule means categories end up with consistent, but not commonly used, names then we've failed.  I also think the yardstick should be what would least astonish a novice user as opposed to someone who spends 10 hours a day editing wikipedia.  This would be much easier if the software truly supported redirects for categories, which would allow categories to have multiple names.  Since it doesn't (yet), we're pretty much forced to use a single name per category (although soft redirects are an option).  I think my bottom line is we needn't insist on any single "one size fits all" solution.  -- Rick Block (talk) 15:10, July 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * Makes a lot of sense to me. Maurreen 16:45, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * IMHO a clear naming convention would be better than a "vague" guideline that leave it up the each editor to descide just how "commonly undersood" the adjectival form is. If we had one definitive convention categories could be speedily renamed to match the agreed upon pattern and minimise confution all round. I know definitive rules are usualy considered counter productive on the Wikipedia, but I feel this is one area where one "house style" is warranted. Granted a novice user would probably search for "German scientists" before "Scientists of Germany", but for the time beeing a soft redirect will quickly point them to the right place, and hopefully true category redirects will soon be implemented to save them that one click too. --Sherool 16:52, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I violently agree there should be a clear naming convention. On the other hand, I don't think the house style should astonish novices or needs to be stated as a simplistic "things of foo" (or "fooian things") rule.  In particular, I doubt anyone would search for category:Scientists of Germany.  Also note that with the current software the capitalization must be exact in order to find this name (i.e. if "Things of Foo" is the category name searching for category:scientists of germany won't find it - try seaching for "category:People of dominica" vs. "category:aMeRiCAN peOPLe").  Actually, for this reason alone, I thing "Fooian things" should be preferred (seaches for "Fooian things" as long as "Fooian" is one word would be case insensitive).  -- Rick Block (talk) 18:43, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Searching

 * Searches are case insensitive (as long as two articles doesn't exist with the same name, just different capitalisation). Searching for "category:aMeRiCAN peOPLe" takes you directly to "Category:American people". I think a bigger source of "astonishment" is the fact that categories are not included in searches at all by default. Had me confused for a while at least. The other problems can as mentioned be dealth wtih by soft (hopefully soon propper) category redirects IMHO. --Sherool 10:55, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean. Searching for "People of dominica" in category space returns no results.  Searching for "People of Dominica" finds the category.  My point was that searches for "American people" are case insensitive, while searches for "People of Dominica" are case sensitive, which seems to be true as far as I can tell (it's only case insensitive if the article name is all initial caps or all lower case except for the first word - I'm sure the "go" button search works this way).  I wouldn't expect category redirects to be implemented any time soon - they've been on the list for over year (although perhaps we should ask Brion Vibber or Jamesday).  In any event, I think the basic question of what's most reasonable (least astonishing) hasn't been answered.  Also as far as I can tell, the discussion above started with "fooian things" but morphed into "things of foo" for reasons other than "this is the form most people would expect".  My main argument is that (IMO) this is pretty much the only rationale worth considering.   If this reasoning (what most people would expect) leads us to "Things of Foo", I'm all for it.  If some other reasoning leads us there, for example because this is the only simple rule we can think of that we know will work in all cases, I'm opposed.  I know this paragraph is long enough already, but another reason not to use "Things of Foo" is that the preposition to use is not intuitively obvious (is it "of", "in", or "from", or does it depend on the kind of category?).  "Fooian things" neatly avoids this problem.  -- Rick Block (talk) 19:10, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, I just ran a search in Category namespace for "People of dominica" and the first return was "Category:People of Dominica". As for being astonished, I can only go by my own experience, and that is I had no idea categories even existed, so I certainly wouldn't have been astonished to find it in one form or another.  I can tell you this, if I was going to search for a category of "History of Trinidad and Tobago", and didn't know what it was called, I'd plug in "history trinidad" (w/out quotes) into the search box, and hey, guess what, "Category:History of Trinidad and Tobago" is the first return.  I don't have to know what the adjective form of the country is.  In fact, if the category was in the adjective form, I definitely wouldn't have found it.  --Kbdank71 19:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Very odd. I tried this as well (to see how "search" would work relative to "go") before posting the above and got no results at all.  Trying it again, I find the category.  I assume I screwed this up somehow (but distinctly remember changing the "d" to a "D" and finding the category - does search come and go dynamically based on current server load?).  I'd much rather talk about what people expect than the vagaries of search anyway.  I agree category names involving Trinidad and Tobago aren't obvious, but I don't generalize this to "no category names involving countries are obvious".  I'd fully expect to find German artists under category:German artists (and, I see from preview, that's where they are),  not category:Artists of Germany or category:Artists of the Federal Republic of Germany or category:Artists from Germany.  If we standardize on a rule that says German artists are categorized in anything other than category:German artists (and don't make it a soft redirect), I'll bet it would be recreated in this form shortly after moving the articles out of it.  My point remains our rule should follow most people's expectations.  This doesn't say much of anything about cases like "Trinadad and Tobago" or "United Arab Emirates", but it does apply to "German things", "French things", "Italian things", "Spanish things", "Japanese things", and many, many others.  Zooming out a bit, I believe we're where we are because we want to avoid the disagreement over whether "American things" is POV or not.  Avoiding arguments is a good thing, but (IMO) not at the expense of inventing arbitrary rules that don't match people's expectations. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:01, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * I can't say what most people would expect. I can only go by what I would.  Which would be the country name.  Granted, I would also expect that if I didn't find what I was looking for, be it adjective or noun, I would try the other.  I would also expect that if one category is one way, the others will be the same way.  IE, if one is a noun, they'll all be nouns.  So whether we talk about American foo vs foo of United States, or Spanish/Spain, or whatever/Trinidad and Tobago, we're moving toward a solution.  --Kbdank71 20:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think search does come and go. Several times when things have been slow, I've been offered a Google search instead with the message "search is disabled to improve performance" or some such.
 * I don't think there would be any problem in leaving behind a soft-redirect, and so there'd be little chance of a defuncted cat being recreated.
 * We should choose a scheme that works for all countries, not just the well-known ones. No harm is done by having a uniform scheme that turns up in likely searches and can be helped along by soft-redirs until we get the real thing. -Splash 20:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it's silly to alter the vast majority of people categories in order to keep the few outliers that don't have a clear adjectival nationality term from feeling left out. Let those that can use "Fooian people" and those that absolutely can't use "People of Foo."  It's likely how people are going to refer to them anyway.  And for those countries that simply have adjectival nationality forms that are relatively unknown in English (e.g., Emirati for United Arab Emirates)...um, so what?  There are resources that tell us these things. Postdlf 04:30, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

"Natural" names and criteria

 * The issue with using non-obvious names (not presuming an answer to what form is most obvious, nor even whether any form is "obvious") is not limited to searching. At least some users (if not most) tend to add categories to articles without checking whether the category exists (see category:orphaned categories).  If our rule ends up with category names that are even a little bit peculiar, I'd be willing to bet users will add articles to the "natural" category names without regard to our rule or the existence of categories matching our rule.  If this is done and no soft redirect exists, either the user creates the category and, hence, an issue for CFD (perhaps speedy due to "name rule violation") or an orphaned category.  If the soft redirect does exist, the user will likely think they've done their thing and all is well (when, in reality, they've created an issue that needs to be fixed).  I've asked user:Beland if his offline analysis can detect articles added to soft redirected categories, but I believe we presently have no automated way to either detect or fix this issue.  I'd like to be clear about our respective priorities.  I've said my #1 (and pretty much only) criteria is "most natural (least astonishing)".  Reading very slightly between the lines, I'm guessing user:Splash's criteria is "uniform scheme is most important" (in particular, more important than common usage or "least astonishing").  Is this accurate?  Can others weigh in on this?  If we disagree about the criteria I see little chance we'll agree on a solution. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:59, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

I think we are split on the criteria, although what the division is, I don't know. I agree with "most natural" and I also favor being concise. Maurreen (talk) 02:47, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Having our cake and eating it too

 * This is a great debate. It is great because it has, I believe, gotten to the crux of the problem.  Without a redirect for categories we are forced to choose between being concise and consistant, or with being natural and more user friendly.  Obviously we should strive for both.  All good reference books tell you where to look if you try the wrong entry.  I'm all in favor of clear guidelines that promote consistancy.  I also think we can create a stop-gap measure to make things more natural and user friendly.


 * I propose that we create dummy categories that have a single dummy article in them. The article might be List of redirected categories.  So when you looked up Category:German Painters, you'd find a category that only contained one article.  The heading of the category would say "See: Category:Painters of Germany.  It might also have a note saying that if there are any other articles in the category, they should be moved.  I'm guessing a bot could frequently make these moves on a regular basis.  With such a scheme, we'd be able to have our cake and eat it too.  As a bonus, when, category redirects become a reality, all the dummy categories will be there waiting to be turned into redirects.  But the really big bonus will be all the time we gain by not arguing and debating so much about deleting and renaming categories! -- Samuel Wantman 11:11, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * That's pretty much exactly what the template does (see for example Category:Authors). It also adds all the categories using the template to theyr own category so Pearle or some other boot could easily be set to "patrol" the list on reguar intervals and move any wayward articles to theyr proper place (not sure if this is already beeing done or not, I notice the Authors category does have a couple of articles). I'm sort of hoping that the Wiki software itself will at some point become "smart" enough to automaticaly "fix" links to redirects when it renders a page, but for the time beeing bots will have to do. --Sherool 11:43, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * As far as I know (see above), we currently have no automatic detection of articles misplaced into "redirected" categories nor a bot to fix them. There is an open bug report on category redirects (which has been open for many, many months) - I'm guessing this is easier said than done and the length of time this has remained open leads me to think it won't be changed any time soon (and I think there may be edge cases that are ill-defined).  If category redirects were already implemented, or were coming sometime soon, I think we could pretty much make any rule we wanted to.  Pragmatically, I think we shouldn't be counting on this, which leads me to think the rule needs to be as natural as possible - even if we create a bot to recategorize articles misplaced into redirected cats. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:13, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

This idea has merit. But ...
 * 1) We would apparently still neeed to decide on the primary names, where things would be redirected to.
 * 2) I don't think being concise stands in the way of using more natural and more user-friendly expressions. Maurreen (talk) 15:28, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Should regions defining ethnic minority pop be treated as if these regions are countries
Don't forget about groups that don't actually have countries, e.g. Kurds, Native Americans. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 01:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Well etnicity and nationality are two completely seperate issues. I figure "people of Kurdish descent" would be a good pattern (theyr nationality would be either Iraqi or Turkish (or something else) depending on where they live), but what about the Jews? "people of Jewish descent" would not be acurate because it's also a religious identity... Although I suppose we could also add a "people of the Jewish faith" to seperate between etnic Jews and practisioners of the Jewish faith or something (ooh complicated). We could naturaly keep "Kurdish people" and such, but there can be confution if these groups ever get a nation. For example if the Palestinian people ever get theyr nation we'd end up with both "Palestinian people" and "people of Palestine" and people would no doubht get confused over what goes where. That's why I would suggest "people of Palestinian descent" for people belonging to the etnic group (is it a distinctive etnic group by he way?) regardles of nationality, and "people of Palestine" for people with a Palestinian citizenship (once such a nation actualy exist that is, currently it doesn't) regardles of entic afiliation. These things tend to get political though, many Kurds would for example argue that they are the "people of Kurdistan", but IMHO the "safest" thing to do is to reserve the "people of place" style for actual nations. --Sherool 11:38, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * It is extremely important to properly categorise category titles. What links the topics is what maters. Groups that dont have countries should be treated as such. Also, I really think people of Palestine, people of Kurdistan implies countries. Safest IMHO would be "Palestinian people" or "Kurdish people" or "Jewish people" (to define Jewish culture/data not necesarily linked to Israel). --Cool Cat My Talk 12:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Considering most of these categories will have "Foo by Country" as a supercategory, it won't matter if you use "Foo of Kurdistan" or "Kurdish foo", they will both imply a country. To solve that, we shouldn't be categorizing either under "foo by country".  --Kbdank71 15:36, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I sincerely believe each Native American tribe is quite uneque in its beliefes. So unifing them under one category is flawed. We could have a general category and sub categories for each "tribe" --Cool Cat My Talk 12:57, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I do not think that ethnicity and nationality are the same question. This discussion originally set out to work out category titles to group things according to their country of origin. This effectively became a question of nationailty or country. This is largely distinct from ethnicity, since the passport you carry does not depend on your political/religous or other beliefs (unless you renounce one citizenship and take another). I think the question of how to title country-related categories is best dealt with seperately from the whole question of ethnicity. It keeps the discussions and decisions clearer. In answer to the original question, there is no such place as Kurdistan, yet, nor Palestine, no matter how strong the politics, and nor is there such a place as Native America (apart from that corner of Arizona or something). -Splash 14:25, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * No not even that can be considered a country. NAtive Americans have some autonomy but not much. --Cool Cat My Talk 15:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Native americans each have their own Nation, so it would be the same as "Foo of country" but with nation instead of country. Theses are recognized seperate entities of the United States, and are treated a such. So basically its another country.   &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  04:51, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * That is actualy cool. Is there a map showing which native countries are where? --Cool Cat My Talk 05:23, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have to dig some up though, as I haven't had used them recently.  &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  14:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * If you can get me a generic map I can make good use of it. Can you get me a 50 states map which is similar to the generic map almost every country has. --Cool Cat My Talk 14:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry took so long. Here are a few Category:First Nations maps, the big yellow one shows what the US would look like w/o the territories, one is of Colorado nations and the other is Southern Ontario. Working on getting more.  &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  18:14, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Still, Artists of the Navajo nation, Chiefs of the Cherokee nation, etc. sound mighty awkward compared to Navajo artists. Furthermore, if you even use the word Kurdistan anywhere in an article or category title you're going to stir up a huge hornet's nest. Do Basques have a "nation" name? Klingons? (Klingon cuisine is currently on VfD.) (Palestine is different since there's a more-or-less autonomous region with that name which at least is negotiating to become a separate state.) &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 16:07, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Kurdistan is not a country yet. Palestine is not a country yet. Equally, the Basque region is just that &mdash; a region, not a country. Klingons do not have a country in the sense we are discussing them here. I doubt the Native Americans carry Cherokee (or whatever) passports, but I could be wrong, and I'm pretty sure they don't have seats at the United Nations. Countries are countries, not semi-autonomous regions within countries. There's a perfectly useful discussion to be had about ethnicity, but it should not be confused with countries. -Splash 17:36, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * For several of these, I wonder if we should be categorizing by them in the first place. By the way, how does Chiefs of the Cherokees sound? They're leaders of a group known as the Cherokees, right? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:53, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Summary 2
Please add to these lists as you see fit, but I think it would be good to keep each item short. Maurreen (talk) 15:45, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
 * added other improvements -- Samuel Wantman 04:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Some possible choices:
 * 1) "(Country adjective) people"
 * 2) "(Country name) people"
 * 3) "(Country abbreviation) people"
 * 4) "People of (Country)"
 * 5) "People of (Country abbreviation)"

Some concerns:
 * 1) "American"
 * 2) View 1 -- Should not be used to indicate exclusively that of the USA.
 * 3) View 2 -- Widely understood to indicate that of the USA. Term used most often to describe themselves. Would follow style guide section on identity.
 * 4) View 3 -- What other term could possibly be used for citizens of the USA that would not also be offensive to USA citizens? All other category naming systems are simply a guise to avoid using this ajetive.
 * 5) Brevity
 * 6) Consistency
 * 7) View 1 -- Consistency among categories important.
 * 8) View 2 -- Absolute consistency among categories not needed.
 * 9) View 3 -- Consider making individual categories consistent with the most closely related article.
 * 10) View 4 -- Consider each on a case-by-case basis.
 * 11) View 5 -- Consistency not needed; if there is a conflict or duplication, usually go with first reasonable category.
 * 12) Grammar
 * 13) Natural, user-friendly expressions
 * 14) "UK/British"
 * 15) How will this apply to categories such as Category:British MPs which span an era covering both Great Britain and the UK? Common usage as per style guide on identity would dictate using British.
 * 16) Lists
 * 17) Are we to standardise list names thus too?

Some other ways to improve things:
 * 1) Use "soft redirects" using  template (see example Category:Authors).
 * 2) Explore possibility of using bots to scan for and recategorize articles from template redirected categories to the correct category.
 * 3) Encourage the creation of category redirects in future software upgrades.

Straw poll?
A lot of good points have been made. We have several options to choose from, and I think there has been at least one objection to each of them.

I'm not sure we can move much further without having a vote of some type. Possibly it would be useful to have a preliminary straw poll on three items:
 * 1) Level of desire for absolute consistency among categories (or primary categories if we set up the system outlined above)
 * 2) Most preferred expression for categories relating to the United States
 * 3) Least preferred expression for categories relating to the United States
 * This would not be binding at this point, but to see where we stand. Thoughts? Maurreen (talk) 06:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes. This was not intended to be all about the US. This was originally intended to solve the "History of " vs. " ish history" issue, since it comes up daily on CFD. I believe we should establish a preference for either, and make it a criterion for speedy renaming. Since that may be perceived as instruction creep, if people really believe a poll is necessary, it should have a third option "don't care" or something like that. The US issue should also be decided of course (and it can be done simultaneously), but the world does not revolve around America. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 17:29, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with Radiant! on all of that. We have the opportunity to work out what to do with more countries than America alone. That could be achieved by generalising the phrazing of Maureen's list on pts 2 and 3. I would prefer to avoid having to have a poll at all, but sometimes a straw-poll is a launching point. Let's allow the postings in RfC/VfD/CfD to simmer for a little longer, people have been gradually turning up to chat. -Splash 17:32, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Hang on. If this debate is intended to cover things like history of foo as well as painters of foo/fooian painters then summary 2 should be amended somehow to reflect that, since at the moment it only applies to people.  Is it not possible to apply different conventions to categories of people and those of activities, policies, geographies and histories?
 * Further points: I just found the recommendation against abbreviations, it is at Categorization, specifically, Avoid abbreviations. Example: "World War II equipment", not "WW2 equipment"., although also see Naming conventions (acronyms), which suggest using US and UK in disambiguation, and also suggest U.S. with periods but UK without periods.  As to a straw poll, why not. Hiding  talk 12:27, August 1, 2005 (UTC)


 * The main page refers to any topic, not just people. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:15, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

And now?
I believe the debate has mostly died down. I would like to make the following points...
 * This is not an official policy proposal. Rather, it proposes a naming guideline that is encouraged for article and category titles.
 * It is, however, proposed that this be added to the speedy renaming criteria for categories.

There are four main issues here,
 * Most everybody agrees that consistency is a Good Thing (and also that soft redirects are appropriate here, and that true cat redirects will be implemented soon)
 * "Things of Foo" vs. "Fooian things". Reading the above I believe there is preference to the former. If people disagree with me then I think a poll would be appropriate.
 * "United States" vs. "US" vs. "U.S.A." and variations - this is less obvious but I believe that most people above agree that "Things of the US" and "Things of the UK" are reasonable compromises. Again, if people disagree with me then I think a poll would be appropriate.
 * How to name categories for which no strict country exists, e.g. the Jewish faith and the Iroquois nation. I believe some good examples were cited above.

Issues that will be debated at a later stage,
 * Should we categorize by gender, ethnicity or sexual preference (e.g. "black componists", "female scientists" etc).
 * What to do about historical nations (e.g. when to refer to Russia or the USSR, and the various names of the UK throughout history)
 * Whether or not to use abbreviations in cat names
 * Possibly others

Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:15, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

I hate to do this, but...I don't think there's a consensus. I agree this debate has died down, I'm not sure if that's because the prime mover has moved on or because the discussion has been sucked onto other things. However, I have to argue that everyone from the UK bar Splash seems to have argued for British foo rather than foo of the UK. That said, I'm even less sure a poll would solve the problem. Can I suggest another compromise? That if the common usage with regards to using nationality is contentious, then use of foo, but if the nationality isn't contentious, use fooian. Otherwise I'm not sure what can of worms will be opened with regards to the UK. I suppose we could let users from each english language country decide their common usage, and allow common usage of the english language naming convention to apply to the rest. I mean, I understand the principle of standardisation at point here, but should we enforce such standardisation against common usage? Hiding talk 15:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * My comments under UK do show that I'm not completely happy with the idea. I do not, though, think that calling the United Kingdom the UK is a can of worms. I suppose you refer to historical questions: we can just define a cat to mean "the countries that have come to be called" as its scope. However, I don't really see any reason to go with "...of the US" and then to decide "...of the UK" is somehow wrong. I think the compromise you suggest above is basically saying "leave everything as it is, and take each case to CfD"...which was what we had hoped to avoid by settling some things here. My personal opinion is that, yes, we should enforce standardisation in an encyclopedia. It even fits with "least astonishment" as mentioned above: if it's Philosophers of Greece I'd be 'astonished' to find it were "Kittitian painters", or for that matter "British painters". -Splash 17:26, 3 August 2005 (UTC) (signed some time after writing!).


 * My suggetion is not leave it as it is. It is to standardise along common usage.  Each country would have a naming convention which would apply, and would solve the problem as easily as any other solution.  I agree we should enforce standardisation, you have misread me there.  I am arguing we should not enforce standardisation to the point of impracticality, and we should also not ignore issues of common usage.  Let us not lose site of the fact that a term of nationality is a standard, and that this debate evolved from a split over whether the term American is confusing. And bear in mind astonishment works both ways.  You suppose that one finds philosophers of greece first, when it could just as easily be that one comes from British Painters.  Also, Painters of the UK does rather confusingly imply that we are categorising people who have painted the UK, doesn't it? Hiding  talk 16:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * But if each country has its own naming standard, which would probably be different from some others, then we have no standard. "Fooian" of some and "of Foo" for others does not make for a standard at all.  And to be honest, if some people would seriously be confused about "Painters of the UK", we could always name it "Painters from the UK".  --Kbdank71 17:35, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Please see the standards we have regarding language usage for how this would apply. There would be a standard applied regionally.  However, we now have a new horse in the race, from the UK, which seems to be even more implicitly an avoidance of using the convenient, common usage adjective of nationality. Hiding  talk 18:03, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * This comes up on CFD daily, so it would be much improved by having a standard. You should look at the larger issue here, not just at the UK. "British" and "of the UK" are both clear and obvious, and also both in common usage. Hence I don't have a strong preference one way or the other. Hence, the issue of standardizing for less 'obvious' countries sways my opinion. As a side point, I don't see anybody on this page arguing for "British foo" other than yourself, so I would like to see some evidence that "everyone from the UK" supports it - aside from the fact that we should be looking at the worldwide issue, not just at people from the UK. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 15:28, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * I think we're getting bogged down in details and preferences, which isn't helping this discussion at all. We should all step back when it comes to "Fooian" or "of Foo" and try to decide that issue.  Don't worry about your country for now, because invariably someone is going to say "well, I like Mycountrian foo, but for all others it can be Foo of Everyothercountry", and we'll be back at square one, which is taking care of each CfD individually, and having no standards.  We should just say, "noun or adjective", and figure out which works better, overall.  I think we've determined that standards are a good thing, so let's get some.  --Kbdank71 17:43, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced we need a standard today, however you asked, I'll answer. Adjective.  Note all categories of people by nationality sit in categories titled foo by nationality, so use nationality, and the term for nationality is an adjective. Hiding  talk 18:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I also think "British foo" is preferable; "Foo of the UK" isn't really common usage, certainly not for people categories. I would prefer to have "Fooian things" as a default with "Things of foo" for the more awkward categories. And I don't think we should avoid using "American" because some other nationalities are offended that the US has appropriated the word. In universal usage "American" means "of the United States of America" unless qualified in some way. That it bothers people isn't really relevant; it's just fact. If Brazil changes its name to "The Brazilian Republic of America" or whatever then there might be a case to answer. JW 16:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * No, this is the problem: it is not fact. It is colloquialism, convenience and nothing more. It doesn't matter how much 'appropriation' goes on, it does not change the fact that the question of what "America" refers to can be laid to rest by being geopolitically accurate and referring to the US/USA/United States/etc. (And, yes, I'd prefer United States of America since there are other United Stateses.) -Splash 17:26, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * No, America is not a continent. The continents are North America and South America, or occasionally the Americas. The name of the country is not "America", but it isn't "the United States" either. The USA is the only country that uses "America" in its title; that is why its citizens are known universally as Americans. It's not just Americans who use the term, it's just about everybody else too. You may not like it, you may think it's incorrect. But it's not the job of an encycopaedia to attempt to change the language. JW 10:05, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It is people from the US that assert that 'everybody else too' uses the term "America" in that fashion. Where I live, newspapers don't. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 10:20, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not from the US either. What do they call Americans where you live, "people of the United States"? JW 10:46, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * From the UK section of the page:
 * ''I'm not sure exactly what the UK proposal is suggesting. I hope this isn't an unworkable suggestion that we should use absurd and clumsy titles like "Painters of the U.K." or "Actors of the U.K". That isn't common usage. JW 22:49, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I would definately agree. Anadine 10:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)''
 * Both views stating opposition to foo of the UK, preferring British foo, and the basis for my statement above which Radiant found objectionable. As to your point that we should be looking at the worldwide view, does this mean you are proposing we are to disregard common usage?  I appreciate that this is an area that requires standards.  Do you appreciate that this is an area where a one size fits all standards may not be practical, and that to legislate foo of and then tidy up may be impractical, because the obvious solution to the UK question has thus been removed? Please also do not assume I am not looking at the bigger picture.  I just have a different view to yours. Hiding  talk 16:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, to take the first comment you quote, there is certainly nothing unworkable, absurd or clumsy about it. Yes, I think we should disregard common usage if common usage is wrong (as in the American question). Then, we should discard common usage where it is right if another, correct, usage would fit a standardised scheme (as in the British/UK question). I am not sure what the impracticality you mention is: it would save having to expect our users to look up the nationality of the Kittitians and Nevsisians, for example. We should not make an exception to our rule for the so-called 'difficult' cases because there is an alternative rule available that avoids the need for exceptions. For the record, my personal preference is "of the United States" and "of the United Kingdom", etc, but there was a fairly clear feeling against expanding the acronym US/USA, and so I'll settle for UK for consistency's sake. -Splash 17:26, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * You may well disregard the comment SPlash, that doesn't mean it can be discounted and a consensual position claimed at that expense. As to disregarding common usage when common usage is wrong as in the American question, can you explain why you believe the American common usage is wrong?  Technically it is correct, the country being America, in a similar way that the Republic of Brazil is referred to as Brazil and so on and so forth.  The term United States is just a descriptive term of the country.  As to the UK question, the standard proposed is not correct.  You have already conceded that point in your mention of the fudge, this category applies to all countries which at some point have...
 * The impracticality I refer to is that countries are mutable. Nationality is less so.
 * Further, yes, when discussing a country, such as a history or an economy, it makes sense to use the term of the US or whatever preference is. However, when discussing people, common usage is to use their nationality.  When one reads a newspaper, do we read of British runners, or runners of the UK?
 * As to making an exception to a rule, I'm sorry, but I thought we were discussing a guideline. I also thought we actually had a rule on common usage, which seems to be getting dismissed out of hand here.  As to exceptions to rules, I am not arguing for that.  I am arguing for common standards across countries, in line with current policy regarding language usage.
 * As to forcing our users to look something up, heavens above, how dare we. Hiding talk 18:03, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I wasn't trying to disregard the comment to claim consensus; I'm not counting votes. I think the comment is wrong, nevertheless (as I presume the commentor would think my reply is).
 * Because the country is not America. It is the United States of America. America is a continent, however much we might refer to it as a country. Brazil is not a continent, no matter the geopolitical or grammatical viewpoint. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is fractionally tiresome to write out. As is the United States of America. I am thus happy enough to go with "Things of the USA" and "Things of the UK". I've never seen the UKoGBaNI referred to anywhere. To aid compromise, I said I'd be happy with "Things of the US".
 * Guideline vs rule. Yes, you are right. But there'd be little point having a guideline to be applied so weakly we rehashed this discussion every day over on CfD. The common usage rule as it stand leads to mistakes on an almost unforgivable scale. I find it intolerable that United States of America redirects to United States and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland redirects to United Kingdom. There is no excuse for not having the redirection the other, correct, way around. I would be bold, were it not for the firestorm it would attract.
 * Our users should not come to Wikipedia, a reference work, and have to go away and look in another (competing) reference work, before being able to conduct their search here. That's what an encyclopedia is for! -Splash 18:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the reason I was referring to the comment was to counter a specific claim.
 * Yes, the country is called the United States of America. However, the continent, I believe, is  known as The Americas.  However, regardless of that, American is the term used to define nationality for people coming from the nation of the USA.  And as Wikipedia has a guideline on using the commonly used term, and that we should respect the commonly used term of the country to which the article applies.  In that spirit, we should be asking ourselves what term the people of the USA commonly use to describe their nationality, and use it.
 * Guideline versus rule, I think it's best that we clarify therefore, that people view this as working as a policy rather than a guideline.
 * The common usage rule may lead to mistakes you find intolerable, however it seems to have been reached by consensus and so it should be respected, as there is no consensus to change it.
 * You have me baffled. Are you referring to editors or readers.  I believed you were referring to editors.  Most readers will not search by category, and as you noted above with your fudge on UK having a note on the category page that describes what the category applies to, the same can be done for a category:american foo.  And is anyone really going to be scratching their head in confusion when reading that Justin Timberlake is an American singer? Hiding  talk 19:07, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that while Brazil is a country, it's also the small Indiana hometown of Jimmy Hoffa. Perhaps we should do something to "correct" the clearly misguided common usage here. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:01, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

I also think it is premature to declare a conclusion to the discussion on countries and nationalities. The fact that discussion had died down does not mean a clear consensus has emerged. "Most" is not the same as "consensus". Maurreen (talk) 17:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I also disagree there is consensus. For example, Postdlf has not weighed in at all lately, consistency vs. common usage where they conflict is not resolved (or did I miss something?), where did the notion that cat redirects will be coming soon come from (or is this a typo?), and my reading is that most people actually prefer "fooian things" with a few exceptions. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:02, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Project page
I disagree with the recent change made to the project page. Maurreen (talk) 17:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Changing "U.S." to "US".
 * 2) Deleting "(present debate on talk page on whether it should be "US", "U.S.", "USA" or "U.S.A.")".
 * 3) For one thing, the style with periods is clearly preferred by the style guide, and there is no clear consensus here to go against the style guide.
 * 4) I suggest that until a conclusion is clear, the project page not take any stand, but be a pointer to the discussion.

Summaries by individuals?
Here's an idea -- Why don't we each make a few short bullet points about the points we feel most strongly about? That could help give an overall view. I'll start.


 * Maurreen's view
 * Prefer "American foo" or "U.S. foo".
 * Least preferred: "Foo of the United States of America" or "Foo of the United States".
 * Standardization among categories is a low priority.
 * Individual categories could just as well be standardized with the articles they are most closely related to.
 * It would be very OK with me not to rename categories for the sole purpose of standardization.
 * Strongly disagree with enforcing anything decided here with speedy renaming. Maurreen (talk) 17:54, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Hiding's view
 * Strongly prefer nationality foo to foo of country.
 * Prefer British foo to UK foo.
 * Standardization among categories is a low priority.
 * Individual categories could just as well be standardized with the articles they are most closely related to.
 * It would be very OK with me not to rename categories for the sole purpose of standardization.
 * Strongly disagree with enforcing anything decided here with speedy renaming. Hiding talk 18:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Splash's view
 * Prefer "...of country" to nationality.
 * Standardization among categories is important, but not all-overriding.
 * Renaming cats to improve standardization is good.
 * Think that not much will have been achieved if this guidenline is so weak it cannot be usefully cited in a CfD discussion.
 * Would prefer to find something that means these discussions needn't come to the full CfD process at all; the speedy rename can just be added to the two-day-rule for speedy deletion.
 * If we go with "Fooian things", would strongly prefer "U.S." or "USA" (periods wherever) to "American", but no particularly strong feelings over British/UK. -Splash 18:59, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Rick Block's view (no relation to Hiding)
 * Strongly (personally) prefer "fooian x" to "x of foo", at least for people related categories but even more strongly prefer whatever is most "natural" (assuming there's something like a 70-80% preference) for the most people, particularly novice users (which I don't think can be resolved with a poll here).
 * Uniform rule across all country related categories not at all important, but rule that is codified (see next bullet) extremely important.
 * Think that not much will have been achieved if this guideline is so weak it cannot be usefully cited in a CfD discussion.
 * Think "real" category redirects are not likely to show up in the software anytime soon (I could be convinced otherwise by a statement from a developer) and cannot be counted on to bridge any gap between an even slightly unnatural rule and what most folks will commonly use.
 * Still have heard no evidence supporting the claim that "American x" is commonly interpreted anywhere in the world other than as "x from the United States of America". Given, for example, this (from a source apparently considered to be authoritative for countries other than the US), avoiding "American x" is striking me as some sort of PC POV.  I'm not frothing at the mouth about this and believe I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I have (so far) seen nothing I'd consider evidence (pretend this is an article, claiming something like "many people in the world consider American to be inclusive of all North, Central and South American people and are offended when it is used to refer exclusively to people from the US" - wouldn't such a claim require some references?  Do any Canadians out there think the phrase ugly American has anything to do with them?).
 * "British x" vs. "X of UK" - prefer "British" especially for people categories, but again most strongly prefer whatever is most "natural" for most people.


 * Radiant's view
 * This way of stating views isn't helpful. I'll put up a straw poll on the main page. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:59, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Disagree with enforcing?
I don't quite understand why some people here strongly disagree with 'enforcing' this guideline. Enforcement sounds like a strong word, but what it really means is that whenever the issue comes up on CFD (which is daily), the outcome of this centralized discussion is followed. If we do not decide something like that, it means we and other people are going to repeat everything that is said here for every individual category to which it might apply. What's the point in that? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:59, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Why is it we can not enforce the guidelines we already have? Surely we can merge using common usage policy, and if that can't settle it, use the oldest category name for each merge or the name of the nearest related article.  Please also note holding categories are titled foo by nationality, not foo of country, which should give a lead.  I see no reason to enforce a contentious policy of standardisation when we have accepted guidelines in place to deal wuth the situation currently. Hiding  talk 09:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * We do, and 'speedy renaming' is one of those. That was precisely my point - if we have an existing guideline, then we shouldn't have a repeated discussion about it every time the issue comes up. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:29, August 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * For one thing, there is a difference between citing a standard in a discussion and speedy renaming. In my view, such absolute standards are not the wiki way. Furhter, speedy renaming does not allow for much flexibility. Maurreen (talk) 17:03, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it should be enforced once agreed otherwise there is no use of this discussion. Renata3 18:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Problems with main page
I've amended countryish to nationality. Since Radiant is the only one to have voted as yet I hope he doesn't object. I'm also removing America and England as a suggestion for proposal 2, as no-one has suggested it here and England is such an incorrect term to use in this discussion. Hiding talk 09:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:28, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Voting Abuse
Radiant, I find it objectionable you have added a vote for me which misrepresents my position. Please allow people the opportunity to cast their own vote. Hiding talk 09:25, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was just trying to be helpful by copy/pasting the remarks. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:28, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * It's most unhelpful when you misrepresent a person's position or cast a vote not yours to vote. Hiding talk 09:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Contradiction?
The contradiction is between "America" (spelled out) and "UK" (abbreviated). For consistency, it would make more sense to make it "America / Great Britain" or "USA / UK". Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:31, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

There is no analogous term. Use United Kingdom or do not list the option. I do not see what use it is anyway, if you want to present the option for American or British then use only those terms, otherwise don't use at all. Hiding talk 09:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The trick is that 'British' only makes sense if the first vote turns out a certain way ("Economy of British" doesn't work). Hence my attempt to clarify it thus. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:48, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

British vs English
I might appear to ignorant, but what's the difference between British and English? While scanning some categories I found that some have both "British xxx" and "English xxx" (e.g. Category:British writers and Category:English writers). Should they be merged and renamed or should they stay as they are because I am totally not aware of some huge difference between them? Renata3 13:37, 4 August 2005 (UTC) Ok, I think I got it, but then maybe it would be reasonable to develop a guideline how to deal with British, English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish things at the same we discussing other related issues? Because for me this issue is utterly confusing and in many places editors are also confused. As I understand from Splash explanation, there should be only British category in the "Category:x by nationality" and only "category:british x's" would contain "English x," "Welsh x," "scottish x." Right? But then what to do with Irish? There is the independent Ireland and the Northern Ireland. How to separate those two? In short, I think we should also introduce this problem in the main page. Renata3 18:26, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * They should be merged if only to clear up the confusion. What the resultant title would be may depend on the outcome of this poll. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 13:39, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * England is one of the constituent parts of Great Britain (which in turn is one of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom). Thus terming something British is more general than terming something English. It is possible to be British and not be English (e.g. you might be Scottish, Welsh or Irish). However, citizens of the United Kingdom all have British nationality. Ask the Government why... -Splash 15:07, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think this belongs here at present. Whether or not to have these cats is not affected by what they are named if we keep them. This discussion asks "English painters" or "Painters of England". We're planning to have an ethnicity and similar related discussion once this one is done. Whilst English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish is not an ethnicity question, it can be adequately thrown into the mix (along with the US states). Incidentally, the Northern Ireland question is another good example of why "Things of Northern Ireland" is the better form, since "Irish things" is just plain confusing in this case, and "Norther Irish things" is well...does that 'nationality' even exist? -Splash 21:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Northern Irish is the commonly used adjective to describe people from Northern Ireland by people in the mainland UK and the Republic. I regret I do not know what term the people of Northern Ireland use to refer to themselves, it could well be either British or Irish depending on allegiance, which further confuses.  However the United Kingdom is a confusing entity and one that needs to be examined regardless of this poll, if you ask me.  However, I have no great problem with using Ireland for the Republic of Ireland and All Ireland when referring to the island, as that is common usage in sports competitions in Ireland, with Irish and Northern Irish denoting nationality for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively.  As the island of Ireland is not a nation, there is no national adjective to apply. I appreciate that issues such as Irish and American are confusing to people, but I think a quick explanation of what the category refers to on the category page should dispel any confusion, and should actually enrich our readership by familiarising them with the term used by a nation to describe their nationality, a goal I think we should embrace, it being encyclopedic.   Hiding  talk 20:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Now there you go, I didn't know there was such a term as "All Ireland" (I don't routinely follow sport). Learn something every day! So far as the UK is a composite country (kinda), yes, some separate consideration might be needed, much as I suspect the US states do. Interesting question you raise about "Ireland not a nation". I think (but am not sure) that Eire/Republic of Ireland is a nation with an entirely sovereign Government (the Crown aside, possibly). I would suppose that Eirelanders are properly Irish by nationality although I don't have one to hand to question! -Splash 22:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)


 * You get the All Ireland hurling and All Ireland gaelic footie. Also note that the Ireland team in Rugby Union is an All Ireland team.  As for Eire/Republic of Ireland, yes, that is a sovereign state called Ireland.  My point was that there is no nation of Ireland which encompasses the entire island at the present time, therefore it shouldn't be seen as incorrect to apply the nationality Irish to those from the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland also owes no allegiance to the British crown, being independent. Hiding  talk 22:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Note also that the countries within the UK are different to the states in the US. England, Scotland and Wales are still countries, due to the lack of a formal constitution.  Northern Ireland's status as a country is somewhat disputed. Hiding  talk 22:37, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

analysis of existing category names
I'd like to see an analysis of the existing category names involving countries indicating how many (overall percentage) are of each general form ("things of x", "things in x", "things from x", "xian things" - any other possibilities?). Taking a straw poll is fine, but I highly doubt the people voting are a statistically representative sample of wikipedia users (or editors). Given my assumption that real category redirects will not be implemented soon, I think we must fit our rule to "most common" usage as much as practical (or we doom ourselves to an endless maintenance job of deleting "misnamed" categories and/or moving articles out of soft-redirected categories into the "proper" ones). IMO any poll (straw or not) has little chance of determining most common usage, however there are enough categories that I think we have a reasonable amount of actual data. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:23, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * People do generally put something in an existing category rather than create a new one. And we have bots to assist us; I do not believe this will be a big problem. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:44, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * As a long standing veteran of cleanup associated with Category:Orphaned categories I disagree. Every few weeks user:Beland's runs detect several hundred "orphaned" categories, of which I'd guess at least half are either obviously misnamed (according to the lax rules we currently enforce) or duplicate existing categories.  These take manual effort to analyze and fix.  The bot user:Pearle can recategorize, but takes manual effort to set up.  We could implement an automatic method for recategorizing articles placed into soft-redirected categories but we haven't yet (and we currently use soft-redirected categories sparingly).  I would like our rule to be as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:28, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * The "endless maintenance" is also why we should make this a significantly strong guideline. It should be at least as citeable as WP:MUSIC, and preferably speedy rename-able under the prevailing two-day-rule. That is, it gets listed for speedy-rename rather than done on sight by an admin and, two days later, is dealt with like any other cat rename. And we do have bots (and Who!) and soft-redirects to help with this. -Splash 15:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Rick Block's idea is very smart. How feasible it is, I don't know. Maurreen (talk) 16:12, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I am not sure we should necessarily feel bound by what we currently have. To examine what Wikipedia does at present and say "ah, then that's the way Wikipedia should do it in future" seems a bit circular. -Splash 16:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree with Splash. If we've made mistakes in the past (and I don't see why we wouldn't have) there's no reason to stick to them. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:15, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Straw poll comment
Just wanted to comment on SimonP's comment about Jim Carrey is a Canadian actor in that he is an actor with a Canadian citizenship, but he is quite clearly not an actor of Canada in that he does, and has never done, any of his acting in Canada. I am a citizen of the United States. I can move anywhere in the world and I will continue to be a citizen of the United States. Why wouldn't Jim Carrey be an actor of Canada? I can see him not being an actor IN Canada, but of? He is a product of Canada, and all that goes with it. Just my 2 cents. --Kbdank71 14:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:44, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's quite so simple; for instance, should George Washington be included in Category:British politicians (or Politicians of Britain) because he held British citizenship at one point? Should Jean-Jacques Rousseau be included in Category:French writers, despite not being a French citizen? Should Dante be in Category:Italian writers, though Italy as a state did not exist? Citizenship is indeed an easily applicable rule but I'm not sure its broad application squares with what we want our categories to be. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:09, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

Depends on the situation
Would it be ok with those who signed in this section to attach a list of example suggestions to the preferred choice of the other two proposals? Presumably those signing in this section think that one or the other will be used most of the time, but would be wary of signing in favour of it without an acknowledgement of the exceptions. If we gave some common exceptions (and were quite willing to add to the list by way of precedent-setting), would those signing in "depends" sign one of the other two? The wording already lists battles, for example. -Splash 15:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I would support the first option if more exceptions than battles were given. For instance the term "Canadian literature" is a universal standard. It gets 212,000 Google hits while "Literature of Canada" gets a paltry 836. The same holds true for other nations and other arts categories like Category:Plays by nationality, Category:Art by nationality, Category:Films by country, Category:Television by country, and Category:Music by nation all of which have long been standardized to the adjectival form. The cause for keeping the people categories where they are is less concrete, but it would be a good idea to have separate votes on people and things. - SimonP 16:03, August 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Simon. I notice that every example I can bring up is being claimed as an exception.  It is somewhat frustrating to have exceptions on one side of the fence but not the other.  However, could we at least agree that whichever way forward we take there will be exceptions, unless, of course, we take the common usage route that has served us well so far, and is not represented on the staw poll? Hiding  talk 17:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Purpose of the discussion
There are apparently different opinions on what we're trying to accomplish here:
 * 1) A result that is the most acceptable to the most people (or looked at another way, a result that finds the least objection), or
 * 2) A result that can be used for speedy renaming.

In other words, which is our higher priority: standards or consensus?

I bring this up because a couple of people have said something like "We will have achieved nothing if ..."

My understanding is that Postdf started this discussion because he disagreed with the common practice of renaming from "American foo" to "United States foo".

My view is essentially that we will have achieved something if all views have been considered appropriately. Maurreen (talk) 17:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I concur that consensus is more important than standards. Hiding talk 17:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * My problem is that the debate comes up daily on WP:CFD. That isn't helpful, and for that reason it would be good to have a consensual standard. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:18, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Article naming conventions
How is this going to apply with regards to article names? We have American comic book, British Invasion, so on and so forth. I noticed a comment above that this convention for category titles would also be applied to articles. Is that the case, and if so why no mention on the main page. Hiding talk 17:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I hadn't noticed the comment you refer to. But I don't see why categories need more standardization than articles, or why they should diverge from articles. Maurreen (talk) 17:07, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * From the And Now section: This is not an official policy proposal. Rather, it proposes a naming guideline that is encouraged for article and category titles. Hiding talk 17:26, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree strongly with that. It's quite a jump from where we've been, and it hasn't had appropriate publicity. Maurreen (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * More publicity is always good. Where would you suggest adding it to? We've got it on CfD, VfD PC, VP Policy (twice) and RfC. We could send a mail to the list, I guess. I do not participate there &mdash; is there anyone here who does?
 * I think the problem is that this has been publicised as standardising category titles. It has never been publicised as applying to articles, and it was never even discussed as being applied to articles.  I really don't think whatever consensus is reached here can in any shape be said to apply to article naming conventions, and I wqould like to clarify that. Hiding  talk 20:38, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I would agree entirely. I'm not sure which comment makes this apply to article titles, and I wouldn't want that to happen anyway and I don't think we (or I at least) ever thought it would. As long as this is not a way to say "if it doesn't apply to both it can't apply to either". -Splash 20:46, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree. My point about publicity was only meant to refer to the fact that the discussion had only been publicized as being about categories, not articles. Maurreen (talk) 02:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * A part of the talk page refers to naming articles. The main page proposal, however, does not (I thought about it but decided not to). The reason is that 1) categories should be more consistent since they're basically our framework of information, rather than the information itself, and 2) debates on category renaming are far more frequent thus need (imho) resolving. People can already rename articles however they want, this proposal won't aid that nor stop that. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:26, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Least preferred
The point of indicating the least preferred option is that it could tell which options have the least objection.

A hypothetical example:
 * 1) 70 percent like option A best, but 30 percent hate it.
 * 2) 20 percent like option B best, but 70 percent hate it.
 * 3) 10 percent like option C best, but no one hates it.

I think overall, the group would be happier with option C. The majority doesn't hate it, and the minority has been given consideration. Maurreen (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I understand that, but it makes the voting results far harder to interpret, and potentially makes for a meta-discussion of how that should be done, and it potentially makes people cast 'tactical votes'. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:26, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Possible compromises No. 3
I could be wrong, but it seemed like there were little or no objections to:
 * "U.S. foo"
 * "Foo of the USA"
 * Comments? Maurreen (talk) 17:54, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I believe you're right, but then which of the two would it be? I believe that you feel most strongly about the whole "United States" issue, which to me is really a secondary point. That's nothing more than a simple disagreement though; but per WP:CSB I believe we should cater to the world first, not to the USA. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:26, August 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * I am not asking anyone to cater to anyone, and I find such comments unhelpful at best. Maurreen (talk) 08:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * To clarify -- the point is to try to find an option that is least objectionable to the most people. Am I the only person here now who is interested in that? Maurreen (talk) 09:43, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * No, I believe we all are. Note that I proposed a compromise here earlier, but people objected to it. Since it had already been discussed for some weeks, I figured we were in a deadlock and a poll would be appropriate. We are now getting input from a number of people stating what their preferences are; I hope that will help decide the issue. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:58, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics)
In light of the above guidleine, do we still need this poll? Are we happy to accept that pages guideline's and caveats, which indicate nationality when describing people but of country when describing the country? If so, then we only need to reach agreement on American or an alternative when describing nationality relating to the USA, and abreviations for the USA and UK in countries. Given Naming conventions (acronyms) suggests using U.S. with periods but UK without periods, if we accept that we could reduce the whole thing to a straw poll on America versus U.S. when categorising by nationality for people. I'll add a proposal to that effect to the main page now. Hiding talk 23:09, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, we still need this poll. The discussion for that guideline was abortive to say the least &mdash; there were a total of 7 votes and a pop-quiz. I do not think that guideline need override our discussions here. -Splash 23:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Guidelines can be reworked, yes, with care. So can policy, but that's a touch harder to achieve (ask Radiant! !)The discussion for the guideline was abortive, I think: it appears to consist only of a brief poll and a vote, along with reference to a single-step conversation had elsewhere. My problem with the guideline is basically that I do not believe that 7 votes and a pub quiz constitutes something we should feel at all bound by (i.e. it's a very weak consensus if it is at all). Our numbers here are greater, and our discussion longer (if less consensual!). -Splash 00:15, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry to be quite so strong in my opposition, but I just don't think that's a good idea. And making yet another poll here without any discussion of it beforehand is not really the best way to do things, imho. -Splash 23:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm being bold. I'd also point out that there was no consensus on holding a poll on this issue, yet one was called.  And all the issues contained within that guideline have been discussed on this page, it's bringing nothing new to the table. Hiding  talk 23:37, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * How else would you preferred we decide the issue? Or would you have preferred not to decide it? I note that this page has seen more traffic (and hence, has become closer to the community and consensus) since the straw poll was added. The discussion was helpful, and people can (and probably do) read this talk page before voting. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:26, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't object Radiant, I merely seek to establish precedent for my own actions. Hiding talk 04:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's certainly bold. But there were no objections to the straw poll, either. But as you say, (particularly with respect to 4c), it brings no new options that we didn't already discuss, apart from implying we should discard our own discussions in favour of one held, briefly, elsewhere. -Splash 00:15, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It implies nothing of the sort. I merely seeked to offer a set of existing policies and guidelines that could work as a compomise position.  As I noted above, is it the case that if consensus is failed to be reached, we are to use those policies as a fall back, since they already exist? Hiding  talk 04:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
 * And one last point: If no consensus is reached here, which looks as though it could well be the case, these guidelines become the policy we use, surely. Hiding talk 23:42, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Remember that guideline is not the same as policy. Policy is essentially binding, a guideline is...well...just a guideline. That particular guideline is also not at all widely used (in fact, I think this is the first time I've seen it cited), so it's currency is rather reduced, imo. If I'm wrong, and it has been widely cited, then I would have to reconsider. If that is the case, I wonder how we came to this discussion at all? -Splash 00:15, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Wait, are we suddenly discussing a policy here. All references previous, I had thought, were that we were discussing a guideline. I take your point on the discussion, and the lack of currency on the guideline.  However, it is an existing guideline and rather than disregard it, my feeling is it is a compromise position.  However, I get the impression there is no wish to compromise at the present time. Hiding  talk 04:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

And yes, you're right, I presumed your 3 polls were taken from the same discussion, which they weren't. I will go correct myself. However, 4b does not extend the much freer voting available in the Proposal 2, turning it instead into a binary yes/no on another document. (Which document appears to lack a status at all.)-Splash 23:58, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Question: are the Wikipedia:Naming conventions part of the Manual of Style? Or are they discussions about things, or guidelines or something else? I can't work it out. -Splash 00:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Naming conventions are policy. Hiding talk 04:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I might be biased, in that I was the only one to vote against those conventions. But valid points have been raised to revisit them. Might be better to wait until we're done here, one way or another. Maurreen (talk) 09:46, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Problems with the poll
In my view, problems with the poll include:
 * 1) "If a consensus emerges here, the intent is to allow for speedy renaming of categories according to this scheme." Not at all settled or clear. Contradictory with saying "guideline."
 * 2) Bias toward more standardization when no such consensus is clear yet.
 * 3) Discouragment of listing "least preferred" options. Maurreen (talk) 08:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Regarding #3, my reasoning was that listing 'least preferred options' makes the voting results far harder to interpret, and potentially makes for a meta-discussion of how that should be done, and it potentially makes people cast 'tactical votes'. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:55, August 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Your reasoning is not inherently more or less valid than mine.


 * I was not calling your reason invalid; I was merely explaining mine. However, I do believe that the KISS principle is on my side. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:55, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, when considering the intent of the page, it is worthwhile to consider the intiation of the page. And I don't recall "speedy renaming" in this talk page or project page until recently.  Maurreen (talk) 09:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * This page was the merging of two pages (this one and Categorization/By country). The former was intended to find out how the USA should be referred to; the latter was created to obviate the need for daily repetitive CFD discussions on the subject. It seems logical to me that if we can get a consensus what the categories should be named, then there's no need to hold the daily discussion. Hence, my proposal to speedily rename; because otherwise, interested parties in this proposal would have to keep a constant eye on CFD and cast their votes every day.
 * I do freely admit to be biased towards organisation. I've been doing organisational wikiwork for several months now and it seems generally appreciated. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:55, August 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Can you clarify the merge? Maurreen (talk) 10:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * My impression was that it was less of a merge than that Radiant created a seperate page for discussion after Maurreen had, both of which summarised the same position from the village pump. Hiding  talk 04:36, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

To Radiant
I'd like to find a way to end our changes to each other's edits. This could have been avoided if the poll had been discussed before it was put up. Maurreen (talk) 08:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I apologize if this turned out to be messy. However, I'm not sure what else I could have done; from your earlier comments I believe you are opposed to standardisation of this issue in general. While I respect that opinion, wouldn't that make you opposed to any kind of standardisation poll? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:55, August 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * You say on the project page: "Also, the issue of 'speedy renaming' has been part of CFD policy for several months now, please read up on it."
 * Do you mean at WP:CFD, where it says: "Criteria for speedy renaming are strictly limited to:" typo fixes, capitalization fixes and Conversions from singular to plural, or back"? Maurreen (talk) 09:34, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, that part. Categories for deletion policies allows for adding of new criteria from naming conventions. Please look at former CFD pages (or ask KBdank, he closes most of them); I strongly believe that whenever an issue comes up frequently, it should be debated in one central place rather than for each individual instance. It saves time, for one. And many people get tired of repeating their arguments (qv the schools issue on VFD). It is not always possible to get a consensus. But it's worthwhile to try, and if there is one, there's no reason for it not to be actionable. There is a lengthy effort to get classes of articles (/categories/templates) away from the various deletion pages, so that they can be restricted to purely the controversial issue (and we have plenty of those, already). Anything that's no longer controversial, by consensus, should be speedily kept, deleted, merged, or renamed, as appropriate. It makes less work for a lot of people, and frees editing time for other things, such as productive writing. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:55, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the apology and will follow up on your talk page. Maurreen (talk) 10:18, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

UN or United nations?
In the lines of US vs United States and UK vs United Kingdom. Renata3 20:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC) Also, EU or European Union? Renata3 20:58, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The discussion is not intended to settle the question for only two of the countries in the world, despite its phrasing. -Splash 21:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree, but still voting people should be aware that at least these two cases need to be taken into consideration. Because when I voted I voted based only on UK/US totally not considering if it would also fit UN/EU. (this is only a suggestion to broaden the scope of the discussion) Renata3 02:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Poll:Oppose votes
The poll did not specify approval voting or not. Some people added oppose votes to a couple of sections. Then an oppose section was added there. I added an oppose section elsewhere. The section and my vote were removed.

That is inconsistent at best. Either all proposals have an option to directly oppose or none do. Maurreen (talk) 15:21, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

categories that currently exist, proposed rule
I've created a list, Category_titles/Categories_by_country, of the "supercategories" of the categories we're actually talking about (these categories are the subcats of category:categories by country) and classified them by current predominant name format (where there is one). There are: Note that this does not count the 75 or so subcats of Category:Occupations by nationality (which are at least mostly of "nationality occupation" format, although there are some exceptions) or many of the subcats of Category:Subdivisions_by_country (which splinter by country first, so are significantly harder to classify). As a proponent of "there should be an enforceable rule" as well as "the rule should reflect common usage" (and assuming the existing formats actually reflect common usage), the rule could be: This leaves 10 categories of categories (labeled inconsistent) and any new groups of categories, that we could resolve case by case. Another approach might be to think about what the categories that have ended up in each form have in common and extract general rules that might require some renaming. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:23, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * 30 in "Nationality x" format
 * 26 in "X of country" format
 * 10 inconsistent (subcategories have no dominant name format)
 * 26 in "X in country" format
 * 7 in "Country at" format (all Olympics-related)
 * if the category fits as a direct subcat of any of the "classified" categories on this page, the name should adhere to the predominant convention
 * This is interesting, but determines common usage from what we already have. It is completely internalised &mdash; and presumably subject to the fairly random choices that appear to have been made for both option. Unless I misunderstand the propsal: I don't really know what you mean by"if the category fits as a direct subcat of any of the "classified" categories on this page, the name should adhere to the predominant convention", but I think it says we should go with whatever Wikipedia already has a majority of. That doesn't really determine common usage in the wider-world sense. -Splash 00:45, 7 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't understand this completely, but it seems to have potential and be somewhat similar to my idea of naming the category in the same format of the most-closely related article. Maurreen (talk) 04:27, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem is that such articles are occasionally renamed back and forth. And as Splash said, basing our current naming scheme solely on the previous naming scheme will only make it harder to to recover from past mistakes. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 07:29, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * I also don't think what Wiki currenlty has should be counted as what is common. Some categories are just named such to match what was there, whether it was "right" or not.  That's the point of this discussion. Reguardless of what exists, we should at least try to keep a close consistency and rename them if we have to.   &infin; Who ? &iquest; ?  07:51, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

To clarify, the proposed rule is essentially "if there is already a well established convention, then use it". Lacking data to the contrary, I think it's a fairly reasonable assumption that the naming patterns that have evolved (in a wiki sense) mostly reflect common usage (and I freely admit this might not be true as well). "Follow established conventions" seems to me to be a pragmatic solution to the issue we're facing. I think there's pretty clearly no consensus (currently 12-4-11 on proposal 1), and rather than simply let this die I'd really like to establish some rule. I haven't tried to extract semantic driven rules from the existing naming practices, but I hardly think it's random. One that is reasonably obvious that covers perhaps 1/3 of the "by country" categories (subcats of Category:Occupations_by_nationality) would be: In fact, looking through the list, we could generalize this rule and add some more, like I think these 3 rules cover most (significantly more than half) of the kinds of country related categories, and with a few more I think we could cover 90% or better. Looking at the categories we have, adopting any single naming convention would require changing the names of dozens of kinds of categories which explodes to perhaps thousands of individual categories which would ultimately require changing 10s (if not 100s) of thousands of articles. Even assuming we could agree on a single rule, I'm not sure this would be a worthwhile effort (even for a bot). Would a single rule make life easier at WP:CFD? Most certainly. But is a single rule desirable ("capital punishment of "???, "actors in "??? - actually I can't find an instance where "nationality x" is plainly awful, hmmm) or pragmatically possible? I think not. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:43, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * An "occupation by nationality" category should have a name of the form "nationality occupation", except in instances where the occupation name includes a country name (e.g. subcats of Category:Prime_ministers_by_country).
 * A category containing people from a country should have a name of the form "nationality x" except in instances where the people are heads of state or have a title including a country name.
 * Categories for natural features (lakes, mountains, rivers, etc.) of a country should have a name of the form "x of country".
 * Categories for man-made objects (archeological sites, buildings, bridges, cities, roads, etc.) in a country should have a name of the form "x in country".


 * I agree with the principle of "If there is already a well established convention, then use it". It seems the most wiki way, for one thing.
 * Bearing that in mind, I'd be at least open to changing well established conventions, when such a change is in accordance with a topical project or the like -- a group of people working most on a given category or group of cats are, in my view, the best to determine how such cats should be handled.
 * Along the same lines, for the categories that don't have an established convention, maybe it'd be good to somehow encourage the people working in them to determine one. Maurreen (talk) 18:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with your three conventions. Further, it appares to me that people, culture and sports all seem to have been categorised by nationality, whilst geography, politics, history and language have been categorised as of country.  I think it's worth asking, is there a rigid insistence on one standard applied universally, or is there room for a compromise where we could have three standards that would have defined edges, such as nationality for people, and so on? Hiding  talk 20:52, 7 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I do not agree with a "don't change it" convention. That only applies, to my mind, in *fD where there is a necessary reluctance to remove information. Here, we're not affecting the information in the encyclopedia so we have a considerably freer hand (WP:BOLD, etc). What we already have appears, so far as I can tell, to have been discussed a few months ago, abortively, and gotten a total of 7 votes. That's not really a well-established convention.
 * I am not very amenable to counting what we already have and saying "hey, that's the way have it, so let's change it to...well...what we already have because we already have it so that must be the way we want it".
 * I am, however, very amenable to go along with the view on the main page that by-group-of-cases might be the best way to go. Without meaning to wikilawyer, I note that for people, there is 75% wanting "Painters of Foo". Perhaps not good enough for consensus yet, but a pretty clear majority. There is also a desire for there to be many exceptions to that rule and I think we should perhaps move to discussing something like Hiding suggests. We can start shifting the discussion in that direction, but ought probably to let the poll run its week before plunging too decisively in one direction.
 * As to Rick's 3 conventions, well, the first one is currently in a minority in the poll, but the other two would likely be less controversial among everyone and I'd be ok with following them, I think, but not because they are that way already but because they sound like sensible ways to proceed. We might want to think about the grammatical issues a bit but I think we're on fairly safe ground.-Splash 21:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Also not to wikilawyer, but by my count the current split is nowhere near 75% "painter of foo" unless you're not counting any of the "it depends" votes. Counting these (which requires carefully reading them, and even then some of the votes are not obvious) I think the current split is more like 15-12 in favor of "fooish painters". -- Rick Block (talk) 21:19, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * I too am not seeing a 75% vote in favour of painters of foo. Hiding talk 22:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Category type by category type, there are clearly conventions. For example, the subcats of Category:Occupations by nationality are overwhelmingly "nationality occupation". Anyone adding a subcat to Category:Actors by nationality not of the form nationality actors is obviously violating the established convention for these categories. We can choose to establish a rule that says the 61 "actor" subcategories are all incorrectly named, but there is certainly an established convention. The "nationality x" convention is followed by nearly all the subcats of Category:Occupations by nationality. There is no established rule for the name of these subcats, but claiming there isn't a convention seems curious. The occupation by country convention doesn't extend universally to all country related categories, i.e. there is no universal convention, but this does not mean there aren't conventions that apply to most categories. I would claim there are existing conventions for approximately 165 existing kinds of categories (subcats of either Category:Occupations_by_nationality or Category:Categories_by_country), and "no convention" for only about 10 kinds of categories (the ones marked "inconsistent" in the list I created). Rather than keep this at a highly general level, can we be much more specific? Precisely what categories have been contentious at CFD lately? If they're occupation by country cats, I'd claim there's clearly a convention. If they're physical feature cats (rivers, mountains, etc.) I'd claim there's a clear convention. If they're man-made object cats, ditto. They may not be any of these, but with more than 150 existing classes of categories by country I'd be very surprised if there isn't an existing class of categories that's pretty darn similar. Should we mindlessly restrict ourselves to the conventions already established? IMO, not necessarily but please don't try to claim that there are no established conventions. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:57, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * You say that if there already is a well-established convention, we should follow it. However, I do not believe that there is any such convention at present. Certainly recent CFD nominations and votes suggest no such thing. There are quite a large number of naming conventions and manual-of-style entries, but it is not clear which of those have widespread support, and which were just inserted ad-hoc by two or three people who thought it useful. Please note that with a bot, it is not a problem whatsoever to rename existing categories. Thus, we should base the decision on what people want, and not on what has been done so far, as that has for a large part been arbitrary. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 21:25, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's any stretch to see that the way the categories have predominately formed as being a convention. However, yes, there should be a discussion of that convention, and whether it reflects current consensus.  I just don't see it as useful to dismiss what's here.  As to citing CFD nominations and votes, they may well attract a different audience to the one that has created the convention, and so could also be biased.  Not that I dispute the merits of this discussion, which I think have allowed all interested parties a chance to state their case. Hiding  talk 22:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

will be gone for a week
I'll be offline for a week. Please don't take my slience on this issue during this time as anything other than "will comment later". Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:57, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Selective removal of oppose vote
Do people think it's OK to remove a votes? To allow oppose votes in for some proposals, but not all? Here are the diffs:
 * 1) Radiant! votes against my proposal (No. 3).
 * 2) Radiant votes to oppose part of proposal 4.
 * 3) I vote to oppose Radiant's preferred proposal, No. 1.
 * 4) Radiant removes my oppose vote.
 * 5) Radiant removes the 'oppose' section to proposal, saying it's "by Maurreen's request."
 * Radiant neglects to mention that the oppose votes were not removed, but just mixed in with the support votes. Radiant does not address the removal of my oppose vote to a different proposal on the page.
 * Comments, please? Maurreen (talk) 06:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * This is not an RfC. This sort of thing belongs on a user talk page. -Splash 06:48, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * For one thing, I tried that already. Maurreen (talk) 06:59, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what the problem is... vote #1 is a straw poll between four different options, letting them pick which one they like best to figure out what consensus likes best. Maurreen's opposition to the first is apparent from her support of the second and third option. Vote #3, on the other hand, is a clear and simple proposal that allows people two choices (to support it, or to oppose it), to figure out if consensus is in support of this proposal. Maurreen then objected (if I understood correctly) to the separate 'support/oppose' sections on her proposal, so I merged them together and sorted the votes chronologically (like is done on a VFD vote; arguably this makes for a better discussion). Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:06, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * What I object to is the inconsistent treatment of oppose votes. Either people can vote "oppose", or they cannot. Maurreen (talk) 09:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * It depends on the voting system. The votes I created (#1 and #2) are approval voting. The votes added by other people (#3, #4ABC) binary voting. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:20, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't know a polite way to say this -- All this is because you say so? You decide the voting system, during the voting, in a way that favors you? Maurreen (talk) 09:29, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Approval voting and binary voting are both well-established voting systems that have different applications; me saying so doesn't come into it. They're not favoring anyone, they simply determine where consensus lies. I understand that you disagree with option #1 of my approval vote. So you vote for the other options, fine. However, next you create a proposal on the same page that has the purpose of discounting the vote. Now that this proposal seems to be failing, you seek to invalidate the approval vote on grounds that is inconsistent with the proposal you added later. I don't think that's particularly solid reasoning. Can we keep things simple please? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:46, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * Regardless of of the issue of approval and binary voting, where is unilateral removal of votes established or accepted? Maurreen (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

loosing steam
I'm having trouble keeping up with this debate. There are too many things being discussed at once. I think it may be time to start over.

I'd like to propose a change in the process. I think this should be a moderated and facilitated discussion. The process I propose is a combination of structured problem-solving methodology and formal consensus decision making. Many of these steps would be easy to accomplish. As we proceed, the facilitator(s) would edit main pages to explain the process, summarize the discussions, and organize the results. All discussions would be on talk pages, and as each phase of the process is completed the discussion about the phase would be archived. So here is the process I propose:


 * 1) Establish a page explaining what we are up to and explaining the process we hope to use.  Set a schedule for each step of the process.  Announce the project to the larger community and encourage participation.  Have people add there names to a list of participants in the discussion.  People who sign on would be expected to see it through and keep up with the debate.  Late-comers to the debate would be requested to read all the debate and archives before commenting.
 * 2) Solicit user contributions on concerns and critiques of current policies (without soliciting discussion on each contribution), also mine past discussions for the same.  At the same time do some research to find out the extent of the perceived problems.
 * 3) Use these concerns, critiques and analysis to create a list of criteria for establishing new policies.
 * 4) Identify which policies are, and which are not causing problems.
 * 5) Create a project statement that clearly defines the objective of the overhaul. This, with the list of criteria, should be used to evaluate any possible solutions.
 * 6) Brainstorm to generate different scenarios for possible solutions. While brainstorming, discourage discussion about the merits of each.
 * 7) Organize and compare the solutions generated. Evaluate each against the criteria and project statement.
 * 8) Select a scenario to pursue.
 * 9) Write specific new policies based on the scenario.
 * 10) Create a plan on how to implement the changes and educate users about the changes.
 * 11) Present as a complete package to the larger community. Ask for feedback and concerns.
 * 12) Try to adjust proposal to address valid concerns if possible.
 * 13) Present for approval.
 * 14) Implement plan.
 * 15) Evaluate progress and make adjustments as needed.

At any point we may need to back track a step or more.

This must seem like quite a bit of work and effort, but if we all start out with an agreement about what we are doing and how to proceed it makes all the work that follows easier.

I'd like to throw out one more suggestion while I'm at it. I'd like to open up this discussion to Categories in general, and not just these naming issues. Perhaps there are creative solutions to how we are doing things that would solve these naming problem and some of the other category frustrations as well. -- Samuel Wantman 09:06, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * For one thing, I'm not sure how much agreement there is one what we're trying to do here (acknowledging that I'm probably in the minority). And what are the other category frustrations? Maurreen (talk) 09:20, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that it would be an excellent idea to have an agreed-upon scheme for making centralized discussions. Votes for deletion/Policy consensus already does that to a lesser extent, but it seems that for every such discussion we're reinventing the wheel. I admit to having made some mistakes here and would be happy to contribute to such a scheme to prevent such mistakes in the future. That said, a fifteen-step plan is probably too complex, and I don't see this as grounds for throwing out everything said here already. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 09:52, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * WP:TS could also serve as a good example of a centralized discussion. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 10:16, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * I am not sure that "starting over" is a sensible thing to do. I don't think we need to repeat ourselves; everything is in the archives/talk pages if people want to read it. And juding from the above, I think we still have plenty of steam! Whilst those 15 steps would form a good basis for discussion of proposals in general (although they are not practical as they stand), imposing them ad hoc here would be a serious move backwards. -Splash 12:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
 * As to a discussion of categories in general, what do you mean? At the moment, we're discussing country-related titling questions and you say that that is hard enough to follow by itself! There is a small list of other things that come up regularly on CfD that it would be nice to discuss next (after a break, perhaps!) but doing them all at once would be....well...painful. If you're after technical solutions to categorization weaknesses (of which there are undoubtedly several), a better place to start might be VP Technical. -Splash 12:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I've made a draft for a centralized page for this and similar debates in the future. Please read over Standards and tell me what you think of it, and/or reword it as necessary. The feedback from all of you is welcomed; it would be good to have an established way to do this to avoid confusion or conflict in the future. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 13:01, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * I should imagine this straw poll isn't going to lead much further than another poll or discussion, the first proposal attracting most votes and being pretty much equally split. At the point of close of poll, if that is still the case, I suggest something akin to these steps be adopted.  I'm not sure about Maurreen, Rick, Splash and Radiant, but I get the impression there is a compromise position on the middle ground if we just work out how to word it.  Also, when it comes time to do the summary, is it okay to request that we wait for Rick to come back before we make any binding decisions? Hiding  talk 19:28, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * That's ok with me. I think the polls have been useful. Also, Who is away for at least most of this week, so we should wait for him too. -Splash 22:46, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Waiting for Who and Rick is fine with me. At first glance, there seems widespread support for using Fooish Bar for people, and Bar of Foo for most other things. It would be good if we had some kind of compromise, and I'm glad that most people added lengthy useful comments to their votes. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 08:11, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

British/American
I should have clarified this ages ago, but in proposal 2, are American/British tied to America and the UK, since many people seem to be preferring American and British as adjectives with differing noun preferences. I think in the next stage of discussion we need to break it down a bit beyond the way it is presented here, depending on what the next step is. Hiding talk 19:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

This has all happened before; it will all happen again
This was previously (January 2005) discussed on WP:CFD, and there is an archive at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:By country. As a result of this discussion, many specific categories were renamed to fit the Foo of Bar model, though many people-related categories were not. The discussion includes: -- Beland 03:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Examples of bad adjective forms
 * A proposal for how to standardize what each geographic entity should be called
 * Discussion of prepositions
 * Discussion of cases where countries have split/merged


 * I would just like to say that, regardless of how the consensus turns out, I would like to see it applied to the sub-cats of Category:Battles by country in particular. Throughout the entire Category:History by country discussion, consensus, and change-over, these Battle categories were left untouched. They are now in a state of disarray and disorder from different people (including myself) applying their favorite standards. Whatever consensus is reached, I would love to see some consistency applied to these subcats. Thanks. LordAmeth 15:57, 10 August 2005 (UTC)